Well, thank you, Nigel, and thank you for that encouraging singing. And can we turn together to 2 Corinthians chapter three, and just turn to a few verses as we begin that capture the essence of our topic tonight, which is the Spirit and the life of a Christian. 2 Corinthians chapter three, and reading verses 16 and 17.

(0:34 – 1:12)

Now, the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces, contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. This is God’s word.

(1:15 – 1:35)

There once was a movie director who wanted to adapt a series of books. There were three books, and he wanted to make three movies. So he went to a film company, he pitched the idea, but they were nervous about committing to three films.

(1:36 – 1:59)

Why not, they suggested, cram all three books into one two-hour film? Well, the director said no. He found another film company, they took on the film, and they agreed to make a trilogy. And because of that, the Lord of the Rings trilogy was made.

(2:01 – 2:29)

Sometimes, the volume of content is so vast, you can’t possibly cram it into a short space of time. That was true of Tolkien’s books, and it’s definitely true of our topic this evening. What the Bible says about the Spirit and the Christian life is so vast and expansive, it would take many sermons and even series to cover it.

(2:30 – 2:53)

Just to give you a bit of a sense of this, a snapshot of this, I want you to have a little look at this slide. Here are some of the things the Spirit does in the life of the Christian. Things he does to initiate your Christian life, and things that he does to continue your Christian life.

(2:54 – 3:25)

His work includes, but this is not exhaustive, conviction of sin, enabling your Jesus as Lord confession, the work of regeneration, making you born again, union with Christ, sealing you as God’s possession, and adopting you into God’s family. And that’s just the beginning. His work of sanctification, intercession, helping you to pray, assuring you, comforting you, gifting you, and empowering you.

(3:26 – 4:04)

And there is no doubt that I haven’t even included some of the things that should be on that list of what the Spirit has done and is doing in your life of faith. Now, I highlight this partly so that I don’t underestimate the work of the Spirit tonight by giving you a snapshot of it, and then you think, ah, that’s all that he’s doing. I want you to leave tonight being so thankful for the many things the Spirit does, and to give the rest of your Christian life to exploring it in all of its detail.

(4:06 – 4:29)

But I also highlight the volume of his work so that you’ll realise the limitations of tonight’s message. What we’re going to simply do is focus in on one aspect of what the Spirit does in your Christian life and mine. But I’ve chosen a very big area, and it’s going to be possibly highlighted in blue on the screen.

(4:29 – 4:50)

It’s the work of sanctification, which, as you might see, I’ve deliberately put kind of in the middle. It’s the only one that’s in the middle there between the initial work and the ongoing, and you’ll find out why that is in just a moment. Sanctification is one of those big Bible words that pops up in Scripture frequently.

(4:50 – 5:11)

And it is good for us to come to grips with it. The English word sanctification comes from a Latin word, which means to make holy. At its most basic level, sanctification is the act of making something that is unholy, holy.

(5:12 – 5:47)

But what does that mean? Can we flesh that out a little bit more? How does the Bible describe and define sanctification? Well, here’s my go at a definition of sanctification. This is what I think reflects the Bible. Sanctification is God’s work through the Holy Spirit of setting us apart for Himself and progressively conforming us into the likeness or the image of His Son.

(5:48 – 5:56)

So it is God’s work. It’s no less God’s work than creation or redemption. It’s God’s work through the Holy Spirit.

(5:57 – 6:14)

And there’s really two distinct aspects of it. Number one, setting us apart for God, setting us apart from the world and apart for God. And then secondly, progressively conforming us into the image of Jesus.

(6:16 – 6:35)

So in this message that we’re going to now proceed through, we’re going to look at those two aspects really. And I’m going to put two headings on it, and I’ll explain these as I go, so don’t worry if you don’t get them first time. We’re going to talk about, number one, positional sanctification.

(6:36 – 6:50)

And then we’re going to talk about progressive sanctification. Positional and then progressive. And in the conclusion, I’m going to cheat a little bit and I’m going to add a third one in, but it’ll be 10 seconds.

(6:50 – 7:13)

So number one, positional sanctification. And this lines up with a bit of the definition which spoke of the Spirit setting us apart for God. Or to put it another way, in a way that theologians have tried to capture this, it’s the Spirit’s work of positional sanctification.

(7:14 – 7:48)

It’s the idea that sanctification is, first of all, a position that you are placed in through the work of the Holy Spirit. So that at least in one sense, sanctification happens the moment you are converted. The instant an individual is united to Christ by faith through the Spirit, they are immediately set apart for God and given a sanctified status.

(7:49 – 8:16)

Now let’s see this for ourselves in the Bible, because maybe you’re thinking that’s not my definition of sanctification, but let’s see it in the Bible. In 1 Corinthians 1, verse two, 1 Corinthians 1, verse two, Paul writes to believers who are sanctified in Christ Jesus. Paul uses the perfect tense.

(8:17 – 8:33)

The perfect tense is where something has already happened in the past, but it has ongoing effects. So for example, I was married in the past and it has ongoing implications for my everyday. I’m a husband every day.

(8:33 – 9:14)

And Paul says that the Corinthian believers have been sanctified in the past and that has ongoing effects in their lives. And that’s an extraordinary thing to say if you know anything about the Corinthian Christians, because you’ll know that some of the ways in which they were living were far from holy living, which must mean that Paul is speaking of a position of sanctification, because this was as yet far from their known practise. And this is not just a slip from Paul.

(9:14 – 9:28)

Paul’s not kind of got his grammar muddled up one time in 1 Corinthians or his tenses. In Acts 20, verse 32, Paul says a similar thing to the Ephesian elders. Acts 20, verse 32.

(9:30 – 9:45)

He speaks of believers who are sanctified. Not those who are being sanctified or who one day will be sanctified. He says it’s already happened.

(9:47 – 10:09)

And I think the explanation of this is then found in the third reference, which is Hebrews chapter 10. In Hebrews 10, verse 10, the author explains how unholy people can possibly be already said to be made holy. Listen to this.

(10:09 – 10:39)

He speaks of those, this is Hebrews 10, 10, who have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. How has the label holy been stuck on the Christian? It is through the sacrifice of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. A sacrifice that is in the past, but which has ongoing effects.

(10:41 – 11:12)

The cross is the means by which the holy status of Jesus immediately upon conversion becomes the holy status of his people. And so the wonderful point is that every Christian, get this, starts their Christian life with the position and status of sanctified. I wish someone had told me that on day one when I was saved.

(11:14 – 11:28)

Let me try and illustrate this. Think of a princess born into a royal family. At the moment the princess is born, she is given a status.

(11:29 – 11:46)

She is a royal princess. That is immediately true, but it’s going to have ongoing effects in her life. And as she grows up in her single digits and then in her teens, sometimes she doesn’t act like a princess.

(11:47 – 12:11)

Sometimes she hates the fact that she’s a princess and sometimes she lives in any way but being a princess. But as she gradually grows and matures and then becomes an adult, she starts to live consistently with being a princess. She starts to do what princesses do and she goes where princesses go, whatever things are that they do and wherever they go.

(12:12 – 12:27)

This is the same thing that happens in the life of a Christian. In our case, we are born again into a holy status. And we don’t always look holy.

(12:28 – 12:39)

We don’t always act holy. But our status sets the trajectory for the rest of our lives. It is what we will become.

(12:42 – 13:17)

And I don’t know about you, but I find that immensely comforting to think that on my very first day as a Christian, my status had already changed from unholy to holy in the sight of God. What a reassurance in those moments, the many moments of messing up as a Christian, that even when I am unholy in practise, this is always still true in terms of my position. I am, you are holy.

(13:19 – 13:55)

And this means that whatever else sanctification is, it isn’t an attempt to gain a status of being holy because we’ve already been given that status by grace through the Spirit and the work of Christ. And by the way, this is the vast difference between the Christian view of works and the view of works in world religions. This is the great difference, isn’t it? Lots of religions teach you to live a holy life.

(13:56 – 14:16)

Many of the same things that the Bible, Christianity would tell you to do. But the difference is in the motivation. For the Christian, it is not to gain the status of being holy in God’s sight because that’s already been granted through the offering of Jesus’ body on the cross.

(14:19 – 14:53)

It is really, really important to get this first point fixed in your mind because if we don’t grasp positional sanctification, the train will immediately derail the moment we start to try and live the next bit. So we’re gonna come secondly to progressive sanctification, progressive sanctification. And most times when we hear the word sanctification, I guess this is the thing that we’re thinking of.

(14:54 – 15:08)

We’re thinking of the actual real life process of becoming more like Jesus. That’s where the progressive words come from. It’s the more and more like Jesus in character.

(15:09 – 15:32)

Not just possessing the status that Jesus possesses, but having the character that Jesus possesses in increasing measure. Now, let me make three observations about progressive sanctification. Number one, it is God’s work and our work.

(15:33 – 15:46)

It is God’s work and our work. I sometimes do this when I’m preparing to preach a sermon. I sometimes ask like folk in the church about some of the application.

(15:46 – 16:17)

And I asked quite a few people this week, what do you think the biggest gap is in the Christian view of sanctification and holiness? And some people said the biggest gap is understanding that this is not self effort. Some Christians seem to think it’s all about what we do and our effort and they lose all sight of the gospel and they lose all sight of grace. That’s what some people said.

(16:18 – 16:40)

Then I spoke to some other people and they said the absolute opposite. They said the biggest gap is Christians thinking that God does everything in sanctification and that therefore we can make zero effort in living as a Christian. Well, let me say thank you for that.

(16:41 – 17:06)

I think that reflects the issue that we’re grappling with here. Because whereas positional sanctification is completely outwith our hands, I mean, what role did you have to play in your own being born again, for example? The actual work of regeneration. Did we give ourselves life? Was that in any way a human work? No, it was entirely a work of God.

(17:08 – 17:36)

And yet when it comes to what we might call progressive sanctification, the on the ground growing into the likeness of Jesus, there is a complex combination of God’s work and your work. And we see this in Philippians 2, verses 12 and 13. Philippians 2, verses 12 and 13.

(17:37 – 18:18)

Paul says, “‘Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, “‘for it is God who works in you to will and to act “‘in order to fulfil his purpose.'” Now, it would be a really interesting, we don’t have time to do this, it’d be an interesting little Bible study just to sit there and try and highlight in red and green which parts of this verse are God’s part and which parts of this verse are our part. It’s actually interwoven all together here. But notice there is an aspect here that is our working.

(18:20 – 18:50)

Paul says to the Philippians, “‘Work out your salvation.'” He speaks of their willing, that’s their decision-making, and their acting, that’s the things they do. So they work, they will, they act, and yet they’re not alone in the willing and the acting. He says that God is working in you to help you to will and to act.

(18:51 – 19:12)

In this aspect of sanctification, it’s not God or me, it’s God and me. Listen to these, I’m going to give you another example from Romans 8, verse 13, same sort of combination. This is Romans 8, verse 13.

(19:12 – 19:39)

Paul says, “‘If you live according to the flesh, you will die, “‘but if by the Spirit you put to death “‘the deeds of the body, you will live.'” So see the combination there. Paul says, live by the Spirit. You’re not doing this alone.

(19:40 – 19:49)

You can’t do it alone. You cannot put sin to death in your daily life alone. Live by the Spirit.

(19:49 – 20:08)

And yet, look what he also says. “‘You put to death the deeds of the body.'” There is a complex combination. The Holy Spirit empowers you not to sin, but you need to choose not to sin.

(20:08 – 20:22)

That’s what he’s saying. That’s the thing about the Christian life, isn’t it? All the good stuff in it, we can say it’s because of God working in us. All of the sin in it, we can say that’s because of our own choices.

(20:24 – 20:41)

And this keeps us from the two dangers that we highlighted moments ago. What were the dangers? Avoiding self-effort as the pattern for the Christian life. We don’t need to do that, because we’re already holy in Christ.

(20:42 – 21:04)

And because we have the Holy Spirit to help us live the Christian life in Christ, in His power. So it’s not self-effort. And yet, on the other hand, we avoid a kind of pious dependence on God that ultimately shirks accountability for our own decisions and our own choices and our own actions.

(21:06 – 21:17)

That excuses us from sanctified sweat. I mean, this sounds like hard work, doesn’t it? Paul speaks about putting sin to death. This is a battle, it’s a fight.

(21:20 – 21:42)

And so it seems to me that what the New Testament describes is dependent activity. Dependent activity in the life of the Christian. Now, I wonder whether some of us fall on each side of that, depending on things like temperament.

(21:44 – 21:55)

Some of us temperamentally are maybe more the kind of lean back, lazier temperament maybe. Just rely on the gospel. If God wants me to be holy, He’ll someday do it.

(21:57 – 22:13)

Or maybe you get up at 7 a.m. and you’ve got your whole plan for how you’re gonna be more like Jesus and you think it’s all on you. Maybe it’s theology. Maybe our theology isn’t quite right and that causes us to fall on one side or the other.

(22:14 – 23:00)

There could be different things at play here. What I wanna ask you tonight is, what side of that equation do you need to pay more attention to? For you, is it resting on the gospel and depending on the Spirit? Is that the thing you need to be doing more of in your Christian life, more dependence? Because you thought the Christian life was just you living it? Like, it’s like, I’m saved through God, but now I’ve go to live the Christian life alone. Is that the issue you have? Or is the issue that you never seem to translate Romans 8, the Spirit-filled life, into actual action, where you put sin to death? So number one, it’s God’s work and ours.

(23:02 – 23:18)

Number two, it’s collective and individual. Collective and individual. I’d like you to turn with me to Ephesians 5. Sorry that we’re jumping around a little bit, but these are just the passages that I think are most helpful to make these points.

(23:18 – 23:35)

Ephesians 5, and this is a chapter, if you read the whole chapter, it’s an entire chapter about the life of the Christian. In verse 15, for example, Paul speaks of living a wise, not foolish life. And so bear that in mind.

(23:35 – 23:57)

That’s the context as we come to verse 18. Part of wise living, Paul says, verse 18, do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit.

(23:58 – 24:22)

Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. I want you to notice something here that is very easy to miss, and I hadn’t spotted it until this week.

(24:24 – 25:11)

And that is that in much of this passage, but in verse 18 particularly, Paul is writing to the church and not just the individual. So in verse 18, this much talked about verse, you hear Christians all the time discussing what does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? We have to realise that when Paul gives this command, be filled with the Spirit, he’s actually saying it in the plural. He’s not saying it to the individual and saying, I need to be personally filled with the Spirit, although of course that’s true, but rather let us as a community be the people who are filled with the Spirit of God.

(25:13 – 25:30)

And this ties in actually with the rest of the letter. In chapter two, verse 22, Paul has been speaking of the church as the temple. The church is the holy temple being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.

(25:30 – 25:48)

That’s chapter two, verse 22. And so here in chapter five, it’s the same temple imagery that Paul’s using. And he’s saying that now you are the temple of God, it makes sense that you should be filled together with the Spirit of God.

(25:50 – 26:09)

And what does that look like in practise? What sort of things would you expect to surround that phrase? Paul says, be filled with the Spirit. What are you expecting to surround that? What would be the manifestations of that? Well, here’s Paul’s list of things. Let me just list some of them.

(26:11 – 26:34)

We wouldn’t see drunkenness. We wouldn’t see a church controlled by alcohol. I think he’s using that incidentally, not only because that is a big issue in itself, any substance that’s controlling us, but he’s making the point that the Christian life is to be lived under a different sort of control and influence.

(26:34 – 26:50)

That is manifest. You can tell when someone is controlled by alcohol, it’s visible. And Paul’s saying the Spirit should be at work in our community in a way that is as visible as a drunk man, except in this case, there’s some wonderful manifestations of it.

(26:50 – 27:03)

And so it’s that, but it’s more than that. Look at verse 19. It’s a worshipful community who is joyful from the heart, who worships God together.

(27:03 – 27:22)

Verse 20, it’s a thankful community, characterised by gratitude. It’s also a community, verse 21, where people submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. In fact, he goes on there to, it spills over from the church into the home, actually.

(27:24 – 27:43)

And I think if you go back, I think you can backfill this as well to earlier in the chapter, because he’s already been describing the Spirit-filled church. Read the earlier part of chapter five. He talks about generosity, self-control, clean talk, relationships based on love, community behaviours.

(27:45 – 28:18)

To put it another way, the evidence of a Spirit-filled life is Spirit-filled relationships and a Spirit-filled community of love. If you walk into a Spirit-filled church, you should be able to see it and even feel it. Not by some miraculous thing that’s happening from the front, but because of the way the community is worshipping God together and the way that they are relating to one another with tangible love.

(28:20 – 28:59)

Now, it is true that in the book of Acts, we also see the church being filled with the Spirit and then being empowered to do great things like evangelism. But it’s interesting that in the letters, that’s not primarily how the filling of the Spirit is described. And it’s so easy to miss this aspect of being filled with the Spirit, which can be seen every Sunday in our church services, in our conversations over coffee, in our community groups, during the week when you visit another believer in church, in the way you speak to them, in the way you speak about them.

(29:00 – 29:55)

Actually, all of that in our daily experience can be the evidence of a Spirit-filled church. Do we need to open our eyes to the broader way that the Bible speaks of a Spirit-filled church? Do we perhaps need to see that pursuing holiness is not an individual sport, it’s a community sport, if I could put it in those terms. One of the things we were chatting about in our community group last Thursday was just this, that I think in churches like ours, in the kind of culture of churches like ours, and this is probably reflecting West of Scotland culture, we put up all sorts of protective little barriers, and we’re fearful of people really getting to know about our weaknesses or our struggles, particularly with our sin.

(29:57 – 30:24)

The problems and circumstances we’re facing we’re more open about, but the struggles we have with sin we don’t wanna talk about. And so we don’t allow for genuine support, the support of fellow sinners who actually, secretly, are struggling with all the same sins that we’re also not willing to be open about. And we miss out on that genuine accountability and that encouragement in becoming more like Jesus together.

(30:25 – 30:44)

If we’re not talking about the battles and the struggles with one another, then we’re just not gonna encourage one another as we should be doing. The New Testament sees sanctification as a community project. So it’s God’s work and ours, it’s corporate and individual.

(30:45 – 31:02)

But thirdly, and finally, it is also beholding Christ. Beholding Christ and increasingly becoming like Him. And we’re finally gonna return to 2 Corinthians 3. Sorry about that.

(31:02 – 31:22)

We’ve been roaming here and there, but we are gonna come back briefly to this at the end. 2 Corinthians 3, verses 17 and 18. And this is probably the finest summary of progressive sanctification in the New Testament.

(31:23 – 31:50)

It just sort of just captures the whole thing in a sense. Paul says, but we all who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. Notice a few things here.

(31:50 – 32:13)

The goal, the goal of the Christian life is to be conformed to the image of Jesus. And Paul says, this is increasingly happening. Notice here, this is why we know there’s another form of sanctification, another shade of it, because he speaks here not of the past tense.

(32:14 – 32:45)

We are being transformed, being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory. In one sense, Paul here is describing conversion onwards, because conversion is where, to use his imagery, the veil is taken away from our eyes. Paul talks about a veil that sort of blinds the unbelieving Jews from seeing who Jesus is.

(32:46 – 33:03)

But Paul says that the Holy Spirit has taken that veil away from our eyes so that we see who Jesus is. That’s conversion, isn’t it? But actually, as we go on in the Christian life, we don’t stop gazing at Jesus. We keep gazing.

(33:04 – 33:41)

We keep gazing at Him in the same way that Moses in Exodus kept gazing at the glory of the Lord in the burning bush. And it was through that continual gazing at the glory of God that led to Moses, you remember, having that face that reflected the glory of God. And using this very same image, Paul says that through continued contemplation of the glory of Jesus, believers are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory.

(33:41 – 34:17)

The way you begin the Christian life is the way you continue the Christian life, with a look to Christ that transforms you from glory into glory. Now, this does not negate any of the stuff we’ve already said, but it is a reminder, and again, this is why we thought about the positional thing first, it is a reminder that the Christian life is never just about looking at a list of commands or just a list of dos and don’ts. That’s where we do go wrong.

(34:19 – 34:44)

We look to the Lord Jesus, the one that we love, and then as we see His glory and as we love Him more, we then long to do the things that He says and asks us to do. We’ve seen that in John, haven’t we? If you love me, you will then obey my commands. And so it is in looking to Christ.

(34:44 – 34:55)

Have you heard the phrase, you probably have heard this, we become what we behold. We become what we behold. Now, just think about this.

(34:56 – 35:28)

That is generally true in all of life, that people become what they behold. If you kind of look at people’s character, even sometimes the way they dress or the way they speak, and then you examine how they spend their time and who they look at and who they listen to and whose videos they watch and whose music they listen to, you see that this is a true principle. What people behold consistently is what they become.

(35:29 – 36:05)

That’s true in all areas of life, but it is true at the deepest level spiritually. It is the people who consistently look to the glory of Christ who become most like Him this side of eternity. Not just people who know lots of Bible verses, or do a whole bunch of religious stuff, but people who are reading their Bible looking for Jesus and the glory of Jesus and savouring that.

(36:05 – 36:24)

Those are the people, always they are the people who develop the most Christ-like fruit in their lives. They are Jesus-y people. And yet notice what Paul says that actually this transformation, and he just drops it in at the end.

(36:24 – 36:32)

You almost miss it. He just drops it in at the end. This comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

(36:35 – 36:48)

The Spirit’s kind of in the background here. So often rightly said that the Spirit’s work is to focus our attention on Jesus, not on Himself. And we see that here, something of it here.

(36:49 – 37:17)

It is from the Spirit that this contemplation continues. And so as you go into work tomorrow, and as you find it hard to remember Christ throughout the day, it is the Holy Spirit that you can be leaning on and you can be asking for the help of in prayer as you go through that busy day. I have a good prayer just to pray tomorrow morning.

(37:17 – 37:41)

Father, help me by your Spirit to not lose sight of Christ as I go through this day and all the things that I’m doing. Or as you’re grabbing your 10 minutes in the lunch break, taking 10 minutes of it just to maybe have a bit of time reading your Bible or reading something devotional, just something that’s gonna focus you on the right thing. That would be a prayer you could pray.

(37:41 – 38:09)

Father, help me by your Spirit to see more of the glory of Jesus in these few minutes in a way that would shape my character and the way that I live. The most important aspect of progressive sanctification is keeping your face directed to Jesus with the help of the Spirit. So positional sanctification, progressive sanctification.

(38:10 – 38:34)

And I simply just want to mention, I don’t want to develop it at all, but just for the sake of completeness, I want to just mention, and I’m going all out in the piece here, perfected sanctification, perfected sanctification. Now, another word for that in the Bible is just glorification, glorification. It’s the same thing.

(38:36 – 39:01)

The time will come when the position we are given at conversion, the character that is progressively revealed in our lives will reach its heightened conclusion. Indeed, it will reach its perfection. We read about this in 1 John 3. Beloved, now we are the children of God.

(39:01 – 39:19)

Now we are the children of God. You see there the status is already given? And it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him. Not just a little bit like Him, but perfectly.

(39:20 – 39:33)

This means exactly like Him. For we shall see Him as He is. You see there? It’s the beholding that transforms us into the likeness.

(39:35 – 39:55)

Our position now, progressively true in our character, will one day be perfectly complete. And as the author of 2 Corinthians just drops in at the end, all of this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. Let’s pray.

(40:03 – 40:28)

Father, fill us with hope tonight. Even as we battle with sin and often struggle to live our lives for you, fill us with hope tonight that our status is already that of holy. Remind us tonight and through this week that we don’t live this life alone.

(40:29 – 40:51)

Help us to walk in step with your Spirit. Fill us as a community and individually with your Spirit so that we might increasingly look like Jesus. And we ask this till the day that we see Him as He is and become perfectly like Him.

(40:52 – 40:55)

And it’s in His name we pray, amen.

The post The Spirit and the Christian life – 2 Corinthians 3v16,17 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Good morning. Our Advent series this year is Christmas Nostalgia. Nostalgia is described as a sentimental or wistful affection for the past.

You know the kind of thing, rose-tinted glasses, visiting the town you were once born in, looking at old photos of your childhood, or of a wedding perhaps. For Scotland fans, after waiting 28 years to make it to the World Cup finals, there’s been a lot of nostalgia kicking about this week. Remember Brazil? 1998 is what the fans have been talking about, and here we go again.

(0:51 – 1:16)

2026, in fact, it’ll be the fifth time in seven World Cups that we’ve played and faced the greatest team in the world. C.S. Lewis, when talking about nostalgia, talks of something in the universe that we now feel cut off from. A desire to be on the inside, but we’re looking from the outside.

(1:17 – 4:50)

The memory of our past, good images of what we really desire, but things that can turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of worshippers. There’s certainly been a few World Cup hearts broken when Scotland were placed in Group C, even before all the nostalgia of 1998 and before. So what do you think of when you think of the nostalgia of Christmas? What memories of Christmas past do you conjure up in your mind? Is it the big family dinner? Getting a Christmas stocking, perhaps? Memories of childhood where everything was done for you, and now as a parent you’re doing everything.

A decent-sized selection box, as with the sugar tax. Chocolates seem to have reduced in size somewhat, or is that just me? Having Schlurr, Viennetta and Ferrero Roche and feeling very fancy. Or the bumper radio times.

However good your Christmas is this year, it probably won’t match up to your rose-tinted memories of Christmas past. When you’ve forgotten about the arguments, the stress, the tears and the tantrums that will often accompany any big family occasion. And with this by way of introduction as much to the next three weeks, as to today, please turn with me in your Bibles to Micah chapter 5, page 933, if you’re using the pew Bibles.

Micah chapter 5 verse 1. Marshal your troops now, city of troops, for a siege is laid against us. They will strike Israel’s ruler on the cheek with a rod. But you, Bethlehem, Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come from me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from old, from ancient times.

Therefore Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labour bears a son and the rest of his brothers return to join the Israelites. He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord, his God. And they will live securely for then his greatness will reach the ends of the earth and he will be our peace.

When the Assyrians invade our land and march through our fortresses, we will raise up against them seven shepherds and even eight commanders who will rule the land of Assyria with the sword, the land of Nimrod with drawn sword. He will deliver us from the Assyrians when they invade our land and march across our borders. Amen.

(4:50 – 6:34)

And this is the word of God. So here we are on the 7th of December, 18 days till Christmas, enjoying our first Advent service. So it’s official.

Trees are popping up everywhere. Our tree has even made it to the box beside me. Black Friday deals are in the past and we can finally say we’re almost at Christmas.

I want to take you on a journey in the next 20 minutes from no hope to hope. From 2,700 years ago to the present day and into your future. Have you made plans for Christmas this year? I want you to pause just for 10 seconds and I want you to think about what you’re going to be doing for Christmas.

Have you got that picture in your mind? Are you visiting family? Do you have family coming to you? Perhaps you’re helping in a homeless shelter. Are you having a curry or are you having full Christmas dinner with all the trimmings? Will there be presents under the tree and excited children or are you past the stage of toys and tantrums and it’ll simply be a glass of wine and a Christmas movie? Whatever your Christmas that you just thought about looks like, I imagine for each of us we are looking forward to Christmas. We’ll spare a thought for people this year who are not looking forward to Christmas.

(6:36 – 10:36)

So our first point, no hope at Christmas. In Scotland, drugs deaths although reduced in 2024 were still by far the worst in any country in Europe. More than three drug deaths every day in Scotland.

With thousands of people addicted to drugs across our country, are they looking forward to Christmas or are they simply craving their next hit? Scotland has the worst life expectancy in Europe. We were once the murder capital of Europe. 22% of the most deprived areas in Scotland can be found on our doorsteps in Glasgow.

Life expectancy is 18 years lower in the parts of the south of Glasgow than it is in other parts of the south of Glasgow and more affluent areas. Over 34,000 households in Scotland are assessed as homeless. More than 10,000 children are spending long periods of their lives stuck in temporary accommodation.

Our suicide rates are increasing year on year with two suicides every day in Scotland. Men three times more likely to commit suicide in those in rural areas and deprived areas more likely than those in urban and affluent areas. And what about the families left dealing with the consequences afterwards facing a Christmas of pain and heartache? The Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland only last week were highlighting that there was a mental health emergency facing Scotland with cases doubling whilst the workforce was being reduced by a quarter.

Young people aged 18 to 34 are far more likely to be pushed into debt at Christmas than any other age group. So it’s not all mistletoe and wine, turkey and trimmings and fun and laughter at Christmas. Now be honest with me, is this what you wanted to hear when you came to church this morning? Andy, we don’t want to hear about hopelessness at any time, especially at Christmas.

I started with this today as I wanted us to realise that for many around us Christmas 2025 will be a very difficult time. A few minutes ago I read from the Old Testament from a prophet called Micah. Now a prophet in the Bible was someone who spoke on behalf of God.

Micah was living in Israel over 2,700 years ago. Life was not great for those living in Israel at that time. In fact, the nation of Israel had already been split into two kingdoms with Israel in the north and Judah in the south.

Let me give you the briefest of potted histories. The whole of Israel were known as God’s people. However, the kingdom of Israel in the north had already fallen to the Assyrians,

and in the south, under the reign of Hezekiah, like other kings before him, the people of Judah had turned from God. They were facing an invasion from the mighty Assyrian army who were coming for the southern kingdom of Judah. They were encamped around Jerusalem, laying siege to the city.

And this is exactly where we find ourselves in Micah chapter 5 verse 1. Marshal your troops now, city of troops, for a siege is laid against us. They will strike Israel’s ruler on the cheek with a rod. So hopefully that verse makes more sense to you now having had a bit of the context.

Micah the prophet of God is saying troops get ready. There is a siege at the door. This is a dire situation for the nation of Israel and the people of Jerusalem.

(10:38 – 11:23)

Micah as a prophet is speaking to the people on a number of different levels as we will see. If we were to read on to verses 10 to 15, we would see because of the way that the people had turned from God, including Hezekiah their king, Micah is predicting judgement, destruction of horses, chariots, cities and strongholds. Micah, as a prophet, was telling the people and the king, you have Assyria laying siege to Jerusalem.

You have disobeyed God. And what happens when you disobey God? Judgement comes. Hold on a minute, Andy.

(11:24 – 15:35)

This is supposed to be Christmas nostalgia, a nice Christmas talk, tinsel and presents, maybe some jokes about the wise men. And so far you’ve given us a dire state of our beloved country of Scotland. And now you’re telling us about the dire state of Israel over 2,700 years ago and how they were facing judgement because they were not obeying God.

Is this not a bit heavy? For a Christmas message? Well, it’s into this bleak landscape that Micah speaks great words of hope, the first Christmas hope. Micah the prophet speaks words of God to people on three different levels. First, he’s speaking to the present situation.

We’ve already seen the call to marshal the troops in verse 1. And in the second half of verse 5 and verse 6, Micah promises that when the Assyrians march through the Israelite fortresses, we will raise against them seven shepherds, even eight commanders who will rule the land of Assyria with the sword. Micah is promising the people who are struggling. He’s promising the people that God can deliver them from the Assyrians.

Verse 6b, he, that is God, will deliver us from the Assyrians when they invade our land and march across our borders. This is not just a call for the troops to get ready, but a heartfelt urging for the people to trust in God. And later after warning them about the judgement that is coming if they do not obey God in verses 10 to 15, Micah urges them to repent.

Chapter 6 verse 8, he has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with your Lord. I’ll say that again.

What does God require of you today in 2025? To act justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. This is what’s before them, a simple choice, face judgement or seek repentance by asking for forgiveness for the things that you have done wrong. 2,700 years later, this simple message has not changed.

Reject God, disobey His commands, and face judgement, or accept God and His rule over your life, and accept His grace, and His mercy, and forgiveness. This is a simple choice, yet it defines our entire lives and our eternal futures. But there’s more, Micah the prophet speaks into and foretells the future.

So he’s spoken to them about their present condition, and now he foretells the future 700 years before the actual events take place. What am I talking about? Verse 2, but you, Bethlehem, Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from old, from ancient times. Bethlehem, in the district of Ephrathah, within the southern kingdom of Judah, is the predicted place where an amazing thing will one day happen.

Bethlehem is the town of Israel’s thus far greatest king, David. Bethlehem is a small town, small among the clans of Judah. This is God’s pattern.

(15:36 – 16:33)

The weak will humble the strong. The last shall be first. Just look at the life of David.

Was he the oldest or the strongest? No, he was the youngest. Whilst the Israelite army were scared to fight Goliath, David stood up and was counted. Jacob was the younger twin brother, and he was chosen to be first.

Joseph was the second youngest of 12 sons of Jacob, but God had great plans for him. Bethlehem, small among the clans of Judah, God often chooses the weak to humble the strong. So next time you are feeling weak and you can’t possibly speak up for God in your place of work or in your school, just remember how God can use the weak and the small for great things.

(16:34 – 18:07)

Out of Bethlehem will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from old, from ancient times. David might have been the greatest king of Israel, but out of David’s town, in the royal line, a promised Messiah chosen by God will come to be ruler over Israel. This promised Messiah is from old, from ancient times.

Micah is doffing the cap, as you were, to the ancient promise made to Abram in Genesis 12. He’s also doffing the cap to the prophecy about Jesse, David’s father, in Isaiah chapter 11, verse 1. A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse, from his roots a branch will bear fruit. From ancient times, forefathers of Israel who are promised to be made into a great nation and from whom were prophesied, from whom the Messiah would come.

And we can go back even further. As Jesus Christ, the Messiah, was there at the very beginning, the creation of the world. John chapter 1, verse 1, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God.

He was with God in the beginning. Through him, all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made.

(18:08 – 19:47)

The Messiah was from old, from ancient times. Verse 3, therefore, Israel will be abandoned until the time she who is in labour bears a son, and the rest of his brothers will return to join the Israelites. Micah continues speaking into the next 700 years, which we can see from this side of history, just how the Israelites may have felt abandoned.

History and the Bible tell us that the Israelites did cry out to God for help with the Asyrians, and God came to their rescue. We see this in 2 Kings 19, verse 35. That night, the angel of the Lord went out and put to death 185,000 in the Asyrian camp.

What a deliverance! But it wasn’t long before the people of God returned back to their old ways, their old ways of sin, and soon they felt abandoned or left to their own disobedient devices. As a number of years later, the Babylonians invade and carry them off into exile for 70 years, and this starts a period of 586 years where Israel and Judah feel almost completely abandoned, apart from a short period coming out of exile. But the whole time with no king, and it appears that God has properly given up on them.

(19:47 – 20:22)

Not only did Israel and Judah have no king, they did not hear from God, no prophets, nothing for 400 years from the time of Malachi, the last record of God speaking to his people through his prophets. Into this silence in Bethlehem, a mother, as it says in verse 3, goes into labour. Hundreds of years of Israel and Judah’s history laid out like the third trimester of a pregnancy.

(20:23 – 21:44)

It’s amazing that God gets his prophet to announce this some 700 years before it happens, and how God uses Caesar Augustus, the most powerful world leader of the day. It could probably be argued that our most powerful world leader of the day is President Trump, and there he was at the FIFA World Cup doing his thing. But God uses the most powerful world leader of the day.

He uses Caesar’s decree to get Joseph and Mary to travel all the way up to Bethlehem, when Mary is heavily pregnant, as Joseph belonged to the line of David and had to go back to the town of his origin, all in order that when the Messiah was born, he would be born in Bethlehem. So into this 400 years of silence, a baby cries out, a Messiah is born. 700 years later, Matthew quotes Micah, chapter 2, verse 6 of Matthew’s gospel, but you Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.

(21:45 – 23:00)

This shows us a couple of things that the Jewish scholars of the day saw Bethlehem as the promise from Micah, as a messianic promise. And the prophecy was so accurate that King Herod practically used Micah’s prophecy like Google Maps. The promise to the rest of the brothers returning to join the Israelites as a reference to the spiritual brothers of the Messiah, the wider group of disciples following the Messiah.

Jesus inaugurates his kingdom and filled with the Holy Spirit in the upper room in Acts, 120 are sent out to turn our world upside down. The prophecy continues and ramps up even further in verse 4, he will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach the ends of the earth. And the beginning of verse 5, and he will be our peace.

(23:02 – 23:59)

Here we see the prophecy about the Messiah in 700 years time, but also how this stretches to a third level. So we’ve seen how Micah speaks to the people in their present situation. We’ve seen how Micah is speaking to the people about what’s going to happen 700 years time.

And he speaks to us now, 2700 years later and into our eternal future. Micah promises that the Messiah will stand. In the Hebrew, that is that he will endure, that he will reign forever.

Is that not encouraging? He will shepherd his flock. What does this remind us of? We’ve been studying John’s gospel. John chapter 10, verse 11 is what you should be shouting out to me.

(24:00 – 24:55)

Jesus said, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. But more than just this, remember that the Messiah is from old, from ancient times.

I read yesterday in Genesis 49, Jacob blessing his sons just before he dies. Jacob says to Joseph, Joseph is a fruitful vine, tying in with our thoughts that we were having in community group this week. And Colin’s sermon from two weeks ago in John 15, a fruitful vine near a spring whose branches climb over the wall. With bitterness,

archers attack him. They shot him with hostility, but his bow remains steady. His arms stayed supple because of the hand of God, the mighty one of Jacob, because of the shepherd, the Messiah, the rock of Israel.

(24:56 – 25:51)

Micah, the prophet, and Moses, the author of Genesis, both pointing forward to the Messiah, the capital S, Shepherd. Jesus, the promised Messiah, will shepherd his flock. Jesus will protect and guide his flock.

Jesus will provide for our every need. So much so that age 33, Jesus, the good shepherd, actually lays down his life for his flock. Jesus died on a cross, and I know I’m jumping to Easter, and it’s not even Christmas yet.

But he dies on a cross to take upon himself our sins, to save us from the death and judgement that we deserve. Jesus will do this in God’s strength. And the verse continues, and they will live securely.

(25:51 – 26:37)

We can be assured of security because of what Jesus achieved on the cross for us, conquering death and Satan. Jesus is able to give those that put their trust and faith in him eternal life and glory. That’s proper security, not just a solid home or a good life insurance, but an eternal promise of a place in heaven.

Just a few weeks ago, John chapter 14, verse 2, in my father’s house are many rooms. I am going there to prepare a place for you. We have the ultimate insurance policy, the ultimate security found in Jesus, the promised Messiah.

(26:38 – 27:31)

For his greatness will reach the ends of the earth. The goodness and knowledge of Jesus, the Messiah, was only just spreading beyond Israel when Jesus was not only crucified, but rose again, back to life, defeating death. From this point forward, the church age, the good news about Jesus spread and spread and spread to the very ends of the earth, which we see in Micah.

This is our present reality being prophesied 2,700 years ago. This is our hope for this Christmas and for our future. And with that, we come to our final point.

(27:31 – 28:26)

Hope for this Christmas and for our future. He will be our peace is how verse 5 starts. Never a truer word of comfort has been uttered.

No one wants to be abused, attacked, or have another country invade us. We all ultimately want peace. Peace is what the Messiah promises.

In a country at war, Jesus still promises peace. And for eternity, Jesus will be our peace. And you know what is truly awesome? David and Micah both believe in the same God that we’ve been thinking about today, a God who keeps his promises, a promise keeper.

(28:28 – 31:10)

If I was to give Andy Hunter £100,000 to invest, I’m not going to do it, Andy, but if I was going to give you £100,000 to invest, I would like to think that you would do some research. You would make sure that you are investing in a company with a proven track record so that you didn’t lose out. Who better to trust now and for your eternal future than God who has delivered on every promise that he’s ever made? Our God has a track record for reliability.

He has delivered on promises made 2,700 years ago, and he will deliver on his future promise to return. This track record gives us such confidence for our future. In the same way that Micah predicted the Messiah’s birth, we can trust the words of Christ himself.

Jesus is the reigning and future King. Do you believe in his death and resurrection? Are you obeying his word? Jesus brings you peace, so take away any worries that you might have and place them on him, and trust in his promise for your future. John 14 verse 3, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me so that you may be where I am.

In the final words of the Bible, God’s written words to us, we have Jesus saying, look, I am coming soon. My reward is with me, and I will give each person according to what they have done. And yes, I am coming soon.

Christ has promised to return, and Christ will return. So what do you do with the ultimate gift this Christmas? Jesus Christ. Will you reject and disobey him and face judgement? Or will you accept Jesus as your Messiah, as your Saviour, the only true hope this Christmas? My prayer is that this Christmas, you will accept this awesome and fully paid for, free gift of eternal life with God.

Amen.

The post Longing for the past and future – Micah 5v1–6 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Well, so far in this series, we’ve talked about the person of the Spirit, and we’ve started to think about the work of the Spirit, first in the life of Jesus, and then in the life of the early church. Very obviously, we’ve started in the New Testament. We started with the Gospels and Acts, rather than with Genesis and Joel.

(0:28 – 1:41)

And while that’s a reasonable approach to take, at some point, we need to step back and consider what comes before, because after all, four-fifths of our Bible is the Old Testament. And so, the question actually arises, what was the Spirit doing before the birth of Christ? To put it in a kind of blunt way, was the Holy Spirit active in the Old Testament? Or was the Holy Spirit working minimally in the Old Testament? Or was the Holy Spirit really doing nothing at all? Was the Spirit just waiting for the day of Pentecost? I was thinking a bit like when you’re sitting in an airport departure lounge, and you’ve really got nothing else to do but wait for the flight to leave. Is that really what the Spirit was doing, just waiting for the day of Pentecost to come? I’m conscious as we begin that this could seem like an academic question to us, because we are a New Testament church.

(1:42 – 2:10)

And so, you might be asking, well, why does it matter what the Spirit was doing in a bygone era? Well, here are a few reasons that I thought of in answer to that question. Number one, if you care about the person of the Spirit, you should care about the history of the Spirit. So, in human terms, if we care about a person, we take the trouble to learn their history.

(2:11 – 4:01)

And it would be strange to say that we honour the Spirit, but we have no interest in his backstory. That was the first thing that occurred to me. The second reason is a bit more practical, and it’s that pondering the Spirit in the Old Testament will actually help us to reflect on the unity and development of the Bible.

So, an important question that every Bible reader asks at some point is, how does the Old Testament and the New Testament fit together? Yes, it’s all one grand story, but are there developments in the way God chooses to operate when I turn the page from the Old Testament to the New? You see what I’m saying? It’s one continuous story, but does everything just work and apply in the same way in the Old Testament as in the New? It’s a difficult and deep question, but thinking about the Spirit’s role in the Old and New Testament might nudge us a little closer to the answer of how these two testaments connect. So, number one, we care about the person of the Spirit. Number two, we want to read our Bibles better.

And number three, which I hope won’t sound too strange or odd, it’s that studying the Spirit in the Old Testament can create a sense of affinity with Old Testament believers but also show us the privilege we have. It’s easy to feel a sense of distance from Old Testament saints. It can seem like they lived in a very different time and in very different circumstances.

(4:03 – 4:27)

And yet something that can close that sense of gap is to realise that Old Testament saints knew something of the Spirit of the Lord. Now, they did not have a clear understanding of the Trinity in the Old Testament. That becomes much clearer when we come into the New Testament.

(4:29 – 5:58)

And yet they weren’t unfamiliar with the idea of God’s Spirit. If you sat in a Bible study with an Old Testament Jew and you mentioned God’s Spirit, they would know what you were talking about. And that helps me to have a closer affinity with Old Testament believers while also feeling the privilege of living in the last days in which the promises of Christ are being fulfilled.

Now, that’s a long introduction, three reasons, but it’s also my attempt to keep you listening for the next 20 minutes. I want you to see that this isn’t academic. And as we turn to the subject, the breadth of it is vast.

There are roughly 100 references to the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. We’re not going to go through every one of them. What we’re going to do is focus on three main things that the Holy Spirit was up to in the Old Testament period.

What was the Spirit doing B.C.? Let me suggest three main things. First of all, He was creating and sustaining. One main thing the Spirit does in the Old Testament is creating life and sustaining life.

(5:59 – 6:33)

We often think of the Holy Spirit in terms of things like salvation, proclamation of the gospel, the formation and empowerment of the church. And of course, these things are all true. But in the first chunk of the Bible, the first thing the Holy Spirit is involved in is creation itself.

Let’s open our Bible to Genesis 1 verse 1 and the second verse as well. Very well-known verses. And we’ll see the Spirit here.

(6:34 – 6:50)

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

(6:51 – 7:59)

This is the first translation of the word Spirit. Some of you will know that comes from a Hebrew word, the Hebrew word ruach, which I always think sounds like it’s a word that’s originated from the highlands rather than Hebrew, ruach. Ruach appears 400 times in the Old Testament, and it can mean different things.

Sometimes, it simply means the spirit or the breath of a human being. So, you have a ruach, a spirit. Other times, we can see in the context, it’s clearly referring to the cosmological phenomenon of breath or wind.

But as I said earlier, on about 100 occasions, the ruach, the spirit, is clearly referring to the Spirit of God. And I think that’s even implied here. I mean, we have the phrase Spirit of God, but notice what the Spirit is doing.

(8:00 – 9:14)

The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Not blowing over the waters, like the wind of nature, but hovering over the waters. It’s a picture of a bird hovering above, poised and ready for action.

The picture is of an intelligent spirit who is ready to swoop into action to create life and order out of the chaos. And so, the capital S Spirit is directly involved in creation. God the Father is creation’s source.

God the Son is creation’s word. And God the Spirit is creation’s operative power, who powerfully brings into being the word of God the Son and the will of the Father. And it’s not only that the Spirit gets things going, but very importantly, the Spirit keeps things going.

(9:15 – 10:02)

Turn with me briefly to Psalm 104. Psalm 104. It’s the kind of psalm, when you read it quickly, you may make the assessment that it’s a psalm about creation.

But I think actually, it’s more a psalm about sustaining life, not just making life. Look at verses 27 to 30. All creatures look to you to give them their food at the proper time.

When you give it to them, they gather it up. When you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. When you hide your face, they are terrified.

(10:04 – 15:14)

When you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. And it goes on. When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.

Do you see there that it’s not just that the Spirit gets things going, but the Spirit keeps things going. That’s Amos is saying, if the Holy Spirit stopped working in the world for a second, there would be no renewal of life and breath and food and water and everything else that makes life what it is. Without the Holy Spirit, the season of winter would never turn over to spring.

Do you see how wrong it would be to say the Holy Spirit wasn’t doing much in the Old Testament? If that was the case, the universe would stop existing. And can you also see, and this is where we start to think about connections, the continuity, but also the kind of elevation. Can you also see that it’s obvious then that the Holy Spirit in the New Testament is going to be the one that gives life, because that’s what he’s always been doing, giving physical life.

And so as we come into the New Testament, he’s the one who gives spiritual life. So that’s the first thing the Spirit is up to in the Old Testament. Let’s move on to a second thing.

The second thing the Spirit’s involved in was empowering and enabling. Now, we should be familiar with the idea that the Spirit empowers and enables his people. The Spirit empowers God’s people for acts of service and acts of witness, and God’s Spirit enables Christians to bear fruit, the fruit of godly character, that would be impossible in their own strength.

This is a fairly 101 idea when we think of Christian living. But actually, in the Old Testament, there was also a certain amount of empowering and enabling believers. And I want you to give you just a smattering of examples of this, and I want you to think about what were the commonalities and the situations in which God’s Spirit enabled people.

Here are some of the people that the Spirit is said to have empowered, and I’m just going to give you the references for you to jot down. In Numbers 11, 70 elders were appointed to assist Moses in the governing of a vast people. There was this position of leadership and wisdom and organisation.

And the Bible says they were given the Spirit of the Lord to help them do that task. In Exodus 31, a man named Bezalel was empowered with the Spirit, along with his fellow craftsmen, to construct the tabernacle, the place of worship. Now, that was actually a very practical skill, of course, but it was a very important building that was being made.

And so God gave the Spirit to enable them to do that practical task Successfully. In Deuteronomy 34, Joshua, the successor of Moses, is filled with the Spirit to lead God’s people into the promised land, with all of the challenges that that was going to bring.

In that context of conflict, the Spirit of God enables them. In Judges 6, Gideon is clothed with the Spirit of the Lord. He’s one of the judges who were leaders in Old Testament times when there weren’t kings.

And he’s clothed, we’re told, with the Spirit of the Lord to lead God’s people against the Midianites. In Judges 13-15, Samson, very famous Old Testament character, is empowered by the Spirit to have supernatural strength to overcome God’s enemies. In 1 Samuel 10 and 11, Saul, the first king of Israel, is given the Spirit to lead God’s people in a way that honours the Lord.

Of course, if you know the story there, he rebels against the Lord, and the Holy Spirit is then taken from Saul, and everything falls apart. But in 1 Samuel 16, David succeeds Saul. And David is really the paradigm for kingship.

(15:14 – 16:50)

He’s the model of it in the Old Testament. And we’re told that he too is filled with the Spirit. And even though he sins against the Lord in a grievous way, we know that his sins are forgiven, and the Holy Spirit is not taken from David.

And so, at least in his lifetime, his whole kingdom doesn’t crumble because of the Spirit of the Lord. And of course, there are many other examples that we could look at in the work of the prophets. In Ezekiel 2, for example, the Spirit strengthens Ezekiel to hear God’s Word and to proclaim God’s Word.

So here are a whole list of people that God in the Old Testament empowers by the Spirit in the Old Covenant era. But what do you notice about them? What’s in common with all of them? Let me suggest three things that all of these people I’ve mentioned have in common. Number one, they are all leaders.

Number two, they are all doing highly important tasks. And number three, the presence of the Holy Spirit is not necessarily permanent. Who are these people? Prominent craftsmen making the tabernacle, the judges who ruled the people, the kings who ruled over the nation, the prophets who alone spoke God’s Word to the nation.

(16:52 – 18:18)

These are not nobodies, but important somebodies playing significant roles in the advancement of God’s kingdom in their time. The legal and spiritual leaders of the people being given God’s Spirit to advance God’s kingdom. But by contrast, under the New Covenant, and as we think about what’s the difference when we get to the New Testament, the promise of Joel as we saw last week is that all of God’s people, all of us, will be given the Spirit of the Lord.

The young as well as the old, the important people and those who may be seen as less important. And it won’t just be for the most significant tasks, like building a temple, or leading a nation, or fighting a foreign oppressor. But because the Holy Spirit lives in us at all times, He is with us to help us even with the so-called ordinary things of life on the Monday to the Sunday.

And there’s also a permanence that comes with the giving of the Spirit in the New Testament. None of us needs to worry like David that the Holy Spirit might be taken from us. Isn’t that wonderful? The Holy Spirit is the permanent possession of every genuine believer.

(18:20 – 19:00)

Are there any other differences between Old Testament saints and New Testament believers? I thought it just would be worth mentioning this, that within discussions about these things among Bible-believing Christians, there’s a bit of debate around whether Old Testament believers were indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Did the Holy Spirit actually come and live within them? Or is that something that only happens in the New Covenant? Did the Spirit empower them but not indwell them? Some people say, yes, the Spirit did both. And other people say, no, the Spirit empowered them but didn’t indwell them until the New Covenant.

(19:03 – 22:17)

My own reading of it is, I do think something very new is happening in the New Covenant. I do personally think that New Testament believers are indwelt in a way that’s not true in the Old Testament. Because in Ezekiel, there is a promise of a new heart, a whole new inner transformation that just wasn’t true for the Old Testament saint in the same way.

But wherever you land in that murky question, the idea of believers being empowered for ministry is not new. And yet as Christians today, we should really see the privilege of living in the time that we do. Well, let’s move on to our third thing before we come to communion.

What was the third thing that the Holy Spirit was doing in this time? Thirdly, the Spirit was prophesying and speaking. The Spirit of God has always been speaking out the Word of God. Another thing that those people we mentioned earlier mostly had in common, not all of them, but most of them, whether it was Moses or David or the prophets, is that many of them were spokesmen for God.

Many of them received the Spirit specifically so that they could speak out God’s Word faithfully, and so that they could write down God’s Word in a faithful way. And we read about this in 2 Peter 1, if you want to turn there just for a moment. It’s just a single verse, but quite an important verse to have as part of your theology as a Christian, in 2 Peter 1, verse 21.

Because it says something about the formation of Scripture, and it says something about the work of the Holy Spirit to guarantee that. And he’s speaking here of Old Testament prophecy, and we’re told that prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God. Now, how did they speak from God? This is the key point.

What enabled them? What guaranteed that they spoke from God? As they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. The prophets like Moses, David, Isaiah, and so on spoke God’s Word because the Spirit gave them the impulse to do so. The Spirit empowered the very process that led them to writing down the Scriptures.

This is a verse in the New Testament that’s telling us that the Old Testament is divinely inspired. And the argument for inspiration is that it wasn’t just a bloke or a guy coming up with his own ideas. The Holy Spirit was orchestrating and directing the entire process.

(22:19 – 23:31)

And so the question then follows, okay, so if the Holy Spirit is speaking in the Old Testament and causing all this stuff to be written down, what is He speaking? What is the message of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament? What’s He saying through the prophets? Well, I guess a whole bunch of things. But I want to just finish on two dimensions, two main things as we think about particularly the prophecies that were spoken. Number one, the Holy Spirit was speaking ahead about Jesus.

He was speaking ahead about Jesus. Think about the prophets. What are the prophets doing? The prophets are called, some people have called them the covenant enforcers.

They basically come along and they say to Israel, listen, here’s God’s law given to Moses. Here’s what God asked you to do, but you’re not doing it. They enforce the law.

They show people that they’re not meeting the standard of the law. But when you read the prophets, what’s the answer to that? I mean, part of it is, of course, repent and change your ways and get back to the law. That’s part of it.

(23:32 – 25:31)

But there’s also a recognition in the prophets that telling the people to pull up their bootstraps isn’t going to do it, isn’t going to achieve it. And so this is the point at which the prophets begin to prophesy the new covenant and a greater fulfilment that’s going to sort out this mess of their hearts. And the answer, of course, is the sending of one who will bring about a revolution of the heart.

The sending of the Son, the sending of the Messiah, the Spirit anointed Messiah, as we thought about just a week or two ago from Isaiah 42, Isaiah 61, and then fulfilled in the baptism of Jesus as the Spirit comes down on Him. As we heard a few weeks ago, that is not just an incidental point in the story. It’s not just a little, you know, an interesting incident.

It’s the fulfilment of all the promises. It’s the moment where Jesus is being identified on earth as the final Saviour King who has finally come to sort out the mess. And that then is the basis on which the same Spirit-filled Messiah will then be able to pour out that same Spirit upon the church and pour out all of His saving benefits upon those who believe.

And so this is the great message at the heart of the prophets. Ultimately, the Spirit is speaking ahead of Jesus. We talk about this, don’t we, the Spirit testifying to Jesus.

But He’s already doing that in the Old Testament. He’s already preaching Christ. But there’s also another aspect to it, isn’t there, as well.

(25:32 – 27:49)

Because not only is the coming of Christ predicted, but also, again, as we saw last week, there’s the promise of the people of Christ, the promise of the church. And so not only is it Jesus Himself who’s spoken of, but this new people, this recreated people with new hearts, with the law of God written on their hearts, with a whole new destiny and a whole new inheritance, not a future of judgement, but a future of glory and a future in the family of God. All of that is promised in the prophecies of the Old Testament.

We don’t have time to go to those various passages, but you can look many of them up yourselves. Well, as we come to the end of this fairly brief study, in one sense, I want us to leave here tonight not only with a clearer view of what the Spirit’s doing in the Old Testament, but maybe also with a firmer view of the value of the Old Testament as a whole. It’s four-fifths of God’s Word, and it’s to be taken as seriously as we take the last fifth of it, and as we consider that whole idea.

Of course, we need to set the Old Testament in its context. We need to wrestle with it in places, but we need to take it just as seriously as we do the New Testament. And so if you are a Christian and you’ve been a Christian for a number of years, but you haven’t really started to get stuck into the Old Testament, then I would strongly encourage you to do so.

Maybe pick a book in the Old Testament. Maybe one of those prophets that particularly point forward to Jesus. Buy an accessible study guide, or have a good study Bible that gives you notes at the bottom that you can look at, and start to enjoy the first volume of what the Holy Spirit said about Jesus.

(27:51 – 28:55)

Do you see just how much the Spirit was up to in the Old Testament? You know, as I studied this, I was actually staggered by the amount that the Spirit does prior to Jesus coming. Creating and sustaining, empowering and enabling, prophesying and speaking. And believe me, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff that I left out tonight, but those are some of the main things.

I hope you sense both the continuity that we have with Old Testament saints, that they actually enjoyed many of the same privileges. Not in quite the same way, but they did enjoy many privileges. Privileges of the Spirit.

But I also hope you sense the real privilege you have of living in this time when the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon His church. We are living in days that our Old Testament brothers and sisters longed to see. Let me just pray for a moment.

(28:59 – 29:42)

Father, lead us now by the Holy Spirit to focus our attention on the One that He proclaimed. We thank you so much for the Spirit-anointed Messiah, the One who fulfils all of these promises. The One who has sent the Spirit upon the church.

The One who has softened our own hearts, opened our eyes, opened our ears, so that we can see and hear and understand the good news about Jesus. May we come to this table with a sense of thankfulness and gratitude. And we ask this in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

The post The Spirit in the Old Testament appeared first on Greenview Church.

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belong to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.

(0:13 – 1:31)

That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you. A servant is not greater than his master.

If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me.

If I had not come and spoke to them, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my father as well. If I had not done among them the works no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin.

As it is, they have seen, and yet they have hated both me and my father. But this is to fulfil what is written in their law. They hated me without reason.

I’d like to reassure you, if you’re not here that often, that it isn’t every week that we talk about hatred. Our practise is to work through books of the Bible, and so we deal with the next passage, whatever it is, whatever it says. Last week, it was about living a fruitful life.

(1:32 – 1:52)

And this week, what to do when the world hates you. And this is not just hatred in a general sense. I guess we’ve all had experiences of being hated in life, but specifically, what to do when you’re hated as a Christian.

(1:53 – 3:38)

Now, I realise that some of us here may not be in that category of a Christian, but Jesus in John 15 is speaking specifically to his followers, and he tells them what to do when hatred comes to their door. Now, it’s not a case of if hatred comes to their door, but when it comes to their door. And this made me think, I was trying to think of an illustration.

It made me think of one of those big department stores, particularly round about Christmas time, in the likes of Silverburn, whether it’s Marks and Spencer’s, or Next, or H&M. Now, if you work in one of those department stores and are a public-facing member of staff, and I guess particularly if you are the store manager, you will face antagonism from the public. That is just a given.

That just goes with the territory. It may not be every day. It certainly won’t be your whole experience of working there, but you will face hostility if you are the public face of the store.

And Jesus is saying in today’s passage that the same will be true for his followers. His people live in the world as the public face of his kingdom. And therefore, hostility isn’t just possible, it’s inevitable.

(3:39 – 4:20)

It may not happen every day. It certainly won’t be the total experience of being a Christian, but it is part of the package of being a known Christian in the world. And so Jesus is preparing his followers for hatred.

He’s warning them to expect it, and he’s training them in how to handle it. In the same way that in that department store, they might train the staff in how to deal with irate customers. I suppose they must do that, so that they’re setting the expectation and training them in how to respond.

(4:21 – 5:26)

Now, when that training is given, it does not make the experience easy, but it does make it a little less difficult. And Jesus is doing the same thing. He wants the experience of receiving the world’s hatred to be a notch or two less difficult, because we know the things he tells us in this passage, so that we’ll bear it better, and so that we’ll continue to be his witnesses in the world.

So, what is the training Jesus gives? It’s found in John 15. Open your Bible there to the passage. Everything I’m going to say is going to come out of the passage.

And in verses 18 to 25, Jesus gives us this training, and it’s largely about knowing things. This training isn’t full of things to do. It’s full of things to think about.

(5:27 – 6:05)

And this is made explicit in verse 18. If the world hates you, keep in mind, Jesus says. Other translations translate this, know that.

There’s something to keep in mind. There’s something to know and understand that will help you cope with hatred. So, I’m going to suggest that Jesus here gives us four things to understand, not if the world hates us, but when that happens in whatever form.

(6:07 – 7:51)

So, four things to know. Number one, know that Jesus was hated first. Know that Jesus was hated first.

This is how Jesus begins. Verse 18, if the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If this happens, Jesus says, keep in mind.

But it’s clear, although he uses the word if, it’s clear from a few verses later that this will happen. Because look at verse 20. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you.

Well, the world did persecute Jesus. We’ll think about that a little more in a moment. And so, therefore, it follows, the disciples will be persecuted as well.

And when it happens, the thing to keep in the front of your brain is that Jesus suffered first. And I take it, he isn’t just saying that Jesus suffered chronologically first, although that’s true. But that in some way, Jesus is the paradigm of what being hated by the world looks like.

As we read through the gospels and learn about the life of Jesus, we discover that being hated was Jesus’ lived experience. Think about this. Imagine you lived this life.

(7:51 – 8:14)

People attempt to kill you as a baby. As an adult, you preach your first sermon in your hometown, and your hometown tries to kill you. You heal people, and you do lots of good and loving things, and yet people still call you possessed by the devil.

(8:16 – 9:59)

And although you’re popular in a general sense for your miracles, your words are rejected, and your ultimate claims are rejected to be the Son of God. And of course, there is that climactic hatred. When Jesus is arrested and beaten and killed on a cross, Jesus experienced the hatred of the world first.

And I think that means that Jesus sets the pattern of what this looks like, and also that he should become our focus when we experience hostility. When we’re given a hard time for our faith, our first thought needs to be, Jesus encountered this first. Now, quite honestly, in practise, that is not so easy to do.

In those thankfully rare times when I feel I’ve been got at as a Christian, because I’m a Christian, my eyes often have looked in other places and not to Jesus. And maybe that’s been your experience too. Here’s where I tend to look.

I tend to look at the person. I tend to look at what they’re doing to me. I tend to focus on what they’re saying about me, or I focus on my circumstances and the horrible impact of what they’re doing to me.

(10:00 – 10:32)

That’s honestly where I tend to look. And yet, the author of Hebrews says, and we often forget in these beautiful verses that we often quote, that the author was writing in the context of persecution. The author of Hebrews says that we are to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

(10:33 – 11:08)

When the world attacks me for my faith, Jesus wants me to look to him. And what will I see when I look to Jesus? I’ll see that he loved his enemies, that he prayed for his persecutors, and that he even died, according to Romans 5, for those who were his enemies. I’ll see that Jesus persevered because he believed God’s promises of future joy.

(11:10 – 11:38)

And I’ll see that the one that I am suffering for is the one who is running the whole universe, sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. When hostility comes our way, the first thing we need to know is that Jesus was hated first. But here’s a second thing, a second thing that’s important to keep in mind, and I suppose this goes even a level deeper than that.

(11:40 – 12:31)

Know that your connection to Jesus makes hatred inevitable. Know that your connection to Jesus makes hatred inevitable. In our service last week, we spoke about, the whole sermon was about our connection to Jesus, the theme of what we called union with Christ.

You might remember that we defined a Christian, a Christian is someone spiritually connected to Jesus, in a way that brings them eternal life through faith in him. And we thought about lots of positives of that connection. The life that comes to us through union with Jesus, the joy that can be experienced through it, the fruitful and purposeful life that is possible through our connection with Christ.

(12:32 – 13:32)

And all of that is true, but it’s not the whole story. You see, the connection that brings us spiritual life could also bring us physical death. The connection that brings us the love of God’s people, which you might notice in verse 17, is actually the immediate context of this part of the passage.

He’s just talked about the love of the church family, and then he talks about the hatred of the world. The connection that brings us the love of God’s people is the same connection that can bring us the world’s hatred, and it’s all because of our connection to Jesus. I was watching a TV programme the other day, and there was this young woman on it who said that one of her parents was a well-known celebrity.

(13:33 – 14:00)

And because of her connection to that parent, because she had the name, and she was known to belong to them, she said that people treated her in a certain way all of her life, sometimes positively, but oftentimes negatively. And it was nothing to do with her in herself. It was entirely to do with who she was connected to.

(14:01 – 14:20)

And Jesus is making a similar point here. The reason his disciples will be hated is because of their connection to him. Or as he words it in verse 19, it’s because they belong to him, not to the world.

(14:22 – 14:35)

That girl who was related to this celebrity, she belonged to her parents by birth. These disciples weren’t part of Jesus’ original family. They don’t belong to him by birth.

(14:36 – 15:39)

They belong to him by grace. And it’s because they belong to Jesus that they are hated as he was hated. And verse 20 contains a very similar idea, except the image here is that of a master and a servant.

In the ancient world, about a third of the population were slaves. And the etiquette was that masters would be treated better than their servants, because the view was that they were higher on the social ladder. And so Jesus’ point is that if he, the master, has been hated by the world, then his servants won’t be treated any better.

That is never going to happen. If the master is persecuted, then his slaves will be persecuted too. Why? Because they’re connected to him.

(15:41 – 15:58)

Jesus is being so honest about the cost of being connected to him. He’s giving us the true cost. I don’t know if many of you are tempted by the Black Friday deals.

(16:00 – 18:06)

They are rarely as good as they look. If you do a bit of research, and you should, and you track the price over many months, you discover that often the great deal you’re getting on Black Friday is what the price was four months ago. And then they artificially raised it, and then they dropped it to make you think it was an amazing deal.

They hide the true cost of the item. Jesus never does that. Jesus puts the bill on the table, and he says, this will be the cost of being connected to me.

And it turned out to be the cost. As far as we can gather from church history, it appears that 10 of the 11 disciples who Jesus is speaking to here were martyred for their faith. Only one of them died in their own bed.

So this teaching wasn’t theoretical. Jesus isn’t, you know, he’s not over egging the pudding here. He is preparing them for a very hard reality.

And it is a hard reality that continues in some parts of the world even today. If you live in sub-Saharan Africa, or parts of Asia, or parts of the Middle East, becoming a convert to Christ is like signing your own death warrant. And such Christians need to see that their suffering is not pointless.

It is profound. It’s not just that Jesus suffered before them, but actually in a profound way, they suffer with Christ, with him, in their union with him, and because of that union. You know, people who get that have a very different mindset.

(18:08 – 18:28)

I was listening fairly recently to a Christian from a country where quite a lot of people are dying for their faith as Christians. One of these countries in the very top tier of persecution. And this man, this guy is endangered himself when he goes back to his country.

(18:28 – 18:54)

He’s always in danger of becoming a martyr. And the interviewer asked him, what should the church in the West be praying for you? And the man said, if death comes because of my faith, pray that I will not renounce my faith in Jesus. Pray that I will be faithful till the end.

(18:56 – 19:21)

Someone can only pray that if they have a profound understanding of their connection to Jesus Christ. And if they have a bigger picture than the here and the now. But you know, back to our land, where let’s be honest, the cost is not nearly that high.

(19:23 – 19:42)

And yet I think even here, we increasingly do need to have a bigger picture of our connection to Christ, even here. And I’m very aware that in a church like this, we will have a range of experiences of hostility. Some of us might have been very sheltered.

(19:44 – 20:23)

And some of us less so, in terms of suffering for our faith. Let me just add an important qualifier that I must say in this sermon, incidentally. This is about being mistreated because of your faith, and only because of your faith.

Look at verse 21, Jesus said, it’s because of my name. That’s the only reason that this kind of persecution comes. So this is not because I have poor character and people just don’t like me, because I’ve got bad character.

(20:25 – 20:54)

I remember years ago, speaking to a guy. He was going around church telling everybody that he was being persecuted at work for Jesus. And he was being a bold evangelist.

There was lots of maybe good things he was doing. But actually, as he described the manner in which he spoke to people, and the manner in which he did or didn’t do his job, I thought, actually, I think I would persecute him at work too, if I was there. And I’m a Christian as well.

(20:56 – 21:51)

Let’s be sure if hatred comes, it’s only because of our connection to Jesus. But of course, within that, there is a range to this. From the minor end of the register, the subtle dig, the little jab, to the higher end of the register, where maybe someone calls you or considers you to be a bigot for just holding to Christian views that are 2,000 years old and in the Bible.

Or when we’re socially ostracised and distanced, or even cut off from family or relationships because of our faith. Now, thankfully, this does not happen to everyone. There is a wide range of different experiences.

(21:53 – 22:19)

But in the worst scenarios, this can be emotionally devastating for people. Even if it’s a far cry from the physical suffering of our brothers and sisters elsewhere, it is no small matter to be shunned by, for example, your parents, or previously close friends. So in whatever form it takes, Jesus says, look to me.

(22:20 – 23:04)

And whatever it looks like, Jesus says, remember you’re connected to me. And bear in mind that that connection also means blessing as well as suffering. Notice at the end of verse 20, just before we leave this point, Jesus circles back to something positive.

He says, if they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. Of course, not everyone obeyed the teaching of Jesus. He preached and some people rejected, many people rejected him.

But the opposite was also true. I mean, these disciples are the very example of that. They had obeyed Jesus’ command to repent and believe.

(23:05 – 24:33)

And in the same way, these disciples would preach and many would obey their message in repentance and faith. This is basically, this verse is basically what happens in the book of Acts, right? These really ordinary men with no authority in themselves, because they’re connected to Jesus, are listened to and a church is born. So in this darkest section of farewell teaching, Jesus is giving a very balanced picture of union with Christ.

It will bring blessing, but it will also bring suffering. Now thirdly, third thing let’s press on that we need to bear in mind is know that the problem isn’t really with you. Know that the problem isn’t really with you.

It looks like the problem’s with you, but it’s not with you. So look at verse 21, they will treat you in this way because of my name. Jesus says, they’re only treating you badly because of the name you bear.

Their real problem is with me. And actually it’s even deeper than that. This is a bit like, you know, when the archaeologists dig and they find another layer and then they keep going and they find another layer.

(24:34 – 25:35)

Well, this is like that. The top layer is the disciple is hated. You go down a layer, it’s really Jesus they hate.

But if you dig even further down, there’s also someone else they hate. Verse 21, for they do not know the one who sent me. And verse 23, whoever hates me hates the father as well.

And verse 24, they have hated both me and my father. The disciple is hated. Underneath that is hatred of Jesus.

But underneath the hatred of Jesus is the fact that his father who sent him is the one being despised. That is the underlying root problem. On the surface, it looks like Christians being bullied, but the ultimate problem that the persecutor has is with God himself.

(25:38 – 25:56)

And just note this, when we hear this, we might think that this is just speaking of people who kind of obviously reject God. That’s maybe how we hear this in a kind of Western secular culture. We might be thinking of, for instance, people who are atheists and just outright reject God.

(25:56 – 26:42)

It may include them, but actually in the original context, what’s the shocking thing is that most of the early persecutors of Christians were highly religious. They thought they knew God. We’ll see this when Jesus is put to death.

It’s a religious court who condemns him. People who thought they were doing God a favour by killing Jesus. You see, the real test of whether someone knows God or not, hates God or doesn’t, is their attitude towards Jesus, the one the Father has sent into the world.

(26:44 – 27:41)

Do we accept Jesus for who he claimed to be, the Messiah or the Son of God? Or do we say, I’m not so sure? Or I think that’s nonsense. This passage is saying that if we say that latter thing about Jesus, that ultimately, that’s an antipathy towards Jesus. And ultimately, it’s an antipathy towards the Father himself.

At the deepest heart level, we actually oppose the God who made us. And notice this, that this is despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I think verse 22, which looks like a tricky verse, is explained when we think of this as kind of a mountain of evidence that’s being rejected.

(27:42 – 29:09)

Jesus had given this mountain of evidence to the people of his day, which they still rejected. Jesus says, if I hadn’t come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, Jesus isn’t saying that if he never came into the world, these people would be objectively sinless or guiltless.

His point is that he had come, he had spoken God’s words to them. He had shown them the miracles that demonstrate that he was God. And yet these folks still rejected Jesus.

And so they were guilty of the sin of denying a mountain of evidence that pointed to Jesus as Messiah. If anyone had no excuse to reject Jesus, it was them. And the fact they hadn’t accepted Jesus revealed their underlying attitude to him and their underlying attitude to God.

And so speaking from this perspective of the Christian, when people mistreat you for your faith, you need to see that there’s a deeper thing going on in their hearts. There’s a deeper layer to the problem. The problem is not with you.

The problem is with God himself. And you’re just the public face of that. And that’s why you’re on the receiving end of it.

(29:11 – 31:00)

Knowing that can make it just a little easier to bear, I think. So that’s the third thing to understand. Number one, Jesus was hated first.

Number two, your connection to Jesus makes hatred inevitable. Number three, the problem’s not really with you. And number four, God remains in control when you’re hated without reason.

God remains in control when you’re hated for no reason. Now, I’m seeing the God in control bits in the fact that Jesus quotes from a psalm in verse 25. And he says, this psalm is fulfilled.

See that in verse 25? Jesus is probably quoting from Psalm 69 here, which is a psalm of King David. And David speaks in that psalm of being hated for no reason. Now, Jesus, a thousand years later, is quoting the same psalm.

And he says, God’s word is being fulfilled. Or as he puts it, the law is being fulfilled in what is happening to me. In other words, Jesus is saying that David’s actual experience was also prophetic.

It also pointed forward to Jesus, David’s descendant. Yes, this did speak of David, but it ultimately pointed forward in a greater way to how Jesus would be treated, hated without reason. Jesus, the only man who lived with absolute integrity, hated without reason.

(31:02 – 32:24)

If God spares us till after Christmas, we will see in the trial of Jesus that there was no good reason why he was condemned. And yet, that very hatred fulfilled the promise of Scripture. Somehow, that awful and baseless hatred was part of God’s bigger plan to save the world.

Because that hatred led to Jesus going to the cross, where he died as a substitute for people who don’t love God as they should. People who like me. God had a bigger plan.

He was in sovereign control, even over this baseless attack on Jesus. And actually, this is comforting for us, I think, on a secondary level. Because while this was most true of Jesus, it was also true of David.

It was his experience as a believer. And it’s often true of our experience as Jesus’ people. I think one of the hardest parts of that negative experience of being hated at some level for our faith is seeing that there’s no good reason that someone’s treating us that way.

(32:26 – 33:12)

There’s nothing in our behaviour, there’s nothing in what we’re saying or doing that deserves it. Sure, we can see divine reasons and deeper reasons, whether it’s our connection to God or his greater purposes. We can know all of that’s true.

But it’s still really hard at a human level to be hated for no good reason. Maybe you’ve been through stuff like that. Maybe you’re going through stuff like that.

Or maybe you’re the spouse of someone that’s experiencing that. Or the friend of the most gracious Christian, and they’re being treated like rubbish just because of their faith. It’s an absolutely rubbish feeling.

(33:13 – 34:50)

But we need to understand that Jesus knows it too well. He was hated without a cause, and yet he was comforted by the fact that God was still in control. God was even fulfilling his promises in that very hatred.

Now, of course, none of this is a magic pill. Knowing this will not make our experience of hostility easy, but it might make it just a little less difficult. It might just make all the difference to help us keep going as a Christian and to keep afloat in the water.

But as we come to the end, as we focus so much on, I suppose, on the angle of being on the receiving end of being hated for Jesus, I think it would be remiss to finish without asking, but what about from the other side of things? And maybe just finishing with the question, is there then any hope for haters of Jesus? And not just the really blatant examples of haters, but as we’ve been thinking in this passage, actually hatred comes in all sorts of forms. It’s not just somebody that’s obviously hostile. And maybe as we’re sitting here this morning, we’re realising, well, if the category for hatred is someone who doesn’t give their full allegiance to Jesus, then maybe I am in that category.

(34:51 – 35:40)

Well, is there any hope for people in that position? There is a famous example in the life of a man named Saul. Maybe you’ve heard this story, I don’t know. But Saul was living at the time of Jesus.

He was a very religious person. He was a Jewish man. And, Saul didn’t think that Jesus was the Messiah.

He didn’t think that he was the son of God. And because he hated Jesus, he therefore hated the people of Jesus. And Saul goes in this campaign to literally lead the persecution of the Christian church, going from town to town and city to city, arresting people and even supervising their deaths.

(35:42 – 36:50)

And one day Saul, more famously known as Paul, was travelling to a city called Damascus and Jesus appeared to him. And Jesus said to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It wasn’t really the church that Saul was persecuting. It was ultimately Jesus himself that he had the issue with.

And at that wonderful moment, Saul’s eyes were opened and he saw Jesus for the first time as he really is, as the son of God, as the Lord of glory, and as his personal saviour. The persecutor became a believer and the hater became a lover of Christ. And eventually, it’s a very long story and I will not give you the whole of Paul’s life, but eventually he lays down his life for Jesus.

(36:54 – 37:16)

And so if we’re here this morning and we have the realisation that Saul had, Paul had, that we’ve seen Jesus totally wrong, there is grace available to us today. There can be a Damascus road moment for us today. And that’s how it needs to be for some people.

(37:16 – 37:52)

I mean, for some folk it’s a gradual thing coming to faith, but for some of us, we think of Jesus one way and we need that dramatic moment of revelation to say, “Ah!, this is who Jesus really is”. And what position do we find ourselves this morning? The Bible says, you either belong to Jesus as his friend, or you’re still an enemy of Jesus. The wonderful news of the gospel is that enemies can become friends and haters can become family.

(37:53 – 38:12)

May that be each of our experience as we respond to this message today. Just a moment of quiet. Father, help us to respond to your word to us today.

(38:13 – 38:38)

Help us to see who Jesus really is. Help us to not only trust in him, but then to bear his name, whatever the cost may be. Help us to fix our eyes on Jesus today.

And as we go into another week of living for him, we ask this in his name. Amen.

The post What to do when the world hates you – John 15v18–27 appeared first on Greenview Church.

We’re turning now to our series in the Holy Spirit. We’ve been looking at that over the last few weeks. It’s going to be a bit like a Bible study tonight, because as we do something topical, we’re going to go to different passages.

The verses will be on the screen, but just by way of setting the scene, and it’s always good just to take a bit of God’s word at the beginning of a message like this. Let’s turn to Acts chapter one, and if you do have a Bible, you can read with me in Acts chapter one. I’m just going to read from verses one to eight.

(0:38 – 1:06)

In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of 40 days and spoke about the kingdom of God.

(1:06 – 2:37)

On one occasion while he was eating with them, he gave them this command, do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptised with water, but in a few days you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit. They gathered round him and asked him, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, it is not for you to know the times or dates the father has set by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes and a cloud hid him from their sight. God bless to us the reading of his inspired words. Well, as we’ve said over the last few Sundays, we’ve been thinking about the person and the work of God, the Holy Spirit.

Colin introduced us to the subject, the divinity and the personal nature of the Holy Spirit. And last week, David showed us how Jesus, the perfect human, was utterly bound into and dependent upon the Holy Spirit. And this week we’re coming to the Holy Spirit’s work in forming and empowering the church.

(2:38 – 3:58)

And by church, because it’s good to get our definitions straight, we mean the family of God, the gathering of those who are trusting Jesus as their Saviour and their Lord, the community of people who are united in Christ, Christians, both in its universal sense of Christians in all times, in all places throughout history, and in its local sense, as Greenview would be one of those expressions. The church which began publicly and formally 10 days after Jesus ascended into heaven, where we’ve just read in Acts chapter 1 on the day of Pentecost, and the particular event, of course, that lifted the curtain on the church age in which we live was the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the lives of those first followers of Jesus. The new age of the Holy Spirit being given, not just to kings and to priests and to prophets, not just on a temporary basis for certain purposes at certain times, but something that would be given to every believer, something that had been promised and foretold in the Old Testament, indeed was going to be the sign of the New Testament.

(3:58 – 7:37)

And when we talk about testament, that’s just another word for covenant, or we might say agreement. In one sense, the New Testament is the new agreement or the new arrangement that was going to come with the coming of Jesus, the time when every one of God’s people would be indwelt by God personally. Jeremiah put it like this.

The verses will be on the screen. Chapter 31, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord.

I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbour or say to one another, know, the Lord, because they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.

Ezekiel describes it like this. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

And I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. And then most famously, Joel, in the second chapter of Joel, which was quoted then in the day of Pentecost itself, the prophet Joel, and repeated by Peter, the apostle, said this. This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel.

In the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions.

Your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days and they will prophesy. And then later on in that same sermon, Peter says, repent and be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

This is an amazing step change. Very easy for us as New Testament Christians to take this for granted. This announcement, this reality that fallen humans, with all our sin, with all our uncleanness, and we know our own hearts, we know the thoughts that can pass through our minds, we know our past and our dark secrets, that people like us can now be inhabited by God Himself.

Every Christian, a little temple with God inside. And no exceptions. From the least to the greatest person, humanly speaking, we can all be personally and directly connected to God.

No more of those Old Testament barriers. No more of the big keep out signs in the temple. No having to trek back and forth to priests in order to relate to God properly.

But access to God whoever and wherever I am. Because as Jeremiah put it, they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. And of course, this church age, this giving of the Holy Spirit, only happens after the cross and the resurrection and the ascension, because it’s only possible because of Jesus.

(7:38 – 9:23)

Because He is the one who took away all those barriers. One who took away our sin, who clothes us in perfection, who sits us at God’s own table, restored to your heavenly Father. And Pentecost, the coming of the Spirit that day and upon the lives of every Christian since, is the evidence of that reality.

That Jesus has done that work. That sin has been dealt with. That guilt has been taken away.

That in Jesus we are now new creations. And in pouring out the Holy Spirit on Christians, on those members of the church, I guess there are three wonders that are at work in the lives of Christians. The first wonder, as we’ve said, is that every Christian is directly connected to God and indwelt by God.

Secondly, Christians are unified, because we are held and bound together by the same Holy Spirit. It’s good to remember that, isn’t it? As we look at each other, the same Holy Spirit that is in me, is in you, and is in every other person. We’re not in a competition.

And thirdly, as well as being connected and unified, Christians are empowered. Empowered and enabled to become more like Jesus. Empowered and enabled to be used by God to serve and to evangelise with spiritual effects.

(9:25 – 10:24)

And it’s that last point that we’re going to focus on tonight. The way in which the Holy Spirit empowers Christians to serve and to bless others. I noted this great wonder at Pentecost, and indeed the great miracle and blessing of the church age, is that every person who becomes a Christian becomes a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.

So to be a Christian is by definition to be inhabited by God, the Holy Spirit. Paul couldn’t be clearer. Again, the verse is on the screen.

Romans chapter 8, if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. Good to remember that. Sometimes being at gatherings of Christians or seeing gatherings of Christians where almost the service begins with a summoning of the Holy Spirit.

(10:25 – 13:56)

Come down, Holy Spirit. Come upon us, Holy Spirit. Well, if there’s Christians there, be assured the Holy Spirit is already very truly present.

And so in one sense, we could define the church as the gathering of all those who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, because that’s what it means to be a Christian. Theologians sometimes call this universal outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the democratisation of the Spirit. This is what happens in the New Testament.

No longer are there any hierarchies or special categories of people, but everybody is included. And one of the ways that that would be evidenced according to Joel and according to Peter was that ordinary believers would experience what had previously just been the preserve of a few. So you notice in Acts 2, when we read those verses from Pentecost, that it speaks, and Peter speaks, and Joel prophesies of all types of people, young, old, male, female, servants, having dreams and visions and prophesying.

Now I don’t think that means that Joel or Peter was telling us that every person would have those exact type of experiences, but it’s a picture of the democratisation of the Spirit. Rather like me, I guess. Imagine somebody had left some astronomical sum of money to the members of Greenview, and next month we were due to get our share of this huge inheritance.

And I would be standing here and saying, folks, this time next week, we’re all going to be driving Rolls Royces. I don’t mean literally everybody’s going to go out and buy a Rolls Royce. It’s figurative, isn’t it? We’re all going to have a share in this great wealth.

And by talking about visions and prophecy, Peter and Joel are saying everybody’s going to have a share in this outpouring of the Holy Spirit. So nevertheless, while I don’t think he’s saying we will all see or experience visions or prophecy personally, the Bible nonetheless tells us that every Christian will receive a manifestation of the Spirit in some form. 1 Corinthians chapter 12, again, it will be on the screen.

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone, it is the same God at work.

Now to each one, the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one that is given through the Spirit, a message of wisdom. To another, a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit.

To another, faith by the same Spirit. To another, gifts of healing by that one Spirit. To another, miraculous powers.

To another, prophecy. To another, distinguishing between Spirits. To another, speaking in different kinds of tongues.

And still to another, the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of the one and the same Spirit, and He distributes them to each one just as He determines. To each one, a manifestation or the manifestation of the Spirit is given.

(13:57 – 15:07)

And in the context there, that manifestation is clearly Paul talking about receiving spiritual gifts, Holy Spirit-given gifts. Verse 4, that is abilities given and empowered by the Holy Spirit for the blessing of others. And note, of course, in that passage that whatever those gifts are, there is no one who’s not going to receive something.

Note the language there of everyone and to each one. And the New Testament gives us a number of lists of those type of gifts, those type of manifestations. Again, there’ll be a little table on the screen coming up, just a little summary table of some of the main passages there.

You can see in Romans 12, there’s kind of two lists in 1 Corinthians 12. There’s one at the end of the chapter as well. There’s a list of gifts, offices that have been given in Ephesians chapter 4, and then there’s a little summary which we’ll come back to in 1 Peter chapter 4. So you can see immediately just by looking at that, that there’s quite a variety of things there.

(15:08 – 16:25)

Some of them seem to be skills. Some seem to be particular kind of roles or responsibilities. Some seem to be miraculous powers.

There’s other parts of the New Testament where gifts are almost seen as kind of life situations. For example, in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul talks about celibacy as being a type of gift. And you’ll also see that some of those things seem to be quite ordinary or common, like teaching or hospitality, whereas some of them seem to be quite extraordinary and rare.

Miracles, we might add in speaking in tongues. And that’s something which has caused Christians over the centuries to divide around these gifts. Around the question are all these different types of gifts still in operation? And the two sides have kind of divided around that subject are known as the cessationists and the continuationists.

Cessationists say, no, they’re not all in effect or operational anymore, where continuationists say, yes, they are all operational even up to the present time. The people who say no, the cessationists argue that such gifts are no longer really needed in the church. They were just for the apostolic periods.

(16:25 – 24:41)

They were a bit like kind of booster rockets on a spaceship for liftoff. But now the church is in orbit. They’ve kind of fallen away and it’s able to kind of propel itself without that extra kind of energy.

And they argue that the gifts faded away in the early church. They see perfection, the perfection that will come at the end of chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians, where Paul talks about when the perfect comes, all these gifts will fade away. They see the perfect as being the New Testament, you know, the Bible being completed.

And that’s all we need going forward. That’s the perfect rather than the perfect being, the coming of Jesus himself. Others, on the continuationist side, cards on the table, including myself, don’t find those arguments overly convincing.

They don’t see, however cautious they might be about claiming such gifts or citing examples of them, a really strong biblical case for saying that there is no possibility that these gifts could be in operation today. So take miraculous healing, for example. I think all Christians still believe that God can heal.

We pray for exactly that at most prayer meetings for certain people. And we know of amazing stories of people who have come back from really hopeless looking health situations. But of course, we don’t presume that God will just heal.

Even in the New Testament, those who clearly had a gift of healing, people like Paul and Peter, couldn’t just do it automatically. Paul had bad eyesight. He left trophimus ill in Miletus.

He tells Timothy to take some first century meds for his stomach problem. So could God do a miraculous healing through someone today? Yes, I personally believe so, but I wouldn’t expect that to happen often. There’s also some gifts in those lists that sound quite super spiritual at first glance, but may actually be a bit more commonplace than we sometimes think.

Take the gifts of knowledge or wisdom or revelation. Often those can sound and be presented as quite mystical things, which is not to say that on occasions they wouldn’t involve some remarkable insights. But I wonder often if those are just ways of describing slightly more commonplace and less dramatic experiences.

I had a call with a Christian brother just in the last couple of weeks, and talking various things, and he had come to faith in a very strongly charismatic church, had been in a very strongly charismatic church for about the first 10 years of his Christian life, but now he was in quite a conservative evangelical church. And we were talking a little bit about the strengths and weaknesses of those churches and his experiences, and while he valued greatly a lot of the strengths of conservative evangelical churches, I guess like Greenview, one of the things he said frustrated him a little bit was there was very little openness to sharing what he described as a prophetic word, giving somebody a kind of word from the Lord. And I said to him, I wonder if that’s sometimes just an issue about vocabulary, that in both those types of churches people often have the same kind of experience essentially, but they’ll express it in slightly different ways.

So we would tend to say things like, the Lord has laid this on my heart, maybe I could share this with you, or I was praying about this and I just felt quite strongly maybe this is something to think about, whereas our charismatic brothers and sisters are maybe more likely just to say God spoke to me, or I’ve got a message from the Lord for you and go a bit more route one. The conservative Christian, I guess, has put a bit of a safety valve on what they’re thinking and feeling, a recognition that they might be fallible, or they are fallible, and they could be wrong, that’s good. But equally, maybe we can at times so blunt the axe that the cut through of those things is a bit lost.

We were talking about this at our community group on Thursday night, occasions where you feel prompted to do something, or to help, or to say something, and then you kind of quash it, and it kind of slides away. I’m going over to Belfast tomorrow, and I’m meeting a pastor that I spoke to again fairly recently, and he described an experience quite recently, he’d a church very much like this in many ways, where at the end of the service he felt very strongly he should say, there’s somebody here who needs to speak to me, if that’s you, don’t go without doing that. And he said, but he’s not really given to that kind of thing, and he usually just brushes it off and ends up saying something like, I’m available to chat if anybody wants to speak to me at the end.

But it was quite a strong feeling, so he said this, he said, there’s somebody here who needs to speak to me, don’t go if that’s you. And he walked to the back of the church to the door to shake people’s hands, and a man immediately walked up to him and said, I guess I’m the guy that needs to speak to you. Well, long story short, he led him to the Lord.

But how might the Holy Spirit’s gifts be manifest in Christians perhaps in more ordinary and common ways? We’ve noted those gifts like having a teaching ability, being able to meet a particular practical need, perhaps being the person who does have a bit of insight and wisdom when discussions are taking place, and hospitality and sharing your faith. And of course, one of the questions that comes up with that is, well, aren’t those just natural abilities? I mean, after all, non-Christians can do those kind of things or show those kind of attributes at times. In what way are those type of things, especially spiritual or Holy Spirit-given? Well, I think the first thing to say is, yeah, there is a common grace element in many of the gifts, might even say that in all of the gifts to some extent, in that they originate in simply being people who are made in the image of God.

They are hallmarks of our divine making. But in Christians, that is people who have been reconnected to God and are now indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Those things are remade, can be re-empowered, rededicated, repurposed for spiritual outcomes.

Wayne Grudem, the theologian, puts it like this, and the quote will be on the screen, a spiritual gift is any ability that is empowered by the Holy Spirit and is used in any ministry of the church. He’s going to say this broad definition includes both gifts that are related to natural abilities and gifts that seem to be more miraculous. And I guess the key features that turn ordinary activities into spiritual ones are that they are empowered by the Holy Spirit and they are given for the common good.

As we read in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, they are given in order to build others up. Because remember, even the miraculous gifts can be faked or misused, maybe through even demonic activity. There’s other religions that have a practise of tongue speaking.

So even those things could be deceptive, but where they are empowered by the Spirit and for the common good of Christians, they become spiritual gifts. So teaching is no longer just communicating data, but it is communicating life-changing truths about God. Hospitality isn’t just food or friendliness, but it is putting the arms of God around somebody.

(24:42 – 25:11)

Processing PVG forms, fixing a radiator, no longer just chores, however cheerfully they are done, but they are guarding and caring for precious souls. You see, that’s the difference between the manifestations of the Holy Spirit among us and just doing stuff. And remember, as we look at these gifts, the value of the gift is not in its kind of high status or its wow factor.

(25:12 – 26:45)

In fact, Paul is very clear that some of the gifts that on the face of it look about eye-catching and quite impressive. We could think of something like tongues, for example, very clear that if we’re not careful, those very things can be of quite low value or even occasioned almost no value when it comes to actually building others up. If we had a time, we could start to look at the individual gifts in more detail.

Maybe that’s one for the podcast. But I think it’s not unhelpful just in the short time that we’ve had just to stick with this big point. And indeed, I think it’s Peter who sums up very nicely in chapter four of his letter.

He says, each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as the one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things, God may be praised through Jesus Christ, to Him be the glory and the power forever and ever.

Amen. See, Peter’s very helpful there. I think he kind of categorises all the gifts probably into the two main categories that are speaking gifts and serving gifts.

(26:46 – 27:18)

But his point is, whatever gift you have, whether it’s the ability to cook a meal, to paint a door, to make a spreadsheet, to prepare a Bible lesson, to organise a kids club, to play an instrument, to grit an icy path, to write a health and safety policy, just the gift of being able to listen. That’s a rare gift, being able to listen to somebody and to pray with them. I mean, that’s worth a hundred hours of tongues if you can do that.

(27:19 – 29:36)

Whatever gift you have, and everybody has at least one, do it for the good and the blessing of others as the Holy Spirit enables you, so that, as he puts it at the end of 1 Peter, so that in all things, God may be praised through Jesus Christ, to Him be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen. Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We thank you that the risen Jesus, as he ascended into heaven, fulfilled that great promise that he would send another advocate, a comforter, and a counsellor, one who would come upon us, who would indwell us, who would connect us directly into your very presence, to the very throne room of God. That as children of God, we have the Holy Spirit within us, and that we know you, our Father, for ourselves.

And Father, thank you for all the ways in which the Holy Spirit works in us, empowering us and enabling us. Thank you for the manifestations of the Spirit that we experience here in Greenview and in our lives day by day, for the multitude of ways in which those gifts, those acts of service, those words spoken, bless and build up and care for the family of God that are for the common good. So Father, we thank you for this great inheritance and this great gift.

Father, we pray that we will use our gifts in that way to bless each other, to build each other up, to be appraised to your name, that this place might be strengthened and bear witness to Jesus more brightly day by day. Father, thank you for all that you teach us from your words, and we commit it to our hearts now that the Spirit himself will continue to strengthen to lead us for your glory. Amen.

The post The Spirit and the Church – Acts 1v1–8 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Exciting moment in the life of any parent when their children are old enough to leave at home. Now, this is not the debacle of the Home Alone movies, but that time when they can be safely left to fend for themselves. And when that happens, before it happens, something happens that you could call ‘The talk’.

(0:31 – 0:46)

Now, those of you who are parents, or children who are old enough, know what ‘The talk’ is. ‘The talk’ is the set of instructions that you must follow in our absence. Remember to lock the front door.

(0:48 – 1:02)

Remember to turn off the hob. Please don’t fight and kill each other, et cetera, et cetera. Now, what’s interesting is that those children live at home all the time.

(1:03 – 1:16)

But when their parents are absent, it’s a whole new world. It’s a different environment completely. And so reminders and instructions are needed.

(1:17 – 1:49)

And as we return to John’s gospel this morning, I hope you can see a parallel, because we’ve reached a point in the story when Jesus is leaving. Jesus is leaving his disciples, who intriguingly, he actually calls his children in chapter 13. You see, during his earthly ministry, Jesus has acted like a spiritual father to these men.

(1:49 – 2:12)

But now Jesus is leaving for an unknown period of time, and his disciples are disorientated. And so in chapter 14 to 16, Jesus gives his own version of ‘The talk’. It’s full of reminders.

(2:13 – 2:29)

It’s rife with reassurances. And it’s packed full of instructions for what they are to do in his absence. Now, I think chapter 14 really majors on some reassurances.

(2:30 – 2:51)

But now as we come into chapter 15, Jesus really digs into some practical instructions. He gets into the nitty gritty of how these disciples are to live in his absence. And he gives them, essentially, a picture of the Christian life.

(2:51 – 3:24)

He shows them what it looks like, and he tells them how it is possible. So whether you’re a long-term follower of Jesus, or a new disciple, or whether you’re a curious explorer, this will show you the pattern of Christian living, but it will also show you the secret to how the Christian life is possible. The pattern, but also the power, the secret of what makes it possible.

(3:25 – 3:38)

So I’ve got three points this morning, if you’ve got your Bible still open. The first of them is that connection to Jesus is the key. Connection to Jesus is the key.

(3:39 – 4:03)

If you are a visual learner, you will probably like John 15, because while it contains instructions, it begins with, and it’s dominated by, an illustration, a picture for you to look at. It’s a simple illustration, but a really profound one. It’s an illustration of a vine.

(4:04 – 4:29)

A single vine which has branches, and next to the vine is the gardener who cultivates it. But what does the picture mean? And what do these different images represent? Well, Jesus, very helpfully, and I’m thankful for this, explains it to us. So let’s just get a sense of what the picture means.

(4:29 – 5:02)

First of all, Jesus in this picture is the vine. In fact, not only the vine, He is, you’ll notice verse one, the true vine, which I guess implies that somewhere or other, there must be a fake vine, an inauthentic vine if He is the true vine. And sure enough, when we look back into the Old Testament, we don’t have to search very far for this vine.

(5:02 – 5:30)

In the first part of the Bible, God’s chosen people, Israel, are frequently depicted as the vine. Israel were meant to be a fruit-bearing people, a nation who would showcase God’s character to the world, a people who would bear the good fruit of love and obedience to God. That was the idea.

(5:31 – 5:57)

But it was a far cry from the reality. And so in passages like Isaiah two, Isaiah five, rather, and Jeremiah two, you’ll see that Israel is described in those passage as a vine that is corrupt and which bears bad fruits. So all of that’s in the background here.

(5:57 – 6:25)

By wonderful contrast, Jesus arrives in history as God’s true and flourishing vine. As the sinless Son of God, He bears the good fruit of the Spirit. Jesus shows God’s character perfectly to the world, and He glorifies the Father in the world as Israel were meant to do.

(6:27 – 6:43)

And notice that it is the Father who is also involved in this passage. It’s very easy, isn’t it, to see Jesus in this text, but actually the Father is everywhere in this passage. Notice secondly that the Father is the gardener.

(6:44 – 6:58)

Six times in 17 verses, the Father is mentioned. The Father is the gardener, verse one. He is the one who cultivates the fruit on the vine.

(6:59 – 7:24)

When it comes to the Christian life, the Father is overseeing the whole fruit-bearing enterprise. The Father is tending to the branches and cultivating them. And what are these branches? What do the branches in the imagery represent? Well, take a look at verse five.

(7:25 – 7:50)

I am the vine, and Jesus says to His disciples, you are the branches. So Jesus is the life-giving source, but like the branches, His disciples are connected to Him and they receive life from Him. That’s what a Christian is.

(7:51 – 8:19)

A Christian is someone who is connected to Jesus in a life-giving way. Though Jesus is presently in heaven, a Christian is spiritually connected to Jesus by faith and through the Holy Spirit. In Christian doctrine, this is often called the doctrine of our union with Christ.

(8:20 – 9:14)

It’s the idea of our spiritual connection or a union with Jesus through which all the blessings of His person and work flow into my life and become mine. And it’s a great thing to be reminded of if you’re a disciple of Jesus. That even on my worst days, even when my circumstances are dismal and my own performance as a Christian is disappointing, it seems. Regardless of my sense of God’s presence or not, I have a promise of unbroken connection to Jesus, which means I am spiritually alive, eternally secure, and presently equipped.

(9:17 – 9:35)

It’s a connection which if I didn’t have, if you broke the connection, it would be devastating. I would be like the sawn-off branch of a tree that is dead and fruitless. Jesus warns of that possible alternative.

(9:36 – 10:02)

Notice that in verse five, if someone is not connected to Christ, their future is death, destruction, being withered, and burned. Even though this passage has fundamentally a positive picture, it also includes a stark warning. Because if you’re connected to Jesus, it’s eternal life.

(10:02 – 10:22)

But if you’re not connected to Jesus, it’s spiritual death. That’s why being a Christian and being sure you are a Christian is such a big deal. It’s not just a preference or a lifestyle choice.

(10:22 – 10:51)

It’s the difference is, Jesus, between spiritual life and spiritual death. And therefore, the utterly important question is, how does someone hook into Jesus? How do they connect with Christ? And Jesus gives us the answer, doesn’t he? Look at verse three. It might seem like a surprising answer to many of us.

(10:53 – 11:17)

Jesus says, you are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Think of what Jesus doesn’t say here. He doesn’t say, you’re already spiritually clean because you come to church, or because you’re connected to a Christian family, or because you’ve done some religious stuff.

(11:20 – 11:57)

He says, you’re already clean from your mucky, unclean soul because of the words I have spoken to you. It might sound an odd thing to say, but people become Christians by a certain kind of listening. Not by doing, not by hearing and rejecting, but by listening to Jesus’ words about who he is and why he came and saying, yes, that sounds about right to me.

(11:59 – 12:10)

Jesus is the Son of God. And I am in need of God’s cleansing and forgiveness. I believe Jesus died on the cross for my sins.

(12:11 – 12:28)

I believe these things I’m hearing. And the wonderful result of that is that Jesus cleansed me and he connects me to himself. What makes you a Christian is a certain kind of believing listening.

(12:32 – 13:11)

And that begs the question, if you’re sitting in church this morning or you’re watching this online, have you listened? Have you listened in a way that has cleansed you and connected you to Jesus? If you’re in any way unsure about that, but you’re interested in doing that, then speak to someone that you came with today, with a Christian friend or family member, and ask them how you can connect with Jesus through faith. And they’ll try and help you with that. It begins here.

(13:13 – 13:29)

And everything else flows from this and grows from this. And that brings us to our second point today. So the second point is that if we’re connected to the vine, fruit bearing is inevitable.

(13:29 – 13:50)

If we’re connected to the vine, fruit bearing is inevitable. Notice this in verse two, that there isn’t such a thing as a branch connected to Jesus that is fruitless. If there were such a branch, the gardener would cut it off.

(13:51 – 14:13)

In other words, what he’s saying is, there is no Christian disciple who is fruitless. Now, in some, the fruit will be more, and in others, the fruit may be less. But in all, the fruit will be abundant and noticeable.

(14:15 – 14:38)

And whatever the level of fruitfulness, the gardener is invested in seeing the fruit increase. Verse two, see that the branches are pruned by the gardener to make them even more fruitful. God does a sort of Alan Titchmarch, clipping and pruning the vine.

(14:40 – 15:10)

Now that looks and that feels really painful, but it bears more fruit in the long run. We’ll be coming fairly soon to the end of another year. And it’s been my, I would say experience without exception, that the years in my life that have been the most easy, the most pleasant, the most joyful, have also been the years that I’ve grown the least spiritually.

(15:12 – 15:48)

The best years, materially, relationally, and all of that stuff, has always been the worst years of growth spiritually. And the inverse has also been true as well, because it is through God’s painful pruning that we grow in faith and increase in obedience. It’s in those painful times of clipping that our idols are cut off the branch, and we’re left clinging to Christ all the more.

(15:50 – 16:08)

We live in a culture that avoids discomfort as if discomfort is a plague. The moment you feel uncomfortable, you need to get away from whatever that discomfort is. And yet one of the keys to Christian growth is actually discomfort.

(16:10 – 16:31)

This flies completely in the face of that. The worst stuff in your life is often the best stuff in your life for seeing you grow if you respond to it in the right way, which is also key. Now incidentally, there’s a lot of discussion here about what this fruit represents.

(16:32 – 16:59)

And maybe that’s been a mistake not to mention that so far. What is the fruit? What does that stand for? Jesus doesn’t give us a definition of the fruit as he does with the other things. And so people have wondered, is it the fruit of godly Christ-like character? Or others have said in the context of John, I think it’s the fruit of witness and evangelism and disciples seeing people coming to faith.

(17:00 – 17:32)

Well, Jesus says in verse five that the one who remains in him will bear much fruit. And so if it’s much fruit, I take it that we don’t need to narrow it or limit it to one particular area. There will be lots and lots of ways that a disciple will glorify the Father and show themself to be Jesus’ disciple.

(17:34 – 18:04)

And isn’t this massively encouraging? Not only do we have life in the vine, but we have the guarantee of much fruit because of that connection to Jesus. It’s not that there are some Christians over here who are a spiritually elite group who alone bear fruit for Jesus. No, Jesus says even the lowest disciple inevitably bears fruit.

(18:07 – 18:46)

I hear as I chat to fellow Christians, when we talk about how their life of faith is going, I hear all the time believers speaking about how rubbish they are and how garbage they are as a Christian. And I’m sure there’s lots of our lives that is a bit rubbish and garbage and failing as a believer. But what I hear very, very little of is people speaking of the fact that they are connected to Christ and therefore that there is good fruit in their life as well.

(18:47 – 19:03)

We’re so good at seeing the bad fruit. We’re absolutely rubbish at seeing the good fruit. That moment this week, when we did against the odds keep our self-control when we would often lose it.

(19:05 – 19:25)

That grace that we did show someone and it was hard to do it, it was difficult at first, it was a battle, but in the end we were gracious and we forgave them. I wonder if we notice that good fruit as well. It’s really encouraging stuff.

(19:25 – 19:45)

Fruit bearing is inevitable and yet that doesn’t mean we should be complacent because here’s our third and final point this morning. The fruit bearing is inevitable, but it is not automatic. It’s not automatic.

(19:47 – 20:14)

Did you know that it is just over four weeks till Christmas? And when you think about it, there is nothing more inevitable than Christmas. Whether you love it or you loathe it, it doesn’t really matter, it always comes. And yet there is no other periodic event that involves as much input, participation, and preparation as Christmas.

(20:15 – 20:38)

We buy presents, we put up decorations, we invite people over because while the event is inevitable, it is not automatic. And Jesus is clear that in the Christian life it is the same with fruit bearing. It absolutely will happen because you are connected to Christ.

(20:39 – 21:04)

But the speed at which it happens and the smoothness with which it happens depends on our participation. So this passage that is dominated with the picture of the vine and branches also has a number of instructions, things that we are to do to participate in the inevitable growth. So let’s look at these fairly briefly.

(21:04 – 21:19)

In verse four, we are to remain in Jesus. Other translations say abide in Jesus. It’s the idea of staying in the same place.

(21:20 – 21:36)

In this case, it’s remaining in the vine. And of course, that’s where the metaphor breaks down. An ordinary vine has no mind and no thinking and it doesn’t choose to stay connected to the vine, does it? But it’s a metaphor, of course.

(21:36 – 22:01)

Jesus is saying in our case, we have to choose every day to stick with Jesus and remain in Him. And this does not deny the complementary truth at all that God also keeps us connected to Him. But the Bible is also clear that from our side, we must actively stay connected to Jesus.

(22:02 – 22:21)

We are to keep trusting in Him. We are to, author of Hebrews says, fix our eyes on Him, the author at the beginning and the perfecter of our faith. Wherever you are between the beginning and the completion, you’re to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus.

(22:23 – 22:37)

We’re to keep doing this. Notice in the passage, if you count them up, that 10 times Jesus keeps saying, remain, remain, remain, remain, remain. Keep plugged in to Jesus.

(22:39 – 22:53)

Let me say it somewhat provocatively. What you did yesterday as a Christian doesn’t matter today. How faithful you were 10 years ago is irrelevant.

(22:54 – 23:23)

In your life today, in your home today, in your priorities and in your heart today, are you remaining in Jesus? Because it’s inevitable, yet not automatic. And so we need to remain and we also need verse seven to listen as well. Jesus’ word connected us to Him in the first place, but Jesus says, that was yesterday.

(23:24 – 23:46)

This is today. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, the Christian life is the privilege of listening to Jesus day by day. It’s the privilege of letting Jesus be the loudest voice in a world where everyone is talking.

(23:49 – 24:07)

When you open your Bible or study a passage or listen to a sermon, it’s actually a privilege. It’s not a heavy burden. It’s a privilege of listening to the one who is wise and good and who always knows what is best for us.

(24:08 – 24:28)

What a privilege to listen to that voice. It is the disciple who listens to Jesus the most, above their desires, above the voices of other people, that will bear the most fruit. And it’s also those who pray, verse seven.

(24:29 – 24:44)

And verse 16. And again, it’s striking how Jesus describes this, because again, this all seems very mundane to us if we’re Christians, Bible, listening to Jesus and prayer. But look at verse seven.

(24:45 – 24:55)

Prayer is actually the outcome of remaining in Jesus. It’s a privilege you get because you’re connected to Christ. And it’s also the result of having His word in our lives.

(24:55 – 25:12)

We get to speak back to the one who has spoken to us. And because of that, we ask the Father whatever we wish, and it will be done for us. And in verse 17, He says the same kind of extravagant thing.

(25:12 – 25:35)

So that whatever you ask in my name, the Father will give you. Of course, we want to immediately qualify that with the context of God’s word and the Father’s glory. And there’s truth in that, isn’t there? This is not authorising our most selfish requests in life.

(25:35 – 25:48)

It’s not doing that. And yet while the qualifier is true, let’s not dumb down what Jesus is actually saying. He’s talking up the privilege of prayer.

(25:48 – 26:17)

And He’s saying, you have the privilege of making requests to the one who runs the entire universe. I mean, if you had, I saw, did some of you see, I think it was Cristiano Ronaldo, he was meeting with Donald Trump, and there were these very bizarre, they almost looked like AI photos, but I think they were genuine of him in the Oval Office. Now, maybe you think that’s ridiculous, and you wouldn’t meet such a person.

(26:18 – 27:00)

But if you got the opportunity this week to meet the world’s most powerful man, whoever that person is, a person with extraordinary resources to actually change the world and do things, and if, in fact, you knew that you would have at least one request that they would answer and put into operation, would you miss the meeting? Would you turn up? I think you would be there. We often don’t see the privilege that prayer is. We talk about the problems of prayer and wrestling in prayer, and these are realities.

(27:00 – 27:10)

The Bible speaks of these things. These are legitimate things as well. But in talking about the challenges of prayer, let’s never talk prayer down.

(27:13 – 27:28)

Precisely the reason it’s so difficult is because it’s so important and so powerful and such a privilege. Of course the devil doesn’t want us to get to our times of prayer. It’s the most powerful thing that any of us are engaged in every day.

(27:28 – 27:48)

Prayer is the most underused opportunity in the life of every Christian. And so fruit-bearing is inevitable, but it is not automatic. We remain, we listen, we pray, and finally we obey.

(27:51 – 28:09)

And immediately that sounds like a really down note to finish on, except we obey by loving. See that in verse 12. Jesus’ command is to love each other as I have loved you.

(28:11 – 28:30)

Jesus in this passage is linking together the idea of obeying Him and loving Him. Verse 10, if you keep my commands, you will remain in my love. And Jesus has done the same Himself, just as I kept my Father’s commands and remain in His love.

(28:31 – 28:54)

Jesus is speaking of a relationship of love, but also a relationship that involves obedience to demonstrate that love. See, we can’t come to church and say, I really love Jesus. And then go into this week and see some command of Jesus and say, I really don’t like that bit of what you said, Jesus.

(28:56 – 29:22)

I don’t really like your ethical commands. I love you, but I just don’t like what you said over here about moral ethics, or something I would really like to do, or something that is gonna make my life a little more difficult because I believe it. I love you, but, no, if we love Jesus, we will not ignore what He says.

(29:24 – 29:41)

And while I guess that’s applied to lots of commands, it’s especially focused here on love. I guess in one sense, because love is so foundational to everything else. It was the church Father Augustine who said, love God and then do whatever you like.

(29:43 – 30:06)

Now, you can go home and think about that. What does that mean? If you love God, you can then do whatever you like, because that will actually set some guidelines to the way you love and live your life. So this is absolutely foundational, but notice this, that Jesus wants us to express our love for Him by loving each other.

(30:08 – 30:23)

And actually, that’s pretty surprising. He doesn’t say, remain in my love by loving me, although we should love Him. He says, the proof that you’re remaining in my love is that you will love one another.

(30:23 – 30:43)

Well, that’s not the easiest thing, is it? It’d be much easier if He just said, love me, because Jesus is perfectly lovable. Us, not so much, not consistently. But Jesus says, love me by loving each other.

(30:45 – 31:10)

And He knows this is hard, which is why to motivate us to do it, He takes us to the cross. Verse 13, greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Jesus speaks of His dying love that is costly and sacrificial for the disciples, whom He calls His friends.

(31:11 – 31:31)

This was a love that hurt Jesus, but He loved them anyway. Again, we live in a world that’s all about avoiding any kind of cost in our love. Apparently, our love is not meant to cost us anything or hurt us at any point or in any way.

(31:32 – 32:04)

I’m so glad Jesus didn’t take that attitude to us. Jesus laid His life down for us, sacrificially, so that we could be His friends, so that we could be included in His business, and so that we could be included in His confidence. Some of us might struggle to make friends and keep friends, but Jesus says in His amazing grace that we can be His friends.

(32:05 – 32:37)

How amazing is this? All Christians bear fruits because a fruitful Christian life is inevitable, but it’s not automatic. And therefore, it is those who love each other in the most sacrificial ways who bear the most fruit. And notice also that this fruit-bearing of obedient love leads to great joy, something we often don’t connect together, obedience and joy.

(32:37 – 32:51)

Look at verse 11. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. When Jesus asks us to do anything, it is always for our joy.

(32:52 – 33:27)

It’s always to make you happy, maybe not in the short run or immediately, but always in the long run. If we remain and listen and pray and obey, deep joy will be ours, completely flying in the face of the myth about the Christian life, which is that it’s joyless. Jesus says if we’re joyless, we’re not really living a committed Christian life because that joy will come through obedience.

(33:29 – 33:46)

But this life can’t even start unless we are first connected to Jesus. If it is, if we are, then the fruit will come. Let’s pray together.

(33:48 – 34:29)

And let’s take a moment to reflect on what God is saying to us. Do you need to connect with Jesus for the first time? Do you need to see more of the privilege you have to live the Christian life? Do you need to rededicate yourself to remain, to listen, to pray, to obey? Father, in these moments, speak clearly into our hearts. Connect us into the vine.

(34:30 – 34:42)

Fill our lives with fruit. Lord Jesus, only you can fill my deepest longing. Only you can breathe in me new life.

(34:43 – 35:00)

Only you can fill my heart with laughter. Only you can answer my heart’s cry. And so we come to you in faith this morning and it’s in your name we pray, amen.

The post The vine and the branches – John 15v1–17 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Well, good evening, everyone, and welcome to the second in our series on the whole Holy Spirit. We’re turning this evening in God’s Word to Luke’s Gospel, chapter 4. I’m going to read a relatively short passage from verse 14 through to 21. These seven verses will form the basis of our initial thinking, but we’ll also refer to them as we move through our study tonight.

(0:36 – 1:02)

Luke writes in chapter 4, verse 14 of his Gospel, Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom, and he stood up to read.

(1:05 – 1:37)

The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written, The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

(1:39 – 2:12)

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. This is God’s Word.

(2:16 – 3:22)

As we continue in our series on the Holy Spirit, we come this evening to the challenging topic of the Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus, and I wonder if even the nature of that topic as it lands on you tonight exposes a blind spot for many of us in how we think about the Holy Spirit. For we know that the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost. We know the Holy Spirit indwells the life of every believer, but why would Jesus, the eternal Son of God, perfect, sinless, fully divine, why would he need the Holy Spirit? And yet the Gospels repeatedly insist that Jesus’ whole life from conception to resurrection to ascension is Spirit-filled, Spirit-led, and Spirit-empowered.

(3:24 – 6:05)

You see, Jesus does not live his life on earth by occasional bursts of divine power plugging in when he needs to as though his battery is somehow discharged. He lives as the true man, the last Adam, humanity as humanity was meant to be, living completely, totally, and utterly dependent on the power of the Holy Spirit of God. And of the four Gospels, Luke especially wants us to see this.

Luke is a gospel saturated with the Holy Spirit. And the first hint of that comes in these very first public words that Jesus speaks at the beginning of his mission, his public ministry, as we often call it. We read that Luke enters the synagogue in Nazareth.

He is handed randomly, I don’t think so, but he’s handed at that time of the year that scroll from Isaiah 61. He finds the place in the scroll, and then he describes, he reads Isaiah’s description of the coming Messiah, because that’s what’s in Isaiah 61. It’s a description of Israel’s great hope, the hope of the nation, the one who would come to be their deliverer.

And he reads, he finds deliberately the passage that says, the Spirit of the Lord is on me. And then he ends the passage by saying, today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me.

Do you see? Right at the beginning of his ministry, he is acknowledging the presence of the Holy Spirit upon him in an exclusively messianic way. And everything Jesus does from this point forward is done in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. So tonight I want to look at three aspects of the Holy Spirit’s work in the life of Jesus.

(6:06 – 6:29)

Firstly, we’ll look at the Holy Spirit’s presence in Jesus’ formation. Strange word, but bear with me. The Holy Spirit’s presence in Jesus’ formation, the Holy Spirit’s power in Jesus’ mission, and the Holy Spirit’s purpose in Jesus’ passion.

(6:30 – 9:49)

So let’s look firstly then at the Holy Spirit’s presence in Jesus’ formation. And what we need to do here is to realise that the presence of Jesus in human flesh was not an accident. And our first word here is anticipation.

Because before Jesus was born, we know that the Old Testament is already preparing us for a Spirit-anointed Messiah. Isaiah, particularly through his great prophecy in the Old Testament, links the coming King, Israel’s hero rescuer, with the Holy Spirit and the presence of the Spirit. And unlike the prophets, priests, and kings in the Old Testament who received temporary anointings of the Spirit, will we call them, experiences of the Holy Spirit that they needed for a particular task at a particular time, this coming servant was going to be promised something far greater.

The prophets, the priests, and the kings who were empowered by the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament—and we’ll look at this in a future study on a Sunday evening as part of this series—they were all anxious that the Holy Spirit might be taken from them. In fact, the Holy Spirit was taken from Israel’s first king. Do you remember King Saul? The Holy Spirit departed from him.

And David, when he comes along after Saul as king—do you remember?—he makes a mess of his life morally, and he’s terrified when he realises the horror of what he’s done. In Psalm 51, you can read it there, he pleads with God, Do not take your Holy Spirit from me because of the mistakes and the sins that I have committed. But the true Messiah is promised something more than that.

In Isaiah 11-2, the prophecy comes about Messiah saying, The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord. This Spirit will rest on Messiah permanently. Not visit him, not empower him, but rest on him fully and perfectly.

And so God’s servant, the Messiah, will be the first permanently Spirit-filled man ever to walk on this earth. So that’s the anticipation of the formation of Jesus. But then we must think about the incarnation itself, because in the incarnation, that promise of this Spirit-filled man becomes a reality.

(9:50 – 11:14)

Again, we’re back in Luke chapter 1v35. If you’re following in your Bibles, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, the angel says to Mary. And the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

To what end? To conceive the Lord Jesus Christ in human form. The same Holy Spirit who hovered over the waters of creation now overshadows the waters in Mary’s womb. The incarnation is a new creation event.

The birth of Jesus is the literal embryo of a new creation. But Jesus, unlike Adam, enters the world already filled with the Holy Spirit. Already the Spirit-filled man, ready to succeed where Adam failed.

But the Holy Spirit wasn’t just present in the looking forward to the coming of Jesus, and he wasn’t just present and surrounding all the events of the incarnation itself. The Holy Spirit remains on Jesus as he grows up through childhood and as he matures. So our third word is maturation.

(11:16 – 11:55)

Luke again tells us—are you seeing the pattern in Luke, by the way? Luke again tells us in chapter 2 verse 40, the child Jesus grew strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the favour of God was upon him. Jesus didn’t bypass human development. The Holy Spirit taught him.

The Holy Spirit shaped him. The Holy Spirit sustained him. And again in Isaiah, do you see again the link? Luke, Isaiah, two big pillars here in our understanding of the work of the Spirit in the life of Messiah.

(11:55 – 14:01)

Isaiah 50 gives us a glimpse of Jesus in our life as he grows up. In verses 4 and 5 of chapter 50, Isaiah says these words, morning by morning, speaking about the messianic king, morning by morning, he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. Do you see? So as Jesus learns through his maturing as a child in those invisible years, here he is as the true spirit-filled human being, learning the Word, listening to his Father, obeying perfectly, not using his divine power like a cheat on a computer game, by the way.

He’s not accessing his divinity here when he needs it, at all the big moments. He is living every single second of his life as a perfect human being in total and constant dependence on the Holy Spirit. Every second.

Now, you may say, well, that’s great theology, David, and praise the Lord for that. What does that mean for me here on the south side of Glasgow on a cold November evening? Well, listen, the Spirit who formed Jesus in the womb of Mary is the same Spirit who forms the life of Christ in you. Jesus says in John 3 to Nicodemus, you’ll know this passage well, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.

(14:03 – 14:34)

And if you have been born of the Spirit of God, the life of Jesus lives in you. The Christian life, doesn’t it, begins with the creative work of the Holy Spirit? It begins with that creative work, but it continues by the sustaining power of the Spirit, and it’s completed one day through the resurrecting power of the Spirit. We’ll see that in a moment.

(14:35 – 14:49)

Do you see, your Christian growth is not mechanical. It’s not like a slot machine where you put some money in, you pull the lever, and you get some money out. That’s not how it works.

(14:50 – 16:35)

It’s relational. Think of this. What’s the difference between you and your non-Christian friends or neighbours or family members? You all look the same, you do the same things, you go to the same type of jobs, you have the same hobbies, you enjoy the same sports, you watch the same programmes.

What’s the difference? Well, every single time you respond to an impulse to pray, you ever had those? Or an impulse to read the Word of God, or to come here on a Sunday evening to hear His Word and be with God’s people. Every time you resist temptation, every time you serve someone with joy, the Holy Spirit’s at work in you. That’s the Holy Spirit right there.

Because your friends, neighbours, family, and others don’t have that prompt. It’s not there. It may look the same, they may look like they’re doing the same things as you are, but they’re not being prompted by the Holy Spirit the way you are.

Do you see? We own all these promptings, all of them, to the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and it’s such a tragedy that we don’t acknowledge that. There’s a hymn, an old hymn in the Believer’s Hymnbook. I must be getting old because I’m quoting hymns from the Believer’s Hymnbook nearly every time I’m preaching these days.

(16:36 – 17:23)

But I couldn’t not quote this one. You’ll see why. Number 436 it is, and it’s about the fourth verse I think.

It’s a hymn about the Holy Spirit. And here’s what it says, and these words are really powerful. Listen to this.

And every virtue we possess, and every victory won, and every thought of holiness are His alone. They’re His alone, the Holy Spirit’s. So be encouraged, friend, if you sometimes wonder if it doesn’t really feel very exciting in my life.

(17:23 – 17:42)

Do I really have the Holy Spirit? Every prompting, all these things that we’ve thought about, they’re evidence of His work in your life. Thank God for that. So the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ formation.

(17:43 – 18:07)

Let’s think now about the Holy Spirit’s power in Jesus’ mission. In Jesus’ public ministry, which we’ve read the beginning of here, we see the Spirit’s power in three key moments. Firstly, His baptism, then His temptation, and then His ministry.

(18:08 – 18:25)

Let’s think firstly then about His baptism. At His baptism, Jesus is publicly anointed by the Holy Spirit. Again, we’re in Luke chapter 3, just a chapter before where we read.

(18:27 – 19:16)

And down at verse 21, you’ll read these words. As Jesus was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on Him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came from heaven, You are my Son, whom I love. With you I am well pleased.

Here is Jesus’ public commissioning as Messiah. Messiah simply means the anointed one, the one on whom the Holy Spirit is poured out and dwells. The crowned king, because the kings in the Old Testament were anointed, even our king is anointed, and that’s where it comes from, that idea of the king being anointed.

(19:17 – 20:04)

But here the true king is not crowned with oil, but with the Holy Spirit Himself. And Jesus’ baptism is a coming together of two great Old Testament passages about Messiah. On the one hand, it’s Psalm 2, and on the other hand, it’s Isaiah 42.

In Psalm 2 and Isaiah 42, God makes two great declarations about Messiah, each of which make an appearance at the baptism of Jesus. In Psalm 2, God says, You are my Son, a great Messianic Psalm. You are my Son.

(20:04 – 22:41)

And in Isaiah 42, Jesus is described as God’s servant. My servant will come and I will put my Spirit on him. So the Son and the servant, Spirit anointed servant, come together here at Jesus’ baptism, do you see? The beloved Son of Psalm 2 is also the anointed servant king of Isaiah 42.

And He’s declared to be that, to fulfil all the Messianic expectations of the Old Testament. But look at what happens immediately after this anointing. Luke 4 verse 1, temptation.

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. There’s something significant going on here, isn’t there? We would naturally expect that the fully empowered, Spirit-filled man, the anointed king, would be straight out the traps and into the battle, taking on the enemy, the Romans, no less, and any other enemy. But notice, the Holy Spirit’s power doesn’t lead Jesus as Messiah to a public battle with the forces of Rome.

It leads Jesus to a private battle with the forces of darkness. And what the Holy Spirit is doing here, right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, because the text is clear, He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. So the Holy Spirit is directing the mission of Jesus and the nature of Jesus’ Messiahship right here.

And He’s telling us something significant. The nature of Jesus’ Messiahship is not going to be sociopolitical. It’s going to be a battle with the forces of darkness that are unseen.

Do you see? The nature of His Messiahship is spiritual. That’s the work of the Spirit in the life of Jesus, right at the beginning of His ministry. So here we have the anointed Messiah, full of the Holy Spirit, being led by the Spirit into the wilderness where He’s tempted for 40 days.

(22:42 – 23:20)

Now, two great contrasts here to notice. The first contrast is between Jesus and Adam. Adam was tempted and failed.

Jesus is tempted and triumphs. What made the difference? Well, Jesus, we know, trusted the Spirit-breathed Word of God in a way that Adam did not. Adam questioned the Word of God together with his wife Eve.

(23:22 – 24:38)

But three times Jesus answers Satan when he’s tempted, it is written, it is written, it is said. Who inspired those words? Who wrote them in the first place? Well, the Old Testament writers, but who inspired them? The Holy Spirit Himself. Peter tells us men and prophets were carried along by the Holy Spirit, and they wrote down God’s Word.

So Jesus takes the Spirit-breathed Word of God, and He uses it to overcome darkness and evil. That’s the nature of the battle. Jesus, the true Spirit-filled man, succeeding as the obedient Son, the dependent Son on the Word of God, where Adam failed.

So that’s Jesus versus Adam. But there’s another analogy, Jesus versus Israel. That’s the significance of the 40 days.

(24:40 – 25:48)

Israel was tested for 40 years in the wilderness, where every physical need they had was provided for, and yet they failed miserably. They failed to trust God, they grumbled, they doubted, they did not believe God, and because of that, not one of them, bar a couple, entered the promised land. In a very emotive phrase, we’re told in 1 Corinthians, their carcasses were spread across the wilderness.

Jesus is tested for 40 days, one day for every one of Israel’s years. And His only provision, because He had no food, and He didn’t grumble about it the way they did, His only provision was the Word of God. And He was fulfilling that messianic promise, that great desire in the Psalms, I have valued and esteemed your Word more than my necessary food.

(25:50 – 27:43)

I’m living on your Word, Lord. And He triumphs on the basis of that Word alone, do you see? Not on the basis of natural bread, or food, or resources, or anything of that nature. He defeats the evil one on the basis of the Word of God alone.

Here is the true spirit-filled Israel, Jesus as the true spirit-filled Israel, succeeding as the faithful servant of God, where the nation of Israel had failed, do you see? So we’ve looked at baptism, we’ve looked at temptation, what about the work of the Spirit in Jesus’ ministry? So Luke takes us on in 4v14, and he says that Jesus returns from the wilderness in the power of the Spirit, and He’s now ready to begin His ministry. And He does so by quoting that passage that we read earlier, this time it’s from, the passage is from Isaiah 61, as we saw earlier, the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me because He has anointed me, do you see? Jesus’ miracles weren’t just random displays of power overriding human weakness, He’s living as a man fully empowered by the Holy Spirit. In John 5, as we’ve seen in our studies in John, He says He can only do what He sees the Father doing.

How can He see what the Father’s doing? He sees what the Father’s doing through the eyes of the Spirit, the illumination of the Spirit. But not only does He see His ministry by the power of the Spirit, He discharges it and carries it out by the power of the Spirit. In Matthew 12v28, He tellingly says that He casts out demons by the Spirit of God.

(27:48 – 28:48)

So we mustn’t make the mistake of thinking that Jesus’ total dependence on the Holy Spirit in some way diminishes His deity. What it does is it rather defines His humanity, okay? So it doesn’t diminish His deity in any way, it doesn’t make Him any less God because He needed and depended on the power of the Holy Spirit. That doesn’t diminish His deity.

What it does is it defines His humanity as the perfect man. In Philippians 2v6-8, Paul tells us that He emptied Himself as He became a man. Jesus emptied Himself not by becoming less than God, but by becoming fully man, choosing to live in utter dependence on the Holy Spirit.

(28:49 – 30:25)

A man at last living on earth as God intended, at last. Now how does this impact on us? Well, the Holy Spirit who empowered Jesus is exactly the same Holy Spirit given to the church at Pentecost. In John 14, Jesus says, as we saw last week, I will send another advocate, another advocate of exactly the same kind as me.

And in Acts 1v8, we read again, recorded by Luke, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses. Our work, our mission is to be Holy Spirit dependent in exactly the same way as Jesus was. Isn’t there a danger sometimes, and I’m all in favour of doing everything decently and in order, those of you who know me well will know that, but isn’t there a danger that we may sometimes replace the Spirit’s power with human strategies and programmes and personalities and performance? Yet God’s work, when it is achieving anything, is always done in God’s way.

(30:28 – 32:37)

Remember that passage in Zechariah 4, where Zerubbabel was really struggling with the task of rebuilding the temple. And I’m sure in his head, he’s thinking, what other things can I do here? Who else can I get to help? Can we bring some other folk in? Can we use some unregenerate somewhere? Can we do this? Can we do that? Should we have some fundraising events or some such thing? And God speaks to him and tells him that the work he’s been called to do is not going to be done by might, and it’s not going to be done by human power. Do you remember the next bit? It’s going to be done by my Spirit, says the Lord.

God’s work is done by the power of God’s Spirit. So where do we hear the voice of the Holy Spirit guiding us in how to do God’s work? How does that happen? Well, every time we open this book, we should feel the breath of God hitting us. Every time we open the Bible.

Why? Because the Holy Spirit wrote the Bible. These are His words. They are inspired.

They are breathed out by God through the power of the Spirit. That verse I read or I mentioned earlier from 2 Peter 1v21, prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. So every time we open God’s Word, we’re hearing the Holy Spirit speaking to us.

The Holy Spirit wasn’t given to Jesus to turn them into a circus act, some kind of spectacle. No. The Holy Spirit empowered Jesus for faithfulness for proclamation, for compassion, for personal holiness, and for long-term endurance.

(32:40 – 34:29)

And that’s the same kind of work He wants to do in us. So if you’re in it for the long haul, which we are, because it’s a life commitment we made, we’re going to need the Holy Spirit to help us endure to the end. If we’re called to work for God, which we are, we’re going to need the Holy Spirit to give us the motivation to keep going in that work.

Because even young men grow weary that those who wait on the Lord and hear His voice through His Word will rise up like eagles and keep going. As we come to our final consideration, let’s think now about the Holy Spirit’s purpose in Jesus’ passion, because we must finally look at and understand the Spirit’s work as Jesus walks the road to the cross. And the first thing I want you to notice in that journey is the Spirit’s presence in the perseverance of Jesus.

Again, we’re back in Isaiah 42 here, where there’s a prophetic statement made about the Spirit-filled servant. And Isaiah describes the Spirit-filled servant, the Messianic King, like this, I have put my Spirit on him, and one of the marks of that indwelling Spirit will be, he will not grow faint or be discouraged. Now think about the Lord Jesus and His passion.

(34:32 – 35:49)

Think about Him on the night He was betrayed. Think about Him, as we will shortly, in Gethsemane. Where did Jesus find the strength to persevere through Gethsemane? When He’s faced with the horror of that cup, and He’s looking mentally to pass on it, where does He find the strength to persevere? Where does He find the strength to pray, not my will but yours be done? How does He persevere through the mockery, the hitting about the head with sticks, the spittle, the thorns, the nails, the whips, the cross, the darkness? Where does He find the strength to persevere? He perseveres by the power of the Holy Spirit.

(35:49 – 36:30)

I have put my Spirit upon Him, and He will not grow faint, and He will not be discouraged, even unto death, even unto death on a cross, even unto death on a cross to pay the price for human sin. Jesus’ passion is the ultimate display of Spirit-empowered endurance. And so He perseveres to the cross, and then we consider His sacrifice, the cross itself.

(36:32 – 37:52)

And as we come to think about the actual act of His sacrifice, His offering, we have to go to this verse in Hebrews, one of the most astonishing verses in the New Testament. Listen to this from Hebrews 9v14. Christ, through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without blemish to God.

There’s the Trinity involved in the cross. The cross is a Trinitarian event. Yes, we focus on the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus.

Of course we do, and it’s right that we should do that. But the Son makes His offering, and the Father receives that offering through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, who empowers Jesus’ obedience to make that offering of Himself. Jesus makes that sacrifice as the perfect man of faith, casting Himself into death, trusting His Father to raise Him by the power of the Spirit.

(37:53 – 38:54)

He casts Himself into death. He offers tearful prayers, Hebrews tells us. He offered tearful prayers, and He was heard.

He was heard. And so we consider resurrection as our third element of Jesus’ passion. He trusted His Father to raise Him by the power of the Spirit, and the Holy Spirit does just that.

In 1 Peter 3v18, Peter tells us He was put to death in the flesh, but He was made alive in the Spirit. The same Spirit who descended on Him at the Jordan at the beginning of His ministry now raises Him on the third day at the end of His ministry. Jesus’ ministry is bookended by two great demonstrations of the Holy Spirit’s work.

(38:55 – 39:25)

One at the beginning anointing Him for all that had to be done, and one at the end putting a seal of approval on all that had been done. But it doesn’t stop there, because finally Jesus ascends, and so we need to think about His exaltation. From His exalted position, He pours out the Spirit on His people now.

(39:27 – 41:09)

He’s exalted at the right hand of God. Acts tells us in chapter 2v33, and from that exalted position, He has poured out all this that you see and hear, all that activity of the Spirit, as God’s message goes out to people in their own language, and they are converted in their thousands. The Spirit who anointed Jesus now flows from Him to His people.

Pentecost is the overflow of the cross, the resurrection, and so the Holy Spirit who rests fully and permanently on Jesus now rests fully and permanently on us as His church. Now, how does this affect us? What’s the application here? Well, if the Spirit sustained Jesus through the greatest suffering that a human being has ever experienced, then He’ll sustain you through your lesser suffering. It’s an argument from the greater to the lesser, isn’t it? If the Holy Spirit sustained the Lord Jesus through His suffering for your sin and mine, then He can sustain you.

And remember, your perseverance as a Christian to this point is one of the greatest evidences of the Holy Spirit’s work in your life. I feel like giving up every day and twice on Sundays. I don’t know how you feel.

(41:10 – 41:36)

Do you know what I mean? I don’t mean that literally, by the way. Those of you who take every word literally, it’s a figure of speech. Every day and twice on Sundays, we often feel like giving up, right? We often wonder if it’s worth it.

Sometimes it would be easier just to go with the flow. Sometimes it would be easier just to enter into that non-Christian relationship. Sometimes it would just be easier if it were other than it is now.

(41:37 – 43:59)

It’s so difficult at times. But as we were reminded this morning by Scott, we come to the Lord Jesus and He knows. He knows.

And He’s with us by His Spirit. And you being here tonight persevering as a Christian after how many months, years, or however long you’ve been a believer, that’s evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work in your life. He’s preserving you.

Do you see? One of my favourite verses in the Bible, if you’re allowed to have such things, is Philippians 1v6. Being confident of this. He who began a good work in you. Who began the good work in you? The Holy Spirit, right? Conceived the birth of Christ in your life, the life of God in your life.

He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Keep on keeping on. And you can do it because of the Holy Spirit.

And finally, just as the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead on that first resurrection morning, so one day, on the last resurrection morning, He will raise you. Listen to these words from Paul, Romans 8. Unbelievable words from a human perspective. And we’re so familiar with them that we fail often to just engage with them.

Just listen to these words as though you’ve never heard them before. If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies. That’s words of one syllable, isn’t it? If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, and he does by the power of his spirit and by the new birth, he who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies.

(44:01 – 45:02)

So, brothers and sisters, Jesus doesn’t call us this evening simply to live the Christian life for him. What he calls us to do is more infinitely amazing and wonderful than that. He calls us to live the Christian life with him, and he calls us to live the Christian life in him, sustained and empowered by the very same Holy Spirit who formed, filled, empowered, and raised Jesus.

And that in the end is the Holy Spirit’s ultimate goal described by Paul in Colossians 1v27. His purpose ultimately is to form Christ in you, which is the hope of glory. Amen.

The post The Holy Spirit in the Life of Jesus – Luke 4v14–21 appeared first on Greenview Church.

And let me say again good morning and let me express my gratitude to each and every single one of you for coming along this morning to the ‘Try Church’ gathering here at Greenview. Over these past few days I’ve seen the south side of Glasgow take a number of very significant steps towards celebrating Christmas. So as I’ve said already my parents are in Clarkston, they were in Stamperland before they were in Clarkston, I’m in Eaglesham so I’m regularly running that route up and down Waterford Road to get down there to see them.

(0:31 – 1:19)

I’m already seeing lights being stretched across town centres and across front and back gardens. I saw adverts for the first time yesterday advertising supermarket chains and soft drink companies. We seem to be on a collision course already with Christmas, it has snuck up on us once more, it’s that time of year already.

And it is a time of year that I think causes some of us, perhaps even most of us, to stop and to reflect on the past 12 months or so. Now we might do that on a bigger scale, thinking about our world, thinking about our country, and we might also do it on a personal scale. I do both, I imagine you do too.

(1:20 – 2:20)

We think about our own lives, our own circumstances, our own relationships, and much much more besides. Now there will be examples of times this year when we’ve seen real positive progress as a country. I’m sure some of us can think of science, medicine, other things that we’ve seen in our world and we’ve thought that’s good news, it’s great that that has happened.

And there will be examples of times this year I’m sure where we see positive progress in our own lives as individuals, either through employment, relationships, other endeavours, we think to ourselves it’s good that that has happened. But whether there are many of those examples or few that are flickering through our brains right now, it’s unavoidably true that we inhabit a world where there is suffering. And that suffering produces a degree of uncertainty.

(2:22 – 5:45)

So there will be examples of times this year when we’ve watched our screens, not in delight, but in horror, disgust, perhaps even fear. There will be examples of times this year when we’ve sat at home on our own with others and what we see on our screens and what we feel in our hearts brings us an anxiety. Anxiety for our own circumstances, anxiety for the circumstances of those close to us.

And at times it feels like life has a way of not really giving us much of a breather. It feels like one wave seems to hit us after the other and we don’t have time to find our feet between these moments. We live in a world where suffering is real and it produces uncertainty, questions, concerns.

And when it comes to Christianity we might feel a degree of scepticism. Scepticism that there is a good God out there or that there could ever be a good God out there given what we see and given what we experience, given the way that we suffer and given the way that the world suffers as it does. So if there is a God it seems like he either could do something about suffering but he chooses not to.

Or maybe he’d love to do something about suffering but he lacks the ability to do things. So perhaps he is actually in total control of everything as a God ought to be. But for whatever reason he leaves us to suffer.

He leaves us in our suffering perhaps in the way that we deserve or perhaps in a vindictive way. Alternatively perhaps he really wants to help and he tries to do what he can but he just seems to fall asleep on the job at times. Things seem to slip through the net when he’s not looking.

Is that the God of Christianity? Well let me pause and say two things at this stage. Firstly as somebody who himself is a persuaded follower of Jesus, if God were either unwilling or unable to do anything with our suffering, if he was unwilling or unable to deal with suffering, he is not a God that I would want to follow. No human being, least of all me, would be interested in following a God who enjoys evil, who enjoys injustice, or he’s too weak to put a stop to these things.

And I’m sure we would all agree with that as we gather here this morning. Secondly I begin this way to show that this is something that we as Christians, we as those who follow Jesus, this is something that we have done a lot of thinking about over the months and over the years of our own lives. We have thought a lot about the way, we are very aware of the way in which we individually and corporately struggle.

(5:47 – 8:04)

See throughout the years some have suggested that Christianity stands as a means of sugarcoating the worst parts of our world, that Christianity is a fairy story for those who are afraid of the dark. Now there’s loads that we could say about that. I hope it suffices at this stage to say that I don’t believe that’s true.

I don’t think there are many Christians out there who would believe that that was true. If you were to ask the Christian friends and family that you have, I think they would tell you of moments of real difficulty, real hardship, real struggle, real suffering. I don’t think I’ve suffered any less as I’ve grown older as a Christian.

I think perhaps if anything I’ve suffered more. It’s been the opposite. So what answers could Christianity possibly have to the suffering that you face, to the suffering that I face, to the suffering that we face in this world? What certainty amidst the suffering could Jesus provide for someone like you, someone like me, as we gather here this morning? Well just for the next 15 minutes or so, as we spend a bit of time looking at those verses that Lucy read out for us, let me just make two hopefully fairly simple, fairly straightforward observations.

The first one is that God sympathises with us in our suffering. God sympathises with us in our suffering. When I was an undergraduate student, I had a part-time job at a local pizza delivery service.

I won’t say which one because I know we all have our favourites. I don’t want to lose half the room. We at this pizzeria would, I can’t call it a pizzeria, it wasn’t a pizzeria, we would occasionally have visits from our area managers.

Now from memory, our area managers were our boss’s boss’s boss. That was kind of where they sat in the hierarchy and when they came to do an inspection, they always decided to come during the busiest parts of the week. Now I assume that was deliberate.

(8:05 – 14:03)

It certainly didn’t help to keep everybody calm, least of all our managers. Now there were two very distinct styles that our area managers would take when they came to do a store inspection. One manager would come in with a clipboard, pen in hand, he would stand in the corner of the kitchen area, he would watch us at a distance, he would tut and shake his head whenever we got something wrong and he never had anything positive to say about anything that we did.

And then there was another who would come along and this manager had a very very different style. See this area manager would put on his apron, he would roll up his sleeves, he would sanitise his hands and he would help us out in whatever way we needed. And see some of us I imagine might think that God, if there is one, is much much more like the former of those two approaches.

As he looks at a chaotic world like the one in which we live, he doesn’t want to get too close if he’s being honest with you. And so he keeps his distance, he hangs back and he shouts instructions at us from afar as to how we might get better, as to how we might improve. But actually the God that we meet in the Bible is so much closer to the second of those two approaches that I mentioned earlier.

We read of a God who, if you like, rolls up his sleeves, steps into our mess, comes into our world, steps into our brokenness, steps into our suffering and sympathises with us. These verses that we read earlier, they’re written around 2,600 years ago and they speak of the arrival of somebody who matches and meets a really really specific description. So we read in verse 2 of a man who had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

We read in verse 3 of a man who was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, someone who is familiar with pain. And we read again in verse 4 of a man who took up our pain, bore our suffering. And then 600 years later, after these verses are written, a man walks on the earth in the area of Judea and Samaria.

And this is a man who claims to be the son of God. He claims that he is truly God stepping into our world, born as a baby, born to experience the aches and pains of this world, born to know what it is to live in a broken world, to be betrayed by those closest to him, to suffer the greatest injustice imaginable as he dies as an innocent man executed on a Roman cross. Now these are all things that humanity would naturally howl at, betrayal, injustice, the death of the innocent.

And yet this man, Jesus, experienced them all. God the Son becomes a man and steps into our world to sympathise with us in our suffering, knowing a degree and a depth of pain that I most likely will never know. Now if that is true, let me suggest two really quick observations here.

Firstly, if Jesus really is the son of God as he claims to be, if he really did suffer in the way that history tells us that he did, then suffering in our world is not a direct consequence of what someone deserves. So I’ve heard one or two people express in moments of difficulty over the years, and maybe you’ve felt this as you sit here this morning, you feel like karma has finally caught up with you, that you’re finally being punished for something that you have done historically. I know one or two people who have spoken to you about this very subject who have suggested that.

Can I say with clarity that is not the message of the Bible, that is not the gospel that Christians believe, that is not what Jesus came to share. See if Jesus is truly God, he is perfectly pure, perfectly good, perfectly holy, and yet he knows and suffers some of the most horrible ways of suffering imaginable. He is breathing the air of a broken reality throughout his entire life, as you are and as I am.

He has plunged into an imperfect world as you are, as I am, but his suffering is not because of something he did or didn’t do. We mustn’t think for a minute that our God is out to get us, and that is why we suffer as we do. Our God is not out to get us, our God is out to help us.

(14:04 – 14:37)

Which leads me on to our second quick observation. See if Jesus really was the son of God as he claimed to be, if Jesus really did suffer in the way that he did as history tells us, then God knows firsthand how hard our world is. God knows firsthand how hard our lives can be, and God offers us firsthand support and strength in these moments of difficulty.

(14:38 – 16:01)

It means that a Christian can turn to Jesus in the midst of whatever he or she is going through and say to Jesus, I find this really, really hard. This is really difficult for me. I don’t know if I can bear this or not.

And rather than our God standing at a distance, shooting us a quizzical look, not quite understanding what we’re going through, instead we meet a Jesus who is gentle, who is caring, and who says, I know, I know what that is like. I experienced that for myself. I know how hard that can be.

I know what it is you’re going through, and I’m here to help. See, as a Christian, I can draw a tremendous amount of comfort from what stands as the objective reality that Jesus identifies with me in my struggles. So I can safely dismiss the idea that God doesn’t care that we were thinking about earlier on.

(16:01 – 18:21)

I cannot read the accounts of Jesus’ life as he is born, as he grows to become a man, as he goes about his earthly work. I cannot conclude that he is indifferent to the aches and pains of this world, not when he experienced them himself, willingly, in order to sympathise with us, his people. Instead, I can draw a tremendous amount of comfort from the objective reality that Jesus knows every single intricate detail of what every single one of us is going through.

And he offers you strength this morning. He offers you comfort, often through a community of other battered and bruised believers, often through the company of other flawed followers of Jesus. He helps us, directly sustains us through all the ups and downs that our world throws at us.

But that’s not all that our God offers, and that leads me on to the second heading this morning. And with this, I’ll begin to draw things to a close. So not only does God sympathise with us in our suffering, he also saves us from a world of suffering.

So over the coming Christmas period, I imagine there will be a number of attempts made to build something out of a box for a child, a grandchild, a niece or a nephew. I’m sure you know the sort of thing I’m talking about, a Lego model, a Duplo model, a kid’s kitchen. I’m sure at some point there will be instruction manuals littered across a carpet somewhere, and just bits and pieces all around, some getting knocked under the sofa where they will remain for a number of months.

And every year for me, there’s that soul-crushing moment when you look at the blueprint for how something should look, and then you see what it is that you have standing in front of you in reality. Now, I’d like to say that my attempts to build these sorts of things are often fairly good. My father was an engineer, and I like to think I have some sort of engineering blood residually pumping its way through my veins.

(18:21 – 22:15)

But with an alarming regularity, when I look at the Lego model or the kid’s kitchen, it tends to just lean slightly one way or the other. Now, I’ve tried to explain multiple times that that’s exactly how it’s supposed to look. I’ve taken the box and tilted it slightly so people can see that that’s how it’s supposed to look.

I’ve taken the instruction manual and just tilted it slightly so that people see that that’s how it’s supposed to look. Nobody’s ever fooled. They know that the final product that they have in front of them is not how it’s supposed to be.

And I think we feel that same innate sense as human beings when we look at our lives, when we look at our world. We get little flickers at what the world could be. We see little glimpses as to what the world could look like.

We might even have a sense of what we think the world is supposed to look like, but the reality is very, very different. And the God of the Bible agrees with that. He agrees with that sense in us that something is wrong.

See, in his original design for the world, there was no suffering. It’s not something God ever wanted for us to experience. It’s not something that God ever intended for us to experience.

We read at the start of the Bible story of a perfect world where there is beauty, where there is plenty, where there is complete harmony between humanity, complete harmony between God and humanity. And the world is then broken. The world is then marred.

It’s scarred when humanity decides that we want to become like God, that we want to reject his laws, push him away from our hearts, and we decide for ourselves what is good and what is evil. Somebody once described it to me as if you complete a jigsaw puzzle on a table, and someone comes along and smacks the side of the table, and the jigsaw ruptures into different bits and pieces, you can still see a glimpse of what it should look like, but it’s now broken and needs to be fixed. And that is the world in which we live.

And the cause is the human rebellion against the God who made us. And these are actions that carry continuous consequences for our world, for our lives, that so often leads to the suffering that we experience in our day-to-day lives. We’re separated from the God of life, and so we know a world where there is death.

We’re separated from the God of love, and so we now know a world where there is hatred. We’re separated from the God of truth, and so we now know a world full of lies and deceit. We’re separated from the God who is good, who cannot have anything to do with evil and sin, and so we now know a world that contains both, as do our hearts.

And so what is God’s response to this? Well, he diagnoses the problem, and he offers us a solution. So verse 6 of chapter 53, he says there, we all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way.

(22:17 – 23:08)

That’s true of you as you sit here this morning. It’s certainly true of me as I stand here this morning. There is that tendency in each and every single one of our hearts to shy away from the God who made us, to push him away from us, perhaps because we want autonomy, perhaps because we don’t want him to interfere in our lives, perhaps because we think we’re good enough without him.

And yet we see from our own lives, we see from our world, and we hear Jesus saying to us that we are not better off without him, but actually we really desperately need him. And so he offers us a solution. Verse 6 again, the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

(23:10 – 24:20)

And then again in verse 8, by oppression and judgement he was taken away, yet who of his generation protested? He was cut off from the land of the living. For the transgression of my people, he was punished. See, we deserve to be separated from our God.

That would be right. But God sent his son Jesus to suffer so that we can be made right with him again. God sent his son Jesus to suffer to take the consequences for our sin upon himself so that we can be made right again, so that we can know our God again, so that we can be restored to the relationship that we were made for.

Again in verse 5, look down with me, it says there that he was pierced for our transgressions on that cross. He was crushed for our iniquities on that cross. The punishment that brought us peace was on him instead.

(24:20 – 25:22)

And by his wounds, we are healed. See, 2,000 years ago, Jesus offers every single human being a swap. He offers to take our sins and the consequences for our sins, the times when we’ve rejected God, rejected his laws upon himself.

And instead he offers us peace, peace with God, peace with God’s people. He promises us healing, a solution to our suffering, a world where there is no more evil, no more estrangement, no more dying, no more death, no more disease, no more suffering, no more sickness, no more struggles. See, Jesus promises that he is coming back one day, and he is going to make everything new again.

(25:25 – 25:37)

And as you read the accounts of his life, you’ll see that there is plenty of reason to trust him. There are plenty of reasons to trust his words. There are plenty of reasons to trust his promises.

(25:38 – 26:20)

We see the miracles that he shows his people again and again, as you read through one of the accounts of his life, as he heals those who have sickness, as he forgives those who have sinned, as he raises people from death to life. All of these things are just little windows, just little glimpses of the world that is to come, the world that he is working on, the world that he will one day come back to share with everybody who trusts in him. See, I said earlier on that we can’t read these accounts of Jesus’ life and conclude that he doesn’t care about us, because he’s willing to step into our world to sympathise with us in our suffering.

(26:22 – 29:31)

Well, nor can I read the accounts of Jesus’ life and conclude that he can’t do anything about it, because he does, time and time again, the biggest evidence of which is an empty tomb three days after he died, where Jesus has come back to life. And so the big question that I end with is, well, why hasn’t he done something about it yet? If we believe that Jesus is coming back to remake the world, to be free from all of these things that haunt us in our heads and in our hearts, why hasn’t he done something? Well, in order to do what he is going to do, Jesus is going to make everything new again. He is coming to put sin and evil to an end once and for all.

And if there is sin and evil in our hearts, we don’t deserve a spot in that new creation, not if we have turned away from God, as we all have. And so that swap that we mentioned earlier on, Jesus hasn’t returned yet because he is waiting. He is waiting for you, and he is waiting for me to turn to him and to ask him for a place in that brand new creation that he offers, a place that he is so willing and so able to give you.

I’m getting married this coming summer, and we’re at the stage now where we’re just beginning to send out invitations and put pictures on the invitations and come up with a wedding registry and a gift list, which always feels like a really horrifically awkward thing to do, to just ask a group of people to buy you things because you love someone. Now, Ashton and I, we could get married tomorrow. We could get married on Monday the 17th of November.

Let me tell you, nobody would be there. What we want to do instead is to wait, send out the invites, wait for people to accept so that they’re there. And that is why God waits for us now.

He has sent out the invites through Jesus. He sends out the invites as every single Christian turns to someone and says, hey, do you want to find out more about Jesus? He is giving you and giving me a chance to turn to him and to ask him to be a part of that eternal project that he is working on, a world free from suffering where we will be with him forever. And so his patience for now is an opportunity for you to turn to him and to ask him for a new life.

(29:32 – 29:52)

For forgiveness. That gives me as a Christian so much hope for the present, that in the midst of everything that I face, in the midst of everything that we face, this world is not the final chapter of my story. And it doesn’t need to be the final chapter of your story either.

(29:53 – 30:14)

That this world, full of suffering as it is, is as bad as it gets. And actually there is the promise of a brand new world that is coming. Now if that is even perhaps possibly true, that is an offer that I have to take very, very seriously.

(30:16 – 31:13)

If that’s perhaps possibly true, I need to respond. And so this Christmas, as we celebrate the Christmas lights, we’ll probably at one point hear and see the words Emmanuel come up, perhaps on the Christmas card, perhaps we’ll sing it in a Christmas carol at some point. That word Emmanuel simply means God’s with us.

Jesus was born as a baby and God stepped into our world to sympathise with us in our suffering. He came and died on a cross so that we would have an invitation to one day go to a world that is free from suffering, a world that he will remake. And in the meantime, he waits so that as many of us as possible accept his invitation.

(31:15 – 32:16)

And so my plea to you this morning is to ask him, ask him for forgiveness, trust in him to give you what you need as he sustains you through a life where we do suffer, a suffering that he knows, and then gives you all that he promises for the future, a brand new world where these things will be no more. I’m going to stop there and I’m going to pray. I’m going to pray a very, very simple prayer in response to everything that we’ve looked at this morning and then I’ll hand over to Zach.

Let me pray. Father, we thank you that Jesus knows what it is to suffer and in him we have somebody who has suffered in the ways that we have and so many more ways besides. Thank you, Father, that you’re not indifferent to our suffering and thank you, Father, for the promise of a world one day which is free from all these things.

(32:17 – 32:33)

Help us to understand how important it is that we are there and help us to understand how important it is that we are forgiven by you so that we can be there one day. Give us everything we need to understand this for ourselves, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The post Certainty Amidst Our Suffering – Isaiah 53v1–12 appeared first on Greenview Church.

For a significant time, they often try to soften the blow, soften the goodbye. Parent going away for a week’s holiday, tells the kids left behind, Grandma’s coming, and she’s going to take them to the cinema. Or a close friend moving to another city with work.

(0:19 – 0:32)

They might give you a photo of you together. It’s a small reminder, a token that says, we’re not going to forget each other. And why don’t you come and visit? My flat has a spare room.

(0:33 – 0:41)

Or a dad going on a work trip. He gives his son his watch. Keep this safe, I’ll be back.

(0:42 – 1:02)

It doesn’t stop the wee boys’ ache, but that small gift reminds him, don’t worry, I’ll be back. It’s a way of softening the blow, of staying present even while absent. And that’s what’s happening here in John chapter 14.

(1:03 – 1:15)

Jesus is preparing his disciples for his departure. He’s already told them, where I’m going, you cannot follow now. He’s going to the cross to die.

(1:16 – 1:32)

Then back to his Father, and all this to prepare a place for them. But for these disciples, the thought of losing him was crushing. Their teacher, their leader, their friend, the one who calms storms, leaving.

(1:34 – 1:48)

But he said, don’t let your hearts be troubled. What we’re going to see this morning is that yes, Jesus is going. But he leaves something far better than a keepsake.

(1:49 – 2:05)

He leaves his presence and help. While Jesus goes to prepare a place for them, another comes to help them prepare for that place. So let’s think about Jesus who promises help.

(2:07 – 2:18)

Probably the worst fear for a child whose parents are going away is that they will never come back. That’s how the disciples felt. Their hearts were anxious and afraid.

(2:19 – 2:35)

But into that fear, Jesus speaks a promise that changes everything. So he says, I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever. He says, I’ll not leave you as orphans.

(2:36 – 2:48)

I will come to you. This advocate, as we read, thank you, Elspeth, in verse 26 is the Holy Spirit. And we’ve been meeting him before throughout John’s gospel.

(2:50 – 3:05)

And over these coming chapters in particular, Jesus will speak more of who he is and what he does. The Spirit is not some force or energy. He is a person, divine and distinct, just like the father and the son.

(3:06 – 3:27)

He’s the living presence of God who gives life. From creation’s first breath to every new believer’s heart, the Spirit brings life where there was none. And as David was mentioning earlier, in our Sunday evening, we started this series called The Whole Spirit.

(3:27 – 3:42)

And we’re exploring even more of the story of the Holy Spirit through scripture. But let’s find out what Jesus is saying in this particular passage. Well, he’s the Spirit who comes alongside.

(3:43 – 3:53)

See that in verse 16, he’s, Jesus calls him the advocate. And the word used is paraclete. That’s a Greek word from para.

(3:53 – 4:09)

We know that word in parachute and others. And it means to come alongside. So, along with the word kaleo, it means to call, literally as he is one who is called alongside to help.

(4:11 – 4:23)

But there’s another, there’s a different word, an additional word that Jesus uses, another. There’s two types of words for another. One means another of the same kind.

(4:24 – 4:36)

And a different one that says another of a different kind. But the word Jesus uses here is another of the same kind. Jesus is saying he’s another like me.

(4:37 – 4:58)

Just as I’ve been with you, so the Spirit will come to you and be like me. And one particular way that he will be alike is in advocacy. What we’re to understand here, you see, is that Jesus, as he goes to the cross, will become the Lamb of God that John the Baptist promised.

(4:58 – 5:13)

He would take away the sins of the world by his death on behalf of sinners. The first advocate would be Jesus himself. All sinful people stand before God’s perfect justice.

(5:14 – 5:33)

And Jesus stands alongside those who believe in him and trust in him. He pleads their case. He argues for justice because his death, impending death, and for us today as we look back, his death on the cross will mean all debt to sin has been paid in full.

(5:35 – 5:46)

And Jesus’ defence as the first advocate will be unshakeable. He will say to the Father then, I have paid for these sins in full. He’s the first advocate.

(5:47 – 6:08)

But when Jesus tells his disciples, when I’m gone, the Father is going to send another advocate, one just like Jesus, then he’s saying he too will do a work of advocacy. He too will stand alongside the believer to help. And the second advocate is going to do a number of things to help these disciples.

(6:09 – 6:24)

He’s the Spirit who stays. See that also in verse 16, that the Spirit’s presence is permanent. In the past, the Spirit came at certain times and for certain people to carry out certain tasks.

(6:25 – 6:56)

But a time is coming soon, Jesus is saying, at a place and a time called Pentecost where the presence of the Holy Spirit would be given permanently and never withdrawn. And from that day until the day Jesus returns, the Holy Spirit would be at work in the life of every believer and in the church of Jesus Christ. So the work of the Spirit in the lives of these disciples would also be available for all believers, you and me today.

(6:58 – 7:08)

In effect, Jesus is saying, I’m not walking away. The Spirit is here. And he continues with his people.

(7:09 – 7:26)

But Jesus also says he’s the Spirit of truth. Look at that in verse 17. The help these disciples would need is being taught the truth because soon there would be so much opposition it would be hard for them.

(7:28 – 7:40)

And among that opposition would be deception and lies. And Jesus is gonna unpack that even more when he says the Spirit will teach you all things and remind you all things. So we’ll come back to that.

(7:41 – 7:56)

But also Jesus says the Spirit, the world cannot see him. The world cannot accept him, he says, because it neither sees him nor knows him. That’s why Jesus’ followers will face resistance.

(7:56 – 8:09)

But remember, when Jesus came, many didn’t recognise him. That’s what John writes about in the early chapters of John’s gospel. And they won’t recognise the Spirit’s work either.

(8:10 – 8:30)

Because you see, spiritual work or spiritual truth can’t be grasped by mere human intellect. By reason alone, the world doesn’t see and doesn’t want to because it prefers its own way. Yet the Spirit opens blind eyes.

(8:32 – 8:47)

We can explain the gospel and clear obstacles and remove distractions, but we can’t change hearts. Only the Spirit can shape desires and change wills to embrace Jesus. New life is his work, not ours.

(8:49 – 8:58)

And so we’re called to depend on God’s Spirit. But also he’s the Spirit who lives within. Look at that also in verse 17.

(8:59 – 9:20)

Jesus explains to these disciples, but you will know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. As I said, the disciples would receive the Spirit at Pentecost. And for every believer since, it happens the moment we trust Jesus.

(9:21 – 9:36)

And the Spirit isn’t distant, he’s a living presence. Not to be left alone. We’re never left to figure out lives for ourselves.

(9:37 – 9:56)

We’re never to be without help because the Spirit lives with us and is in us. That’s how Jesus speaks and guides and comforts and makes himself known through the Spirit’s work in our hearts, as he is with us and in us. That’s how we face anxiety and fears and sadness and such like.

(9:56 – 10:07)

How we endure trouble and opposition. Jesus, by his Spirit, is with us and in us. And so said Jesus in verse 18, you are not orphans.

(10:09 – 10:22)

Jesus is speaking, remember, to fearful, uncertain people. Like children, really, who need protection and care. I’m sure we all know what an orphan is.

(10:23 – 10:39)

A child who’s lost one or more parents. Perhaps an untimely death. Or their parents are simply unable to look after them and so give them up to care and be raised by others.

(10:40 – 10:49)

But that’s not your situation, says Jesus. You will not be left without provision or protection. You will be cared for.

(10:50 – 11:07)

You will be helped to grow and flourish because that’s Jesus’ purpose for his followers. Maturity, fullness of life, now and hope to come. How does this happen? I will not leave you as orphans.

(11:07 – 11:26)

I will come to you. Jesus is promising his Spirit, another like him, to help us to face even hard and difficult times, whatever they may be. Sure, as Christian believers, we can feel under-resourced for life.

(11:27 – 11:39)

And sure, we can be tempted to think that Jesus hasn’t given us what we need. But that’s not the reality. The Spirit does not merely visit.

(11:40 – 11:56)

He lives with and in the believers and he is resident and personal and intimate. And we’ll see this just a little bit later, but he says he makes his home with them. And because of him, we can have the life that Jesus calls us to.

(11:57 – 12:12)

We can follow Jesus in the ups and downs of life. We can endure life in a troubling world. So let’s think about what that obedient life looks like when the Spirit is at work, helping and preparing.

(12:15 – 12:32)

Well, Jesus says in verse 19, before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. The world will soon believe Jesus is gone, crucified, buried, forgotten. But his followers will know differently.

(12:34 – 12:50)

Because I live, Jesus says, you will also live. You see, after his death, Jesus won’t remain in the tomb. He will rise to life and because he lives, his life will now flow into those who trust him and it’s not a distant faith.

(12:50 – 13:07)

It’s a real living union with the risen Jesus, the Father and the Spirit. Through the Spirit, we share his life. When Jesus came, when Jesus said he came to give us life, he meant more than physical life.

(13:08 – 13:24)

It’s more than bread. And he said to the people asking for food, it’s the kind of life that comes from God himself. Every person here and since in the past has been born physically alive but spiritually dead.

(13:25 – 13:49)

But we can truly become alive through belief and faith in Jesus. That’s why John wrote back in chapter one, to all who received him, to receive Jesus, he gave the right to become children of God and that’s why Jesus told Nicodemus, you must be born again. The Spirit is the giver of new life and he awakens dead hearts.

(13:50 – 14:12)

He makes Jesus real to us, come alive to us and begins God’s new creation within us. Without the Spirit, there is no true life but with him, we become part of his family. So Jesus says, on that day, you will know that I am in my Father and you are in me and I am in you.

(14:13 – 14:35)

That day that Jesus is referring to is this period of time of Jesus’ resurrection and then ascension into heaven and the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost. And in that season, in that time, the very life of God is shared with his people. And Jesus is saying, you’re gonna be part of my family.

(14:36 – 14:58)

My life and my Father’s life are gonna flow into you and the Spirit is the bond that makes this real. Joining the disciples with Jesus, bringing his presence so, so close that Jesus says, I am in you. And when the world cannot see Jesus, his people will.

(15:00 – 15:13)

Yet notice how Jesus will be shown to them. Cast down your eyes to verse 21. Jesus says, the one who loves me will be loved by my Father and I too will love them and show myself to them.

(15:14 – 15:37)

It’s through love. God’s love looks like this, writes John, back in chapter three. He gave his only Son so that whoever believes in him won’t die without hope but will have life full and eternal and we’re caught up in that love when we trust the Son who gave his life for us.

(15:38 – 15:55)

And Jesus calls his disciples to love him. It’s more than knowing about him. Many people would admire Jesus as a teacher or prophet but Jesus says, if you love me, something far deeper.

(15:56 – 16:20)

And Jesus has been showing them over these years as together that being his disciple is not about religion and rules but relationship. As God is bringing them into his family, as spiritual eyes are opened, Jesus isn’t a mere teacher or miracle worker or good man. He’s their Lord.

(16:24 – 16:50)

Admiration turns to adoration, to love. And Jesus has been showing them how to display this love by being servants, humble, not lording over people, not seeking selfish ambitions. Remember, Jesus had been showing the disciples exactly what this love looks like.

(16:50 – 16:58)

In chapter 13, the previous chapter, he washed the disciples’ feet. He says, I’ve set you an example. Go and do the same.

(17:00 – 17:21)

And so Jesus is saying, if you love me, you will obey my commands. It might sound as if Jesus is giving us a checklist, do this and I’ll know you love me, but that’s not his tone. He’s describing this relationship where love leads to obedience.

(17:23 – 17:38)

Jesus’ command begins with a call to repent and believe. Yes, to turn from sin and trust him completely. Loving Jesus starts with trusting him, resting in what he’s done.

(17:39 – 17:48)

But out of that, from that, obedience grows. It’s not forced. It’s not legalistic.

(17:52 – 18:09)

Jesus adds, by this, everyone will know you are my disciples if you love one another. Love is to mark his followers as they love one another. It’s, the world is meant to see Jesus through the loving obedience of his people.

(18:11 – 18:42)

Did you notice Judas’ question? He says, Lord, why show yourself to us and not the world? Jesus doesn’t answer this question directly. Certainly he doesn’t answer the why, but he does answer the how. Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching, says Jesus, because Jesus will be seen through those who love and live out his teaching.

(18:43 – 19:04)

It’s not about dramatic miracles. The greater things Jesus promised the disciples would do, earlier in the verses we looked at last week, it’s lives transformed by loving action, forgiving, serving, caring. When believers live like that, the spirit is moving, and Jesus is shown to the world.

(19:06 – 19:27)

So Judas’ question gets turned around, really. Jesus is saying, the world will see me through you, and that’s true today. Whereas people love and obey with humility and grace, the world glimpses Jesus in a world full of rage and hate and confusion.

(19:28 – 19:50)

Does not that love for one another speak powerfully into that? But the opposite’s also true. Anyone who doesn’t love me, says Jesus, will not obey my teaching. Without love, obedience fades, and Jesus remains unseen.

(19:52 – 20:07)

You know, Jesus isn’t looking for love shown in emotion and tears, but love shown in obedience. If you love me, keep my commands. That’s how real devotion shows up.

(20:09 – 20:27)

And that’s where the challenge would land for the disciples, and for us too. What happens to a life or a church that doesn’t walk in spirit-filled obedience? Well, we begin to live like we’re spiritually fatherless. We’re spiritual orphans.

(20:29 – 20:58)

We say we believe and trust Jesus, but we rely on ourselves and our own strength and abilities, and we don’t trust God at all. And we lose interest in Jesus’ priorities and drift into serving ourselves. So the test is not how we feel on any given day, it’s commitment, it’s faithfulness, it’s endurance, it’s choosing obedience because we belong to him.

(20:59 – 21:08)

And through that, Jesus is made visible to the world. It’s through love, but it’s also from the inside out. Look at verse 23.

(21:09 – 21:30)

One more thing about this life of obedience. He says, my Father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them. They’re not going to be left as orphans. They’re not being placed, as it were, in foster care or placed in a children’s home, and the difference is significant.

(21:31 – 21:53)

The Father and the Son and the Spirit choose to make their home with them, not in temples, not in palaces, but to live in ordinary lives. And as children of God, we’re at home with God. It’s not a place to stay.

(21:54 – 22:19)

It’s a place of belonging. And the Spirit is the divine homemaker. What Jesus prepares for his people in heaven, going to the cross and in heaven, the Spirit begins shaping in them now, and this unseen work in the life of the believers, the world can’t see it, but it’s real nevertheless.

(22:20 – 22:44)

His life fills his people, and the Spirit works within, and it’s displayed in and through the lives of those who believe, and it’s a quiet, transforming work, and it starts from the inside out as God makes his home in us. And what does that look like in practise? Well, it’s shaped by two things. We see that in verse 25 and 26.

(22:46 – 23:14)

Remember earlier, Jesus called the Spirit the Spirit of truth? Well, firstly, Jesus said, the Spirit will teach you all things, and the disciples needed teaching. There was so much they didn’t yet know or understand, and they’re going to become witnesses to Jesus across the world and set up churches and disciple and pastor and face all sorts of opposition and dangers and lies and deceptions. They had to keep on learning.

(23:18 – 23:38)

This morning, someone texted me a word of encouragement, but they also said, I’m looking forward to learn. You see, that attitude of learning should be the same for us, too. If we follow Jesus, we must be teachable.

(23:39 – 23:47)

We are to learn. We don’t know it all. We open ourselves up humbly, ready to learn God’s ways and purposes for our lives.

(23:47 – 24:00)

The Spirit is our teacher, correcting, rebuking, reshaping. It’s not simply about facts and doctrine, important as that is, but it’s about reformation. We’re being reshaped.

(24:00 – 24:12)

It’s about growing that wisdom and maturity. God changes our thinking and shapes our desires in the good and the hard times. We are always to be learners.

(24:14 – 24:25)

But also, secondly, the disciple needed reminding. We know how much we are prone to forget, and the disciples were the same. Jesus said, He will remind you of everything I have said to you.

(24:27 – 24:50)

You see, people would listen but reject the message the disciples were taking. They would reject Jesus, the one that they had lived with and seen, and they would not understand why. And as they faced the hardships and the ups and downs of life, they would need to be reminded of all that Jesus had promised them so that they would endure and persevere.

(24:52 – 24:55)

And so do we, too. We forget. Our thoughts wander.

(24:56 – 25:02)

Fears rise. Disappointments and stresses weigh us down. In church life ministry, too, we can feel let down.

(25:03 – 25:14)

We can be overwhelmed. We need His Spirit to remind us of His truth and His promises to us. By His Spirit, God whispers to us that He is with us.

(25:14 – 25:34)

His love is for us, that He will never forsake us or fulfil us. He leads us to Jesus, never away from Jesus. So as followers of Jesus, we open His Bible looking to hear from Him, to be encouraged, to be disciplined, to be built up, and that’s the Spirit’s work.

(25:35 – 25:55)

When we’re reminded of Jesus’ words in the moment of need, that’s the Spirit’s work. When conviction of sin comes with grace and hope, that’s the Spirit at work. We were talking in our community group this week, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

(25:55 – 26:05)

We often think about that’s for people who don’t know Jesus, and yes it is, but it’s also for us who do believe. We need to be reminded that Jesus is the way. He is the truth.

(26:06 – 26:10)

He is the life. It’s not just a message for people who don’t know Him. It’s for us too.

(26:12 – 26:23)

When we’re deceived, we need to know He is true. When we’re lost, we need to know He is the way. And it’s all underpinned by Jesus.

(26:25 – 26:50)

This one final aspect of Jesus’ comfort to His disciples, as part of their preparation, He wants them to experience real peace and security. So in verse 27 to 31, remember how this chapter started? Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Jesus promised a place, and He’s promised His presence, but now He promises peace.

(26:51 – 27:23)

Jesus says, peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. It’s not the world’s peace, fragile and temporary. The world’s peace depends on calm circumstances, on things being right or sorted, but that’s not often the case, is it? Jesus gives a peace that holds in the storm, a peace that begins with by being forgiven and being right with God, that whatever happens, those who belong to Jesus are at peace with God.

(27:23 – 27:35)

That’s the foundation we need. And this peace runs deep, Jesus said. He calls it my peace, the very calm He carried through fears and sorrows and suffering.

(27:36 – 28:01)

He knows trouble’s coming, opposition, hatred, loss, but His peace will strengthen as they face it with God, not apart from Him. And it’s the fruit the Spirit brings living within them, a peace that settles the heart when everything else is shaken. But He also wants them to experience real security.

(28:01 – 28:14)

He says, I’m going away. There’s so much about to happen that’s going to shake them, turn them upside down, it seems, evils closing in. Jesus said, the prince of this world is coming.

(28:17 – 28:28)

Judas is about to betray Him. The authorities about to condemn Him and torture Him, allow Him to be tortured and then nailed to the cross. All part of Satan’s scheme.

(28:30 – 28:42)

When Judas left to betray Jesus, John writes, it was night. Darkness seemed to win. But Jesus said, He has no hold over me.

(28:43 – 28:54)

He would not be overpowered. Jesus was giving His life willingly. Jesus knew what He was doing was fulfilling the Father’s plan.

(28:54 – 29:14)

He says, the world must learn that I love the Father and do exactly what He commands. What is about to take place at the crucifixion of Jesus will reveal the love that the Father and the Son had for us. The Son’s obedience to the Father’s saving will.

(29:15 – 29:24)

The innocent, perfect Son of God willingly laying down His life for the guilty. The willing Saviour redeeming slaves to sin. But it’s not the end.

(29:24 – 29:34)

He says, I am coming back. That’s the Gospel. Jesus is going, but He’s coming back.

(29:34 – 29:47)

The power of death is unravelling. And that’s real security. For those who know and trust that physical death is not the end.

(29:49 – 30:25)

C.S. Lewis, he writes a story, a series of stories of Aslan in ‘The lion, the witch and the wardrobe’ and it captures this truth so beautifully. When Aslan rises from the dead and he explains to the little girl, Lucy, though the witch knew deep magic, there’s a magic deeper still. When a willing victim who’s committed no treachery is killed in a traitor’s stead, the table would crack and death itself would start working backwards.

(30:28 – 30:42)

Jesus’ death would not mean defeat. His resurrection would prove victory over sin and over death. When they saw Him alive, they would know it was all part of the Father’s plan.

(30:43 – 30:50)

And that’s the goal. That their faith in Jesus would be strengthened, not shaken. That’s real security.

(30:52 – 31:41)

So Jesus is going to prepare a place for them, but another comes, the Holy Spirit, to prepare them for that place. Do you believe Jesus went to prepare a place for you? I’m going to ask you all a personal question. Have you been born again by His Spirit so that you can be in that place? And if you have, do you know the presence of His Spirit in your life? Do you know His living in you, working in you, through you, helping you, reminding you, teaching you? And are you resting and at peace with Jesus because of His death and resurrection? A peace and a security that the world cannot bring.

(31:46 – 32:15)

Well, maybe as we think about these things, we’re going to sing a couple of songs in response, if it’s okay. The first one directs us to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And as we sing this, focus and ask God to clear the things that are perhaps in front of you and let the Spirit speak to you, help you, teach you, remind you as we sing these words, or perhaps allow others to sing them to you.

(32:17 – 32:36)

And the second song is, I’m sure a song that many in the room will know, even if we’ve not sung it together before. It enables us to be involved in a conversation together as it asks questions and answers are given. And I hope you can find your place in that too as we sing that together.

(32:37 – 33:03)

But more than that, I want the truth of Jesus and who He is and what He’s done and what He will do to be central. And Jesus is able and therefore worthy to be the perfect Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. His going to His death and resurrection brings forgiveness, peace with God and secure salvation for all who believe.

(33:04 – 33:29)

This is God’s plan, God’s forever plan to gather His people to Himself and to live with Him. And the Spirit is coming to prepare His people for that. Even as we live in all brokenness and darkness and difficulties and troubles in this world, so as we sing, we declare Jesus is worthy because He is.

The post Another advocate – John 14v15–31 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Just a brief prayer as we start. Father, help us to open up your words and open up our minds and our hearts to what you want to teach us tonight, that your Holy Spirit indeed will lead us and teach us. And it’s in Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

(0:24 – 0:43)

As we start our series on the Holy Spirit, I’d like you to turn to Acts chapter five. It’s on page 1,096, if you’re using the church Bible. And it’s a fascinating and fearful passage, Acts five.

(0:46 – 1:09)

The reason I want to read this passage, however, is because of what it says about the Spirit. So do have your radar on for what it says about the Holy Spirit, Acts five, verse one. Now, a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property.

(1:10 – 2:04)

With his wife’s full knowledge, he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet. Then Peter said, Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money 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 lied just to human beings, but to God. When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died, and great fear seized all who heard what had happened.

(2:04 – 2:26)

Then some young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him. About three hours later, his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land? Yes, she said, that is the price.

(2:27 – 2:54)

Peter said to her, how could you conspire to test the spirit of the Lord? Listen, the feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also. At that moment, she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in, and finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband.

(2:55 – 3:22)

Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events. This is God’s words, and it teaches us an enormous amount about the Holy Spirit. But before we get to the passage, I don’t know how many of you like art history.

(3:24 – 3:49)

I’m not really a fan of art history, but something I do find interesting about art history are the unfinished works of art. Turns out that many great painters started a potential masterpiece, but didn’t finish it. Maybe this is why I’ve never painted a masterpiece, I just haven’t finished it yet.

(3:50 – 4:24)

But from Leonardo da Vinci to Michelangelo, Rembrandt, hopefully we’ve maybe got some pictures coming up, Benjamin West, who painted this painting. All of them have paintings that are wonderful and yet incomplete. And I start with that because it seems to me that many Christians have a similarly incomplete picture of the Holy Spirit.

(4:26 – 5:05)

Some of the detail is there and much of the detail is good, but there are, if you like, some blank bits here and there on the canvas. So it might be, for instance, that their understanding of the person of the Spirit is a bit sketchy. Or it may be that they have a huge blank section on the mural because they haven’t grasped that the Holy Spirit was actually operational in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament.

(5:05 – 5:38)

And so they’ve got this big blank patch on the wall. And it’s not just that there are some bits that are incomplete, but maybe even, if we’re going to be humble about it, there may even be some places on the portrait where we’ve drawn in a few things that are actually incorrect or not quite right. And maybe there’s a few bits here and there where we need to rub something out that’s not quite biblical, not quite really what the Bible is saying.

(5:40 – 5:58)

And so as we move through this series, which is kind of like overviewing the biblical mural of the Spirit, we’re gonna kind of overview what the Bible teaches on the Spirit. As we go through this, I want you to be prepared for a few things. Number one, be ready to see a little more of the Spirit than you have already seen.

(6:00 – 6:31)

And number two, be ready occasionally to rub out something that isn’t quite right. Or it may be, in fact, that your mural’s kind of wonderful and perfect already, and in which case, just rejoice in what you are reminded of about God the Spirit. But my prayer for this series is that as we learn more about the Spirit, we will love Him more and be led by Him more gladly.

(6:32 – 6:57)

So this is not just some theoretical thing, but we want, in fact, to grow in our love for the Spirit and in our daily being led by the Spirit. So with that way of introduction, let’s begin with some basics, some fundamentals tonight. And I say basic, but actually, not everyone gets what we are about to cover.

(6:58 – 7:32)

And it makes an enormous difference to how we view the Holy Spirit. So let’s ask two basic questions tonight. Number one, is the Holy Spirit God? And number two, is the Holy Spirit a person? Or just some kind of powerful force of God? So a couple of things that are, they should be right at the centre of your understanding of the Spirit.

(7:33 – 7:50)

But let’s just check whether these things are there on your wall. On your wall, so to speak. And for each of these, we’re not just gonna look at the biblical passages, but we’re also gonna think about what difference this would actually make in your attitude to the Spirit.

(7:52 – 8:26)

So let’s start with the question, is the Holy Spirit God? And of course, outside Orthodox Christianity, many people’s answer is no. There are lots of people who are queuing up to say that the Spirit is not divine. Whether it’s the cults, or Judaism, or Islam, there are many different groups outside Orthodox Christianity who deny the Spirit’s deity.

(8:28 – 8:59)

And so if your answer is yes, I believe that the Holy Spirit is God, do you understand the biblical support for your position? Does the Bible make it clear that the Spirit is God? Well, the answer is yes. And I want to look with you at three lines of evidence briefly. So for one thing, the Bible gives the Spirit divine titles.

(8:59 – 9:18)

Divine titles. The Holy Spirit is called God in the Bible. This was one of the reasons that I read from Acts 5. Ananias and Sapphira have lied to the apostles.

(9:19 – 9:41)

They’ve lied about the amount of money that they’ve given to the church. The issue isn’t that they’ve held back money, the issue is that they’ve lied about how much money they’ve actually given. But in verse three, Peter says, the bigger issue is that you have lied to the Holy Spirit.

(9:42 – 10:08)

And why is that such a big deal? Well, it’s such a big deal because of the end of verse four, the next verse. Peter says, you have not lied just to human beings, but to God. You see the link that Peter makes? To lie to the Holy Spirit is to lie to God.

(10:09 – 10:27)

There’s a parallel between these two things. So Acts 5, verses three and four sticks the divine title God on the Holy Spirit. And this is not the only place in the New Testament that this happens.

(10:28 – 10:48)

Let me give you one other example, which I hate to say on the 2nd of November is Christmassy, contextually. But in Luke chapter one, Mary is being told that she will give birth to the Son of God. And this is what the angel says to her.

(10:48 – 11:10)

The Holy Spirit will come on you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Now the Most High, put capitals on the M and the H, Most High is a title from the very earliest part of the Bible. It comes from Genesis 14.

(11:11 – 11:38)

And so we’re being told clearly in Luke one that the Holy Spirit is the God of the whole Bible. The Spirit is given divine titles and the Spirit has divine attributes, second thing. Now attributes are qualities and abilities someone possesses.

(11:40 – 11:59)

And the Spirit is said to have attributes that only God possesses. So just to offer one illustration. In Hebrews chapter nine, verse 14, the Holy Spirit is called the Eternal Spirit.

(12:00 – 12:18)

Now if you just think about that, only God is eternal in Himself. And so if the Holy Spirit is the Eternal Spirit, the Spirit must be God. And there’s lots of things like that in Scripture.

(12:19 – 12:28)

The Spirit is present everywhere. It’s only true of God. The Spirit knows all things.

(12:28 – 12:36)

That’s only true of God. The Spirit is all powerful. That’s only true of God.

(12:37 – 13:06)

And so the Spirit isn’t just given the titles of God, but the Spirit also has the attributes of God. And then if that isn’t categorical enough, just to cap it off, thirdly we have the Trinitarian formulations of the Bible. The New Testament has a number of passages where the Father, Son, and Spirit are presented together as equals.

(13:07 – 13:34)

Equals. So think about Matthew chapter 28 and the famous Great Commission. What’s the Great Commission? Go into the world and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of who? The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

(13:36 – 13:48)

And by the way, it is not the name of the Father and the name of the Son and the name of the Holy Spirit. There’s only one name in that verse, singular. The name of the Father and the Son and the Spirit.

(13:51 – 14:18)

I don’t know how much clearer it can be from that, that the Holy Spirit is on an absolute par with the Father and the Son. He shares the same name as the Father and the Son. In the New Testament, the Spirit is called God, acts like God, and is God, sharing the name and honour of God.

(14:19 – 14:38)

And down the centuries, all Orthodox Christians have believed this. In fact, one of the dividing lines between a biblical view of the Spirit and one that’s not biblical is just this. Now, a little bit of church history, because it’s good to do a little bit of church history occasionally.

(14:40 – 15:14)

In 325 AD, there was an early church council in a place called Nicaea, which is in Turkey today. And at Nicaea, a few hundred church leaders got together for a conference, and they studied the Bible, and they produced a statement about the Trinity, what the church believes about the Trinity. And this creed, don’t worry if you can’t read it, but what you possibly can see on the screen there is that it has three sections.

(15:14 – 15:23)

Section one was about God the Father. We believe in God the Father. Section two, we believe in God the Son.

(15:24 – 15:43)

And section three, we believe in the Holy Spirit. What is really intriguing about that statement is how short the third section is. The Holy Spirit only got a single line in the Nicaean Creed.

(15:43 – 15:56)

Simply says, we believe in the Holy Spirit. Now, the fact that the Spirit is in the creed at all shows that he’s viewed as God at this point. He has his own paragraph.

(15:57 – 16:24)

But why was he given just a line? Well, the reason is that at that time, the big debate of the day was about God the Son. The big debate was, is Jesus fully divine? And so because of that, they wrote this huge, big, long section defending the deity of Jesus. What happened was that after Nicaea, people then began to debate about the person of the Holy Spirit.

(16:24 – 16:55)

Well, what about the Holy Spirit? And there were some people who popped up who said that while the Holy Spirit was part of God and in some ways, maybe divine, they said the Spirit is a notch or two below the Father and the Son. He’s somewhat divine, but he’s not fully equal with the Father and the Son. And so you know what they did? They called another council.

(16:55 – 17:22)

That’s what you did whenever there was a bit of controversy. And in 381 at the Council of Constantinople, they added a much longer section to the Nicaean Creed about the Holy Spirit, which said amongst other things that the Holy Spirit is the Lord God. Now, this is not just a bit of theology or history.

(17:23 – 18:08)

This influences our attitude towards the Spirit because if the Holy Spirit is God, then we should honour him as God. Have a listen to how the Council of Constantinople put it. And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, that’s a divine title, the giver of life, that’s a divine attribute, who proceeds from the Father and who in unity with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified and who has spoken through the prophets.

(18:10 – 18:39)

So the early church grasped that if the Spirit is God, then like the Father and Son, the Spirit should be worshipped as God and glorified as God. To put it another way, we shouldn’t honour the Spirit one iota less than we do the Father and Son. The Spirit is not the inferior member of the Trinity.

(18:41 – 19:13)

Now, there is a caveat to this. It’s a caveat and it’s not a contradiction that we are to honour and glorify the Spirit in the way that the Bible encourages us to honour him. It’s interesting when you read the New Testament, you find, or I should say you don’t find, isolated worship directed to the Holy Spirit alone.

(19:14 – 20:00)

There are passages where the Son is just directly praised and glorified. There’s most passages where the Father is praised and honoured. But the overwhelming presentation is that the Holy Spirit is honoured according to his role within the Trinity, which is not usually to be in the direct spotlight of isolated praise, but to be that member of the Trinity who enables our prayers and enables our praise and who loves, the Holy Spirit loves to shine the spotlight on the Father and the Son.

(20:02 – 20:40)

To use a human illustration, you know what you see sometimes at these Oscar ceremonies and there’s maybe like a film production and the film producers have won an award and there’s maybe seven or eight people come up to the front. And there’s always those people that come to the microphone, but there’s always one or two people that stand at the back, you know, and they’re pushing everyone else forward and giving them the spotlight, giving them the applause. Well, it’s not that the Holy Spirit is any less worthy of honour, but the Spirit loves to play the role of putting the Father and the Son to the front.

(20:43 – 21:16)

And so for instance, in New Testament passages like Ephesians 1, you’ll see there that God the Father is the one who is praised directly. And then there’s a very significant section where God the Son is honoured as the agent of redemption through his death on the cross. And then the Holy Spirit comes at the end as the one who is working behind the scenes and in the hearts of people to make all of this happen.

(21:19 – 21:53)

To put it another way, we honour the Holy Spirit with the emphasis of the New Testament, which is normally to be the one through whom we praise and through whom we pray. So what does this look like in the church? Well, it looks like speaking of the Holy Spirit with reverence. You know, one of the things I regret is that sometimes whenever I speak of the Holy Spirit, it seems like it’s always in the context of controversy.

(21:57 – 22:08)

And the Holy Spirit is not just a person who’s involved. We’re the ones that create the controversies about the Spirit, not the Spirit. And so we need to speak of him even with reverence.

(22:10 – 22:36)

It also is something about our thinking, isn’t it? That we don’t think any less of the Spirit than the Father and the Son. And it also looks like praise that is often Trinitarian in its structure. It’s wonderful, isn’t it? That hymn that we sang together, it honoured the whole Trinity as the Godhead works together for our salvation.

(22:38 – 23:10)

And another way also that we honour the Spirit is by recognising the Spirit’s distinctive contributions to our salvation. Nigel was pointing this out this morning, that while within the one God, all the members of the Godhead are united in all that they’re doing, and yet the Bible does teach distinct roles, you could say. Things that the Father does particularly, things that the Son does particularly, things that the Spirit does particularly.

(23:11 – 23:46)

What does the Spirit do particularly? Well, the Spirit’s involved in things like creation and new creation in the hearts of those who are spiritually dead. And the Spirit’s involved in things like the inspiration of the Bible and the illumination in people’s minds so they can understand the Bible and agree with it. And as we see the Spirit’s roles in these areas and recognise these things, we worship and glorify the Spirit.

(23:48 – 23:57)

So that is the first fundamental. Is the Holy Spirit God? Yes. And that sets the tone for the whole way we view the Spirit.

(23:58 – 24:29)

But so does our second question, which is just as fundamental. And the second question is, is the Holy Spirit personal? Is the Holy Spirit a person? Ligonier Ministries, which is a ministry connected with the late R.C. Sproul, they carried out a survey in the UK to ask about people’s beliefs. This was in 2018.

(24:30 – 25:03)

And they asked people that weren’t Christians, but also people who were Christians, lots of biblical questions. And I think one of the most shocking results of that report was they discovered about half of UK evangelicals said they believed that the Holy Spirit is not a person, but a force. Only 39% said that they disagreed with the statement, the Holy Spirit is a force, not a person.

(25:04 – 25:22)

6% said they didn’t know. And about 50% thought the Spirit was just a force. Now, I’m actually not that surprised by that, because this does seem to be one of the more sketchy parts of the mural as I listen to Christians.

(25:26 – 25:48)

Many Christians are clear on the deity of the Spirit, but they’re less clear on the person of the Spirit. And I think even there might be some reasons for this, if you think about it. One of the reasons might simply be that the very name of the Spirit might appear to people to be impersonal.

(25:49 – 26:04)

The most common title for the Spirit is the Holy Spirit. But the titles, the Father and the Son, are very obviously personal, aren’t they? You relate to, you have a relationship with the Father. You associate with a Father and a Son in human terms.

(26:05 – 26:26)

But it’s a little less obvious that the Holy Spirit is necessarily a person. And then maybe added to that is the fact that the Bible often describes the Spirit in terms of his actions and his power. I mean, even think of the most popular images for the Spirit in the Bible.

(26:27 – 26:44)

Images like a powerful wind, a raging fire, powerful rushing water. These are highly powerful things. Wind, fire, water.

(26:44 – 27:02)

And so maybe it’s as people read these things, they then make the wrong deduction that the Spirit is just a force, not a person. But this is where we need the whole Bible to keep us right. And so Acts 5 again is really helpful.

(27:02 – 27:16)

Acts 5 not only proves that the Holy Spirit is God, but it also proves that the Holy Spirit is a person. Look again at verse three. You have lied to the Holy Spirit.

(27:18 – 27:32)

Well, you can’t lie to something that’s impersonal. You can lie to your friend, but you can’t lie to a lamppost, unless you’re particularly foolish. And it’s the same in verse nine.

(27:33 – 28:11)

How can you conspire to test the Spirit of the Lord? You can’t test the patience of mere fire, wind, or water, but you can test the patience of a person who has these powerful characteristics. And these personal characteristics are everywhere in the New Testament. The Holy Spirit knows things, teaches people, leads the church, He testifies, He makes decisions, and has a will.

(28:12 – 28:27)

You can insult the Holy Spirit, although you shouldn’t, and you can grieve the Holy Spirit. You even, as we see here, can lie to the Holy Spirit, and therefore the Spirit is Personal.

(28:30 – 28:53)

Now, John Owen, who was one of the great minds of church history, he wrote a book on the Holy Spirit. Interesting that in his day, I think it was the 1700s, John Owen felt there was a big neglect on the Holy Spirit in the church of his day, that people didn’t know much about him. So he wrote this massive, long book that you can try and read, it’s pretty hard to read.

(28:53 – 29:46)

But anyway, he’s got a really good illustration in it, and he says, he said, imagine you hear of a far-off country that is flourishing, and there’s reports coming out of this country that this place is amazing, that it’s full of life and flourishing, it’s full of justice for all of the citizens, and it’s full of people who are well-taught and well-educated, and it’s a place where evil is kept in check. And Owen says, wouldn’t it be obvious that such a country must have a governor, some sort of wise ruler who is making all of this happen? Because for there to be justice, someone has to administer justice. And for everyone to be well-educated, there must be someone there to teach.

(29:47 – 30:28)

And so Owen says, it’s obvious from what the Spirit does that the Spirit must be personal. I think Owen would have agreed with the writer who says, the Holy Spirit is not only an action, but an actor. So what difference does this make? What difference does it make that we use the right pronoun when it comes to the Holy Spirit? Everyone’s on about pronouns today, aren’t they? We need to use the right pronoun when it comes to the Holy Spirit.

(30:28 – 30:51)

What is the right pronoun when it comes to the Spirit? The right pronoun is not it. The Holy Spirit is not an it. But in the accommodating language of the Bible, the Spirit has given the pronoun He to tell us that the Spirit is personal.

(30:52 – 31:10)

Now what difference does it make to grasp that? And I’m assuming that this is gonna make a bigger difference because as we’ve said, this is a more sketchy part of the mural for many people. So here’s a few things. First of all, let’s just start with how you speak about the Holy Spirit.

(31:11 – 31:31)

I think that’s important. Let’s stop talking about this Holy Spirit as if the Spirit is the Christian version of the force in Star Wars. Have you come across Christians that kind of seem to speak of the Spirit in that way, right? So it’s this force that’s kind of flying around and that you can manipulate and pray into.

(31:32 – 31:46)

You know, it’s like it’s just this thing that you can tap into. Let’s stop doing that. If the Holy Spirit is personal, then you should engage with the Holy Spirit as a person.

(31:48 – 32:15)

And I thought about giving you a kind of a checklist to do this, and then I thought that’s not the right way to come at this, is it? What I want you to simply see is that you will give much greater attention to the Spirit when you realise the Spirit is a person. Silly illustration. In our house, we have a small number of people and a very large amount of stuff.

(32:16 – 32:32)

Now, the stuff in our house matters. It’s not inconsequential. If, for example, a light stops working or something in the house isn’t functioning, it will get attention at some point.

(32:34 – 32:59)

But what gets most attention in our house are the people in our house. If a person in the house is upset about something or a person in the house has something to say to everybody, we all stop and we all listen. There is a different level of attention given to a person than there is to the power unit that isn’t functioning in the kitchen.

(33:01 – 33:34)

And my heart behind this series is not to try and make us go in any kind of weird direction with the Holy Spirit, but actually to get us to grapple with who the Holy Spirit actually is. Because when we view the Spirit as God and when we view the Spirit as personal, He therefore becomes someone who demands our daily concern and attention. We will expect to engage with the Spirit each day that we live our lives.

(33:36 – 34:08)

How do we engage with Him? Well, we see, don’t we, in the Bible that it is chiefly through the word that He inspired, as He teaches us and comforts us and leads us through His word. And above all, as He leads us to worship the Father and to worship the Son. When we see the Spirit as personal, we will stop seeking to use the Spirit as just a means to our ends.

(34:09 – 34:35)

And we will start to have affections for the Spirit, an attitude that cares about what He thinks and that makes us sensitive to sin and sensitive to His leading. Much more about that in weeks to come. But as we begin this series, let’s fill in two sections of the canvas.

(34:37 – 34:43)

The Spirit is God. Honour Him. Glorify Him.

(34:44 – 35:08)

Don’t see the Spirit as in any way beneath the Father and Son, even though He plays a very particular role. And the Spirit is personal. Know Him, love Him, give Him your consideration so that by knowing the Spirit more, you will be led by Him more gladly.

(35:09 – 35:46)

Let us pray. Our Father, there has been a lot to think about this evening, and we pray that this will change us and that this will encourage us to see the Godhead in the way that the Bible describes it. We want to honour you for who you are, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

(35:47 – 36:12)

We want to praise you tonight, Father, through your Son and in the power of your Spirit. And we also want to recognise the distinctive role of the Spirit in our salvation and in our lives. May we be more sensitive to His leading, to His convicting, to His teaching, to His guiding as He points us to you and as He points us to Christ.

(36:13 – 36:16)

And it’s in His name we pray, amen.

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