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Who is the Holy Spirit?

Pentecost Sunday, 31st May, 2009

Acts 2:1-41

Today we celebrate the birth of the church. By definition the birth of the church is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In fact our theology links the arrival of the Holy Spirit in our lives to new birth or being born again. This comes directly from John 3, but I want to start at Jesus’ baptism.

 

John 1:29-34

 

In John’s gospel more than anywhere else we see an intimate connection between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Here Jesus is identified as ‘Lamb of God’ and ‘Son of God’ because the Holy Spirit visibly descended on Jesus.

 

In the synoptic gospels – Mathew, Mark and Luke -  God speaks as ‘a voice from heaven’ saying “This is my Son in whom I am well pleased”

In other words the baptism of Jesus was probably the most visible demonstration of the three persons of the Godhead acting as one but in different ways.

 

 Jesus is actively being baptised.

The Holy Spirit is directing our attention to his deity

God, the Father, is declaring his approval.

 

In understanding who the Holy Spirit is, we nearly always have to understand him in the context of Father, Son and Holy Spirit working together.

 

At Pentecost we see the same relationship at work.

The Holy Spirit is sent  by God – He is the ‘promise of the Father’ Acts 2:32-33

He is sent because Jesus asked the Father John 14:16

and he comes when Jesus ascended into Heaven. John 16:7

 

The question “Who is the Holy Spirit?” is rather vital to our understanding of the church because it is he who is given to be in the church and it is his fruit that we are meant to form in our lives.

 

The Bible does not have a dictionary mentality so revelation does not come with this is God and this is what we mean by him; this is Jesus and this is what we mean by him; this is the Holy Spirit and this is what we mean by him. What we get is history - showing God at work. We learn to understand him by his actions and his words. We discover Jesus by reading the gospels watching and listening to  his action and words. The same is true of the Holy Spirit. He appears in Genesis 1:2 ‘hovering over the waters’ – like a dove? And we need to pick up the threads throughout the Old Testament and into the New to understand him at all.

 

He is first revealed as Ruach. The wind or breath of God. Today we celebrate that he comes to the church as the breath of God. What are we to understand by this? Jesus explained this in John 3:8. So the Holy Spirit’s presence is known by the effect he has on the church and the world at large. In the early moments of your life, anxious parents and midwife wait for your first cry – the evidence that you are breathing. One of the key elements of whether someone has died is that they are no longer breathing. For our spiritual life -  it begins when God breathes his Holy Spirit into our lives and we are born again.

 

So here is the challenge of today, are you still breathing? Is your spiritual life healthy because you are being filled by the Holy Spirit as each breath you take or are you just panting – alive but breathless?

 

 Jesus taught us that when we believed we were immersed into the Holy Spirit of God. But we can resist the Spirit and become empty and dry. Think of a sponge, when you put it in water it absorbs the water and becomes full of it. But a dry sponge can be immersed in water and yet not absorb water.

 

 Secondly, the Holy Spirit is said to be ‘like tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them’. There are two things here first the Holy Spirit is fire. Fire is a demonstration of energy. He energises the disciples – they suddenly become able to speak in other languages and have the courage to speak out about Jesus.  Secondly they Holy Spirit rests on each of them. This was not an apostles only or  priests only event. In fact Peter says later in the chapter verse 38-39:

Repent and be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off – for all whom the Lord your God will call.

 

We believe the Holy Spirit is for every Christian.  Each of us has a share of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit and therefore Jesus is only revealed fully as each of us express the life that we have been given the gifts we use to his praise and glory and the fruit ripens in our lives.

 

 He is a person.  The question is “Who is the Holy Spirit not what is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is always referred to as “he” although he has no sex, nor has God for that matter, only Jesus was sexually defined as he was a human. One of the main problems we have of understanding God is that we can only understand in relation to what we experience, so we tend to describe God and the Holy Spirit in human terms because we have no other way of describing him.  Jesus is clear about the Holy Spirit being a distinct person.

 In John 16:8-15 page1084 Jesus tells us

–He will convict

–He will guide

–He will speak

–He will bring glory to me

 

Jesus clearly understood the Holy Spirit was a person.

In Ephesians 4:30 page 1176

 we read that the Holy Spirit can be grieved  and in Galatians 5:22-23 we read that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness ,faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, all of which are characteristics of a  person not a force. So the Star Wars ‘May the force be with you’ is nothing to do with God and our gospel but a lot to do with the Ying and Yang of Buddhism. We do not believe is some force but a person who wants us to respond to him and welcome him into our lives.

 

Who is the Holy Spirit? He is God in us. He is the presence of Jesus day by day. It is he who speaks to us about our sin, our direction in life and reassures of God’s love and forgiveness.

 

Are you immersed in the Holy Spirit? Have you received Jesus and Saviour and Lord? Unless God breathes the Holy Spirit into your life, you are spiritually dead, unable to relate to God, with no hope beyond this life other than the eternity of hell.

 

Are you filled with the Holy Spirit or are you holding out against him in some part of your life, preferring the pleasures of sin rather than the love, joy and peace that only he can give. It one of the chief characteristics of us humans is that we want to do it ‘my way’. In fact Frank Sinatra made the I did it my way  the ultimate human experience and if you go to the Crematorium tomorrow you will probably here it played at many a funeral. But it a hollow life.  Our Christian experience is blighted by the fact that we prefer our way than God’s way. I don’t mean over career, etc. I mean in how we think and feel about others. We like our envy, our lust, our lies, our hatred, our contempt of others, our dishonesty. We prefer to spend time on our interests, we use God’ name glibly and we idolise everything and everyone we choose. The question is which one of them is on your conscience now. The Holy Spirit is there to convict you of sin but he is also there to fill you with himself and to know that love, joy and peace that no one else can give.

 For us then, the issue is not so much “Who is the Holy Spirit?” but how much of my person have I allowed him to fill?

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