What Does the Holy Spirit Do - part 2

Acts 9:31: The Church was strengthened; and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it grew in numbers, living in the fear of the Lord.

For the last several weeks, we have been looking at the Holy Spirit, not just to know more about Him, but to get to know Him better. Our goal is never just to know more about God; we can know all about Him without ever knowing Him. I hope this series on the Holy Spirit has at least made you interested in Him, but a sermon series won’t cause you to be filled with the Spirit. The Bible says that the way to receive God is to seek Him with your whole heart. In Jeremiah 29:13, God says, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

What is it like to seek God with your whole heart? If you’ve ever been deep in the water where you aren’t sure if you’re going to make it to the surface in time to breathe, your desire for air is what God is talking about. The Psalmist puts it this way: As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? (Psalm 42:1-2) Does this characterize your spirit, longing, panting for God? If you’re not there, ask God for the desire for Him.

We are not asking something unreasonable; in fact, we are able to ask God for good things for two reasons. First of all, because Jesus paid the price for our sins – allowing us to come into God’s presence. Without this gift from Jesus, we would still need an intercessor to go to God on our behalf, like the Jewish priests did. Back in Temple days, once a year, only one priest, chosen by lot, was allowed to go into the Holy of Holies to meet with God, and he had to undergo special cleansing and atonement to make sure he was worthy to enter. He would have a rope tied around his waist in case God struck him dead – that way his body could be removed from the holy place. When Jesus died, the Temple curtain that separated the people from the Holy of Holies was torn in two, from top to bottom, signifying that we no longer need to be separated from God’s presence because of what Jesus did. (that’s a good place for an amen)

But that is not the only reason we don’t need an intercessor. The other reason is because of our own identities. Last week we were reminded that when we don’t know how to pray, the Holy Spirit intercedes for us. If you read Romans 8 this week, you know that if we are in Christ, our identity has been changed. Romans 8:15-16 tells us For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba, Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

We don’t need another intercessor because the Holy Spirit has sealed our adoption as God’s children!

Adoption is a powerful concept, and one I am passionate about. Adoption places the adoptee in a new family. It allows for a level of ongoing care and nurture which hadn’t been present before, and now the adoptee is eligible to receive an inheritance. But perhaps the most powerful aspect of adoption is that it gives the adoptee a new identity. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we actually are God’s children!

I want to make a distinction between a couple kinds of adoption. When Tara and I were newly married, we went to visit the Jessamine County Dog Pound. There were cages full of dogs there, all available for adoption, but there was this one black dog that stuck out to us. We asked the attendant if we could take him out for a walk, and he said, “The mean one?” No, we didn’t want the nasty one – we wanted the quiet one. We ended up loving that dog and we ended up adopting him. Now, we chose that dog based on his demeanor and size and friendliness. We didn’t choose the mean dog based on the same criteria.

But when God adopts us, he does not take our conduct into consideration. He doesn’t just go through and find the nice ones and the good looking ones and say, “I pick this one.” Listen to how it is described in Deuteronomy 7:7-8: The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

The deliverance from slavery in Egypt is mirrored by the way the Holy Spirit sets us free from slavery to sin, and it bears repeating that without the Holy Spirit, our identity is that of sinner, estranged from God. And the passage in Deuteronomy is a stark reminder that there is nothing you can do to make God want to adopt you. It is not because you had the best behavior or because your family has always been in church. God chose you to bring glory to himself, even in that choosing.

When the Holy Spirit adopts us, he transforms us into different people. I love the stories in scripture where God actually changes people’s names – sometime I might do a sermon series on that – and although we don’t usually receive an actual new name when the Holy Spirit indwells us, our identity has been forever altered. We are no longer the same person!

The Holy Spirit equips us with strength and power to accomplish God’s purposes, things we cannot do on our own. In Acts 1:8, if you remember from a few weeks back, right before Jesus ascended into heaven, he told his disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” It is Holy Spirit power that gives us the power to be Jesus’ witness in your own community as well as around the world.

Have you ever thought, “I would never know what to say.”? I can understand that. There are times when I go into situations wondering what words I can possibly say, and there are times when the Holy Spirit gives me the words right at the right time. I love what Jesus told his disciples in Mark 13:11 “Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.” First of all, notice that Jesus didn’t say “if” you are arrested and brought to trial; he knew his disciples would suffer for his sake. But he also knew Who would speak for them. At this point in history, Christian brothers and sisters around the world are being persecuted and are witnessing to prison guards even as we sit here in relative prosperity and comfort. But know that each of us will have times of testing – the test isn’t like the tests you endured back in school, and the test isn’t even so much about how you will behave in troubling situations, but will you relinquish all control to the Holy Spirit? Will you be completely surrendered to Him, to speak what He tells you to say and only what he tells you to say? Jesus already established that the Holy Spirit only speaks what God tells him (in John 16:13) – will we be characterized by that same dependence on the Spirit for every word?

God calls us to be witnesses wherever we are – whether that is in a so-called secular job, in an unbelieving family, in your school, at the store, wherever you are. There is someone who the Holy Spirit is sending you to meet. There is someone the Holy Spirit is sending you to encourage. There is someone the Holy Spirit is sending you to challenge or hold accountable. We so often compartmentalize our lives – Sunday is for church, weekdays are for work, weekends are for doing whatever you want to do… but with the Holy Spirit, there is only one compartment – and it’s all-inclusive. The Spirit wants to have control over every aspect of your life, not just the churchy parts.

I like to watch “Bar Rescue” on Spike TV, where John Taffer comes in to miserably failing bars and figures out why they are failing and then turns them around. He always finds filthy kitchens and that always makes me wonder what’s in the kitchens of places I eat, and he also finds other areas where they are failing. A difficulty he almost always runs into is that the owner doesn’t want certain changes to take place. One example is the name of the bar – there are some names that just don’t invite people in, and so John will say he wants to change the name. Inevitably the owner will get all riled up about the name change. So John will tell the owner to trust him. The customers and the bar employees always love the new name and the new atmosphere.

We are in the same boat; the Holy Spirit is saying that he is going to change our identity, clean us out, and use us for his purpose, but we’re going to have to trust him. Jesus tells us that we can trust the Holy Spirit to give us the words we need in tough circumstances. After all, God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and self-control. (2 Timothy 1:7)

But the Holy Spirit does not only transform us; the Holy Spirit also gives spiritual gifts. 1 Corinthians 12:7-11 says: Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines. 

The Holy Spirit gives spiritual gifts – if you are a Christian, you have at least one spiritual gift, and the Holy Spirit gives it to you for the common good, to build up the church, and to give you your place in the body. If you have never done a spiritual gifts inventory, I have some that are available in the back of the sanctuary after service. I don’t want you to just take them and fill them out and say, “oh, so that’s my spiritual gift” – the idea is that you find out your spiritual gift so you can use it!

The Holy Spirit also gives us the Fruit of the Spirit, as detailed in Galatians 5:22-23. The Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. I have often done nine-week sermon series on the Fruit of the Spirit, taking one aspect each week, but today I want to focus on a few things. Notice that the word “fruit” is singular? Unlike spiritual gifts, we do not just get one or two of these. We get all of it. I have heard sermons preached again and again about the Fruit of the Spirit and I am embarrassed to have even preached them myself – of how we are supposed to work really hard to achieve them – try to love people more, find things that bring joy, try to be more patient, and so forth, but that just does not work. Why not? Because this is Fruit of the Spirit, which only comes from the Holy Spirit living within the believer.

If you want to grow an apple, you have to plant an apple tree. If you want to grow strawberries, you have to plant strawberries. An apple tree can’t try really hard to grow strawberries and no matter how hard a strawberry plant tries, it will never grow an apple. Someone can tie a strawberry on an apple tree branch, but it will end up getting all mushy and then drying out and rotting. And as much as we try to work harder and achieve love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, they don’t grow on us naturally. This Fruit only grows from the Holy Spirit!

So it is only in Him that we really become loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. This is the essence of being a Christian and this is where Christian behavior comes from. Have you ever heard the accusation that someone doesn’t want to be part of a church because the church is full of hypocrites? Well, if our hearts remain unchanged and we just try hard to exhibit the Fruit of the Spirit, which is what has been advocated so often, then we’re teaching Christians to be hypocrites. Fake it ‘til you make it does not work.

In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul is talking about Moses, who spoke to God face-to-face. Whenever Moses came from God’s presence, his face glowed with God’s glory, so much that he had to wear a veil to cover his face. So here’s what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:17-18: Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

I’ve mentioned the freedom in the Lord the last couple of weeks and it bears repeating, because there is no freedom from sin apart from him. Every sin must be paid for, because every sin is first and foremost a sin against God, and only Jesus Christ can pay the price, which he did on the cross. And the Holy Spirit actually transforms us – with ever-increasing glory – into Jesus’ likeness. You want to see good behavior? Allow the Holy Spirit to transform you!