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"Knowing The Holy Spirit"

Sunday Sermon: 8/4/2024

Knowing The Holy Spirit – Part One.  Join Transformation Community Church for this week’s inspirational and encouraging word of the LORD: “Knowing The Holy Spirit – Part One” We hope this message will bless you in your walk with God and Jesus Christ. Many blessings!

Knowing The Holy Spirit – Part One

A nice elderly woman was leaving church after the Sunday services. As she was in the back, she shook the hand of the pastor and said, “That was a good sermon.” The pastor replied, “Oh, it wasn’t me, it was the Holy Spirit” to which she replied, “Oh, no, the Holy Spirit would have done much better than that!”

In this series, we are going to focus on the Holy Spirit and just how important He is as being the third head of the trinity. Today we’re going to talk specifically about what Christians believe about the Holy Spirit.

A tremendous amount of confusion and controversy exists about the Holy Spirit. You can visit churches were people experience hysterical laughter said to be inspired by the Holy Spirit, or you can go places where people fall down on the ground, where they even growl like animals, all in the name of the Holy Spirit.

Part of our problem is that the Holy Spirit seems so mystical. We can picture God the Father because we’ve all seen fathers. We can picture God the Son, because he became human, and we can read about what he did and what he’s like. But when we try to picture the Holy Spirit, our minds go blank, and we end up with symbols like a dove or wind or fire.
On the one hand, our Bibles begin with these words:

Genesis 1:1-2 (NKJV)

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Who moved upon the face of the waters? The Spirit of God. He is the first member of the Godhead to be specifically mentioned in scripture, and yet He is the least understood today.

On the other hand, our Bibles end with these words:

Revelation 22:17 (NKJV)

The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” And let him who thirst come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely.

Who is inviting us to come and drink of the water of life? The Spirit, and with Him, the Bride! And it spreads to all who hear.

Therefore, God’s word opens and closes with the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Different churches tend to emphasize the Holy Spirit in different ways: Charismatic and Pentecostal churches focus on his power, while evangelicals tend to emphasize the Spirit’s work in bringing attention to Jesus Christ, and still Roman Catholics focus on the Holy Spirit’s work through the church hierarchy. Entire churches have split over how to understand the Holy Spirit.
When we talk about what Christians believe about God, we looked briefly at the Christian idea of God as a trinity. The Trinity is simply a summary of the Bible’s teaching that within the nature of the one true God, there are three eternal persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This means that the Holy Spirit is a person, not merely a force or an influence.

I frequently hear people call the Holy Spirit an “it,” as if the Spirit is like God’s laser beam, but if the Christian belief of the Trinity is true, then the Holy Spirit is a “he” and not an “it.” The Trinity also means that the Holy Spirit is a divine person; he’s God and therefore worthy of our worship and praise. The 66 books of the Bible present God the Father as our creator, God the Son as our savior, and God the Holy Spirit as the one who takes what Jesus did and applies it to our lives. You might think of God the Father as God for us, God the Son as God with us, and God the Holy Spirit as God in us.

Now every orthodox Christian, whether Catholic, Pentecostal, evangelical, or charismatic would agree with that statement, but the real confusion comes not in who the Holy Spirit is but in what he does. This is because it is the Holy Spirit who makes God real to us. The Holy Spirit brings us into an experience with God through Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit, then, is the wellspring of all genuine Christian experience, so it’s not surprising that Christians would differ about what the Holy Spirit does. Christians have such different personal experiences with God.

Jesus himself likened the work of the Holy Spirit to being like wind. We can’t see wind, but we know wind by its effects. The human eye can’t perceive air molecules as they move at high speed, but we can certainly see a tree that’s been uprooted by a high wind. In a similar way, we can’t see the Holy Spirit, since he is a non-physical person, but we can know him by his effects—what he does. It’s on this matter of what the Holy Spirit does that Christians often differ. My purpose here is to focus on those key ideas that every genuine Christian—Pentecostal, charismatic, evangelical, whatever—would agree with.

One of the things the Bible often associates the Holy Spirit with is freedom. 2 Corinthians 3:17 says, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom.” I want to look at four freedoms that the Holy Spirit produces in our lives. We will look at two today and two next week.

#1 – The Holy Spirit As Counselor

The first freedom we’ll look at relates to what the Holy Spirit does in the lives of those who don’t yet have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

John 16:7-8 (NKJV)

Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you. 8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:

The Greek word translated “counselor” doesn’t have an exact equivalent in the English language. The actual word is paraclete, and it means one who’s called alongside of another person to offer assistance. For instance, a paramedic is someone who comes alongside a person to offer medical assistance. The word paraclete could be translated “counselor” or “comforter, helper, supporter, advocate, ally, even friend.”

Jesus tells us that part of what the Holy Spirit does as a paraclete is convict people of sin. The idea here is that people in our world live in a state of spiritual blindness—we might call it denial—about how they stand before God. Our tendency is to minimize our guilt before God, to point to other people who seem worse than we are, to make excuses. So, the Holy Spirit as a counselor or paraclete penetrates our evasions, shatters our defenses, and silences our excuses in order to show us how we truly stand before God.

1 Corinthians 12:3 (NKJV)

Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus [a]accursed, and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.

This verse tells us that the Christian’s confession of Jesus Christ’s lordship in his or her life is tied directly to the activity of God’s Holy Spirit. You see, apart from the work of God’s Spirit, none of us would become Christians; none of us would turn away from our sins and surrender our lives to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Our sins have made us spiritually dead, incapable of seeking God on God’s terms apart from divine intervention. This is the first freedom: since the Holy Spirit draws us into a relationship with Christ, we are free to experience salvation.

Once we’ve come to a point of commitment to Jesus Christ, we can look back and see how God was drawing us to himself through his Spirit all along. We thought we came to Christ, but what we discover is that the Holy Spirit came to us and led us by the hand to that point of commitment to Jesus.

This means that we can’t take any credit for coming to faith in Christ—that it’s not because of our good looks, or our deep spiritual openness; it’s something that God initiated, God worked out, and we merely cooperated with. A. W. Tozer wrote, “The primary work of the Holy Spirit is to restore the lost soul to intimate fellowship with God.” No longer do our sins alienate us from God, no longer do we live separated by God and in a state of spiritual lostness, because we’ve discovered the freedom of forgiveness and intimacy with God. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is the freedom of salvation.

#2 – The Holy Spirit As Guarantee

The second freedom we’re going to look at relates to what happens at the moment we entrust our lives to Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 1:13-14 (NKJV)

In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.

At the moment we trust in Christ, God marks us with a seal. Back then people used a seal to make things secure. New Testament scholar Gordon Fee says, “A seal denoted ownership and authenticity; this thereby guaranteed the protection of the owner.” For example, when I graduated from Indiana University, I received a diploma. That diploma has Indiana’s official seal on it. It’s that official seal that authenticates my diploma as genuine. The Holy Spirit is God’s authentication of our Christian faith and authenticates us as genuine children of God.

The Holy Spirit is also described here as a deposit. In other words, the Holy Spirit is a first installment or down payment that is God’s pledge to complete what he started in our lives.

The idea of a seal and a deposit present the Holy Spirit is a guarantee, and here we find the second freedom. Since the Holy Spirit indwells us, we are free to experience security in our relationship with God. The moment we entrust our lives to Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit indwells us. He makes himself at home in our hearts.

Romans 8:9 (NKJV)

But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.

The lack of the Holy Spirit indwelling a person’s life indicates that one has not yet truly received God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. The indwelling of God’s Spirit is also God’s seal of ownership on our lives, that we no longer belong to ourselves, but our lives have been given over to God. The indwelling of God’s Spirit is God’s pledge that no matter what happens, no matter how bad we fail, no matter how far we stray, he will stand with us to complete what he started in our lives. The only one who can break the seal is God himself, and he’s promised not to break it, so we have the freedom of security, of not wondering where we stand with God, of not worrying about him giving up on us or someone driving a wedge between us and God.

There are many things Christians believe about the Holy Spirit. In fact, lots of Christians argue over these differences. Yet all Christians agree that the Holy Spirit brings freedom—the freedom to experience salvation, and the freedom to be secure with God. They may disagree on exactly how that all happens, but all agree that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is salvation and security. This comes through the Holy Spirit’s work to draw us to Christ, through his indwelling, his empowering, and his giving.

Closing Illustration

Heather Burke-Cody blogs: “A ‘Soul Nudge’ for the Nasty

I was thrift shopping for dorm stuff. The cashier appeared to be one of the most unhappy, maddest people ever. I was six people deep in the line, and it seemed like she got more and more exasperated with each passing customer.

She was especially incensed when one of my unmarked items needed a price check …. But as she rang up my items, I felt a … soul nudge. I tried to bargain with Jesus and told him that the extra little bit of cash in the back side of my wallet was not meant for her. It surely should go to someone sweeter and kinder, more deserving, or at least appreciative maybe. Not someone downright mean and angry. But God did not budge.

The human heart is our very best compass. It rarely leads us astray. So, I paid my bill and reluctantly found the backside of my wallet. I slipped her some cash as she handed me my receipt.

She was caught off-guard by the gesture. She gripped the folded bill with one hand and paused. Then slid her mask down with the other hand. Her loud, stern voice got quiet when she whispered a single word: “Why?” To which I answered two words back: “Soul nudge.”

There was another pause. A brief reckoning of sorts. When she grabbed my hand and held on, I was the one caught off-guard. “Today’s my 75th birthday and ain’t nobody called me. Not my sister. Not none of my kids. None of these people here. Nobody. Nothing. I don’t think I can remember ever being so sad. Ain’t nobody even remembers it’s my birthday.”