BE The Church In Spirit

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May 2, 2020

What does it mean to be the Church? Well, that question cannot even be answered if you do not understand the Holy Spirit. Literally everything the Church is, does, participates in, and celebrates is infused with His power. In today's message, we will examine seven truths about the Holy Spirit and how He empowers us to BE the church! Join us!

00:00: 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.
00:08: 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,
00:22: 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.
00:43: 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.
01:11: 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.
01:24: 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,
01:33: I believe that now more than ever, at least in our lifetimes,
01:39: 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.
01:56: That word church, ecclesia, it means a people who are gathered together or assembled together in person.
02:06: 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
02:18: 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.
02:37: Gathering is essential to the DNA of the church, and what we've learned so far over this series called
02:47: Be the Church is that because of Jesus's death, burial, resurrection, and redemption, we're not just saved to become individual believers.
02:59: We're saved to make us into a church, which means that Jesus died to make us a gathered people, gathered.
03:10: 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,
03:16: I don't care about all of these denominations, it's just gonna be me and Jesus, me and my Bible, me and my faith, me and my prayer, and that's all that I need.
03:24: 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
03:34: 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
03:42: 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.
04:04: You were not bought and paid for to deliver you into isolation, you were bought and paid for to bring you into the church.
04:10: 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
04:24: 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.
04:34: 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.
04:44: 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.
04:58: 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.
05:16: For there in heaven, we will gather together around the throne of grace and we will be thrilled to participate.
05:24: 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.
05:56: 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.
06:11: And our online gatherings are helpful, but they are a pale, pale comparison to what an in -person gathering is.
06:21: 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.
06:28: You know, heaven is not going to be a bunch of people tuned in on their
06:34: MacBook Pros and Surface Pros and whatever else you're tuning in on your iPhones, your
06:39: Androids. It's not going to be a collection of people all in disparate places tuning in and participating.
06:46: No, we're going to be standing side by side, face to face, arm in arm, hand in hand around the throne, worshiping
06:54: Jesus. See, there's something personal about our gatherings.
07:00: There's something in person that makes them true and real and good.
07:06: 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.
07:17: 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,
07:23: I think. So as you know, we've done this now two different times.
07:29: 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.
07:37: 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.
07:45: 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.
08:16: 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.
08:24: It is a committed body of believers who want to grow in maturity and unity around the gospel.
08:32: 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.
08:41: 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.
08:49: 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
08:56: Holy Spirit. What does it mean for us to be the church in the power of the
09:02: Holy Spirit? What does it mean for us to be a Spirit -saturated, Spirit -centered, Spirit -glorifying church?
09:09: 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.
09:17: We know that the church does not exist as a human institution.
09:23: 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.
09:33: 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
09:39: Moose Lodge, the Knights of Columbus, the Masons, the Mormons. It's not a sporting event. It's not a concert.
09:44: 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
09:56: Spirit in our gatherings. You can go to an NBA game, and you can be excited.
10:02: 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.
10:10: But if it has no Spirit, that movement that it produces is not lasting, and it's dead.
10:16: 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.
10:29: There must be a different power that is animating within our gatherings. There must be something holy outside of the realm of our human imagination, our human strength, our human will, our human powers of organization, our human creativity.
10:44: Because we exist, we move, and we have our being as the church because we have been infused by the
10:51: Spirit of God. Many people in our society gather, but we gather in the power of the
11:00: 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.
11:11: 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.
11:19: That is the way that the government considers the church. It's just a gathering of people who have united around some purpose.
11:27: 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
11:36: 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.
11:46: It is empowered by the Spirit of God, and it is different than the world in which we gather. So today,
11:56: I want us to look at seven truths that everyone agrees about when it comes to the
12:03: 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
12:13: 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
12:21: 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.
12:35: What I want to do today is I want to look at seven undeniable and indisputable truths about the
12:44: Spirit of God, how he interacts with the church, how he moves in the church, how he empowers the church.
12:57: And I want to highlight for us what the Holy Spirit is doing to make us be the church.
13:04: And I hope that this will convince us of just how awesome he is, how much power he has.
13:10: 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.
13:20: And again, we're going to look at seven truths, which are, number one, the Holy Spirit creates and animates the church.
13:28: Number two, the Holy Spirit seals the church. Number three, the
13:34: Holy Spirit guides the church. Number four, the Holy Spirit teaches the church.
13:42: Number five, the Holy Spirit sanctifies the church. Number six, the
13:47: Holy Spirit equips the church for mission. And number seven, the Holy Spirit endows the church with gifts.
13:56: 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.
14:10: When we cover these seven points, we will be doing it at a 100 ,000 -foot level.
14:16: There will be no exhaustiveness in the sermon. This will be a very general, big -picture, holistic view of what the
14:26: 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.
14:36: 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.
14:43: 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
14:54: Holy Spirit is. So if you're down with that, let us begin with our first point, the
14:59: Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit creates and animates the church. Paul says in Romans 8, 9 -11, we'll begin in verse 9, he says,
15:12: However, you are not in the flesh, but in the
15:17: Spirit. Now, let's stop for a second. That word, you, there in verse 9, and maybe grab a
15:26: Bible and follow along with me here. That word, you, is not singular.
15:32: He's not talking to you, the individual. He's not saying, however, you are not in the flesh, but you are in the
15:37: 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.
15:48: And he is saying, you, the church, you no longer live in the power of the flesh. You are the church.
15:54: You now live in the power of the Spirit of God. He is saying, he's directing his comments to a group.
15:59: And he's saying, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. Now, I honestly think that this highlights why
16:09: English is such an awful language. How it's unhelpful and bizarre and how the rules of grammar annoy us.
16:18: There's more irregular verbs in the English language than there are regular verbs. And that is asinine and annoying.
16:26: 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.
16:32: 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
16:38: Christian. I know how to live my life as an individual. I know how to be a isolated Christian who doesn't live in the flesh, but lives in the
16:45: 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.
16:52: 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.
17:02: 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.
17:14: When I read this passage to you, I'm going to revert to, instead of saying you,
17:19: 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.
17:31: 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
17:38: Paul is talking to in this passage. He's talking to the church, the collective people of God. So, y 'all ready?
17:44: I didn't have to do that one, but I did anyway. So, here we go. Paul says,
18:26: Now, again, maybe that caused your ears to break a little, and I'm sorry for that.
18:34: 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.
18:46: These are plural words that Paul is using for the whole church and the group and the body.
18:52: It's about the gathered people of God. And while I know normal English doesn't make this clear, southern
19:01: English does. It actually does differentiate a plural you from a singular you, even though it is very nonstandard
19:07: English. If you're from Brooklyn in the 1980s, or if you belong to an Italian mob, maybe you would simply say,
19:14: Use guys. That also is a way of differentiating between the singular and the plural. But I hope that you get the picture here.
19:22: 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.
19:31: And He has not only made us alive as individual believers, but He has made us alive as a church.
19:38: He is saying that the power behind our gatherings is the Spirit of God. He is saying that He is the power that unites us together.
19:45: He is 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.
19:52: That what Paul is saying fundamentally here is that the Spirit of God creates and animates the church.
19:59: Without the Spirit, the church has no life. Without the Spirit, the church has nothing. It is just a dead gathering.
20:07: It's just a concert, an event. It's a hockey match. It's something, but it's not living.
20:13: Because without the Spirit of God, the church would be dead. But with the Spirit of God, the church lives.
20:21: That's what Paul is saying. The Spirit creates the church. The Spirit animates the church.
20:29: The Spirit makes the church alive. That's our first point.
20:37: Second point is that the Spirit of God, after He awakens and enlivens and animates the church,
20:46: He also seals the church. Paul says in Ephesians 1 verse 11,
20:53: 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.
21:09: So Paul begins here. He says, the church has been predestined according to the perfect counsel of God's will.
21:16: So the question that we would want to ask ourselves here is, why has the church been predestined? And verse 12 answers that.
21:22: 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.
21:32: 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.
21:40: 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
21:49: 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.
22:02: Now, how did this happen? How did we get predestined by God? How does, in space and time, this work out?
22:10: 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
22:23: 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.
22:35: Do you see what this means? We, the church, have been predestined by God to gather and glorify
22:45: God. Saved from the wrath of God. Connected to God as a community of people through the
22:54: 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.
23:09: That is essentially what Paul is saying here. It was the
23:14: 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.
23:25: 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.
23:34: It is the same Spirit that Paul calls our down payment on what eternity is going to look like.
23:39: 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.
23:47: 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.
23:57: 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.
24:05: 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
24:18: 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.
24:27: This is my inheritance. This is what I'm stepping into, and every single step of the way, the
24:32: Spirit of God is making payments in your life. Jesus has made payment for your soul on the cross.
24:39: The Spirit is making payment in your soul by sanctifying you every single day until that final payment is made, that final breath is taken, and 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 down paid with the
24:57: Holy Spirit. And that doesn't just apply to individuals. That applies to the church.
25:03: Jesus purchased a church. Jesus made a down payment for that church with the
25:09: 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.
25:18: Because we have the Spirit of God, not just as individuals, but in the church, we have a guarantee concerning eternity.
25:30: We have a guarantee. For now, we gather together as earthly people by the power of his
25:39: 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
25:51: 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
26:09: Lord of glory and we're going to praise him forevermore. And we know that because the
26:19: Spirit's power at work in the church today demonstrates that. Jesus died on the cross to purchase you.
26:26: He put a down payment of the Spirit within you to convince you and he is demonstrating that the
26:33: 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
26:40: 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
26:50: 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.
26:58: 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?
27:06: What is the Holy Spirit doing that the Bible says that he should be doing in the church so that we know that the
27:11: Spirit of God is alive and in our church? What does he do? Those are questions that we need to ask and the
27:18: Bible answers them. The Bible says that he brings God's presence into the church according to 1
27:25: Corinthians 3 .16. You can read that. The Spirit of God convicts us of our sin.
27:31: So anytime in church when you are listening to a sermon or you're listening to the reading of the
27:36: 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
27:46: Holy Spirit in your life. That is evidence that the Holy Spirit is alive in the church of God. John 16, 7 through 11.
27:55: The Spirit of God gives direction to us as a people. That means that we, the church, are being directed on mission by the
28:04: 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
28:15: 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
28:25: Spirit of God who animates the church. That's Acts 9, 32. We see that the
28:33: 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
28:51: 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.
29:00: That also means that if we do not grow, if we do not move an ounce closer to God in our behavior, in emotions, in our actions, in our mentalities, in our thoughts, in anything, in our worship, if we don't move towards the
29:20: 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.
29:36: That's when churches become more concerned with politics than with God. That's when churches become more concerned with social justice than God.
29:43: That's when churches become more concerned with worldly agendas than with God because the
29:48: Spirit of God has pulled His power away from them and He's no longer sanctifying them because if the
29:53: Spirit is present in our church, then we will become more holy, more set apart, more in love with God.
30:00: That is what that is trying to say. Again, that's 2 Corinthians 3, 18. The Spirit of God also empowers us for witness.
30:08: 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
30:18: 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.
30:26: 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
30:37: 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.
30:43: 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
30:53: 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.
31:00: 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.
31:11: We know that that's going to happen when the Spirit of God descends on a church and that's what I'm praying for our church.
31:21: Again, that's Acts 1 .8. You see the Spirit of God in the
31:26: New Testament bringing blessing and fellowship into a community. That's 2 Corinthians 13 .14.
31:33: We see Him bringing freedom and peace to the people of God. That's 2 Corinthians 3 .17.
31:38: We see in Romans 8 .10 -11 that He animates us with God's own life.
31:44: That means that in our church, it's not about our human life and our human imagination and our human machinations.
31:50: That means that when we gather, we are gathering in the power of the life of the living
31:55: God because the Spirit of God has animated us and infused us with God's life. There's more.
32:02: 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
32:07: Spirit convicts us of sin, every time He opens up our heart to see the plain teaching of Scripture, every time
32:13: 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
32:32: Spirit of God at work in the body of Jesus Christ alone. And that is our seal for redemption.
32:39: 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
32:46: Spirit has not only indwelled individuals, He has illuminated and indwelled the church, and His activity in the church right now should thrill us.
32:56: 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
33:01: 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.
33:20: 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
33:32: Spirit of God has sealed us in Ephesians 4 .30. It says, Just as God in Christ has forgiven you.
34:03: 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.
34:26: 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.
34:55: 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
35:07: Spirit alone who guides the church. Paul says in Galatians 5 .25,
35:14: 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
35:26: Spirit, let us also walk by the
35:33: 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
35:38: 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
35:49: Holy Spirit is living in us is so that we can walk by the Spirit of God, that we can live by the
35:54: Spirit and do everything that we do as a church under the direction and the power of the Spirit of God.
36:00: He's saying that there's no human strategy involved. We are led by, guided by, and fueled by the
36:07: Spirit. And what does that mean? Well, biblically, we see the Spirit guides us to remember, to understand, and to interpret the
36:16: Word of God. So as the church gathers, we see that the Spirit is guiding us in truth.
36:23: He's guiding us to understand, remember, and be able to interpret the Word of God. That's John 14, 26.
36:30: 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.
36:43: 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.
36:52: That's Romans 5, 3 -5. The Holy Spirit fuels our worship in a way that cannot be squashed or taken away by the things of this world.
37:02: 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
37:09: God because of the influence of the Spirit of God in our church. It's Romans 5, 3 -5.
37:17: 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.
37:28: That's 2 Corinthians 3, 17. So the Spirit not only fuels our worship, the
37:33: Spirit not only causes us to remember and understand the Word of God, the Holy Spirit also leads us into freedom, and He guides us into ways that we're no longer in slavery to our sin and our emotions and our failure.
37:46: We're now totally free because the Spirit of God is leading the church into freedom, and He's leading the church to show the world the beauty of the freedom that He has given.
37:58: The Holy Spirit guides us in prayer, helping us know how to pray, what to pray, when to pray, why we pray, even what we say when we pray.
38:06: That's Romans 8, 26 -27. The Spirit of God is intimately involved in every single aspect of the church, and He is guiding it.
38:17: The Holy Spirit guides the way that we live as people who have been made alive, given new life, according to the fruits of the
38:24: Spirit. That's Galatians 5, 22 -23. You just read through that list of the fruits of the Spirit, and you see that the
38:30: Holy Spirit is moving in our lives, guiding us as believers, and helping us live fruitful,
38:36: Holy Spirit -centric lives. And that's not just so that we can be good individuals. That's so that we can be faithful participants in the local church.
38:47: See, what I want us to see is that the Holy Spirit is animating us, sealing us, and guiding us in every single activity that we do as the church.
39:00: One of the ways that He guides us as a body of believers is in the fourth point that we see, that He teaches us.
39:08: It's one of the reasons why we gather as a local community of Christians is to be taught the Word of God, to sit under the preaching of the
39:15: Word of God, to love the Word of God, and to be explained the Word of God so that you can be equipped by the
39:21: Word of God and sent out in power. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12 -13,
39:27: Now we, the church, have received not the Spirit of the world, but the
39:33: Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the
39:43: Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. Do you see what Paul is saying here? Paul is saying that when a faithful minister stands up to preach the
39:54: Word of God, when the church gathers, he's not doing that according to human wisdom, not human cunning, not silly stories or anecdotes.
40:03: He's not just peppering in a Bible verse here and wrapping it around his wonderfully articulated stories.
40:11: But when that man stands up to preach and to teach the truth of the Word of God, he's not standing up at his own power and his own strength and his own creativity.
40:19: What he is sharing was given by God, and it's in the Word of God, and then the Spirit infuses those sermons with life.
40:28: The Spirit uses sermons like that that are thoroughly grounded in the Word of God and thoroughly taught in a way that's consistent with the
40:36: Word of God. The Spirit infuses that teaching, and he teaches the church through sermons like that, and he combines his spiritual power with sermons like that, and he writes those truths on the hearts of the believers with sermons like that.
40:50: Paul is saying that something happens beyond the physical, beyond the frame of the body of the man when the
40:59: Spirit is using his preaching to edify and challenge and to encourage the people of God. One of my favorite ministers has died a while ago.
41:08: His name is Martin Lloyd -Jones. He was a thin, wiry Welsh man. He was a surgeon before he became a pastor, and when he walked up into the pulpit, there was nothing at all special about him.
41:18: There was nothing pleasing to look at. He was a dour man, and he could barely even look over the pulpit of Westminster Chapel, and when he would open the
41:29: Word of God, something would happen to him. The Spirit of God would fall upon him, and over the course of his sermons, you would see him heating up and warming up, and they had this phrase for Martin Lloyd -Jones called logic on fire because he was a brilliant man, but as he would preach, the fire of God would descend upon this man, and he would just be on fire, and by the end of the sermon, everyone in that room was enraptured by the words that he was saying.
42:01: It wasn't because of Lloyd -Jones' brilliance. It wasn't because of his accent. It wasn't because of his thin, wiry frame.
42:07: It wasn't because of his balding head. It wasn't because of his big brain, and it wasn't because of his communication style or his delivery.
42:14: It was because the Spirit of God descended down upon that man, and his words had power and authority outside of himself.
42:22: It was because the Spirit of God was pleased to come upon that man and to use that man's sermons for the edification of the church, and Westminster Chapel was a faithful church for many decades.
42:33: Many people grew under the ministry of those sermons because they weren't Lloyd -Jones' sermons.
42:38: They were sermons infused with the power of the Spirit of God. That's what
42:44: I pray for our church. I pray that any man that stands in the pulpit at our church would not stand in his own creativity, in his own imagination, in his own silly little stories.
42:56: Any comic can go and try to moonlight at night and share their little anecdotes.
43:02: That is not what preaching is. Preaching is being surrendered under the authority of the Word of God and begging
43:08: God like crazy to have his Spirit come down upon that sermon and to write that sermon on everyone's hearts, even the minister.
43:16: There are times when I've been preaching where I feel like Kindle has just ended and the
43:22: Spirit of God has begun. And as words are coming out of my mouth, it is a crazy experience because I feel, literally, as I'm speaking those words, that this is not me.
43:34: This is the Spirit. I didn't write this down. And even as I'm speaking, those words are cutting at my heart and they're ministering to me.
43:43: And I pray to the Lord that the Lord would use such a broken instrument as me or anyone who stands up in our pulpit and He would use such crass objects for His glory.
43:57: And that only happens when He comes down and He infuses those sermons, when
44:03: He infuses those words with His power because there's nothing special about me, there's nothing special about Derek, and there's nothing special about any human preacher.
44:16: If you can attribute the majority of energy, effort, fruit to a man, if you can say that the reason his ministry is successful is because he's a good communicator, then
44:33: I want nothing to do with that ministry. I want nothing to do with a ministry where the majority of the glory can come back to a man.
44:43: What pitiful glory that would be. What I'm far more interested is a man who's been captivated by the
44:52: Spirit of God, a man who has been captivated by the Word of God and a man whose sermons are greater than himself and there's another power at work in his sermons, more than just his own imagination and power.
45:05: That's what I wanna see. That's what I want for my life. That's what I want for our church. John the
45:13: Baptist has this wonderful little phrase when he's asked about Jesus, he says, he must become greater and I must become less.
45:20: And I often, I know this verse doesn't apply to preaching, but in a way it kind of does because John the
45:25: Baptist was a preacher. But I think about this verse a lot when it comes to preaching.
45:31: I think about how as I'm standing up to give the message to you guys that I wanna become less.
45:42: I want people looking to be able to not even see me because they're so enraptured by what the
45:49: Spirit of God is doing that I fade completely away. That me and my portly white
45:55: American body would just disappear in light of what the Spirit of God is doing. That is what
46:00: I want every single time that I preach. I don't want glory. I don't want praise.
46:05: I don't want honor. I just want Jesus to be known. And I know that I can't do that work.
46:12: None of us can. It is only the Spirit of God who writes the word of God on our hearts and I pray for that for our church.
46:21: What Paul is saying is that something is happening in the sermon that is beyond physical and he reiterates that in 1
46:28: Corinthians 2, 1 through 5 where he says, and when I came to you, brethren,
46:34: I didn't come with superiority of speech or of wisdom proclaiming to you the testimony of God for I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
46:46: I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom but in the demonstration of the
46:58: Spirit and of power so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men but on the power of God.
47:09: Paul's saying that there is something totally unique and utterly different about a biblical sermon.
47:19: True biblical preaching is not concerned with the mechanisms, the mannerisms, or the methods of this world.
47:25: It is not concerned with trying to manipulate people into a feeling. But it is concerned only with communicating the truth of God and the power of the
47:37: Spirit of God. And I believe that God blesses that kind of preaching.
47:44: I believe that He feeds the church with that kind of preaching. I believe that He teaches and that He equips and that He instructs and that He motivates, captivates, cripples, cuts, establish, humbles, and He builds up the church with that kind of gospel preaching.
48:00: We know that's what Paul meant when we look at a verse like 2 Timothy 3, 16 through 17 where he says, all scripture is inspired by God and it's profitable for teaching and for reproof and for correction and for training up in righteousness, which is just another way of Paul saying preaching.
48:20: Paul's saying that the scriptures are inspired by God. Amen. And as we read them individually in our own homes, they are inspired words breathed out by God.
48:32: But Paul, look at what he says. He says that they're profitable for teaching them, for preaching them.
48:38: Paul says that the inspired word of God is useful to preach and it has power when it is preached and it will reprove the sullen soul of man when it is preached.
48:50: It will correct the wayward heart of men and women when it is preached. It will train up the believers to live lives of righteousness when it is preached.
49:00: Why? What's the point of it? What's the point of the
49:06: Spirit's power in a sermon? Why is Paul even mentioning all of these things? He says it in verse 17.
49:12: So that the man of God, so that the woman of God, so that the child of God may be adequate and equipped for every good work.
49:22: True biblical preaching equips the congregation for the wonderful work of God. Did you know that God has work for you to do in your life that he wants to equip you in the church to do?
49:35: And he's using sermons to equip people for mission. If you look at a pastor whose congregation never grows and they constantly stay in perpetual immaturity, it may be, as we've already discussed, that the
49:51: Spirit of God has removed his power and it also may be that the pastor is less concerned with biblical truth and more concerned with mechanics and methods and stories and anecdotes and he's lost his way.
50:05: And one day, he'll have to stand before the living God and give an account for why his sermons had no power.
50:11: Because they were offensive to the Spirit of God and they evoked the wrath of the Spirit of God so much so that the
50:16: Spirit of God abandoned that man in his ministry. You see, there's no power in that kind of preaching.
50:22: There's no life change and there's no spirit in that kind of preaching. And sadly, if you look out across the cemetery of American Christianity and all the watered -down, lifeless, soulless, spiritless preaching that is going on today in the
50:36: American church, you'll have no doubt why the church is dead. You see, just like the church has no life without the
50:47: Spirit, the sermon has no life without the Spirit and it's no good, no value to the people of God in that sorry, sordid condition.
50:58: So even as I speak to you, I want to humbly throw myself at the mercy of God here. I want to pray that I'm never impressed with myself, never consumed with anything other than the truth of Jesus Christ, not with worldly wisdom or man -centered tactics or efforts, because if I sacrifice the
51:20: Word of God to have all of those worldly things, then not only
51:26: I will stand before the judgment seat of Christ and have to give an account for my foolishness, but each and every single one of us are going to suffer because the
51:35: Lord God uses the preached Word of God to grow the people of God.
51:41: I thoroughly believe that. So what we're seeing in this text is to be the church.
51:49: Spirit must animate the church. He must create the church and give it life and he must seal the church. He must guide the church into righteousness.
51:57: He must teach the church from the Bible so that it would be strengthened and it would grow up into maturity.
52:05: That's what it means for us to be the church and the spirit when we see his power coming alive and all of those things.
52:13: It also leads to our fifth point that it's the spirit who sanctifies the church. Again, Paul teaches us about what it means to be the church and the spirit in 2
52:23: Thessalonians 2, 13 when he says, but we should always give thanks to God for you.
52:29: That's the church he's speaking to, the church at Thessalonica. But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren.
52:37: Beloved by the Lord because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the spirit and faith in the truth.
52:52: Paul tells us that we, the church, not just the church at Thessalonica, we know that this is a general statement about the church.
53:02: So this applies to us at Shepherds. Paul tells us that we, the church, must give thanks to God not only because God has chosen us for salvation while we were dead in our trespasses, but that he has also chosen to give us his spirit for sanctification, which just means that God has given us, every single one of us, his spirit to make us holy, to sanctify us means to make us holy, to purify us, to set us apart, to make us grow in godliness and righteousness.
53:39: That's what Paul is saying. The spirit of God was not only given as a down payment on eternity, but he was also given as a guarantee that you and I would grow in this life right now.
53:55: Peter says roughly the same thing in his first epistle right at the very beginning, verses one and two, when he's introducing his content to the church that he's writing to, he says, to those who reside as aliens, as foreigners in this world, scattered throughout the various regions, who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the
54:16: Father by the sanctifying work of the spirit to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood.
54:24: May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure. Peter is saying that we are chosen by God to be sanctified and to be made holy, not just as individuals, but as the church that we have been called out of the world as aliens and that we are now called out of the world according to God's infinite intelligence and his foreknowledge so that we can be empowered by the spirit.
54:48: It says in the passage that we were chosen according to the foreknowledge of God by the sanctifying work of the spirit.
54:55: That means that one of the evidences that we have been justified is that we are being sanctified. One of the evidences that God has done a work in our life is that we are growing in the grace of Jesus Christ, that we are empowered by the spirit.
55:08: Why? Why is he doing this? So that all of us together would grow in the grace of Jesus Christ so that we would learn to obey
55:15: Jesus Christ, that we would learn to obey his word, that we would learn to grow holy, and that our hearts and our affections would be more concerned with Christ than with the world, that we would love his word more than we love anything else, that we would begin to hate our sin more than anything else in our life, and that we would repent and that we would rejoice and that we would worship and that we would grow more in love with Jesus every single day.
55:36: The Holy Spirit is involved in our lives as a church and as individuals to show us that we really have been saved.
55:46: His activity in our life is there as evidence that we really are in the faith.
55:52: So to both Peter and Paul, the Spirit was given not only to animate us and seal us and guide us and teach us, but to also show us that he is alive and well in our life to make us obedient followers of Jesus Christ who experienced the grace and the peace of Christ through our sanctification in the greatest measure.
56:11: That's how Peter ends it. May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure. Why? Because you have the
56:16: Spirit of God inside of you, brother and sister. You experience the goodness of God because of the
56:23: Spirit of God in you, brother and sister. He bought and purchased us, the church, so that we would be holy, so that we would be set apart from the world, loving
56:33: Jesus, obeying Jesus. Why? So that we would be effective missionaries in the world, which is our sixth point.
56:40: How can we be the church of God in the Spirit? We must know that in light of everything that we've just shared, that the
56:47: Spirit of God is also equipping us for mission. Jesus says in Acts 1 .8
56:53: .2, the disciples, right before he ascends to heaven, to the ones that he is leaving behind, to the ones who were going to be waiting, gathered and huddled together in an upper room in the city of Jerusalem, Jesus tells them this, but you will receive power when the
57:10: Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all
57:16: Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest parts of the earth. And while this message was given from Jesus to his disciples, it applies to us as well, because we belong to the church.
57:32: We belong to the gathering of the people of God. We belong to the people that the Holy Spirit has bought, purchased, and paid for, and we have been given a mission directly from the mouth of Christ to not only be a gathering people, but also a scattering people, a people who take the message of the gospel, a people who share the truth of Christ with others, a people who witness to the resurrection, a people who are not only living in the power and the ability and the strength of the
57:58: Spirit, but they're also going and telling others about that power and strength and ability of the Spirit. You see, we share that power with others.
58:09: We speak about that power with others. We share the gospel and that power and that strength with the world who has no power and has no strength, which tells us that the whole church, all of it, every member is called to be a missionary for Jesus.
58:23: Jesus says, you, meaning all of you, will receive power. There is no disempowered
58:31: Christian. There is no Christian that has no power. There is no weak
58:36: Christian. There is no incapable or unqualified Christian, because if you are a
58:44: Christian, then you have received power. You've been empowered by the
58:50: Spirit of God to do the work that God has called you to do. No excuses needed. You have it.
58:57: The question is whether you believe it. The question is if you want to continue to sit in excuses and continue to tell yourself lies that the enemy wants you to believe that I am weak, that I am not empowered, that I am not qualified, that I am not this, that I am not that.
59:14: You can live in those lies, but I'll let you know right now that they're not from God. They're from the devil, because if you're a
59:22: Christian and you have the Spirit of God, you receive power, which leads to our final point today.
59:30: We're not only called to be missionaries to the world, but we're also gifted by the Spirit of God to love and serve in the church, and we know that we're supposed to serve in the church because of what the
59:42: Holy Spirit has revealed to us in His Word, and that is that He endows the church with gifts.
59:51: That's our final point, and it comes out of many passages in the New Testament. Last week, we looked at Romans 12.
59:57: Today, I want us to look at 1 Corinthians 12, where Paul says this. Now, there are many gifts, but the same
01:00:04: Spirit. There are many varieties of ministry and the same Lord. There are many varieties of effects, but the same
01:00:11: God who works all things in all persons, but each one is given the manifestation of the
01:00:18: Spirit for the common good. So what we're seeing is that every single
01:00:24: Christian, tall, small, new and old, young and mature, all of us, have been given the Spirit of God to give us power and to give us gifts that we are meant to use in order to love and to serve the church.
01:00:40: If you have never served in the church, then you are living below your purpose because God gave you a gift so that you would use it for the good and for the church, for the common good.
01:00:52: That's what Paul says. Now, we're not going to be able to dive into these gifts right now, which
01:00:58: Paul lays out later. It's a wonderful topic, and it's a topic for another sermon or series of sermons.
01:01:05: What I want us to do right now is to end the way that we began. I want us to talk about a general high -level approach here, simply acknowledging that it is the
01:01:13: Spirit of God who equips the church to love and serve one another. It's the Holy Spirit who equips individual believers to bless the church by using their talents and their gifts to serve one another.
01:01:25: By the biblical standard, the church is not an event led by a charismatic teacher. It is not a concert with worship leaders throwing up their hands and shaking their hips.
01:01:34: It is a living body, a collection of people who have all been empowered by the
01:01:40: Spirit of God to serve. Some to teach, some to preach, some to sing, some to give, some to encourage, some to counsel, some to greet, some to be hospitable, some to bless the community of faith by having big, awesome, gracious faith.
01:01:58: We've all been given a gift in order to serve, and we all have a responsibility to understand what that gift is and to use that gift to serve the body of Christ.
01:02:07: If you don't know what your gift is, find it out. Read Romans 12. Read 1 Corinthians 12.
01:02:13: Read Ephesians 4. And know that those lists aren't exhaustive, that there are gifts that Paul doesn't mention.
01:02:20: He's just giving examples here. But there's something that God has gifted you with in order to equip you to serve the church, and I think that we have a responsibility not only to know that but to employ that and to use that.
01:02:35: We've all been given a gift so that we can love and serve the body of Christ, and that is what it means to be the church. We are a people.
01:02:43: We'll end with this. We are a people who've been made alive by the
01:02:48: Spirit of God. Without the Spirit, there is no life in the church. And a church that's animated by the
01:02:56: Spirit is also sealed until eternity by the Spirit, is also guided by the
01:03:03: Spirit in our day -to -day lives and when we gather. And we are taught by the
01:03:09: Spirit, pointed to the truth of Christ by the Spirit. We are sanctified in that truth by the
01:03:16: Spirit so that we grow to be holy by that same Spirit. We are equipped by the Spirit for missionary work in the world to the nations, and we are endowed by the
01:03:24: Spirit of God and given spiritual gifts by the Spirit of God so that we can love and serve the church.
01:03:31: To say that the Spirit of God is necessary for the church is perhaps the greatest understatement that could ever be made.
01:03:39: Everything we do, everything, is wholly and wonderfully dependent upon the
01:03:47: Spirit of God. We don't need ecstatic spiritual circumstances in order to see the Spirit moving.
01:03:53: Everything that happens in the church is a result of His power and His work in our lives.
01:04:00: To be the church, it's the point of the series, right? To be the church is to be a thoroughly
01:04:06: Spirit -infused and saturated enterprise. Everything we're called to do, we need the
01:04:13: Spirit of God to accomplish. And that is where we will end our time today, realizing that we, the church, exist by the
01:04:23: Spirit. We move by the Spirit. We cannot be the church without the Spirit. And you and I are in desperate need, both individually and corporately, to be under the authority and the power and the direction of the
01:04:37: Spirit of God. So let us pray. Lord Jesus, I thank
01:04:45: You so much that You did not just come and die and pay for my sins and set me back on an even slate with God and just leave me and abandon me to my own devices.
01:04:59: Lord, I know so many Christians treat their faith that way. That You came and forgave them of everything so that they could just go and live their lives.
01:05:08: You're like the divine cheat code. Lord, I pray against that for us.
01:05:16: Lord, I pray that we would have a big view of the Spirit. That we would see the triune
01:05:23: God at work in our life. That God the Father predestined us for salvation. That Jesus Christ purchased our salvation and the
01:05:31: Holy Spirit is working out our salvation. That He's working out our salvation not as a group of individuals but as a corporate body of believers who are gathered together under the banner of Christ and His Gospel.
01:05:46: That we would understand that we are sealed by the Spirit and protected until Jesus returns. That we are guided by the
01:05:52: Spirit until Jesus returns. That we are taught by the Spirit until Jesus returns. That we are equipped for mission so that other people can hear the
01:06:01: Gospel until Jesus returns. And that we are empowered by the Spirit to love and serve one another until Jesus returns and when
01:06:08: He returns. Lord, we will know that all of this ministry that you sent your
01:06:14: Spirit to accomplish was not useless. And this ministry was not optional even.
01:06:25: I think, Lord, sometimes that we treat your church like it's well, I'll go if I don't have anything else going on.
01:06:34: Or, you know, wow, really stinks this week. I'm tired and I don't want to get dressed so I'm not going to go to church.
01:06:41: But that's okay, I'll tune in on a live stream. Lord, I pray that against such low views of what you died for.
01:06:53: Lord, I pray that we would make every effort as a body of people to not be estranged from one another.
01:07:01: Lord, I pray that we would see the value of being gathered together wherever that is.
01:07:07: If it's in a building or if it's outside or if it's on an online screen. Lord, I pray that you would convince us that you are accomplishing eternal things when we gather.
01:07:20: That these are dress rehearsals for eternity when we gather. And Lord, God, I just pray that that you would convince us of the depth and the beauty of what you're doing in your power,
01:07:34: Holy Spirit, when we gather. And that, Lord, we would have a high view, a high view, a reverent view of the gathered people of God.
01:07:46: Lord, that's what I pray. And Lord, I pray for every single person right now who is saddened and frustrated by this coronavirus.
01:07:56: Lord, I pray that you would, by the power of your Holy Spirit, even as we can't gather and experience some of your wonderful graces that you make available to us when we gather,
01:08:08: Holy Spirit, I do pray that you would minister to our people and that you would build them up.
01:08:14: You would cause them to have joy and peace and hope in this very strange time that we live.
01:08:23: Lord, I ask those things with confidence, knowing that only you can accomplish them. In Jesus' name, amen.