Who Is the Holy Spirit?
Sermon Notes
Who is the Holy Spirit?
Start with Jesus (as the person most qualified to tell us about the Holy Spirit)
John 14
Another like Jesus
Jesus is God (John 1). The Holy Spirit is God
A person, like Jesus (not a force or a metaphor)
Reminds us of Jesus: the Spirit of Truth
Everything Jesus did, the Holy Spirit does (in fact, Jesus did what He did by the power of the Holy Spirit).
The presence of the Father’s love
The Spirit of adoption
By whom we cry, “Abba” (Romans 8)
The Advocate
The sustained presence of God reminding you of and empowering you to be who you are
Testifying for you with you.
Acts 1
The power of God given for the sake of mission
There are plenty of things that the Holy Spirit does in the New Testament, but if we don’t start here, we can get ourselves into all kinds of problems.
God
A person
Love
Mission
When do I receive the Holy Spirit? What does it mean to be filled?
The debate in the Church over the last hundred years or so has been when and how often a person receives or is filled with the Holy Spirit.
One-time at conversion or a “second-filling”
I started where I did to show how strange this language is.
Now, it is biblical: Paul says in Ephesians 5, “…Be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
But the biblical authors assumed the context above, the context of relationship with the person of God. In that context, doesn’t the “at conversion” versus “second filling” debate sound a bit silly?
“The first time I hung out with my friend, I received him/her fully.”
How many encounters do you need with your husband or wife?
The second filling comes right after the first and right before the third.
The way we tend to use the filling language depersonalizes both the Holy Spirit and us.
“Go on being filled…”
Requires agency from both parties
The Holy Spirit must will to fill
You must will to be filled
What does this relationship with God look like?
Communication: He speaks to us (if only we would listen)
He is the most interesting person in the universe. He can talk however He wants.
That said, there are some ways that we will often here His voice.
The Bible (the foundation)
A feeling
A voice (audible or in our heads)
Words and pictures (we talk about this one often in the context of prayer ministry)
Church
Power
Fruit (character)
Power to help us become who He created and recreated us to be.
Fruit is primary. There’s a lot of talk about gifts, not nearly enough about fruit. In fact, we tend to associate fruit with external metrics when the Bible talks about internal transformation. The fruit that we’re talking about is not counted but weighed.
The Holy Spirit is not terribly interested in people who have vibrant ministries but are unrepentant, unchanging jerks (we’re all jerks sometimes, but is this fruit growing in us)?
Gifts
For the Church
Places where gifts are listed (Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4
Given our relational framework, I’m not sure that we should treat those lists as comprehensive but should recognize that we are in relationship with the most creative person in the universe. He is not a vending machine who has 9 or 18 products that He gives out. He is a person who gives us what we need so that we and those around us can grow into the people He’s made us to be.
Again, there are some common themes, but the lists are not comprehensive
For mission (courage, insight, signs, wonders)
Let no one ask to be filled with the Spirit unless He is wiling to be sent on mission
He is about empowering a local community to be the light of the world, to be a community of the possible.
Where the curse of sin is repealed
Where people can become fully alive
Where the Kingdom is present on earth as in heaven
Where God can bring lost kids