Moving from WITH to IN: Understanding the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit

“Moving From WITH to IN: The Story of the New Testament”
 Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church – Sunday, Feb 14, 2016
Text: Acts 5:32 // Series: Four Small Words

Good morning.  What would happen if as you went through your day today, you skipped every third word?.  Your Valentines Cards read would read “I love ---“.  Poems would be a bit awkward: “Roses are ___, violets are___, sugar is ____, and so ___ you.” That leaves a lot to the imagination, doesn’t it? 

How about love songs?  Stevie Wonder singing: “ I just to say love you. Just called say how I care.” That one actually works but it’s like a caveman wrote it! 

What if you skipped every third word in the Bible?  You’d shorten it – but you’d be pretty hard pressed to get an adequate or accurate grasp of what’s going on. “For God loved the He gave One and son that believes in shall not but have life.”  Bit tricky.  Try it over lunch – skip every third word and see if you can still get your message across!

The reason I bring this up is that when I was growing up, the tradition that I was part of skipped or de-emphasized a critically important part of God’s nature and character.  We would talk about God the Father, we loved to talk about Jesus the Son, and then there was that other Guy”.  We baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the [whisper] Holy Spirit”.  It was as if we were skipping or ignoring the third person of the Trinity.  And without the Holy Spirit, the story doesn’t make sense.  It’s woefully incomplete.  You have a 2/3rds of God.

Over the past three weeks, we’ve been exploring the big picture of the Bible.  Trying to answer the question “what’s this all about anyway?”  We’ve suggested that the goal of the Bible isn’t to gain more knowledge about it but to deeper our understanding of it and gain some traction in our lives.  We’ve suggested that the Bible is a massive book – various styles, historical contexts but also suggested that we could give ourselves 4 words that could function as a bit of a summary of the Story.  Writer and pastor Jarrett Stevens has written a very helpful and brief book called “Four Small Words” and has given us permission at Jericho to use that framework for this series, for which we are grateful.  The point of getting a framework is not only to gain a deeper understanding of God’s Story but also our own stories. The four words that cover the whole scope of the Bible are…

OF – Creation (Gen 1-2) Story of True Identity

BETWEEN – OT (Gen 3-Mal 4) Separation 

WITH – Gospels (Mat 1-Acts 1) Present God

IN – NT (Acts 2-Rev 22) People Inhabited by God    

Two weeks ago, I attempted the whole OT, this week, I’m supposed to attempt to preach through the whole NT but this is actually a message about the Holy Spirit.  

But let’s look at where we’ve come from.  OF – Beginning of the Story… Story of your identity.  Genesis 1-2 teaches us that you and I were created in the image OF God with a purpose, for a purpose.  Out of overflow of loving community in the Trinity, God created all that is, including humankind and God looked at all He had created and said “it is good!”….  BUT we saw right away in Genesis 3 there’s a problem.  Things are not now as they were created to be.  Relationships are broken. Creation itself is longing for freedom from the decay and bondage that it experiences.  The first act of the story is one of beauty and goodness and perfect relationship with God BUT the second act of the story which we saw begins very quickly in Genesis 3 is a tragedy that is marked by separation.  This is word #2   

Sin is that which has come BETWEEN us and God.  This second act of the Story lasts a LONG time.  The whole of the Old Testament, in fact.  This is the story of separation from God and from each other.  God builds bridge after bridge in His grace but people are still intent on building walls between them and God.  But God is still faithful to His promise to redeem and to restore lost relationship.    

So we come to the third movement in the Bible – the entrance of the Promised One, Messiah, the Saviour come to set all things right again.  Jesus.  God has finally, after centuries of anticipation and provisional longings made a way and bridged the gap that sin has created.  So we see in Jesus’ birth, his life, his death, burial, resurrection and ascension – He is God WITH us as Mike explored last weekend.  Comes to save people from the penalty of sin.

That’s not even the climax of the story.  The amazing thing is that the story is just getting exciting!  You see, while He was here on Earth, in the gospel of John 14:16-17 we read that Jesus made a promise to His followers.  “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive Him, because it isn’t looking for Him and doesn’t recognize Him. But you know Him, because He lives WITH you now and later will be IN you.”

We’re moving from WITH to IN.  And IN has always been the point. 

God gave two massive gifts in the New Testament era – the gift of Jesus AND then Jesus promised that gift of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus says to His followers – It is better for you that I go because I will send you the Holy Spirit.  He will be not just WITH you but He will live IN you.  And so the final word that sums up the writings and reflections of the New Testament, from the book of Acts to the reflections on the church in the epistles and to the last chapter of Revelation where it says “The Spirit says come”… The work and ministry of the Holy Spirit the people of God and in the world is “IN” the witness of the New Testament.  That God would choose to live IN people is something so powerful and game changing that we often struggle to understand it.  Christians flight a LOT about the Holy Spirit.

One way to understand what this kind of relationship looks like and how you can actively experience it is to look at those who first experienced this – the early followers of Jesus.  So turn with me to the Book of Acts, chapter 2, we’re going see the incredible and powerful story of the movement from WITH to IN. 

I like the way Jarett Stevens summarizes this in his book Four Small Words.  He reminds us that “Up to this a point in the story, God has always been present but still somehow distant.  Present in the garden, but separated by that thin, divine line of Creator and created.  Present in the covenants commands, priests, prophets, and kings, but separated by sin.  Present in Jesus, like us in every way… with the exception of His perfection.  God was for the first time flesh and bone, but it would be these very limbs and ligaments that would be His limitation, because the power of His presence was confined by the contingency of proximity.  The only way to be physically with Jesus was to be lucky enough to happen to be in the town that He was passing through, on the hill He happened to be teaching from, in a tree that He happened to be walking by” (130). 

Yet he prepares to leave the earth and return to heaven, Jesus spells out what is going to happen next…  Acts 1:8 – you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses.  This is new.  This is different.  God is now not only coming into the world, but coming INTO human beings! 

So Jesus tells them to wait in Jerusalem.  Waiting is hard work, isn’t it?  We just entered a period of 40 days leading into Easter known as Lent (which began this past this past Wed.  Lent is like Advent, it’s a period of preparation – some people fast or give things up).  Thought it’s only been four days, some of you are eagerly waiting for Easter on March 27 so you can eat chocolate again or go on Facebook or whatever.  Then 40 days AFTER Easter, comes another marker in the Christian tradition that often gets overlooked by Evangelicals.  This is the feast of Pentecost, that back in the time of Jesus, celebrated  the first fruits or crops of the season.  So Jesus tells his followers to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit.  And on that Pentecost Sunday morning, around 9 AM, around 120 of the early believers are all gathered together – they are worshipping in song, they are praying, and the Holy Spirit is poured out in power.  A wind breaks through that upper room and what appears like fire fills and alights all who gather there.  They begin to spontaneously manifest their fullness of the Spirit by speaking out with bold witness in multiple languages that they have never spoken in before.  People on the street hear them and say “what in the world is going on!?  Some think that the most logical explanation is that the disciples are drunk.   But Peter stands up, preaches a powerful sermon that says “you wanna know what is being poured out?  It’s not magic whiskey.  This is a categorically different kind of spirit J.  Peter looks back into the Old Testament and says “what you see here and now is the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, being poured out upon all people.” 

This is big stuff!  This shift, from WITH to IN, changes the whole story!  It changed my whole story.  You see, as I mentioned at the start, I grew up a tradition that largely ignored the Holy Spirit.  But as I became a teenager, I became part of another tradition that was all about the Spirit.  I began to hear and see manifestations of the work of the Spirit – spiritual gifts like healing and prophecy and tongues that were not part of my mental categories.  It was astounding to me!  Looking back on it now, I went from not hearing about the Spirit into one of the more charismatic denominations in Canada.  It was a BIG swing for me.  Some spiritual whiplash may have occurred J.  I began to see and hear talk about the Holy Spirit in ways I had never encountered before… This brought up LOTS of questions for me.  What is the Holy Spirit for?  Why is He given?  Is the Spirit a ghost?  Like the force in Star Wars – a kind of impersonal entity that inhabits all?  Sounded like pantheism or pantheism to me but people talked about the Holy Spirit like that so I was very confused. 

Many other things confused me…  Some people argued that the Spirit is given to you at conversation others were just as sure that you got Jesus and God the Father in one event and then the Spirit at another event called the second filling.  Some friends argued that we should be seeing everything we see in Acts all the time. Others argued that those gifts were poured out for the start of the church and that they are not available now.  So much controversy!!!!  LOTS of questions in my mind and heart maybe yours as well.  So let’s be frank: the Holy Spirit is hard to fully understand.  But this is not an excuse for not wrestling with and getting to know more about and experience more of the Spirit in our lives.  I love the way author Francis Chan in his book “The Forgotten God: Reversing our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit” reminds us that “the point is not to completely understand God but to worship Him. Let the very fact that you cannot know Him fully lead you to praise Him for His infiniteness and grandeur.”  I’m not content with a 2/3^rds God or with 2/3rds of God.  I want to more.         

Our Confession of Faith articulates the person and work of the Spirit in this way:

““The Holy Spirit, the Counselor, is the creative power, presence and wisdom of God. The Spirit convicts people of sin, gives them new life, and guides them into all truth. By the Spirit believers are baptized into one body. The indwelling Spirit testifies that they are God’s children, distributes gifts for ministry, empowers for witness, and produces the fruit of righteousness. As Comforter, the Holy Spirit helps God’s children in their weakness, intercedes for them according to God’s will and assures them of eternal life.”   I want the presence of God in my life.  I want more of His wisdom.  I want to be guided into all truth.  I want that for you, for Jericho.  As I continue to grow in my understanding and love for and of the Spirit, I find it helpful to boil it down to two basic questions about the Holy Spirit.  First, who is the Holy Spirit?  Secondly, what does He do?   Much of the NT wrestles with these 2 questions.   

Questions # 1  Who is the Holy Spirit? 

1. The Holy Spirit is a Person

He has feelings of affection, sadness, feels rejected, He has a will, He speaks. He has thoughts, He teaches, He witnesses, He prays, He searches. The Spirit has desires, He convicts and convinces.  These are the attributes of personhood because the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity.    

• Fully equal to God the Father and to Jesus the Son (Romans 8:9-11)

Sometimes see the term Spirit of Christ used interchangeably.  In the 4^th Century, the church had to wrestle with many competing ideas being expressed about the nature of God.  So they gathered and came up with the Nicene Creed, part of which reads “we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped & glorified”   God in three persons, blessed Trinity

• Assures children of God of their new relationship (Rom. 8:15)

We have a personal relationship with God through the Sprit .  Rom 8 says “So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” 16 For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.”  When we are talking about the Holy Spirit, already we are taking about the miraculous possibility of us as humans being able to have a relationship with God.  Unlike any other deity, God living IN us!  The person of the Spirit also   

• Brings unity to the Church (John 17)

Having said that, we need to be careful as Mike reminded us last weekend not to try to domesticate or gentrify Almighty God.  By saying that the Spirit is a person, He is not walking around in a physical body like Jesus did when He was on earth. 

Because while the Holy Spirit has some of the clear characteristics of personhood, The Spirit is the Indwelling Presence of God
God is not merely “out there” or “back there” or “in those people in Acts 2”.  No, God is living IN you if you have said yes to Him and opened your life up to Him.  We see this teaching throughout the New Testament:  That the Spirit is    

• Given as “sign” or mark of conversion at conversion (Eph 1:13-14)

I like the way our Confession of Faith explains this: “ere Baptism by the Spirit is the experience of every believer at conversion and is symbolized by water baptism.  It’s a one-time experience.  Romans 8:9-11 teaches that if one does not have the Spirit of Christ, you are not part of Christ.  Meaning that the Spirit comes as a part of the package when you come to saving faith in Christ.  We see in Acts 2:38 this is a concurring set of events.  Scripture does not instruct that a dramatic, emotional, post-conversion experience is needed to live a full Christian life…

On the other hand, the New Testament uses two primary pictures: 

• NT speaks of both “baptism” (I Cor 12:13) and “filling” (Eph 5:18)

So when you are initially saved, you receive the Holy Spirit.  But you still need to grow in surrender to the Holy Spirit.”  Gal 5:16.  This is the language of filling.  We are commanded to be continuously filled with the Spirit.  So this isn’t a one-time event.  This is an ongoing surrender to the will of God.” (COF, 20)      

• Filling produces the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23)

Filling is walking in deeper obedience to the Spirit of God.  Its making an intention act of surrendering, yielding my life to God’s control more fully.   

You can see we are already starting to get into answer the second question:

• What Should I expect the Spirit to do – in me, to me, through me?

Here I’ll briefly suggest 4 C’s…  one of these might be for you today. First C: 

1. Comforts (Isaiah 61:1, Psalm 139:7 – where can I go from your Spirit?)
   • Never leaves us; comforts us so we can comfort others

Some of you today need comfort.  Healing from your past.  Experience of this week.  Life had beat you down. You feel dejected and remorseful.  You need to come for prayer. We’re going to pray for you that the God of all comfort would release Holy Spirit comfort to you this morning.   

2. Counsels (I Cor. 2:10)

Jesus was abundantly clear in John 14 and 16 that the role of the Spirit is as a guide.  A counsellor.  One who teaches, relevels the Father’s heart and will and plan to us.  Some of you today are asking God “what is your will for my life?” You need direction.  Some of you are facing complicated situations and decisions – you need the Holy Spirit to guide and counsel you with the wisdom of God.

• Shows us truth, teaches us what we need to know, reveals God to us

I love the way theologian Karl Barth put this: "When we are at our wits end for an answer, then the Holy Spirit can give us an answer. But how can He give us an answer when we are still well supplied with all sorts of answers of our own?"  If you have all the answers to all of the questions, first of all, I’m going to suggest that maybe you’re asking the wrong questions, but you certainly don’t need the Holy Spirit, and that is a grievous state of affairs.  Because if your life can be fully explained and lived without the need to introduce the Holy Spirit, into the conversation, that’s not experiencing the fullness of God IN you.  That means everything about your spiritual life ifs natural and not supernatural.  Third C…      

3. Convicts (John 16:8-11)
   • Attracts the lost to Jesus

Sometimes I get in trouble because I am trying to do the work of the Spirit.  I am working to try and convict people of their sin, but the Bible says that’s the job of the Spirit.  That’s not to say we don’t speak out truth in love and call people to change where they are out of line.  But God has given us the privilege to partner with Him.  I find that sometimes I am tempted to usurp my authority and start doing God’s job of bringing conviction!  Never a good idea to try to do God’s job.

Maybe you are here today and you feel something stirring in your heart.  You feel a level of discontent with your spiritual life.  Whenever you come to a place like Jericho or when you hear someone begin to talk about God, something begins to swirl around inside of you.  It feels a bit scary and unfamiliar but there’s a sense of longing as well.  A sense that though everything looks super smooth and good on the outside, all is not right with your life.  There’s an unsettledness and deep fear when you think about death.  Friend, that may well be the work of the Spirit trying to get your attention and draw you to a place of confession and repentance that will lead to freedom, liberty, and new life in Christ.  If you are experiencing that conviction of sin, a desire to turn to God and repent, don’t dull that or brush it off!  Respond to it today. You do so by praying saying “I’m sorry – forgive me; please come & cleanse me, fill me. Thank you for loving me.  I receive your love”  If that’s you today, come talk with our prayer team, with me, with the person that brought you, we’d love to help you with most important decision you’ll ever make 

The fourth and final C that describes the work of the Spirit… 

 Corrects (Psalm 139:23-24, John 16:8, Romans 9:1, 1 Cor 4:4.)

• Brings attention to things in my life that need repentance

This is a job that sometimes I wish the Spirit didn’t have!  The Spirit brings conviction on sin – the Sprit searches our hearts, knows us intimately… desries to bring us back on course when we stray our of a deep sense of love and compassion.  I find for me, sometimes when I am praying, its like my thoughts are directed back to a word I spoken in anger or a situation where I was less than truthful.  This is the work of the Spirit, inviting me to repentance.  Psalm 139 is a prayer inviting the Spirit to search your heart and help us walk in deeper places of obedience and faith and joy and peace.  Maybe for you today as we respond in worship in song, it’s been a long time since you asked God to do that by His Spirit.  You would come to God and say “turn that spotlight my heart.  My motives. My thoughts. My words…  Is there anything that needs correction?” 

I want to pause here for a minute and suggest a particular action that you would ask Holy Spirt to take in your heart this morning.  If you’ll take out the insert in your Info Sheet this morning flip it to the side that is titled “Encounter: Meet and move in the Holy Spirit”.  There’s a wonderful process laid out here of learning and living more fully into a life filled with and empowered by the Spirit.  But some of you are blocked in this encounter because of a lack of belief in the work and ministry of the Spirit.  Something has happened in your past where you have shunned or walked away from or resisted the ministry of the Spirit.  Perhaps you have been up close with excesses or even spiritual abuse and that’s created in you a fear or a distance.  You have spoken out vows “I never want any of that weird stuff to happen to me that I saw or experienced”.  Maybe you have scoffed at the ministry of the Spirit.  You’ve heard a prophetic word spoken and said “yeah right.  I don’t believe that stuff is for today”.  Maybe God has desired to pour out a gift into your life and you’ve rejected it.  Friends, the Spirit will not force Himself into lives who continuously reject Him.  And I am convinced that here today, there are some who need to do some repenting for the way in which you have willfully rejected the Spirit of God.  Friends, I cannot emphasize this enough…  Do not grieve the Spirit through your lack of faith.  Ask God to bring to your mind those moments, those thoughts, those words spoken and then repent of them – say to God “Holy Spirit, I love you.  You are welcome in my heart.  You are welcome in this church.  You are welcome to move in and through me!” 

Our worship team is coming to lead us in three songs of response, all focused around this theme of obedience to the invitation to be filled with the Spirit.  I was struck by it yet again in our Life Journalling reading this past week in Acts 5:32

We are witnesses of these things   and so is the Holy Spirit, who is given by God to those who obey Him.”   If you desire to walk in greater obedience to God, that happens as you open your heart up more and more to the person and work of the Holy Spirit.  Obedience to the Spirit and being filled with the Spirit are intricately linked. And being filled with the Spirit is integral for full witness in the world.  The Spirit desires to empower you, fill you, comfort you, sustain you…  

Our prayer team is here.  Ali, Gary and Betty, Meg and myself…  We have been praying for you already this week and would love the privilege of praying for you now.  I expect that many of you will come forward and say “I need to experience more of God.”  We would love to pray for you to be filled more with the Spirit.

Lets’ pray together.  Father, we love you.  Jesus, we need you. “Holy and wise are you Spirit in all Your ways! Power and presence of God, divine Gift to all God’s people, you convict us of sin, you give us new birth, you guide us into all truth. You enrich us with gifts for service, you cultivate the fruit of maturity. Divine Comforter and Counselor, who prays for us when we do not know how, who baptizes us into the one body, who gives a foretaste of the glory to come. We love you.  We welcome you.  Come and fill us.  Live in us.  Inhabit this place.  Inhabit your people.  We ask this in faith today and each day. Amen.