Honor the Holy Spirit Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill John 16:7 "I do not understand my own actions. For the good that I want to do I don’t do and the evil that I hate is the very thing I do." Most of you wouldn't regard this as the testimony of a person who really knows Jesus. It’s the testimony of a Jew. And I think most of us who have been here Sunday after Sunday realize that, that it’s that famous verse in Romans 7 that of course, is talked about in Christendom as the normal Christian life. But in fact, isn’t the normal Christian life. It’s a subnormal Christian life; it’s a Jewish life. Romans 7 is a kind of parenthesis you remember, that Paul adds while he’s describing at one end the way to come into victory over those things that you do not want to do, and then he describes to you the way to do the things that please God. And in between he says, “Of course, when we were under the law it was a different story. Then, I didn’t understand my own actions because the very things I wanted to do I couldn’t do and the things I wanted to avoid, those were the very things I did.” And so Romans 7 is a kind of parenthesis; it’s a little explanation in brackets, which Paul adds to the people who are still in that situation. And in fact, he starts Romans 7 by saying, “I’m speaking to those of you who know the law. You know the law; you’re Jews, and you know the law, and you know what it was like under the law. You tried to obey it, and you tried to do what was right, but you couldn’t.” And so I think most of us probably realize that, that Romans 7 isn’t the normal Christian life. Now, I’m not dumb; I know that many of us who call ourselves Christians are living in that, too. I mean, we’re losing our temper; we’re being irritable with people when we know we shouldn’t be; we’re thinking unclean thoughts when we know we shouldn’t think them. So I understand; I agree with you that many of us who call ourselves Christians are living there. I just think it’s important, loved ones, to recognize that that isn’t normal Christianity. It may be normal Christianity in our western society, but it isn’t biblical Christianity. Biblical Christianity is, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Biblical Christianity is, "Love is eager to believe the best. Love is not irritable or resentful. It is patient and gentle. The fruit of the Spirit is love, and joy, and peace, and long suffering, and gentleness, and goodness." That’s normal Christianity. Just to keep sane in this bonkers world in which we’re now living, we need to keep a hold of that. That is normal Christianity, where you live above sin, and above self. Now, if you say, “Now, where does it say all that?” Well, Romans 6: it says it, you remember. If you look at it, old Paul is saying what many of us have said, “Oh well if Jesus’ death enables you to sin and be forgiven, then maybe the more you sin the more you’ll be forgiven.” And so that’s where he starts you remember. Romans 6:1 he says exactly that, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” And then he answers, “By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” And then he points out the effect that this has on our everyday life in verse 5, “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.” See, that’s where he starts it, “We might no longer be enslaved to sin.” Then freedom from sin: verse 7, “For he who has died is freed from sin.” That’s it. Now some people say, “Oh yeah, well that’s right. I mean, 90 years of age, or 85 when I die I’ll be free from sin.” But do you see the death he’s talking about? He’s talking about the fact that we have all died with Jesus, that God took all your miserable self-centered self with all its anger, and it’s irritability, and its desire for its own way and he put it into his Son, Jesus, and he destroyed it there, and you actually could walk away from it if you wanted to. That’s actually what he’s saying. God says to you, “You’re telling me you can’t stop lusting. I’m telling you, I destroyed you, and your self, and your lust in my Son; you 'can' stop lusting. You can! You can walk away from that if you want to.” And that’s what Paul is saying, that we are freed from sin through our death with Christ. I don’t blame you if you think, “Oh no, I haven’t heard that before. I just heard that Jesus died so that I could sin with immunity or with impunity.” Well, that’s what we tend to share with each other. But in fact loved ones, the purpose of Jesus’ death was the remaking of us, the recreating of you and me. I mean, when you lose your temper you know fine well that it’s you that is losing it. It’s you. It’s not just you’re having a little falling short of your normal saintliness. It’s you being your normal, miserable, old self. And often, I’m sure you felt the same as me; you’ve thought, “I wish I could start again. I wish I could change myself. I wish I could begin again. I wish I was just different, but I’ve inherited...” And then we blame our dads, and our mums, and our pet dogs, and our great grandfathers. And really there’s no reason to blame all of them; it’s us. We are just sin; and the Bible says carnal; we just are little gods. We are looking around all the time to get something for ourselves, and to cut down anybody who is trying to get in ahead of us. That’s our nature. We just are eternally looking out for ourselves, and we’re wanting our own way, and we’re insisting on our own rights. Indeed, we take it as our right to have our own rights. And what God did with us in Jesus, was he took you, as you are, and he put you into his Son Jesus, and he destroyed you in Christ. He destroyed you. There’s a spiritual world all around us, and God destroyed you in Jesus and remade you completely new. That’s what that verse means, “Our old self was crucified with Christ.” Now you may say, “Well, yeah, I’ve heard some of that before, and what you say does seem the only way for me to get free from myself, but how do I bring this about?” It’s interesting the Buddhists say, by works you bring it about. It’s very interesting; most of the ancient religions have something of truth in them. And you notice that Buddhism is strong on this business of dying to self, and the Buddhist says – it’s strange isn’t it, you’d wonder if way back, Buddha knew of Jesus’ death, wouldn’t you? Because, the Buddhists say, “Negate the self.” "Negate the self. It’s desire that causes pain. The way to eliminate pain is to eliminate desire. The way to eliminate desire is to eliminate the self. You negate the self." In other words, you enter into passivity, and that’s what many things like the lotus position indicate. You remember, even the pictures of a Buddha are of an impassive being that is untouched by anything around him. And so the Buddhists say, “Negate the self.” There are many people in our society that say the same, “Just don’t have any feeling. Just eliminate your feeling. Eliminate feelings of happiness, feelings of sadness, and then you’ll be in a place where you will not sin.” Many of us are in the same spot. We say, “Yes, I have to enter into this crucifixion with Christ. The way I do it is I read my Bible; I pray; I go to church; I tithe. I do all the right things, and by that means I enter into this crucifixion with Christ.” Loved ones, you’ll never do it. That’s why Luther beat himself. That’s why he was beating himself with those irons in the monasteries. They beat themselves to try to beat the body into submission. And there are many of us who are not much better than that. We’re trying to beat ourselves into this crucifixion with Christ. Loved ones, you won’t do it. The experience that God gave to you in Jesus is in eternity and we are in time. And even though Einstein shows how one connects up with the other when you get far enough out in space, yet the fact remains we are in time. And this work that God did to you in Christ has been done in eternity, in the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. Unless you have H. G. Wells’ time machine, you cannot bring that stuff from eternity into time. And yet the methods of works-righteousness that the Buddhists and all the other religions, including our Christian religion so often has, that will not do it. That’s why today is such an important day. Half of us are living in miserable defeat, not because we don’t know that God has done something for us in Jesus -- many of us believe that. Many of us believe that God has done something for us in Jesus that enables us to live above self, and above sin, and above anger, and above irritability. We know that. It’s not lack of knowledge. But the reason we have not entered into that, is because we have missed the center of Christianity. The center of Christianity! It’s the 'heart' that makes Christianity different from everything else. It’s the thing that makes Christianity 'powerful' in your life. It’s a gift. It’s the gift that was offered by Peter on the day of Pentecost. I’ll show you it. It’s Acts 2:38. “And Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’” The Holy Spirit is able to make what happened to you in Jesus real in your life. The Holy Spirit! I don’t blame you, if you’ve heard all kinds of strange things about the Holy Spirit or you’re kind of skeptical about him. But the Holy Spirit is the one who will make real in you what God has done in Jesus. The Holy Spirit is real. He’s the gift of God to us today. He’s the one who comes into us and makes your life what God made it on Calvary. I feel for any of you here, and I do think some of you are in this spot. I feel for any of you who have listened to, even this gospel that I’ve preached, days and days, and weeks and weeks, and months and months, and years and years, and you’ve tried with all your good heartedness and your determination to make it work in your life. But loved ones, you can’t make it work. You don’t 'make' it work. You don’t 'make' this thing real in you. You don’t. Please believe me, you don’t. All you do by trying to make it work is work yourself to the end of yourself, into futility and into despair. It’s the Holy Spirit that makes these things real to you. If you believe that you have died with Jesus, and yet you’re bewildered; you say “Well, Pastor, I would say that I believe it, but it sounds strange to me to tell you the truth. But I believe it; I do believe what you say. I believe the Bible says it, and I certainly know the need of it in my own life. I’ve said, ‘My sins are forgiven.’ I’ve said, ‘I’m on my way to heaven.’ But I live like a devil at home and I live like an irritable creature in work, so I know I need something, so I believe that. But how do I have it made real in me?” The Holy Spirit! The Holy Spirit will do it for you. The Holy Spirit has been working in you for years. That’s part of the reason you’re here; even unconsciously, it’s part of the reason you’re here this morning. The Holy Spirit has worked in you for years, and if you begin to acknowledge him, and treat him as a real person, and begin to listen to him, and ask him to give you some messages from himself, he will begin to make this real in your own life. Now loved ones, that’s what happened on the day of Pentecost. Do you remember those men? I mean, they were cowards. I mean, they were. Peter said, “I’ll never deny you;” and he moved as fast as he could when a little maid dealt with him. You remember, even three times. God gave him three opportunities to pick himself up, and he moved out fast. All the others moved out fast from the cross, once Jesus was crucified. And then you find them gathered together in an upper room, and you remember, doing all kinds of things that they shouldn’t have been doing anyway: drawing straws, and trying to appoint another apostle that really never came to anything. And they all gathered together in that upper room and kind of crowded around in fear of all the persecution that was beginning to break out, outside. And then they were just changed. I’ll show you, it’s Acts 2. I mean, you can’t believe it’s the same men, you know, when you think of Peter... It’s Acts 2:22. And if you remember, old Peter, when he was denying Jesus, he said, “No, no, I know nothing of him. I’m not one of the Galileans; don’t look at me.” And then he gets up in the midst of this hostile crowd and says, “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know—this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” And that’s Peter. That’s the cowardly man who wouldn’t even admit that he was a follower of Jesus to a little maid in the courtyard. Now, if you say, “What changed him?” Acts 2:1-14. The Holy Spirit came upon him. The Holy Spirit changed him. I don’t know if you have fear? I think a lot of people in these days have fear. I don’t know how you think about it. I mean, it always used to be the 'mushroom cloud'. We thought, “Oh yeah, we’re scared of the mushroom cloud.” And I think deep down we do think that some fellow is likely, like Gaddafi [Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, 1942-2011, Libyan revolutionary and ruler of Libya for forty-two years], to press the wrong button. But it’s interesting that it’s not just fear of that any longer, is it? I think it’s all kinds of fears, isn’t it? I mean, it almost goes back to old Roosevelt, whatever you think about him, it was the right thing to say, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” I don’t know about you, but it seems more and more people are fearful. It’s strange because we’re actually the affluent society in the world. We have actually more money and in a way more assurance than any other society. And yet it is interesting, isn’t it? There’s more fear than ever. I was in England, and the same story: there was the headline, “More grade schoolers are committing suicide now than ever before.” And I thought it was just America. But it’s interesting; there’s a fearfulness in the world, isn’t there? And you know, you can tie it to certain things; you can tie it to, “Well, who knows who will blow a hole in the plane you’re flying in, or who knows what terrorist is going to rake the airport when you’re picking up the tickets.” And yet, wouldn’t you agree it’s even beyond that, isn’t it? I mean, you’re not necessarily going to fly. You’re not necessarily going to be in an airport. And yet it is amazing that there is a fear, greater fear in our society. I don’t know if you have trouble with fears. I don’t know if you are fearful about tomorrow, or if you’re fearful about your job, or even if you’re fearful of what other people are thinking, or are going to do to you, or if you’re fearful maybe just of sickness or of disease? Loved ones, the Holy Spirit will deliver you from fear. You can’t deliver yourself from fear. Fear comes because you think you’re absolutely on your own, and that your life depends utterly on you and on your ability to protect yourself. That’s because you think you are 'it'. God crucified you on Calvary. You were utterly destroyed. You’re a nothing. You’re not 'it'. God is 'it'. The Holy Spirit makes that fact real in your life. See, that’s what happens. The Holy Spirit rectifies things inside in your personality. And you know; you’ve tried it; you’ve tried it, “The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not fear." "The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not fear.” You’ve tried the auto-suggestion; you’ve tried, “Let me think good thoughts. Let me think happy thoughts. Let me think strong thoughts, safe thoughts.” And you’ve tried that. There’s only one who can take the truths of this Word and make them real in you, and that’s the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the one. The Holy Spirit is real. This is why this is such an important day. It’s a day when we remember that the Holy Spirit is the heart of everything. I’ll show you it loved ones, it’s John 16. I don’t know how many of you have read it carefully, but it is amazing the things that Jesus says you. I think many of us think, “Oh well, it’s still the Lord Jesus that does things for us.” Well, it’s really not. Jesus is now at God’s right hand, and he explained this all to us in John 16:7, “Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you.” Do you see how strong that is? Jesus is saying, “It’s to your advantage that I’m going. Actually, believe me, if I didn’t go, the Counselor wouldn’t come to you. It’s either him or me. And I have to live in my own body here, and you need someone to live in your body. So I’m going to send you someone who hasn’t a body of his own. He’s the Counselor. He’s the Holy Spirit, and I’m going to send him to you. And he’ll come inside you, and he’ll live 'my life' inside you.” “And when he comes,” in Verse 8, “He will convince the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no more; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me.” Why? “For he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” And the Greek verb is "anangelo". And it means share, or impart it to you. “He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and he will impart it to you.” That’s it. The Holy Spirit imparts to you the confidence and freedom from fear of Jesus. That’s it. That’s it. Do you see why all our reading 'power of positive thinking' books is so silly, and our attempts to free ourselves from fear? The Holy Spirit alone is able to deliver you from fear by replacing it with the confidence of Jesus. I don’t know how you are in regard to making decisions about your life and about where you’re going in your life, or what job you should do, or where you should live, or where you should go. But the reason you have trouble doing that is, you can’t do it! You can’t do it on your own, because we’re all a bunch of little fleas on this. We’re a bunch of little fleas, one little flea puts up his head a little higher than the rest of the little fleas, but he still only sees a couple of inches around him. And that’s what you do when you try to: “Well, where should I go with my life? What should I do with it?” All you’re managing to do is poke your head up a little above the other little fleas, and you can’t see much more than a couple miles away. And so you’re always making decisions that have to be changed, because you think, “Oh well, I should do this...” And then that doesn’t work so you change and you go and do something else. And you must admit, that’s what many of our lives are like. You remember, old Frost said in his poem, “Knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.” And many of us find that. We’re – why are we where we are today? Because we drifted off and we just drifted into what we are. We haven’t been able to see clearly because you aren’t meant to. You can’t see. You don’t know the complex, wonderful person that you are. God does, and God knows why he put you here. And the purpose of the Holy Spirit is to guide you. I’ll show you, it if you’d like to look at it. It’s in Acts 16:6. And it’s just amazing; it’s the way the Apostles operated. It’s the only way a man or a woman can operate. “And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia.” Why? “Having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.” Because, the Holy Spirit had the whole thing planned, and knew they weren’t to go into Asia. And he told them not to. “And when they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas.” The Holy Spirit is able to guide you in your life. He’s able to show you what you should do. He’s able to guide you and to guard you from errors. The Holy Spirit will do this, loved ones. He will. You know there’s so much to tell you, but the time is moving. But the Holy Spirit will do those things for you. The Holy Spirit is why Jesus died. He died so you would receive the Holy Spirit. But you know what we’ve done; we’ve made fun of the Holy Spirit. We’ve elevated the gifts, and sometimes the smallest gifts; and we’ve elevated them until they’re caricatures of what they were meant to be. And so we’ve elevated the gifts instead of elevating the dear Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit we cannot do without. And I don’t know if you have taken him seriously. I would ask you, have you ever received the Holy Spirit? Have you ever consciously and deliberately said, “Holy Spirit, I receive you now, and I am going to honor you as my Counselor, and I am going to acknowledge that you are in my life. And I ask you to start feeding me impressions, and start checking me when I’m moving the wrong way.” I don’t know if you’ve ever done it. The tragedy is, when you hear that kind of thing you say, “Well wait a minute now, there’s no big deal about that. Okay, I’ll think about the things you said.” Don’t think! It’s the thinking about the thing, that is our own 'works salvation' stuff. Don’t you see that? We’re always trying to think our way into the thing. You can’t think your way into it. The Holy Spirit is a real person, and if you begin to honor him in your life, he will begin to make real in you the miracle that God did to you in Jesus. And even we men, we can do it privately; you don’t need to tell anybody else, at the beginning. The Holy Spirit will fill you with it later on, but we can do it privately. It’s a thing you can do with dignity. You can start it. "Try it; you’ll like it" You can try it. Have you ever...? Have you ever treated the Holy Spirit as a person? Do you see the tragedy of our lives, the one person that God the Creator has given us to enable us to enter into his salvation and deliverance, that one person we’ve treated as an 'it'. We’ve treated him as a 'force', or an 'atmosphere' that comes upon a meeting. We have failed utterly to honor the Holy Spirit. Loved ones, he is in your life; honor him. If you honor him just a little, the Holy Spirit will begin to manifest in you the freedom from fear, and the guidance that he gave to the Apostles. And he’ll begin to make real in you what God has done for you in Jesus. So I’d say especially to any of you who have been trying for years, any of you who have just been trying, and trying, and trying, and can’t make it work, would you this morning, acknowledge the Holy Spirit as real, and would you begin to honor him? Let us pray. Dear Father, we thank you for your patience with us over these many years. We thank you Lord for the way you have painstakingly enabled us to hear the gospel year in and year out. And yet Lord, we seem to have missed the heart of it. So Father, we come to you first of all to apologize to you for that, and to repent, too Lord, of trying to make it all real in our own lives by our own efforts. We repent our Father, now, of any salvation by works that we have been involved in. And now, Lord Jesus, we believe your words when you said, “It is to your advantage that I go away, because if I do not go away the Holy Spirit will not come to you.” We believe you Lord, and we want to tell you Lord Jesus, how deeply sorry we are that we have ignored those words for so many years, and we want now to thank you Lord Jesus, for the Holy Spirit. And then dear, honored, Holy Spirit, we turn to you and we are ashamed that we have ignored you and utterly been indifferent to you for so many years. Holy Spirit, thank you for doing what you’ve done in us so far. Thank you that everything good we have ever felt has really come from you, and hasn’t come from ourselves. And Holy Spirit, we honor you now, and we would receive you into our own hearts and our spirits this morning. We receive you now Holy Spirit. We acknowledge you; we honor you as our Counselor, and not only as our Counselor but our master and our Lord. We honor you as Jesus inside us, and we ask you Holy Spirit, will you begin to lead us into deliverance from ourselves, and from fear, and from anxiety, and from the bewilderment that so often rules our lives, and will you guide us in a plain and simple path? Holy Spirit, we ask you to start to guide us in our careers, and the places we’re going to live. We ask you now to start showing us, and we will honor you from this day forward. And now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each one of us now and ever more. Amen.