The Spirit

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in John chapter 14 tonight. John chapter 14. As we continue on with our study of what we as Baptists believe tonight, we’re going to look at the Holy Spirit.

And some of the things that I’m going to tell you tonight, I know for a fact that I’ve already told you before, but you may not remember them. So we’re going to go over them again. You’ve got a short memory.

We’re old. Because I’ve been of the conviction for a long time that we as Baptists don’t put nearly the emphasis on the Holy Spirit that we ought to. and I think some of that is because we’ve seen where other groups might take it to excess and engage in practices that we look at and say that’s probably not biblical and then they they blame it on the Holy Spirit.

Denominations aside we’ve all probably heard people who’ve said well I feel like the Holy Spirit told me to do such and such and it’s completely opposite of what God’s word says. And I think we are a little nervous sometimes about treading into unfamiliar territory. You know, we don’t want to be seen as this group or that.

We don’t want to be accused of just going by what the Holy Spirit reveals to us to the exclusion of the Bible. I think there’s nothing wrong with listening to the Holy Spirit. There’s nothing wrong with seeking the leadership of the Holy Spirit in God’s Word we’re told to.

We’re told that He should play a preeminent role in our lives, but He will never lead us in a direction that’s contrary to what God’s Word says. Because the Holy Spirit, when you get right down to it, is the one who revealed and empowered. He revealed the Word.

He empowered the human writers to put it down on paper. He inspired it. And so what the Holy Spirit whispers in somebody’s ear today is not going to be contradictory to what God’s Word says, and if they are, that’s not the Holy Spirit you’re hearing.

Exactly. Yes, try the spirits. That’s right.

Try the spirits and see if they be of God. So I think we should not be afraid of the Holy Spirit. And as a matter of fact, if we understand His role, which is what we’re going to talk about tonight, if we understand the Holy Spirit’s role, not only should we not be afraid of the Holy Spirit, but we should recognize our total dependence on the Holy Spirit.

And see, the thing is, even as Baptists, we’ve been dependent on the Holy Spirit all this time. We just don’t recognize it or like to talk about it. But the Holy Spirit is nothing for us to be afraid of.

Tonight we’re going to look, as I said, at John chapter 14 and see what Jesus said. If you have your pink and gray booklets with the Baptist faith and message, Just going to explain to you real quick what it is we believe about the Holy Spirit. This is just an overview.

There’s no way I could tell you tonight everything that we believe about the Holy Spirit. But we’re going to hit the highlights tonight and then tie that into what Jesus said about the Holy Spirit. So if you have those booklets, we’re on page 9 tonight, section 2C.

It says, God, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, fully divine. He inspired holy men of old to write the Scriptures.

Through illumination, he enables men to understand truth. He exalts Christ. He convicts men of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. He calls men to the Savior and affects regeneration.

At the moment of regeneration, he baptizes every believer into the body of Christ. He cultivates Christian character, comforts believers, and bestows the spiritual gifts by which they serve God through his church. He seals the believer unto the day of final redemption. His presence in the Christian is the guarantee that God will bring the believer into the fullness of the stature of Christ. He enlightens and empowers the believer and the church in worship, evangelism, and service.

And that just really scratches the surface. But to put this in more everyday terms, what this means, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, fully divine. That means we believe that the Holy Spirit is God.

We believe that He’s the third person of the Trinity. And that stands in contrast to, for example, the Mormons who believe that he’s a separate God or a separate personage of God. That stands in contrast to the Jehovah’s Witnesses who believe that the Holy Spirit is an impersonal active force, sort of like God sending out radio waves, that he’s some kind of power but not really a being with a will of his own.

We believe that the Holy Spirit is a person, that he’s the third person of the Trinity, and that he’s just as much God as the Father and the Son. it says he inspired holy men of old to write the scriptures we believe that the scriptures were breathed out by God I don’t fully understand the process of how that works where God through the Holy Spirit gave them the the words and the truth to write down and yet he did it in such a way that he allowed their own writing skills and their own vocabularies and writing styles to shine through because we can see differences in the writing of John versus Peter and so on and so forth. How God did that exactly, I don’t understand, but the Bible says that he did.

And so the scriptures are fully God’s word because of the work of the Holy Spirit. Through illumination, he enables men to understand truth. That’s one of the things we’re going to talk about tonight.

The Holy Spirit opens our minds to be able to understand the truth of God in a way that we could not do otherwise. And I’ve told you many times before that we would not understand anything of God lest he revealed it to us. You and I are so far beneath the character, the nature of God.

We’re of a totally different nature. And it’s like, it would be like trying, it would be like my dog trying to understand what I’m doing when I sit down and balance my checkbook. He has no concept of what I’m doing.

God, we cannot understand God on our own. the same way. The only things we can understand of God is what he’s revealed to us, and the Holy Spirit makes it possible.

It says he exalts Christ. One of the things we’re going to talk about tonight, the Holy Spirit always points people toward Jesus Christ, not away from him. He convicts men of sin, righteousness, and judgment. You know what?

We know right and wrong because the Holy Spirit speaks to the conscience that God’s put in us and convicts us of sin. When we’re wrong, he convicts us. He lets us know.

Not only that, he points us to what is right, and he impresses on men the reality of God’s judgment that that’s coming. And all of this he does in order to point people to Jesus Christ. The sin and righteousness and judgment that he convicts of is to point people to our need for Jesus Christ. He calls men to the Savior, and he affects regeneration. That means regeneration is a fancy word, I believe, for being born again.

He makes that possible. That’s the work of the Holy in us. At the moment of regeneration, he baptizes every believer into the body of Christ. Now, this is one thing that sets us apart from some denominations that believe you are baptized into the Holy Spirit or you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit at a later date.

They have some scriptures that they use to back that up. I think this is not a slam against them. I think those scriptures are taken out of context, and I believe the Bible teaches that after the time of the apostles, there were some things that we’ve been talking about on Wednesday nights where the Holy Spirit came to a group of people a little later on, but it was always for specific purpose.

God opening the doors to the minister, and Peter was there in each of these instances. I realized this this week. God was opening the doors of ministry to the Jews there at the day Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came on all these Jewish believers then a couple chapters later at Samaria when Peter and John went down to check out what was going on the Holy Spirit was received by this group of Samaritan believers and then in what we’re going to be studying here in the not too distant future either this Wednesday or next Wednesday how Peter began to minister to the Gentiles and they received the Holy Spirit there were some people who believed and then a little later on received the Holy Spirit, but it always was God working toward a purpose of teaching the church and teaching the apostles something.

Beyond those few instances, the norm in Scripture and the norm today is to receive the Holy Spirit at the moment of our conversion. I believe the Scriptures bear that out. Now, we can be filled with the Holy Spirit throughout our lives.

We can, well that’s what I was going to say. We can be filled with the Holy Spirit and that’s an ongoing process that we can have all sorts of interaction with the Holy Spirit but I believe when the Bible talks about the gift of the Holy Spirit and the baptism of the Holy Spirit I believe those are talking about the same thing and I believe that the norm is for them to happen at the moment of conversion. So he baptizes every believer into the body of Christ. He cultivates Christian character.

That means we believe the Holy Spirit works within us to make us more like Jesus Christ. He comforts believers. That’s one of the things that we’re going to look at tonight. He bestows spiritual gifts by which they serve God through his church.

All the gifts that we have, the spiritual gifts that it talks about in Paul’s letters and the gifts that we exercise, those are the work of the Holy Spirit. God doesn’t give us gifts so that we can say, look how great I am, I have this spiritual gift, and look at how I exercise it. It’s entirely the gift of the Holy Spirit, and it’s something that we exercise through his empowering so that we can serve God and glorify him and not ourselves.

He seals the believer unto the day of redemption. The Bible a couple times uses the word earnest, which apparently a lot of places don’t do anymore when you’re buying a house. I sold a house in Arkansas a few years ago and couldn’t believe that they were trying to make me an offer without earnest money, and the realtor said, well, that’s what people do now.

Okay, that’s funny because two or three years ago when I bought the house, we had to make an earnest payment. And most of you know what that is. That earnest payment is money that you put down that shows that you’re serious and you’re going to go through with the deal. And if you back out on the real estate deal before it’s done, you lose that earnest money.

So it’s an incentive to stay in the deal. The Bible calls the Holy Spirit our earnest, the earnest of our redemption, meaning that he’s the proof. He’s the evidence that God is serious about our redemption and that he’s going to carry it all the way to its conclusion, that we don’t have to worry. And God has sort of, through the Holy Spirit, marked us out and sealed us as his until our final redemption.

The presence of the Christian is the guarantee that God will bring the believer into the fullness of the stature of Christ, sort of what I was just talking about. And he enlightens and empowers the believer and the church to worship evangelism and service. So in other words, all the good that we do, All the service that we render for the Lord is ultimately the work of the Holy Spirit within us.

And there are several scriptures. At the end of each of these sections, there are scriptures here I encourage you. That’s one of the reasons you have these little books is not just to read along with me in Sunday night service.

But so that you have those scriptures in front of you and you can take these books and go read the relevant scriptures and see where that comes from in the Bible. And these things aren’t true because this is what the Baptists say. These things are true because this is what we believe the Bible says.

And I want us to look tonight at one of those passages where the Bible talks about the Holy Spirit in John chapter 14. And one of the, just to explain this, because I’ve really struggled with this in preparing these messages. One of the problems with preaching on subjects out of a doctrinal statement is you’re collecting teachings that are taught all throughout Scripture, and you’re kind of distilling them down to the most basic statements and putting them in paragraph form, it is impossible to find one passage of Scripture that covers every point of the subject.

And so I always feel like I’m leaving something out. That’s why I encourage you to go back. Hopefully this for you is a jumping off point to get a little bit acquainted with what we believe and go back and search the Scriptures for yourselves, because there’s absolutely no way I can cover everything I need to in our time together.

But one of the things we’re going to look at tonight is this passage from John chapter 14, when Jesus himself was getting ready to, he was preparing the disciples for his eventual leaving, his eventual exit, and he warns them that he’s going to be gone, and he tells them, and he tells them a couple times, that he’s going to send a comforter. And so we’re going to start in verse 15 of John chapter 14, and it says, If you love me, keep my commandments. This is Jesus speaking to the disciples.

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. 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 you shall know that I am in my father and ye in me and I in you he that keepeth my he excuse me 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 now there are a number of things that Jesus hits on in this short passage but sort of the key to it is his discussion with them of the Holy Spirit. And he says that he’s going to go away.

And in other passages, he says it’s necessary for him to go away. And I think we’ve talked at times about why was it necessary for Jesus to go away? Well, Jesus had taken on a human nature in addition to his divine nature.

And so Jesus in that human nature was in one place at one time. And so when Jesus left, he could then send the Holy Spirit, who instead of being in one place at time and ministering to a small group of believers, the Holy Spirit, without that physical body, without that human nature, could be at all places at all times to minister to all of us. And the same Holy Spirit that you and I have tonight is the same Holy Spirit that’s in dwelling believers at First Baptist, the same Holy Spirit that’s in dwelling believers in the city, the same Holy Spirit that’s in dwelling believers all over the globe tonight.

And He’s with all of us, all at the same time. Something else that we notice here is that he says, you know him, this is in verse 17, for he dwelleth with you. That means he’s with you right now, and he shall be in you.

And I know the question’s been asked on Wednesday nights, what was the relationship with the Holy Spirit before Pentecost? Where was the Holy Spirit? And we see a few mentions of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, and usually it appears that the Spirit of God was in the midst of the people of Israel, but not necessarily indwelling the individual. Okay, I could be totally wrong on that.

You go check that out for yourself. But it sounds to me, and I haven’t looked into this as much nearly as I should have, but it sounds to me as though, say, we together as a group get together. The Holy Spirit is among us, but He’s not in us, and I don’t know if that distinction makes sense.

But that seems to be borne out here by verse 17, where he says you know him and he’s with you. He is with you now in the present. He shall be in you.

That sort of reinforces that point in my mind. But he talks about the work that the Holy Spirit, he’s soon coming to be in you. And here’s what he’s going to do.

Jesus outlines some things that the Holy Spirit’s going to do. I see six of them here in this passage. We’ll just go through them pretty quickly tonight.

First of all, he comforts our hearts. The Holy Spirit is, along with everything else, he’s a comforter. That’s the title that Jesus uses several times, not only in this passage but in others.

The Holy Spirit is a comforter. And I’ll be honest with you, I don’t always think about the Holy Spirit in comforting terms because I think of the Holy Spirit in convicting terms, and if there’s one thing that conviction’s not, it’s comfortable, right? Conviction is not comfortable.

But the Holy Spirit is meant to be a comforter. And that’s because we as believers have the very presence of God within us at all times. It’s hard not to be comforted by the thought that we are never alone.

You know, when I think about that, being all alone, I think of Richard Wurmbrand, who founded Voice of the Martyrs. He wrote the book Tortured for Christ and talked about how he spent time in solitary confinement months on end with nobody else in his prison cell. I think sometimes in the dark, he was all alone.

And he was all alone because of his faith. And yet he wasn’t ever alone because the Spirit of God was in that deep, dark prison with him. And it doesn’t matter what struggle we’re going through, folks.

The Spirit of God is always with us. There are times that we feel like, I don’t have the strength to do this. I don’t have the strength to do what God’s called me to.

The Holy Spirit is always with us, and His strength is always there. He’s always working in us and He’s always working through us. And when we think about that, when we remember that in times of difficulty, it should be a comfort to us that He’s always there ministering to us.

You’ve always got the Holy Spirit ministering to us. He said, I’ll pray to the Father and He shall give you another comforter. And they were going to need it because they’ve spent three years with Jesus every day, day in and day out.

They’ve been with Jesus. And suddenly Jesus is talking about going away. And they’re going to be like lost puppies.

They’re not going to know what to do. Take away Jesus and where do they go from there? He says, I will send you another comforter.

I’m not meant to stay here and be in your physical presence and comfort you like that for the rest of this. I’ve given you a job to do, but I’m going to send you another comforter to go with you. So he comforts our hearts.

Second of all, he abides eternally. Verse 16 also says, when he sends this comforter, he says that he may abide with you forever. that word means to take up residence and stay put.

I’ve given you a definition, something similar to that. Earlier on, I can’t remember my exact wording, but I know abiding was, I remember abiding was talking about staying put, you know, that I’m not going to leave. And so when God says He’ll never leave us or forsake us, we know that’s true because the Holy Spirit is in us from the moment we put our trust in Jesus Christ as our Savior.

That Holy Spirit indwells us. He baptizes us. We receive the gift.

Whatever terminology you want to use, He’s there in us and with us, and He does not leave us as long as we’re on this earth. He’s with us all the time. He abides in you.

There’s nothing you can do to get rid of the Holy Spirit. It can be a comforting thought. It can be a sobering thought, depending on how you look at it.

But He abides with us eternally. He’ll never leave us. It’s the eternal ministry of God in our midst. Third of all, He teaches truth.

I think this is really important. It goes back to what Brother Ken mentioned about trying the Spirit. He said in verse 17, Even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him, but ye know him.

He calls him the Spirit of truth. And in another passage where Jesus is talking to the disciples about the coming of the Holy Spirit, he calls him the Spirit of truth who will guide you into all truth. There’s a lot of stuff about God that I’m not smart enough to know or to figure out on my own.

I mean, let’s just be honest. and I’ve been preaching for over a decade. I’m now, you know, and so it’s easy to feel like I’ve done this before. I know lots of stuff about God.

I’m finishing up a degree in Bible. It’s easy to feel like I know lots of stuff about God. When you get right down to it, there’s a whole lot more about God I don’t know than what I do know about God.

And when you realize that and realize that God’s up here and I’m down here and realize I can’t figure God out on my own, It feels like an insurmountable task, if not for the fact that we have the Holy Spirit who will guide us into all truth. The truth that God wants us to understand is always available at the time God wants us to understand it, because the Holy Spirit sort of grabs us by the hand and drags us along where we need to be, so that we’ll understand the truth of God. And not only that, but the Holy Spirit, especially in conjunction with God’s Word, The Holy Spirit will help us to understand the truth and to separate the truth from fiction.

Now, this is really important. Discernment should be taught more than it is in a majority of churches around this country. And if it was, if we were paying attention to God’s word and following the leadership of the Holy Spirit, half the stuff that’s being taught from so-called churches on television wouldn’t be believed by anybody who’s got a Bible and the Holy Spirit.

When we listen to the Holy Spirit, when we read God’s Word and study it and get to the original intent of what’s being said, we should be able to discern truth from error because the Holy Spirit will lead us to the truth. He teaches us the truth. He indwells us.

Now, this is a little bit different from abiding. They’re similar. But indwelling us just means, in verse 17, he dwelleth with you and shall be in you.

He’s not just with us. He’s in us. Abiding means he’s there forever.

or indwelling means he’s not just with us. He’s not just by my side. He’s in here.

He’s inside of me. The Holy Spirit is. .

. Think about that for a second and try not to hurt your brain as you think about it. You’ve got God living inside you.

It’s quite a realization to realize that the very Spirit of God has taken up residence within you. It’s not just that God is with you. God is inside you.

And I mean that very differently from the way the New Age movement does when they say, God is inside you like there’s some part of you that’s got. That’s not what I mean at all. I mean the Holy Spirit of God has taken up residence, and he’s always there to lead us and to guide us.

Fifth of all tonight, he points us to Jesus. Now, verses 18 through 20 teaches this. He said, 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. How are they going to see him? When the world sees him no more, it’s because he’s gone on to be with the Father.

So how do they see him? Spiritually they see him because the Holy Spirit points them in that direction. Because I live, ye shall live also.

How is that? Because the Holy Spirit points us to Jesus Christ where we find eternal life. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father and ye in me and I in you.

We understand this relationship that the Father and the Son and the Spirit have and that we have to all of them. We understand that because the Holy Spirit gives us understanding and the Holy Spirit is always turning our focus and our attention toward Jesus Christ. If we’ll listen to the Spirit, you know, I talked this morning about jealousy. One of the remedies for that is the Holy Spirit.

If we’ll listen to the Holy Spirit, He’s always leading us to take our focus off of ourselves and all these other things and put our focus on Jesus Christ. If we’ll listen to Him and follow His direction, His answer is always Jesus. The Holy Spirit has one direction, one answer of where we’re headed. And then finally tonight, verse 21 teaches that he transforms our lives.

All of this would be incredible enough, but on top of it all, the Holy Spirit transforms our lives. It says, 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.

Now, this doesn’t specifically mention the Holy Spirit. But I don’t think it’s by accident that Jesus brings that up in a conversation about the Holy Spirit. Because he’s not already started the next thing he’s teaching to them, because in verse 22 he’s interrupted by Judas and then they go on in a different direction.

This is part of all the same thought. He’s talking about the ability to keep his commandments. His commandments are impossible to keep.

The Ten Commandments and the Old Testament law are impossible for us to keep, especially according to Jesus’ interpretation. Because there were men who thought they were righteous because outwardly they’d followed the law, and then Jesus says, yeah, you’ve never murdered anybody. Have you ever been angry without a cause?

Same as murder. Oh, wait, I can’t keep that commandment. Yeah, you’ve never committed adultery, but have you ever looked with lust at somebody?

Oh, guilty. One’s a lot harder to do than the other, or not do than the other. And so by Jesus’ interpretation, none of us are innocent, But even the commandments of the New Testament, the law of Christ where he says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

We can’t do that perfectly. We can’t follow. It’s impossible for us to do.

Brother Ken knows. And I know, but some of you have heard the stories. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Can I pick which neighbor? Right. It’s impossible to do it perfectly the way Jesus does.

So how do we have any hope of keeping his commandments at all? The Holy Spirit. I don’t think it’s by accident that as he’s talking about the Holy Spirit and the ministry of the Holy Spirit in us, that he then turns to this talk about keeping the commandments.

Because it’s the Holy Spirit that works in us and changes us and makes us sensitive to the things of God and transforms us from the inside out. It’s the Holy Spirit that sanctifies us. It’s the Holy Spirit that makes us more like Jesus.

we would not be able to follow his commandments apart from the Holy Spirit. And so the Holy Spirit, we need to understand that the Holy Spirit transforms our lives. Why in the world would we as Baptists be afraid of the Holy Spirit or afraid to talk about the Holy Spirit when all the things that we look at and all the things that we want are things the Holy Spirit provides?

Who doesn’t want to be comforted by the presence of God? Who doesn’t want to have God always with you? And who doesn’t want to know the truth and how can I figure out what’s true and what’s not in this situation?

We want to do that. Who wouldn’t want God inside of us and with us, inside us every day? Who wouldn’t want a little extra help pointing our focus toward Jesus?

Who among us doesn’t look at the end of the day and see all the things we’ve done and all the things we’ve thought and said and felt over the course of the day and say, Lord, I’ve really let you down and I wish I could do better. The Holy Spirit is the one who changes us and enables that. All the things that we look at, a lot of the things that we look at and say, I wish God would do that.

Those are the things that the Holy Spirit is here to do in us and through us. Why in the world would we ever be afraid of the Holy Spirit? Why would we ever ignore the Holy Spirit?

That may be more of our problem, not being afraid of the Holy Spirit, but ignoring the Holy Spirit. Folks, the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, sent here by the Father and Son to minister to us for the express purpose of us being the Christians that He created us to be. We can’t do it without Him.

And so my challenge to you this week is to just recognize the role of the Spirit in your life and look for His leadership. Ask for His help. Listen for His voice.

When He points you in a direction, do what He says. The best thing that we can do, knowing all of this, is to not ignore the Holy Spirit, but let the Spirit have the work that the Father and the Son sent Him here for.