God The Holy Spirit

February 22, 2009

John 14:15-17, 25-26; 15:26-27; 16:7-15

What are some of the things we pray for which God has already done? Do we pray for spiritual blessings? Done! Ephesians 1:3 states: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, We come short in no gift says 1 Corinthians 1:7. Do you pray for holiness? God made you holy, set apart for His purpose when you came to believe and obey Christ. Do you pray for God’s power in your life? Done! If you have the Holy Spirit in you, you have His power. 2 Timothy 1:7 says God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity but of love and self-discipline. We have the power! Do you pray for God to reveal His plan for Cut Knife to you? Believe it or not, God does nothing with our revealing His counsel to His servants. Listen to what Henry Blackaby says about God’s revelation to us from Amos 3:7

Christians spend much time talking about “seeking God's will,” as though it were hidden and difficult to find. God does not hide His will. His will is not difficult to discover. We do not have to plead with God to reveal His will to us. He is more eager to reveal His will than we are willing to receive it. We sometimes ask God to do things He has already done!

The people in Amos's day became disoriented to God and to His desires. God had revealed His will; the problem was that they had not recognized it or obeyed it. Amos declared that God does nothing in the affairs of humanity without seeking one of His servants to whom He will reveal His activity. Tragically, there are times when no one is walking closely enough with Him to be receptive to His word (Isa. 59:16; 63:5; Ezek. 22:30–31).

Jesus walked so intimately with His Father that He was always aware of what the Father was doing around Him (John 5:19–20). Jesus said that if our eyes are pure, they will see God and recognize His activity (Matt. 6:22). If we are not seeing God's activity, the problem is not a lack of revelation. The problem is that our sin prevents us from noticing it.

When God is working in your child's life or when He is convicting your coworker, He may reveal His activity to you. His revelation is His invitation for you to join Him in His redemptive work. Be alert to God's activity around you. He will reveal His activity to His servants. If your spiritual eyes are pure, you will be overwhelmed by all that you see God doing around you! The Holy Spirit is working all the time! This morning we’re going to take a brief look at the work of the paraclete – our helper, comforter, consoler, intercessor, advocate. Parakletos, used as the name of the Holy Spirit by John, comes from the Greek para – meaning alongside and kletos, meaning called. Today we’ll take a look at the third person in the Trinity – the person of the Holy Spirit.

But first, A farmer and his farmhand went duck hunting. The farmer said to his friend, "You're always talking about fighting with the devil. I'm not a Christian, and I never have to fight with the devil." The farmhand answered, "Boss, if you and I shot two ducks, one was wounded and one was dead, which one would you go after first?" He said, "Well, I guess the wounded duck." He said, "That's right. The devil knows you're a dead duck." If the devil doesn't bother you, it's because he doesn't have to bother you since you and he are traveling in the same direction. If you turned around, you'd have a collision with him. Right now, you are in collusion with him.

There’s a lot of truth in this little story – if you’re no danger to the enemy, he’ll leave you alone. Once you start living in obedience to Christ, you become a threat to him and you can expect him to react. The you have to resist him and he will flee from you.

Please turn to John chapter fourteen and we’ll start reading at verse fifteen. We’ll be flipping to passages in John 14 through 16, but we start with John 14:15-17

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you.

Now, please look down to verses 25 and 26: These things I have spoken to you, while I am still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

Now turn to chapter 15 and I’ll read verses 26 and 27: But when the Counselor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me; and you also are witnesses, because you have been with me from the beginning.

And, the last passage is found in John chapter 16, starting at verse 7: Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convince the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no more; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

In order to summarize the biblical teaching about the Holy Spirit, three indispensible truths must be affirmed, namely the Holy Spirit is a person. He is a person of Power and influence in the life of the believer. Second, the Holy Spirit is God, and, third, He has specific functions in the triunity of God. He is the Spirit of Truth (Jn 16:13), as well as being our Comforter. He can be grieved (Eph 4:30) and sinned against (Mk 3:29). He reveals, searches, know (1Cor 2:10-11). He evaluates situations (Acts 15:28) and punished (Acts 5:3,5). He is called God in 1 Corinthians 3:16 - Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? , and God’s attributes are present in Him. Hebrews 9:14 calls Him eternal. Romans 8:2 calls Him the Spirit of life who free you from sin and death.

Here John uses two ideas which lie very close to his heart and are constantly entwined in his thought. The Holy Spirit is a person and the Holy Spirit is God. Lets look at these two facts more closely.

1. The Holy Spirit Is a Person

The most important passage to support the first truth is John 14–16. At least three things in these chapters confirm that Jesus thinks of the Holy Spirit as a person not a mere force.

1) Jesus calls him "another Counselor" in 14:16, "I will pray the Father and he will give you another Counselor to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth" (14:26; 15:26; 16:7). When Jesus calls him a Counselor or Comforter, he treats him as a person not a force. And when he calls him "another Counselor," he means, "He will be a counselor like me." The Holy Spirit is a counselor like Jesus is—he is a person.

2) In John 14:17, Jesus says, "You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you." Then in verse 25 he says, "I have spoken to you while I am with you." Jesus virtually identifies the Spirit with himself. "I am with you and will be in you" is the same as saying, "I am with you and the Spirit will be in you." "You know me now as flesh and blood Son of God. You will know me soon through the Spirit who will be given to you." Therefore, the Spirit is no less a person than Jesus is.

3) The Holy Spirit is described not merely as the voice of God's teaching but as a teacher in his own right. John 14:26, "The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things." And in 15:26 he is a witness in his own right, "When the Counselor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me." And lest we think that the Spirit is just the extended teaching activity of the Father and the Son, John 16:13 says that the Spirit first hears and then teaches: "He will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak." The Spirit is treated not as a force, or influence, or activity of another person, but as a person in his own right, hearing from the Father and the Son, and teaching and bearing witness to men.

It will make a great deal of difference in your own life if you believe that you are being indwelt and led and purified not by impersonal forces from a distant God, but by a person who in his essence is the love of God (Romans 5:5; 1 John 4:12–13). Handley C.G. Moule, the former bishop of Durham who died in 1920, gave witness to the importance of the Spirit's personality:

Never shall I forget the gain to my conscious faith and peace which came to my own soul, not long after a first decisive and appropriating view of the Crucified Lord as the sinner's sacrifice of peace, from a more intelligent and conscious hold upon the living and most gracious Personality of that Holy Spirit through whose mercy the soul had got that blessed view. It was a new development of insight into the Love of God. It was a new contact as it were with the inner eternal movements of redeeming goodness and power, a new discovery in divine resources.

2. The Holy Spirit Is God

When you add the second truth about the Holy Spirit, the first becomes even more precious. The Holy Spirit is God. The person who indwells and leads and purifies is no one less than God, the Holy Spirit. The simple evidence for this is the frequent designation "Spirit of God." The Spirit is "of God" not because God created him, but because he shares God's nature and comes forth eternally from God (see 1 Corinthians 2:10–12). If the Son of God is equally eternal with the Father, as John 1:1–3 makes clear that he is, then so is the Holy Spirit equally eternal with them both, because, according to Romans 8:9–11, the Spirit of Christ is one and the same with the Spirit of God. If this were not so, we would have to imagine that there was a time when the Son had no Spirit and the Father had no Spirit. But I want to try to show that the Holy Spirit is essential to the relationship between the Father and the Son. He is, to use Moule's words again (p. 28), "the Result, the Bond, the Vehicle, of their everlasting mutual delight and love."

As far back into eternity as God the Father has been generating or imaging forth the Son, there has been an infinite Holy Spirit of love and delight between them, who is himself a divine Person. Therefore, as Jesus prays for the church in John 17:26, he asks his Father for nothing less than the Holy Spirit when he says, "I made known to them thy name, and I will make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them." The most glorious of all truths that we will discover is that when the Holy Spirit comes into our lives, he comes not merely as the Spirit of the Son, nor merely as the Spirit of the Father, but as the Spirit of infinite love between the Father and the Son, so that we may love the Father with the very love of the Son, and love the Son with the very love of the Father.

Do you remember when you first came to believe and receive Jesus? When the story of Jesus was first told to you? What made you feel that this was the truth about the Son of God? That feeling is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit within us who moves us to respond to Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit makes us living witnesses of who Jesus Christ is.

"You," said Jesus to his disciples, "will be witnesses about me." (Is 43:10) There are three elements in Christian witness.

Firstly, Christian witness comes from long fellowship and intimacy with Christ. The disciples are his witnesses because they have been with him from the beginning. A witness is a man who says of something: "This is true, and I know it." There can be no witness without personal experience. We can witness for Christ only when we have been with him.

Secondly, Christian witness comes from inner conviction. There can be no effective Christian witness without this inner conviction that we have heard the truth. We believe! We may not have all the answers but we know whom we believe and we are persuaded that Christ is able. (2 Tim 1:12)

Finally, Christian witness issues in outward testimony. A witness is not only someone who knows that something is true; he is someone who is prepared to say that he knows that it is true. A Christian witness is a man who not only knows Christ but wants others to know him too. We are driven by the Holy Spirit, burdened by the Holy Spirit, enabled by the Holy Spirit.

It is our privilege and our task to be witnesses for Christ in the world; and we cannot be witnesses without the personal intimacy, the inner conviction and the outward testimony to our faith.

If I love the lost, I will seek to save them from perishing, especially my family members. If I love God, in the power of the Spirit I will work to overcome the worldwide ignorance and the belittling of the work of the Holy Spirit in us and through us. The blinders are beginning to fall off my eyes. The bombshells of the unseen war all around me are exploding with terrible brightness. I am coming to see the peacetime mentality that dominates our North American churches, a mentality of comfortably seeking to gratify all our own desires. I see this as a tactical victory for Satan—the result of a kind of nerve gas from Satan's arsenal of chemical weaponry that puts the soldiers of Christ into a kind of stupor or euphoria which eventually puts us to sleep at the gates of the enemy, and makes us utterly oblivious to the cries of the P.O.W.'s behind the wall. Who but Satan could devise a chemical weapon which when spread over the army of Christ would make us content simply to hold worship services and support groups at the door of Satan's dungeon? Picture the Allied troops landing in Germany, marching victoriously toward the smoke from the ovens of Dachau, and then stopping at the gates, setting up camp, and having a big Bavarian beer fest to celebrate while the Gestapo finishes murdering 5,000 Jews behind the gates. Satan is satisfied with all our religious activity as long as it does not move us to break down those gates to rescue the perishing.

Therefore, at the top of my agenda these days has been the question: how can I get myself and the church awake to a wartime mentality? Is there some way to break the spell? Picture a great army asleep with mighty weapons in their limp hands and armor in their tents. Picture them sleeping in the fields all around Cut Knife - Satan's stronghold. Suddenly, an eyelid blinks, a head lifts and looks around. Then another and another. A strange awakening spreads through the field. Muscles are flexed. Armor fitted. Swords sharpened. Eyes meet with silent excitement. The light in the commander's tent goes on, the generals gather and the strategy for the attack is laid. This is Holy Spirit Revival!

What has happened? The Holy Spirit has begun to move upon the armies of the Lord. "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light . . . (Eph 5:14) Do not be drunk with Bavarian beer but be filled with the Holy Spirit . . . (Eph 5:18) Put on the whole armor of God . . . Eph 6:11) and take the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God . . .(Eph 6:17) Keep alert . . . and help each other be bold" (Ephesians 5:14, 18; 6:11, 17–19). There is only one power that can break the spell of Satan, waken the armies of the Lord, and rout the god of this age—It is the power of the Holy Spirit.

Recently, I was praying earnestly about these things and seeking the Lord for direction in my ministry. And the Lord gave me, I believe, the over-mastering conviction that I should preach on the Holy Spirit. There are three reasons why I believe this:

1) If I am burdened for the vital experience of God missing in many of our people and for the power of godliness to be in your lives, it makes sense to preach not just on what God has done or what he will do or what we must do, but on what God is now doing and how he is now experienced in you through the Holy Spirit.

2) This sentence found in Romans is stunning and full of ominous warning. It is a wake up call!: "If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live" (Rom. 8:13). Your eternal life hangs on having a vital experience with the Spirit of God. There are miracles which God may be willing to perform if we seek his Spirit and are filled anew. And these miracles will win for him glory that is now denied him. And what miracles do I refer to? I refer to the miracles of renewed interest in things of God: Revival! Let’s start there! Sanctification – holiness! Listen to what Oswald Chambers has to say about sanctification “When we pray, asking God to sanctify us, are we prepared to measure up to what that really means? We take the word sanctification much too lightly. Are we prepared to pay the cost of sanctification? The cost will be a deep restriction of all our earthly concerns, and an extensive cultivation of all our godly concerns. Sanctification means to be intensely focused on God’s point of view. It means to secure and to keep all the strength of our body, soul and spirit for God’s purpose alone. Are we really prepared to separate ourselves just as Jesus did? “For their sakes I sanctify Myself . . .”(Jn 17:19). The reason some of us have not entered into the experience of sanctification is that we have not realized the meaning of sanctification from God’s perspective. Sanctification means being one with Jesus so that the nature that controlled Him will control us. Are we really prepared for what that will cost? It will cost absolutely everything in us which is not of God.

The resounding evidence of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life is the unmistakable family likeness to Jesus Christ, and the freedom from everything which is not like Him. Are we prepared to set ourselves apart for the Holy Spirit’s work in us? Are we? Come, Holy Spirit, preach yourself to us - your people.

My earnest desire and prayer is that we not just learn about the Holy Spirit, but that we come to know him and love him and enjoy him and be awakened by him and empowered by him to formulate and execute strategies to rout the forces of Satan and rescue hundreds from his captivity. That is the miracle I pray for!

There is a immense responsibility upon us today to know and experience the Holy Spirit. Here's why. John Owen in his work on the Holy Spirit points out something so obvious we may overlook it. The Bible portrays for us a history of redemption with three major divisions that reveal the three persons of the Trinity.

Division number 1: Before Christ's coming . . . the prominence of God the Father; Division number 2: during the days of Christ's earthly life . . . the prominence of God the Son; and since the ascension of the Son . . . the prominence of God the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we live in a unique, climactic period of redemptive history; we live in the days of the Spirit. Just as Israel of old had a special responsibility to know and honor God as Father in the oneness of his nature, and just as the people of Palestine had a special responsibility to know and honor Jesus as the Son of God in the days of his flesh, so now we have a special responsibility to know and honor the Holy Spirit. "The sin of despising the Holy Spirit’s Person and rejecting His Work is the same nature as idolatry of the Old Testament and the Jews' rejection of the Person of the Son" (Owen).

O, how favored we are as a people to be living in the age of the Spirit. How thankful we should be that we were born (owing to no virtue in us whatsoever!) in a day when the fullness of God's nature as three in one has been revealed and when the various ministries of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have been displayed and offered to us to experience. Surely everyone who loves God will be earnestly seeking to know and experience as much of God as possible—and in our day that means especially, as much of the Holy Spirit as possible.

If going hard after the holy Spirit is priority number one at Good Shepherd Community Church, you can see, can't you, how I have been led to direct our attention to the Person and work of God the Holy Spirit. Let's make 2009 a unique period in our lives—a period of unusual pursuit and openness toward the Holy Spirit. There are attacks to be resisted. There are strongholds to be taken. There is a spiritual war to be won. It may be that in these next few weeks the troops at Good Shepherd Community Church will awaken, conceive a new strategy, and penetrate farther than we ever have into Satan's domain. It’s coming! If Jesus has sent us even as the Father sent him (John 20:21), then should we not be able to say with Jesus, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives" (Luke 4:18; Is 49:8-9; 61:1-2) When the Holy Spirit falls upon this congregation, the undeniable sign will be the impulse and power to invade Satan's prisoner camps and release the captives.

Let me draw this message to a close by repeating what Henry Blackaby said earlier: Jesus walked so intimately with His Father that He was always aware of what the Father was doing around Him (John 5:19–20). Jesus said that if our eyes are pure, they will see God and recognize His activity (Matt. 6:22). If we are not seeing God's activity, the problem is not a lack of revelation. The problem is that our sin prevents us from noticing it.

When God is working in your child's life or when He is convicting your coworker, He may reveal His activity to you. His revelation is His invitation for you to join Him in His redemptive work. Be alert to God's activity around you. He will reveal His activity to His servants. If your spiritual eyes are pure, you will be overwhelmed by all that you see God doing around you! The Holy Spirit is working all the time!

Let’s pray