Sunday Morning Bible Study

June 5/6, 2010

Introduction

Do people see Jesus? Is the gospel preached? Does it speak to the broken hearted? Does it build up the church? Milk – Meat – Manna Preach for a decision

The Work of the Holy Spirit

I have had a lot of ideas about the Holy Spirit through the years.

When I was little, growing up in the Methodist church, they used to call the Holy Spirit the “Holy Ghost”.  To a kid in kindergarten, that sounded kind of spooky to me.

I got saved when I was fourteen years old.  My parents had switched to the Baptist church, and I heard the gospel for the first time, learning that if I would trust in Jesus, I could come to know God.

But it wasn’t until I was sixteen that I had a pretty dramatic experience that changed everything.

A girlfriend took me to a little prayer meeting connected with Melodyland.  I knew things were a little strange when they said they would pray before dinner, but stead of saying a short little prayer, they all got on their knees, some on their faces, and prayed for about twenty minutes.  After supper we were standing in a circle and a fellow went around praying for people. When he came up to me, he began to tell me a few things about my life and I wondered how he knew these things about me. When he went to put his hand on my forehead, I fell over backwards, not knowing what was happening or why it was happening. I was filled with the Holy Spirit. I spoke in tongues.

I became a bona-fide Jesus Freak.  I would wear a pretty big cross around my neck and carry my Bible everywhere.  My friends and I would have Bible studies together (just for fun).  We’d pray over people, laying hands on them.  We put on outreach concerts.  We shared our faith door to door.  Just crazy kind of stuff.  As a junior in College, my pastor asked me to take over the leadership of the Sr. High group.

To be honest, when I went to Seminary after college, I became a bit confused about the Holy Spirit.  For awhile I wondered if my experience as a teenager was real.  But after seminary, as Deb and I began to attend Calvary Chapel, I began to do some serious study on my own to learn what the Holy Spirit was all about.

There are many kinds of things that the Holy Spirit does in our lives:

Assurance of our salvation

(Ro 8:16 NKJV) —16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,

Comforts us

(Jn 14:16 NKJV) —16 And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—

Helps us pray

(Ro 8:26 NKJV) —26 Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Produces “fruit”

(Ga 5:22–23 NLT) —22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

Produces holiness

(1 Th 4:3 NKJV) —3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality;

(1 Th 4:7–8 NKJV) —7 For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness. 8 Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit.

Gives Spiritual Gifts

(1 Co 12:7 NKJV) —7 But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all:

I used to think that the work of the Holy Spirit was characterized only by some sort of amazing overnight, instantaneous change.

Illustration

THE ELEVATOR

An Amish boy and his father were visiting a mall. They were amazed by almost everything they saw, but especially by two shiny, silver walls that could move apart and back together again. The boy asked his father, “What is this, Father?” The father (never having seen an elevator) responded, “Son, I have never seen anything like this in my life. I don’t know what it is!” While the boy and his father were watching wide-eyed, as an old lady in a wheel chair rolled up to the moving walls and pressed a button. The walls opened and the lady rolled between them into a small room. The walls closed and the boy and his father watched small circles of lights with numbers above the walls light up. They continued to watch the circles light up in the reverse direction. The walls opened up again and a beautiful 24-year-old woman stepped out. The father said to his son, “Go get your mother!

Though there may be times when the Holy Spirit indeed helps us grow in big steps, I have learned that the work of the Spirit goes WAY beyond amazing experiences.  He wants to work in our lives daily and to effect a continual change.

The Holy Spirit wants to do many things in our lives, but I want to focus on just three of them that have been the most important in my life to help me change from the inside out.

1. Conviction

When I go off track, conviction is what makes me aware that I’m not where I need to be.

Like those freeway “Botts’ Dots”, those little glued on dots that let you know that you’re straying from your lane or going off the road.  They are especially annoying when you’re falling asleep at the wheel.

Do you know what it’s like to fall asleep at the wheel?

Play “Kid Sleep Driving”

What I find even more amazing that the dad is apparently filming this for 10 minutes without thinking about stopping his son and taking him out of the car!

It can be pretty dangerous to fall asleep at the wheel.

Play “Sleep Driving”

(Jn 16:8 NKJV) And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:

convict – elegcho – to convict by proof; there seems to be a sense of shame in the person convicted; bringing things to the light

Sometimes “conviction” is kind of like shining a spotlight on a problem that needs to be dealt with. Jesus said:

(Jn 3:20 NKJV) For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.

The Holy Spirit can use various things to bring conviction:

God uses the Scripture to bring conviction:

(2 Ti 3:16 NKJV) —16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,

Balaam was “convicted” by his donkey:

(2 Pe 2:16 NKJV) —16 but he was rebuked for his iniquity: a dumb donkey speaking with a man’s voice restrained the madness of the prophet.

God can use people in your life:

(Mt 18:15 NKJV) —15 “Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother.

The Holy Spirit is faithful to bring conviction in our lives, but the question is whether we will pay attention to it.

David

David had been running for his life from King Saul. One day David and his men were hiding in a cave when in walks Saul. Saul ends up taking a nap …

(1 Sa 24:4–7 NKJV) —4 Then the men of David said to him, “This is the day of which the Lord said to you, ‘Behold, I will deliver your enemy into your hand, that you may do to him as it seems good to you.’ ” And David arose and secretly cut off a corner of Saul’s robe. 5 Now it happened afterward that David’s heart troubled him because he had cut Saul’s robe. 6 And he said to his men, “The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my master, the Lord’s anointed, to stretch out my hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord.” 7 So David restrained his servants with these words, and did not allow them to rise against Saul. And Saul got up from the cave and went on his way.

David’s men had some good points.  There had been prophecies that David would one day be king.  When you think of how often Saul had tried to kill David, you would think that David would have been justified at striking back and killing Saul.

Yet David’s conscience bothered him.  Just cutting a corner off Saul’s robe bothered him.

It’s like he ran over some “Bott’s Dots”.

Later in his life after he had become king, David went through a period when he was drifting a bit from God.  He committed adultery with another man’s wife.  He committed murder to cover it all up. David tells what it was like to try and hide his sin:

(Psa 32:3-4 NLT) When I refused to confess my sin, I was weak and miserable, and I groaned all day long. {4} Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat.

That’s conviction.  David knew he had done wrong, but he was stuck.  He wasn’t willing to admit he had blown it.

When the prophet Nathan showed up, he told David a parable about a man taking his neighbor’s little lamb.  David got all upset at the story until Nathan pointed at David and said, “Don’t you get it buddy, you’re the sinner!” And David got it. He confessed his sin to God.

My point?

These are not lessons about David’s “conscience”.  These are clear pictures of the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

Pay attention to the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

Be careful about restricting the work of the Holy Spirit in this area of your life.

(Eph 4:30 NKJV) And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

When we refuse to respond to the conviction of the Holy Spirit, we begin to develop a callus on our heart.

A callus is a thickening of the skin, where you no longer have the same sensitivity.

That’s a good thing if you are learning to play guitar.  You don’t want to feel the pain of those steel strings biting into your fingertips.

But if you are trying to grow in sensitivity to the things of God, then a “callus” is a bad thing.

A callus grow in our heart when we don’t respond to the conviction.  We feel the pain but don’t make the change the Spirit wants.  And our heart grows a little harder.

It seems that’s what happened to David.

When he was younger, he was convicted by just cutting off the corner of Saul’s robe.

When he was older, it took a friend to confront him face to face before he acknowledged his sin.

Pay attention to those uncomfortable feelings that you’re in the wrong place.

This is one of the ways that the Holy Spirit wants to effect change in your life.

He’s warning you for a reason.

As important as it is to pay attention to those “Bott’s Dots”, most of us don’t really drive by avoiding the “Bott’s Dots”.  Most of us drive down the road by following the road, but driving in our lane.

The Holy Spirit wants to be involved in showing where our “lane” is.  By showing us how to live.

2. Leading

(Jn 16:13 NKJV) However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.

How does the Holy Spirit ““guide” us?

Illustration

I think the Holy Spirit’s “guidance” is a little like GPS.  It’s like having that voice that tells you where to turn.  Even if sometimes the “voice” sounds like your wife.

Play “GPS on PMS” clip

The problem is that sometimes we’re listening to the wrong voice, like the voice from the “Dark Side”…

Play “Darth Vadar GPS”

Sometimes the wrong voice we’re listening to has its own agenda and doesn’t want to take you where you are supposed to go.

Play “Poor Man’s GPS”

How do we make sure we’re listening to the right voice?

a. God’s Word

(Ps 119:105 NKJV) Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.

(Jn 14:26 NKJV) But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

Some people use God’s Word like a fortune cookie.  They read it looking for hidden clues about what they are to do.

There’s a story about a fellow who was depressed and decided to read his Bible to figure out what he was supposed to do.  He closed his eyes, flipped open his Bible, and let his finger land on a passage.  It was a passage about Judas where it says,

(Mt 27:5 NKJV) Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself.

The man wasn’t sure about this, so he closed his eyes, flipped to another page, and his finger landed on another passage about Judas:

(Jn 13:27 NKJV) …“What you do, do quickly.”

Gulp.  Be careful about letting your Bible be nothing more than a fortune cookie.

It’s better to learn and apply the principles of God’s Word.

Like this passage:

(1 Ki 17:17–22 NKJV) —17 Now it happened after these things that the son of the woman who owned the house became sick. And his sickness was so serious that there was no breath left in him. 18 So she said to Elijah, “What have I to do with you, O man of God? Have you come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to kill my son?” 19 And he said to her, “Give me your son.” So he took him out of her arms and carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his own bed. 20 Then he cried out to the Lord and said, “O Lord my God, have You also brought tragedy on the widow with whom I lodge, by killing her son?” 21 And he stretched himself out on the child three times, and cried out to the Lord and said, “O Lord my God, I pray, let this child’s soul come back to him.” 22 Then the Lord heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came back to him, and he revived.

When you read this passage, don’t be asking yourself, “Where is there a dead boy I can lay on top of?”

Maybe a better thing to look at is the fact that Elijah prayed.  And God heard his prayer.  And God did an impossible thing because Elijah prayed.

b. Circumstances

God will use circumstances to guide us.  God will use circumstances to teach us.

Sometimes we look at this merely in the sense of when God opens and closes doors.

You apply for a job and the employer calls you back and offers you the job.  Or the employer calls back and says you didn’t get the job.

We may simply say, “The door closed”.

Sometimes the circumstances that God uses are the lessons you’ve picked up in life.

David wrote,

(Ps 37:25 NKJV) I have been young, and now am old; Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, Nor his descendants begging bread.

What have you “seen” in life?  What have you been learning?

Paul wrote,

(1 Co 16:8–9 NKJV) But I will tarry in Ephesus until Pentecost. 9 For a great and effective door has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.

We don’t exactly know what Paul meant by “a great and effective door has opened”, but Paul did look at life differently than many of us.

We often think of “open doors” as when God makes things easy for us.  we can be faced with a decision to go through door #1 where we get a raise and move to a new state, or door #2 and take a pay cut and stay in a mediocre job and think that God has “opened the door” with opportunity #1.  But Paul had learned with the wisdom of his age that “easy” didn’t mean “open door”.  In fact, Paul’s open door contained “many adversaries”.

You might be struggling with a difficult marriage and suddenly find an interesting and very nice young gal paying attention to you at work.  Is this an “open door” because it’s “easy”?

How has God been molding you through circumstances?

Are you learning anything in your life?

Are you picking up a few of those “difficult lessons” that are invaluable in God’s sight?

c. People

The Holy Spirit will use people in your life to give you guidance.

It’s important to be careful which people you pay attention to.

Rehoboam.

When daddy Solomon died, Rehoboam became king and faced an immediate problem.  It turns out that the people hadn’t been all that happy with some of the way Solomon ran the country.  Solomon had been pretty hard on the people.  The people asked for Rehoboam to lighten up a bit.  Rehoboam didn’t know what to do, so he decided to ask for advice.

(1 Ki 12:6–7 NKJV) —6 Then King Rehoboam consulted the elders who stood before his father Solomon while he still lived, and he said, “How do you advise me to answer these people?” 7 And they spoke to him, saying, “If you will be a servant to these people today, and serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be your servants forever.”

But Rehoboam didn’t like their advice.  He ended up doing what his younger buddies suggested, getting even tougher on the people.  And as a result, he lost control of 5/6 of the nation.  BIG mistake.

It’s important to pay attention to what the Spirit’s really trying to say.

Agabus.

(Ac 21:10–13 NKJV) —10 And as we stayed many days, a certain prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. 11 When he had come to us, he took Paul’s belt, bound his own hands and feet, and said, “Thus says the Holy Spirit, ‘So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man who owns this belt, and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.’ ” 12 Now when we heard these things, both we and those from that place pleaded with him not to go up to Jerusalem. 13 Then Paul answered, “What do you mean by weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.”

Some people are convinced that Paul made a mistake in going to Jerusalem.  I don’t think so.  I think that the Holy Spirit’s message was simply to warn Paul about the difficulty up ahead.  God wanted Paul to be prepared.  But it was the people who added in the extra, “And don’t go there”.

No matter what advice or words people will say to you, you are still responsible to figure out for yourself what God is really trying to say.

d. Prompting

There will be times when the Holy Spirit will simply give you a “nudge”.  He’ll whisper in your ear.

After God used Philip to start a great revival in Samaria, God nudged him to go down south to Gaza. Then …

(Ac 8:29 NKJV) Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go near and overtake this chariot.”

Philip ended up leading the Ethiopian eunuch to the Lord.

As Paul and Silas were traveling through Asia Minor, we are given hints as to how they chose where to go:

(Ac 16:6–7 NKJV) —6 Now when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. 7 After they had come to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them.

We aren’t told exactly how this happened.  But they sensed the Spirit’s leading as they went.

How do you know when the Spirit is moving you and when it’s just the pizza you had for dinner?

It helps if you are a person who is regularly in the Word.  Reading your Bible every day helps you understand a little better what God’s voice sounds like.

Sometimes you simply aren’t sure.

Sometimes you make mistakes.  Sometimes walking with God can get a little messy.

e. Willingness

One of the most important things about the Holy Spirit’s leading is your own willingness to be led.  Do you really want to know what He has for you?

Illustration

About fifteen years ago I helped take one of our kids’ classes on a field trip up to the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.  Cell phones were kind of new back then, and when I found out that the other drivers all had cell phones, I suggested that we swap phone numbers so we could stay in touch in case we got separated.  We exchanged phone numbers and then took off.  I was the last car, and got separated immediately from everyone, even before we got on the freeway. I thought, “Aha, I’ll just phone them and tell them to drive slowly until I catch up!” But they all had their phones turned off!

The Holy Spirit would love to guide us, but we need to be sure we really want to hear.  Make sure you keep your phone on.

3.  Empowering

The Holy Spirit can do some pretty amazing things in our lives.  He wants to use you in some pretty amazing ways.  He wants to make some pretty serious changes in your life.

None of it is possible apart from His help, His power.

It is called many things in the Scripture.  The baptism of the Holy Spirit.  Being filled with the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit of God being upon you.

Jesus said that the Spirit would give us power.

(Ac 1:8 NKJV) —8 But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

The word for “power” (dunamis) means “enabling”.  The Holy Spirit gives us the power to be “able” to live for Him.

Some people think way too narrow minded in this.  They think that the only thing associated with the baptism of the Holy Spirit is the gift of tongues.  The baptism may indeed be accompanied by wonderful things like tongues, but the baptism is all about receiving God’s power to live for Him, not about some ecstatic experience.

Men like power tools.  We understand power tools. Play Power Tool clip.

Being a Christian without allowing the Holy Spirit to fill you is like having all these wonderful tools without ever charging the batteries or filling the gas tank.

It is meant to be a daily, moment-by-moment walk:

(Eph 5:18 NKJV) And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit,

The grammar here speaks of a continual filling.  I see it as a continual “yielding” to the Holy Spirit.  I ask every day for God to fill me.

The keys to receiving it are recognizing your need, and trusting Jesus.

(Jn 7:37–38 NKJV) —37 On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. 38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”

How many of you know that you have been filled with the Holy Spirit?  I’m not asking how many of you are perfect, but how many of you have tasted of this precious gift?

How many of you have not experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but would like this power of the Spirit in your life?

I’m going to ask that those who have been filled with the Spirit lay hands on those who would like to be filled and pray.  Ask God to fill them with the Spirit.

Then I’m going to ask for all of us who would like a fresh filling of the Spirit to pray for one another to once again be filled.