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Bentley Baptist Church Sermons
The Gift of the Holy Spirit
Acts 2:37-41 | Ps Alex Huggett | 4/8/2024
Part of a series on the book of Acts. Find more resources in Church Connect.
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Acts 2.37, you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, for the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off. As many as the Lord, our God, will call. With many other words, he testified and strongly urged them, saying be saved from this corrupt generation. And so those who accepted his message were baptized, and that day about 3000 people were added to them. That's quite the revival. So we looked at this verse repent and be baptized last week, and this week I want to look at the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:I wonder what comes to mind when you hear that phrase, gift of the Holy Spirit. For many years, for me, what came to my mind was a theological category. I could give you a doctrine of the Holy Spirit, but the idea of the Spirit as a gift was nebulous at best and probably something I really left back in the Bible for the day of Acts, and probably something I really left back in the Bible for the day of Acts. In fact, for a long time I was resistant to the idea of the Holy Spirit working and being active in my life. But I've often observed that someone's openness to the Spirit has a profound impact on their experience of God, and that was certainly true for my experience. When I opened my heart and embraced the gift of the Holy Spirit, my life changed, and so this morning I want to look at what the gift of the Holy Spirit is and why it's important. But first we need to be clear about who the Holy Spirit is, because I find that many people, many Christians, actually aren't quite sure they get confused about this. We understand Jesus he walked the earth. We understand the Father, but what's with the Holy Spirit? And so this takes us into what we call the doctrine of the Trinity. As Christians, we believe there is only one God, but that he has revealed himself and exists in three persons, and this can be really hard to get our heads around. But you'd expect that If God is God and we are not, I don't know why we would expect to understand everything about him. So let's put our limitations up front and just admit them. I'm going to show a snippet from a video from the Bible project which I like just to help illustrate really our limitations and how God can be beyond what we are. Okay, you can actually see the rest of that clip on our resources page in Church Connect.
Speaker 1:Now, one of the profound implications of God's triunity is that he exists in community within himself. Community and relationship is the essence of God's nature. He's all about relationship and all about loving the other. You know, sometimes when I was a child, some of the stories about God creating was sort of God was lonely, sort of idea. God has never been lonely. God didn't need to create us or the universe or anything out of some need. It was an overflow of his love. Isn't that wonderful. It tells us something about the nature of the church, doesn't it? That worships this God. But that's an aside.
Speaker 1:Whatever God's unity means, we experience him as three persons Father, son also called the Word and Holy Spirit. And so when we're talking about the Holy Spirit, we're simply talking about God. And so, importantly, what we're talking about with the Spirit is God with us. And in John 14, 23, we read this is Jesus' words if anyone loves me, he will keep my word, my father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him. And we saw in the reading during communion. And as Jesus continues his discourse, it becomes obvious that he's talking about the presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer, jesus is present with us through the Holy Spirit, and so this is what Peter meant when he was talking about the gift of the Spirit. He meant the gift of God's very presence with us.
Speaker 1:Perhaps as Christians we can take that for granted, but it's quite profound. This was the fulfillment of the promise in the prophet Joel, which Peter quoted earlier in his sermon. And it will be in the last day, says God, that I will pour out my spirit on all people, and then your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions and your old men will dream dreams. I will even pour out my spirit on my servants in those days, both men and women, and they will prophesy. So previously, god's spirit had only come on certain people at certain times. He might come on a prophet, and the prophet would give a prophetic utterance, or God appears in the temple and his glory fills it for a time. But now he says he's come on all of his people and he's come for all time. And so when we're trying to understand who the Spirit is, it might simply be helpful if we think of him just as God's presence with us in all his life-giving goodness and power.
Speaker 1:And I don't know about you, but when you put it that way, the Holy Spirit isn't quite as mysterious. Right, it seems fairly straightforward God with us, but in another sense, of course, the Spirit is mysterious and there's not much we can do about this, because Jesus said that he's like the wind, and actually the word in Greek and in Hebrew for matter, for wind, is the same word for spirit. Jesus said you hear its sound, but you don't know where it's coming from or where it's going. You know, a sailor at sea can't control the wind. They can't avoid it. What they can do is unfurl the sails and let the wind propel them, or the sailor can try to resist it. They can furl their sails and just let the wind blow past.
Speaker 1:I think this is a little bit why some people find the spirit a bit scary, because we can't control him. He carries us where he will, and sometimes he carries us to places outside our comfort zone, places we don't understand, and so our natural tendency can be to resist. But when we let the wind of the Spirit carry us, amazing things can happen, things that we would never experience on our own, that we would never experience on our own, and so if the gift of the Spirit is God's presence with us in the life of the believer. What does that look like? What does God's presence mean for us? Well, very broadly, if the Spirit is the presence of Jesus with us, then everything we see in the ministry of Jesus, in the Gospels, and every promise he's made, that's what the Spirit wants to do in us and through us. You want more of Jesus and his goodness and his promises. Then you need more of the Spirit, right?
Speaker 1:So let's look at a few examples of this in Scripture. So in John, chapter 8, jesus said I'm sorry, these are so small, I've got to find a better font. But John, chapter 8, verse 38, jesus said the one who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, will have streams of living water flow from deep within him. And Paul wrote so. One of the things the Spirit does in us is to bring life. The spring from which this living water flows is deep and it brings refreshment to us and to those around us. So how do we experience more of this abundant life? How do we become people who bring this life to others? It's through the Spirit. Paul writes a few verses later.
Speaker 1:Now, the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. We live in an age when people crave freedom, but you know, when freedom is untethered from an overarching truth, when I become, the definition of what freedom means for me and everyone is their own definition, it just leads to confusion and conflict. The Spirit leads us into true freedom in Christ, to be all we were truly made to be. And what's that? Well, we see in another place where Paul writes for all of those led by God's spirit are God's children. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. Instead, you received the spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out Abba, father. So we're God's children, and one of the most important things the Spirit does is to anchor our identity in the Father. So we know who we are and we have an assurance of salvation and of our relationship with God.
Speaker 1:Do you want a deeper experience of the fatherhood of God? Do you want a deeper assurance of your salvation? Friends, we need more of the Spirit. Spirit also fills us with a deeper experience of God's love, joy and peace, and he grows us in Christ-like character. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, and I've said before how this was my experience. I'd grown up in a Christian family, I'd been baptized, I'd made a profession of faith, I'd been a missionary. It wasn't until I opened myself up and was filled with the Spirit that I discovered what joy and peace were. I think I'm still growing in some of the other aspects, though Don't ask Andrea about it later.
Speaker 1:But do you want more love and joy and peace in your life? Do you want to be a more patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, disciplined person? Oh, the Spirit is a big part of that. Now there are practices that we need to engage in as well, but we do that in the Spirit Life, refreshing freedom, love, joy, peace. Now I say if that's what the Holy Spirit does, then Spirit come, wind, blow where you will. But that's not all. There's more.
Speaker 1:Jesus said truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, remembering that the Spirit is Jesus, represents Jesus with us, and he will do even greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. It is for your benefit that I go away, because if I don't go away, the counselor will not come to you. If I go, I will send him to you. Paul prayed for us to be strengthened with power in our inner being through God's spirit, and he said a manifestation of the spirit is given to each person for the common good. Friends, you can know the power of God in your life. You can know the power of God to be more effective in your walk, to live a more holy life and in your witness Do you want to do the greater works that Jesus promised? I don't even know what that means, honestly, but it sounds good.
Speaker 1:It all comes down to the presence and power of God in our lives through his spirit. So how do we receive this spirit? Well, if you're not a Christian this morning, if you're not a follower of Jesus Christ, as the scripture says we read earlier you need to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins in the name of Jesus, and you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now to repent means to turn away from our sin and our selfishness and to start following Jesus, his teachings and his way of life. And baptism is a ceremonial immersion in water that signals our trust in Jesus and our entry into the life of being one of his followers. It's what we call discipleship, and if you'd like to find out more about that or make a decision to follow Jesus, you can talk to me. I'll be here for a few minutes after the service, before we go into the meeting I have, or you can scan the QR code, hopefully on the back of the chair in front of you. They keep coming off, so I hope there's one there. But just click on the connect tab and follow the instructions there. Now, if you're already a believer, as most of us here are there. Now if you're already a believer, as most of us here are, friends, sometimes we assume that our experience of God, as we have it now, is as good as it gets. But the source of living water has deeper wells than you and I can ever dig.
Speaker 1:Repentance and baptism isn't just a one-time deal. We live in a state of repentance. Right, we're constantly I don't know about you, but I'm constantly having to fight my temptation to go back and follow the ways of the world, to follow my own desires. I have to constantly be turning back to Jesus, to face him, to continual act of repentance, and we have to live in a sense, with hearts that are washed or baptized by faith.
Speaker 1:Jesus said elsewhere that if we persist in prayer, the father loves to give us the holy spirit. And so if you're dissatisfied with your current walk with God, or you just want more of God, you want to experience more, ask God to fill you afresh with his spirit Again. I would love to pray with you for that, because the gift of the Holy Spirit means there is more to faith and there is more to life. There is more of God that we can know. There is more power we can take with us into the world to do his will. There is more power we can take with us into the world to do his will. Will we embrace the more that is in God by the Spirit?
Speaker 1:Let's pray, father. We thank you that you have presenced yourself with us through your Spirit. Father, it wasn't enough for you just to save us. It wasn't enough for you to make a way for us to be with you one day when we're dead and we go to heaven. But you come to us now, and this life is an opportunity for us to continually grow in closer and closer fellowship with you. Help us, father, show yourself to us in deeper ways, in your fullness, fill us. Fill us. Holy Spirit, wind of God, fire of God blow where you will Purify us. Set us on fire. We pray In Jesus' name, amen.