Sermon Transcript
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.
When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked, aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs. We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues.
Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, what does this mean? Some, however, made fun of them and said, they have had too much wine.
If you’ve ever heard the phrase the Holy Spirit and you want to know what it means, where do you start? Well, you have to start on page 1 of the Bible, where the uncreated world is depicted as this dark, chaotic place. But then above the chaos, God’s Spirit is there hovering, ready to bring about life and order and beauty. Okay, but what is God’s Spirit? Yeah, so the Spirit is the way the biblical authors talk about God’s personal presence.
The Hebrew word is ruach. Ruach. Yeah, you got to clear your throat at the end. So what is it? Well, ruach can refer to a number of different things, but what they all have in common is is energy.
Energy? How so? So there is an invisible energy that makes the clouds move or the tree branches sway. Right. Wind.
So in Hebrew, that is ruach. Okay. Now take a big breath. So you feel that inside you? Yeah, the air?
Well, specifically the energy, right? The vitality in your body that you get from breathing deeply. That too is ruach. And this is the same word used in the Bible to describe God’s personal presence. Just like wind and breath are invisible, God’s Spirit is invisible.
Wind is powerful, and so God’s Spirit is powerful. And just as breath keeps us alive, so God’s Spirit sustains all of life. Yeah, ruach. Now, as we continue on in the story of the Bible, we see God’s ruach giving special empowerment to people for specific tasks. The first person in the Bible this happens to is Joseph.
God’s Spirit enables him to understand and interpret dreams. And then it happens to this guy named Bezalel, and he is an artist. God’s Spirit empowers him with wisdom and skills. He is given creative genius to make beautiful things in the tabernacle. And we also see God’s ruach empower a group of people called the prophets.
They are able to see what is happening in history from God’s point of view. That is exactly right. And here is the problem as the prophets saw it. While God’s ruach had created a really good world, humans have given in to evil. They’ve unleashed chaos into it through their injustice.
A new type of disorder. Yes, and the prophet said the Spirit would come, just like in Genesis 1, but now to transform the human heart, to empower people to truly love God and others. How will this new act of God’s Spirit happen? Well, centuries pass and we are introduced to Jesus. And at the beginning of his mission, there’s this beautiful scene where Jesus is being baptized in the waters of the Jordan River.
Yeah, the sky opens up and God’s Spirit comes and rests on him like a bird. This story is saying that God’s Spirit is empowering Jesus to begin the new creation. And we see this happening when he heals people or forgives their sins. He is creating life where there once was death. Now, Israel’s religious leaders oppose Jesus and they eventually have him killed.
But even here, God’s Spirit is at work. The earliest disciples of Jesus who saw him alive from the dead said it was God’s energizing Spirit that raised him. Jesus. This is the beginning of new creation. Yes, and it’s still going.
When Jesus appeared to his closest followers, he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. And soon after that, the Spirit powerfully comes on all of his disciples so that they can become a part of this new creation and share the good news and learn how to live by the energy and influence of God’s Spirit. And so today the Spirit is still hovering in dark places. Yes, pointing people to Jesus, transforming and empowering them so they can love God and others. And the Christian hope is that the Spirit is going to finish the job.
The story of the Bible ends with a vision of a new humanity living in a new world that’s permeated with God’s love and life-giving Spirit.
Well, can you guess what we’re going to be talking about today? If you weren’t sleeping during the Scripture passages that were read earlier, and if you weren’t sleeping during the Bible Project video that we showed earlier, then you’ve probably figured out we’re going to be talking today about the Holy Spirit. Over and over again, the Bible mentions the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost. The Spirit of God is, in fact, mentioned more than 800 times In Scripture. In the book of Acts alone, that we’ve been studying thematically for the past few weeks, in the book of Acts alone, it mentions the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of God 57 times.
You know, there’s a funny little story, at least it’s funny to me, in Acts chapter 19 that says this in verses 1 and 2. While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples and he asked them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? They answered, no, we’ve not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. I think that that’s funny because this passage was written some 2,000 or so years ago, and yet even today, that’s kind of the way things go for many, isn’t it?
Maybe you can relate to the whole disciples in this story. Look, we get the whole love God thing, we get that we’re supposed to serve God thing, and we even get that Jesus may be the Son of God and that we’re saved by grace, God’s grace alone, not by our good works. But not everybody is so sure about the Holy Spirit. Some people are like, I didn’t even know that there was a Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, I think, is sort of like how I relate to my gallbladder.
I know that my gallbladder is in there somewhere because I’ve heard people mention it before, and I saw a film, I think, about it in my high school biology class that I don’t really remember, but I don’t really know what it does and I never really interact with it because it’s invisible and I’m not even aware that it’s there. And that’s kind of how many of us think about the Holy Spirit. So the problem I’m trying to point out is that there seems to be a large gap between what we read in Scripture about the Holy Spirit and how most believers and churches operate today, which, by the way, is exactly what the enemy wants. Francis Chan refers to the Holy Spirit as the The Forgotten God in Many Christian Churches, especially here in the Western Hemisphere. His argument is that the Holy Spirit is tragically neglected and, for all practical purposes, forgotten.
And you might think that’s a bit extreme, but he’s not suggesting necessarily that Christians are denying the Spirit’s existence, but rather that there are thousands and maybe even millions of church growers— churchgoers across the United States today who cannot confidently say that they have experienced the Holy Spirit’s presence or actions in their lives over the past few days, weeks, months, maybe even years. A.W. Tozer puts it like this. He said, the idea of the Holy Spirit to the average church member is so vague as to be nonexistent. In another quote by Tozer, he said, if the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95% of what we do would go on and nobody would know the difference.
But if the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95% of what they did would stop and everybody would know the difference. And maybe you feel that’s a bit harsh, but as our world today continues to weather new seasons of difficulty and chaos, and as Jesus’s followers and we find ourselves drawn into new and complex sets of issues, there really is no better time than now to remind ourselves of the work of God’s Holy Spirit in the world and how in the Bible God’s Holy Spirit generates life and order out of chaotic, dismal, and lifeless situations. We desperately need to think about how we relate to the Holy Spirit and examine that. So how did the earliest Christians, interact with the Holy Spirit? What was their understanding of the Spirit?
What did it look like? And why do we still need the Holy Spirit today? So we’re going to look today at 2 questions, basic questions: who the Holy Spirit is and what the Holy Spirit does. Who and what. First, who is the Holy Spirit?
As described in the Bible Project video we showed earlier, the Holy Spirit is the way that the biblical authors talk about God’s personal presence, God’s personal presence. He is the personal, the Holy Spirit is the personal divine resident of every Christ follower’s heart. And not just God’s presence with us in some general sense or God’s presence near us, but more specifically, God’s presence within us. And to understand and to appreciate how the earliest church understood and related to the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts, we should first consider what the entire biblical narrative has to say, sort of in summary. So let me sort of summarize here.
When we zoom out and we look at the whole of Scripture, we see that the Holy Spirit is described throughout the Bible first as a person, that the Holy Spirit is a person. He is personal, not some impersonal energy or force in which all of us participate. The National Geographic Channel ran a series a while ago, and maybe some of you saw it, it’s called The Story of God. And I saw that it was narrated and hosted by Morgan Freeman, so you know it’s gotta be good, okay? Morgan Freeman’s gonna narrate, I’m gonna watch it.
But almost right from the beginning, you hear from people of different faiths referring to God as a force or a power or a binding energy. And unsurprisingly, there was absolutely no suggestion from anybody that God, whether one or many, was a person with whom we can have a relationship. No one said that. But if we’re to think biblically about the Holy Spirit, we need to know that the Bible testifies to the fact that the Holy Spirit is not a principle of nature or a force or a part of God or a mode of His existence. The Holy Spirit is a person.
How do we know? Well, because He bears all of the attributes of personhood. For one, He has intellect, the Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit has intellect, which is evident by the fact that there are certain things that only the Holy Spirit knows, as we’ll see in just a bit later today. I mean, the Holy Spirit wrote the Bible, for goodness’ sake.
He inspired the people who put pen to paper to write the Bible. The Holy Spirit was the author. So naturally, he has intellect, and he can also speak his thoughts intelligibly and directly so that humans can hear his voice, as he has done throughout history. So the Holy Spirit has intellect, but he also has emotion or feelings, as seen in the fact that he can love, he can become angry. And the Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit can also be grieved when, for instance, there’s a break in fellowship with him or with others, or when we are unloving or ungenerous, or say, for instance, when we ignore him.
And as a person, the Spirit also has a will. The Holy Spirit has a will, meaning that he acts with intentionality and purpose, as when he distributes specifically spiritual gifts to specific individuals as he specifically sees fit. So the Bible describes the Holy Spirit consistently as a person, but the Holy Spirit is also described in the Bible as God, the 3rd member of the Trinity, equal to but distinct from God the Father and God the Son. As such, the Holy Spirit possesses all of the attributes of deity. For one, the Spirit is omnipresent.
He is everywhere. That doesn’t mean He’s everything or in everything, but rather that there is nowhere that you or I can go on the earth where the Holy Spirit is not also present.
And He has other attributes of deity. He is omniscient, meaning that there is absolutely nothing that He does not know, and He depends upon no one outside of Himself for any knowledge about anything. You and I depend upon other people’s knowledge. The Holy Spirit does not. You and I depend upon the fact that, for instance, every time you fill a prescription at the pharmacy, you’re banking on the fact, you’re hoping that the person behind the counter went to school and knows something about medicine.
Very few of us ever check on that though. We don’t open up the pills to make sure that they contain the right ingredients and we wouldn’t know them if we saw them anyway. We only know that somebody wrote the prescription, the pharmacist filled it, and then we’re gonna swallow it. So we’re just banking on their knowledge. Or how about every time you get on an airplane, you’re assuming that the pilot has done this before.
You’re assuming that they’ve flown before. When you go to school, you assume that the teacher has been to school, studied the subject themselves, and is more knowledgeable about it than the students. The Holy Spirit, though, is completely reliable. Because He is unlimited in knowledge and He depends upon nobody outside of Himself for what He knows. He didn’t acquire His knowledge anywhere by going to school or anything.
He knows what He knows simply because He knows it. He knows it because He is God. He knows what you and I do not know. And the Holy Spirit is also omnipotent, meaning that He is all-powerful. But God doesn’t just use His power to perform some magic tricks and miracles to just impress people.
Every time the Holy Spirit exercises his unlimited power, he does so in order to reveal himself or to draw others closer to him or to accomplish his sovereign purposes in the world. As such, and as we see in the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit is all-powerful over all sorts of things. The book of Acts describes the Holy Spirit as all-powerful over nature, over illness, over death, over circumstances, and over our enemy, the devil. The earliest Christians certainly knew that the Holy Spirit was God. Pastor Dan shared the story from Acts chapter 5 a couple of weeks ago about Ananias and Sapphira.
The early church in Jerusalem was described at the end of chapter 4 as a group of believers who were so filled with the Holy Spirit that they were of one heart and of one mind and so knit together were the hearts of the people that they held all of their possessions loosely and they willingly shared them with one another. Not because they were coerced, but because they loved one another. The people would give their possessions to one another or they would give them to the apostles who would then distribute them to people in need. But 2 members of this group, Ananias and Sapphira, after selling a field, gave a portion of the proceeds to the apostles. That’s not the problem.
The problem is, is that they lied about it and they made a pretense of having given all of it, all of the proceeds, which reeked of hypocrisy and deception. And so Peter says this: Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit? You’re lying to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money that you received for the land. Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal?
What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not just lied to human beings, but to God. So he’s saying you’ve lied to the Holy Spirit and you’ve lied to God. He’s equating the two. And as a result, Ananias died on the spot.
You can read about that in Acts chapter 5. He died on the spot, followed soon thereafter by his wife Sapphira. This wasn’t just a coincidence. This was the judgment of a holy God. Who knows the private motivations and thoughts of every heart.
So, the Holy Spirit we read about in Scripture is a person, and the Holy Spirit is also God. And this same Spirit was present and active in creation and all throughout the Old Testament, but we also see the Holy Spirit come upon Jesus. We see the Holy Spirit at Jesus’ baptism, and we also see it throughout the Gospels, particularly in the Gospel of Luke, where it says that Jesus was led by the Spirit and spoke And the Apostle Paul later said at the beginning of the book of Romans that Jesus rose from the dead by the Holy Spirit. He was physically dead, Jesus was, and God’s Holy Spirit gave him resurrection life. Jesus was filled up like a vessel filled with the Holy Spirit, immersed, meaning the Spirit was with him and in him and permeated his very existence and activity.
And all that Jesus said, all that Jesus did was linked to the work of the Holy Spirit. Of the Holy Spirit. And on the night of the Last Supper, Jesus promised his followers that though he was about to leave and go to the cross, that God the Father would send his followers another helper. Jesus said this in John 14:16, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and to be with you forever. He’s referring to the Holy Spirit.
Jesus, by the way, said this in the middle of one of the worst moments in the lives of his disciples. Everything was going wrong for them. Judas had shown himself to be a traitor and had just left the room on his way to betray Jesus. On top of that, Peter had just been told that within the next 24 hours, he was going to publicly deny knowing Jesus. And Jesus was also now talking about leaving them, and it looked like it was really going to happen.
But Jesus in this moment assured them that though he would be leaving, they would not be left alone. They would not be alone. There would be another divine person just like him who would take his place in their midst, one who would be with them just as Jesus had been with them to provide comfort and strength and guidance. But rather than simply being near them, the Holy Spirit would also be in them. And this ties in directly to the opening chapter of the book of Acts, which was read earlier.
Where Jesus promised his followers in chapter 1, verse 8, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Jesus told them they would need to wait a bit longer for the Holy Spirit, but he did promise that the Holy Spirit would soon come and immerse them in his personal presence. And this promise was a fulfillment of one of the key hopes from the Old Testament prophets, that in the Messianic kingdom, God’s presence, his Spirit, would come up and take residence among and even within his people and transform their hearts. And so, if you are a Christ follower, don’t miss this, if you are a Christ follower, you too are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, the divine counselor and advocate, the same one that Jesus promised, the same Spirit that was at work in the early church, God’s personal presence with you and within you. You always.
So that’s who the Holy Spirit is. Now let’s see what the Holy Spirit does— who the Holy Spirit is and what the Holy Spirit does. Now we don’t have time to cover each and every reference to the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts, and this is not going to be a comprehensive description of every single way that the Holy Spirit has worked throughout history. Of course we couldn’t do that. But I do want to point out 3 specific ways that the Holy Spirit worked in the book of Acts and the early church that I think have great importance for for us today.
First, we saw one of the Spirit’s ministries in verse 8 of chapter 1 that I spoke just a moment ago. It says, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. In other words, the Spirit provides empowerment. The Spirit empowers people for specific tasks, whether it’s Joseph in the book of Genesis, whom the Spirit gave the ability to interpret dreams that he wouldn’t normally have the ability to be able to understand, Or Bezalel in the book of Exodus, whom the Holy Spirit, it says, gave supernatural ability to be able to work with raw materials and to bring beauty and order out of them, resulting in the creation of the tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant. Or leaders like Joshua or Solomon, whom the Holy Spirit enabled to rule with wisdom and discernment.
Or the Old Testament prophets, to whom the Holy Spirit gave divine perspective and insight that they wouldn’t normally have access to. Or to the disciples and followers of Jesus here in Acts chapter 1, whom God was anointing with his Spirit in order to enable them to witness and to testify about Jesus in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth. The Holy Spirit influences and enhances human abilities with divine empowerment. So we see a picture of that in Acts chapter 2, which was also read for us right before this message. It was the day of Pentecost.
Pentecost is an ancient Israelite festival, and thousands of Jewish pilgrims would return to Jerusalem from all over the world with all of these different people and languages and cultures just colliding in the city. And on this particular Pentecost, the disciples were together in a house, which was then suddenly, we’re told, filled with rushing wind along with fire. And then the fire then splintered off into tongues of fire hovering over people’s heads. And we’re like, what must that have been like? Well, the onlookers, were wondering, what does this all mean?
They were asking the same kinds of questions you and I would ask. They said that in verse 12 of chapter 12, or chapter 2, excuse me. What does this mean? Well, what it means is, for one, since God’s presence frequently appeared as fire in the Old Testament, this fire in Acts chapter 2 was symbolic of God’s personal presence, the Holy Spirit coming to dwell, but not just in one location, in the, like in the Old Testament, in the tabernacle, or maybe the temple, or maybe on Mount Sinai, but actually now within individual hearts and lives of every one of God’s people. But this was also now in Acts 2, a demonstration of God’s empowerment, his power coming upon people.
Notice that it says in verse 2 of chapter 2, that the blowing of the violent wind wasn’t just wind, no, it says it came from heaven. But the odd thing about this, is that it doesn’t appear to just actually be wind. It doesn’t say it was a violent wind. If you look, it says it was like a violent wind. And so this wasn’t some internal psychological experience.
This was tangible. They all felt it. They all heard it. They all saw it. And then nothing like this had ever happened before.
How can something like this be? It has to be God. And so one of the things that this account is meant to show you and me is that when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, it’s not you summoning up your strength or courage. It’s not just trying to tap into some sort of emotional experience. No, it’s the power of God coming and filling you.
And the manifestation of that in this particular scene is that the believers suddenly started sharing the good news about Jesus without any inhibition. And the Holy Spirit also enabled the believers to be able to speak in languages that they they wouldn’t normally be able to speak. So the only explanation that the onlookers could come up with is they said, these guys must be drunk. But Peter stood and he corrected the crowd and he said in verse 15 of chapter 2, these people are not drunk as you suppose. It’s only 9 o’clock in the morning.
No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel, that in the last days, God says, I will pour out my Holy Spirit on all people. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams. And even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.
So you see, one of the Holy Spirit’s primary roles is to empower individual believers to live supernatural lives and to empower the collective church, the collective body of Christ, to carry out God’s mission in the world. And I think this is so important to understanding and appreciating what happens in Acts, because it wasn’t until the Holy Spirit came I mean, prior to that, the disciples were a weak group of men, weren’t they? Peter had denied knowing Jesus. The other disciples had left Jesus when he was arrested because they feared the religious leaders. They had run away and lived in fear until the Holy Spirit came upon them.
After the Holy Spirit had come upon them, threats no longer seemed to scare or to stop them. Like in Acts 4:8, where it says that Peter stood up to the rulers and the elders of the people. He stood up to them and he was able to do so because it specifically says that he was filled with the Holy Spirit. In other words, the same guys who had previously run away are now standing eyeball to eyeball and toe to toe with the authorities. And even after the apostles were beaten and ordered to stop preaching, they went out rejoicing for the opportunity to suffer for Christ.
They were completely changed and empowered people. Take Stephen, whose story is in Acts chapter 6 and 7. And chapter 7 of Acts, verse 55 indicates that what enabled Stephen to be able to face the prospect of being martyred was that he was, quote, full of the Holy Spirit. See, he had that type of spiritual confidence and boldness because the Holy Spirit illuminated Stephen’s spiritual eyes, enabling him to see something that the world could not see and giving him the joy of the Lord even though things looked entirely bleak. In the same way as those earliest believers, you and I do not and will not have power without the Holy Spirit.
Without the Holy Spirit’s work, without the Holy Spirit’s power, we are operating in our own strength and the results are not good. We’re operating in our own strength. But when believers live in the power of the Holy Spirit, the evidence in their lives is supernatural. The world can’t help but sit up and notice because it is the Holy Spirit who’s running the show in your life. And the same Holy Spirit who replaced the apostles’ fear and courage is the same Holy Spirit that you have within you if you have surrendered your life to follow Jesus.
Here’s a couple of additional implications that I want to point out. First, the empowerment of the Holy Spirit has absolutely nothing to do with the degrees or the titles that you have. The Jewish authorities marveled and were astonished in Acts chapter 4 at the courage that was being shown by Peter and John because they said these men were, quote, uneducated. The power of the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with your theological training or background. And the power of the Holy Spirit also has nothing to do with race or culture or gender or economics or age.
You can have all of what the world says you need in order to measure up and but still be defeated and weak spiritually. Because it is impossible to live the life that God wants for you on your own and in your own strength. If you could do it on your own, Jesus would never have said, apart from me, you can do nothing. But if you have the Holy Spirit, you have everything you need. You have the supernatural enablement and empowerment of the Holy Spirit to live out what God wants to do in and through you.
Another implication, we spend an awful lot of time, don’t we, and money trying to change ourselves or to change other people. Here’s what you need to know. The Holy Spirit is infinitely bigger and more powerful than all of your attempts to fix yourself by your own strength. You might say, I’m a natural worrier, or pick whatever it is that you struggle with. I’m a natural worrier.
That’s just how I am. I was born that way. And every time I try to overcome it, it just gets worse. But the Holy Spirit specializes in changing personalities. He can make the insecure person secure.
He can make the fearful person confident. And if you are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and are open to his control in your life, you are a spiritually powerful person. So my encouragement is why not surrender yourself today in a new way by praying just something like this? You can put it into your own words, but praying something like this. Holy Spirit, I am yours today.
I give my life to you. Have your way in me, Holy Spirit. I will do what you want done and as you want it done. I will seek to glorify Jesus and to build his kingdom. Holy Spirit, be more real to me than ever before because I want all of your power expressed through me today.
I give you all of me. And you can pray a prayer like that and receive God’s power. The Holy Spirit’s power in a new way. But another ministry of the Holy Spirit that we see in the book of Acts is that he provides spiritual direction, direction and supernatural wisdom and guidance. Here’s some examples.
In Acts 6:10, we’re told that the religious leaders who opposed Stephen’s sharing of the good news about Jesus had a problem because it says, quote, they could not stand up against the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, or the wisdom that the Holy Spirit gave Stephen as he spoke. In Acts chapter 10, Peter was guided by the Holy Spirit to the house of a Roman centurion named Cornelius. And this story is important because it was at Cornelius’s house that God publicly opened the doors of the church to the Gentile world. But that would have never happened at that point had Peter not been sensitive to and led by the Holy Spirit there in the first place. In Acts chapter 13, verse 2, we’re told that the church in Antioch was worshiping and fasting and praying And while doing so, the Holy Spirit specifically directed the church leaders and told them to set apart Barnabas and Saul, who later became Paul, to carry out the missionary work to which God was calling them.
And on Paul’s second missionary journey, Acts 16:6-10 tell us that Paul had made his travel plans and was intent on going in one direction, but it says he was, quote, kept by the Holy Spirit from going in whatever direction he was planning, and he was instead redirected by the Holy Spirit to go to Macedonia. Instead. So all throughout Acts, we see evidence of the Holy Spirit doing these kinds of things— directing and guiding people, giving them supernatural wisdom and discernment to know what to do, what to say, and when. When I first moved out to California, some of you remember Wanda Blockus. Wanda Blockus took me out to lunch my first week here, and she gave me a bunch of street maps, like paper street maps, like the old-fashioned kind, of the area.
And I still have them somewhere. And some of you, perhaps of a younger generation, have never seen a paper map like Wanda Blockus gave me, but they used— you know, you used to have to get them at gas stations, and then they were impossible to correctly refold afterwards because they were like 96 different folds or something like that. But whatever it is that you use as your navigation tool today, I’m assuming it’s a computer or a device, GPS like me, you know that there are almost always multiple ways to get to where you want to go. Even if you already know how to get where you’re going. Remember my kids once challenged me to drive home from wherever we were using only left turns.
That’s pretty hard. Try that sometime. The problem for us in life though is that when we need spiritual direction or we need to make an important decision, we usually struggle with when we’re not able to see the map, we’re not able to see the big picture. And so it’s easy to get confused or lost or turned around or discouraged. And so when making a decision or weighing options, some people look for miracles.
They say, God, if this is your will, if this is the decision that you want me to make or the direction you want me to go, then do this miracle to let me know that it’s really you leading me. Other people rely on magic or luck or superstition like horoscopes or lucky numbers. Still others are more pragmatic. I bet some of you engineer kind of people have done this where you take out a sheet of paper, you divide it in half, you put the pros for a decision on one side and the cons on the other, and if the pros outweigh the cons, it’s a go. And if the cons outweigh the pros, it’s a no-go.
And then there are, of course, others who make decisions by relying on their feelings or their emotions primarily. How do I feel about this? Does it feel right? What will others think? Look, there’s no question that God wants to guide his people through the Holy Spirit.
He is not the author of confusion. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would guide you and me into all the truth. You don’t have to rely upon these other methods and just trying to guess, like throwing darts at a dartboard, in order to gain spiritual direction. So here’s a question. How does the Holy Spirit guide us?
How does the Holy Spirit guide us? This is found in Acts, but I think you’ll find it in other places in Scripture. I just wanna answer that question. How do you know when you’re hearing the Holy Spirit’s voice, when the Holy Spirit is leading and guiding you? First, start with Scripture.
The Holy Spirit, first and foremost, speaks through Scripture. And if what you want to do or are weighing doing is a violation of the clear precepts and principles of the Bible, don’t do it. I’m not talking about, by the way, taking one verse in isolation and making a decision about it. I’m talking about considering the whole counsel of Scripture because I believe the Holy Spirit never leads somebody to do something that contradicts God’s Word. That is most assuredly not God’s will for you, to do something that the Bible says not to do.
Secondly, but assuming that you are seeking direction, that what you are seeking direction for does not contradict Scripture, and assuming that you are pursuing God and not actively walking out of step with the Spirit and living in known sin. The Holy Spirit then often also provides a specific inner conviction, maybe as you’re reading God’s word or the stirring of your heart regarding a matter. Sometimes he speaks louder than at other times, but when that happens, always listen because it may be the Holy Spirit and then compare it with scripture. Also, the Holy Spirit also guides us through prayer. And through prayer, the Spirit begins to conform your thinking and your desires to God’s will.
The Bible calls that the renewing of the mind. Sometimes the Holy Spirit also guides through circumstances. Now, I wanna be clear, circumstances should not, should only confirm what the Holy Spirit has already said to you in God’s word and in your inner spirit. Circumstances should not be the sole determining factor for making some sort of big decision. And this is where a lot of people get off track.
They say, well, this door opens, so that has to be the will of God, right? Well, sometimes doors close in the will of God. That’s why spiritual guidance shouldn’t start with circumstances alone. It should always start with the Holy Spirit speaking through the Bible and into your inner spirit and through prayer. You know, we generally label only our good experiences as being the will of God.
If something negative happens, we’re like, well, that must not be God’s will, right? But when a person has God’s word and the inner witness of God’s Spirit, it really doesn’t matter how negative the circumstances might seem. Because God still may be leading you in that direction. And lastly, I will say the Holy Spirit also guides through his people, the church. That’s why he made you part of a body, the body of Christ that is vitally connected.
And it’s why you need to be in a small group of believers who know you, who know your heart. I think you’re gonna miss a large element of the Holy Spirit’s guidance and direction if you don’t have other believers speaking into your life. As I was preparing this message, I was thinking about a big decision that I made almost 11 years ago at this time in 2010, and that was whether or not to move my family out here to California. I’ve told this story before, but all of those factors that I just shared came into play for me as I was reading God’s word and feeling the leading of his Spirit in my heart and in Shannon’s heart, and we were praying about it, and we were also looking at our circumstances and looking and comparing it back to other things that God was showing us. And we talked to our friends who knew us and were praying for us, and God directed us, and he’s confirmed through that decision.
But a lot of people that we knew at that time who were living in Texas where we were living were saying, you shouldn’t do that, you shouldn’t move 1,800 miles away to California. And they thought that that was foolish. And yet we wanted to follow God’s leading. And I think that God often works like that. Sometimes there are other added elements, but when we need direction, the Holy Spirit is able to direct us.
He, again, is not the author of confusion. So a couple of quick exhortations about this from just personal experience. Here’s what I’ve learned. Don’t be more consumed, if you’re seeking out a direction or a decision, don’t be more consumed with the answer or the direction that you’re seeking than you are with God himself. I know that we may be more interested in the goal of just, I just wanna make a decision, I wanna know what I’m supposed to do.
But God often uses the journey and the waiting and the timing of it all and of seeking him to do something else in our lives that we would not experience if we didn’t go through the whole process of prayer and seeking out his preferred will. Also, my experience is that very rarely, and I’ve probably shared this with some of you, ‘Cause this is just a foundational piece of my life, very rarely does the Holy Spirit seem to lay out the whole puzzle for us. I found that we often don’t know what all of the steps are, and certainly not steps 2, 3, and 4 until we take the first step. To inquire of the Lord, and God, once we take that first step of obedience and of faith, often reveals then the second step. After you take the second step, then he might reveal the third step.
And sometimes there’s some time in between those steps, but God leads step by step because that requires us to depend upon him. That’s been my experience. And often also I will say that the direction of the Holy Spirit wants you to take, or the decision that he wants you to make, may not make sense from a worldly perspective. And that’s okay, ’cause the Bible says that God’s wisdom looks like foolishness to the world. So keep seeking the direction of the Holy Spirit.
So quickly, a 3rd activity of the Spirit that we see in the earliest church is God’s Holy Spirit regenerating, regenerating people’s hearts. The Spirit is able to change even the hardest heart and to replace it with a softened heart that is open to hearing from and serving God. And the only time, or the only way that that ever happens, the only way that a person ever receives salvation and comes to faith in Jesus and becomes a new creature and begins loving God and loving others, is through God’s Holy Spirit. In Acts chapter 2, after the violent wind from heaven and the tongues of fire came on the believers on the day of Pentecost, Peter stood up to preach and to share why Jesus is the true Messiah. And verse 37 of chapter 2 says, when the people heard this, they were, quote, cut to the heart and said, brothers, what shall we do?
Now, what was it that cut the people to the heart? Was it Peter? No, it wasn’t Peter, it was the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the one who cuts us to the heart, who opens the eyes of our— to open the eyes of unbelievers to see their need for salvation. The Holy Spirit is the one who brings conviction, who makes absolutely clear the spiritual issues of life and our need for salvation, and then he calls us, the Holy Spirit does, to make a decision.
Without this ministry of the Holy Spirit, Romans 8 says, we would never be willing or able to believe. No, we’re unwilling and unable to believe. Without the Holy Spirit, there is no spiritual awareness of how sinful our sin is or how hopeless we are in our sins and in our trespasses. The Holy Spirit opens up our eyes and changes our hearts. The Holy Spirit is the great convictor, the great convincer, and the great explainer.
You know, the story of the early church in the book of Acts is filled with numerous accounts of individuals and groups being brought to faith through the work of the Holy Spirit. How about the Jews on the day of Pentecost when we’re told that 3,000 of them accepted the message of the gospel? That’s the work of the Holy Spirit, not the work of the apostles. When the church was scattered due to persecution after Stephen’s death, Acts chapter 8 tells us that an evangelist named Philip proclaimed God’s word to the Samaritans and crowds of men and women were converted and baptized, including a sorcerer named Simon. That’s the unmistakable work of the Holy Spirit.
The same is true of the Ethiopian treasurer in Acts chapter 8, who was converted after the Holy Spirit orchestrated a divine encounter with Philip. And then of course you have Saul, who was the former terrorist who could not have been more opposed to Christianity, who was then miraculously converted in Acts chapter 9 on the road to Damascus. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit, of course. You’ve got Cornelius, the Roman soldier I mentioned earlier in Acts chapter 10. You’ve got Lydia and the Philippian jailer in Acts chapter 16.
You’ve got some Athenians who come to faith in Acts chapter 17. You got the Corinthians in Acts chapter 18 and the Ephesians in Acts chapter 19. These are just the main conversion stories that we know about from the book of Acts. For Christianity though to have spread as quickly as it did, you know that there have to have been thousands and thousands and thousands of more stories just like them. And all of them are the result of the Holy Spirit stirring in people’s hearts, opening their eyes and their ears and their minds and hearts to the gospel and leading them to the point of salvation.
Can I just tell you why this is such an encouraging aspect of the Spirit’s work? I’m gonna tell you anyway, whether you wanna know it or not. First of all, it keeps us humble before God to realize that we don’t have anything to do with our salvation. It’s humbling to realize that we are each so naturally corrupt and hostile against God that never in a million years would any of us call upon the name of the Lord for salvation were it not for the regenerating work and ministry of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. We don’t have anything to boast about regarding our salvation except that God did it, to boast about God’s mercy, God’s grace, God’s kindness.
Moreover, this aspect of the Holy Spirit’s work also, I think, encourages us to remember that the Holy Spirit is the great convictor of people, not you or me. We need to be faithful in sharing our faith with others, absolutely, but we are free from the responsibility of actually trying to convert people in our own strength or to make people believe on our own. Our job is to present and the Holy Spirit does the convincing and the rescuing. We’re faithful and then God plants and waters the seeds and brings about the growth in his own timing and in his own way. To me, I think that ought to give you great comfort if you’re especially a person who prays for people to come to faith, to recognize that the Holy Spirit is able to bring someone to faith, even though you look at it and you go, I’m not sure that this person will ever have their eyes open to see their need for the Lord.
And you can pray knowing that the Holy Spirit is able to bring about regeneration in his own timing and in his own way. So keep sharing, keep investing, keep praying. Whenever we or anyone else is drawn to Jesus as Savior or led to worship him or to serve him, that’s a result of the Holy Spirit working on and in us. Now, can a person resist the Holy Spirit? What do you think?
Can a person resist the Holy Spirit? Absolutely. Stephen, just before he was martyred, said in Acts 7:51 to those about to put him to death, you stiff-necked people, he said, your hearts and your ears are still uncircumcised. He’s saying your bodies may be uncircumcised and changed, but your heart is not and your ears are not. You’re just like your ancestors, Stephen said.
You always resist the Holy Spirit. So we can absolutely resist the Holy Spirit and get ourselves into a state of mind and heart where we say no again and again to the Holy Spirit’s promptings. We actually, I think, do that all of the time. We’re just not always conscious of it. It is dangerously possible to resist the Holy Spirit.
We can resist him individually. We also, many churches corporately resist him. You read Revelation chapter 2 about churches that resist the Holy Spirit’s work. It’s entirely possible to tune out his voice. And it is in fact entirely possible for someone to say no to the work of the Holy Spirit so often and so completely that the Holy Spirit just takes the person at their word.
It is so dangerous to say to the Holy Spirit, no, I hear you, And I know that it’s you, but I’m not going to listen. That’s one of the recurring themes throughout scripture. It’s a warning, and it’s why the Bible repeatedly says, let the one who has ears, let him hear. So my plea to you, friends, just as we’re about to close here, is, is that if you’re a person who’s resisting the work of the Holy Spirit in your life, maybe you’re resisting his work to come to faith in Jesus, stop resisting. Stop resisting.
I’m praying that this message today, that the Holy Spirit would penetrate your heart and reveal that apart from you, you do not have spiritual life in you, that our sins cause us to be dead in our trespasses, and we need the forgiveness of God. And Jesus has provided the ultimate sacrifice to pay for the penalty, the penalty for your sins and for my sins, but we need to receive that that invitation by faith to put our trust in Jesus, not our good works for salvation. If you’re resisting the work of the Holy Spirit and have not yet come to faith, I pray that today would be the day of your salvation, that you would put your trust in Jesus and stop resisting. And maybe you’re already a Christ follower, but you’re resisting the Holy Spirit in other ways, and I’m praying that this message today would reach you loudly and clearly too, and that you would repent and stop resisting. The work of the Holy Spirit.
See, throughout the book of Acts, as we wrap up here, the Holy Spirit is the main character. It’s what we’ve been talking about today, and he’s just the main character throughout the whole thing. The Spirit was nothing less than the very heart and soul of the early church. The movement of the Holy Spirit, the believers’ response to him, was the benchmark of their church gatherings. They expected the Holy Spirit to act.
When they prayed, they expected the Holy Spirit to answer, and often with miracles. Could you and I say the same? When people look at us today, do they see the same radically changed, supernaturally empowered, Spirit-directed lives that onlookers saw in the lives of the earliest Christians? You know, I’ve occasionally thought about or been asked why many people or many churches today, especially in this area, don’t seem to experience the same things in our midst like we read about in the book of Acts. I do think it’s true, and this is just my personal opinion on this, it is true that God, I think, works uniquely in various times and places.
But I think it’s also true that the Holy Spirit is more obviously active in places where people are actually desperate for him. But the more self-sufficient that you or I, or we as a church, think that we are, the less we think we need the Spirit. You can, a church can continue to function without relying upon the Holy Spirit and people will still come. Now, lives aren’t going to change. There’s not going to be the fruit of the Spirit that’s going to be manifested.
It’s resisting the work of the Holy Spirit, but you can entirely do that. I can entirely do that. We can live our lives without depending upon the Holy Spirit, but that’s not what God wants for you or for me. And I think the more desperate that we are for the Holy Spirit in our lives and in our midst, the more the Holy Spirit begins to do the same kinds of things in our midst that we read about in the book of Acts, where he directs and he does miracles and he regenerates and changes lives. Here’s a question for you and for me in closing.
As the people of God right now, are you dependent upon yourself or are you desperate for God’s Spirit? Those are the only 2 options. You’re either dependent upon yourself and your own strength, or you’re desperate for God’s Spirit. I don’t think there’s a 3rd option.
And until and unless God’s Holy Spirit is unleashed in our hearts to have his way, everything else you or I try to do will be empty and fruitless. And until and unless the words of the prophet Zechariah become the model of our hearts, and the MO of our lives, that it is not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts, then we will not discover or experience the glory and joy of what it means to live in the Holy Spirit and to bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit. May God, friends, ignite in us a new passion for a relationship with the Spirit that is so deep and intense that we will suffer any inconvenience endure any trial, face any challenge, and go wherever he leads us in order to make sure that we cultivate and experience an intimate walk with him. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, I thank you that your Holy Spirit has been leading even in this time together, not because I’m more anointed than, say, somebody else necessarily, Lord, but just your word is living and active, And as we’ve shared your word, Lord, I know I’ve personally felt your Holy Spirit speaking, and I trust that you, God, are revealing things that you want us to hear, to respond to.
Lord, I wanna ask that you would forgive us when we grieve the Holy Spirit, when we do things in our own strength, according to our own resources and our own timing, and according to our own wisdom and our own feelings, rather than looking to you. Would you revive and renew us and awaken us to the reality of the Holy Spirit in our midst and within us? And would you fill us with your Holy Spirit? And would you fill us with your power and your life and use us as your servants in the world? Thank you for what Jesus did on the cross, and thank you that you sent another just perfect helper to not simply be around us us, but to live within us.
And thank you for that relationship. We’re so grateful. We pray these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.
