Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

This week's message is from ACC's Student Minister Thayer Wallace.

Around Christmas time, it seems like it is just about impossible to not hear the word. In fact, we just sang a song, Jesus Messiah, that says Emmanuel. So often, though, we hear that word and don’t really think about it.

“Oh Emmanuel, right. That’s Jesus”

But then that is all we really think about the word.

What does it mean? Where does it come from? Why do we call Jesus that?

After Matthew tells about the angel appearing to Joseph to explain the whole Jesus-being-born situation which clearly needed some explaining, he then goes on to explain why the angel said what he said.

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”) (Matthew 1:22-23 ).

For the record, I know what some of you are thinking, Immanuel can be spelled with and E or and I, so we didn’t just misspell it.

Because of this passage, anytime we hear the word Emmanuel, we automatically think about Jesus. And that isn’t a bad thing by any means, but I think that we forget about someone that doesn’t really get enough credit.

Jesus was “God with us.” This is very true. He was God incarnate. He was God in the flesh. He came to be a sacrifice for our sins by dying on the cross. So in a very real way, he was WITH us, but he isn’t specifically with us anymore. He is no longer on this earth, so how is he “with us”?

Now I know there are some of you who are about to throw me out of the church building for heresy, so before you all start throwing rocks at me, let me clarify. While Jesus is no longer specifically with us in the since that he was, he didn’t just leave us hanging either.

How then, does Jesus Christ maintain his status as Emmanuel?

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. (John 14:16-17a)

The Holy Spirit. That’s how. The Holy Spirit. Christ sent the Holy Spirit to us to be “With Us”. Literally. While Christ came to earth as the Emmanuel, the Holy Spirit is equally the Emmanuel. The Holy Spirit is “God with us” as literally as it can be. He dwells within us.

And even though we know this (We know that the Spirit is with us), not very many of us hear much about Him. There aren’t very many praise and worship songs that are sung to the Spirit are there? I actually, off the top of my head, can’t think of one. Can you? And you really don’t hear a lot of sermons about the Spirit either. In fact, we just go through our lives and never really think about how the Spirit is living and active in our lives.

Jesus himself even said that “it is better that I go, so that I can send the Advocate.”

So who is the Holy Spirit? Who is this that is better than Jesus himself being here with us? If He is the Emmanuel, what does he do?

We are going to go through 3 different ways in which the Spirit acts. There are a significant number of other things that the spirit can do, He is after all just as much God as the Father and Jesus, so He is all-powerful, but there are three that I want to highlight this morning.

Empowers

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; (Acts 1:8a)

You will receive what? POWER. That is something that is very real. That doesn’t say:

“You will be slightly more comfortable about your salvation when the Holy Spirit come on you; although you will always kind of wonder if you were ACTUALLY saved because you weren’t sure if you felt anything”

NO that’s not what it said. You will receive POWER.

Woah. Hold on Thayer. I don’t know about this.

So often we hear about the power of the Holy Spirit, and what do we think about. We think about those “Crazy Charismatics” that run around speaking in tongues and healing people. Or we think of Benny Hinn up on stage whopping people with his suit coat, slaying the in the Spirit. I know there were some of you that when you heard I was going to be preaching today about the Holy Spirit, you were terrified because you had no idea what kind of liberal nonsense I was going to have to say.

So to battle these visions of what we say to be, and what may very well be, crazy, we swing the pendulum in the total opposite direction and never talk about the Spirit. We don’t mention him in church. We don’t mention Him in pray. The only time He even gets a nod is at baptism. Then He is just the guy that lives in us and makes certain we are saved. We don’t accept Him working in our lives at all, but that isn’t what I see when I read about the early church. That isn’t the Spirit that I see anywhere in the Bible.

Empowering has ALWAYS been a job of the Holy Spirit

Let’s look at the Old Testament for a bit.

Moses had the power of the Spirit

Balaam had the Spirit

When Balaam looked out and saw Israel encamped tribe by tribe, the Spirit of God came on him (Numbers 24:2)

The Judges had the Spirit

“Spirit of the LORD” appears in Judges 6 times. Every time is to empower someone.

The Spirit had an empowering function in the Old Testament. The difference between what the Holy Spirit did in the Old Testament and what He does now is all about duration.

When the Spirit would come to people in the Old Testament, He would come OVER them and then He would leave after they had completed the task at hand.

On the other hand, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 3:16

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? (1 Corinthians 3:16)

We have the Holy Spirit actually living in us. How awesome is that. Just read through Judges and you can see how powerful the Holy Spirit is. And we have access to that ALL THE TIME!! What has happened in the 2000 years since the bible was finished??? Is the Holy Spirit just elderly? Is He old? Can He just not do the things He could when He was young?

Why do we think that He no longer has power? Why do we think He just sits around waiting for us to die so that he can’t stamp our Visa to get into heaven?

The Holy Spirit is more than just our security blanket. He Empowers us.

But he also Guides us.

How many of you have ever asked this question:

God, what do you want me to do? Where do you want me to go? What do you want with my life?

I am a college student. It should be assumed that I have found myself asking this at recent points in my life. In high school. My freshman year. I still ask God this question.

And I will bet that almost all of you have asked God that as well. And if you haven’t, you need to because if you don’t care what God wants in your life, then you aren’t trying to please Him.

So often when we ask God what He wants, we forget that His Spirit already lives within us. So instead of waiting for God to pull open the clouds and speak to you, start listening to the Spirit of God that lives in you. You know those little feelings you get that you should do something? Have you considered if they are the Spirit speaking to you? Run them by Scripture and if they align, LISTEN TO THEM.

The Spirit leads us. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at scripture.

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  (Matthew 4:1)

So Jesus was led by the Spirit. Jesus, one of the trinity, even listened to the leading of the Spirit. How many of you remember Philip in the desert?

Philip, for those that don’t know who Philip was, was a leader in the church when it was scattered. Philip, once found himself in the wilderness. He didn’t really know why he was there exactly. Until…

The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.” (Acts 8:29)

The Spirit told him what he needed to do. He didn’t just wonder in the wilderness. He told Phillip what to do, but it was still Phillip’s responsibility to act. Philip still had a choice. Maybe before we ask God to speak to us, we should check to see if he already is and we just aren’t listening.

So currently we have 2 things. The Spirit Empowers and the Spirit Guides.

The Spirit also Transforms.

This is the job of the Spirit that we talk about but I’m not sure it really clicks. What happens at baptism? What happens when we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit? We are transformed. When we rise out of the water, we are totally new.

It isn’t like we just get in the water and get wet. That isn’t what baptism is. It isn’t a 3 second bath. We are a new creation. Totally new. Too many people see baptism as a divine dunk. A holy bath that washes off the icky sin and then we are nice and clean. But that isn’t just it. That is far too small of a view.

Francis Chan had an analogy that I really loved so I’m gonna share it with you.

Take a pig. A pig is an animal that wallows around in its own filth. And it is happy in its filth. You can take a pig and you can clean it off, but what is that pig going to do? It is going to run right back and roll around in its own excrement. That’s pretty gross. Why does it do that? IT’S A PIG!!! That’s what pigs do. That is their nature.

And we are no different. Paul says this in Romans

For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:18-19, 24-25a)

We are just like those pigs; constantly rolling around in sin. And we love it. Even when we don’t want to, we sin. Why? We have a sinful nature. And that’s why baptism has to be more than just a cosmic bath that washes the sins off of us. It has to change our nature too. It has to transform us. When we receive the Spirit, we then have the power to not go back to the sin. When we don’t have a spiritual nature, how will we possibly live by the Spirit? We can’t. We need the Spirit in our lives to live by the Spirit.

Jesus even says about baptism. The Spirit gives birth to spirit. The water is not enough. It isn’t the water alone; it is the transformative power of the Spirit.

So yes, the Spirit is a big part of our salvation. The Spirit is what renews us. It changes our nature and allows us to even know how to follow Christ.

He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior.  (Titus 3:5b-6)

But do not think for a minute that the Holy Spirit is just a security blanket. He is a huge part of a Christian’s life. So where is He is your life? That’s the question. Is He just some guy that you are told started living in you at baptism? The guy that you have never felt before? Is He the guide of your life that directs all of your actions? Could you live without Him or would your life be exactly the same if He was not there?

And here is the million dollar question. Is He? Is he there? Have you ever accepted this gift? Have you ever said “yes LORD, I want you to give me this gift. I want to be renewed. I want to have a new Spirit. I want to be empowered to follow God.” Is that you this morning?

Thayer Wallace

Tags: Holy Spirit, empower, guide, transform