Third Person Singular
Jonathan Anderson & #8364; August 10, 2003
SING
“People Need The Lord” / OPENING PRAYER
My dear brother Brian is a man of the Word; you are fortunate to have him as your pastor, because he stands firm in the Truth of Scripture; he lives by it here, and he defends it when in fellowship with clergy and lay leaders in regional settings.
I am going to make the assumption that this is a fairly conservative congregation. This morning I want talk about something that has been sorely neglected in modern Methodist discipleship (although it is certainly a precious part of your own pastor’s spiritual life)…and that is the HOLY SPIRIT.
But before I can talk about the Holy Spirit, I want to make sure we’re
all on the same page. So I have to ask you… “Have you been born again?”
Oh, maybe you’ve gone to church all your life; maybe you volunteer
for work parties and take meals to the sick; maybe you give of your income and
donate to charities; you probably cherish favorite Bible Stories and believe the
core doctrines of the Christian faith. BUT HAVE YOU BEEN BORN AGAIN?
“
ß Have you recognized the
deity and lordship of Jesus Christ and submitted to that Lordship yourself?
ß Have you
confessed your sins, repented of your rebellion against God, and crucified your
self-will on the cross?
ß Have you surrendered your pride, even your shame, and allowed Jesus
into your heart to breath New Life into a sin-sick soul?
ß Have you heard him whisper those words
of assurance to your heart, ‘You are my precious child; I love you; I died to
pay the price and redeem you from hell; you are mine, I have chosen you; be now
One in the Spirit with Me and the Father.”
You might be fairly schooled in
what the Bible says about quite a few things. You might even BELIEVE IN
what scripture says about Jesus. But even the demons know who
Jesus is and what he’s done…the question isn’t what you know ABOUT God or
ABOUT being a Christian. The question is whether you KNOW the One who it’s
all ABOUT!
Remember, Jesus said, [Matthew 7:22-23]
Many will say to me
on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name
drive out demons and perform many miracles?' yet Jesus warned, I will
tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away ffrom me you evil doers!!'
Do you KNOW JESUS? TRY THIS: you can DESCRIBE your relationship with
parents, spouse, children, classmates, coworkers, teachers, bosses, neighbors,
even enemies. Think of some now. You can describe having a BAD
relationship as well as a GOOD one, or a DISTANT relationship as well as one
that is INTIMATE.
ß If
you asked me to describe my “relationship” with the neighbor to the west of our
house, I couldn’t. WE DON’T HAVE A RELATIONSHIP!
ß It’s the same as if you asked me about
my relationship with George W. Bush. I know a few things ABOUT him; I
BELIEVE that he’s a good president, etc. But I don’t have a relationship
with him.
ß So if I ask
you to describe your relationship with Jesus Christ, if you draw a blank, it
probably means that YOU DON’T HAVE any relationship to speak of. Oh, you
might know quite a few things about him, you might even believe everything the
Bible says about him. But even the demons know who He is and what he’s
done.
Knowing Jesus PERSONALLY begins by accepting him not only with your
HEAD but by receiving him into your HEART as Savior AND Lord. And if you’ve
never done that, EVEN IF YOU’VE GONE TO CHURCH FOR YEARS, or IF TODAY WERE TO BE
THE FIRST TIME YOU EVER SET FOOT IN ONE…today, by the end of this message, you
will have an opportunity to BE SURE. If you ARE sure, I want to speak to you
about the Holy Spirit. If you’re NOT sure whether Jesus is your Lord,
listen and whet your appetite.
SCRIPTURE TEACHES that the Holy Spirit is the
OTHER SIDE OF THE SAME COIN as receiving Jesus into your heart. Listen to
what the Risen Jesus told his disciples, AFTER Easter, but BEFORE Pentecost
[Acts 1:3-8]:
"Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you
have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you
will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."
So when they met together, they
asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"
He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the
Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy
Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea
and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
Now, I knew GOD THE FATHER growing up. And though I was water-baptized the Philomath UM Church in Junior High, I didn’t literally meet JESUS THE SON until I was about 25. In a
profound, personal encounter, God halted my downward spiral and redeemed me from
the pit of despair; I entered a journey toward wholeness, and I collapsed into
His strong arms!
Even though I had a number of mountaintop experiences over
the years that helped deepen and sustain my faith, the concrete intimacy of that
first encounter with the Risen Jesus DID FADE with time. My prayer-life
the first two years that I pastored in Idaho had been marked by a growing hunger
to once again know that direct, personal intimacy with Jesus.
But I didn’t want “just another mountaintop.” I wanted a
daily intimacy with God in the place where life is lived every day…in
the valley! I wanted to feel him close to me when I was in the muck and mire
of ministry and daily living!
I attended a Pastor’s Prayer Summit with about
80 pastors from the Treasure Valley between Ontario Oregon and Boise.
There were only three U.M.s, all from the weekly prayer group I’d been
attending at CLF in Ontario, pastored by A.G. minister Jack Becker (Jim Woods’
son Tim was a part of that group). When I returned from that, I
knew what I wanted…I wanted to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit,
evidenced by the presence of tongues (but I also desired any other gift the Lord
would release into my life!).
And so, after Wednesday morning pastor’s prayer
on May 17, 2000 (ALMOST 20 years to the 20th anniversary of Mt. St. Helens), I
met with a Foursquare pastor and he prayed with me to receive the baptism of the
Holy Spirit. Not much happened immediately, but by the end of the week I
found myself praising and crying out to God in some strange language…but I also
began interacting with people in a deeper, more powerful way.
To help me prepare for today’s message, I listened to my sermon tapes from June 2000. I
heard a great depth of COMpassion and sensitivity in presenting this THIRD
PERSON of the Trinity to a wary people, many of whom had never heard a sermon ON
the Holy Spirit before, let alone had never seen the Holy Spirit’s power descend
upon someone!
As I listened to those tapes, I REMEMBERED what a gentleman the
Holy Spirit is. I REMEMERED how tender and sweet He is. And I began
to REMEMBER how much I want to be available FULL TIME to soak in His presence
and to minister in His power! I began to desire once more to court and be
courted by the Lover of my soul.
It’s important to emphasize the Holy Spirit
as the THIRD PERSON of the Trinity: Father Son and Holy Spirit are ONE
GOD but THREE DISTINCT PERSONS. The Holy Spirit is not some ethereal “life
force.” Perhaps many of us were weaned on the term “Holy GHOST”—but he’s anything but a phantom!
The entire Bible is about God’s unwavering
desire and attempt to relate to humanity face-to-face; and it’s about humanity’s
propensity for making God’s offer of RELATIONSHIP into a RELIGION. That’s
PART of the reason why God came to us PHYSICALLY, in Jesus the Christ, so that
we could know God AS A PERSON.
But human life is short, so coming to us in
the Flesh could really only be an introduction. That’s why toward
the end, Jesus told his disciples:
“I will not be with you much
longer; but my Father will send his Holy Spirit to walk with you forever.”
Because the Holy Spirit is a PERSON, not a concept—knowing him must be an
experience. Not a passive experience, like witnessing a
beautiful sunset, which quickly becomes a mental memory, but dynamic
experience, like any true relationship between persons: parent/child,
husband/wife, Good Shepherd/sheep.
This EXPERIENCE which people of
charismatic or Pentecostal faith rightly identity as “the baptism of the Holy
Spirit” remains largely ALIEN and unwelcomed in the old wineskins of “mainline”
institutions (Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Lutheran).
I want
to tell you about David du Plessis: He was a Pentecostal pastor from South Africa who became an international spokesman and lecturer. On one occasion, he’d been talking to a group of Episcopalian clergymen for about a half-hour about the Pentecostal experience of the Holy Spirit when one of the priests stood up suddenly as though a nerve had been struck. With quavering voice flush with emotion, the clergyman asked:
“Mr. du
Plessis, are you telling us that you Pentecostals have the truth, and we other churches do not?”
[Believe me, I know how David du Plessis felt…for I’ve
been accused of that very thing.]
Praying on his feet, Rev. du Plessis replied, “No, I believe we BOTH hold the same truth…but we HANDLE it differently. Let me try to illustrate: When my wife and I moved to America we bought…a deep freeze, and there we kept some rather fine Texas beef.
Now, we can take one of those steaks out and lay it, frozen solid, on the
table. It’s a steak, all right, no question of that. You and I can
sit around and analyze it: we can discuss its lineage, its age, what part
of the steer it comes from. We can weigh it and list its nutritional
values.
“BUT, when I put that steak on the grill, something different begins
to happen. [It starts to sizzle and smoke and] my little boy smells it
from way out in the yard and comes shouting, ‘Gee, that smells good!
Can I have some?’
“Gentlemen,” David du Plessis said, “that is the difference between our ways of handling the SAME TRUTH, the same Lord, the same Baptism, the same Holy Spirit: You have yours on ice; we have ours on fire.”
With tongue-in-cheek, we’re tempted to describe some
congregations as “GOD’S FROZEN FEW.” But of the denominations which
today could be characterized as “Pentecostal”—like A.G., Foursquare, Church of
God—many began as movements within Wesley’s Methodism, not the least of
which is the Assemblies of God which owes direct homage to Wesley’s holy fire
for Christ! Indeed, elements of what would be shunned by 20th Century
mainline churches as “raving Pentecostalism” were actually an intimate part of
early Methodist revival:
John Wesley wrote in his Journal (regarding
speaking in tongues, dancing and lifting hands, being “slain in the spirit”,
prophesies, healings, and the like):
“The danger is to regard these things
too little, or to condemn them altogether; to imagine that God is not in them
and that they are a hindrance to God’s work. Whereas the truth is:
“God
has suddenly and strongly convicted many that they were lost sinners, and the
natural consequences were sudden outcries and strong bodily reactions;
“These manifestations have strengthened and encouraged the believer, [built up the
church]; and made God’s work more apparent [to unbelievers].”
John Wesley
was an Episcopal priest: intellectual, university-educated at Oxford, a
stiff-upper-lipped Brit. But he became the founder of the most powerful
revival movement since the spread of the Early Church! (That is, until this
century, when A.G. world missions can count a global adherence of over 50
MILLION). Wesley was NOT “mainline.” Indeed, he was
eventually censured, not allowed to preach from Episcopal pulpits. But he
just went outside…even preaching from his father’s tombstone…and spoke to the
masses, where he found a hungry audience in the hoards of people written off by
the “good Church folk”…a field ripe for the harvest.
The founder of my Alma Matter was a “rebel-rousin’ radical rev”! And I am proud to trace my spiritual lineage through him.
There’s a modern Episcopal priest who has been
called the father of the modern charismatic movement within Mainline
Protestantism (a RENEWAL movement, as opposed to splitting off and forging a
NEW denomination). His name is Dennis Bennett. In one of
Bennett’s books, he emphasizes that every Christian receives the Holy Spirit
at the time that they first believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and
accept Him as their Lord and Savior—regardless of whether they FEEL anything at
that moment.
That’s good news for people like me, who accepted Jesus when
I was an adolescent, but didn’t meet Him personally until I was 25.
Bennett also emphasizes that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is not just for some...it
is to be desired and earnestly pursued by ALL Christians. Further,
it’s not receiving something IN ADDITION to salvation…rather, it is a RELEASE of
the Spirit that has been within them since they first believed! Like
having received a Christmas gift but having never unwrapped it!
And
while the baptism of the Holy Spirit is not necessary for salvation, it IS
prerequisite for full empowerment for ministry and boldness in
preaching.
Acts 1 [Jesus had told the disciples:] John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit…[and]
you will receive power…[to] be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea
and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
Acts 3 [When the
Sanhedrin lambasted Peter and John for healing a paralytic, Peter challenged
them to]: “Repent…and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out,
that times of refreshing may come from the Lord….”
Acts 4 [Later that night the whole Body of believers prayed]: “Lord…enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant
Jesus." After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was
shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
Mark Rutland is president of Southeastern University,
an A.G. college in Florida. I have a particular interest in what he has to say about the Holy SPirit because Dr. Rutland is, himself, a former United Methodist
preacher. He had been indoctrinated against and adamantly denounced the
Gifts of the Holy Spirit as being available and operative today—that was supposed to be left in the Bible as an historical curiosity!
Rutland remembered feeling a personal and congregational futility that I knew only too well before receiving the Holy Spirit: That is, “FEELING POWERLESS AND NOT KNOWING WHY.”
Do YOU feel that way in your Christian Walk?
Powerless, but not sure why?
I dare say it has a whole lot to do with being a Christian in full possession of the Holy Spirit, but being so socially conditioned to “keep it all together” that there’s no chance for the Holy Spirit to be in possession of YOU. I have to acknowledge that a
NON-CHARISMATIC CULTURE was so ingrained in ME, it took nine years of gentle
preparing, tilling, hunger-building faith development even AFTER the
life-changing, born-again conversion in 1991 for God to grow in me a desire
and receptivity for the RELEASE of the Holy Spirit (which has actually dwelt
in me since my 7th Grade baptism). It’s probably just much harder
for people who have been Christians for years WITHOUT the gifts of the Holy
Spirit to receive that outpouring than it is for totally unchurched,
new-believers who come into Born-Again faith without any of that church-culture
baggage.
Today is as good an opportunity as any to seek and
receive the Baptism of the Holy Spirit…and to know it is loosed as evidenced by
the reception of a prayer language or an tongue you otherwise don’t know…and to
inaugurate in you OTHER gifts of the Holy Spirit such as Prophecy, Healing, even
Miracles.
However, AS I SAID BEFORE, THE HOLY SPIRIT IS A GENTLEMAN, and
he will not cause discord or chaos; no, he is the creation agent that brought
Chaos into Order!
So, before I would challenge and encourage people to
seek baptism in the Holy Spirit, it MUST be established in the your heart
whether you have even yet been born again…especially when preaching to people
who have “been church-goers their whole lives,” but, as Mark Rutland said,
“they know they are powerless but don’t know why! And that goes
deeper even than not having allowed the Holy Spirit to come out of that wrapped
gift-box. It may be as deep as having never been born again in the first place, even if you’ve called yourself a Christian for years.
As I commented earlier, I was water-baptized when I was in 7th grade. I’d been in a
confirmation class taught by my dad, and I remember asking Jesus into my heart as that day approached…but I also remember praying the very next day, “I don’t
know if I’m ready yet, Jesus, maybe you should just come back out.” Certainly in
the years that followed, I often lived as though he WASN’T in my heart.
ß Desperate for
affection, I gave away my purity in high school.
ß Desperate for acceptance, I became a
workaholic and became addicted to climbing the ladder to professional
success.
ß Grieving the distance this caused in family I KNEW was God’s divine gift, I began drinking heavily and working even more.
Until one night in 1991, I came home after one of my typical 14 hour days. Feeling like a wretched, absent husband and father, I numbly took 3 month old Gabriel from an equally numb Marci, put a tape in the stereo, and sat down to rock this little child that I didn’t
know.
[When his sister was that age, I was a playful, loving
dad…and after God got a hold of me I became a good dad again. But this was
my darkest season of life.]
Anyway I put this tape in; it was a collection of Steve Green songs that our church choir director had given me two years earlier because I had been interested in singing a solo at church; but I had never listened to it until that night.
Then, every song, in the order that they
played, resonated with my desperate soul… PEOPLE NEED THE LORD…that was one of
the first, and he sang about MY SILENT CRIES! Then he sang about this
joy…where did it come from? How could I get it?
HAVE MUSIC START PLAYING
And finally he sang the song I’d like to share with you
now…and I was never the same again…
SING “I CAN SEE”
All at once he walked
beside me, like he’d been there all along,
Not a stranger, but a brother, who
can sense when something’s wrong.
And he answered all my questions, and he
understood my fears that somehow vanished now that he was here.
Can’t you see
who walks with you?
Can’t you hear who speaks your name?
Can’t you feel
something stirring in your heart?
How the words ring strong and true, like a
once familiar strain.
Can’t the paths we follow from now on be the
same?
I couldn’t bear for him to leave me, so I begged him, please, to stay
for the evening, a few moments, before he went his way.
Then like a host
he stood and blessed me,
Broke the bread and poured the wine,
And I knew
there was something there I recognized…
Yes! I can see who walks with
me! I can hear who speaks my name!
I can feel something stirring in my
heart!
How his words ring strong and true, like a once familiar strain.
And I know I’ll never be the same. I can see!
And from the moment
in time, I felt the emptiness subside and all the wonder of creation shining
through.
And for the first time in my life, I really looked into his eyes and
saw eternity, and suddenly I knew…
Yes, I can see. I can see who walks
with me!
I can hear who speaks my name!
I can feel something stirring in my heart!
How his words still ring strong and true, like a once familiar strain.
And I know I’ll never be the same.
I can see! I can see.
I can see….
Can YOU SEE? Do you WANT to? Listen to
Jesus…listen him calling. Hear him calling to your heart:
You can
belong to me. I cherish you, treasure you, love you completely.
Someday you’ll finally see, how precious you are in my eyes; how you’ve
never been out of my sight. I have loved you for all of your life. Come, and
belong to me.
Pastor Brian always provides opportunity at the end of the
service for people to spend time in prayer…and I believe there is a prayer
volunteer who could come forward at this time. I’d like to just open the
altar, and have us close the service with an opportunity for YOU TO BE SURE that
you’ve given your heart to Jesus. There’s no hurry…I don’t have to be anywhere and I can stay and pray with you. And if you do need to go, feel
free to do so during the postlude. But for those of you whose hearts may be burning, I do not want to send you away without an opportunity to quench your
thirsty soul at the Fountain of Living Water.
Have you met Jesus?
Have you been born again? Do you WANT TO KNOW HIM? I invite you to come forward and pour out your heart to God. And whether you come forward
or remain in your pew, I invite you to pray these words with me…
ß Realize and
admit that you are a sinner and that your unconfessed, unrepented sin keeps you
from being able to receive God’s free gift of salvation.
ß Confess your sin to God and
accept that he sent his Son Jesus to pay the price for your rebellion and to
redeem you from eternal separation from God.
ß Ask Jesus to come into your
heart not only to be your SAVIOR, but Surrender, Obey, and Submit to allow him
to become your LORD AND MASTER.
ß BELIEVE AND RECEIVE. Accept the free gift of eternal life
that God offers through Jesus and open it!
If you want that…or if you’re
not sure whether you have it…come, and believe God’s promises…come, and receive
his good gifts.
POSTLUDE MUSIC, ALTAR PRAYER
TIME.
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