For God So Loved - The Holy Spirit

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Question

Have you ever felt powerless?

Last week we talked about how God sees Himself in relation to us, through the cross. That in our sin, in our death, God doesn’t abandon us or drive us off - he brings grace, compassion, and he shows great love by giving His son for us to be free.

This week, I wanted to talk about what God has committed to do through us with the Holy Spirit in our powerlessness.

And I want to cover two main areas - the first is, what the Holy Spirit does IN us, and the second us, what the holy spirit does THROUGH us. And we’ll talk about the THROUGH us next week.

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Romans 5:5–8 NIV

And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

This is big deal number 1 that God wants to do in our lives. This is one of the most primary goals - that God would continually pour his love into our hearts

And this verse uses two words to describe US - powerless, and sinners. We couldn’t do anything, and we were the bad guys in the story.

And this is what the presence of the Spirit in our hearts draws us towards - a relationship continually defined by more and more presence of the love of God.

And the reasoning is really, really simple. If we are truly repentant, if we take a hard long look at ourselves and realize that we’re not good enough - it causes remorse. It causes sadness. It causes regret. And that is not God’s goal.

2 Corinthians 7:10

2 Corinthians 7:10 NIV

Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.

And this one seems backwards to us. We feel like, we WANT people to have remorse. We WANT them to feel regret. It shows that they mean it, right?

But God’s priorities is this - that

The Holy Spirit doesn’t work to cause us to regret - he wants us to re-orient

To point ourselves towards the hope that God has for us, and to say ‘I’m going after that. I don’t need to be this way anymore’.

And this is why He pours His love into us - to continually encourage us to get out of the regret, get out of the remorse, and move towards the change, because that’s REALLY what God wants to see.

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Ephesians 1:13–14 NIV

And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.

On believing, God puts a seal on us - the Holy Spirit

A seal was a mark on a letter, made by the person sending it, so that if the person receiving it saw the mark, they knew who it came from - and they could trust the contents

It could also be a crest or a seal pressed into a document - an official mark of, ‘this came from us, it’s good’.

Paul is saying, God uses the Holy Spirit as a reminder, as a mark saying, ‘You are mine. This is from me. Trust it.’

Not only is the spirit a seal, it’s a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance. The point of this phrase is this - that God gives the Holy Spirit as power to make sure that we make it all the way.

It’s like God has this amazing home built for us, but it’s somewhere far away, and we’re not sure how we’re going to get there. God makes a powerful and generous deposit in our bank accounts and says ‘there, that should handle any sort of costs you may have to pay to get here. So just, come on out’.

The Holy Spirit doesn’t work to put us out - He works to keep us in

and this is a fundamental shift from how many of us have approached God. We think God is out there just trying to hammer the bad people, like some kind of giant cosmic whack-a-mole

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John 14:16 NIV

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—

the Holy Spirit is our ‘parakletos’ - the word means advocate or helper. Outside of the bible, it was a legal assistant or an advocate in a court of law - somebody who went to bat for your defence

Now here’s the thing. A lawyer, an advocate, they aren’t trying to enable you to keep doing bad things. They want you to stop.

But in this case, the Holy Spirit isn’t the person trying to root through and find good reasons to keep you in jail. He’s the person who has come along side you, put his arm over your shoulder, and is trying to clear the roadblocks in your life to make sure you can get OUT of jail.

And this even extends to our problems as well. When we suffer - even when we suffer because of ourselves, which is a lot more often than any of us are willing to admit - the Holy Spirit just comes along side, puts an arm on our shoulders, and says ‘hey, ok. Let’s figure this one out.’

Now, Jesus puts a time limit on this help. And that time is ‘forever’.

The Holy Spirit isn’t a bandaid solution to get us out of a jam. He wants to be with us forever. He wants to advocate for us the rest of our lives. He wants to help us from here on until we die.

The Holy Spirit doesn’t work to put us back in jail - He works to walk us out to freedom

Now, this doesn’t mean that he won’t deal with the bad parts of us. And that he won’t call us on them. He will.

But the goal is different. The Holy Spirit isn’t here to show you that you’re bad, you’re not worth it, whatever. He loves you deeply. And he wants to know you forever. He’s working to get you back into the full presence of God, face to face, like we were created to be.

So, here’s this three-fold purpose of the Spirit in our hearts.

to continually pour God’s love into our hearts

To show us God’s seal that He still loves us, and to deposit power into our life to make sure we can reach our inheritance

To walk along side us to work through everything we need to work through to get to freedom

And the total picture we’re putting together is this - how much God loves us, and how much work He goes through to make sure He can be with us.

Last week, we talked about the fact that our sinfulness doesn’t cause God to stop loving us -it causes Him to respond in compassion and grace, and to give his Son so that we can be free.

This week, when we see our powerlessness and failures, our weakness to solve the problem of sin ourselves - we’re met by a God who sends the Holy Spirit, not to drive us off, but to do anything possible to bring us back in.

So we have no excuse. If we are sinful - God draws us in. If we are weak - God makes us strong. Whatever reason you have to say God couldn’t accept you or doesn’t want you - God powerfully drives that away.

So let’s accept that love and that grace today.