Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 3-110 (Sermon/notes)

THE HOLY SPIRIT’S GIFT OF ENERGY! (Part 1 of 2)

by Rowland Croucher

Pentecost Sunday is ‘the birthday of the Church’. Pentecost is a Greek word meaning ’50’, so we celebrate Pentecost 50 days after the resurrection of Jesus. Forty days he taught and encouraged his followers, then after his Ascension they waited another ten days for his gift of the Holy Spirit.

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The Holy Spirit is God in action. Sometimes the Holy Spirit is called ‘the third person of the Trinity’ as if he is a lesser Being than Father and Son. He has certainly been ‘the neglected member of the Godhead’. (In the Apostles’ Creed there are at least 10 statements about Jesus Christ and only one about the Holy Spirit).

At the beginning of time, God’s Spirit (Hebrew ‘ruach’) created this universe out of nothing, brought order out of chaos. ‘By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth’ (Psalm 33:6). In Time Magazine (May 13, 2002) there’s a double page spread headed ‘A Star Is Born’: ‘The astonishing images beaming down from the new high-resolution camera on the Hubble Space telescope arrived last week, and they are out of this world. This photo of a stellar nursery is a close-up of the Cone Nebula, a cloud of gas and dust some 2,500 light-years from Earth. From top to bottom, the celestial pillar spans 2.5 light years – 3,000 times the size of our solar system. Stars are being born within the cloud as dense knots of gas collapse and flare with nuclear fusion. Five billion years ago, when our sun was still a newborn, it was probably shrouded in a cloud like this one.’ That’s the creative Spirit of God at work.

Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures – our ‘Old Testament’ – there is the deep conviction that no one can do the work of God without the Spirit of God; no one can lead others for God who is not led by God’s Spirit. The Spirit gives Joseph skill to rule (Genesis 41:38); he gives Joshua military prowess (Numbers 27:18); he gives skill to a couple of craftsmen (Exodus 31:2-6), and he gives words to the prophets.

The Holy Spirit empowers Jesus, from his conception, and throughout his ministry, to teach and to heal. And before Jesus ascended to the Father, he gave his followers a mandate designed to motivate them for the task ahead. He promised to send the Holy Spirit in his place (Luke 24:49).

Notice we used ‘he’ – the Holy Spirit is not an ‘it’ or a thing (although the Bible describes his operations as being like the wind, unpredictable or even mysterious). The English language used to say ‘Holy Ghost’, but the Spirit is not a ‘spook’ either. He is like Jesus, who is like God: he can think, will and feel – that is, he possesses all the attributes of any personality: intellect, emotion and will. He can be grieved and he can be quenched or stifled and ignored. The Holy Spirit ‘inspires’ people to say what God wants them to say (or to write those things down). So prophets and Scripture are ‘inspired’ by the Spirit. The Spirit guides us into the truth about Jesus, about ourselves and our sinfulness – and its consequence, judgment – and gives us the ‘big picture’ and God’s will for the future (John 16:8-13).

When you become a Christian, the Holy Spirit enters your life, and he will never leave you. In a sense, he’s a guest: you’ve let him in the front door. It’s now an exciting (and sometimes scary) process letting him take control of every room in your home. (Perhaps you could imagine these rooms, invite him in, and talk about what he discovers there!). He helps us to pray (Romans 8:26), to communicate to others about Christ (Mark 13:11), to love (Galatians 5:22), and to do what is right (1 John 2:27).

So be ‘filled with the Spirit’ (Ephesians 5:18). You get drunk with wine by choosing the sort you want, imbibing it, and ingesting it. Then your behaviour exhibits some changes according to how much and how often you drink (changing – and eventually controlling – you). So with the Spirit, says Paul. But in one sense you don’t get more of the Spirit; he gets more of you.

How am I filled with the Holy Spirit? First you must desire him – hungering and thirsting for what is right (Matthew 5:6). This involves confession of your sins (1 John 1:9). Then ask him to fill you: if you ask for anything he wants, he’ll hear you (1 John 5:14,15). Thank him for filling you, and by faith live moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day in his power and under his direction.

He wants to change you, though your basic temperament remains the same. Paul, for example, was a very aggressive person before his conversion but the Spirit redirected all that emotional energy towards more positive ends. Being ‘filled with the Spirit’ simply means being controlled by him.

Are you supposed to ‘feel’ anything when the Spirit comes into your life? Yes and no. Some do, some don’t. Some have a ‘peak experience’ – for a few it’s quite powerful. For others it’s quite a matter-of-fact transaction. The Spirit operates uniquely in each of us. Remember, he’s like the wind – sometimes a hurricane, sometimes a gentle breeze.

Indeed, Paul and Luke describe receiving the Spirit in different ways. For Paul ‘receiving’ the Spirit makes us God’s children (Romans 8:15). For Luke ‘receiving’ the Spirit gives us power (Acts 1:8). However, Paul also writes about receiving the Spirit with accompanying miracles (Galatians 3:1-5). Christians today generally follow either Luke or Paul on this point – the Pentecostals like Luke, the evangelicals Paul. In the early church, ‘Spirit’ and ‘Word’ went hand in hand. Let us combine both Luke and Paul: allowing the Spirit to make us holy, give us wisdom and endue us with power. Throughout the world, where ‘signs and wonders’ accompany the proclamation of the good news the church is dynamic and alive. However the great need for those young churches is Bible teaching – but without losing their enthusiasm.

About miracles: some Christians expect a ‘miracle a day’; others confine them to the pages of their Bibles! Jesus did promise that his followers would perform the same miracles he did – even greater ones (John 14:12). His power still the same. But note that biblical miracles clustered around just four historical periods – the creation, Moses and the Exodus, the prophets Elijah and Elisha, and Jesus and the apostolic era. There were always a few miracles at other times (eg. those in the Book of Daniel). Does God still heal miraculously? Certainly, and we should pray for that possibility. But today no one has a gift of healing like Jesus’ or Paul’s. No one can heal anyone at any time. Sometimes Paul healed everyone in a city. But no faith healer I’ve heard of has a gift like that today. Some of them build hospitals: if they had Paul’s gift they might be emptying them!

Christians sometimes get nervous about spiritual gifts they don’t fully understand, especially if they sense the Holy Spirit nudging them to be the channel of such a gift. It is important to remember that the Spirit doesn’t offer white-elephant gifts. His presents are not useless, like the thing you took home from the last Christmas party. We are wise not to turn up our noses at his gifts, for he knows what he is doing. And the Church is waiting to benefit from our gift-offerings…

Stay open-minded. Don’t fall for Cornford’s Law, which says ‘Nothing should ever be done for the first time.’ Instead, opt for the perspective of Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts: ‘Life is like a ten-speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.’ If we could scan a congregation with God’s radar, we would probably spot dozens of unused gifts – spiritual capacities lying dormant in the lives of many Christians. Meanwhile, the whole church is poorer.

Again, the Holy Spirit is simply God in action. God acting in your life individually, and in the life of the church. (Some years ago a preacher caused a fuss when said in one of our Australian Anglican Cathedrals: ‘If the Holy Spirit were removed from this place, 99% of what we do here would go on unhindered!’).

I want to major on something Paul says about the Holy Spirit. Two years ago, my wife Jan and I did a SKI trip around Australia (‘Spending the Kids’ Inheritance!’). We listened on CD to all the Psalms as we drove down the beautiful Western Australian coast, and to all of Paul as we drove across the Nullabor. Sometime, if you’re doing a long car-trip, listen to all of Paul’s letters, and you’ll be amazed at his fervour, his passion, his energy. This man was utterly ‘sold out’ to Christ.

[Continued in CLM-3-111]