1:33; 3:31-36 page 1064/1066

John the Baptist : Baptise with Holy Spirit = lamb of God

He sees the Holy Spirit as the authentication of Jesus. It is the physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove that is the final PIN, password, signature or seal that tells John the Baptist that his cousin is the Lamb of God who has come to take away the sins of the world.

And if Jesus is authenticated by the Holy Spirit, then you and I likewise need to understand that we are noted as being with Jesus because of the witness of the Holy Spirit. In a sense our witness is merely another religious geek until the Holy Spirit moves in a non-believer and says, that’s Jesus at work, this is the real thing.

 

I want you to notice something rather profound here. John the Baptist identifies Jesus as the one who will baptise with the Holy Spirit but he declares him as “The Lamb of God”. Now I know John said a lot more than what is written here and I shall enjoy a seminar in heaven by John on what he understood before he was decapitated at the wish of a dancer. But what John records is by implication a whole. The baptiser in the Holy Spirit is the Lamb of God and vice versa. The one who came and died on the cross is the one who baptises with the Holy Spirit. The idea of baptism here comes from John’s actual work, which was to preach the need for repentance and baptise in water for ceremonial washing. Jesus is superior to John. He will not baptise with water (although his disciples did and we still do, as a public sign of a spiritual event) Jesus baptises with the Holy Spirit – the real thing. His blood was shed for cleansing from sin. We are immersed in his Holy Spirit for new birth and new life.

 

 3:3-8 Page 1065

NEW BIRTH & THE WIND

There are two things here. First that Being born again is the work of the Holy Spirit. You are born as humans because two humans had sex and conceived you. You are spiritually alive because the Holy Spirit conceives you. If you are not born of the Holy Spirit, you are spiritually dead, your body will die and you will go to hell. If you are born of the Holy Spirit, you have eternal life and on your way to heaven. Death becomes the gate to all that God has promised.

 

Secondly, the spirit is spirit. He des not materialise, except on rare occasion, like at the baptism of Jesus as a dove and to Pentecost as a wind and flame of fire. He is invisible. But non-the less he is here. The example is wind. No-one denies the existence of wind but you cannot see it isolate it. Scientifically is the movement of energy.

 

 4:23-24 We move to a well in Samaria. And a conversation about where to worship. Jesus’ comment tells us more than we sometimes realise.

John 4 verse 23 - 24 (NIV)

Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

 

God is Spirit  

Jesus is answering a question about where God should be worshipped.  His answer cuts across the argument about place. God is not geographical. There is no where which is geographically more significant than another. Therefore we do not have pilgrimages to Walsingham or Lourdes or Rome or Jerusalem or Mecca. Because God is not confined to these places.  In fact God is worshipped in the geographical sense by you being where he commands. If , like Graeme & Jenny that is in Uganda, then that is where they will worship him. If God commands us to be here, together on a Sunday Morning then make sure you are here. If it is in the car on the way to work, respond to him there. The special place is where God wants you to be now. That is where you will worship him in spirit and in truth. Secondly,  this is vital in our prayer life.  Jesus did tell us to find a secret place and each of us has places we find more conducive to pray. But God through the Holy Spirit is where you are, where ever that is and however chaotic the environment. So you can pray when the children are making a lot of noise, or they have distracting  music on – remember God can hear you when you can’t hear yourself think!   But for yourself, you need to find a time and place to pray. Thirdly you don’t have to be there for prayer to be effective. You can pray for the situation in Sri Lanka without going there. You can pray for Graeme and Jenny without having to fly to Uganda. Some are called to go and pray in places. Tim, when he was in Tibet, specifically prayed against the evil spirits that inhabit the hill tops on a hill top. God was praised where his name had never been spoken before. But you could call on God to drive demons from Tibetan mountain tops here in South Ruislip.

 

 Second to our reading of this verse is that God is Spirit and we must worship in spirit. That means that any activity that does not engage the inner man, that does not engage our minds and hearts, is not worship. If you were singing earlier and thinking about something else, you were not worshipping. You were in the right place and the right time, but your brain was not engaged and your spirit was elsewhere. It also means that we need the Holy Spirit to lead our worship. The key issue here is understanding God. Jesus makes quite clear that he and God are one. He also says he is totally obedient to the Father. The Holy Spirit is introduced in the context of a united Godhead, three persons in one. How you view that is often based on your culture and experience.  It is impossible to comprehend God because he is greater than our intellectual capacity to understand.

 But when we worship we must be one with the Father and the Son and wait a few weeks and we will be studying John 17 and that will  speak in those terms. To do that we need to be open to the holy Spirit leading us. In our Sunday evening service we pray that God does that and we seek to respond spontaneously to him in our worship. This morning, our worship was lead rather than spontaneous. The point is neither are worship unless the Holy Spirit moves us to worship.  

 

 7:37-39

But let us move on.

John 7 verse 37 - 39 (NIV)

 

On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice,

"If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.

STREAMS OF LIVING WATER

This passage follows from what we have just been talking about.  The metaphor is living water, this time not from a well but a visionary river flowing from the temple out to the world. Notice two aspects of this.

One is

 "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Come to Jesus to receive the Holy Spirit. Come to Jesus and have your deepest spiritual needs satisfied. Jesus is the answer to man’s needs, he is the saviour of the world.  And while he is still rejected by so many, this world still crumbles under the destruction of sin. That is not to say that God says ‘yes’ to everything you ask. Your needs are much deeper than you think and we rarely know them ourselves. Which is why we struggle with why God allows so much in our lives we don’t like. We simply do not understand what is good for us. The Holy Spirit is not Heineken, but he satisfies parts no other thing, person or relationship can.

 Two is

Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."

Being filled with the Hoy Spirit is an overflowing experience. If we want the Holy Spirit for ourselves, to bottle and keep, he will never satisfy, because he wants to flow through you and out to others. To flow through you to other Christians in encouragement and prophecy and healing and all those other gifts that the letters speak about. He, the Holy Spirit wants to flow through you to your family, your friends, your neighbours, your colleagues, anyone you meet. God is in the business of salvation. So expect that working with him ends you up being part of his telling Good News. It is the Holy Spirit that convinces people of sin and righteousness and judgement and he wants to flows through you. He is always described as living or flowing water, never bottled up!

 

 John 14 verse 16 -  (NIV)

 

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you forever--

the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him.

But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans;

I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me.

Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realise that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him." Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, "But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?" Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching.

My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching.

These words you hear are not my own;

they belong to the Father who sent me.

"All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counsellor, 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. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.

I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

 

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. This expression is repeated later and clearly carries great weight. The key problem was that the disciples were happy to be with Jesus but thought that he would be an emperor. But Jesus wanted to be a friend to all in his kingdom. To do that he would have to be with all of us. So the Father sends the Holy Spirit in Jesus name. . He is the promise of the Father. He is the presence of Jesus to all Christians in all time, all of the time. He is therefore a comforter, a ever present friend. We may not sense his presence but the Holy Spirit never deserts. Remember this strange word theologians use – paraclete – means comforter, as well as counsellor. He is that as well. He teaches us. Robert pointed out last week that in particular the Holy Spirit guided the apostles in the recording of Jesus ‘ words. Hence the Bible is our reliable guide. But there is more to it than that. The Holy Spirit is with us, guiding us in our understanding of the scriptures. It is the Holy Spirit that takes the words and applies them to your situation. It is he that supplements the Bible with prophetic words, the test of which is whether they are inline with what is revealed about God in the Bible. 

 

  moving on to John 15 verse 26 - 27 (NIV)

 

"When the Counsellor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.

 

We have already seen that the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father. There is no division between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Here the Father sends, the Holy Spirit tells the Good news through you and me and brings glory to Jesus in doing so.

 

 All this is underlined in John 16 verse 7 - 15 (NIV)

But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away.

Unless I go away, the Counsellor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgement:

 in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and in regard to judgement, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.

 12:"I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.

 He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.

 If you missed last Sunday, get the tape to help you understand this passage. It is reiterating what has already been said for emphasis  and giving the full sense of the truths revealed.

 

 In John 19 verse 30 (NIV)Jesus’ death is described as

When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished."

With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

What is significant at this point is that God, to win your salvation did the unthinkable – he turned away from Jesus, and as he died Jesus’ spirit was given back to God. The Father and Holy Spirit left Jesus. That is what hell is. It is not an inferno. It is much worse than that. It is where God is not. And Jesus suffered it so that you wouldn’t have to.

 

 The last and vital reference to the Holy Spirit in John is 20:21-23John 20 verse 21 - 23 (NIV)

 

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.

If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven;

if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."

 

Now we see how Jesus reverses the death process. He who had breathed his last now breathes on his disciples. He who surrendered his Spirit, now gives it to his followers. And you, if you have believed are the receivers of that breath. He breathes on you. His Holy Spirit is the very essence of your spiritual life. And he will glorify Jesus and tell the good news to all.

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