Why Do we want the Holy Spirit?
Good morning. Before I begin my message this morning I want to share with you something I came across in my quiet time this past week. I’ve been focusing my reading on the book of Acts these days and came upon Acts 19. So if you have your Bibles I’d like you to turn it please. (Read Acts 19:1-7)
Did you notice the different stages of these disciples salvation experience? They had believed John’s message of repentance and were baptized by water. Then after Paul tells them they needed to believe in Jesus, the one who had come after John the Baptist, it says they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And then when Paul laid hands on them in v. 6 it says they were baptized in the Spirit resulting in them speaking in tongues and prophesying.
I know, it sent my head spinning as well!!! And honestly, I’m not sure I still fully understand what went on here. But there were a couple of things that did come tomy mind in light of this passage.
1. The story of the blind man in Mark 8, of where Jesus laid hands on him, and then was asked by him, ‘do you see anything’? Remember the man’s response? He said ‘I see men, but they look like tress, walking’. And then it says Jesus laid hands on him again and his sight was restored.
Now keep in mind the context – Jesus’ disciples were struggling with understanding what Jesus was all about, of which this blind man’s healing done in stages became a visible object lesson.
The disciples liked what they had seen so far and embraced what they understood but obviously there was so much yet they didn’t get.
And I sense that’s kind of what happened here in Acts 19 as well. They had heard the message of John the Baptist and liked what they heard and in turn responded to it, but it wasn’t the full message. And notice Paul didn’t criticize them for it either. He simply said, start believing in the One who John the Baptist was the forerunner of, namely Jesus. And so that’s what they did.
Now I’m sure we’ve all heard stories of people who, when they encountered the message of Jesus, saw their lives literally do a 180 overnight. Paul in the Scriptures is an example of one of those kinds of conversions. But even he continually kept his heart open to new depths of spiritual insight the Holy Spirit wanted to give him. In fact his life goal was that “I may know Him and the power of His resurrection”. Just as the blind man acknowledged that he had not been healed completely and the disciples that they had not yet received the Holy Spirit.
So for me one of the take aways from this passage, particularly as it relates to the topic of the Holy Spirit, was to be open to what God may be wanting to say to me about the Holy Spirit. To not allow my preconceived ideas or past experiences, etc. to get in the way of God wanting to reveal Himself to me in ways I yet do not understand. That when God’s Spirit stirs within my heart a sense of restlessness in regards to where I’m at in my understanding, that I don’t just ignore it because it makes me uncomfortable. But rather in honesty say “you’re right God I don’t understand, help me to understand”.
For its only through that kind of honesty that the Holy Spirit can deepen our understanding. Lets not be guilty of allowing ignorance, people, past experiences, etc. to stop us from embracing and experiencing everything God has for us.
2. The second thing that came to mind as I reflected on this passage, as well as the others from the book of Acts we looked at last week, is that the receiving of the Holy Spirit IS meant to be a real, identifiable experience, not just a matter of fact logical conclusion to what the Scripture teaches about the Spirit. There is meant to be some kind of visible supernatural expression of one’s receiving of the Spirit; whether it be a supernatural ability to love, or to have a heart filled with praise that can’t be held back, or a boldness to share our faith, or insight and wisdom that is beyond the human or like here in Acts, tongues and prophecy. Something that clearly sets us apart from the rest of the world.
I like how Peter puts it in II Peter 2. He’s just given them a list of the various virtues such as self control, steadfastness, godliness, etc. that are to accompany a follower of Jesus. And then he says this in v. 12. “I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have”.
In other words there was no question in Peter’s mind that these followers had it all well established in their heads but he felt the need to remind them that thesevirtuesneeded to be part of their everyday life and practice as well.
And again we’ll talk about this in more depth when we talk about the filling of the Spirit and its evidence.
But I thought I’d at least share these light thoughts from my devotional time this week with you before I began the message!!! Besides it does relate to what we’re talking about!
Soon that note lets get started. And again I’m going to ask you to take your Bibles and turn to Acts 8. (READ v. 14-24)
As we go to prayer I’d like us all to take a moment and ask God to search our heart as to OUR motivation for wanting the empowering of the Holy Spirit. Is it for power? Is it for our betterment? Or is it because we want to experience all that God has for us? Is it because we love the church and desire to be a better servant to our brothers and sisters?
Or maybe you’re here this morning and you find yourself in a place of where you’re not sure you want to have a new understanding of the Holy Spirit? Take time to talk God about that as well and tell Him your reasons why.
Pray
Simon saw the signs that Philip was doing and was blown away. Hey they wereeven better than his own magic. In fact so impressed was he with Phillip that he began following him around hoping he could figure out how Phillip was doing it. And when the people responded to Philiip’s teaching and got baptized Simon jumped on board as well. I mean he really liked what he saw. V.13 says , “and seeing signs and great miracles performed, he was amazed”. And then when Peter and John showed up and began to lay hands on people for the receiving of the Spirit Simon he was even more impressed, to the point that he was willing to pay for the power he was seeing demonstrated. Unfortunately he never saw the real deal. He never saw the ugliness of his own sin, the need for repentance, and what God can do through someone who has been forgiven and made new and clean.
And I think the same thing can happen to us as Christians when it comes to OUR desire for the Holy Spirit.
2. We can so quickly make it about ourselves
The Corinthian church is a good example of this. They had received the Holy Spirit but the church had become an absolute mess because individuals within the church had become more concerned about themselves than they were about the betterment of the church. It was THEIR experience that mattered, never mind how it was blowing the church apart. In fact if you read I Cor. 14 it sounds like the manifestations of the Spirit had become a competition; of where they tried to out do each other by speaking in tongues above each other; of where they were comparing who had the most gifts and who had the more important gifts.
And so the apostle Paul had to remind them that the gifting and empowering of the Holy Spirit was not about them; it was not about who could speak in tongues the most or who could interpret the best or who had the most gifts or the more visible gifts or anything like that.
Instead the gifts of the Spirit were meant to be about the church being built up and God receiving the glory.
Listen to what Paul says in I Cor. 12:7. “To each is given the manifestation (demonstration) of the Spirit for the common good”.
Or what about I Cor. 14:12? says, “since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church”.
Nowhere in Scripture do we read that the gifts or manifestations of the Spirit were intended for our betterment. They are always about building up the church and bringing glory to God.
Which brings me to the question we are considering this morning – why do we want the Holy Spirit and His manifestations? Is it so we can feel or appear more spiritual? Is it so people will notice us? Or is it so we can genuinely become more effective in helping build up the church and be the kind of witnesses He has called us to be?
The other thing Paul had to remind the Corinthian church about was that whatever gifts they had received, ithad nothing to do with them. There wasn’t something extra special about them that had made God give them the gifts that He did.
In I Cor. 12:11 Paul says, “all these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills”.
I like especially what Paul says in I Cor. 14:36. “Was it from you that the word of God came? Are you the only ones it has reached? If anyone thinks that he is a prophet or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized”.
In other words we don’t determine when and/or how the Holy Spirit shows up. All we can do is make ourselves ready by emptying ourselves of those things that would interfere with His ability to work through us and then simply surrender ourselves to how He wants to empower and gift us for service and His glory.
And when the Holy Spirit truly moves that’s exactly what happened. God is the one who is praised. Jesus is the One who is lifted up just like when the Spirit moved at Pentecost. The people knew something extraordinary had happened. They knew it had to be God.
Similar to whathappened in I Kings 18 when the prophet Elijah called down fire from heaven. The people didn’t leave that place and say, “wow that Elijah guy is an amazing guy! He sure knows how to pray”. Rather their response was one of “The Lord he is God, the Lord he is God”.
Now obviously, we can’t control how others respond to what the Holy Spirit may be doing in our lives.Our motivation could be completely above board – the Holy Spirit could clearly be moving in our hearts and yet it could still be misunderstood. And there’s not much we can do about that except to continually check what our motivation is and make sure self is not part of it, for the empowering of the Spirit is not about what He can for us.
The other thing about wanting the Holy Spirit is that sometimes
2. We can make it about the miracles
Lets remember that Simon was a sorcerer, meaning he dealt in supernatural powers before he ever heard Philip preach or ever heard of Jesus Christ. He had used his magical arts for a long time in Samaria (according to Acts 8:9–11), and amazed the people. He knew real power when he saw it.
So when Philip came to town and not only preached but performed signs by healing people and casting out demons (Acts 8:7), Simon knew the power was real, and that it was stronger than his power. So he was ready to switch sides. He even tried to buy the power with money because he wanted it so badly (v. 18).
But clearly his object was not the God behind the power but the signs and wonders themselves. Rather than seeing the Jesus behind these miracles, and to whom Phillip was pointing to by performing these signs and wonders, Simon got his eyes fixed on the supernatural miracles.
And I get how they can happen. I mean when you see someone get healed, who wouldn’t want to see more of that. I know I personally would love to see more of those kinds of miracles happen today. But when our focus and conversation becomes the miracles rather than the God behind the miracles things can very quickly go off track.
Ilus - I mean all you have to do is turn on your TV’s and see some of these so called “faith healers” in action and you know something has seriously gone off track. I caught one on the other day who was selling miracle spring water. His claim is that if I ordered his water and drank it I would be able to declare my financial debt gone or for an ailment to leave, etc. And as sad as that is in of itself the part that bothered me over more was that in the 10 minutes or so I watched, almost nothing was said about God. It was about this miracle spring water and testimonials for whom it had apparently worked.
Listen, something has seriously gone off track when you can have a Christian television program in which the talking about miracles trumps God. But that’s what happens when the miracles become the focus.
I think Francis Chan said it well when he said,
If we expect (demand) God to perform certain miracles or to give us a particular experience, it will be tempting to manipulate or even fake experiences of the supernatural.
There’s no doubt in mind that many of these guys on TV that emphasize the supernatural experience have themselves experienced a supernatural touch from God but when those experiences become the focus of their ministry and God decides not to show up in that way what do they do? Human nature kicks in and says we can’t let the experiences die. And if that means we have to manipulate or worse yet fake them, that’s what we do.
Now I know I’m probably drawing from extreme examples but the truth is we can be guilty of the very same thing.
Case and point – worship. I don’t know about you but I’ve had worship experiences that caused me to ask God to do it again. There was just something about it that moved my heart. And in and of itself there’s nothing wrong with that but the question is why do we want to that worship experience repeated? Is it because we liked the way it made us feel or is it because it caused us to connect with God in a fresh way? Is our focus on the experience or the God behind the experience? Because you see if it’s the God behind the experience then God has the total freedom to show up in our lives in whatever way He wants.This time it happened to be through worship, next time it could be through something else like a prayer or a time of solitude or a word of encouragement from someone. But when our focus is on the experience its so easy for our human nature to want to reproduce that experience. It’s so easy to get caught up in running all over the country side trying to catch the next experience when it is the God behind the experience that we ought to be chasing.
I can’t help but think that the author of Psalms 42 was drawing on a past experience when he wrote, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for the living God, when can I go and meet with Him?”
Clearly expressing an experience but look where his focus was. And because of that God wasn’t forced to show up the same way every time.
Another thing we need to keep in mind is that Godwill show up differently for different people. For some it could be through music while for others it could be through good biblical teaching. But if our focus is on the worship experience because of its more demonstrative nature, we are now chasing the experience. And like I already said, we’ve now button holed God into showing up a certain way and potentially missing other ways He might want to manifest Himself to us. In fact there may be every day miracles we are completely missing because we’re chasing A particular experience.
For example, I saw a miracle this week that had nothing to do with worship music or healing or speaking in tongues or anything remotely close to that. In fact it had to do with something that some might consider a negative thing. It had to do with a man who been married to his wife for 62 years, sit beside her bed and thank God for the gift that he’d been given to enjoy all these years. In the midst of his wife’s impending death, Norm gave God praise. That to me was nothing short of supernatural and caused me to drive home in tears. Not out of sadness for Norm but because God showed up.
Listen, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to experience the power of God’s Spirit. We just need to be careful not to make the experience our focus.
God calls us to pursue HIM period. The Bible emphasizes that we should concern ourselves with becoming more like Christ. And if in that pursuit God chooses to do something supernatural, it becomes the by-product of our pursuit of Him, not the pursuit itself.