"Power to Live and Serve"Sermon Transcript for February 4, 2001
By Rev. Dan Sinkhorn
Gosh, that was wonderful. I always feel I’m disadvantaged if I have to follow the bells. They’re just good! And I promised at 8:30 a.m. to work something into the sermon about the bells; and I forgot to do it so we’ll see if we can do it this time. Last week we began a two-part series on the Holy Spirit. And we talked a little bit about how the Holy Spirit is God’s way of being with us--all the time, anywhere, whoever you are. One Spirit everywhere for all. And that Spirit is the way that God reveals Himself and makes things happen. That the Spirit is with us always.
This week we are going to talk about how that Spirit can become a part of who you are and how that Spirit can get you to do the work that God has called you to do. It’s a remarkable story; and I’m anxious to get started. So let me begin with the scripture passage from the Gospel of John. This is from Chapter 3; and I’m going to read Verses 5 & 6. "The truth is, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives new life from heaven." Now, what Jesus seems to be saying there is that you can be born once of your mother, but that you must be born again of the Spirit. Jesus says that you must be born of water and the Spirit. And I think in this case what He means by the water is the water of the womb. Now, we can debate that another time. But He does seem to be indicating that because he says that humans give human life and the Spirit gives spiritual life. And so you’re born a baby person when your parents bring you into this world. And when the Holy Spirit gives you a new birth you are born a baby spirit person. And that is, in essence what we’re going to talk about today.
What does it mean to be born of the Spirit? And what role does the Holy Spirit play in that process? Well, if you were born of waters of the womb and your mother and dad bring you into this world, then you are their sons or daughters. But when you are born of the Spirit, then it stands to reason that you become the sons and daughters of God since it is God’s Spirit. And if you are sons and daughters of God, the first and most important promise that you receive is that you are forgiven of your sins. And that is, without a doubt, the most important thing that you can do when you become the son or daughter of God.
Now I don’t know about you other parents, but I get pretty angry with my children at times, but I always find forgiveness. I always forgive them; it’s just a matter of time. And I think that if earthy parents, with all of our weaknesses, can forgive unconditionally our children, then we can expect that our Heavenly Father will also forgive unconditionally. So when you enter in to life in Christ, you become a son or daughter of God and you are forgiven for your sins. And that sonship, as Paul puts it in his letter to the Romans, entitles you to all of the benefits that go along with it.
Now, before I go any further, I just want to encourage you. If you haven’t read the Letter to the Romans found in your New Testament I hope that you will give it a try sometime soon. It is considered one of the finest arguments for Christianity ever written. It’s also considered one of the best arguments, period. In fact, I’m told that many law schools give the book of Romans as a reading assignment for potential attorneys so that they can learn how a really good argument is made. It’s taught in philosophy classes as the perfect argument. Now, that makes the book of Romans a pretty good tool for a young Christian. So I encourage you to take a look at it.
Listen, for example, to what Paul tells us in Romans, Chapter 8, Verses 14-17: "For all who are led by the children of God are children of God. So you should not be like cowering and fearful slaves. You should behave instead like God’s very own children adopted into His family calling Him daddy. For His Holy Spirit speaks to us deep in our hearts and tells us that we are God’s children. And since we are His children, we will share His treasures. For everything God gives to His Son, Christ, is ours too. But if we are to share in His glory, we must also share in His suffering." Now, Paul, a Roman citizen, is speaking to Romans. And he means Roman adoption. And in Rome, when you are adopted into someone’s family it is complete and total. You are entitled to every stick of furniture, every penny that your parents own. You are completely adopted into the family and that is the kind of adoption that Paul is speaking of when he tells us that we will be forgiven. That we can call our Heavenly Father "daddy".
What does that mean to you? I know some people have had what they don’t consider the greatest dads in the world. So don’t dwell on that. Just imagine the most perfect parent that there ever was. The parent who never forgets, who always forgives, who never neglects, who always nurtures and loves. Here is the perfect parent inviting you in to that kind of intimate relationship. A relationship that gives you the deepest kind of experience. A relationship that gives you a most complete and total sense of assurance. The beauty of my love for my children is that they know how much that I love them. And they know that I will forgive and forget. They know that I will always love them no matter what they do. And as I say, in my human weakness if I can do that, how much more can God do for you as our Heavenly Father? You have such assurance in your inheritance of His love. But remember this, we are entitled to everything that His Son, Jesus, is entitled to including the suffering. Sonship, daughtership comes with a price.
But what a glorious thing it is to be children of God. But like any children, we start out as babies. Birth is not the climax of gestation, it’s the beginning of life. And that’s the way it is when we are born of the Spirit. We spend the time in preparation. A time of anticipation. And then we are born again of the spirit. Remember, Jesus told Nicodemus in the garden that you must be born again. And Nicodemus really stumbled with that concept. He thought that Jesus was trying to say that he actually had to go back and somehow be born again from his mother. But Jesus was talking about birth in the Spirit; a rebirth of a new person. And so, if He can say that to a wise old man like Nicodemus then He must be saying the same thing to us. That you start out as a baby. When you are born again into the Christian family you are born a baby Christian.
And what do babies do? Well the first few weeks we just watch for them to raise their head and hold it up for a while. And then eventually they crawl; and eventually they walk and then they get in to everything. And that is what we are like as baby Christians. And we need that guidance and nurture in the same way that a baby person does. When you start growing from your infant Christianity you need someone to tell you how to do things, where to do things, to watch out for you. The Holy Spirit is here to do that. The Holy Spirit helps us develop our relationship with God. And in time he enables us to do the things that Christians do. He takes away...shows us that the barrier is taken away. That there is nothing separating us from God any more.
The Holy Spirit makes us mature enough to recognize that God is right here and right now with us in that Spirit and not around the corner behind the thick wall. Now I can relate to that because as a parent of small children again I find that, you know, when we’re all sitting around the dinner table together everybody’s behaving pretty well, eating their food, talking about school. But if Mom or I or both happen to walk out to the kitchen for a few minutes, it’s just a matter of seconds before you hear the kicking and you hear people saying each others name gritted through teeth. And you hear the crying out, "Mom, he looked at me again!" You’d think that the wall between the dining room and the kitchen was 100 feet thick. In fact, we’re right there. Just not clearly visible. And as the children mature they begin to realize that. I know that because my 15-year old will just sit there and pretend like he doesn’t have any idea what’s going on in that room. Because he’s learned that even though he can’t see us, we’re there. And that maturity with God is the same way. As we mature in our Christian walk we begin to recognize God’s presence with us always. We begin to develop a spiritual wisdom.
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he says that "God will give you wisdom that comes from heaven." It’s the wisdom that causes us to understand. So if you go back a couple of weeks to the message on faith, you remember that we said that you have to take a leap of faith. That sometimes you have to step out in faith and then wait for things to happen. And Saint Anselm said it this way about the wisdom that comes from above. "I don’t understand in order to believe; I believe in order to understand." It’s a leap of faith. The Holy Spirit fills you and then things begin to become more clear to you. God reveals Himself day by day through the Holy Spirit. I remember a song from my childhood from the rock opera "Godspell". Remember the song, "Day by Day"? The person singing is saying, "Day by day Lord I want to see you more clearly. Day by day Lord I want to hear you more clearly. Day by day I want to love you more dearly." It is a day-by-day walk with the Holy Spirit. We’re not instant adult, mature Christians. We’re growing Christians walking through our Christian life in the same way that we walk through this earthly life. And day by day the Holy Spirit reveals more and more about God to us so that we can become more like God.
And as we become more like God we begin to develop the family resemblance. I’ve heard it said that couples, after they’ve been married a long time, begin to look a little alike. I’ve heard that said about people and their pets, too. But I do believe that when we are filled with the Holy Spirit it begins to radiate from within us. And as we mature in our walk with God, the Holy Spirit begins to change us into the likeness of God. We begin to have that family resemblance. We begin to recognize each other by the family resemblance. I’m sure that if you’ve been a Christian for a long time you can go where other Christians are you can spot right away someone else who’s been a Christian a long time. We have the family likeness. Paul described the likeness in the form of spiritual gifts. He said in his letter to the Galatians that some of the gifts we would have as children of God is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Reverend Mike talks about that a lot. He encourages us to memorize those gifts so that we can be striving towards that. Those are signs of the family resemblance.
I want to talk about the top three on that list for just a second. The number one gift of the Spirit that reflects the family resemblance is love. Love begins with the letter "L". And if you look at the letter "L" it’s symbolic. On one side it talks about our relationship with God and on the other side it talks about our relationship with other people. And so the love that the Spirit gives us is reflected in our love for God and our love for each other. And love is incomplete without both. So if we are filled with the Holy Spirit and loving in the Holy Spirit, our love for each other and for God are one complete unit. And that’s when we really begin to see the family resemblance in each other.
We have joy when we take on the family likeness and begin to experience the Holy Spirit. Now, joy is not the same thing as happiness. Happiness is temporary. Happiness is the way I feel when I just finished the best dessert I’ve had in a month. It’s temporary. I have to have another piece if I want to be happy some more. Joy is something deeper. It’s something rich. It’s something that I can’t even begin to find the right words for. I sat there for a half an hour last night flipping through the thesaurus. There’s got to be a good word for joy here. All I can tell you is joy is what makes us dance in our jail cells. Joy is what makes us rejoice and praise God when we’re laying on our death bed. Joy is what the Apostles spoke of when they were able to witness to their jailers. When they prayed to stay a little longer in the community and they got thrown in jail, they said "Hallelujah! Just what I prayed for!" It’s a joy that goes way beyond a few minutes of human happiness.
And then the third gift that I want to talk about is peace. You can recognize a brother or sister by their peace. It’s an inner peace that passes all understanding. The world doesn’t understand it. How is it that you can be calm in the midst of chaos? How is it that when everything seems to be going badly and the world looks like it might end in a moment, you are at peace? It’s the family resemblance. It’s the Holy Spirit in you reflecting outward. Paul says in the Second Letter to the Corinthians that "we take on the moral likeness of Christ". Now, the moral likeness, I would assume, is about our relationships with each other. We have those God-given qualities through the Holy Spirit that show the world that we’re children of God. But how do we deal with each other? The moral likeness of Christ would probably be best described as how we interact day by day with each other. How we deal with our diversity.
The Holy Spirit has given each one of us unique gifts. And inside the church all united in that one Spirit we’re all coming to church from different backgrounds with different points of view with different ideas about the technical stuff. But we are all united in one Spirit. We are all bound together by that same Holy Spirit that causes us to be brothers and sisters in Christ’s family. I don’t agree with my earthly brothers and sisters about everything, but I can tell you that when the five of us are standing together there is no mistaking that we are all brothers and sisters. The resemblance is uncanny. And while we don’t agree about everything, when you listen to us talk you can tell that the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree. And that’s the way it is with the family of God. We may not all agree; but even in the midst of our diversity, there is unity in the one Spirit.
Jesus knew that we’d struggle with that. So much so that He prayed in John 1:17 that "we would be united despite our differences". And this was the church Jesus was talking about! The Apostle Paul was so concerned about it he wrote about it to the Ephesians. And he said, "Don’t bicker and fight, get along." Isn’t that what every parent wants? We know that our children love each other and we know how important they are to each other. But sometimes you wonder if they’re just going to bicker and fight endlessly. Jesus prayed for unity because he knew that our family of faith would be the same way. Paul encourages us to remember that "we are one in the Holy Spirit of God. We are brothers and sisters though we disagree at times. And so that we should have peace, love, and joy as the guiding principle, as that symbolic presence that overrides our earthly wickedness. God gives gifts to all of us by His Holy Spirit. When we’re united in the church each one of us comes in with a different gift.
I said I’d work the bells in. I see bells every different size here. I see no two alike. And I have heard them ring one at a time. And it’s pretty, but it doesn’t make very good music. Yet when all of these different bells come together, it’s glorious. And there is exactly what we can be as a church. The church is a body of people bound together by the Holy Spirit but each bringing a different song to sing, a different melody, a different tune, a different gift. And those gifts are given to you freely when you call yourself sons and daughters of God. You are His children and He gives you the gifts and abilities to get the job done. And He binds you together as a family because as a unit you can do anything with God as your guide. And that’s they way it is with church.
And yet for some reason we don’t always do that. Some of us ignore our gifts. Last week I said that one of the things that seems to happen with the Holy Spirit is that we ignore the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit urges us on and yet we ignore it because we are embarrassed, because we’re ashamed, because we’re afraid of the potential outcome, or maybe because we’re just too tired. Each one of us, sons and daughters of God, will have a gift to bring. If not to the local church, than to the community--to some place in God’s kingdom. But we neglect that. Nicky Gumbel, the author of "Questions of Life", which is the textbook for the ALPHA class describes it this way, "The church has been likened to a soccer match in which thousands of people desperately in need of exercise watch 22 people desperately in need of a rest." And that seems to be the way it is in church sometimes. Sometimes it seems that only a handful of people are doing the work while the others are watching. Ouch!
And yet, God has gifted all of us who claim to be His sons and daughters with abilities and talents. I Corinthians, Paul says, "Some are apostles, some are prophets, some are teachers, some do miracles, some have the gift of healing, some help others, some work together to accomplish things, some even speak in unknown languages." And the list goes on and on and on. Everyone has a gift to bring. And it is for the common good that we bring it for the growth of the kingdom of God.
We are a family of faith, but we are a growing family. There are new births occurring daily in our family of faith and we should be glad to be a part of that. The Holy Spirit gives us the gifts to help others join the family. We just have to have the courage. The Holy Spirit reveals God’s word to us and then gives us the ability to reveal that word to others. If you are one of those who has fear about witnessing to others, about your relationship with God, I would ask you if you are embarrassed to talk about your Heavenly Father. And if so, is it because you don’t know Him that well? Because if you knew Him really well, you couldn’t keep your mouth shut about Him. Ouch!
It seems that when we are called into the family of faith and given those gifts, we’re not to keep it to ourselves. We’re to share it. To grow the family of faith. And the Holy Spirit gives us the power and the courage and the boldness to do that. People will ask me sometimes in our conversations in Sunday School class and so forth, "I don’t know how to pray. I don’t know what to say to people. Words just don’t come when I need them." And the answer is clearly that the Holy Spirit will give you those words. We’re assured by Jesus and the Apostles in our scriptures, that we will be given the words we need to say when the time comes. So we need not be afraid.
We’re given power for service. We are given not only the gifts but the ability to proceed ahead with them. The power that drives our engine. Every Christian has the Holy Spirit. That is the given. That comes when you accept Christ as your Savior. But we’re not all filled with that Spirit. We’re not taken up, as it were, with the Holy Spirit that drives us and moves us on and grows us in our relationship with God. Some of us stay infant Christians for a long time because we didn’t accept that gift of the Holy Spirit. Where the gift is in us--oozes out of us so that the whole world can’t miss it. To receive that, all we have to do is pray for the Holy Spirit. Just ask! Our Heavenly Father is so giving and kind all you have to do is ask. Just pray, "Lord, fill me with your Holy Spirit."
It is, as John the Baptist said in last week’s message. We heard about John’s message of how the Holy Spirit...that Jesus was baptized in the Holy Spirit. That He baptized with water but Jesus was baptized with the Holy Spirit. He used that word baptism which we learned last week means a total immersion, a total saturation. In other words, you don’t get a credit card to the Holy Spirit gas station. You also are expected to fill up regularly.
When the Holy Spirit is in you, you want to be filled with it. So ask for that. See what God will do for you. We learned last week that the Holy Spirit was there in the book of Genesis, Chapter 1 at the very beginning of time. "The Holy Spirit was hovering over the surface of the earth and bringing order in the midst of chaos." And I tell you that in the last book of the Bible, Revelation, the Holy Spirit is still there. The same Holy Spirit. Unchanged and still doing the same work. And that Holy Spirit in Revelation 22 says, "Come let each one who hears come. Let the thirsty ones come. Anyone who wants to, let them come and drink the water of life without charge." All you have to do is ask, "Lord fill me with your Holy Spirit and do what you will do." Amen.
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