The Holy Spirit

Let me play with fire this time. So throughout the Bible, there's this theme of fire and what it represents throughout the Old Testament is often the presence of God. Where in the Old Testament, Moses encounters God in this bush that is burning yet not consumed. And when God would rescue the people of Israel out of slavery, out of Egypt, He would lead them as a pillar of fire through the desert. And it would be on Mount Sinai that God once again manifested as fire, He would make this covenant with the people of Israel and He would give the law, the 10 commandments to Moses to share with the people. When Solomon would build a temple at the dedication of the temple, once again, God manifests as fire and the temple represented God's presence on this earth. In this holy place. And then 1,993 years ago, God did it once again. If you have a Bible in Acts chapter two, starting in verse one, it says, when the day of Pentecost, that's important, remember that, we'll come back to that later. When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together, these are the disciples, the followers of Jesus. This is after the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus. When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly, a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house

where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each one of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. God is three and yet one. There is one God, one divine essence expressed in three distinct persons. You have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. If you're like, Robert, you're like, can you explain that? Not with the time that I have today. But one of the reasons I believe the Bible is legit because God, who is outside of creation, he is unlike anything in all of creation, yet he created us in his image. God is unique and so when God is described, there's gonna be some things that's hard for us to wrap our minds around. And if people were just making up this whole God thing, they wouldn't have gone with the Trinity because it's kind of a hard sell. And the reason I believe it's true is because there is a mystery to it. That God is three and yet one, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And what we're gonna talk about today is the Holy Spirit.

And what we're gonna talk about today is actually essential for you and I to experience God. Now I wanna say something to parents, especially to the young people who are watching this right now. I wanna say something to parents, especially to those who are parents of really little kids, preschool kids. Maybe you're a new parent, young family. The most important thing that you will do as a parent is create an environment where your kids can experience the love of Abba Almighty. And so one of the things we do as a church is we understand that when these kids are born, there's no manual, there's no like here's instructions, you kind of have to figure it out. And so one of the things we do as a church is we wanna help our young families figure out how do you create an environment where your kids can actually experience the Almighty God. And we do that through a thing called Parent-Child Dedication. It's a couple classes that we're gonna teach you some, we're gonna give you some tools, some resources to help you create this environment. And then here's what I think is the best part of it is we invite our church community to pray over those families and over those young children. So if you're a parent of a preschooler and you're interested in that

and you would like to receive some of those tools, get some help in that creating of an environment, you can go to dedication.sv.cc. And later on this year, we'll have that service where we pray for those families. and we pray for your kid. And I think it's something that is absolutely beautiful, and I want you to experience that, and I want your kids to experience the love of God in their home. But as we talk about the Holy Spirit, we're talking about how do we actually experience God's presence here on earth? We've been reading the Creed, the Apostles' Creed, every week in this series, and so if you're brand new with us, we're gonna do something here in a moment that everybody else who's been with us the last few weeks, you know what's about to happen. We're gonna read the Creed out loud together, and I'm gonna ask all locations, if you would, stand where you're at, and let's read the Creed out loud together. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended to hell. The third day, He rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From there, He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Universal Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting, amen. You can have a seat. Today, the part of the Creed that we're talking about is I believe in the Holy Spirit. I believe in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the newest member of the band when we talk about the Trinity. The Holy Spirit has always existed for all of eternity in this relationship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is three and yet one. And so before God ever created humanity, before He ever even created the cosmos, God was already in this relationship. The very nature of who God is is love. And for there to be love, there needs to be an object. There needs to be one to share that love with. And so God, who is triune, three and yet one, has always experienced love, which means He didn't create us so that He could receive love. He created us so that this love that He has experienced for all of eternity,

He could share that love with us. The Holy Spirit, the word spirit in Hebrew is ruach. And in Greek, it's pneuma. And it's where, if you hear like pneumatic drill, it means breath or wind or spirit. And the ruach of God, the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, was there at creation in the very first pages of your Bible. He was hovering, fluttering over the deep. The Holy Spirit is the one who breathes life, that the breath of God was breathed into Adam and he became a living being. The Spirit breathes life. It's the Spirit who inspires, inspires means to breathe into, who inspires what we have here, the Word of God. That this is not a collection of books that some people decided, hey, let's start writing these different books and let's just hope over the span of 1,500 years, it all just kind of makes sense and ties together. That's not how this went. In fact, the Bible teaches that all Scripture is God breathed. That it wasn't people just writing, that it was the Holy Spirit who guided them. That the reason we have all of these prophecies that connect that the Bible is one unified story written by over 40 authors across three continents in three different languages is because it wasn't people writing it,

it was the Holy Spirit writing through people. There's a difference. The Holy Spirit inspires the Word. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit inspired artists. That art was breathed into by the Holy Spirit. They were given special gifting for art and for carving stones. It was the Holy Spirit who breathes life into the womb of the Virgin Mary. We just read that in the Creed. That this new creation that was happening was by the power of the Holy Spirit. It's the Holy Spirit at the baptism of Jesus descending life. like a dove. It's the Holy Spirit who empowers Jesus for the ministry and the miracles, and it's the Holy Spirit, after the crucifixion and burial, who raises Christ from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit, who breathes life into Jesus. And when Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit, Jesus makes some incredible statements. He says to his disciples, he says, it's actually good for you, because he tells them, I'm gonna be crucified, here's what's gonna happen, I'm gonna be buried, I'm gonna raise from the dead, like he called all of this,

yet the disciples, a lot of it went over their heads. But he says, it's actually good for you that I go, because if I go, I will send to you the Holy Spirit. It's better, Jesus says, that he's not physically walking around on this earth, but that the Holy Spirit is with us. And then at Pentecost, which is what we just read in Acts chapter two, and the reason I said Pentecost is significant, there are three major Jewish holidays that were pilgrimage holidays. The first one is Passover, the second is Pentecost, and then the third is Tabernacles. And these three major holidays, what they represented is God's redemption, his provision, his presence, and his covenant, his promise. Pentecost was associated with Moses receiving the 10 commandments, receiving this covenant, the law. And when Moses receives the covenant, way back 1,500 years before this moment that's happening at Pentecost in Acts chapter two, when Moses comes down the mountain, he finds that the people are worshiping a golden calf, and the Levites, they gather up swords, and 3,000 men are killed that day. Fast forward 1,500 years. And at Pentecost, the day that they celebrated

receiving the law, the day that they celebrated this covenant that God had with the people of Israel, it's on that very day that no longer is it a covenant of law, now the covenant of grace, and the power of the Holy Spirit shows up. Peter stands up and he preaches, and he invites people to surrender their life to Jesus, and you know how many people were saved on that day? 3,000. So at the original Pentecost, 3,000 lose their life under the covenant of the law, and now this new covenant is ushered in this covenant of grace, and 3,000 are saved. God's painting this picture for us. He's doing something new, and it's beautiful. And what happened at Pentecost is exactly what Jesus promised. In John chapter 14, Jesus says, if you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate. Another advocate, and those words another advocate means in the Greek, it's not somebody totally different, it's one just like me. Another, just as Jesus has been our advocate, Jesus says, he will give you another advocate just like me to help you and be with you forever. And then he says, the Spirit, and anytime you see Spirit capitalized in your Bible,

that's referring to God, the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, the Holy Spirit of truth. Just as Jesus was God's presence on this earth 2,000 years ago, the Holy Spirit is God's presence in the world today. This is really important for us to understand. If you want to experience God, here's how you do that, you do that through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God's presence in the world today. He's not a force, this is not Star Wars, not some kind of just power that's floating around in the universe, he is a person. The Bible teaches that he can be grieved, that we can ignore him, we can actually quench the work that the Holy Spirit wants to do in our lives. Jesus is another advocate, which means just like Jesus guided the disciples and taught the disciples and did miracles and signs and wonders and testified to the truth, that's what the Holy Spirit does today. He's another advocate just like Jesus. When Jesus walked this earth, all of those things that happened, they are still happening today, they're just happening through the Holy Spirit. Spirit of truth, the Greek word there is aletheia, and it means to be not covered or hidden, which means God's not trying to play hide and seek with us. The Holy Spirit actually wants to reveal things about Jesus, about who God is to us.

He wants us to know him. He's not playing hide and seek. He's not going, oh, I hope they can figure out all these mysteries. No, he wants to reveal things about who Jesus is, about who God is, his love for us. He wants us to understand this word that he has inspired, that he has breathed life into. And the reality of what the Bible teaches, anytime you and I have ever understood anything in the Bible or anything about God, we can thank the Holy Spirit for that. He is the one who illuminates our hearts and our minds to spiritual things. Paul talks about the significance of the Holy Spirit. And he writes this in Ephesians chapter one, verse 13. He says, and you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth. The gospel, gospel means good news. The good news of your salvation. When you believed. So if you're here and you've put your faith in Jesus, you've put your trust in Jesus, when you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession to the praise of his glory. Paul says, you were marked with a seal. Now, in ancient times, seals would be made with wax

that would be melted and the king or the ruler would have some kind of a signet ring or maybe some kind of a stamp like this and they would put a seal onto the wax. And it represented something significant. That seal represented ownership. That this message, that whatever was written on this, it was owned by somebody. And when you and I receive the Holy Spirit, it is like this seal, Paul writes, that signifies that we belong to the king, the king of kings, the Lord of lords, Abba Almighty, Jesus, his one and only son. We belong to the Holy Spirit, God who is three and yet one. We are God's possession, he writes, bought with a price. That seal represents ownership. It also represents authority. It represents authority. Any decree that had a king's seal on it was irrevocable, I keep messing that word up, irrevocable, there it is. We'll fix that later. It could not be undone, here, I'll just say that. Even the king himself, once a seal was placed on a decree, it couldn't be undone. The breather of life has authority over life. And when he is within you, he is the author, he is the giver of life, he is united within you. The same power that raised Christ from the dead is a deposit guaranteeing your inheritance. That one day when our flesh dies, when our bodies give out,

when they fail us, that the spirit of life will breathe life into us the same way he did at the resurrection of Jesus. Ancient seals also represent security. That once a seal has been made, the deal is done. The Holy Spirit is the ultimate closer. There's no more negotiations, there's no more trying to figure out, are we okay with God? Once we've been sealed in the spirit, he is the deposit guaranteeing our inheritance, the covenant of grace, this new covenant is secure. And so understand what is happening on a spiritual level. When you and I hear the gospel, the good news of what God has done for us, and when you and I, we surrender our life to Jesus, what the Bible teaches is you and I are now in Christ. And not only are you now in Christ, the spirit of God is in you. So you are enveloped in Christ and you are indwelt with the Holy Spirit. And the Bible says, and you and I are. We're in the hands of the Father, and nobody can snatch us. You are in Christ. You are indwelt with the Spirit. You are in the hands of the Father. What does that mean? It means you are 100% secure. This is really good news. And for some of us, we know this up here. But have we actually experienced it?

Have we experienced the living God working in our life that Jesus says, it's actually better that I go because the advocate, the helper, the Spirit of truth is going to walk with you. And so wherever you go, there the Spirit of God goes with you. There's a huge difference between knowing and experiencing. And here's what we do to experience the Spirit of God. We experience the presence of God in our life. And it's not complicated, but it's also not very easy. You ready? If you want to experience God in your life, give Him your attention. That's it? Yeah. If you want to experience the power of God in your life, you and I must choose to give Him our attention. Something we do at Sun Valley is we pray, come Holy Spirit. Have you heard us do this? And sometimes we'll invite you to open up your palms like this. And what we're doing is we're inviting the Holy Spirit to take over in that moment. And when we have time alone with God, one of the things that I do is I'll pray, come Holy Spirit. And what I'm meaning is Holy Spirit,

take over in this moment. I'm inviting Him to speak to me. And sometimes I'll ask a question. Sometimes it's a very simple question. Holy Spirit, is there something you want me to know about your love for me today? Do you know that God loves you? No matter who you are, no matter what you've done, no matter what's been done to you, He loves you. And if you're like, Robert, I've sinned. He knows that. And He knows that it's serious. That's why Jesus gave His life on the cross to pay the debt of that sin. It's very serious to Him. Yet that debt has been paid. There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So if you feel like, oh, if I invite God to talk to me, is He gonna condemn me? No, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. You've been set free. Holy Spirit, is there something you want me to know about your love for me today? See, sometimes we think we're waiting on God to reveal Himself to us. He's actually waiting on us. He's waiting on us to give Him our attention. Something that the Holy Spirit's been teaching me when it comes to giving Him my attention,

is to slow down. When I talk to people and I go, hey, how are things going? They have the same answer that I often give people when they ask me, how am I doing? I say, man, it's really busy. I'm just busy. In fact, survey all locations. If I were to ask you, hey, how are things right now? How many of you would say, busy, things are busy? Just show of hands all over the place, yeah. I know it's more than just raise their hands, but that's fine. One of the things that God's teaching me, I was reading about, there's this moment where Jesus encounters a man who's demon-possessed. And the man who's demon-possessed, it says he runs up to Jesus. He's rushing up to Him, and he's frantic, and he's yelling at the top of his lungs, and he's terrified. And then he says, hey, don't throw me into the abyss. Can you just send me into this herd of pigs? So Jesus does that, and then the pigs, they just rush into the water and drown themselves. And I'm reading that going, man, the pace of demonic activity, it's frantic. They're rushing. And then I look at the pace of Jesus. And when I read the accounts of Jesus's life, your Bible is broken up into two parts.

The New Testament is after the birth of Christ. And the first four books of your New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, these are like biographies of Jesus. When you read about Jesus, he's never frantic. He's never rushing. He doesn't seem like, oh, he's just too busy. He's got so many things going on. He had a pretty important job, and he had three years to do it. And the guy took never. Naps. And you could look up on the horizon Somebody write that down, that'll preach. and you could see the sea. Jesus wasn't frantic. He wasn't hurried, he wasn't rushed. I was spending time this week, and I started doing this thing that's gonna sound a little bit weird for some of you, and that's fine. I started actually picturing Jesus being with me when I'm praying. And as I'm walking and I'm praying, it just felt like he said, hey, slow down a little bit. Because I was in a hurry to get to where I was going. And as I was imagining him there walking with me, I just began to enjoy being in his presence. Seeing the way that he sees me, and listen, that's the way that he sees you, he loves you.

And even as I was praying, I was like, hey, I gotta preach about the Holy Spirit, God, what do you want me to talk about? I just felt like he said, just tell him how much I love him. So guess what I'm doing right now? I'm just telling you how much he loves you. He wants you to slow down and spend some time with him. Not just rush into his presence and go, here's my list of things. I got these prayer requests, I gotta get them out real quick, and then off I go. When we pray, come Holy Spirit, what we're saying is, God, I wanna receive from you. I wanna hear from you. I don't wanna do all the talking, I wanna hear from you. Just wait. When we're frantic, we can change things in the world outside of us. We can change things around us. We can go through a place, we can fix something, we can clean something. But if you wanna experience change on the inside, you gotta slow down. Invite God to meet you in the pause and in the quiet. And what I found is if I can find opportunities to get alone, to get away, for some of us, we need to go into our room, we need to close the door, lock it, go into the closet, close that door to be away

because you got little kids in the house. And if you just close one door, you're gonna see little fingers coming out underneath the door. You gotta get two doors. And what I found is when I get alone, I realize that I'm never alone. The Spirit of God is with me wherever I go. And he's invited me to spend time with him, to reveal things about Jesus in the heart of God. This summer, we had two different high school groups that we took on mission trips. We took one group to Panama, we took another group to the Dominican Republic, and I was in the Dominican Republic. And there, it was a couple weeks that we were in country. The organization we were working with, they have this rule, and at first, I was like, I don't know how this is gonna go. And the rule is no cell phones. Can you imagine looking a bunch of high schoolers in the face and saying, we're gonna take your cell phone away the entire time that you're here? And we gave them a heads up, and more importantly, we gave the parents a heads up because they were the ones that were having the toughest time with that. And at the end of the trips, we said, hey, what did God do in your life?

What did you experience? What were some of the highlights? Almost every single student said, I loved not having my phone. If you've seen the movie WALL-E, when the screen breaks and all of a sudden, they're like, wow, look at all these stars. And wow, there's other people here, and they begin to interact. It was like WALL-E, by day two of this mission trip, all of a sudden, these students were like, wow, I love people. People are really interesting. Now all we have is to talk to people and look them in the eyes, and this is incredible. And then all of a sudden, it was like God had our attention. If you wanna experience God in your life, give him your attention. It's that simple, but it's not that easy. Because all of us, just the culture that we live in, it's this economy of attention that, if they could just grab our attention with this ad or with this show or with this thing on the feed that changes every couple seconds and these dopamine hits, and we're frantic and we're busy and we're running around, and the spirit of the living God is just waiting for us. And he wants to bless us. He wants to walk slowly with us. We believe in the Holy. Spirit, in the Old Testament,

this is before Jesus shows up, humanly speaking, when God's establishing this covenant with the people of Israel, there's a man named Aaron, he's the high priest, kind of represent the people in the tabernacle, which would eventually become the temple. And he was told by God to pray a specific blessing over the people, this is called the Aaronic blessing. And for generations, this has been prayed. This is a prayer we still sometimes pray over people, it's in Numbers chapter six, starting in verse 24, it says this, this is the blessing that Aaron is told to pray over the people, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. I found this old picture of me with my son, Corbin. Corbin's a senior in high school now, this is him when he was a baby. Oh, the ladies, oh. I want you to see this picture because this is what it looks like for a face to shine upon you. And I love my son, I love all my kids. What's captured in this moment is just a drop in the ocean of how God's face shines upon you. Abba Almighty, this blessing that's been prayed for generations, it's true for you. He does make his face shine on you, he does lift his countenance, he turns his face toward you. He's gracious to you.

Grace means we don't earn it, we don't deserve it. He doesn't love us because we're awesome, he loves us because he's awesome. The Bible teaches us that we have God's attention, the question is, does he have ours? If you wanna experience God in your life, he's so much closer than you think. Give him space, maybe try picturing him with you, get to a quiet space, invite the Holy Spirit to reveal the heart of God to you. Maybe ask him a question and just sit and it might be a little uncomfortable and here's what I wanna challenge you with, turn off your phone, just give him your attention. I've been doing this, when I'm driving, I picture that he's with me in the car, it's changed how I drive. You can't use the HOV lane doing that, by the way. I thought about it, it doesn't work. And if you're like, Robert, this sounds like make-believe, no, it's matter of fact, the Bible teaches that he is with us, wherever we go. The Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of truth, he's with us. The same presence that formed the cosmos, the same presence that filled the temple, the same presence that walked this earth 2,000 years ago, that presence fills us. The Bible says that we are now the temple. We are the place where God's presence dwells. When we say, I believe in the Holy Spirit,

what we're saying is everywhere that we go is holy ground because the Spirit of God is with us. Walk and step with him, slow down. Give him your attention. If you're here and you've never surrendered your life to Jesus, been filled with the Holy Spirit, if you've never experienced this seal, this stamp on your life, this deposit of the Spirit of God, a promise guaranteeing your inheritance, I wanna invite you to do so right now. Right where you're at, right where you're at. You can pray my words, you can pray your own words, but in your own heart and mind, you can talk to God right now. And start by just admitting, Jesus, I know that I've sinned. And I know that I need a savior. Jesus, thank you for the good news, the gospel. And when I couldn't save myself, you came and you gave your life as payment for all of my sin. I believe in the resurrection, possible by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, I declare that you are Lord and savior, my rescuer. I put my trust in you. I put my trust in you. Come Holy Spirit, I invite you to take over, to fill me, to make me spiritually alive.

I pray that you would lead me from this day forward. I pray that you would heal more of yourself to us this week. Would you help us to slow down, to give you our attention. And I pray that we would experience your face shining upon us as we do that. That you would transform us, that we would not be struggling harder or trying to do more, but we would be transformed by your love. Thank you for enveloping us, indwelling us in the fellowship of the Trinity, in this relationship of love. Thanks for inviting us in. God, we love you too. And it's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.