Transcription
Too, so, uh, we're gonna get to that scene that we just read from in John 20, but I actually want to begin 72 hours prior to that, on the final night of Jesus' life, when he said something hard to understand, even for the most seasoned disciples: "I'm going away, but that's gonna make it so much better." John 14:15 and 16 record this one really long conversation that Jesus is having with the twelve, and wedge right in between the Last Supper and the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus cracks a smile and says something along the lines of, "Look, my days with you are very numbered at this point, but I'm sending you my spirit, and that's even better."
So, according to Jesus—and he is remarkably clear about this—the indwelling presence and power of His Holy Spirit is an upgrade to, uh, face-to-face interaction with him in person. God's dwelling, uh, indwelling presence surpasses God in human form, and the comparison is really not even close. That's what he said. And the most interesting part of that, at least to me, is that we don't buy it, right? I mean, just show of hands, honestly, how many of you would trade your current experience with the Holy Spirit for just one face-to-face with Jesus this afternoon? Really, real? I mean, come on. Like, I think like the answer is probably most of us, if we're honest, right?
So I want to talk to you today about the Holy Spirit, and that's because I think that what Jesus called an upgrade, most of us would actually trade it back if we could. And, uh, the theme for this conference was, just a minute ago, from Luke Chapter 10. It's a this journey from, uh, doing for God to partnering with God in what he's doing. And I find it interesting that the very next verse after your theme verse is, "At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, 'I praise you, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, because you've hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for that is what you are pleased to do.'" Dallas Willard, in his book *Hearing God*, he calls this the extended incarnational plan. So when was it that Jesus saw Satan fall like lightning and defeat? What made Jesus dance like an excitable little kid? Because the the Greek word that's used by Luke here is a word picture for jumping up and down with spontaneous joy. So when did Jesus break into spontaneous praise and see the enemy defeated? It was when his power was shared with the likes of you and me, little children, ordinary people. The extended incarnational plan. And it's for that reason that I want to talk to you this morning about the Holy Spirit.
Now, the biblical understanding is of a Triune God: Father, Son, and Spirit. And we generally get the Father right; he's God in heaven, parenting us as children. And we're familiar with the Son; he's Jesus, the image of the invisible God who came and lived among us and shared our experience. But the Spirit is more like an urban legend in the modern Western church. Like, we've all heard the rumors, but has anyone really spotted the Yeti? It's it's that kind of thing. The Spirit is that person in your friend group that you've been in a room with a lot of times but have never gotten to know very personally. And so it's definitely awkward at this point; you know them by association through other people. And then there's that one dinner when everyone gets up to go to the bathroom at the same time except you and that person, and you're dying inside, and that two minutes feels like it goes forever. That's the Holy Spirit. And from Genesis to Revelation, the Spirit is present and active and essential. And despite that, the tragic truth is that for most of us in the modern West, the Holy Spirit has become a familiar stranger. *Christianity Today* did a survey asking this question: True or false, the Holy Spirit is a force, not a person. 51 percent of Christians said true; seven percent said, "I don't know"; 42 said false. So over half of American Christians think the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, is a force to be used, not a person to know and be known by. So I want to introduce you this morning to the person of the Holy Spirit. And admittedly, what I'm about to walk us through is going to be trying to take, like trying to take a sip of water from a fire hose. There's no way that you'll be able to take all of this in, and that is perfectly okay. I just want to douse your imagination in Jesus' vision for your life, empowered by his spirit. And then, as you go in the days, weeks, and months ahead, sort out the implications. So this is a shove into the deep end; it is a playful, well-intentioned, friendly shove. But here comes the shove. Okay, so let's get acquainted with the Spirit as presented to us in scripture through five major scenes: creation, Old Testament, Jesus, early church, and then us. And as an anchor for you to hold on to as we go through the entire Bible in the next 15 minutes or so, the key word to pay attention to is going to be Tabernacle or Temple, which are used most of the interchangeably in the biblical narrative. So if you'd like to follow along with me, you can turn to Genesis chapter 2; I'll meet you there. All the verses are going to be on the screen as well.
Scene One: Creation. So Genesis 2, beginning in verse 20, says, "But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he was sleeping he took one of the man's ribs and then closed up the place with flesh." This is the first surgery in history, complete with anesthesia and everything. "Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man." Now the word rib in this passage is a really interesting one; it is the Hebrew *saylock*. Can you say that? And that probably means doesn't mean rib in a biological sense, because that same word shows up again and again, over 40 times elsewhere in the Old Testament, never again is it translated into English as rib. Almost every other occurrence of the word *salo* refers to the side of a sacred piece of architecture, usually the Tabernacle or the temple. So what that means for Genesis 2 is, at the beginning, Adam and Eve's bodies are called temples or Tabernacles in the Hebrew imagination. Temples are houses for God's presence, and so are our bodies. That's what we encounter on page one of the Bible. Hang on to that; it's going to come back around.
Moving on ahead to the Old Testament, if you would just turn ahead to the next book in the story, stick a finger in Exodus chapter 40, and I can meet you there in just a second. Now, throughout the Exodus story, God's presence is depicted to us as a dense cloud. It's a cloud that guides the Israelites through the desert, a cloud that descends on Mount Sinai to give Moses the Ten Commandments. Then eventually God instructs Moses to build a tabernacle, which is Old Testament language for a tent, which sounds ridiculous, right? "And build me a tent so we can go camping together." It sounds childish, but it was actually a revolutionary thought, because up to this point in history there was never a conception of a God that was not bound to a location, right? There was a sun god, a moon god, a mountain god, and an ocean god. This was strikingly personal, that God would walk with his nomadic people, that he would take up residence wherever they took up residence; he would stay with them wherever they go. That was a revolutionary idea that set Yahweh apart from every verifiable conception of God that had existed in history up to that point. And to be fair, it was a lot more glamping than camping. This was a really nice tent; it was made of Keisha wood, it had various rooms, all that sort of thing. Exodus 40, the final verses of the whole narrative of Exodus, say this: "Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle."
Now fast forward with me just a little bit in Israel's history; we come to First Kings. Israel is now settled; they're no longer nomadic. King Solomon then makes some upgrades on God's house; he moves it from a tabernacle or a tent to a temple, which is like a real building. There's a guest room on this thing; it's a permanent home in the middle of the city. Now when they finish up the construction, something familiar happens. This is First Kings 8: "When the priest withdrew from the holy place, the cloud filled the Temple of the Lord, and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple." It's an exact repetition of Exodus 40. So here's a theme that you'll encounter in the Old Testament: the Tabernacle is good but incomplete. It's good because God's presence is clear and among us, and that's wildly progressive. No one in ancient Israel is having an argument about the existence of God, right? Who is God? Where is God? How can we know? He's the dense cloud, so filling the Tabernacle, no one can even walk in without falling face down. So, so God is verifiable; he's there, but it's incomplete because there's no intimacy. You see, in Moses' Tabernacle, Moses couldn't go in because the glory of the Lord was so powerful. And as for the rest of the people, they're told, "If you even set a foot on the base of the Mount Sinai while Moses is up there talking with God, you'll drop dead on the spot." And in Solomon's Temple, the priest couldn't perform the service. But when God showed up, only the high priest got into the presence of God, and that was only once a year. And even when that happened, they tied a rope to his ankle just in case he dropped dead in the presence of God, so there was a way to retrieve the body. No one was arguing about the existence of God, but no one knew God on a personal level either. The Tabernacle was a place of presence without intimacy.
Now, if you keep flipping through the scriptures, you'll eventually hit John chapter 1, and that brings us to Jesus. John 1:14: "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." In other words, dwelling in this passage is the Greek *skēnōō*, which means Tabernacle. In fact, the most direct translation of this verse is, "The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us." So the Old Testament pattern is, build a tabernacle, and then God fills it with his glory or his presence. John describes Jesus as a tabernacle filled with God's glory or his presence. The glory of the Lord that filled the Tabernacle in the Old Testament has now filled the body of Jesus in the New Testament; he is a living, breathing, walking, talking Tabernacle. And this is a whole lot more than just a clever play on words about the Apostle John; it is the basis by which we understand the whole of Jesus' life. Because then Jesus goes around acting like he is the Tabernacle. One of the reasons that Jesus got himself into so much trouble with the Pharisees is he goes around the Earth doing things that you could not do outside of the temple. And I'm not talking about social faux pas; I mean, Jesus violated the Torah. Jesus goes around doing things like saying things to people like, "Oh, your sins are forgiven," and the priests are going, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not how it works. We've got a system where someone comes in, reports to a priest, and in the Holy Place, through the qualified person who's been anointed and selected by God, someone might receive forgiveness after offering the sacrifice. Where'd you get that? Moses gave us that; the one who met with God on the mountain; it's the law." And then Jesus goes around just breaking the law: "You're forgiven; there's no sacrifice; there's no priest; you're forgiven." Jesus acts like he is the Tabernacle. In Luke's gospel, the very first recorded time Jesus enters the temples and adults, we read this: "Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. He went to Nazareth, where he'd been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written, 'The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.'" And then the entire congregation attempted to push him off a cliff. I've preached some bad sermons; it's never gone that bad, right? Look, here's the issue: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me." Jesus is standing in a tabernacle, claiming to be the Tabernacle. He's standing in a building that they say God dwells in and saying, "No, no, no, no, no, I am the container for God's presence; I am the vessel filled with God's spirit." And that was a bit much, but to be fair, Jesus doesn't ask people just to believe him outright. He then goes around doing things that could not be done unless God's spirit really had made his home in a person. Isaiah lists all of the qualifications for what it looks like when a person becomes a tabernacle, and Jesus read that part too. It's priority toward the poor, freedom for the imprisoned, the healing of incurable conditions, and an outpouring of God's favor. And in the days that follow, does Jesus prioritize the poor? Absolutely. He builds a movement on the poor. What about freedom for the prisoner and the oppressed? All the time; he goes around setting free those who have been held captive through deliverance. And do the blind receive sight from Jesus? Yeah, both literally and and spiritually, everywhere he goes. Eventually he made this claim: "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." Jesus said that while he was standing on the Temple Mount, which was one of the architectural wonders of the world; they'd been working on it for two generations. The priests were offended because they think he's talking about the building, but John goes on to explain, "But the temple he had spoken of was his body." Jesus is talking about his *salo*; this is a return to Adam's rib, the first temple. He's hearkening all the way back to the first page of the story; his body is a living, breathing, walking, talking Tabernacle. Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit. "You might be building a container for God's presence, but so am I. I'm making you the container for God's presence, just like I did it first. And what I'll build in three days through my death and resurrection is a dramatic upgrade; in fact, it's a replacement to what you've been working on for a couple generations." That was Jesus' point.
Moving right along, this brings us to the early church. So if you flip ahead, we come to John chapter 20. Here we are; I told you we're going to get back here; we finally made it to the text that Tyler read for us a minute ago. John 20, beginning in verse 21: "Again Jesus said, 'Peace be with you.' As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit." So the message of Resurrection evening was, "Receive my spirit; the presence of God that you've seen tabernacling in me, I now give it to you." Just as the Father sent me into the world as a living, breathing, walking, talking Tabernacle, I now send you into the world as living, breathing, walking, talking Tabernacles. And that was a whole lot more than just poetry. Notice the line that follows: "If you forgive anyone's sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven." Jesus is talking to ordinary people like you and me, saying, "If you forgive, it's forgiven; if you don't forgive, it's not forgiven." Are you sure that's in the Bible? Yep, that was message number one off the lips of Jesus post-resurrection. What could that possibly mean? Remember how Jesus walked around doing things that you could not do outside of the temple, things he could only do in line with the Torah? If he really was the new Tabernacle, he promises his Spirit to his followers, and he says, "Now you guys do it." Now does that mean you go around forgiving sins? No, it means that that people should carry the experience of the forgiveness of God with them everywhere they go; that when people come into your presence they should experience God's disarming presence through you. Jesus is saying, "The presence and power that you've seen in me is now given to you." And that's not just like a comforting theory or a poetic metaphor; it's actual practice. And then in the book of Acts, those very disciples go around doing stuff that you could not do outside of the temple; they're preaching forgiveness, they're baptizing, they're praying, they're healing. They go around doing the very stuff Jesus did. Or remember, remember the things that he listed: "The Lord is on me to proclaim the good news." They preached the gospel; the church always has and always will preach the gospel, but they did more than just preach the gospel, because the evidence of the Holy Spirit also includes freedom, healing, and justice. And in Acts, "In addition to the Lord added to their number daily those who are being saved." They also pray in jail cells, fling open Peter and John, heal a paralytic on their way into morning worship, and then he's dancing at the front and during the opening worship song. Paul preaches so long someone dozes off, falls out of a window to their death, then he heals them during the benediction. Daily they're serving food to the oppressed and the vulnerable. And in the midst of all of that supernatural, fruitful ministry, they also suffered, and they grieved, and they questioned and doubted, and they went through spells, sometimes long ones, of spiritual boredom and apathy. How how can that be? How can those two things go together—supernatural power and natural pain and hardship? Because this is about a relationship with a person, not a set of spells or a box of magical powers. And the church, led by the Holy Spirit, looks like the continuation of everything Jesus started, and it looked flawed, because that everything was given to ordinary people like you and me. And the rest of the Bible is just the story of a bunch of ordinary people like us, tabernacling, ordinary people filled with the Holy Spirit, carrying on the ministry of Jesus.
Finally, that brings us to us. So our whirlwind tour through the scriptures is going to land in First Corinthians. Now I'm going to read to you from a letter written by the Apostle Paul to the church at Corinth. This letter was written to be read in gatherings like this one, to people following Jesus like us; essentially, this is a letter to us. First Corinthians 3:16: "Don't you know that you—now that's a plural 'you' in ancient Greek; there are several different words for 'you,' making it clear when you're talking to just an individual 'you' or a communal 'you.' In English we don't have that; we just have the one 'you,' which is why the South invented 'y'all,' which is a plural version of 'you,' right? So, so and it's why in this passage we read this really clumsy translation, 'you yourselves—don't you know that you yourselves'—it's because we're talking to to a plural group of people, I gathered community; we're talking to the church. 'Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in your midst?'" So there's still a tabernacle; there's still a place where God's glory dwells, and it's you; it's y'all, right? And it's the gathered church; it's it's the not the building; it's the collective lives of Jesus' followers as a community. We are bound together by the Holy Spirit. When we're together, the glory of the Lord fills the atmosphere, just like in Moses's tent, just like in Solomon's Temple. And but there's even more than that; just check this out, chapter six of the same letter, just a little bit later. Read this in First Corinthians 6:19: "Do you not know that your bodies—now this time it's singular—do you not know that your body, do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price; therefore honor God with your bodies." Now, on a personal note, as a child, my grandma convinced me that this verse meant that I shouldn't get tattoos or smoke. She was way off; it's got nothing to do with that.
It's probably good that I wasn't taking a drag off a Newport 100 while waiting for the bus in elementary school, but still, that couldn't be less what this is about. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you? The singular who is in you and you and you and you, whom you have received from God. You, you individually—your physical body is now a sailor just like it was at first; it's a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit. You are filled with the very Spirit of Jesus.
So here's the story of scripture when it comes to the Holy Spirit: The Familiar stranger that lives in the background of every scene. In the story at creation, God affirms Adam and Eve's bodies as dwelling places for his Spirit, living tabernacles. In the Old Testament, God fills Moses as tabernacle and then Solomon's Temple. God's spirit comes into the heart of his city to live with his people. In Jesus, God's spirit fills a person whose life, death, and resurrection then broke down every barrier between God and us. So then in the church, there would be a gathered community of people that are bound together by a spirit, and every time we come together, the presence of the Lord is palpably among us. And there's even more intimacy than that because you, any one of you who accepts the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus on your behalf, is then filled with his Spirit, exactly like he was filled with that Spirit. That's the story of the Bible. If I had to sum it up in a single sentence, I would say it like this: God's spirit has been given to us and to you. This is so beautiful, but it's way more than just poetry; it's practice.
So back to that night, the one where Jesus said, "I'm going away, but I'm sending you my spirit, and that's better." On that same evening, he also said this: "Very truly I tell you,"—now that's Jesus—for what I'm about to tell you is not hyperbole; I actually literally mean this—okay, "very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I've been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I'm going to the Father." Whoever believes in me will do exactly what you've seen me doing by my very Spirit. Now there's so much debate among scholars about whether Jesus is talking about quality or quantity, right? Is he saying your, your works of miraculous power will be even better than mine, or is he saying, because my spirit's been given to you, there will be so many works of miraculous power—will be greater now? And I would say it doesn't really matter which one of those it is; pick whichever interpretation you want. What I'm trying to point out is that what he's saying is it's definitely not, "You'll do fewer and less good things," right? It's definitely, definitely isn't saying that, and to fixate on that is to miss the real heart of this because the key word of what Jesus is saying here is, "Whoever"—very truly I tell you—"whoever believes in me will do the works I've been doing." Jesus has made all of us into tabernacles filled with his presence and power, doing the very things we've seen him doing. Who's that for? Whoever the power of God has been shared with; whoever will receive it. Eugene Peterson says it is the lived conviction that everything, absolutely everything in the scriptures is livable—not just true, but livable—that is the supernatural core, a lived resurrection and Holy Spirit core of the Christian life. You see, the Holy Spirit makes the impractical practicable, to borrow a phrase from Jordan Singh.
This is what the ministry and gifts of the Holy Spirit are all about; they're about making the totally, utterly impractical—like the supernatural and the miraculous and the gospel ministry of Jesus—not only possible by extremely spiritual people with extremely great gifts, but practicable by the high school student who's struggling with pushing the envelope too far with his or her girlfriend; by the stressed-out businessman who's financially over their head; by the mom who's drowning in their kids' constant needs; by the doubter with their arms crossed and kind of questioning or or combating everything that I'm saying even as I'm saying it; by the woman who's on the edge of her seat because she wants this so bad she can't even stand it; and by the youth pastor who's half excited and half dreading the fact that we're at the beginning of a new school year and it's all ahead of you—everyone, every child of God who has received Jesus is then filled with his Spirit to make the impractical practicable. Karl Barth called it the impossible possibility; that was his term for the Holy Spirit. And who is that for? Whoever believes in me. This is what you can expect from your life.
So what if God's dream for his church isn't only that more people would fill the seats at your youth ministry and more discipleship groups would be born out of it? I mean, it definitely includes that, but what if it also includes the addicted finding freedom? What if it includes the single mom with four kids coming to know Christ through her kids' faith? Uh, what if it includes people who are obsessively distracted by their own appearance actually finding freedom to live as their true selves and to accept their bodies because they've been filled by his spirit? And what if it's love for those—or what if it's the ability to walk into a room like this where you interact with other ministers, so you don't compare yourself, but you can celebrate one another and undress yourselves before one another in a profound way? What if it includes being free enough to spend your Friday night at a Michelin-star restaurant with friends where someone else is picking up the bill or serving food to impoverished widows in a nursing home and being equally present, equally alive, equally joyful in either environment? And what if it includes the terminally ill being wheeled down from the hospital into the church that you lead within because there's this rumor going around that the people there actually pray for healing and occasionally it works, so we might as well give it a shot? Now what if it includes a simple word spoken that cuts right to the hardest heart—so the the word of prophecy—what can say what a word of preaching never ever could? You have to admit, if it includes all those things, that does sound significantly more fun, right? That is the dream that put light into the eyes of Jesus on the final night of his life, that everything he has might become yours. And one of the great tragedies of the church in our time—maybe the great tragedy of the church in our time—is that the Holy Spirit has become a familiar stranger. Is it the very thing that got Jesus so excited? Is it the very thing that we struggle to relate to? I mean, it must break the heart of Jesus that the spirit he was so eager to give us has become, in the church in our time, unknown, feared, and divisive, right? The Holy Spirit is unknown. Just go back to that survey we started with: 58% of Christians in the West aren't even aware that their the Holy Spirit is a being to know and be known by. People go in and out of our churches, ordering their whole lives around the teaching of Jesus, completely unaware of how close he's really come to them. And the reason that so many of us would reverse the deal if we could—that we'd trade the intimacy of the Spirit for a face-to-face chat with the Son—is because the Holy Spirit's become a stranger. And some of you, if you're really honest, are leading in ministry and you're thinking, "Man, if this is it, if the experience I'm having right now is all that Jesus won for me on the cross and through his resurrection… I know you're not supposed to say this, but I'm a bit underwhelmed and disappointed." Billy Graham wrote, "Everywhere I go, I find that God's people lack something; they're hungry for something; their Christian experience is not all they had expected, and they often have recurring defeat in their lives." Christians today are hungry for spiritual fulfillment. The desperate need of the nation today is that men and women who profess Jesus would be filled with the Holy Spirit. Now that's not a particularly charismatic, theologically and biblically sound gospel preacher who traveled the globe, seeing the church in every culture and variety, and his conclusion at the end of all of it was, "You know what the church needs today? It's the Holy Spirit." The Holy Spirit's unknown. The Holy Spirit's also feared. The gospel writer Luke uses the summary phrase repeatedly for Jesus' ministry: "All he began to do and teach," and the order there is really important: do and then teach. Jesus' method of ministry was often experienced first and then explanation of the experience second, and that's important for us because, as modern Western people, most of us want explanation up front, and then if the explanation is really strong and totally verifiable and I understand every last bit, maybe, maybe I would be open to experience. And the only trouble with that way of approaching our faith is the entire Bible and the whole of scripture is basically person after person after person having a revolutionary experience with God; they don't have language for it, then developing language for it, putting it down on paper, and it's that that we now use to instruct us on what to expect from God. The early church, we're always trying to get back to, was mostly illiterate peasants who did not yet have a completed copy of the New Testament, and yet the scriptures based on their lives are the Holy Spirit-saturated historic accounts of ordinary people experiencing God in the everyday, in every variety, and then on the other side of that experience, they sort out the implications and what God gave them in an outpouring 2000 years ago has become the bedrock for future generations to build on. And here we are, a couple centuries downstream from them, benefiting from God revealed through both word and spirit, and many faithful generations of Christ followers uh now carry the essential nature of both. But in our time, the experiential aspect of our faith has grown unfashionable and in many cases is actually feared. But if we want to be led by the Spirit, we've got to become with people who are comfortable with a God who often works first and then explains second. Simon Ponsonby, who's an intellectual Oxford scholar, wrote, "I purposely emphasize the word 'experience' and will seek to show from scripture the importance of experience. A non-experiential religion is suspect, for it fails to deal with the totality of our being." Kurt Thompson, who's a clinical psychologist that just happens to also be a person of faith, wrote, "Despite the interest in spirituality in much of the West and North America in particular, our overall experience of God's power and life-giving vitality is often limited. We often see life in Jesus as being more about survival than about grace, adventure, and genuine, concrete, life-giving change." The Holy Spirit's unknown. The Holy Spirit's feared.
Lastly, the Holy Spirit in our time has become divisive. And this isn't particularly true around the world, but there is a division in America between Bible churches and Holy Spirit churches, right? There are certain churches that preach the Bible with excellence and intellect and thoughtfulness, but the experience of the Holy Spirit is suspiciously absent. And there's other churches that major on the ministry and expressions of the Holy Spirit, but then they diminish the Bible mostly into like inspiring pep talks. Just to give a little note, so so when I say something in a room like this one, if I stand up and say, "We're going to talk today about the Holy Spirit," in a church in America or among pastors, youth pastors in America, I'm totally aware that the second I say that, the room splinters into a couple different groups, right? There's some people in the room; they're like, "Oh, wait a minute, how are we going to go about this because X, Y, and Z?" And there's others of you; they're like, "All right, finally! I have Calvary chapels coming around; it took you guys a little while, but I'm glad you're finally opening up," right there. And neither of those is what I'm saying. See, I want you to see that the spirit of unity that Jesus gave as the bonding agent for the church has become the dividing agent of the church, and that must break the heart of Jesus. How jealous must he be for his church? Back—the kingdom of God is not in either/or kind of kingdom; it's a both/and kind of kingdom. It is Holy Bible and Holy Spirit. It is exegeting the text and delivering a word of prophecy. It is preaching the gospel and healing the sick, right? It is, it is seeing new people baptizing, coming into the kingdom, and it is feeding the hungry on the street. It is a both/and kind of kingdom. So what a moment for you to be leading within a church in a world like this and being able to emphatically say yes to the Holy Bible, yes to bringing the full complexity of my life thoughtfully and intellectually to this text that's been passed on throughout history and allowing it to serve as an authority—the authority in my life—and yes to the Holy Spirit, yes to the God revealed through that scripture, alive here and now, even within me, because I—he's made me a living, breathing tabernacle.
So here's the whole idea that I'm circling around, and the big idea that I want to land with today: The Holy Spirit is a person to know, not a force to capture. I'm not trying to get you wound up about the power of the Holy Spirit or the experience of the Spirit; I'm trying to introduce you to the person of the Holy Spirit. And the trouble and the downfall of even teaching on something like this is you cannot know a person by hearing about them, right? I could stalk your Instagram profile; I could talk to all of your friends and family; I could read your memoir, but then if you and I sit down for coffee after this, I will not know you any better. I will know a lot more about you, but I will not know what it feels like to be in your presence any better. To know the Holy Spirit, to experience what Jesus was talking about in that last night of his life, it requires a whole lot more than listening to a sermon; it requires the risk of relationship, and that means interacting interpersonally with God as Spirit. It means learning to enjoy the presence of his Spirit, learning to tune your ear to the voice of his Spirit, learning to walk and step with his Spirit. That's a whole lot more personal, but it is much better. So to know the Holy Spirit experientially, interpersonally, like I'm talking about, as a person, it comes, in my experience, through intimacy, holiness, and faith. I just want to land by inviting you to know the Spirit in those ways: First, through intimacy. The Holy Spirit, before anything else, is this: God has gone to such great lengths to be close to you. He has lived among you, died your death, given you his life, and now he's filled you with his breath. God has gone to such great lengths to be close to you. His goal was never merely to get us into his presence; his goal is always to get his presence into us. The story of the Bible is much less a story about how we can get close to God and a whole lot more story about how close God has really come to us, and the Holy Spirit is the most intimate expression of God in that whole story—a spirit of intimacy before anything else. It was John Wimber who said, "When I speak of hearing God's voice, I mean developing a practice of communion with the Father." So we're talking about the spirit of Jesus, and Jesus craved intimacy with the Father more than anything else. Jesus, in the midst of wild, out-points of ministry, would, would withdraw alone to be with the Father. Jesus would make plans to get away from the crowds far more than he was able to carry out those plans. The disciples would wake up in the morning, and Jesus was off on a moonlit prayer hike all night, just talking to the Father. And when explaining his ministry, the outward expressions of power, Jesus said, "I only do what I see my Father doing." So preaching the gospel, healing the sick, opening the eyes of the blind, delivering the imprisoned—oh, all of that is just the overflow of intimacy. My life isn't about effort; my life is about intimacy with the Father. This is just all that, all that's coming out of me is just the overflow of that intimacy. So do you have a practice of communion with God? Because relationships are built on planned and spontaneous interaction, right? We have planned interaction with those that we're really close to, with with our family members, our friends, whatever. We make plans to get together, and when those planned times are happening, they spill over into spontaneous interaction. So do you have a planned time of interaction with God? Do you have a regular time of meeting with him through his word and prayer? If not, the overflow of that relationship is being held back by the fact that there is not that common means of communication. And then secondly, do you find that that planned time is then spilling over into the rest of your day, or is it simply a like one little item and it's kept in a compartment? Do you find yourself spontaneously talking to the God that you meet with at a planned time in the morning or the evening or whatever as you're walking the dog or on your commute home from work or as you're interacting with this or that person? Do you find that spontaneous interaction is being born out of planned interaction?
Secondly, there's holiness. See, when we talk about the Holy Spirit, usually people first think of wild experiences and powerful stories. So it's very helpful to remember that we're talking about the Holy Spirit, and there's got to be at least one person in this room thinking, "All this is great, man. So glad that you came; I bet you're enjoying being out of Portland where it rains all the time, but how on Earth am I supposed to start thinking about opening up the eyes of the blind when I can't stop X, Y, or Z? When I have this habitual sin pattern hidden in my life and I don't know who to bring it up to or how to carry it, so the rest of you can get out there and open the eyes of the blind? I'm going to keep trying to sort this thing out in the dark." Now Jesus did not lower the standard of holiness. Sin does not mix with God's presence; it is the one thing that we can have in our lives that crowds out room for God. Jesus did not lower the standard of holiness, but Jesus did redefine the term holiness for us. So in Kierkegaard, to find sin this way: Not as the breaking of moral rules, but not wanting to be oneself before God. Jesus' definition of holiness was not moral, moral perfection; it was confession; it was allowing God to see you, to dragging yourself before him, undressing yourself of what you keep, of what you're using to keep things covered up in front of everyone else and saying, "This is who I really am, and I can't sort it out on my own." That says Jesus is holiness; it's not never needing to undress yourself; it's undressing yourself every time you need to. The most common Biblical name given to our spiritual enemy, to Satan, is the Accuser. The most common Biblical name Jesus uses for the Holy Spirit is Advocate; it's the exact opposite. The Spirit is the antidote to our opposition. So if you're thinking, "I'll get to all this empowered Spirit stuff when I sort out my…" you should know that the Spirit, even now, is the advocating voice in the ear of the Father in the midst of your accusation. The Spirit is the one who's forever pleading your case. Here's your part: Just allow yourself to be seen; just bring your whole self, especially the parts of you that you think don't belong, into the presence of God.
And then finally, there's faith, because scripture speaks of both quenching and fanning into flame uh the Spirit in First Thessalonians and then in Second Timothy. Both of those are connected to faith because when the Spirit speaks to us, it often feels like this prompting to do something that both pushes us beyond our comfort zone and gives God the power to do what only God could do, and that requires faith, right? Speak to that person; offer to take that coworker to lunch; pray for her; bless that person financially. And every time God speaks, he wants to act. Every time God speaks, it's only because he wants snacks; that's what we know on the pages of scripture, right? How did God, how does God create? He speaks: "Let there be light," and then bam, there's light. So you cannot separate God's voice from God's action. It's one thing that makes God different than you and me is that you can separate my voice from my action, right? I
Have intentions of what I mean that don't always get carried out. Not so with God; the action immediately takes place when he speaks. So when God is putting a prompting on your heart, it's because he wants to act; it's because he's got something he wants to get done. But he works by consent, so we invite you to partner with him in response. And that requires faith. My friend Pete defines faith this way: the length of time between God speaking and our acting. That's good, right? I find that helpful. It's not mine, so I can say it's good. It's the—it's—it's this: what it means to live by faith. To invite more of the Spirit into your life is just—I'm going to narrow that gap as much as I possibly can between God speaking and my acting.
So I'll close here—uh, on a Saturday night not too long ago—just, I don't know, two or three years ago now—I climbed into bed with like tears of joy and longing in my heart because I just watched that new Coldplay documentary. Have you guys seen it? A Head Full of Dreams, the one Amazon did. It's so good. It's so good. I don't even like Coldplay very much. Like, the early albums—I was in like middle school—for you know, like Parachutes and Clocks, and I was like, "This is the greatest stuff I've ever heard." And then Chris Martin just lost me after that. And then I watched this documentary. I was like, "Chris, I'm back." It was me. It wasn't you. It was me the whole time.
But here was the crazy part about the documentary that I never knew. Did you know that the drummer for Coldplay did not know how to play the drums? His college roommate played the drums, and the rest of the three guys were forming a band. He, being a great friend and roommate, set up the drum kit for his audition to be in Coldplay. And then his roommate, the drummer, no-showed. And they were like, "Oh man, you know what? We've already booked our first gig, and we really need to rehearse." He happened to play some other instruments. They're like, "You're—you're a musician, so do you think you could just try to play the drums just so that we could practice these songs?" And he was like, "Yeah, sure." And you know what? You know how it sounded awful? It sounded like someone who did not know how to play the drums attempting to play the drums. But because they already had the show booked, they kind of figured it out enough that he played drums with them at their first show. One thing led to another, and he became the drummer for a band that defined a generation. Why? Not because he was talented, not because he was qualified, not because he was gifted, just because he was available. He was available. Are you available? See what I'm trying to say to you is if you become available for God to fill you with his Spirit, you can be the drummer for Coldplay. I'm just kidding; that's not what I'm trying to say to you. What I'm trying to say to you is that that's a gospel story—that God—God does not—he never has cared very much for the gifted or the qualified, but he has shaped history through the available. Are you available? Are you available? Are you available? Why don't we stand together?
I'm going to close just by a moment of ministry together. I'm going to ask God to do what only God can do, and I'm going to invite you to respond to it, because God only speaks because he wants to act. So will you stand with me? You calm, Holy Spirit. Come, Holy Spirit. Come, Holy Spirit. When I pray that, what I mean is not that I'm asking the Spirit to inhabit somewhere that the Spirit was absent a moment ago. I'm praying like the Psalmist: Awake, my soul. Would I become aware of the Spirit's presence within me now? Would my ear be tuned to the Spirit's voice to me now? So you come, Holy Spirit. And I just want to encourage you, just if you're willing, just to open yourself up to the Spirit. This is what I find helpful to do is to close my eyes because I'm easily distracted, and to open my hands in front of me in this posture—both of receiving whatever God wants to give, coming with nothing—and just kind of opening my whole life up before him. Become, Holy Spirit. We're just gonna wait for a moment and not be in a hurry because I have no idea where you've come from to get here, but you did not come for content. And I believe that God has appointments with you that he wants to speak to you, and that his desire is that whenever you go back wherever you've come from, that you're not talking about content; you're talking about a face-to-face interaction where he did within you what only he can do. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to name the things that I just sense God's up to in the room, and then I'm going to invite you to be terrifyingly vulnerable in response to that, because God only speaks because he wants to act. Come, Holy Spirit.
So that my sense is that there's a couple of people—maybe just a single individual in this room—and you have a sin pattern in your life that you have mostly kept hidden, but not in a secret way—like you might have an accountability partner you talk to about this or something—but you're—you have a deep fear that maybe you've never articulated that it disqualifies you from ministry. So you've kind of got this elephant in the room every time you're talking to God because there's this part of your life that you cannot pin down by your willpower, and you've tried and tried and tried to overcome this pattern, but it keeps raring its head. And you're wondering, "God, are you going to penalize the people that I lead, the ministry that you've called me to because I can't get this together?" And I think God wants to encounter you today so that you could know that where your willpower runs out, that's exactly where he meets you with his grace. And today you're going to begin a journey toward freedom. It could be all in an instant, or it could be a journey, but that is about knowing that you're forgiven right in the midst of your failure—not overcoming that pattern of failure.
Second thing is I think that there's some of you in the room, and you've been posturing while you've been here—even putting a best foot forward—kind of hyper-aware of how you're being perceived by the people around you. And that might be a new thing for you, or it might happen when you get in context around other ministry leaders. But God—God has an identity for you to inhabit that is free among other leaders, and he actually wants to begin that today. He wants you to inhabit that identity beginning right now. And so he—he just kind of wants to come in and re-wire your internal life so that you might be able to be around these same leaders as you move through the rest of this conference—free, joyful, not thinking about yourself, being poured out like a drink offering to others, and more available to him.
And then finally—finally—I just think there's just a—some of you are hungry for what I'm talking about. You're hungry to know the power of the Spirit in your ministry because you're aware that the best you've got is not enough. And you're pretty good at what you do, but you open the pages of the New Testament, and you go, "You know what? They're having a different experience than I'm having, and I want what they're having." So here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to invite—uh, people that you feel like—if one of those words you feel like, "You know what? I think that's for me"—what I'm going to invite you to do is to actually move your body to the front of this room, and then just hold yourself in the exact same posture of prayer at the front of the room. And that is the only step. This isn't the first step in a seven-step process; we're going to end up in another room where I'm giving you a massage and whispering into your ear. The honorarium is not sweet enough for that kind of treatment. I'm just kidding. It's because God only speaks because he wants to act, and the way we make room for God to act is by joining our bodies to what his Spirit's whisperings—by moving our feet; it's by opening up more space within us; by making ourselves vulnerable. So I'm actually not going to ask you to respond for anyone else—for you to accelerate your own transformation. So if, as I was naming those three things—a pattern that's beyond your willpower, hunger—just a hunger for more of the Spirit—or a posturing before people that you want to be freed from—you feel like I'm—I'm describing you, just come to the front of the room, and I'm just going to pray over the room. Come, Lord. You come, Lord. You come, Lord.
You know, typically the way this works is a few people respond, and then other people are available to pray for them. You guys have messed that up, but this is the gift of getting to be in a room with co-laborers is that we can all be undone and weak, yeah, and God can be the one who ministers. So I'm going to say a prayer. We're going to sing maybe just a chorus, yeah? Does that work? Or you know, whatever you guys have got going. And—and just as you're ready, join your voice to this chorus, but don't rush it. Just hold before the Lord the part of yourself that you're bringing and let him do the work within you. So, Holy Spirit, I pray that you would do this. I pray that areas that have been kept hidden, right now your spirit of grace would—would swoop in, and that in the place where the—the accuser has been allowed to whisper in the lives of my brothers and sisters, would they now hear the voice of the Advocate whispering, "Beloved, beloved, beloved, beloved." Would they hear the voice that spoke to Peter on the beach after resurrection that said, "Now I've always known who you were; the only person surprised by the denial was you, Pete, and you're still the rock I want to build the church on"? Would you whisper that over my brothers and sisters? "You're still the rock I want to build the church on." And Lord, I pray that those who have dressed in fig leaves in front of one another would find themselves naked and unashamed now, and it would actually begin to worship you with freedom and a joy that only comes because your spirit becomes drawn to the surface of their lives. And Lord, I pray for those who are hungry, would you satisfy? Would you satisfy? I pray that the days ahead would be ones of story and adventure and power, but I pray you give them a foretaste right now—just a little taste of your presence and power that keeps them hungry in the days ahead, in Jesus' name.