Sunday, October 14, 2012
GOD IS ON THE SIDE OF THE THIRSTY SAINT
This
morning we will continue to think on, pray about, and seek the ministry of the
Holy Spirit. Two weeks ago I said we
were going to be looking at being filled with the Spirit. Wednesday evening I said we would plan to
take a fresh look at baptism in the Spirit.
Now I stand before you to say that we will not do either of those. I give you my apologies. The way I see it, I have two options: I can press on and pretend that I have it
altogether, that I have a thorough understanding of the ministry of the Spirit;
or I can be honest and confess to you that I myself desperately need to
experience far more of the Spirit’s ministry than I have tasted. I am choosing the latter road. If you conclude that a pastor ought to be
much farther along than I am, you are absolutely right. The only way I know to change that is to
honestly seek Him with all my heart.
You may
also get the idea that we aren’t making much progress, that we aren’t covering
much ground. Again, I suppose you would
be right. However, our goal is not to
cover ground. Our purpose is not to wrap
this thing up and say, “We have studied the ministry of the Holy Spirit.” What if we do that, but nothing has really
changed in our lives? That is what I
fear most of all. This seeking after the
ministry of the Spirit is no small thing.
If we can look squarely at the Holy Spirit as portrayed in the Word of
God and not be changed, what does that say?
It says we are on dangerous ground.
It puts us in company with the Pharisees, who, after carefully examining
the life of Jesus for three years, rejected Him.
My intent
is to deliberately slow us down, to encourage us to look not only at what the
Bible says about the Holy Spirit, but to look at our own lives and ask how the
Spirit is impacting the way we live day by day.
Brothers and sisters, for most of us that will not happen unless we
deliberately slow down and pray with purpose.
I. The Ministry of the Holy Spirit is Vital to
Our Lives
Let’s begin
this morning by reminding ourselves of this simple truth: The ministry of the Holy Spirit is vital to
our lives. There is no way that we can
be too strong on that truth. The
ministry of the Spirit is absolutely necessary in our lives. We need Him to work in and through us day by
day.
Let’s look
again at those foundational passages that we have been going over. John 14:15-20…
If you love
Me, keep My commandments. 16 And I will
pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with
you forever-- 17 the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because
it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and
will be in you. 18 I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. 19 A little
while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I
live, you will live also. 20 At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in
Me, and I in you.
Jesus told
them He would not leave them as orphans.
What did He mean by that? At that
point, they had walked with Jesus about three years. He was their everything. They couldn’t imagine facing life without
Him. To have Jesus leave them was like
being orphans, because He had been like father and mother to them. Jesus knew the pain they were experiencing,
as He began to tell them He would leave them.
But praise God, He would not leave them as orphans. Instead of leaving them as orphans, He would
come to them. But how? That’s what He has been saying. “I will ask the Father, and he will give you
another Helper (One like me).” Jesus
would come to them in the person of His Holy Spirit.
Without the
presence and work of the Spirit, we who know the Lord are like orphans in this
world. Why? Because this world is not our home. Jesus has delivered us from this present
world and our citizenship is in heaven.
Jesus said we are not of this world, just as He is not of this world. If we were of this world, the world would
love us, but we are not of this world. That
is why the world won’t claim us. We are
outcasts in this world. So what shall we
do? It’s not what we do; it’s what Jesus
did. He went to the cross, bearing our
sins in His own body. Then He rose from
the grave and ascended back to heaven.
From the right hand of the Father, He has sent His Spirit to live within
us. Yes, He really has come to us. Praise God for that marvelous truth.
Now let’s
read John
16:5-7…
But now I go away to Him who sent Me,
and none of you asks Me, 'Where are You going?' 6 But because I
have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. 7 Nevertheless I
tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go
away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.
We have
been over this a number of times, but let us be reminded again that when Jesus
departed and sent His Spirit, that was the best thing He could do for His
apostles. It was better that He depart
and send the Spirit than that He remain with them in the flesh. In the same way, it is to our advantage that
Jesus is not here in the flesh but is present with us through His Spirit. To a limited extent we might say that this is
heaven on earth. We experience what
Abraham, Moses, and Elijah never experienced.
A graphic
way to see the necessity of the Spirit in our lives is to compare Peter’s life
before Pentecost with his life afterward.
Though he had walked close beside Jesus for some time and had just said,
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Peter turned around and
rebuked that same Jesus. Do you remember
the story? After Peter’s great
confession, Jesus began to tell His apostles that He must go to Jerusalem and
suffer and die there. That’s when Peter
said, “No, Lord, it will never happen to you.”
His words and his heart were so far from that of His Master that Jesus
had to say, “Get behind me, Satan; you are an offense to me, for you do not set
your mind on the things of God but on the things of man.” It was that same Peter who later boasted that
though everyone else might deny Jesus, he would never do so. He would even be willing to die for
Jesus. Of course, we know that end of
that story. Just as Jesus predicted, he
denied His Master three times.
But then
came the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit of God was poured out on Peter and
the other 120 who were waiting for the promise from the Father. What a difference the coming of the Spirit
made in the life of Peter. He boldly
stood up before thousands and told them that the Jesus they had crucified was
both Lord and Messiah. Three thousand
were saved that day.
The
ministry of the Spirit is vital to the life of the Christian. Are we all agreed? If you disagree but are not willing to say so
in front of all these people, please come and talk to me. If you question this in your heart, let’s sit
down together and open God’s Word and see what else it says on the subject.
II. Various Views Concerning the Ministry of the
Spirit
Though most
all Christians will agree that we desperately need the ministry of the Spirit
in our lives, there are varying views concerning the specifics of that
ministry. We don’t have time to explore
all those views this morning, but let me say that there are two large opposing
camps when it comes to understanding the Holy Spirit. I am going to refer to these groups as the
charismatics and the fundamentalists. I
recognize that there are other viewpoints, but these two still represent very
large portions of the Christian population.
Most
charismatics would strongly maintain that all the gifts of the Spirit present
in the New Testament continue to operate in the church today. Most fundamentalists contend that certain New
Testament gifts of the Spirit ceased to function when the assembling of the New
Testament was completed. The
charismatics, including the various Pentecostal groups, commonly teach that
while all Christians have the Holy Spirit, believers should seek a second
experience most often referred to as “the baptism of the Spirit.” Most fundamentalists, on the other hand,
stress that all believers were baptized in the Spirit at conversion and there
is no genuine second experience.
Fundamentalists often see charismatics as being guilty of many abuses in
relation to the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Charismatics sometimes counter by saying that fundamentalists are
fundamentally dead. These two groups
have often opposed each other, sometimes bitterly. Many Christians will identify with one group
or the other, most often depending upon the background in which they were
raised.
Brothers,
and sisters, I want to encourage you to resist being forced into either
camp. Don’t let anyone tell you that you
have to fit in one or the other of these boxes.
I believe there is truth from both sides that we need to grasp. Charismatic groups have indeed often been
guilty of abuses, but it is also true that fundamentalists groups, with all
their right doctrine, have sometimes portrayed a living death. We don’t have to fit into either one of these
traps.
I can’t fit
into either one of these camps. Though I
was raised in a fundamentalist-leaning environment and often warned against the
abuses of the charismatics, I can’t espouse the fundamentalist teaching that
some of the gifts of the Spirit ceased with the completion of the New Testament
canon. I believe it is one of those
doctrines that arose as a justification of our lack of the Spirit’s power in
our current religious society. And I
confess that though there were times when I thought I had the Holy Spirit
figured out, the plain truth is, “I don’t.”
III. God Is on the Side of the Thirsty Saint
So we might
ask, “What about the Lord? Which side is
He on? That’s all that matters.” The Lord won’t fit into either camp. Rather, God is on the side of the thirsty
saint. I must confess that I borrowed
that little statement from an interview entitled “Can Evangelicalism Be
Saved?” A man named David Enlow was interviewing
A. W. Tozer in 1954. (I found it in Keys
to a Deeper Life, A. W. Tozer, p. 92).
When we
think of differing views concerning the ministry of the Spirit, don’t ever
forget that God is on the side of the thirsty saint. That thirsty saint may be a charismatic, or
he might be a fundamentalist. He might
not fit in either camp. But far more
important, he is thirsty to know God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. His practices may seem a bit strange to some;
or his theology may appear weak, but he is hungry for the living God.
The Lord
delights more in the thirsty saint than in the theologically orthodox. A person may be very sound in all his beliefs
and not be thirsty to know the Lord. On
the other hand, one may jump up and down and seemingly exercise gifts of the
Spirit and lack that all-encompassing longing for Jesus. The Lord is on the side of the thirsty
saint.
If the
Pharisees were here today, they could take the enthusiasm of the charismatics
and the doctrinal preciseness of the fundamentalists and roll them into
one. We are well aware that the
Pharisees were zealous for right doctrine.
They gave their lives to a study of God’s law. They read it, memorized it, meditated on it,
interpreted it, and taught it. No group
mentally grasped the law as well as the Pharisees. On the other hand, they were religious
enthusiasts. They zealously went after
God, though not according to knowledge.
They prayed, not being ashamed to pray to the Lord in public. They fasted consistently. They gave a tithe to God of everything they
possessed. Yes, they were both
fundamental and charismatic, but they were not thirsty for God. All the evidence we need is to hear them
accuse the very Son of God of casting out demons by the power of the
devil.
So what am
I saying? You can have great knowledge
of the Holy Spirit, understanding who He is and what e does, and still have
little or no experience of His presence and power. You can read a dozen books about the Holy
Spirit and be no better off for it. We
talk of the difference between knowing about God and knowing God, and so we
should. To many who know all about Him,
Jesus will say, “I never knew you; depart from me, you who work iniquity.” In the same way, there is a great difference
between knowing about the Holy Spirit and experiencing His presence and power.
It is also
possible for a person to talk about experiencing the power of the Spirit
without having the reality. He may raise
his hands in the worship service; he may often say, “God told me this or that;”
he may appear to be filled with a holy excitement, but such outward actions are
not necessarily a demonstration that he has a genuine hunger for the Lord.
Brothers
and sisters, nothing can substitute for that deep heart hunger. Yes, God is on the side of the thirsty
saint. But why? Because “blessed are they which do hunger and
thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled” (Matt. 5:6). Jesus said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him
come to me and drink. He who believes on
me, as the scripture has said, out of his innermost being will flow rivers of
living water” (John 7:37-38). John
then tells us that the whole process is the work of the Holy Spirit. “Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He
will give you the desires of your heart” (Ps. 37:4).
Listen to the words of the Lord from Is. 44:3, “For I will
pour water upon him who is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground.”
When we
hunger for the Lord and keep on hungering, we will not be disappointed. We will not be turned away. The Lord is not hiding from us. II Chron. 16:9, “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the
whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to
Him.” John 4:23, “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers
will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to
worship Him.” Heb. 11:6, “But
without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must
believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” The Lord is seeking people to hunger and
thirst after Him, and He will reward such thirsty saints with no less than
Himself.
Conclusion
Perhaps
that seems a bit simplistic to say, “The Lord is on the side of the thirsty
saint.” It is my conviction that there
is nothing more timely for us to hear.
But we already know that. How
many times have we talked about hungering and thirsting for the Lord? The issue isn’t how many times we have heard
it. The issue is simply: “Are we doing it?”
Realize
that there are key concepts about which every believer has to decide. For example, when we consider the gifts of the
Spirit, either all those gifts are for today or they aren’t for today. It’s one way or the other. And I cannot say that this is not an
important issue, because it is important.
We must seek to discern and believe the truth. However, we must understand that holding the
truth about the Holy Spirit and experiencing His presence and power are two
different things.
How do we
apply what we have heard this morning?
We believe the truth that there is nothing more important than thirsting
for the Lord. Yes, we should strive to
have the right beliefs, but if those beliefs do not cause us to hunger for our
Lord, they are of no value. Yes, we
should be diligent to understand what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit, but
all the biblical knowledge of the Holy Spirit in the world does no good, if we
are not motivated by it to seek the Lord with all our hearts.
So hunger
and thirst for the Lord. But how do I do
that?
a. Ask Him for that hunger and thirst.
a. Ask Him for that hunger and thirst.
b. Go to the Word and take time to chew on what
you read.
c. Spend time with the Lord. Delight in Him, and you will hunger for more
of Him.
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