Give Thanks!
Giving Thanks to the Spirit
John 16:7-8
We are taking some time to “Give Thanks” for our spiritual blessings. We began with thanks to God. He is worthy of our praise and thanks and with King David and the ancient Israelites, we can say, “O give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His mercy endures forever!”
Than last week we placed our attention on giving thanks for our salvation. As people who were wandering in the wilderness, suffering from an incurable disease, locked away in prison and about to drown in the storm-tossed seas of life, the Lord heard our cry and saved us. And of all the people in the world, the ones who ought to be the most thankful are the saved of God.
Today I want us to focus on giving thanks to the Holy Spirit. Now in my mind, the most abused member of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit. There is so much misunderstanding and lack of understanding regarding the ministry of the Holy Spirit and I believe He needs to be honored and worshipped and reverenced for Who He is and the Work He does.
The Bible warns us about the danger of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, we are warned about resisting the Holy Spirit, we are warned about grieving the Holy Spirit, we are warned about quenching the Holy Spirit, and all those verbs are addressed at the way we refer to the Holy Spirit Himself.
But it is not just a matter of trying to avoid blasphemy and abuse. We need not only to avoid certain errors regarding the Holy Spirit, but we need to learn to worship the Holy Spirit for what He has done and who He genuinely is.
I think it extremely important that we understand that we have received from each member of the Trinity certain specific benefits. Oftentimes, we just lump everything together and consider them as a whole.
I’m not suggesting that we have three Gods and it’s not wrong to think of the three as One. But it certainly broadens our appreciation and gratitude when we realize that every part of God is worthy of our praise and thanks. Paul was fond of doing that. For instance, in the very last verse of the last chapter of 2 Corinthians, he says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
That is a Trinitarian benediction that sorts out the individual features of the ministry of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit to us as believers. It is the love of God. Coming from God is that divine, sovereign love. It is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the Son who provides divine, sovereign grace. And it is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Or to say it another way, from the Father comes divine love; from the Son, divine grace; and from the Spirit, divine fellowship.
And while it is certainly true that throughout Scripture there is an overlapping in the work of the Trinity, there is still an emphasis on those specific works which each member does in some unique way.
And I’m afraid we spend a lot of time thinking about the love of the Father and the sacrifice of the Son, but leave out the Spirit. But in reality, the Father initiates our salvation, the Son ratifies our salvation, the Holy Spirit communicates our salvation. The Father chooses us for life, the Son provides the sacrifice that leads to life, and the Holy Spirit gives us the life. And being able to recognize the ministry of each member of the Trinity is what allows us to experience a greater level of worship.
Now just one more thought by way of introduction and then we’ll get into our text.
One of the most interesting things Jesus ever said is recorded in John 16:7
When Jesus said that, the disciples had been with Jesus for a period of 3 years. They had been in His presence 24/7. He was everything to them. On one occasion, according to John 6, Jesus said after a group of people left, “Will you also go away?” and Peter, speaking for the rest, said, “To whom shall we go? You and You alone have the words of eternal life. We’re not about to go anywhere. Everything we want to know, everything we want to see, everything we need You have, You are.”
And now Jesus is saying, “It is advantageous for you if I leave.” How in the world could it be better without Jesus than it was with Jesus? What could be better than being in the physical presence of the Son of God?
The Jews had waited for centuries for Him to arrive. Ever since that promise was announced, every generation of Jewish people who knew the Messiah was going to come had wished that they would be the people alive when He came.
And finally here they were, living right in His presence. They didn’t want Him to go anywhere. They didn’t want Him to leave. They wanted Him to stay and set up His kingdom and that would be the end and the culmination and the fulfillment of everything.
Yet in that last evening together when they were meeting in the Upper Room before He was taken and crucified, He says to them, “I’m leaving and you’re not going to be able to get to Me, but I’m going to tell you something, it’s to your advantage that I go away.” How could that be true?
Then He says this: “If I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I’ll send Him to you and He’ll be in you.” What is better than having Jesus? It is having the Holy Spirit within your life.
And the reason Jesus said it would be better for them to have the Holy Spirit than to have Him is because the Holy Spirit brings to believers a ministry that had never been known before. The best thing that could ever happen to any people, better than having Jesus Christ in their midst, is to have the Holy Spirit.
Now if that is true, then the Holy Spirit must be something very, very special. And indeed He is.
So in order to assist us in giving thanks for the Holy Spirit, I want to help us see what He does so we can worship Him as He deserves.
2 Timothy 1:7
I have three basic truths I want to cover this morning. First of all I want to talk about the Holy Spirit's work for you. This is the work of salvation. Secondly, we'll talk about the work of the Holy Spirit in you. This is the work of sanctification. Third, we're going to talk about the work of the Holy Spirit through you. This is service.
1. The Holy Spirit Works for You
There is a work the Holy Spirit does for you, and that work is the work of salvation. And if you are saved, it is past history. If you were saved last week, this is a week old. If you were saved five years ago, this is five years old. If you were saved 40 years ago, this is 40 years old.
How does the Holy Spirit do this? The first thing the Holy Spirit does is to convict us of our need of salvation. I read to you earlier from John 16:7. Just one verse later, Jesus makes this statement about the work of the Holy Spirit.
verse 8
He said the Holy Spirit would do a work of conviction. The Holy Spirit would convict the lost people that they were sinners, of righteousness of the Lord Jesus, and of judgment that they are on the way to hell.
I can't convict anybody of their sin. The Holy Spirit has to convict people of their sin and their need for Jesus, and that's what He does. He convicts.
How does He convict? According to the Scriptures, and putting a lot of them together, the way the Holy Spirit convicts lost people of their need of salvation is by turning on the light in their life. The word convict carries the idea of turning on the light. It is only as the light is revealed that lost people see their need of the Lord.
God has put the light in three places. God put the light in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus said, "I am the light of the world." But unfortunately, many people are not interested in the Lord Jesus Christ.
He also put the light in His Word, the Scriptures. In the Psalms we read, “Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. It declares, "The entrance of Your Word gives light." People come to a Bible-teaching church or somebody goes into their home and shares the Word of God with them. As the scriptures are shared, the Word of God convicts people of their lost condition and their need of Jesus.
There are some of you here who came to this church and the Word of God was preached and when it was preached it was like it was directly to you. You wondered who's been telling the preacher about you. Nobody. That's the Holy Spirit. But unfortunately a lot of people never come to hear the Word of God or they never hear the scriptures.
The third place God has deposited the light is in His children. Jesus said, "You are the light of the world." As Christian people live for the Lord around lost people, it turns the light on and it shows them their need for Jesus.
Do you see the flow of the process? The Holy Spirit convicts people of their need of Jesus. They repent of their sins. They receive the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior, and the moment they do God the Holy Spirit does a number of transactions in their life.
One thing is they are born of the Spirit. Jesus said, "You must be born again." In John 3, verse 6, Jesus said, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." In the verse before that He says, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit." Physical birth is known as water birth; but when you're saved, that is your spiritual birth, you are born again.
You are born physically, you have a physical birth. When you get saved you are born spiritually, you are born of the spirit. The moment you repent of sin and receive Jesus as your Savior, you are born of the Spirit. At that very moment you become a child of God.
The second thing that takes place is you are baptized by the Spirit into the body of Christ, into the church. What does it mean to be baptized into the body of Christ? It means to be in Him in spiritually.
A lot of times Romans 6:3 gets quoted at baptismal services, but it’s not talking about water baptism.
It’s using the metaphoric sense of the word to describe a spiritual immersion. Water baptism doesn’t change anything. It is simply an outward, visible representation of what happened at the moment of our salvation when we were immersed 8in Christ Himself.
I was baptized in water in 1980, but my real baptism took place 2,000 years ago when I was literally placed into Christ at His death and resurrection. We die in Him, we rise in Him. When did that happen? When he died and rose again.
First Corinthians 12, verse 13, says, "For by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body." This is the baptism by the Spirit.
The moment you are saved, you become a part of the body of Christ. That is the church universal. God the Holy Spirit puts you into the body. That takes place the moment you are saved.
You are born of the Spirit. You are baptized by the Spirit. Another thing that happens when you are saved is you are sealed by the Spirit. In 2 Corinthians 1 he lists a number of things that happen when you are saved.
verse 22
That's two transactions the Spirit does when we're saved. One, we are sealed by the Holy Spirit. The moment you are saved, God puts the seal of the Spirit in your life.
In Bible days the seal meant several things. It meant a finished transaction. When you have finished the transaction, you put a seal on the document.
It also meant ownership. A seal on something meant that you owned it. You had your own signet seal. When you are saved, God is saying that the work is done, the transaction is complete. When you are saved God the Holy Spirit is given to you as a seal saying that you belong to the Lord. He owns you.
The next thing it means to seal something is to preserve it. When you are saved, you are sealed with the Holy Spirit of God, and nothing can break the seal of the Holy Spirit. When you are saved you are saved eternally.
The next thing He says in 2 Corinthians 1, verse 10, that you are given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts. You are familiar with earnest money. If you go to the car dealership and you see a car you like, you put down some earnest money. What that earnest money means is that you can't finish the transaction right now, but here is some earnest money to hold this car for me. The earnest money means you are in earnest. It is your guarantee that you are going to pay the rest of it.
The Bible says that the Holy Spirit is God's down payment. Everything He promised you at salvation He's going to give you, and every time the presence of the Holy Spirit of God is real in your heart, every time you get a blessing from the Lord, that God's saying, “This is just the down payment. You'll get the full load when you get to Glory.”
We are born of the Spirit. We are baptized by the Spirit. We are sealed by the Spirit. We are given the earnest of the Spirit. But the next thing is we are indwelt by the Spirit. When you get saved, God's Holy Spirit comes to dwell in you.
Romans 8:9 says, "You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.”
Now the reverse of that would be true also. If you are His, you have the Spirit.
Listen to verses 10-11
“But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, him that raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwells in you."
Think about that. Get the impact of what's being said here. This passage of scripture, and numerous others I could go to in the Word of God, teach that when we receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, God, the God of this universe, in the person of the Holy Spirit, comes to live in you. Is that not an awesome, overwhelming thought?
God lives inside you! God's Spirit is in you. Those hard times you go through, He's right there. Those times when you need a special touch from the Lord, He's right there. There's so much I want to say about that, but that's the first thing. The work of the Spirit in you is salvation.
Realizing the Holy Spirit is within you, we come to the second work of the Holy Spirit in relation to you and me as saved people and that is
2. The Holy Spirit Works in You
Let’s call that sanctification. It is from that word we get our word “saint”. And under that definition, every believer is a saint. Now sometimes “saints” ain’t in the way the live, but positionally that is our designation. A saint is someone who is set apart. We are set apart from sin and set apart to service.
So there is a sense of sanctification that speaks of us being set apart as far as our position in the Lord is concerned.
But there is another sense in which this word applies and that is practically. Now with the first usage of the word, there is no problem. God takes care of justifying us and changing our standing and establishing our position in Him as saints of God.
But in regard to the second usage, there are some major problems because now that we are saved, God the Holy Spirit begins to work in our life so that we are more and more separated from sin and separated unto the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what the Holy Spirit really wants to do in your life. He wants to get the sin out, and He wants to get the things of the Lord in.
And how well that process works depends upon our willingness to cooperate with Him in the process. We can resist and rebel or we can enjoy the ride.
So how does He go about doing it? How does the Holy Spirit make us what we ought to be? Let me suggest how He does that.
One of the works of the Holy Spirit in sanctification is to cleanse us. When the Holy Spirit gets us, He has to clean us up.
When we get saved there's a whole lot of junk that God needs to get out. There's some filth that needs to be gotten out. Some of it is filth of the flesh and some of it is filth of the spirit.
Most likely you have some habits that ought not to be in your life, and the Holy Spirit comes in and starts working on those. Every time you get ready to do one of those things you've been doing the Holy Spirit says, "Do you think you ought to do that?"
Somebody asks if smoking will take you to hell? No, smoking won't take you to hell, but it will make you smell like you've been there! But you've been saved and you want to take a drag on that cigarette and the Holy Spirit says, "Your body's My temple. Do you think you need to harm your body with the nicotine?" Could you ever imagine Jesus Christ smoking a cigarette? And yet He lives in us so everything we do He experiences. And the Holy Spirit convicts you.
There are most likely some words your using that will have to change when you get saved. When you get around people who are just as lost as a golf ball in high weeds and their language is so bad, they don't even know they're talking that way and your tempted to talk just like them.
Listen: that’s just how lost people talk. But God expects His children to be different.
Or maybe you’re out working on a project and the hammer misses the nail and mashes your thumb. And it’s throbbing like a drummer in a rock band and all of a sudden there rises up in your mouth the filthiest words known to man and the Holy Spirit says, “You're a child of God and you know you ought not to talk like that.”
See, that’s conviction. All of a sudden the Holy Spirit starts pointing out things to you that ought not to be in your life. And he begins this process of sweeping gout the trash and cleaning up the messes and spit shining the chrome so that He can put you on display in front of a lost and dying world and let them know He can change lives.
That's the way it is being saved and having the Holy Spirit in you. He just keeps cleaning us and digging up the dirt and getting it out of us and that process continues for as long as we are on this earth.
He cleanses us and then He changes us.
After salvation, we have this desire like we’ve never had before to read God’s Word. And so we dig in. Now what do we find in the Bible? We find Jesus. He’s on every page, Old Testament and New. And as we study the life of Christ, there is a transformation that God intends to happen in our life.
2 Corinthians 3:18
See, the Holy Spirit not only cleanses us so He can get the garbage out, He changes us so He can get Jesus in and He does it through His Word.
As you begin to read the Word, God's truth begins to work on you. And as you begin to read God's Word and get God's Word in you more and more of the bad stuff gets thrown out and more and more of the good stuff starts coming in, you're changed. It's not all at once.
It's a process. But if you will allow the Holy Spirit to get the bad stuff out of your life and if you will allow the Holy Spirit to get the good stuff in, one of these days you're going to look up and you're going to like the new you. You will say that you're talking better than you used to talk. You're sweeter to your husband than you used to be. You don't blow up as much as you used to blow up. You're living better and you're happier. You're going to like the new you that the Holy Spirit of God is producing in you.
The Holy Spirit works for us. That’s salvation. The Holy Spirit works in us. That’s sanctification and thirdly,
3. The Holy Spirit Works Through You
This is His work of service. God wants you to serve Him.
Philippians 1:19
Notice the phrase “the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ”. Old KJV uses the word "supply." It is a word that is built around the word for choir.
In those days cities would have great performing choir groups and much like today, wealthy benefactors would supply everything needed for those choirs to function. They provided the funds for supplies and salaries, whatever was needed to carry out their function or produce their art.
That’s the Word Paul uses to describe the function of the Holy Spirit. He's saying in this verse that the Holy Spirit provides everything you need to serve the Lord. We all know that we want to serve the Lord. But a lot of times we don't feel like we have what we need to serve the Lord.
If that describes you, I want you to underline in your Bible
2 Timothy 1:7
I need three ingredients to serve the Lord. I need to know what the Lord wants me to do. I need the right kind of spirit to do what God wants me to do. And I need the power to do what God wants me to do.
Look at what we are promised through the Holy Spirit and let’s consider them in reverse order.
First God promises us a sound mind. Let’s call that wisdom. God, the Holy Spirit, will give you the wisdom to know how to serve the Lord.
There are some here that have been teaching Sunday School for a number of years, but by your own testimony when you were first asked to teach a Bible class, you didn't have the wisdom to do it.
You felt totally helpless and so what did you do? You asked the Lord to help you. God gave you a sound mind. God gave you the wisdom to be able to teach His Word. God will give you the wisdom to do whatever He wants you to do.
It's not enough to just know what the Lord wants you to do. You have to have the right spirit to do it. Sometimes we can serve the Lord, but we serve the Lord with the wrong spirit and it's not effective.
What do we need? We need the love of God and that’s what we find the Spirit providing. God's Holy Spirit will fill you with His love.
Some of you work with the rambunctious middle schoolers. That's a lively group. It takes a lot of love to work with middle schoolers. For those of you who guard the donuts and get angry with the children and treat them like you wish they weren’t here, you need to let the Spirit of God give you a great big dose of His spirit of love.
Maybe he needs to remind you of how much of His love it takes to love you. It takes a lot of love to serve the Lord but God's Holy Spirit will help you love other people if you'll just let Him work through you.
Not only do I need to have wisdom to know what to do and love to do it in the right way, but I need power to be able to get it done.
And His gracious gift through the Spirit is a spirit of power rather than fear. Jesus said in Acts 1:8, "But you shall receive power after the Holy Spirit comes upon you." That's the difference Pentecost made.
On the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came in power to give you and me power to do what God wants us to do. Aren't you thankful for the Holy Spirit in your heart?
I'm want to leave you with three verses that contain instruction for us regarding the work of the Holy Spirit in our life in these three areas and these will be our homework assignment for this week.
The first one has to do with service. It’s found in
1 Thessalonians 5:19
God's Holy Spirit wants to work through you in service so God says don't quench the Spirit. Let Him work through you.
The second has to do with sanctification and it’s found in
Ephesians 4:30
When God's Holy Spirit wants to work in you, don't break the Spirit's heart. Don't grieve Him. Let Him work in your life.
Then for those of you who are lost, there is the work the Holy Spirit wants to do for you regarding salvation and the instruction comes from
Acts 7:51
God's command to the lost person is don't resist the Holy Spirit.
Let's bow our heads and pray
Give Thanks!
Giving Thanks to the Spirit
John 16:7-8
We are taking some time to “Give Thanks” for our spiritual blessings. We began with thanks to God. He is worthy of our praise and thanks and with King David and the ancient Israelites, we can say, “O give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His mercy endures forever!”
Than last week we placed our attention on giving thanks for our salvation. As people who were wandering in the wilderness, suffering from an incurable disease, locked away in prison and about to drown in the storm-tossed seas of life, the Lord heard our cry and saved us. And of all the people in the world, the ones who ought to be the most thankful are the saved of God.
Today I want us to focus on giving thanks to the Holy Spirit. Now in my mind, the most abused member of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit. There is so much misunderstanding and lack of understanding regarding the ministry of the Holy Spirit and I believe He needs to be honored and worshipped and reverenced for Who He is and the Work He does.
The Bible warns us about the danger of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, we are warned about resisting the Holy Spirit, we are warned about grieving the Holy Spirit, we are warned about quenching the Holy Spirit, and all those verbs are addressed at the way we refer to the Holy Spirit Himself.
But it is not just a matter of trying to avoid blasphemy and abuse. We need not only to avoid certain errors regarding the Holy Spirit, but we need to learn to worship the Holy Spirit for what He has done and who He genuinely is.
I think it extremely important that we understand that we have received from each member of the Trinity certain specific benefits. Oftentimes, we just lump everything together and consider them as a whole.
I’m not suggesting that we have three Gods and it’s not wrong to think of the three as One. But it certainly broadens our appreciation and gratitude when we realize that every part of God is worthy of our praise and thanks. Paul was fond of doing that. For instance, in the very last verse of the last chapter of 2 Corinthians, he says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
That is a Trinitarian benediction that sorts out the individual features of the ministry of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit to us as believers. It is the love of God. Coming from God is that divine, sovereign love. It is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the Son who provides divine, sovereign grace. And it is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Or to say it another way, from the Father comes divine love; from the Son, divine grace; and from the Spirit, divine fellowship.
And while it is certainly true that throughout Scripture there is an overlapping in the work of the Trinity, there is still an emphasis on those specific works which each member does in some unique way.
And I’m afraid we spend a lot of time thinking about the love of the Father and the sacrifice of the Son, but leave out the Spirit. But in reality, the Father initiates our salvation, the Son ratifies our salvation, the Holy Spirit communicates our salvation. The Father chooses us for life, the Son provides the sacrifice that leads to life, and the Holy Spirit gives us the life. And being able to recognize the ministry of each member of the Trinity is what allows us to experience a greater level of worship.
Now just one more thought by way of introduction and then we’ll get into our text.
One of the most interesting things Jesus ever said is recorded in John 16:7
When Jesus said that, the disciples had been with Jesus for a period of 3 years. They had been in His presence 24/7. He was everything to them. On one occasion, according to John 6, Jesus said after a group of people left, “Will you also go away?” and Peter, speaking for the rest, said, “To whom shall we go? You and You alone have the words of eternal life. We’re not about to go anywhere. Everything we want to know, everything we want to see, everything we need You have, You are.”
And now Jesus is saying, “It is advantageous for you if I leave.” How in the world could it be better without Jesus than it was with Jesus? What could be better than being in the physical presence of the Son of God?
The Jews had waited for centuries for Him to arrive. Ever since that promise was announced, every generation of Jewish people who knew the Messiah was going to come had wished that they would be the people alive when He came.
And finally here they were, living right in His presence. They didn’t want Him to go anywhere. They didn’t want Him to leave. They wanted Him to stay and set up His kingdom and that would be the end and the culmination and the fulfillment of everything.
Yet in that last evening together when they were meeting in the Upper Room before He was taken and crucified, He says to them, “I’m leaving and you’re not going to be able to get to Me, but I’m going to tell you something, it’s to your advantage that I go away.” How could that be true?
Then He says this: “If I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I’ll send Him to you and He’ll be in you.” What is better than having Jesus? It is having the Holy Spirit within your life.
And the reason Jesus said it would be better for them to have the Holy Spirit than to have Him is because the Holy Spirit brings to believers a ministry that had never been known before. The best thing that could ever happen to any people, better than having Jesus Christ in their midst, is to have the Holy Spirit.
Now if that is true, then the Holy Spirit must be something very, very special. And indeed He is.
So in order to assist us in giving thanks for the Holy Spirit, I want to help us see what He does so we can worship Him as He deserves.
2 Timothy 1:7
I have three basic truths I want to cover this morning. First of all I want to talk about the Holy Spirit's work for you. This is the work of salvation. Secondly, we'll talk about the work of the Holy Spirit in you. This is the work of sanctification. Third, we're going to talk about the work of the Holy Spirit through you. This is service.
1. The Holy Spirit Works for You
There is a work the Holy Spirit does for you, and that work is the work of salvation. And if you are saved, it is past history. If you were saved last week, this is a week old. If you were saved five years ago, this is five years old. If you were saved 40 years ago, this is 40 years old.
How does the Holy Spirit do this? The first thing the Holy Spirit does is to convict us of our need of salvation. I read to you earlier from John 16:7. Just one verse later, Jesus makes this statement about the work of the Holy Spirit.
verse 8
He said the Holy Spirit would do a work of conviction. The Holy Spirit would convict the lost people that they were sinners, of righteousness of the Lord Jesus, and of judgment that they are on the way to hell.
I can't convict anybody of their sin. The Holy Spirit has to convict people of their sin and their need for Jesus, and that's what He does. He convicts.
How does He convict? According to the Scriptures, and putting a lot of them together, the way the Holy Spirit convicts lost people of their need of salvation is by turning on the light in their life. The word convict carries the idea of turning on the light. It is only as the light is revealed that lost people see their need of the Lord.
God has put the light in three places. God put the light in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus said, "I am the light of the world." But unfortunately, many people are not interested in the Lord Jesus Christ.
He also put the light in His Word, the Scriptures. In the Psalms we read, “Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. It declares, "The entrance of Your Word gives light." People come to a Bible-teaching church or somebody goes into their home and shares the Word of God with them. As the scriptures are shared, the Word of God convicts people of their lost condition and their need of Jesus.
There are some of you here who came to this church and the Word of God was preached and when it was preached it was like it was directly to you. You wondered who's been telling the preacher about you. Nobody. That's the Holy Spirit. But unfortunately a lot of people never come to hear the Word of God or they never hear the scriptures.
The third place God has deposited the light is in His children. Jesus said, "You are the light of the world." As Christian people live for the Lord around lost people, it turns the light on and it shows them their need for Jesus.
Do you see the flow of the process? The Holy Spirit convicts people of their need of Jesus. They repent of their sins. They receive the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior, and the moment they do God the Holy Spirit does a number of transactions in their life.
One thing is they are born of the Spirit. Jesus said, "You must be born again." In John 3, verse 6, Jesus said, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." In the verse before that He says, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit." Physical birth is known as water birth; but when you're saved, that is your spiritual birth, you are born again.
You are born physically, you have a physical birth. When you get saved you are born spiritually, you are born of the spirit. The moment you repent of sin and receive Jesus as your Savior, you are born of the Spirit. At that very moment you become a child of God.
The second thing that takes place is you are baptized by the Spirit into the body of Christ, into the church. What does it mean to be baptized into the body of Christ? It means to be in Him in spiritually.
A lot of times Romans 6:3 gets quoted at baptismal services, but it’s not talking about water baptism.
It’s using the metaphoric sense of the word to describe a spiritual immersion. Water baptism doesn’t change anything. It is simply an outward, visible representation of what happened at the moment of our salvation when we were immersed 8in Christ Himself.
I was baptized in water in 1980, but my real baptism took place 2,000 years ago when I was literally placed into Christ at His death and resurrection. We die in Him, we rise in Him. When did that happen? When he died and rose again.
First Corinthians 12, verse 13, says, "For by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body." This is the baptism by the Spirit.
The moment you are saved, you become a part of the body of Christ. That is the church universal. God the Holy Spirit puts you into the body. That takes place the moment you are saved.
You are born of the Spirit. You are baptized by the Spirit. Another thing that happens when you are saved is you are sealed by the Spirit. In 2 Corinthians 1 he lists a number of things that happen when you are saved.
verse 22
That's two transactions the Spirit does when we're saved. One, we are sealed by the Holy Spirit. The moment you are saved, God puts the seal of the Spirit in your life.
In Bible days the seal meant several things. It meant a finished transaction. When you have finished the transaction, you put a seal on the document.
It also meant ownership. A seal on something meant that you owned it. You had your own signet seal. When you are saved, God is saying that the work is done, the transaction is complete. When you are saved God the Holy Spirit is given to you as a seal saying that you belong to the Lord. He owns you.
The next thing it means to seal something is to preserve it. When you are saved, you are sealed with the Holy Spirit of God, and nothing can break the seal of the Holy Spirit. When you are saved you are saved eternally.
The next thing He says in 2 Corinthians 1, verse 10, that you are given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts. You are familiar with earnest money. If you go to the car dealership and you see a car you like, you put down some earnest money. What that earnest money means is that you can't finish the transaction right now, but here is some earnest money to hold this car for me. The earnest money means you are in earnest. It is your guarantee that you are going to pay the rest of it.
The Bible says that the Holy Spirit is God's down payment. Everything He promised you at salvation He's going to give you, and every time the presence of the Holy Spirit of God is real in your heart, every time you get a blessing from the Lord, that God's saying, “This is just the down payment. You'll get the full load when you get to Glory.”
We are born of the Spirit. We are baptized by the Spirit. We are sealed by the Spirit. We are given the earnest of the Spirit. But the next thing is we are indwelt by the Spirit. When you get saved, God's Holy Spirit comes to dwell in you.
Romans 8:9 says, "You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.”
Now the reverse of that would be true also. If you are His, you have the Spirit.
Listen to verses 10-11
“But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, him that raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwells in you."
Think about that. Get the impact of what's being said here. This passage of scripture, and numerous others I could go to in the Word of God, teach that when we receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, God, the God of this universe, in the person of the Holy Spirit, comes to live in you. Is that not an awesome, overwhelming thought?
God lives inside you! God's Spirit is in you. Those hard times you go through, He's right there. Those times when you need a special touch from the Lord, He's right there. There's so much I want to say about that, but that's the first thing. The work of the Spirit in you is salvation.
Realizing the Holy Spirit is within you, we come to the second work of the Holy Spirit in relation to you and me as saved people and that is
2. The Holy Spirit Works in You
Let’s call that sanctification. It is from that word we get our word “saint”. And under that definition, every believer is a saint. Now sometimes “saints” ain’t in the way the live, but positionally that is our designation. A saint is someone who is set apart. We are set apart from sin and set apart to service.
So there is a sense of sanctification that speaks of us being set apart as far as our position in the Lord is concerned.
But there is another sense in which this word applies and that is practically. Now with the first usage of the word, there is no problem. God takes care of justifying us and changing our standing and establishing our position in Him as saints of God.
But in regard to the second usage, there are some major problems because now that we are saved, God the Holy Spirit begins to work in our life so that we are more and more separated from sin and separated unto the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what the Holy Spirit really wants to do in your life. He wants to get the sin out, and He wants to get the things of the Lord in.
And how well that process works depends upon our willingness to cooperate with Him in the process. We can resist and rebel or we can enjoy the ride.
So how does He go about doing it? How does the Holy Spirit make us what we ought to be? Let me suggest how He does that.
One of the works of the Holy Spirit in sanctification is to cleanse us. When the Holy Spirit gets us, He has to clean us up.
When we get saved there's a whole lot of junk that God needs to get out. There's some filth that needs to be gotten out. Some of it is filth of the flesh and some of it is filth of the spirit.
Most likely you have some habits that ought not to be in your life, and the Holy Spirit comes in and starts working on those. Every time you get ready to do one of those things you've been doing the Holy Spirit says, "Do you think you ought to do that?"
Somebody asks if smoking will take you to hell? No, smoking won't take you to hell, but it will make you smell like you've been there! But you've been saved and you want to take a drag on that cigarette and the Holy Spirit says, "Your body's My temple. Do you think you need to harm your body with the nicotine?" Could you ever imagine Jesus Christ smoking a cigarette? And yet He lives in us so everything we do He experiences. And the Holy Spirit convicts you.
There are most likely some words your using that will have to change when you get saved. When you get around people who are just as lost as a golf ball in high weeds and their language is so bad, they don't even know they're talking that way and your tempted to talk just like them.
Listen: that’s just how lost people talk. But God expects His children to be different.
Or maybe you’re out working on a project and the hammer misses the nail and mashes your thumb. And it’s throbbing like a drummer in a rock band and all of a sudden there rises up in your mouth the filthiest words known to man and the Holy Spirit says, “You're a child of God and you know you ought not to talk like that.”
See, that’s conviction. All of a sudden the Holy Spirit starts pointing out things to you that ought not to be in your life. And he begins this process of sweeping gout the trash and cleaning up the messes and spit shining the chrome so that He can put you on display in front of a lost and dying world and let them know He can change lives.
That's the way it is being saved and having the Holy Spirit in you. He just keeps cleaning us and digging up the dirt and getting it out of us and that process continues for as long as we are on this earth.
He cleanses us and then He changes us.
After salvation, we have this desire like we’ve never had before to read God’s Word. And so we dig in. Now what do we find in the Bible? We find Jesus. He’s on every page, Old Testament and New. And as we study the life of Christ, there is a transformation that God intends to happen in our life.
2 Corinthians 3:18
See, the Holy Spirit not only cleanses us so He can get the garbage out, He changes us so He can get Jesus in and He does it through His Word.
As you begin to read the Word, God's truth begins to work on you. And as you begin to read God's Word and get God's Word in you more and more of the bad stuff gets thrown out and more and more of the good stuff starts coming in, you're changed. It's not all at once.
It's a process. But if you will allow the Holy Spirit to get the bad stuff out of your life and if you will allow the Holy Spirit to get the good stuff in, one of these days you're going to look up and you're going to like the new you. You will say that you're talking better than you used to talk. You're sweeter to your husband than you used to be. You don't blow up as much as you used to blow up. You're living better and you're happier. You're going to like the new you that the Holy Spirit of God is producing in you.
The Holy Spirit works for us. That’s salvation. The Holy Spirit works in us. That’s sanctification and thirdly,
3. The Holy Spirit Works Through You
This is His work of service. God wants you to serve Him.
Philippians 1:19
Notice the phrase “the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ”. Old KJV uses the word "supply." It is a word that is built around the word for choir.
In those days cities would have great performing choir groups and much like today, wealthy benefactors would supply everything needed for those choirs to function. They provided the funds for supplies and salaries, whatever was needed to carry out their function or produce their art.
That’s the Word Paul uses to describe the function of the Holy Spirit. He's saying in this verse that the Holy Spirit provides everything you need to serve the Lord. We all know that we want to serve the Lord. But a lot of times we don't feel like we have what we need to serve the Lord.
If that describes you, I want you to underline in your Bible
2 Timothy 1:7
I need three ingredients to serve the Lord. I need to know what the Lord wants me to do. I need the right kind of spirit to do what God wants me to do. And I need the power to do what God wants me to do.
Look at what we are promised through the Holy Spirit and let’s consider them in reverse order.
First God promises us a sound mind. Let’s call that wisdom. God, the Holy Spirit, will give you the wisdom to know how to serve the Lord.
There are some here that have been teaching Sunday School for a number of years, but by your own testimony when you were first asked to teach a Bible class, you didn't have the wisdom to do it.
You felt totally helpless and so what did you do? You asked the Lord to help you. God gave you a sound mind. God gave you the wisdom to be able to teach His Word. God will give you the wisdom to do whatever He wants you to do.
It's not enough to just know what the Lord wants you to do. You have to have the right spirit to do it. Sometimes we can serve the Lord, but we serve the Lord with the wrong spirit and it's not effective.
What do we need? We need the love of God and that’s what we find the Spirit providing. God's Holy Spirit will fill you with His love.
Some of you work with the rambunctious middle schoolers. That's a lively group. It takes a lot of love to work with middle schoolers. For those of you who guard the donuts and get angry with the children and treat them like you wish they weren’t here, you need to let the Spirit of God give you a great big dose of His spirit of love.
Maybe he needs to remind you of how much of His love it takes to love you. It takes a lot of love to serve the Lord but God's Holy Spirit will help you love other people if you'll just let Him work through you.
Not only do I need to have wisdom to know what to do and love to do it in the right way, but I need power to be able to get it done.
And His gracious gift through the Spirit is a spirit of power rather than fear. Jesus said in Acts 1:8, "But you shall receive power after the Holy Spirit comes upon you." That's the difference Pentecost made.
On the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came in power to give you and me power to do what God wants us to do. Aren't you thankful for the Holy Spirit in your heart?
I'm want to leave you with three verses that contain instruction for us regarding the work of the Holy Spirit in our life in these three areas and these will be our homework assignment for this week.
The first one has to do with service. It’s found in
1 Thessalonians 5:19
God's Holy Spirit wants to work through you in service so God says don't quench the Spirit. Let Him work through you.
The second has to do with sanctification and it’s found in
Ephesians 4:30
When God's Holy Spirit wants to work in you, don't break the Spirit's heart. Don't grieve Him. Let Him work in your life.
Then for those of you who are lost, there is the work the Holy Spirit wants to do for you regarding salvation and the instruction comes from
Acts 7:51
God's command to the lost person is don't resist the Holy Spirit.
Let's bow our heads and pray
Give Thanks!
Giving Thanks to the Spirit
John 16:7-8
We are taking some time to “Give Thanks” for our spiritual blessings. We began with thanks to God. He is worthy of our praise and thanks and with King David and the ancient Israelites, we can say, “O give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His mercy endures forever!”
Than last week we placed our attention on giving thanks for our salvation. As people who were wandering in the wilderness, suffering from an incurable disease, locked away in prison and about to drown in the storm-tossed seas of life, the Lord heard our cry and saved us. And of all the people in the world, the ones who ought to be the most thankful are the saved of God.
Today I want us to focus on giving thanks to the Holy Spirit. Now in my mind, the most abused member of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit. There is so much misunderstanding and lack of understanding regarding the ministry of the Holy Spirit and I believe He needs to be honored and worshipped and reverenced for Who He is and the Work He does.
The Bible warns us about the danger of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, we are warned about resisting the Holy Spirit, we are warned about grieving the Holy Spirit, we are warned about quenching the Holy Spirit, and all those verbs are addressed at the way we refer to the Holy Spirit Himself.
But it is not just a matter of trying to avoid blasphemy and abuse. We need not only to avoid certain errors regarding the Holy Spirit, but we need to learn to worship the Holy Spirit for what He has done and who He genuinely is.
I think it extremely important that we understand that we have received from each member of the Trinity certain specific benefits. Oftentimes, we just lump everything together and consider them as a whole.
I’m not suggesting that we have three Gods and it’s not wrong to think of the three as One. But it certainly broadens our appreciation and gratitude when we realize that every part of God is worthy of our praise and thanks. Paul was fond of doing that. For instance, in the very last verse of the last chapter of 2 Corinthians, he says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
That is a Trinitarian benediction that sorts out the individual features of the ministry of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit to us as believers. It is the love of God. Coming from God is that divine, sovereign love. It is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the Son who provides divine, sovereign grace. And it is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Or to say it another way, from the Father comes divine love; from the Son, divine grace; and from the Spirit, divine fellowship.
And while it is certainly true that throughout Scripture there is an overlapping in the work of the Trinity, there is still an emphasis on those specific works which each member does in some unique way.
And I’m afraid we spend a lot of time thinking about the love of the Father and the sacrifice of the Son, but leave out the Spirit. But in reality, the Father initiates our salvation, the Son ratifies our salvation, the Holy Spirit communicates our salvation. The Father chooses us for life, the Son provides the sacrifice that leads to life, and the Holy Spirit gives us the life. And being able to recognize the ministry of each member of the Trinity is what allows us to experience a greater level of worship.
Now just one more thought by way of introduction and then we’ll get into our text.
One of the most interesting things Jesus ever said is recorded in John 16:7
When Jesus said that, the disciples had been with Jesus for a period of 3 years. They had been in His presence 24/7. He was everything to them. On one occasion, according to John 6, Jesus said after a group of people left, “Will you also go away?” and Peter, speaking for the rest, said, “To whom shall we go? You and You alone have the words of eternal life. We’re not about to go anywhere. Everything we want to know, everything we want to see, everything we need You have, You are.”
And now Jesus is saying, “It is advantageous for you if I leave.” How in the world could it be better without Jesus than it was with Jesus? What could be better than being in the physical presence of the Son of God?
The Jews had waited for centuries for Him to arrive. Ever since that promise was announced, every generation of Jewish people who knew the Messiah was going to come had wished that they would be the people alive when He came.
And finally here they were, living right in His presence. They didn’t want Him to go anywhere. They didn’t want Him to leave. They wanted Him to stay and set up His kingdom and that would be the end and the culmination and the fulfillment of everything.
Yet in that last evening together when they were meeting in the Upper Room before He was taken and crucified, He says to them, “I’m leaving and you’re not going to be able to get to Me, but I’m going to tell you something, it’s to your advantage that I go away.” How could that be true?
Then He says this: “If I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I’ll send Him to you and He’ll be in you.” What is better than having Jesus? It is having the Holy Spirit within your life.
And the reason Jesus said it would be better for them to have the Holy Spirit than to have Him is because the Holy Spirit brings to believers a ministry that
