BE The Church In Spirit

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Shepherd's Church Podcast. My name is Kendall, and I am so blessed to be bringing this message to you today. Now, as this pandemic creeps along and as stay-at-home orders persist here in Massachusetts where I'm recording, and recently they've been extended out to May 18th at a minimum, and as frustrations and fears are now setting in, I just want to say right off the top that I am so thankful to be able to share a message like this with you, to preach the gospel in such a way that can be easily disseminated to you in ways that were not even possible a hundred years ago.

So I'm so thankful that this is the case. I'm also thankful for the technology that makes our online gatherings possible, like the one that we're going to have tomorrow, where while we cannot see each other face to face, it is a wonderful, wonderful blessing to be able to see you on the screen and to hear your voice coming through my speakers and to be able to see your facial expressions and see just as much as we possibly can a gathering of sorts coming together.

I really feel like that's a huge blessing, and I just want to thank every single person who's joined us on those calls, and while we can't be gathered together as a church right now, that has been a tremendous blessing for me.

I hope it's been a blessing to you, and I cannot wait to see you all again tomorrow morning. Now, like I said last week, I believe that now more than ever, at least in our lifetimes, Christians need to recapture a vision for what it means to be the church.

Because in Scripture, the word gathering, which is the word that we get for church, is essential to what it means for us to even be the church. That word church, ecclesia, it means a people who are gathered together or assembled together in person.

To be the church means that we are a gathered people, a people who come together, a people who fellowship, a people who meet, a people who commune, a people who break bread together, a people who assemble around the Lord's table, a people who rally around the gospel and convene together to worship.

If you take away the in-person gathering, the assembling, convening, and togetherness of the church, then what you do is you strip it of one of its fundamental characteristics that makes us who we are.

Gathering is essential to the DNA of the church, and what we've learned so far over this series called Be the Church is that because of Jesus' death, burial, resurrection, and redemption, we're not just saved to become individual believers.

We're saved to make us into a church, which means that Jesus died to make us a gathered people, gathered. So when people say, you know, I don't really need the church to be a Christian, I don't have to go to church, I don't care about all of these denominations, it's just going to be me and Jesus, me and my Bible, me and my faith, me and my prayer, and that's all that I need.

And when people say that, I would say maybe that they're half right, because sure, you don't need the church to be a Christian. You need Jesus to be a Christian. That's true. You need new life, new birth, new creation, saving faith in order to be a Christian.

That's right. But hear me out here. Fundamental to the salvation and redemption that Jesus accomplished for you, one of the necessary consequences of that salvation is that you would be gathered together as a people, as the church.

You were not bought and paid for to deliver you into isolation. You were bought and paid for to bring you into the church. And whether you go to a local church or not, you're still part of the church.

So to spurn the local gathering, to sit at home in isolation, to willingly refuse to neglect the gathered body of our Lord is to misunderstand what Jesus saved you for. He didn't save you to simply give you a personal relationship.

That's part of it. But he also saved you to bring you into a relationship with the body, with the bride, with the church, which is not a building, and it's not a time slot, and it's not a denomination.

The church is the gathering together of the people of God. So whenever, wherever, and however the people of God gather together, we should want to be there. And here's another cool thing about this. In this life, when we gather together as Christians, no matter where we gather or how we gather, when we do that, what we are doing as we are participating and practicing and what we are going to be doing for all of eternity, for there in heaven, we will gather together around the throne of grace and we will be thrilled to participate.

It will be our greatest joy to sing. We will be overwhelmed by his presence. We will be gathered around the living word of God and feasting at his table, which lets us know that every single element of our temporary church, gathering around the preached word of God, feasting at his table, overwhelmed by his presence, singing songs of praise, every element in our temporary church gatherings here on earth represents a permanent and forever kind of reality in heaven.

So the church is critical to our life as believers. And I'm hoping that a series like this will help us recover a love for the church and a longing to be gathered together again in person. And our online gatherings are helpful, but they are a pale, pale comparison to what an in-person gathering is.

And I don't know about you, but my heart just yearns for us to be able to get back together in real corporate worship. You know, heaven is not going to be a bunch of people tuned in on their MacBook Pros and Surface Pros and whatever else you're tuning in on your iPhones, your Androids.

It's not going to be a collection of people all in disparate places tuning in and participating. No, we're going to be standing side by side, face to face, arm in arm, hand in hand around the throne, worshiping Jesus.

See there's something personal about our gatherings. There's something in person that makes them true and real and good. So in a series like this, my hope really is that we would just learn to love the gathering of God's people, that we wouldn't tie it into our salvation.

We're not saved by going to church, but because we are saved, we want to gather with the church. That's an important distinction, I think. So as you know, we've done this now two different times. There's been two messages in this series called Be the Church.

And week one of that series was we saw how the church must be unified together. We're unified around our identity in the gospel and that affects the way that we treat each other and that affects the way that we go on mission together for the kingdom.

Week two, we saw that we are supposed to love one another, that to be the church, we are to be the church in love, and that love makes us want to serve one another as Christ sacrificed and served for us.

And that love makes us devoted to one another, caring for one another in real and tangible ways that make us look and feel like a family of grace, rather than just a collection of people who are interested in the programming or the style of music or whatever else that attracts people to church these days.

Because as we're seeing and as we're learning, the church is not those things. It's not an event. It's not a concert. It is a committed body of believers who want to grow in maturity and unity around the gospel.

They have a unity of purpose and mission, pouring out love on one another, serving one another, devoted to one another, and that is what it means to be the church. Now all of those truths are relevant and true, and I want us to hold them tightly, but we're going to add some to it today.

We're going to further develop what it means for us to be the church, and today we're going to be doing that by looking at the Holy Spirit. What does it mean for us to be the church in the power of the Holy Spirit?

What does it mean for us to be a Spirit-saturated, Spirit-centered, Spirit-glorifying church? That's what we're going to be looking at today, to be the church in the Spirit. Because here's the fundamental thing that we know.

We know that the church does not exist as a human institution. It's not a club. It's not a lodge. It's not a get-together of like-minded people who show up for something. It's not, and as we said, it's not a concert.

It's not an event. It's not like the Elks Club, the Moose Lodge, the Knights of Columbus, the Masons, the Mormons. It's not a sporting event. It's not a concert. If there is no Spirit in our gatherings, then we are dead.

We're just as dead as the world, and we're gathering for no reason, no purpose, with no power, and no redemption if there is no Spirit in our gatherings. You can go to an NBA game, and you can be excited.

It can be one of the most fascinating games you've ever seen. You can go to a football game. You can go to a concert, and you can be moved in those moments. But if it has no Spirit, that movement that it produces is not lasting, and it's dead.

We are not those things. So I would say to be the church, we must be different than the kind of gatherings that the world can produce. There must be a different power that is animating within our gatherings.

There must be something wholly outside of the realm of our human imagination, our human strength, our human will, our human powers of organization, our human creativity. Because we exist, we move, and we have our being as the church because we have been infused by the Spirit of God.

Many people in our society gather, but we gather in the power of the Holy Spirit. And that is what makes us different. And listen, our government right now has lumped us into all of the non-essential gatherings.

We are considered in the same vein as the NBA or a Katy Perry concert or a room full of people drinking at a bar. That is the way that the government considers the church. It's just a gathering of people who have united around some purpose.

Some people gather to drink. Some people gather to cheer. Some people gather to be religious. We are not at all like any one of those gatherings because those gatherings do not have the Spirit of God.

We know that the church of Jesus Christ is essential. Even though the government says it's not an essential gathering, we know that it is. It is empowered by the Spirit of God, and it is different than the world in which we gather.

So today, I want us to look at seven truths that everyone agrees about when it comes to the Holy Spirit and the way that he infuses and empowers and animates the church. This sermon is not going to be about the miraculous gifts of the Spirit.

It's not going to be an exposition on speaking in tongues. It's not going to be on the gift of healing. It's not going to be on any of the controversial aspects of the Spirit of God because that is its own message.

That needs to be treated carefully and with seriousness and sobriety, and that needs to be maybe a series of messages. What I want to do today is I want to look at seven undeniable and indisputable truths about the Spirit of God, how he interacts with the church, how he moves in the church, how he empowers the church, and I want to highlight for us what the Holy Spirit is doing to make us be the church.

And I hope that this will convince us of just how awesome he is, how much power he has. I hope that it will show us that we have need of the Holy Spirit in everything that we do, that he is essential for the church, he is necessary for the church.

And again, we're going to look at seven truths, which are, number one, the Holy Spirit creates and animates the church. Number two, the Holy Spirit seals the church. Number three, the Holy Spirit guides the church.

Number four, the Holy Spirit teaches the church. Number five, the Holy Spirit sanctifies the church. Number six, the Holy Spirit equips the church for mission. And number seven, the Holy Spirit endows the church with gifts.

Now, I know that I struggle even communicating two or three points in a sermon and keeping that within a reasonable length, so I don't want you to worry. When we cover these seven points, we will be doing it at a 100 ,000-foot level.

There will be no exhaustiveness in the sermon. This will be a very general, big-picture, holistic view of what the Spirit of God is doing in the church. There is going to be a lot of Bible in this message and a whole lot less explanation.

I'm going to say each and every single Bible reference for you so that you can go back and you can look those up yourself. And what I want to do is I just want to wash this sermon in the words of God to show just how critical and essential the Holy Spirit is.

The Spirit Creates and Animates the Church

So if you're down with that, let us begin with our first point, the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit creates and animates the church. Paul says in Romans 8, 9 -11, we'll begin in verse 9. And he says, however, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.

Now let's stop for a second. That word, you, there in verse 9, and maybe grab a Bible and follow along with me here. That word, you, is not singular. He's not talking to you, the individual. He's not saying, however, you are not in the flesh, but you are in the Spirit.

He's not talking to you. He's talking to the group. That word, you, there is a plural word discussing the entire congregation who made up the church at Rome. And he's saying, you, the church, you no longer live in the power of the flesh.

You are the church. You now live in the power of the Spirit of God. He's saying, he's directing his comments to a group. And he's saying, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. Now I honestly think that this highlights why English is such an awful language.

How it's unhelpful and bizarre and how the rules of grammar annoy us. There's more irregular verbs in the English language than there are regular verbs. And that is asinine and annoying. Because you could easily read a verse like this and you could think, oh, he's talking to me.

He's talking to me, the individual. He's saying, Kendall, you're not in the flesh anymore. You're in the Spirit. Great. I got it. I know now how to be an individual Christian. I know how to live my life as an individual.

I know how to be an isolated Christian who doesn't live in the flesh, but lives in the Spirit. It's all about me. And that is not what this verse is saying. We can get that idea, but this word, you, is a collective.

It's a corporate. It's talking to the body. It's talking to the church. It's plural. So this might actually frustrate your sensibilities and this might hurt your ears and this might break your hearts.

But for a moment, I'm going to revert to my Southern roots for just a moment. When I read this passage to you, I'm going to revert to, instead of saying you, I'm going to say y 'all when the word you is plural.

Does that make sense? I'm not going to read the singular word you as y 'all because that would be ridiculous. Every word that is a you that is plural, I'm going to read as y 'all so that when I do that, you'll understand kind of who Paul is talking to in this passage.

He's talking to the church, the collective people of God. So y 'all ready? I didn't have to do that one, but I did anyway. So here we go. Paul says, however, y 'all are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.

If indeed the Spirit of God dwells in y 'all. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of God, he, now the individual here, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in y 'all, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the Spirit is alive because of righteousness.

But if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in y 'all, then he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to y 'all's mortal bodies through the Spirit who dwells in y 'all.

Now again, maybe that caused your ears to break a little, and I'm sorry for that. My only point is to demonstrate, and normally, you know me, I'm not going to talk like that. But I did this to demonstrate that the entire verse is not for you, the individual.

These are plural words that Paul is using for the whole church and the group and the body. It's about the gathered people of God. And while I know normal English doesn't make this clear, Southern English does.

It actually does differentiate a plural you from a singular you, even though it is very non-standard English. If you're from Brooklyn in the 1980s, or if you belong to an Italian mob, maybe you would simply say, use guys.

That also is a way of differentiating between the singular and the plural. But I hope that you get the picture here. Because what Paul is saying is striking. He is teaching us that the Spirit of God has taken us as dead as we all were in our sin, and he has not only made us alive as individual believers, but he's made us alive as a church.

He's saying that the power behind our gatherings is the Spirit of God. He's saying that he is the power that unites us together. He's saying that he is the power that makes us alive together. He is the power that makes us love one another, serve one another, care for one another.

That what Paul is saying fundamentally here is that the Spirit of God creates and animates the church. Without the Spirit, the church has no life. Without the Spirit, the church has nothing. It is just a dead gathering.

It's just a concert, an event, it's a hockey match. It's something, but it's not living. Because without the Spirit of God, the church would be dead, but with the Spirit of God, the church lives. That's what Paul is saying.

The Spirit creates the church. The Spirit animates the church. The Spirit makes the church alive. That's our first point. Second point is that the Spirit of God, after he awakens and enlivens and animates the church, he also seals the church.

Paul says in Ephesians 1 verse 11, We, the church, have obtained an inheritance through faith, having been predestined according to God's purpose, who works all things together after the counsel of his will.

So Paul begins here. He says, the church has been predestined according to the perfect counsel of God's will. So the question that we would want to ask ourselves here is, why has the church been predestined?

Verse 12 answers that. He says, and we who were the first to hope, we, the church, who were the first to hope in Christ would be the praise of God's glory. So here, what he's saying is the church was predestined by God, not as a collection of individuals, but as a group of gathered people, they were predestined by God before the foundation of the world to be gathered together, to give glory and praise and honor to God and to magnify his name as a community of people who have been ransomed from darkness to life.

That is what he's saying, that we were predestined to be gathered and we were predestined in our gatherings to give glory and honor and praise to God. Now, how did this happen? How did we get predestined by God?

How does in space and time, this work out? Verse 13 and 14 answers that. He says, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having believed you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who was given as a pledge of our inheritance with a view to the redemption of God's own possession to be the praise of his glory.

Do you see what this means? We, the church have been predestined by God to gather and glorify God, saved from the wrath of God, connected to God as a community of people through the spirit of God who has sealed us and locked us and is keeping us and protecting us, ensuring that we will remain faithful together until Jesus Christ returns and claims us as God's own possession for eternity.

That is essentially what Paul is saying here. It was the spirit, the Holy Spirit of God that was given to us to not only create the church and not only animate the church, but as a down payment for eternity.

The spirit that currently animates our church and gives life to our church is the same spirit who is going to seal our church until Jesus returns to call us home. It is the same spirit that Paul calls our down payment on what eternity is going to look like.

You think about a down payment. You put a down payment on a house. The house doesn't fully belong to you yet, although you can get some of the benefits of it. It doesn't fully belong to you until you've paid off every last cent.

That's when the government can't come with men and guns to take your house away from you if you don't make the payment. You get a down payment on the house to stake your claim on the house, but it's not fully yours until you've made the last payment.

The same is true. The Holy Spirit was given as a down payment on eternity. So that as we are sanctified day in, day out, as we are walking with God through the spirit in our lives, walking towards eternity, we are to look back on that down payment and look back and say, this all belongs to me.

This is my inheritance. This is what I'm stepping into. And every single step of the way, the spirit of God is making payments in your life. Jesus has made payment for your soul on the cross. The spirit is making payment in your soul by sanctifying you every single day until you that final payment is made.

That final breath is taken and you, you stand before Jesus and he says, well done, my good and faithful servant. And you step into the inheritance that he bought for you on Calvary and he downpaid with the Holy Spirit.

And that doesn't just apply to individuals that applies to the church. Jesus purchased a church. Jesus made a down payment for that church with the Holy Spirit. And one day that final payment is going to be made and he is going to have her as his bride for all of eternity.

Because we have the spirit of God, not just as individuals, but in the church, we have a guarantee concerning eternity. We have a guarantee. For now, we gather together as earthly people by the power of his Holy Spirit, but soon a day is coming when Jesus Christ is going to return.

When the final payment's been made, when the final person comes to know Christ out of every tribe, tongue, and nation, when the mission of the gospel has had full success and everyone that Jesus is going to save has been bought and paid for, he's going to return and he's going to gather us together before the throne of God.

And we're going to stand there before the Lord of glory and we're going to praise him forevermore. And we know that because the Spirit's power at work in the church today demonstrates that. Jesus died on the cross to purchase you.

He put a down payment of the Spirit within you to convince you. And he is demonstrating that the Spirit of God is actually in you by the work that the Spirit of God is doing. And you might be asking, what work is the Spirit doing in the church today?

And I'm not talking about gold dust falling from the ceilings of churches. And I'm not talking about wild, ecstatic manifestations of the Spirit. I'm just talking about the normal means of grace that the Spirit of God does in a faithful church.

And we see that all throughout the scripture. What is the Holy Spirit doing in the church so that we can know that he's really there? What is the Holy Spirit doing so that we can be convinced that he has power?

What is the Holy Spirit doing that the Bible says that he should be doing in the church so that we know that the Spirit of God is alive and in our church? What does he do? Those are questions that we need to ask.

And the Bible answers them. The Bible says that he brings God's presence into the church according to 1 Corinthians 3 .16. You can read that. The Spirit of God convicts us of our sin. So anytime in church, when you are listening to a sermon, or you're listening to the reading of the Word of God, or you're listening to someone praying, or you even walk into the church and have a conversation with someone, and you feel convicted over your sin, that is a ministry of the Holy Spirit in your life.

That is evidence that the Holy Spirit is alive in the church of God, John 16, 7 through 11. The Spirit of God gives direction to us as a people. That means that we, the church, are being directed on mission by the Spirit of God.

See, churches fail when they start listening to a man or a woman, and they start following after their own human devices, and they start going down roads that the Spirit of God never intended them to go.

We will be successful as a church. We will be faithful as a church. We will be in alignment with the will of God as a church so long as we follow the Spirit of God who animates the church. That's Acts 9, 32.

We see that the Spirit sanctifies the church. That's 2 Corinthians 3, 18. That means that if we, the church, grow in even the most minuscule ways towards righteousness, towards holiness, towards love for God, towards love for His Word, towards hatred of sin and hatred of the things that displease God, if we grow even an ounce in the direction of godliness, that means that the Spirit of God has been alive in our church.

That also means that if we do not grow, if we do not move an ounce closer to God in our behavior, in our emotions, in our actions, in our mentalities, in our thoughts, in anything, in our worship, if we don't move towards the Spirit of God, that means that the Spirit of God has pulled away His power from our church.

And that's what happens to a church when it begins to die or when it begins to sink into liberalism or when it begins to fall into immorality or liberalism. That's when churches become more concerned with politics than with God.

That's when churches become more concerned with social justice than God. That's when churches become more concerned with worldly agendas than with God because the Spirit of God has pulled His power away from them and He's no longer sanctifying them because if the Spirit is present in our church, then we will become more holy, more set apart, more in love with God.

That is what that is trying to say. Again, that's 2 Corinthians 3, 18. The Spirit of God also empowers us for witness. Acts 1, 8, it says, and you will receive power and you will be my witnesses. That means that if we're going to be the witnesses of Jesus Christ, then that means that we're going to receive power from the Spirit of God and He's going to fuel us to not just speak to people locally and in our region, but He's going to fuel our church, the Shepherd's Church.

He's going to fuel us to be a mission-sending church. That means that from our church, if the Spirit of God is really animating our church and giving power to our church, then I believe that we're going to see missionaries raised up out of our church.

We're going to see pastors and church planters raised up out of our church. We're going to be a witness, mission-sending church because when the Spirit of God has descended in power and He begins convicting us of our sin and He begins causing us to love Him with every facet of our being, that means men and women will raise their hand and they will say, I want to go where Jesus Christ has not yet been named.

I want to share the gospel where no one else knows about it. And I want to stand up and I want to be qualified and I want to be equipped and I want to be trained and I want to be set apart and raised up for the ministry and the mission of God.

We know that that's going to happen when the Spirit of God descends on a church and that's when I'm praying for our church. Again, that's Acts 1 .8. You see the Spirit of God in the New Testament bringing blessing and fellowship into a community.

That's 2 Corinthians 13 .14. We see Him bringing freedom and peace to the people of God, that's 2 Corinthians 3 .17. We see in Romans 8 .10 -11 that He animates us with God's own life. That means that in our church, it's not about our human life and our human imagination and our human machinations.

That means that when we gather, we are gathering in the power of the life of the living God because the Spirit of God has animated us and infused us with God's life. There's more. There's so much more in the New Testament that we could cover.

But what I want us to see is that every time the Spirit convicts us of sin, every time He opens up our heart to see the plain teaching of Scripture, every time He opens our minds to be able to worship and our hearts to be able to worship, every time that He causes a brother or sister to minister to one another, any time anything good or godly happens within the walls of the church, any time when we gather, someone grows in righteousness, it is by the movement and direction, power, and will of the Spirit of God at work in the body of Jesus Christ alone.

And that is our seal for redemption. That work is evidence of our salvation. That work is a down payment on what's going to be happening for all of eternity because the Spirit has not only indwelled individuals, He's illuminated and indwelled the church and His activity in the church right now should thrill us.

We shouldn't be looking for ecstatic examples of the Holy Spirit of God. We should see what the Spirit's already doing that the Bible says that He's going to be doing and that should thrill our hearts and overjoy us.

His activity right now in the church should cause us to love the church, to love the gathering of the saints, even as we await the greater and more beautiful and more perfect gathering that is to come.

The Holy Spirit is our seal. He is our promise of future glory. And as we await the glorious return of Christ, Paul tells us to consider how the Spirit of God has sealed us in Ephesians 4 .30. It says, Do not grieve the Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you, the church, y 'all, were sealed for the day of redemption.

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you all, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God and Christ has forgiven you.

Paul is saying that the presence and the activity of the Spirit of God in our church, because He has sealed us for redemption, that His power is going to cause us to be godly, it's going to cause us to be active, and it's going to cause us to be participating members within the church for the good of the church and for the love of the church.

He's telling us that we will want to and yearn to and be excited about ministering to one another's needs, that we will be peaceable under His power, that anger and malice is going to fade away under His direction, that we will be the most easy people and the most willing people to show forgiveness and to ask for forgiveness because He has sealed us in the love of Christ until Christ returns.

In all ways and at all times, the Spirit is animating the church. He is sealing the church. And that leads us to our third point, that it's the Spirit alone who guides the church. Paul says in Galatians 5, 25, right after talking about the fruits of the Spirit, he says, if we, the church, if we, the gathering of the people of God, if we, the collection of saints who come together, if we live by the Spirit, let us, let us also walk by the Spirit.

So if we live by the Spirit, let us walk by the Spirit. That's what Paul is saying. Paul is saying that the Spirit of God is not only animating and sealing the church and fueling the church, but he's also guiding the church.

He's saying that the new creation of life that we have all been given, the very reason that the Holy Spirit is living in us is so that we can walk by the Spirit of God, that we can live by the Spirit and do everything that we do as a church under the direction and the power of the Spirit of God.

He's saying that there's no human strategy involved. We are led by, guided by, and fueled by the Spirit. And what does that mean? Well, biblically, we see the Spirit guides us to remember, to understand, and to interpret the Word of God.

So as the church gathers, we see that the Spirit is guiding us in truth. He's guiding us to understand, remember, and be able to interpret the Word of God. That's John 14, 26. The Holy Spirit guides us in our worship, and even in a worship that doesn't mourn over our circumstances and is not bogged down by what's going on in our life, and it doesn't hope in our situations.

The Holy Spirit causes us to rejoice in the hope that we have in God, no matter what is going on in our life, and realizing that nothing can take that hope away from us. That's Romans 5, 3 through 5. The Holy Spirit fuels our worship in a way that cannot be squashed or taken away by the things of this world.

Even if it's a bad day, if it's a bad year, if it's a bad decade, our hearts are still going to long to worship God because of the influence of the Spirit of God in our church. It's Romans 5, 3 through 5.

The Holy Spirit guides us into freedom from sin and freedom from the damning effects of the law, freedom in our emotions, freedom in our minds, and freedom from anything and everything that binds us. That's 2 Corinthians 3, 17.