Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 2-153 (Topical Sermon)

RELEASING THE HOLY SPIRIT IN MY LIFE

by Rod Benson

The first Baptist minister in Australia was a Scotsman named John McKaig, who trained in Yorkshire and served as a missionary to Ireland. Lack of success among the Irish led him to England, where he served as a pastor at Bingley with disastrous results.

From there he apparently felt God calling him to come to Australia, arriving at Sydney Cove in early 1831. McKaig held worship services in the Long Room of the Rose and Crown Inn on Castlereagh St, Sydney. As far as we know, McKaig performed the first baptisms of believers in Australia.

Being a non-conformist (as Baptists were known in those days), he attracted very little support, was ostracised by the Establishment, and largely served the convict community which in 1834 comprised 43 percent of the population of the colony of New South Wales.

To provide sufficient income to conduct his ministry, he launched a snuff and tobacco business. Some complained that when he preached he was not as sober as he ought to have been. What a beginning! What an honourable heritage is ours! Australia’s first Baptist church – run from a pub by a tipsy Scottish tobacconist!

Despite his enthusiasm and courage, his passion and vision, McKaig also knew absolute failure. He had to defend himself against charges of heresy, insanity, dishonesty, gambling and drunkenness.

His ministry was brought to an end by moral failure. His tobacco business also failed, leaving him in debt and landing him in debtor’s prison where he sank so low emotionally that he tried to take his own life by cutting his throat.

Even that desperate act ended in failure, and we have no record of his death. Baptist historian Leon McBeth describes McKaig as “a man of good intentions [whose] aberrant personality and flawed character doomed him to defeat.”

EXPERIENCING FAILURE

McKaig is not alone. Those who follow Jesus know what it is to experience the dark valleys as well as the glorious mountain-tops in their life’s journey.

The Apostle Paul, one of the greatest and most successful Christian leaders, a man of God who conquered the known world for Jesus Christ, experienced similar extremes and wrestled with similar tensions and paradoxes.

In Romans chapter 7, we find Paul writing autobiographically, at the end of his rope, battling like McKaig, wondering who actually controls his life.

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist denomination, believed Paul’s cry in Romans 7 must have been a recollection of his pre- Christian days. Wesley believed one could experience “perfect love” filling the heart to such an extent that sin is excluded from thought and action. He said that if someone of Paul’s stature felt defeat as a Christian, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Most biblical scholars today (with the notable exception of Douglas Moo) agree that Romans 7 describes a Christian who is walking with Jesus, seeking to please God, and trying to understand why he or she fails under tests and temptations.

What hope is there for us? Who will rescue Paul? What will transform me in a way McKaig never discovered? What strategy or power will give me freedom and victory from absolute despair and desperation when my Christian life is simply not working?

THE EMPTINESS OF DUTY AND CONFORMITY

The tragic reality is that, although we are saved by the grace of God, many of us implicitly believe that, when we are defeated by sin, the law of God will come to the rescue.

We diligently obey the rules – the ten commandments, or the moral standards of our church, or the values of those we respect and trust, or our personal code of ethics. We search for ways to achieve the strength to overcome our battles and to live a victorious life.

That’s where I was during my late teens: wearing the right clothes, singing from the right hymn book, reading from the right version of the Bible, preaching the right doctrine, living an ostensibly blameless life, and feeling pretty good about myself and my achievements.

I unconsciously thought, as do many earnest Christians, that Christ plus law equals freedom. But I was wrong.

Paul cuts right through that neat little philosophy, denying that we can live the Christian life simply by following the rules. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the law: it is important (verses 7 and following); it is holy (verse 12); we ought to love and respect it.

In verse 9, he says there was a time when the law did not apply to his life, prior to his bar mitzvah as a Jewish 12-year-old. But when he realised the depth of commitment to the law that God required, sin sprang to life and he died – spiritually. The law produces death (verses 10-11).

If you believe you can honour God and live the law, living a virtuous life without total surrender to Jesus Christ, you are fooling yourself.

When you arrive at the “pearly gates” God will say, “If you had honestly examined my law, and examined your life, you would see the real you! There are too many failures and inconsistencies; you don’t measure up to my righteous standard.” And God will shut the gates, leaving you outside.

In his hymn, “Rock of Ages,” A.M. Toplady eloquently expresses our absolute inability to keep God’s law and so save ourselves:

Not the labours of my hands Could fulfil thy law’s demands; Could my zeal no respite know, Could my tears forever flow, All for sin could not atone, Thou must save, and thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring; Simply to thy cross I cling; Naked, come to thee for dress; Helpless, look to thee for grace; Foul, I to the fountain fly; Wash me, Saviour, or I die.

The primary purpose of the law, according to Paul, is to reveal what we are really like and to drive us to Jesus who fulfilled the law in his own life.

But the law retains a place in my life as a Christian. It reveals my shortcomings, encouraging dependence on the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

THE ROAD TO VICTORY

The law is good and useful, but it can’t give me victory. It only makes my burden worse, like the sting of rubbing salt into a wound. What, then, is the answer? How can I achieve personal victory over sin? Perhaps you can identify with Paul’s situation:

“I’ve tried everything and nothing helps,” says Paul. “I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? . . . The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different . . . A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death” (Romans 7:24-8:2, The Message paraphrase).

There’s the solution! There’s the road to victory! Not the law of God but the Son of God will rescue me, turn me round, pick me up, and renew my hope and purpose in life. As I surrender to him, Jesus fills me with his grace, and the Holy Spirit shatters my chains and releases me into freedom and victory.

Now I live by the Spirit and not by the law. Where the law bound me, the Spirit sets me free. Where the law brought death, the Spirit guarantees life.

The more I open my life to the power of the Holy Spirit, and the more I release him in my life, the more I’ll discover that the will and the law of God are evident in my life as the God-given fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).

ALLOWING THE HOLY SPIRIT TO LEAD YOU

If, like John McKaig and the Apostle Paul, you are struggling tonight, and you know what it is to suffer defeat in your battle against sin, stop being frustrated by your own powerlessness and slavery to the law.

Let the law expose your sin and lead to Jesus, let his forgiveness flow through your life, and let the Holy Spirit loose in your life!

How do I release the Holy Spirit in my life? First, focus your spirit on what brings glory to God, allowing yourself to be led by his Spirit. Recalling spiritual conflict in his own life, Paul says in Galatians 5:17-18, “For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not know what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.”

Second, focus your mind on God’s agenda, not your own agenda or that of someone else. Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace (Romans 8:5-6).

Third, focus your body on what pleases God: “If you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Romans 8:13).

Australian rugby player Nick Farr-Jones said, “Losers make promises; winners make commitments.” Commit yourself tonight to release the Holy Spirit in your life. Focus your spirit, your mind and your body, and allow God to lead you by his Spirit.

“Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Romans 8:14).

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E092 Copyright (c) 2002. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: New International Version (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980).

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