Responding to the Holy Spirit [B]

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We’re going to be back in John chapter 14 this week. I’m going to try to finish up with this series on the Holy Spirit. Didn’t intend for it to be a series, but it sort of became that, and we’ll try to finish it up today and move on to something else next week, Lord willing.

But there are times in life when we get news that we just can’t avoid doing something about. You know, somebody can give you a piece of information that really doesn’t require any response or reaction on your part. Somebody says, wow, I really hit traffic on the way here today.

Doesn’t really require you to do anything. That’s a piece of information that might be interesting to know, but it really doesn’t affect your life one way or the other. And you’re not really expected to do something about it.

There are some times in life, though, that we’re given information, we’re given news that requires a response. And to do nothing about it is, in fact, to do something. We can get the news, you’ve got cancer.

And it requires a response on our part. You know, we have to decide in that moment, am I going to fight it? Am I going to do the chemo, the radiation?

Am I going to go an alternate route? Am I going to do nothing? And to do nothing is to do something.

It’s not just limited to bad news, though. You can get the news, you’re going to have a baby, and you really have to respond at that point. Okay, the baby’s coming.

I’ve got to get ready. There are any number of ways to get ready. You can stand there, mouth agape for a while.

This was unexpected, but you know what? We eventually have to respond to that news. There’s all sorts of news that we get, and because of the magnitude of the news, it’s worth a response.

It requires a response. The gospel. Every time we hear the gospel, there should be a response.

And hear me on this, to not respond is to respond. Because our response to the gospel is accept God’s mercy, reject God’s mercy. And to say, well, I’m not going to do anything is to reject God’s mercy, it is a response.

What we’ve been talking about with the Holy Spirit was big news. That Jesus came to His disciples and said, I realize you don’t completely understand all of this yet. This is what He was telling them.

I realize you don’t understand all of this yet. You don’t completely understand everything that’s about to happen. Even though I’ve told you time and time again, you don’t understand everything that’s about to happen.

I’m about to die. I will rise again from the dead. But then I’m going to have to go away.

But I’m not leaving you comfortless. And they’re still asking him all sorts of questions about, well, how will you show yourself to us? That’s not what I’m talking about.

They’re wanting to know about signs as they always were. They’re wanting to know about, excuse me, they’re wanting to know about all sorts of things. And he, well, the question pops out in verse 22.

Not only how are you going to show yourself to us, but how is it that we’re going to know you and others will not? How are you going to show yourself to the end crime? This is not what Jesus is talking about at all.

He’s telling them, I’m not going to leave you comfortless. I’m going to leave somebody who will come after me and who will minister to you in ways that, quite frankly, Jesus could not in the way he limited himself in his human form. He’s still fully God, but also fully man, and he limited himself in some ways.

Was he everywhere all at once? No, he was not. And yet that’s one of the attributes of God.

But in his human form, he limited that and was not able to be everywhere at all times. Now, he still could do some pretty amazing things like go through walls, as we see after the resurrection. He shows up in a locked room.

That’s pretty incredible. And yet we don’t see him indwelling every believer at all times. You realize if Jesus hadn’t gone back to heaven and the Comforter hadn’t come today to commune with God, to talk with God, to talk with God in his earthly presence, we’d have to fly to Israel.

Or we’d have to buy him a plane ticket over here and invite him to come to church. And yet he sent his Holy Spirit. He said, I’m sending you this Holy Spirit who’s going to indwell all of you, who’s going to comfort you, who’s going to teach you the truth.

That’s pretty big news. that requires a response on our part. And I started talking, I don’t even know how many weeks ago it was because I know we were gone and I talked about something else in the middle of it.

Started talking about potential responses and the way that people respond to this idea of the Holy Spirit speaking to us. I want to go back through this real quick and look at what he says about it and sort of refresh your memory and then try to move very quickly into the rest of the message. He says in John 14, 15, 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. So this comforter that he’s sending, who is the Holy Spirit, not only is a comforter, someone who will comfort us, somebody who will be there with us in the good times and the bad times, but he says that he may abide with you forever, somebody who would never leave us. He says, 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.

Some incredible things about the Holy Spirit there. That He’s the Spirit of truth, that He teaches us the truth of God’s Word, and He abides in all of us. Just the ones who were there that day?

No. He’s speaking directly to them, but He’s speaking about all of us. Because the Bible makes it clear later on when we see Christianity spread outside of Jerusalem, the Holy Spirit is in different cities and different people all the time.

He indwells all of us. Today, from the moment of conversion, we are indwelled by the Holy Spirit. And He lives in us, and He lives with us, and speaks to us.

And He can be here with us today, and in us today, and He can be in and with believers in Kenya at the same time, and believers in Russia at the same time, and believers in, you name it, and wherever believers are, He indwells them, and He indwells all of us at the same time. And He is the same comforter and the same Spirit of truth for us as He was for them all those years ago and as He is for other believers in the world as we speak. He dwelleth with you and shall be in you.

And that sort of tells me that before He sent the Holy Spirit at the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was among God’s people. But something different was going to happen when the Holy Spirit of God indwelled believers. He didn’t just dwell among us anymore, but he dwells within us.

I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you. Yet a little while in 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.

And he that hath my commandments and keep it them. He it is that loveth me and he that loveth me shall be loved of my father. and I will love him, and I will manifest myself to him.

And folks, what he’s talking about here is the unbreakable relationship, the unbreakable bond among God the Father and God the Son and the believers, that no man is able to pluck us out of his hand, and that he, as a representation of that, and because of that, he will send his Holy Spirit to indwell us and to minister to us. That was the whole purpose of his discourse, and they picked up on something else and asked him about it. Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us and not unto the world?

What kind of sign are you going to give us? How are you going to show yourself to us? And how is it that we’re going to understand, but they don’t get to understand?

Oh, my goodness, you’ve totally missed the point, as they so often did. And in all fairness, we would too. We feel like we’re smarter than they are because we have the benefit of looking back 2,000 years.

And hindsight makes all the difference. Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings, and the world 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. but the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, he brings it back around. He talks about manifesting himself to them and he talks about the love of the Father and his love and their love for him and there’s all this discussion of love and doing what he says.

We’re not talking about earning God’s love through the law, but we’re talking about God loving those who do what he says, meaning repentance, repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he brings it back around to this idea of the comforter. But the comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you. Jesus, in human form, had a limited amount of time on this earth, and a limited amount of places where he could be in order to teach them so much information.

But he says the Spirit of truth will teach you all things. The Spirit of truth is with us always to teach us all the things that God needs us to know and to bring us to remembrance of all the things that Jesus said that we need to remember. He says, 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 is come to pass, you might believe. Here and after I will not talk much with you for the prince of this world cometh and hath 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 he’s told them, there is a comforter coming.

This Holy Spirit of God, the third part of the Trinity, God the Spirit, will be coming after I go away and I’m going away so that he can come and he’s coming to minister to you in my physical absence. And he will comfort you. He will guide you.

He will lead you. He will teach you. He will bring all things to remembrance that I have taught you.

He said, it’s going to be great. Don’t worry about it. I know you’re going to miss me.

I know you’re going to miss me in my absence, but I’m sending someone here who will minister to you in ways that I cannot. And that’s not to minimize what Jesus did in his earthly ministry. But that’s to say, in his human form, he limited some of his divine attributes.

He didn’t get rid of them. He didn’t stop being God. but things like being everywhere all at once being able to to do all could Jesus have flattened the mountains could Jesus have ended the world with a snap of his finger sure he could but he limited some of those things and he says I’m sending you someone who can be with you always and at all places where I couldn’t have and so they had this news and we had this news as believers that God has sent his Holy Spirit that Christ has sent the Holy Spirit of God to minister to us and He continues to teach us and He continues to indwell us and comfort us and lead us and guide us and point us to Christ and to bring to remembrance all the things that Christ taught.

We have access to this same Spirit now. And the reason I started in on this train of thought with the Holy Spirit was the fact that we as Baptists too often neglect the Holy Spirit because we identify that with other movements outside of our grouping that a lot of times we look at as misguided at best and heretical at worst. But folks, there’s no group of Christians or even so-called Christians who own the Holy Spirit. Hear me on this.

The Holy Spirit does not belong to the Pentecostals. The Holy Spirit does not belong to the Charismatics. The Holy Spirit doesn’t belong to the Baptists.

The Holy Spirit was given to believers. And wherever true believers are, the Holy Spirit indwells them. Now, does that mean they’re right on everything?

No. When we all get to heaven, we’re going to find out somebody was wrong. I don’t think it’s us, and that’s why I’m a Baptist, but hey, I could be wrong.

But the Holy Spirit doesn’t belong to just one group of Christians. And shame on us if we ignore the work of the Holy Spirit because we don’t want to be identified with somebody else. Then we’re letting somebody else come between our relationship with God.

We’re letting somebody else come in between us and the Holy Spirit who Jesus left here to minister to us in his physical absence. And we as Baptists tend to keep the Holy Spirit at arm’s length. And if we do that, we’re rejecting his work.

We’ve been given this incredible message that God has allowed us to be indwelled with his Spirit. And we can either embrace that or we can reject it. We started talking a few weeks ago, whenever it was, about some ways that we reject that.

That not only believers reject it, but also the world outside rejects the work of the Holy Spirit. Now, just to refresh your memory, some of those are that we can blaspheme the Holy Spirit. Now, if you’re a true believer, you can’t blaspheme the Holy Spirit.

Because the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is to reject the work of the Holy Spirit and the work of Christ as being the work of Satan, or being a deception and saying, I’m not going to accept that. By the very fact that we accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah, as the only begotten Son of God, as the only sacrifice for our sins, and we show repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ, by that very fact alone we are not blaspheming the Holy Spirit and cannot blaspheme the Holy Spirit. And yet just like the Pharisees who said, well he casts out demons by the power of the devil.

And Jesus looked at them and said you need to be very careful. This is my paraphrase of what he said. but you need to watch very carefully where you step because blaspheming the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven.

They were dangerously close, not a one-time act, but they were dangerously close. They were dangerously close to a life of rejecting Him and His work, of rejecting what the Holy Spirit was leading them into. I don’t believe either that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is a one-time act.

It is the culmination of a life of rejecting the person and work of Jesus Christ as witnessed by the Holy Spirit. And if we die in that condition, we can’t be forgiven. But men can blaspheme the Holy Spirit.

And when the Holy Spirit testifies, as He does, He still convicts men and says, you need to pay attention to the gospel. He’s talking about you. You’ve sinned.

You need a Savior. You need to run. Don’t walk.

Run to the cross of Jesus Christ. And men still say, no, that’s just a fairytale. No, that’s ridiculous. That can’t be true.

I’m telling you, if we die in that condition, our sins will not be forgiven. And men still today blaspheme the Holy Spirit in that way. We talked about one story with two different reactions to the Holy Spirit that are tossed out there.

And you can turn there if you’d like. I already kind of went through it verse by verse a few weeks ago. I’m just going to tell you the story today.

But I encourage you to go back and read it for yourself in Acts chapter 5. And instead of just listening to the story, go check it out for yourself. But Ananias and Sapphira were members of the church there at Jerusalem, I believe.

And they sold some of their property. And they were in cahoots and said, we’re going to sell our property and keep back some of the money from it. But we’re going to say that we were giving everything that we made from the sale of that property to the church.

Now, did God care that they kept back a part of the purchase price? I don’t believe so. Because when the Apostle Peter confronts them about it, he even says, was it not your property to begin with?

Now there’s a train of thought here that everything we own is God’s anyway. And that’s true. Everything we own is God’s and He simply allows us to use it.

I think that’s a pretty healthy way of looking at our possessions. It puts things in the right perspective. But he says, was it not in your own power?

Had God not given you this to use? From an earthly perspective, didn’t you own it? It was yours.

And it was your money to do with as you saw fit. Who cares if you kept back 10% of the purchase price? The problem was the lying.

The problem was coming before the church and saying, we sold it for, say they sold it today for $100,000. We sold a piece of property for $100,000. We’re going to give $75,000 to the church and say, that’s what we sold it for.

We sold it for $75,000. Here’s the proceeds. And the problem was the lying.

And Peter said to Ananias, why did Satan fill your heart to get you to lie to the Holy Ghost? He said, you haven’t lied to the church, you’ve lied to the Holy Spirit. And we can lie to the Holy Spirit.

God is not fooled by our little lies and half-truths. And we know he’s not fooled by our little lies and half-truths. And yet we do it anyway.

And we hide our motives and we say, God, I really would like for this to happen because this. And we say all the, like we’re trying to convince God, Lord, this needs to happen because it’d be good for the church or it’d be good for so-and-so. And we leave out the part where God, it’s good for me.

It’s what I want. You know what? God knows our motives.

God knows our hearts. Why are we lying to him? Or we pray and say, God, would you help me out of this situation?

I don’t know why I’m in this situation. I don’t know why they’re mad at me. I don’t know why they’re doing it.

And we know full well it’s because of something we did wrong. I’m just throwing out some examples here. I’m not saying that every time something bad happens to us, it’s because we did something wrong.

But what I’m saying is we will throw out things to God and say, God, I don’t know why I’m in this position when we know full well what sin it was we did that brought us to this consequence. We ought not to play dumb with God because God is not fooled. And I say this, and I know I sound pretty strong on this.

I sound like I’m getting all over you about it. It’s because I do this. And I find myself having to come back and say, God, you knew as well as I did.

You knew better than I did that I had mixed motives here. Let me just be honest. Yes, there is. I want X, Y, and Z because it would be good for this.

It would be good for that. But also, I have the selfish motive. Can I just be honest about that?

Now, whatever your will is. I have to go back to God sometimes and say, God, I just lied to you and you were not confused about it. But we can lie to the Holy Spirit.

Folks, why lie? Why tell the Holy Spirit something that’s not true? And yet we do that.

We can also tempt the Holy Spirit. What happened after Peter confronted Ananias was that he was so afraid because he knew he’d lied to God and he knew he’d been caught. I don’t know why we don’t think we’ll get caught.

God knows about the lie before we even tell it. But he realized he’d been found out. And he was so scared he died.

Do I read in the passage that God struck him dead? I don’t see that in black and white. Maybe God struck him dead.

What I get from the passage is he was so scared he died. And I’ve heard of people being so scared they had heart attacks. And you know what?

If we’re going to be so scared of something, we have a heart attack, it ought to be God. We ought to understand Him as a loving Father, but we ought to also understand Him as the God of the universe who can bring down some pretty good judgment when He needs to. And there ought to be a healthy fear.

You know what? I love my parents, and I know my parents love me. But I’m 29 years old.

I’m still a little bit afraid of my mom and dad. Now, I know they love me, but I also know that they can bring some consequences. Say, what consequences can they bring on a 29-year-old?

You don’t want to know. It’s the same kind of relationship. He calls himself our father for a reason.

I haven’t had a spanking probably since I was 13 years old. But I think today if I heard that belt coming through the belt loops from my dad, I think I probably still would run. He calls himself our father for a reason.

And yes, we should see him as love and mercy and kindness, but we also ought to know he does not mess around with sin. And so Ananias, at least on something, had the right perspective. He was so scared he died.

If we’re going to be that scared of something, it ought to be God and his judgment. What came after that? Sapphira, his wife, came wandering into the church meeting, blissfully unaware of what had happened.

She knew about the lie. She was party to that. but she was blissfully unaware of what had happened in the church meeting up to that point where her husband had been found out.

The men of the church had already carried Ananias’ body out and she comes into the church meeting and Peter gives her one last opportunity. And folks, here we see again the judgment and the mercy of God. God, speaking through Peter, I believe, was so merciful to give her one last chance.

He could have struck her dead. Gave her one last chance to tell the truth. Just do the right thing.

And Peter asks her, Did you sell the property for this much or for this much? And she lied. And Peter said, How have you agreed together to tempt the spirit of the world?

How have you put it in your heart to tempt God’s Holy Spirit? And I think I gave the example last time that it’s like being a parent. Saying you can only push me so far.

I will let you sometimes have just enough rope to hang yourself. and all the while I’m watching you and hoping you’ll realize what the right thing is. Now I’m not going to let you get too far but I’m hoping you’ll figure out what the right thing is and do it because you know what’s right you just need to remember it.

Some of y’all are looking at me funny because you know I have a two to three year old but if we don’t start training them that early you can’t train a 15 or 16 year old you might as well just give it up. You got to start early but you just got to remember what’s right but eventually you get to that point you have pushed me too far. Your party’s over.

And those of you who raise kids know that. You’ll let them go for just a little bit. Doesn’t mean that you’re okay with what they’re doing.

It doesn’t mean you don’t see it. It means I’m going to give you a little bit of grace to see if you’ll turn around. But you can only push me so far.

And with God, He is full of grace and He’s full of mercy. But you know what? You can only push Him so far.

I’m not saying that He doesn’t love us anymore, but I’m saying He steps in and He has to spank us from time to time. He says, why do you tempt the Holy Spirit of God? And we can ignore the Spirit of God and we can tempt Him by doing things we know we’re not supposed to do.

And why? Why, Sapphira? Do you just have to keep pushing and see how much you can get away with?

We do that. We push the Holy Spirit and see how much we can get away with. That’s tempting the Holy Spirit.

Well, I believe that’s all we talked about last time. We can also resist the Holy Spirit. We can resist the Holy Spirit.

You don’t have to raise your hand in this, but have any of you ever resisted the Holy Spirit? You don’t have to raise your hand because I can tell by the look on your face. I think we’ve all resisted the Holy Spirit at one time or another.

And we think, oh, I’m getting away with it because I’m going to do what I want to do and not what the Holy Spirit’s calling me to do, but it never ends well. It never ends up being fun. Usually it ends up being miserable.

I tell you from my own personal experience, I knew in high school God was calling me to be a pastor. I didn’t want to be a pastor, at least not full time my plan back then was I was going into politics I hope that still doesn’t become the case but I was going into politics I was going to run for city council at 18 and I was going to run for state representative and then eventually I was going to work my way up and I was going to be governor of Oklahoma that was my plan I knew God was calling me into ministry and I’m just hearing things I’m just hearing things I convinced myself I’m just hearing things but I knew deep down God was calling me to, the Holy Spirit was calling me to do something and I ignored it. And I ignored it and I argued with God for a few years, really.

And finally I said, let me rephrase this. I knew before high school, I knew going back to junior high what God was calling me to do. And it was finally when I was a sophomore in high school, I finally said, okay God, whatever.

If that’s what you want me to do, that’s what I’ll do.

now that worked out well to finally give in to him because I love what he’s called me to do but I will tell you he called me once before to go to a specific church God I can’t do that there’s no way I don’t want to go to that church and by the way it’s not this one I don’t want to go there God have you met those people because I’ve met them and I don’t think you have met them they’ve not met you I will say there was a church that I went to fill in at and I was told by one of the men I knew who filled in there before he said I heard you’re going such and such I said yeah he said well you better take Jesus with you because he ain’t there I thought well that bodes well that’s encouraging and I went and filled in there and I knew they needed a pastor and I thought no I’m not going there I felt God calling me to go there And I mean this in a totally non-blasphemous way.

I thought, God, are you crazy? I’m not going there. So I went and found myself another full-time job, as you do.

I thought, I’ve got a family now. I need health insurance. I need benefits.

I went and found all of those. And I was so miserable. Every day, I would cry in the car on my way to work.

Now, y’all know from my stories, I’m kind of, especially since I’ve had kids, I’m an emotional guy a little bit. Especially when it comes to my kids. But I can’t even watch, really, shows with shooting and killing on TV anymore because I’m sitting there, tears running down, thinking, that’s somebody’s child.

Normally it does something to the women when you have kids, but in this case it did something to me. But don’t normally cry about things like that, oh, it’s too hard. But I would cry every day on my way to work at the county because I hated the job I was doing.

I hated the position I was in. And you know, it was because I resisted the Holy Spirit. I knew he was calling me to do something else, and I wasn’t going to do it.

And finally, after about five months of that, I said, okay, God, whatever. And I won’t say that everything was a cakewalk after that. There were a lot of hard times that came after that, as you can imagine, as I’ve described, the church I’ve described.

But I will tell you, I was not miserable like I was before. God has a way of going through the difficult times with us when we go where he sends us and do what he tells us to do. when we stop resisting.

When we resist, we make it worse on ourselves. We make it harder on ourselves. The example of resistance, the example of resistance that’s given in the Bible is in Acts chapter 7.

And I would love to take the opportunity to go through this with you verse by verse. But I just cannot. You’ll have to read it on your own at home because the story is about two chapters long.

But basically what takes place in Acts chapter 7, It actually starts back in chapter 6 where Stephen, who we know the end of the story was the first martyr of Christianity, other than Jesus himself. Stephen gets arrested for preaching, for being a Christian and for proclaiming Christianity. And he’s put on trial. And Acts chapter 7 basically is his defense.

And he doesn’t try to deny and say, no, I’m not a Christian or no, I haven’t been preaching this. But he gives a defense, what they would call in the legal field today, an affirmative defense. Yeah, I did what you accused me of doing, but it’s okay because, and then fill in the reasons.

It’s like when we say, yes, he did kill that guy, but he was insane at the time. It’s called an affirmative defense. He gives this defense and says, yes, I’m a Christian, but, and he goes through the history of the nation of Israel before these Pharisees, before the Sanhedrin.

He tells them, this is how God has interacted with our people throughout all this time. And he goes back to Abraham and he talks about the faith of Abraham and he talks about God’s promises from the time of Abraham on and he talks about how God had always been with the Israelite people and he talks about their struggles through the wilderness. He talks about their struggles through all the centuries.

Folks, you go back through the history of the nation of Israel and I’m about to start doing this with my Bible class at school. Going through the whole story of the Old Testament and hitting the highlights and you see that not only in the book of Judges where we normally talk about it, but throughout the whole Old Testament, there’s this cycle where the people would walk with God and then eventually they would get so comfortable in their safety and in their prosperity that they would begin to forget about God. They’d fall into sin and idolatry.

God would try to get their attention. Either there would be a plague and we see all these things that people say, well, God was ruthless in the Old Testament. God will get our attention by whatever means we compel him to use.

If God can get our attention with the still small voice, I believe that’s what he’ll use. If God has to get our attention with the whirlwind, that’s what he’ll use. It’s sort of like my children.

I have one of them. I can spank and spank and it doesn’t faze him. I have to threaten to throw Kitty and his stuffed Garfield in the garbage.

That’s what gets