The Holy Spirit: Introduction

John 14;26 "But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you."

                    The Holy Spirit is an important part of my life.  I don’t talk a lot about the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit doesn’t want to draw attention to himself, but to Jesus.  And Jesus wants attention drawn to the Father.  And the Father wants to honor Jesus.  And Jesus wants us to know and be aware of the Holy Spirit.

                    The idea of a Holy Spirit sounds a little spooky when one first hears of it.  It brings up pictures of Casper the Ghost, a controversial cartoon in my household growing up. 

                    But as I think about ministry and the Christian life, the presence of the Holy Spirit is always around.  I think the turning point came for me a few years ago when I asked myself the question, “How do we know the Holy Spirit is in us?  How do we know when the Holy Spirit is prompting us?”  When I answered those questions in a practical way, the presence of the Holy Spirit started showing up even more and more.

                    This work of the Holy Spirit has caused Christians to  ask, “How can we know when the Holy Spirit is prompting us and moving us?”  I want to give you some answers to this over the next few weeks.

                    To do so, I need to bring everyone up to speed on the Holy Spirit.  Some of you in the church have studied this subject for yourselves, have taught it and have personal experience with the Holy Spirit.  Others are brand new to the Bible.  They would understand the discussion Paul had with John’s disciples when he asked them, ““Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”” Acts 19:1, 2, NIV.

                    So a little background is necessary before I get into recognizing the presence of the Holy Spirit.

                    First, the Holy Spirit is a spirit.  In other words, the Holy Spirit is invisible.  We can’t see him, can’t describe him in physical terms, can’t put him under a microscope or identify him in any other way.

                    So how do we know that there is a Holy Spirit?      The Christian’s answer is pretty simple.  We trust Jesus.  We believe that everything Jesus said about anything is true.  We trust him.  If Jesus told us the moon was flat, we would trust him.  Now Jesus did not make any claims that were untrue, so we trust him even more.

                    Jesus died for our sins.  He said he would and he did.  We trust him for that.  He told us that if we believe in him, we would have everlasting life.  We believe him.   He said that before this life, he was in heaven with the Father.  We believe him.  When he called himself “I Am”, a term that identified him as God from the Old Testament texts that identified God’s name as “I am”, we believed him.  When Jesus said, “I will send the Holy Spirit after I go” we believed both that there was a Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit was sent by Jesus.  If you don’t believe in Jesus, you won’t believe in this invisible Holy Spirit, but if you believe Jesus, you will believe that it is true.

                    That is why I believe that there is a Holy Spirit, an invisible being; I believe it because Jesus said it.

                    This invisible spirit is also holy.  By that, I mean it is not an evil spirit, nor is it a bad spirit; it is a Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit will do nothing unholy, nothing wrong.    The Holy Spirit will only do what is right.

                    If the Holy Spirit will only do what is right, can’t you see why knowing the promptings of the Holy Spirit would be such a help to us in our Christian life?

                    The Holy Spirit is not only an invisible spirit and a holy spirit, but the Holy Spirit is an independent spirit.  By that I mean that the Holy Spirit has it’s own personality, it’s own will, it’s own job to do.

                    I say this because the Jehovah Witnesses and others will tell you that the Holy Spirit is not a person, but the term is used to express one aspect of God.  They will tell you that the Holy Spirit is a force from God, an “it”.  Just like you and I emit our personality into a group of people, so, they will say, the Holy Spirit is just that presence or force of God.

                    But the Bible teaches different.                     “26 But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” John 14:26, NIV.

                    Notice that the Holy Spirit is not Jesus.  The Holy Spirit is not the Father.  The Holy Spirit is a separate, independent person that the Father sends to do a job.

                    Another example, “19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” Matthew 28:19, NIV.

                    Notice that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are listed as three separate beings.  If the Holy Spirit was just a force from God, then the Father and the Son would have been enough.  But the Holy Spirit is mentioned as one of three.

                    But the Holy Spirit is also mentioned as one.  We are to be baptized in the name of the trinity.  The Holy Spirit is separate and is together.  So we ask ourselves in this passage, “If we are baptized in the name (singular) of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (three), is the Holy Spirit God?  Is he in some way equal to or a part of God?

                    Remember Annanias and Sapphria, the couple who got into trouble for lying about their gift to the church?  Listen again to what Peter said to Ananias. “3 Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? 4 Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God.”” Acts 5:3, 4, NIV.

                    Notice the logic here.  Annanias didn’t lie to me.  He lied to the Holy Spirit.  And when he lied to the Holy Spirit he lied to God.  So the Holy Spirit is God. 

                    You say, “How can this be?”  I say that there are many things the Bible explains, but some that it doesn’t.  And this is one of them. 

                    The truth is that the Holy Spirit is not only invisible, holy, a separate person, but the Holy Spirit is God.

                    When we have the Holy Spirit in us, we have God in us.  We are not God.  We are not part of some divine energy.  But within our bodies, within our minds, the Holy Spirit dwells.  We believe this by faith.

                    So the Bible tells us that we have a relationship to the Holy Spirit.  We can interact with the Holy Spirit in our lives.  We can grieve and quench the Holy Spirit.  We can have a witness of the Holy Spirit with our spirit that we are children of God.  We can know and receive illumination and knowledge through the Holy Spirit.  He is real, he is active and he is in every Christian.

                    I greatly want everyone in our congregation to know the promptings of the Holy Spirit.  I have two reasons for this.

                    First, so we can act on His promptings in our lives.

                    Second, so we can see His work in others. 

                    If God is working we want to know it and see it.  We want to be a church where people are aware of what God is doing.

                    We want to know so we can enjoy the blessing of seeing God work.