The Holy Spirit - What He Does For Us
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Introduction
Introduction
This morning we talked about the gift of the HS being the indwelling of the HS and everything that might bring along with it.
To be sure that includes our salvation and being born again, but we also talked about how that includes whatever the Spirit of God has done, is doing, and will do in and among His people.
So we addressed this morning the question that should follow our understanding that the Holy Spirit dwells within us, “What does He do?”
And that is a really great question, and it’s one that I’m certainly not going to answer definitively tonight, but I do believe that we can trust what the scriptures tell us in regards to this question.
I also want to say tonight, that when I said that the Holy Spirit is the most lied to and lied about subject in religion, that the lies are often accomplished through this concept of the Holy Spirit indwelling.
Untold hundreds if not thousands of false doctrines have arisen in modern day religion from those who allegedly received “additional revelation from the Holy Spirit.”
How many people have been misled by “different gospels” coming from these lies?
So it seems to me the best place to start is in understanding something key to who God is, and since the HS is God, this needs to be front and center in our discussion about what the HS does for us today.
Who here has heard and believed that God can do anything?
That’s what we are always taught right? God is all powerful
GOD is self-limiting
GOD is self-limiting
So it seems to me the best place to start is in understanding something key to who God is, and since the HS is God, this needs to be front and center in our discussion about what the HS does for us today.
Who here has heard and believed that God can do anything?
That’s what we are always taught right? God is all powerful and has the ability to do ANYTHING!
What if I was to tell you that isn’t exactly accurate according to God Himself?
You see, tells us something critically important about God.
18 so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.
So what that means is that any time that God reveals to us through His self breathed scriptures any promise, any revelation, any prophesy, any thing about himself, he is self-limiting himself because he is now bound by His own words!
So does this give what has been written an incredible amount of weight? YES!
So whatever we might say that the Holy Spirit does for us today, we must first and foremost understand that He will do NOTHING that stands in contradiction to the scriptures.
Is this not the same principle that Paul wrote to the Galatians in ?
8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.
The gospel preached on the day of Pentecost is the same gospel that’s been preached ever since, and anyone who says any different, let him be accursed.
And so to be extremely clear, Whatever the HS does today for us, He does it in accordance with the scriptures, and I’m comfortable in saying that he does it MOSTLY THROUGH the scriptures and what we know about His work is through the scriptures.
The Scriptures
The Scriptures
The Holy Spirit has a long history of placing God’s word into our hands.
He did it in the OT, He’s responsible for the NT. And He without a doubt uses those means to communicate God’s message to the world.
He uses the scripture to convict the world of Sin and to bring about faith. Paul wrote in
14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” 16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” 17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
He tells uses the scripture to inform us that the faith has once for all been delivered to the saints and that no additional revelation is coming when Jude wrote
3 Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
I believe that the Holy Spirit leads us by the Scriptures which gives us the Wisdom of God
You’ll remember that I quoted this morning, but in the verse before that Paul wrote
15 and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
The Holy Spirit gives us wisdom through the scripture and desires for us to avoid irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge”
We could go on and on, but I think it’s clear that the HS uses the scriptures as a wonderful tool in our lives to give us the wisdom that comes from God.
But as I said this morning, the HS is not the Scriptures, and perhaps is this nowhere better noticed than in the fact that Scripture tells us that the HS intercedes for us.
Intercedes
Intercedes
We read quite a bit from this morning, and we will return there tonight for perhaps the best proof of the HS being more than the scriptures.
Now I’ll be honest, I don’t know how this works, I only know that it does.
And I don’t want to appeal to emotionalism as proof of this working in our lives, but I don’t think that I am when I say that we have all likely experienced a moment of great heartbreak, of the loss of a loved one, the hurt from watching a loved one suffer. And in those moments we understand the feeling of knots in our stomach, of the lump in our throat, of a terrible mix of emotions that we couldn’t explain fully if we wanted too.
18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. 26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
Church, I don’t know about you, but this seems like a deeply personal connection to me. The Holy Spirit helps you and me in those moments where we can barely pick ourselves up off the floor, and he brings our hearts before the throne of God for us!
Church that is amazing!
I don’t know about you, but I want that, I need that!
And according to the scriptures, we have that!
Some might ask, how does it work?
I don’t know.
What does it feel like?
I don’t know
How do you know it happens?
I trust in God’s word.
Seal and Deposit
Seal and Deposit
Deposit
20 O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge,”
14 By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.
14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
5 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
Seal
Seal
Seal
30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
13 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
13 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,
5 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
22 and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
Christ has sealed us as his people, He’s made us a people for his own possession! The idea of a seal is to show ownership and authority over something.
I’m fascinated by TV shows and movies that take place in the 18th century and watching when they sit down to write a letter and get ready to send it off, they take a stick of wax, hold it over the candle on their desk, dab the wax on their letter, and then they take their seal, their unique imprint and press it into the wax as the proof of who sent it. No one would accept a letter as genuine without the proper seal attached to it.
The scriptures tell us that the HS is God’s seal upon all Christians. It proves to us that we are all those things that we talked about this morning in ,
That we belong to Christ
That we are sons of God
That He will resurrect us from the dead.
And in the same vein, the Holy Spirit serves as a guarantee or a deposit toward something better to come.
The image that is usually employed here is that of an engagement ring.
An engagement ring is a promise of things to come, a promise that has yet to be realized yet.
And that is what the HS is for us.
Remember in the prophets how God promised a time when he would pour out his spirit on his people?
And remember how I said in that that time was now?
Well we still live in that time. Christ is still building His church, the gift of the HS is still being given, and we live in this time of God dwelling with his people in the spirit as we each constitute the temple of God.
But that is just a down payment on that awesome and great day when we will all be together with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.
Again, what do I point to to prove that happening today, well I point to the scriptures.
Again we could probably spend a month just on what we’ve talked about today, but the last think I want to talk about is how the Holy Spirit produces fruit in our lives.
Fruit of the Spirit
Fruit of the Spirit
Through gathering together with the church, through building one another up to love and good works, through study of the scriptures and the obtaining of the wisdom found within them,
We live the kind of Spirit filled lives that he’s called us to live.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.
Gal 5:16-
