Responding to the Holy Spirit [A]

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Transcript:

Good morning. It’s good to see all of you here today. We’re going to be in John chapter 14 again.

John chapter 14. I started sharing with you some things last week about the Holy Spirit, and I would like to continue on with that same line of thought this week. And just to let you know, I have a lot of notes today, and we probably, for your sake, will not get through all of them.

Instead of trying to cram them all in this morning, I’ll probably split them in half and finish them either tonight or next Sunday morning. But we started looking last week at John chapter 14 and what Jesus said about the Holy Spirit. And I kind of shared with you that I feel like we as Baptists have a tendency to push the Holy Spirit aside because we’re afraid of the connotations if we get too wrapped up in the Holy Spirit.

Well, somebody’s going to think we’ve gone charismatic. And you know what, there’s no reason for us to treat the Holy Spirit as though he’s the stepchild in the Trinity. he’s just as much a part of the Trinity as God the Father, God the Son he’s active and involved in the work of the Godhead and we ignore him to our own peril and we miss out on a lot of what God wants to do in our lives when we ignore the Holy Spirit and we read this passage and we’ll read it again today and I talked to you about some of the things that Jesus said about the Holy Spirit some of the things that we need to know that he called the Holy Spirit And I want to talk to you today about how we respond to that, because we sort of left it without a response.

Here’s what Jesus said. Okay, what now? So Jesus said these things.

What do we do with it? That’s what we’re going to talk about today. But he starts in verse 15 of John chapter 14 and says, if you love me, keep my commandments, and I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another comforter that he may abide with you forever.

Even the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him, but ye know him, for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you. It will not leave you, excuse me, I will not leave you comfortless. Let me start over, verse 18.

I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more, but ye see me, because I live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.

He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me, and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him. And in verse 22, Judas saith unto him, Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us and not unto the world? So what he’s asking here, again, is not a bad question, but he’s sort of missing the point of what Jesus was talking about.

Jesus was pointing out the fact that I’m going to send you a comforter. In just a little while, I’m going to be going away, but don’t fret about it because I’m not going to leave you here all alone. I’m going to send a comforter that the Holy Spirit is going to come and minister to you in my absence.

And he does mention manifesting himself to them and them seeing him, but the world not seeing him. And out of everything that he mentioned, I would say that’s the minor point, because what he’s really focused in on here is the coming of the Holy Spirit and how he’s going to leave them, but not leave them to fend for themselves. And one of the disciples says, well, how are you going to manifest yourself to us?

They’ve missed the point of everything that he said. And I think I gave you the example last week of teaching Bible class and talking about some different things, answering some questions for them, and somehow or another the Holocaust came up, and explaining to them that Hitler killed six million Jews, and on top of that there were all these other groups of people talking about how horrible it was, and he killed blacks, he killed Russians, he killed communists, he killed homosexuals, he killed Jehovah’s Witnesses, and went on to talk about how awful that was, and then a child raises their hand and says, what’s a homosexual on us? Ask your mother, we’re not getting into that here.

You missed the entire point of what I was talking about. And folks, that happens on a daily basis. I talk to kids and give them all these instructions, and then they ask some question from some tiny minor point.

But that was just the one that sticks out in my mind. That’s what they were doing here. We do that with Jesus so often.

We do that with his word so often. We read through and read God’s word, and we study God’s word, and he has these big, bold points that he wants to make, and we get hung up on little details. I know of a person who has said that they will not go to church because all the churches are not following God’s word because they have potlucks.

And it talks about, do you not have houses to eat in? Really, that’s the point of that passage, that we can’t have potlucks at church? Now, they were having an issue in the early days with taking the Lord’s Supper, and people were having drunken feasting.

And so he says, have you not houses to eat and drink in? And he’s talking about doing the Lord’s Supper in a proper way. We get hung up on the little details and totally miss the big point that God’s trying to make about the proper way to conduct the Lord’s Supper.

Not to mention the big point that God makes about not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together. As long as we got the potluck thing taken care of, we’re good. So Jesus is talking here about the coming of the Holy Spirit.

That’s his major point, and the disciples are wanting to know, how are you going to manifest yourself? Sort of like he’s talking about, I’m going to be crucified. Which of us is going to be greatest in the kingdom?

You are missing the point. And Jesus answers this question and brings it back, eventually, the Holy Spirit, talking about the Comforter again. Jesus was very good at this, deflecting these sort of red herring questions.

Because sometimes people would ask these things because they just didn’t get it. Sometimes they would ask things because, oh, what Jesus is talking about is uncomfortable, like the woman at the well. And he starts talking about her husband, who’s not her husband.

She’s had five husbands, and the man she’s with now, the man she lives with now is not her husband. And she starts in, I perceive you’re a prophet. Which mountain are we supposed to worship on?

Try to deflect the real issue because it’s uncomfortable to deal with the truth that Jesus is teaching us. So sometimes we miss the truth because we want to, and sometimes we miss it because we just are too hung up on the details. And Jesus is very good about bringing even our questions that come up at the long moment.

He’s very good about bringing those back to what we need to understand. And so he brings this back into the main point of what he’s been talking about. And he says, if a man loved me, in verse 23, if a man loved me, he will keep my words and my father will love him.

And we will come unto him and make our abode with him. Okay, so he’s talking about manifesting himself to the believers, talking about the Father and Son coming to them and making their abode with them, dwelling with them. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings, and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me.

These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. And he talks about manifesting himself through his word. He’s answering Judas’ question here, talking about manifesting himself through his word, through his teachings, and then he comes back to the comforter.

but the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things. So I’ve had time in three plus years to teach you a lot of truth about God. And yet the Holy Spirit, when he comes, shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance.

See what he did there? He used Judas’ question and answered it, but then he brought it back to the main point he needed to know. He shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you.

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. You have heard how I said unto you, I go away and come again unto you.

If you loved me, you would rejoice because I said, I go unto the Father, for my Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it come to pass, that when it has come to pass, you might believe. Hereafter I will not talk much with you, for the Prince of this world cometh, and have nothing in me, but that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do.

Arise, let us go hence. So the whole point of what he said is that his time is running short. There’s about to come a time when he’s going to have to leave them, that they are going to be without him for the first time in three years, but take heart, don’t be afraid.

I’m not leaving you to fend for yourself. There is another comforter who I’m going to send who is going to build on the ministry that I have started here. He’s going to teach you everything you need to know.

And so we sort of left it off last week talking about this. Some of the things that Jesus points out about the Holy Spirit. He is God.

And we have ample evidence through the scriptures that the Holy Spirit is God. God the Holy Spirit. Equal and co-eternal with God the Father and God the Son.

That He is the Spirit of truth. He does help us to see what’s true and what’s not. in concert with God’s Word.

He is the comforter. He does comfort us during difficult times. He does point us in the right direction.

When we are at our breaking point and don’t know what God wants us to do next and don’t know where to go from here, the Holy Spirit comforts us and points us in the right direction. He is our teacher. He does not only, as we take things in, help us to see whether they’re right or wrong, But he actually guides us as we study God’s word to help us learn more and to help us to retain more and to use more.

He does. He is our rememberer, our reminder. He does help us to remember the things that we have already learned that slip our mind.

And he calls those scriptures. He calls those truths from God’s word back to mind at just the appropriate time. And folks, there are more things that the Holy Spirit does.

There are more things that the Holy Spirit does that are talked about in Scripture, but just from this passage, it gives us a pretty broad view of who He is and what He does. So we saw last week what Jesus taught about the Holy Spirit, what He said the Holy Spirit came to do, what His role was, and then we sort of left it with, there you go. Keep that in mind.

But I don’t want to just come in and preach to you about things to tickle your intellect and so you can leave here and think, well, good, I know more about the Holy Spirit now. Wasn’t that nice? Folks, God’s word is there for us to do something different.

Not only to believe something different, but to do something different. Now, I don’t want to act like it’s not important what we believe. It is.

But it’s there for both reasons. God’s word should change not only our beliefs, but the actions that come as a result of it. So knowing what we know about the Holy Spirit, that he is God, he is the Spirit of truth, He is all of these things that Jesus said He is.

We then have a response. We then have a choice to make. Just like with anything else that God tells us to do, we then have the responsibility of responding to what He has told us.

Just like when we hear the gospel, when we hear the message that Jesus Christ died for our sins because we’d sinned, we could not save ourselves, we’re separated from God by our sins, and we are destined to be separated from Him for eternity in hell. And that Jesus Christ shed his blood and died on the cross, taking our punishment, and now offers forgiveness as a free gift that we receive by faith. When we hear that gospel, each time we hear that gospel, we have a responsibility to respond one way or another.

We have a responsibility either to accept God’s offered forgiveness, or to reject it. And doing nothing is rejecting it. There’s a choice to be made.

There’s a response. Now we take this same thing. Anytime God’s word teaches something, we have a responsibility to respond.

And we will respond in one of two ways. We will either accept the teaching and be changed by it, or we’ll reject the teaching either because we don’t believe it or because we’re just not going to do anything. Make no mistake, either one is rejected.

So having heard what Jesus teaches about the Holy Spirit, we have a responsibility to respond to that. And the Bible shows us a number of ways that we can respond to the Holy Spirit. And we can go on ignoring him.

And guys, I’m not saying we all ignore him all the time. Most of you have been in this church for a number of years or any church for a number of years. I know you believe the Holy Spirit’s God.

I know we try to listen to him. But I think sometimes we’re also afraid of letting him have too big of a role in our lives. So please don’t think I’m assuming that you all completely rejected the Holy Spirit.

No, I’m just talking to myself and to you as the group. These are things that we can go on and continue to ignore him in some of the areas where we should be looking for him to work and should be seeking him to work and should be letting him work, or we can take the knowledge of what Jesus says about him and we can do things differently. And as I said, there are a number of things that the Bible talks about that we can do in response to the Holy Spirit.

Some of them are good. Some of the ways that we respond and interact to the Holy Spirit are favorable, are good things that the Bible says, this is what you need to do. We’ll probably talk about those either tonight or next week.

Some of them are bad, and the Bible says, look at what this person did. This is not what you want to do in response to the Holy Spirit. But I went through and made a list of some of the ways the Bible says people respond to the Holy Spirit.

And out of some of these ways, the first one that comes up is blaspheming the Holy Spirit. When we see the Holy Spirit at work and we know what God’s Word says about what He does, we can blaspheme, people can blaspheme the Holy Spirit. And there are always lots of questions about what this means.

People ask questions about this all the time. Can I lose my salvation? Because the Bible talks about it being the unforgivable sin.

If you’ll turn with me to Matthew chapter 12. We’ll look at this for just a minute. But people can blaspheme the Holy Spirit.

We know what blasphemy is because it’s to speak evil of God. It used to be a crime. And I’m not saying we should go back to a day and age where we throw people in jail because they said something false about God.

But certainly we’ve come to a different place in our society where it’s actually encouraged and celebrated when people blaspheme God. But speak ill of God is blasphemy. Starting in, you know what, let’s start in Matthew chapter 12, verse 22.

I’ll try to move through this very quickly. Then was brought unto him, that’s Jesus, one possessed with a devil, blind and dumb, and he healed him in so much that the blind and dumb both spake and saw. So somebody brings a man to Jesus who was demon-possessed, and the demon had kept him from the use of his eyes and his mouth.

Jesus healed him. And all the people were amazed and said, Is not this the son of David? But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub, the prince of devils.

Now think about that for a minute. Let that sink in. The logic behind that statement.

He uses the power of the devil to fight the devil. And Jesus points out in his response that that doesn’t really hold water. Jesus knew their thoughts.

Oh, I love that. I see that more and more. I mean, it’s not that the Bible changes.

It’s just I’m starting to more often notice that where I’ve just read over it real quick in years past. Jesus knows their thoughts. Jesus knows what’s in their heart. I’m teaching through John chapter 3 right now with my 4th through 8th graders in Bible class.

And we talk about Nicodemus. Jesus starts answering questions Nicodemus hasn’t even asked. And one of the fourth graders said, it’s because he knew what he came there to ask before he even asked it.

I said, you’re exactly wrong. So it says here in verse 25, And Jesus knew their thoughts and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand. Now that quote doesn’t come from Abraham Lincoln.

He did say it, but he was quoting Jesus. A house divided against itself cannot stand. And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself.

And how shall then his kingdom stand? And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges.

But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is coming to you. Or else how can one enter into a strong man’s house and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man, and then he will spoil his house. He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.

So they’ve accused him of casting out demons by the power of the devil. Which sounds okay when they first say it, but when you really think about the logic behind it, I mean, Jesus tears them up. He goes point by point where they’re wrong.

And he says, what kind of strength would the devil then have? Why would he be interested in using his power against himself? He said, so I’m either doing this illogical thing, or I’m casting out demons by the Spirit of God.

You be the judge. He says, but if I’m casting out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come to you. And all the other objections that they have sort of fall by the wayside of that.

Well, they’re not going to admit that. He says in verse 31, Wherefore I say unto you, because of this I tell you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh the word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him.

But whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come. And he goes on to teach some more, but he sort of leaves off with the Holy Spirit at that point. Talks about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit and says that it cannot be forgiven.

He says whoever speaks evil of him, that can be forgiven, but the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven. If it’s the unforgivable sin, that’s a frightening thing, a sin that God can’t or won’t forgive. And so people want to make very sure that they have not committed that sin.

What if I said something about the Holy Spirit? Am I condemned forever? I believed in Christ. Am I condemned forever either way?

Sometimes one of the kids fell down on Friday, just tripped for no reason. I said, what, are you slain in the Spirit? Did you get the Spirit for a minute?

Because it was a spectacular fall, arms and legs flailing everywhere. He said, did you get the Spirit for a minute? Okay, I made a joke.

Did I blaspheme the Holy Spirit? Is that what he’s talking about here? No.

Guys, if you look at it in context, what he’s referring to, he is by the Spirit of God casting out devils, and they are rejecting the work of God through the Son of God and attributing it to Satan. It is a hardened, deliberate rejection of what God was doing. It is a hardened, deliberate rejection of the work that the Son of God did at the command of God the Father with the power of God the Spirit.

So this work of the Holy Spirit, they said, was Satan. That’s a pretty gutsy claim. So what they’ve done in blaspheming the Holy Spirit ultimately is to reject the Holy Spirit’s person and work in their lives and reject the Son.

I maintain, I realize a lot of people have different interpretations on this passage, that’s okay. But I maintain that people blaspheme the Holy Spirit today by rejecting the conviction that he uses to draw them, the power by which he draws them to the Son. These miracles that were being done in the power of the Holy Spirit were meant to draw people to the Son for salvation, to point out that he was not just an ordinary man, that he was God in human flesh.

Folks, that is still the business the Holy Spirit is in today, is of convincing people that Jesus Christ is not just a man, but that he’s God in human flesh, that they might run to God for his offered mercy. And my understanding of this is that the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is not an individual instance, but it’s the decision that’s made in the heart over time to reject God the Son and the drawing of God the Holy Spirit. So what sin is unforgivable?

rejecting the work of the Holy Spirit all through your life as He tries to call you to Jesus Christ. But we can blaspheme the Holy Spirit. When He calls us and convicts us and says, Hey, you’re a sinner. You know what He’s saying up there about Jesus dying for you?

He’s talking to you. You need this. And we reject it.

And we say, oh, that’s not God speaking to me. That voice is not God. That’s something else.

And we reject the Holy Spirit. And we attribute His work and His message as He draws us to Christ. We attribute it to other things. We die in that hardened condition.

And God doesn’t forgive that. The Bible says that he that believeth not on the Son is condemned already. All we’re doing is cementing the choices we’ve made.

So it’s possible to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. Is it possible to do it by accident? I don’t think so.

If you made a joke or you said something wrong at one point, I don’t believe that’s what he’s talking about here by blaspheming the Holy Spirit. But it is still a very real and dangerous thing to reject the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives as he attempts to draw us to Christ. To reject that influence and attribute it to somebody else. In their case, they were attributing it to Satan.

But ultimately, they were rejecting that call of the Holy Spirit to come to Christ. And so that’s one of the options that men have. It’s not presented by the Bible as a good option. Hey, do this.

Be like the Pharisees. But when I told you we have that responsibility to make a choice, that’s one of the choices that we make in response to the Holy Spirit. Another one is to lie to the Holy Spirit.

You know you can lie to the Holy Spirit. Did you know that? Doesn’t mean he’s confused.

Doesn’t mean he believes the lie. He is God the Holy Spirit. He knows everything.

Doesn’t mean he’s confused for a minute, but we can lie to the Holy Spirit. You can lie to me today. I may know the truth, but you can still tell me the lie.

Doesn’t mean I believe it. and vice versa, I could lie to you. Turn with me to Acts chapter 5 as we look at this one.

In light of the Holy Spirit. This will be a familiar passage to some of you. One that you may have heard preached on when church needed money or something.

But it says in chapter 5 verse 1, but a certain man named Ananias with Sapphira his wife sold a possession and kept back part of the price. Not a problem so far. His wife also being privy to it and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostle’s feet.

Still not a problem in this story. Until we get to verse 3. And Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost and keep back part of the price of the land?

Okay, wait a minute. Maybe, okay, it refers here to lying to the Holy Ghost. What did he do? Was he supposed to sell his land and give everything?

Or the Holy Spirit was going to strike him dead? By the way, spoiler alert, if you’ve not heard the story, that’s where this is going. Verse 4 says, Whiles it remained, was it not thine own?

After it was sold, was it not in thine own power? Why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.

He says in verse 4, it was your property. I mean, you owned it. Now, I mean, ultimately, we need to recognize that everything we own is actually God’s, and he allows us to use it.

He entrusts us with it for a time. But from a human standpoint, his interaction with the business of it, the selling of it, and the giving of part of it to the church, it was his property. Once he sold it, the money was his.

He didn’t have to lie to anybody. There was no problem here if he sold it and gave half of it to the church. what the problem was was not that he gave half of his money to the church the problem was that he gave half of the money to the church and stood there and told them that he was donating all of the proceeds of the sale of the property to the church.

So is this a message on is the message from this passage that Ananias didn’t give enough? No. The problem with this was that Ananias lied about what he was giving.

If he had stood up in front of them and said you know what I’m going to give part of the proceeds from the sale of the property to support the work of the church, to support feeding the poor, to support sending out missionaries. I’m going to give part of the proceeds of this property. We probably never have heard of Ananias and Sapphira.

The problem here was lying. And Peter says you’re not lying to us when you stand before everybody and you say well I’m going to give everything I have to support God’s work. And you haven’t given everything you have.

He said you’re not lying to us you’re lying to God. thou has not lied unto men, but unto God. We sometimes do this with God.

Maybe not this publicly and this outwardly, but we’ll pray. Or maybe I’m the only one who’s ever done this. I don’t think so, but we’ll do this sometimes.

We’ll pray and say, you know, God, I don’t know why I’m in this predicament, but could you help me? We’ll pray and we’ll ask God to help us out of an issue and we’ll act like we don’t know how we got here. When really, we know exactly how we got here, because I did something I wasn’t supposed to.

God knows how we got here, and not only that, God knows that we know how we got here. Or sometimes we’ll say, God, you know, I just, I’m praying this because, and we’ll try to give some altruistic reason, all these pure motives, and we know in our hearts that there may be a little bit of selfishness in it. Like, there was a student who left the school just recently, We prayed that God would keep her there.

And part of it was, that’s the best place for her. But there was also a little selfishness of, we want this particular child to leave. It would be lying to the Holy Spirit to say, God, we’re just praying that you would do this because it’s in her best interest. You know what?

God knows sometimes we have the selfish motives. Just be honest with God. Why do we lie to the Holy Spirit?

We forget sometimes that the Holy Spirit is God. we forget sometimes that God knows and sees everything and so when we’re dealing with God and we hold back part of the truth we forget He knows and I won’t ask you if any of you have ever been in the situation where you’re talking to God well I don’t know how I got here or you tell Him part of the truth but my guess would be unless I’m just a horrible person and I’m the only one my guess would be that at some point all of us have been there and we leave afterwards knowing I’ve not been completely honest with God And the foolish part of it is he knows. He knows.

I laugh at the story of Adam and Eve in the garden. And they were trying to hide from God. Their eyes were open after they disobeyed him and ate the fruit of the tree.

Their eyes were open and they realized they were naked. And so they tried to hide from God. And of course, I’m very much paraphrasing the story.

But God comes walking through the garden. Where are you? And he knew where they were.

Why would you try to hide from God? He made the stuff. He made you.

He knows every thought you have, and I’m sure he can see through stuff. There is no hiding. We can read numerous passages that tell us, spiritually, physically, it doesn’t matter.

There is no hiding from God. God is the one who searches out men’s hearts. He knows the truth.

Why lie to God? But we lie to the Holy Spirit, and we say, well, I’m giving you everything I have, not just money-wise, with our lives. I’m giving everything to you.

I’m giving you everything I have, and we do that knowing it’s not the truth. Or we tell him, I just don’t know how I got here. I don’t know why I’m in this mess.

I don’t know why I do that. You know what? Let’s own up to the truth.

Let’s not try to lie to the Holy Spirit of God. That’s one option. We can say, you know what?

I hear this conviction, and I’m going to think about it, and maybe later. Lies. All lies.

Sometimes my kids will say something. They don’t lie to me very often. They know better.

But sometimes they’ll say something that’s not true. Oh, the lies! Tell them that.

Sometimes I can get Benjamin to say it back to me. You know what? He knows.

He knows when we’re lying. That’s one option. Instead of dealing with the Holy Spirit, we can lie and we can keep him at arm’s length.

But why? We go further in this story and we see a third thing that we can do in our response to the Holy Spirit. Verse 5 says, And Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and gave up the ghost. If you’re new to the Bible, that’s a euphemism for he died.

He gave up the ghost and great fear came on all of them that heard these things. I would think so. How many of us this morning, if somebody stood before the church and was pointed out they had done something that they weren’t supposed to and God knew about it, and they were so fearful they fell down dead, would the rest of us not go through a Holy Spirit revival in that moment trying to get right with God?

I mean, you want to talk about some serious, uh-oh, they were afraid because of what they had just witnessed. And you know, sometimes we need to remember, we nee