The Person of the Holy Spirit - Life of Paul Part 60

If I were to give the average follower of Christ a choice today between two options, option number one being to keep things exactly the way they are today with the Lord Jesus in heaven, and with the Holy Spirit here on earth ministering to us, or option number two, which would be to have the Lord Jesus personally back here on earth again, walking with us, talking with us, eating and drinking and sleeping with us, and who the followers of Christ would choose. Well, I've taken people to Israel for the last 15 years, over a thousand people, and you know what I've learned is that what makes it so special and so meaningful is the sense that people are walking where Jesus walked, that they're praying where Jesus prayed, that they're standing where Jesus stood.

And so based on my experience with people in Israel, I suspect most people would probably, given the choice, choose option number two. The Lord Jesus back here on earth with us again, but interestingly enough, listen to what Jesus said about this. He said, John 16 7, it is for your good that I am going away, for if I go away, I will send the Holy Spirit to you. The Lord Jesus made it clear that option number one, with him in heaven and the Holy Spirit here on earth, that that really is our best option, which means the Holy Spirit must be in the business of doing some pretty amazing and some pretty awesome things here on this earth for the Lord to have said that. Now that's what we want to start talking about today, the person and the work of the Holy Spirit, and it grows out of an incident out of the life of the Apostle Paul here in Acts chapter 19. So let's look at the Bible and then we'll come back and we'll start talking about the Holy Spirit.

A little bit of background. Remember now the Apostle Paul has finished his second missionary journey. Let's show you a map. He's gone from Troas here in northwestern Turkey today across the Aegean. He's gone to Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, Corinth, all in Greece preaching. He then made a quick stop at Ephesus and returned home to Antioch in Syria, which is down here just off of the map. He began his second missionary journey in the beginning of 50 A.D. He finished it in the fall of 53 A.D.

So that's where we are. Look at chapter 18 verse 23. And after spending some time in Antioch, Paul set out from there and traveled from place to place throughout the region of Galatia and Phrygia strengthening all the disciples. After being back in Antioch for just a few months, let's show you a map, the Apostle Paul decided to go back and visit all of these cities in Galatia and Phrygia.

That was the underbelly, the southern underbelly of Turkey. Cities such as Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, Antioch and Perga, all of these cities. He decided to go back and visit these cities and encourage the believers there. Acts 19 verse 1. So Paul took the road through the interior, that is of Asia Minor, and he arrived at Ephesus.

Back to our map. Here Paul went through Derbe, Lystra, Iconium and then went through the middle of Turkey, the middle of Asia Minor, arriving at Ephesus here on the western coast. And Ephesus, as you can see, was the capital city of the green portion of the map, the Roman province of Asia, making it the second most influential city in the Roman Empire of Paul's day. Now, Paul had wanted to go to Ephesus for many, many years, but the God in his timing had never allowed Paul to go there and do any serious ministry. Here in Acts chapter 19, suddenly the timing of God is right and now Paul is going to spend two years here in Ephesus, the longest amount of time he ever spent in any one city on any of his journeys.

And we're going to read more about that in the weeks to come. Verse 1 continues, And when Paul got to Ephesus, he found there some disciples and he asked them, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? And they answered, No. We haven't even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. So Paul said to them, Well, then what baptism did you receive? And they replied, John's baptism. Here the Apostle Paul meets a group of disciples, followers, and the Bible says they had believed and been baptized. And yet the Bible says they've never heard of the Holy Spirit. And it's obvious from the verses to come. They did not have the Holy Spirit indwelling their life.

You say, Well, Lon, how could this be? I mean, I thought that as soon as a person believes in Jesus, as soon as they become a true follower of Christ, the Holy Spirit immediately comes into their life. Well, that's right. That's exactly what the Bible teaches. Romans 8, verse 9, And if anyone does not have the Holy Spirit in their life, that person does not belong to Christ. But the Bible says these men had believed they were disciples, but they didn't have the Holy Spirit in their life yet, which means they were not born again.

The deal had not been sealed yet. You say, Well, how can that be? How can you explain that? Well, the explanation that I think makes the most sense is that in the early days of the Christian faith, before the New Testament was written, it took a while for the Apostle Paul and the other apostles to spread the full and complete message about Jesus Christ throughout the Roman world. And while they were going about that, pockets of people could be found who had incomplete information about Christ. They had enough information about Jesus to be attracted to Him, but they didn't have enough information to close the deal for salvation and eternal life.

And apparently that's what happened with these men here in Acts 19. They had believed fully everything they knew about Jesus. They had heard about John's baptism. Maybe they had heard a little bit about the earthly ministry of Jesus, but they didn't know about the cross. They didn't know about the resurrection. They didn't know about the coming of the Holy Spirit, and therefore they had not been able to complete the deal yet.

But all that's going to change. Verse 4, Paul said, John's baptism was a baptism of repentance, and John told people to believe in the one who was coming after him, that is Jesus. And then Paul apparently went on to tell them about the cross and tell them about the crucifixion. Tell them about the resurrection and on hearing this, this new information, updated information, these men were baptized now in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they spoke in tongues and they prophesied whatever their exact theological deficiency was, the apostle Paul fixed it. He told them the extra information they needed.

They received that information, believed that information, and the Spirit of God entered their lives in great power. Now that's where we're going to stop for the moment because it's time to ask a most important question. And you all know what that is. So are we ready? Okay.

Even the most stoic among you, are you ready? All right. Here we go. Ready? One, two, three. So what?

Yeah. You say, Lon, so what? What difference does any of this make to my life today? Well, friends, isn't it interesting that when the apostle Paul arrived here in town, he asked these people, have you received the Holy Spirit? Because Paul understood the central and crucial and strategic role of the Holy Spirit in our lives as believers. And that's the first thing he wanted to know. Do you have the Holy Spirit in your life?

And we're going to talk a little bit about that central and strategic ministry of the Holy Spirit. But, you know, I own a 1996 Dodge Caravan that we used to transport my daughter Jill around. It has 125,000 miles on it. And a week or so ago, this fuse started blowing under the dash whenever you'd start the car. Now, the fuse controlled the signal lights, which frankly, I didn't think was that big a deal.

So I didn't... I said, well, we don't need to fix that. And it also controlled the dash lights. And I said, well, that's probably not that big a deal either.

But it also controls something that in Washington, D.C. is a big deal. It controlled the air conditioning. And so my wife said, we got to get it fixed. I said, all right. So we took it into the repair shop.

And when I went to pick it up, the guy hands me a bill for over $800. And I said to him, I said, wow, that's a pretty expensive fix just for a fuse. And I think I made him upset. Because here's what he said back to me. He said, and I quote, Well, then next time, why don't you just lay hands on the van like Benny Hinn and ask the Holy Spirit to fix it? Okay. You see why I think I've said it. Now, we all know that the work of the Holy Spirit is not to heal fuses in vans.

We all know that. But what exactly is the work and the ministry of the Holy Spirit here in our world? Well, before we talk about what the Holy Spirit does, let's first talk about who the Holy Spirit is, because that is crucial to understanding what He does.

First of all, there's two things I want to tell you. Number one, the Holy Spirit is a person. He's not an inanimate force. He's not a thing.

He's not an it. The Bible says Acts 5, the Holy Spirit can be lied to. Acts 7, the Holy Spirit can be resisted. Acts 10, the Holy Spirit can be obeyed. The Bible says Romans Chapter 8, that the Holy Spirit prays for us before God the Father. Ephesians Chapter 4, the Bible says the Holy Spirit has feelings that can be hurt and wounded and grieved.

Friends, you cannot grieve an it. You cannot hurt the feelings of an impersonal force. The Holy Spirit is a person, which leads to the second thing I want us to know, is that not only is He a person, but He is also God. The Holy Spirit is as much God as is God the Father and God the Son, the Lord Jesus. All the attributes that the Bible credits to God, the Bible also credits to the Holy Spirit. All the works of God that the Bible credits to God, the Bible also credits to the Holy Spirit. For example, Psalm 139 says that the Holy Spirit is omnipresent. Isaiah 40 says that the Holy Spirit is omnipotent. The Bible, 1 Corinthians 2, tells us that the Holy Spirit knows the deep things of God that only God can know. Genesis 1 tells us the Holy Spirit took part in creation, which only God did. 1 Peter Chapter 2 tells us that the Holy Spirit inspired the writing of the Bible, which we know only God did. Luke Chapter 1 tells us that the Holy Spirit was the one responsible for the virgin birth. Matthew 28, 19, Go and make disciples, Jesus said, of all nations, baptizing them in the name, singular, of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And the reason the word name is singular is because there is only one God, who exists in three persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. This is why the Council of Constantinople, 381 A.D., where 150 evangelical bishops gathered to lock down theology, evangelical theology, said, and I quote, We believe in the Holy Spirit, the life-giving one, who is to be glorified equally with the Father and the Son. This is who the Holy Spirit is.

Now that we know who He is, let's talk about what does He do. Well friends, the work of the Holy Spirit is so enormously broad that we can't possibly cover it all today. In particular, we're not going to talk today about spiritual gifts. We're not going to talk about the charismatic gifts, the gift of tongues, the gift of healings, of prophecy and miracles and all of that. And the reason is that I have a 12-tape series that I did years ago called Tongues, Healings, and Miracles of Biblical Perspective that you can pick up in the bookstore.

If you have any questions about any of these gifts, we talk about what the gifts are, how they operated, are they operating today, you have any issues with that, pick up those tapes and you can listen to them. We are a non-charismatic church. We have serious theological concerns about the way some of these charismatic gifts are being practiced today. Therefore, we don't practice them. Now this doesn't mean we're an anti-charismatic church. You will never hear us say a bad word about people who disagree with us on this and do practice these gifts. We never have and we never will. But friends, it does mean that we don't practice them here.

However, we don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Just because we don't practice some of these charismatic gifts, that does not mean that we downplay or diminish the ministry of the Holy Spirit in this church. Because folks, in our world today, the Bible teaches that in the church age in which we're living, almost exclusively this age is the age of the Holy Spirit. To put it another way, almost all the work of God going on today is being done not directly by God the Father or directly by God the Son, but by God the Holy Spirit. To try to run the church without the Holy Spirit, well that's craziness. To try to reach people for Jesus Christ without the ministry of the Holy Spirit, well that's ludicrous. To try to live a life that honors God today without the Holy Spirit's help, that's impossible. Friends, trying to do the ministry of God without the Holy Spirit is like trying to run a car without gasoline.

So we do not diminish. As a matter of fact, we play up the ministry of the Holy Spirit but in the ways that we feel are appropriate. Now, having said all of that, what are some of the jobs? What are some of the ministries of the Holy Spirit? I'm only going to give you a few. I can't possibly give you all.

But here are some of the most important. The Holy Spirit in our world today is the one who removes people's spiritual blindness so they realize their need for Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians chapter 4 says that the God of this world, Satan, has blinded the minds of unbelieving people so they cannot see the glory of Jesus. Now verse 6 goes on to say, But the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, made His light shine into our hearts as followers of Christ so that now we can see God's glory in the person of Jesus Christ. You know when you pray for a friend, a loved one, a neighbor, a relative, a co-worker to come to Christ, you know what you're really praying for?

What you are really praying for is for God the Holy Spirit to remove the spiritual blindness from these people to drop the spiritual scales from their eyes so that they can see and understand where they stand before God and can appreciate their need for Jesus Christ. And friends, if you are walking with Jesus Christ today, let me tell you who do you have to thank for that? You say, I know who I have to thank. I have my mama to thank.

No, no, no. Your mama may be a wonderful lady. But your mama is not the reason you're walking with Jesus today. The reason is that at some point in your life, it may be as a result of your mama's prayers, but at some point in your life, God the Holy Spirit dropped the scales from your eyes, removed the spiritual blindness from your heart, and suddenly you understood where you stood with God and why you needed Jesus and you asked Him to be your personal Savior. If you're walking with Jesus today, you've got the Holy Spirit to thank for that. And if you're here today and you've never trusted Jesus in a real and personal way, may I say to you that this is really the key issue. When I was in the process of coming to Jesus, the man that led me to Christ said, Lon, every time you open the Bible and read it, and I would say to you every time you get ready to come to church, a little prayer you should say is, God, if you're real and Jesus is who He said He is, remove the blindness from my eyes and help me see that. Now, folks, if God isn't real and Jesus isn't hidden in who He said He is, there's not a bit of danger in praying that prayer because you're praying to nothing. But if God is real and Jesus is who He said, that's the key issue, that God needs to remove the blindness that the Bible says every one of us come into this world with, the spiritual blindness, so that we can see and understand our need of Jesus.

Once we get there, the rest of it is a piece of cake. That's a great prayer for you to pray. Number two, what else does the Holy Spirit do? Number two, He's the one that brings new birth to people who come to Christ. Remember, Jesus talked about it to Nicodemus, John chapter 3. He said, you must be born again and then He said, you must be born by the Spirit. The Spirit is the one who gives new birth.

Number three, the Holy Spirit indwells every genuine follower of Jesus Christ. Remember what Jesus said, John 14, 17. He said to His disciples, the Holy Spirit has been with you and after I rise from the dead and go to heaven and He comes at Pentecost, He will be in you, inside that body with you.

That's why Paul writes 1 Corinthians 6 verse 19. Don't you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God and thus you are not your own. Living inside of that body, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, is not just you but is you and the Holy Spirit together. Number four, the Holy Spirit is the one who gives us assurance of our salvation every day, Romans 8 16. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are God's children. Hey, as a follower of Christ, you know that sense that you have that you know that you know that you know that you belong to God.

You know that sense? Well, let me tell you where it's coming from. It's coming from the Holy Spirit testifying every day to your heart that you're a child of God. When I first came to Christ in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, almost 33 years ago, I would walk down the street and see all my old drug buddies and they would say, hey, what's going on? And I said, hey, I just gave my life to Jesus and they would go, what?

You did what? They said, what are you crazy? Don't you know Christianity and real Christianity is a hoax?

Jesus can't be the Messiah. And they throw all these high sounding intellectual arguments at me that I've never heard before. I think they must have learned them in religion class there in Chapel Hill.

I don't know where they got them from. And all these things I couldn't answer, these objections that I had no way to respond to. But friends, you know what? I knew that I knew that I knew that I belong to Jesus Christ. And I would say to them, you know, I can't answer your questions, friends, but I know that I know that I know that I belong to Jesus.

I'm sticking with Him. Now, how did I know that? I knew it because it was a ministry of the Holy Spirit to my heart saying, Lon, you may not be able to answer their questions, friends, but you still belong to me. And that's one of the things the Holy Spirit does for us each and every day. Number five, the Holy Spirit is the one who illuminates our minds so that we can understand the Bible. 1 Corinthians 2, verse 14, the person without the spirit cannot grasp truth that comes from God, for it is foolishness to him and he cannot understand it. But we have received as followers of Christ God's Spirit so that we can understand the truths freely given to us by God. You ever run into people who say things like, you know, I read this Bible and I can't... It's like, God will be good to me. I read it and it's like hieroglyphics in here.

I can't understand one word this thing's saying. You know why? Because as an unbelieving person without the ministry of the Spirit of God in their life, they can't understand spiritual truth. And then all of a sudden these people come to Christ and they're like, oh, oh, oh, oh, did you see this in here? Did you believe it? Did you know this was in here? Oh, my gosh, I can't believe this. I can't believe this.

This is awesome. What happened to them? Say they came off their medication.

No, no, no. What happened to them is the Holy Spirit came into their life and all of a sudden began illuminating their heart and their mind so they could understand spiritual truth. If you have quiet time in the morning and you take out the Bible and you read it and it makes sense to you and it thrills your heart and it gives you goosebumps and it encourages you for the day. Let me tell you why that's happening because the Holy Spirit is illuminating your heart and mind so that you can grasp spiritual truth.

That's one of His jobs. Number six, the Holy Spirit is the one who gives us spiritual gifts so we can serve God and then empowers us to use them effectively. 1 Corinthians 12, number seven, the Holy Spirit is the one who comforts us in the trials of life. John chapter 14, when we're really low, He's the one who wraps his arms around us and says it's going to be okay.

I'm here with you. Number eight, the Holy Spirit is the one who prays for us when we're so distraught that we don't even know what to pray for. He's the one who says, now, Father, they can't say this, but here's what they really want to pray. Number nine, the Holy Spirit, 2 Thessalonians 2, is the one who restrains evil in this world so that the work of God can move forward. Friends, thank God for the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And in this world, I've just given you a smattering of what the Bible teaches.

How could we ever do ministry or life without the ministry of the Holy Spirit? But I have one more that I want to give you as we close and this one is really cool. You say, well, they're all cool.

Well, they are, but this one's really cool. And that is number 10, that the Holy Spirit is God's down payment on us as followers of Jesus Christ. Now, you know what a down payment is.

A down payment is a deposit that somebody makes as a promise that they're going to follow through on the deal. Well, listen to what the Bible says. 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 22, God sealed us and gave us the Holy Spirit in our hearts as a down payment. Ephesians chapter 1 verse 13, after you believed in Jesus Christ, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise who is God's down payment, guaranteeing our inheritance as followers of Jesus Christ. And what is this inheritance that the Holy Spirit as a down payment is guaranteeing in our lives? Well, listen, 2 Corinthians 5, we know that He who raised Jesus will raise us also so that our mortality may be swallowed up by eternal life. Now, He who prepared us for this very purpose, that is for the purpose of having eternal life, is God who gave us the Holy Spirit as a down payment. Friends, the indwelling Holy Spirit is God's guarantee that as a follower of Jesus Christ, you are going to get eternal life exactly like God promised you.

The indwelling Holy Spirit is God's guarantee that God's going to raise you up to live forever, just like He raised Jesus up to live forever. He put a deposit down on you. He made a down payment on you and me.

And friends, God doesn't make down payments unless He's serious about finishing the deal. You know, my son John, I'm traveling around with him, we're looking at colleges and he wants to play college baseball, so we're trying to coordinate our schedule so we're there on campus at the same time that the college baseball coach is there, which sometimes gives us a very tiny window to shoot for. And we were looking, we were at a college up north out of the area here where the only day we could make that happen was the day of graduation from college. And so I call up this little college town trying to get a hotel room for the night before graduation.

Well, I finally found one, it was not cheap, but I finally found one and so I get the lady on the phone for reservations and she says, sir, I need to tell you that because this is graduation weekend, we require a down payment that we go ahead and immediately charge onto your credit card today. And I said, okay, well, how much is it? She said the full price of the room. I said, well, what is your cancellation policy? She said, our cancellation policy is you can cancel whenever you want, but we keep your money. I said, well, that doesn't sound like much of a cancellation policy to me. She said, sir, do you want the rumor, don't you? I said, all right, I'm going to take the room.

I said, but let me just tell you something. I said, when I make this kind of a deposit on the room, you can be absolutely sure if I have to give that room away as a wedding present, somebody is going to be there to stay in that room. I guarantee you that room will not go empty because I don't make a down payment like that without being serious. I mean, you know me, right?

You know my heritage. All right, well, now the point is God doesn't make down payments either unless he's serious. And when God made the down payment in your life of giving you the Holy Spirit, friends, he did it because he's serious. He's serious that everything he promised you about eternal life, you're going to get. He's coming back to finish the deal and he left the Holy Spirit as a deposit.

Just so you know, beyond any doubt, he's finishing that deal. Now, I don't know, it don't get no better than that. I mean, if that doesn't lift your spirits today, I don't know what in the world will.

I mean, you know, God help you. But this lifts my spirits knowing this. And next week, we're going to come back. Actually, next week is Father's Day, so we're going to talk to your dads. But the week after that, we're going to come back and talk with some more about the Holy Spirit. And just to whet your appetite a little bit, two weeks from now, we're going to talk about the Holy Spirit and the role that he plays in living the Christian life. See, I'm convinced that 90% or more people who come to Christ have been taught to live the Christian experience incorrectly. And that's why we look around and all this wonderful victory that everybody talks about having, we're not having it and we go, well, maybe something's wrong with us.

Something's not wrong with you. Something is wrong with the way that you were taught to live the Christian experience because at the heart of living the Christian experience properly is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We're going to talk about that in two weeks. So if your motto is, hey, if I'm a Christian, how come I can't live the Christian life? You don't want to miss two weeks from today.

We're going to tell you how to fix that. So let's pray together. What do you say? Heavenly Father, thank you for the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Thank you for above everything else, his being our down payment, our guarantee that you're going to do everything you said you're going to do, that you're going to complete the deal. And so, Lord Jesus, help us to walk out of here encouraged this morning, encouraged that not only do we have the Holy Spirit doing all these wonderful things for us each and every day, but that the Holy Spirit is our absolute pledge from God that we're going to heaven and that eternal life is going to be ours. And so lift our spirits and encourage our hearts with that knowledge today. No matter what's going on in the world today, remind us it's only temporary. And one day we're coming to be with you. And we have the Spirit of God as our down payment to prove it. And we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.