The power of God in us who believe - Pentecost 2009
The Power of God for us who believe Luke 24:36-53
The visiting preacher was standing at the door after the service when a lady came up to him full of praise for a wonderful sermon. With characteristic modesty he said, “It wasn’t me Madam, it was God.”
To which the lady replied, “Oh no, it wasn’t THAT good!”
The point is that for every one of us, for every part of our Christian lives, the preacher’s words are entirely true. It isn’t me – it’s God. It isn’t us! It’s God! Because the Christian life is not about struggling to follow Jesus Christ in our own human strength. The Christian life is a life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit – God living inside us!
This sermon series is about salvation. We are thinking about what it means to be saved. We have thought about our need of salvation, the problem of sin. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. How much can I get away with and still get into heaven? Absolutely nothing! And we have thought about how Jesus’s death on the cross brings us salvation. All who believe are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.
Today we think about that wonderful promise Jesus made to his disciples just before the Ascension in Luke 24:49.
49 I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”“Power from on high”. A strange phrase. What would the disciples have been expecting when Jesus promised they would be “clothed with power from on high”? How is that promise fulfilled in the lives of ordinary Christians like us?
In the New Testament around 100 times the word we translate as power refers to the almighty power of the almighty God. And when Jesus promised to his disciples “power from on high” THAT is the kind of power He was talking about. The greek word in question is dunamis and from that root we get two significant English words. The first is dynamo – which generates electrical power. The second is dynamite – the explosive. Jesus promises to give his disciples the power of the Holy Spirit, dunamis, the dynamo and the dynamite of the Christian life! Jesus is promising the almighty power of the almighty God in the life of every Christian.
It is the power of the Holy Spirit which brings us to faith and repentance.
1 Corinthians 12:3 Therefore I tell you that no-one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no-one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.
Upon our faith and repentance God forgives our sins
With the barrier of sin removed, GOD HIMSELF, God the Holy Spirit comes and lives inside us
John 7:37 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. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.
We will be thinking more about these streams of living water tonight.
The Holy Spirit teaches us about Jesus
John 14:16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you for ever— 17 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.
23 … “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. …. 26 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.
It is in the person of the Holy Spirit that the Risen Christ returns to believers. The Spirit as Helper represents the Risen Jesus Christ in the world and He is the personal presence of Jesus in our lives!
The Holy Spirit comes into our lives to be our Counsellor, Comforter, Helper: as somebody has said, “The word Comforter as applied to the Holy Spirit needs to be translated by some vigorous term. Literally, it means “with strength.” Jesus promised his followers that “The Strengthener” would be with them. This promise is no lullaby for the fainthearted. It is a blood transfusion for courageous living”.
The Holy Spirit helps us to pray
Romans 8:26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.
The Holy Spirit brings Christ’s resurrection life into our lives
Ephesians 118 I pray … that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, 20 which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms,
His incomparably great power for us who believe! The almighty power of Almighty God – living in you and me!
God the Holy Spirit changes us to make us like Jesus
The transforming power of God – which is able to save from the guttermost to the uttermost! The power of Jesus Christ, who transformed the lives of all kinds of people from respectable Pharisees like Nicodemus to prostitutes like Mary Magdalene and professional thieves (tax collectors) Matthew and Zaccheus. Prodigals who were throwing their lives away, returning home and being transformed into children of God! “My Son was lost but now is found – was dead but now is alive again! Sinners into saints.
Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control.
The character of Christ, reproduced in us. C.S.Lewis once used a strange phrase when he said that it was God’s purpose “to people the world with a lot of little Christs”. To transform every Christian to make them like Christ. The fruit of the Spirit, and particularly the first three, love, joy and peace are experiences which God the Holy Spirit brings into our lives rather than anything we can work at producing.
“All of us, then, reflect the glory of the Lord with uncovered faces; and that same glory, coming from the Lord, who is the Spirit, transforms us into his likeness in an ever greater degree of glory.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)
The Spirit “metamorphoses” us into the image of Christ. He is the HOLY Spirit and His work is to make us holy too. That process is called “purification” or “sanctification” depending on which book you read. Oswald Chambers “Sanctification is not something our Lord does in me; sanctification is himself in me.”
2 Timothy 1 7 For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.
The Holy Spirit helps us continue God’s mission as witnesses to Jesus
Acts 1:8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
This is the power Jesus promised to his disciples just before He ascended. Power to be witnesses for Jesus.
1 Corinthians 2: 3 I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.
The Holy Spirit continues God’s mission in signs and wonders
Mark 16:15 He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. … 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”
In my years as a Christian I have seen healing miracles from back injuries, kidney problems, even terminal cancer. The blind seeing and the lame walking. And then so many examples of healing of the mind and the emotions. I have also seen the power of Christ in deliverance from evil, people set free through the Name of Jesus Christ.
In all these areas we see the difference the Holy Spirit makes in the life of every Christian. It is the power of the Holy Spirit which brings us to faith and repentance. Upon our faith and repentance God forgives our sins. With the barrier of sin removed, GOD HIMSELF, God the Holy Spirit comes and lives inside us – the almighty power of the Almighty God at work in you and me! The Holy Spirit teaches us about Jesus and helps us to pray. The Holy Spirit brings Christ’s resurrection life into our lives. God the Holy Spirit changes us to make us like Jesus – making us Holy. The Holy Spirit helps us continue God’s mission as witnesses to Jesus and the Holy Spirit continues God’s mission in signs and wonders.
No wonder that when Jesus talked about the salvation God gives us he talked about a new life starting – a new birth.
All this work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer is new birth and new life
3 In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no-one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”
4 “How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no-one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
Some Christians talk and act as though this new birth is just a one-off action by God the Holy Spirit. We are spiritually dead. The Holy Spirit comes and gives us some kind of “new life”, we are “born again” and the Holy Spirit then goes away and leaves us alone again. That idea completely misses the point. Every aspect of the new life we enjoy as Christians is the Holy Spirit continuing to work inside us. If the Holy Spirit ever were to leave us alone, which He never ever would, but if the Holy Spirit ever WERE to leave us alone, all the blessings of salvation would disappear. Our new life is the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit, God living inside every Christian.
“To the church, Pentecost brought light, power, joy. There came to each illumination of mind, assurance of heart, intensity of love, fullness of power, exuberance of joy. No one needed to ask if they had received the Holy Ghost. Fire is self-evident. So is power!” Samuel Chadwick (1832–1917)
Every one of us needs to experience more of this power from on high. More of the dynamo and the dynamite of the Spirit in our lives. But do we really want to?
TOZER: Do you want to be filled with a Spirit who, though he is like Jesus in his gentleness and love, will nevertheless demand to be Lord of your life? Are you willing to let your personality be taken over by another, even if that other be the Spirit of God himself? If the Spirit takes charge of your life he will expect unquestioning obedience in everything. He will not tolerate in you the self-sins even though they are permitted and excused by most Christians.… You will find the Spirit to be in sharp opposition to the easy ways of the world and of the mixed multitude within the precincts of religion. He will be jealous over you for good. He will not allow you to boast or swagger or show off. He will take the direction of your life away from you. He will reserve the right to test you, to discipline you, to chasten you for your soul’s sake. He may strip you of many of those borderline pleasures which other Christians enjoy but which are to you a source of refined evil. Through it all he will enfold you in a love so vast, so mighty, so all-embracing, so wondrous that your very losses will seem like gains and your small pains like pleasure. A. W. Tozer (1897–1963)
Do you want to be clothed with power from on high?
Before we can be filled with the Spirit, the desire to be filled must be all-consuming. It must be for the time the biggest thing in the life, so acute, so intrusive as to crowd out everything else. The degree of fullness in any life accords perfectly with the intensity of true desire. We have as much of God as we actually want. A. W. Tozer (1897–1963)