Galatians 3:2-29 | The Promised Spirit | Alex Culpepper

Well, if you're new or visiting with us, and Nathan already introduced me, but I'll introduce myself again. I'm Alex Culpepper. I'm the lead pastor here at Renovation Church. It's my joy on most Sundays to be able to open up the word of God with us. And so, if you're not familiar with what we do, we spend some time singing and worshiping the Lord and directing our hearts towards him, receiving whatever he might have for us.

But then we also come to the Word, believing that he has mighty things for us in His Word. And so we kind of just walk through Scripture to discover what it is that God has there for us. And so if you. If you don't have a Bible with you or you don't know how to navigate one, we want you to learn how to do that. But in the meantime, we also put the scripture up here on the screen so that you can follow along with us as well.

We are. Well, we're in the book of Galatians, but I want to. I want to draw your attention back to the book of Genesis. In the book of Genesis, there's this little part where God makes a garden, and he makes some trees, and he makes people. And God gives a command to Adam and Eve, and he tells them, hey, of the tree of the knowledge of the good and evil, you shall not eat.

And he says, on the day you eat of it, you will surely die. Okay. Yeah, you will surely die. You ever wonder why Adam and Eve just didn't, like, keel over, right when they. They sinned?

Like, why? Like what. Like what happened? Like God said on the day. And I mean, you would just kind of lean in to think, well, like, you would think, okay, at the time you eat it, like, you're.

You're gonna die. Right? That would be your expectation. And so now it is God's book. And it would be kind of silly for God to make himself look like a fool on the first few pages, right?

So, which must mean, like, the fact that they didn't just keel over then and there must mean that God is intentionally trying to show us something about death. It must mean that death is something more than merely taking your last breath. It must mean that God intends for us to see that Adam and Eve died even though they were still breathing at the time. Like, whatever happened in that moment pulled the plug between Adam and Eve and their source of life, that they instantly, in the disobeying of God's command, in the not trusting God and trusting the voice of a liar, who had invaded the garden, that they had disconnected themselves from, from life, even though they were still breathing. And so this means that our chief need as human beings.

You need to know this. Darwin was wrong. And I know you're not surprised that I would be saying that. But our chief need as human beings is not to survive, because even if we survive, we are still dead. We need to somehow be reconnected to the source so that whatever is dead, whatever died with Adam, can be brought to life.

That's the greatest human need. And so we're in this series called Grace Through Faith. In the book of Galatians. We're in a section between chapters two and four of Galatians. And in this section, if you don't know Galatians, the book is written by a guy named the Apostle Paul.

He was a guy who started churches and preached the gospel about Jesus kingdom to many different peoples throughout kind of the European world and especially areas around Rome. And so the reason we draw our attention to this is because Paul wrote some letters to these churches and in Galatia. Galatia is a region of a number of churches. And all of these churches are people primarily occupied by those who were not Jewish. Because God's kingdom was, you know, was originally in the minds of many people who read the Bible, it was for Jews.

But God did something in Jesus to expand what he was doing beyond one nation and outwards to many nations. And Galatians is really kind of where we get the first, like, flavor and taste of, oh, God's doing something in other people groups. And so the Apostle Paul is writing to the Galatians. What's happening is that he's right now making a positive case for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Like, what is the true gospel?

The. As opposed to what? Some false teachers have come into these churches and said, See, false teachers called Judaizers have showed up in the Galatian church and they have started teaching the people in these churches that, yeah, like, we're glad that God has done something for many nations, but we need to let you know that it's still very important that you become Jews. Right? Like, it's not enough to simply believe and trust Jesus and experience the Holy Spirit bringing you back to life.

You need to also adopt the Jewish laws and procedures and practices. And for what it's worth, this is the first major false teaching that we actually have on record is, we think, like a joint effort of the early church trying to address and deal with false teaching that's corrupting the gospel. This is the first false teaching that we have record of.

And so what Paul does in order to combat this is he's going to spend a little bit of time arguing against the false teaching. But what he's also doing is he's trying to help them understand what is good and right and true about what God has done. And so he does this in this section that we're in. He does this by emphasizing God's grace. And God's grace is God's generous power to do what you can't.

We came up with this, this definition in our first week. You see, so the Judaizers, they were saying, you know, God's benefits only really come to those who both believe in Jesus and become Jewish law keepers. And Paul says that if they want to teach that, you need to know that they're denying, they're actually denying God's generosity. And if you will deny God's generosity, you're going to miss out on the benefit of his power. And so in week one, kind of the first facet of God's grace that we looked at was the word justification.

And this word justification is the idea that unrighteous people can somehow come to God and because of Jesus, sacrifice for us, his blood covering us, his life given as payment for our sins, we receive from him the gift of his righteousness. Even though we were unrighteous, we become righteous. That's the idea of justification. And so in today's passage, we explore another facet of the grace of, of God that Paul points us towards. And that facet of God's grace is the promised Holy spirit.

So Galatians 3, 2, he's going on in his argument, and he says, let me ask you only this. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? So he knows that the Galatians are going to be familiar with what he's talking about because they've had an experience. He's referencing the experience that they have had. He reminds them of their experience with the Holy Spirit.

Now we just need to clarify some things. The word spirit and the word breath are the same word in the biblical languages. When you read the word breath and the word spirit, we have two different words for those words, but in the biblical languages, they are the same word. And so it's kind of unclear what are we talking about? Are we talking about something spiritual?

Are we talking about just what it means to like, take breath into your lungs? And so I just, I want to, I point that out because I want you to see something in Genesis 2:7. So this is all the way back at the creation of human beings and about bringing them to life. And in verse seven it says, then the Lord God formed the man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of of life. That word breath for breath of life is the same word that you would read for spirit at other parts in the New Testament.

God breathed spirit into man and brought him to life. He breathed into man the breath of life and the man became a living creature. So before the Death of Genesis 3 is the life of Genesis chapter 2. And whatever died in humanity, in our sin, in our listening to the liar who invaded the garden, whatever happened there in some way cut us off from the life that was breathed into us.

But Paul speaks to the Galatians now, and he's saying, they have received the breath, they have received the Spirit. They have. And he is of course, speaking of the Holy Spirit. This verse was actually put on the screen at the very beginning of our service this morning. But Acts 1, chapter 8. Who is this Holy Spirit?

Jesus promised his disciples. He said, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Jesus is getting ready to ascend. The next time that Jesus returns will be his second Coming, where he's bringing his kingdom to earth.

And in the meantime, he says, I'm giving you the Holy Spirit so that you will have power. And the power has a purpose. The power is for to tell my story, to tell about what you have seen and heard in me and down through the generations. This is what the Church does. We are empowered by the Holy Spirit to reveal to the world who Jesus is.

So who is Holy Spirit? Holy Spirit is the third person of the Godhead. So we speak of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We have a triune God, all who are one. One God in three persons.

And he is a he and not an it. When we say the word Spirit, the temptation is in speaking of a spirit that we say, oh, well, it's nice that. And we speak of him almost like the force, right? The forces in you or with you or whatever. Right?

But that's not what the Holy Spirit is. He is a person.

And in fact, one of the things that I try to do with my own language, just because we're so divorced from that time, and we're so divorced even from like thinking of spiritual things, at least not in the same way that first century people did. The people who the Scriptures were Originally written to, I speak of him as Holy Spirit. So I say Holy Spirit as a proper name. Now, you don't have to do that. That's just a thing that I do to just help keep reminding myself that I'm speaking of a person.

So instead of saying the Holy Spirit, I just say Holy Spirit so that I get solidified in my soul that the person that I'm speaking to is a person. Okay, so what does Holy Spirit do? What does Holy Spirit do? You notice that he already kind of gives some indication, like, did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? So there's something about the Holy Spirit connected with faith.

So what does Holy Spirit do? He initiates, sustains, and expands spiritual life. Now, with any of these in this list that we come up with here, you could double click on any of them and expound forever. And I don't have a lot of time to do that, but let me just, like, really quickly name for you what Holy Spirit. Like, what this looks like.

So again, that word breath, he is. He is the breath that brings us spiritually to life when we're told we're made alive and we're no longer dead. This is what the Apostle Paul and many writers of the New Testament are speaking of. He provides for us union with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He unites us to Jesus.

He makes us a part of God's family. He is like the active agent in adopting us and taking us out of the world and into God's family. If you have a name written in heaven, it's because of what the Holy Spirit has done you. He transforms us from the inside out. He leads us into holiness.

He gives us a passion for the things of God. He lights our hearts on fire, like we talked about at Easter. He produces heart change. He helps you keep Jesus commandments. He helps you love Jesus.

He grows your affections for Jesus. He helps you experience the peace with God that has been purchased for you by the blood of Jesus. He actually, like, applies the blood of Jesus to your life. He empowers your ability to crucify the flesh, to kill the parts of you that are seeking to rebel against God. He makes you more and more like Jesus.

This is all what the Holy Spirit does. He initiates, sustains, and expands spiritual life. He's like that. We were unplugged from the Source and he plugs us back into the source. So verse three says, are you so foolish?

Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? So the implication is that these teachers who have come in and are encouraging them turn to the law, that you need to perform works of the law in order to truly be saved. That this turning to the law kind of a false understanding of what spiritual life looks like, that it's actually the power of God that brings you to spiritual life. That's what he's saying. Like, why would you turn to some other power to complete your spiritual life when the Holy Spirit is the one who has initiated your spiritual life?

The whole idea of the starting point is that the Spirit, you know, brings us to life and then points us to how we are to go and what we are to do and how we are to develop.

So I just want to then draw our attention to the next thing that Holy Spirit does.

Can you go back to the slide? I don't know why I skipped there, but there we go.

There we go. Reveals what is true, good and right. Holy Spirit reveals what is true, good and right. When you see and believe in Jesus as your king, Holy Spirit is the one who reveals that truth to you. He's the one who kind of takes the blinders off of you, right?

So he guides and directs us into how we are to obey Jesus. He gives us wisdom. There's a passage in the Book of James that says, if any of you lacks wisdom, well, just ask God. He gives richly. And ask without doubting.

The Holy Spirit is in you, and he's going to bring all the resources of heaven to give you what you need for the moment. Holy Spirit makes sense of God's word when you read it. One of the best interpretive tools that you can take with you as you read the Bible is you open the Bible and you say, holy Spirit, help me understand what I'm reading, right? He tells you what is true. He convicts you of sin.

He gives you the ability to discern what is good and right. He helps you experience the peace and hope and love that have been revealed to you. He reveals what God wants to do here and now. Like, you might have a Bible verse that relates to certain things, but he shows you how to apply the truth that God has taught you. I think of the number of you I've had conversations with over the last several years, and there are a few among us here who were even saying, you know, I just felt like I was being drawn to come through the door.

And lo and behold, when you showed up, you heard the truth of God's word and the Holy Spirit met you. And he's now leading you in a direction and accomplishing things in your life. This is the kinds of stuff that the Holy Spirit does. So verse five, does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by the works of the law or by hearing with faith, Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, so unfortunately, our details are kind of sparse about what kind of miracles Paul is referencing here. We happen to know that in one city in Galatia, a city called Iconium, it says that Paul and Barnabas did say signs and wonders in that city as they proclaim the gospel.

And their signs and wonders made people go, oh, what is this? And then they heard the message of the good news, that you can be freed from your sin by Jesus and come to trust him, and his lordship is available to everyone. And the truth of that was confirmed with signs and wonders. So we don't know what kinds of signs and wonders were done, but here are things that are typically associated with the word signs and wonders. In the Gospel, you have significant healings.

I'm not talking about like, oh, I had a headache and my headache is gone. I'm talking about, like, people who have been paralyzed for a long time or people have been blind for a long time that those issues are resolved. You have demonic expulsion. That falls into the category of signs and wonders, where in the middle of preaching or in the middle of people bringing the word of God to bear on the lives around them, demons may reveal themselves, right? And then those demons leave.

That is a sign and a wonder of the New Testament. Some signs and wonders reference authority over nature, where Jesus is literally commanding winds and waves to obey him. And of course, you have instances of resurrection. There are a handful of resurrections that Jesus performed, but there are also a handful of resurrections that were performed by the apostles or by the Holy Spirit through the apostles in the book of Acts. And then you have situations like immediate divine intervention.

There's a guy named Elymas in the Book of Acts who is, like, an opponent of Paul's, and they're in the middle of, like, this, like, dispute in the, like, court of the rulers sort of thing. And like, Paul says something, and then Elymas is just struck blind. He can't see anything anymore. And so to validate the truth of what Paul was saying. And so what does.

What was the third thing that Holy Spirit does? He empowers the advance of God's kingdom. This is what we see with the signs and wonders there.

We just kind of need to, like, do some caveats and pulling apart here. So there are many cases, and you need to know this, because this is like running rampant today. There are many cases where people falsify claims of the miraculous and they manufacture miraculous happenings. There are many other cases where the miraculous actually is happening, but it's attached to false teaching and false prophecy. And there are times, I realize that, when many people probably even in this room, have asked God for a miracle and not received it right.

So we have to hold and just deal with all of these realities when we say that Holy Spirit empowers the advance of God's kingdom. Because of those realities, though, and because we know that people get things wrong, and because we know that this emphasis of the miraculous is abused, what can happen is that it makes us culturally a very skeptical people whenever we hear of testimony of miraculous things.

And there's a part of that that is healthy, and there's also a part of that that can be dangerous to our souls. Because I think because of that skepticism and because, like, we as a culture are people who need to understand everything and fit everything into nice, neat boxes and keep things in a controlled and understandable category, because of just all of that, we can close ourselves off to the expectation of God moving in power, right? Like in the Bible, when God moves in power, it's nearly always in a context, especially in the New Testament, always in a context where the believers are expecting God to move in power.

And Scripture, I just want to let you know, Scripture gives us no reason to think that Holy Spirit will stop working miracles. Scripture gives us no reason to expect that Holy Spirit will stop giving clear messages to people to tell them how to respond to the missional needs of the moment. I just want to share a story real quick. There's a college, a seminary, called Asbury Seminary. And a few years ago, I think it was 2022 or 2023, there was what is termed a revival taking place, place at Asbury, where in the chapel worship service, people like the.

The guy who was preaching just said, hey, there's like, space here to come forward, and if you want to receive from the Lord, you know, there's space up here. And he thought it was not a great sermon that he preached. And. And a lot of people will tell you it wasn't even, like the best thing that he's ever preached before, but the Holy Spirit did something in that moment where like, a group of 10 kids came up to the front and then they just stayed there, and they were confessing sin and repenting of sin. And then other people saw what they were doing.

And then they started coming forward. And then more people started confessing sin and repenting of sin before the Holy Spirit. And so this thing expanded and expanded. Now, I tell this story because there was a guy who played on the basketball team who was involved in all sorts of just stuff, right? That wasn't healthy.

He wasn't a believer in Jesus. And so he comes forward during this time, and just what God was doing was so powerful to him. It brought him to conviction of sin and belief in Jesus. And he had heard stories about Jesus. He understood things about who Holy Spirit was.

He had received the love of God, transforming his heart. That guy, that basketball player, you know, he has to move on to the next thing. So he turns around and walks out of the building. And a guy in a wheelchair is like, rolling in to, like, come to the revival to see what God is doing in the revival. And this guy who has just been saved comes up, lays his hand on the man, and says, in the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk.

And the guy got out of his wheelchair because that guy didn't have any baggage. He didn't have all the stuff that says, well, maybe he won't and maybe he couldn't. And God doesn't really do that today. No, he had just become a Christian. And as far as he knew, Jesus does the stuff that Jesus says he does.

And so he puts his hand on the man and the man gets out of his wheelchair and walks. Now, I also want to say that God also empowers in ways that make a lot more sense to us, right? All of the things that I just said are ways that God empowers. That doesn't make as much sense to us. But God also empowers in ways that make more sense to us.

We see God's power working when lives are changed from the inside out. We see God's power working when people make bold steps of great risk for the sake of the kingdom. We see Holy Spirit's power as much in that as we do in miracles. But it's important for us to know the reason why I talked about all of this. It's important for us to know Holy Spirit is not a theory.

He is not an idea that we talk about in church on Sunday. He is the creator of worlds working in, through, and among us. And part of the reason that we see so little of his power at the present time is that we have allowed our skepticism to lower our expectation of what he might be willing to do.

And so there's probably 15 or 20 of you who want me to give some kind of caveat to that or practical next step. And there might be time for that in the future, but we need to get through this passage, so we're going to keep going. So Paul's message to them is, hey, you've obviously experienced the power of the Spirit by merely your belief. You didn't do any kind of Jewish law actions or anything like that. You just believed and the Holy Spirit was working among you.

And he's using that experience to counter the lies that have been coming in among them. So verses 8 and 9 of Galatians 3 says the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the Gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed. So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. So Paul says to them, you know what you, what you experience with the Holy Spirit. Galatians is the fulfillment of the promise that was made to Abraham.

So Abraham was the patriarch of the Jewish people, right? The one who had been given many promises. God called Abraham to leave his family, to follow him into a land that I have reserved for you. And God made many promises to Abraham about things that he would accomplish for the world through Abraham's bloodline. And Abraham didn't know what the fullness of God's promise would mean.

But Paul here is telling us that God's promise to Abraham was fulfilled when the non Jewish Galatians received the Holy Spirit.

And that blessing came to them simply through faith as Jesus and as Lord and Savior. And so what is faith? We defined this last time too. But just as a reminder, faith is belief exhibited through active trust. So yes, like salvation and forgiveness and justification are also tied up in the blessing to Abraham.

But all of those are intangible. And Paul is pointing to Holy Spirit as the tangible affirmation of all of the promises that were made to Abraham. And so verse 10 says, for all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the Law and do them. So Paul's saying, everybody who tries to follow the law fails. And when you fail and at being a law keeper, and you're supposed to be a law keeper, do you know what the Law does to you?

It curses you. It's a curse. And so verse 13 says, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. See, Jesus is the only one who has ever tried to perform the law and come out the other side of it and not been cursed by it.

He's the only one who has ever done that. He fulfilled the law in every single aspect. And then he willingly submitted his body to be cursed on our behalf, to pay the price in order to cleanse and purify and justify us and give us life. Verse 14. So that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

Paul here is clearly teaching that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is the promise that God made to Abraham when he said, in you shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. So when we think of promise, what we think of is we think of heaven, right? And I get it, like, we were very much framed in this, like, heaven and hell kind of mindset. We think of eternal life when we think of that word, promise. We think of a place that we go after this life is finished.

And certainly eternal life is a promise of the New Testament. The resurrection of the body is a promise of the New Testament. But to call it life after death is a bit of a misnomer. Because as far as Paul is concerned, eternal life starts when the Holy Spirit falls from heaven and puts a new breath in your lungs and lives in you. Eternal life breaks into you when what was previously dead in you is brought to life.

Eternal life is heaven, the new age, breaking into the here and now and bringing you to life. So promise, then, at least in this context, is the spirit of God bringing dead people to life. This is the blessing and the promise that God made to Abraham. That we, who had been God's enemies and had rebelled against him and had incurred death, that we would receive his generous power to first justify us right, to make us clean. But the reason he makes us clean is for a purpose, so that we can be a people in whom he might put his spirit, so that he could live in us, so that he could breathe new life into us, so that he could create union between himself and people from every tribe and every tongue and every nation.

So then after this, Paul goes back into a bit of lawyer speak, which he does frequently in the book of Galatians, because these people, they read the Old Testament Scriptures. They are supposed to, even though they're Gentiles. God says, or Paul says, you know, read the Scriptures as he's training up these churches. And these Christians read the Scriptures and the Old Testament Scriptures you just got to know they are full of law all over the place. And Paul anticipates, hey, you're probably going to have questions about why the law is there.

So in verses 15 to 18, we're not going to go through the whole thing. But he basically makes the point that the promises to Abraham were made by God through an unconditional covenant where all Abraham had to do was simply believe God's promises and that was it. Like Abraham became a recipient of what God was offering. It was completely on God to hold up his end of the bargain of this covenant. And that promise before, before the law came, he believed that he had access to that.

All of that happened before, before the law ever came. So whatever happens with the law, and this is Paul's point, it can't nullify what God had already promised to Abraham. So basically, God says he's going to unify himself with people from all families of the earth unconditionally, that there's no condition on whether or not he does this. And if God said it, we should believe it. And so verse 19 says, why then the law, it was added because of transgressions until the offspring should come.

So Paul, right here, he's going to point to two purposes of the law. And the first purpose of the law is this. It was added because of transgressions. Means it was meant to restrain sin. It exists to restrain sin in the Messiah's culture.

It existed to preserve a culture from which the promised offspring, which is Christ, would arrive, so that when Christ came, he would come in the midst of a culture that still had some value for knowing and following God, even though all the people in that culture had greatly overestimated how well they actually knew God. God.

So that's the first purpose of the law. And then he says, is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Well, certainly not. For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But here's the problem.

There was no law that God could give that was going to bring life. So verse 22. But the scripture imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. This is the second purpose of the law, when he says it imprisoned everything under sin. The law came about to show us how wicked our own hearts were and how desperately in need we are for a different source of life.

Or to put it like this, the second purpose of the law is to reveal our need for forgiveness of sin, to reveal our need for forgiveness of sin. The law reveals what is broken in us so that we can then turn to the source of life and receive whatever he has to give.

Verse 23. Before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith. He's still stuck in lawyer speak, but I just want to kind of give you an implication of all this and answer a question that many of you have probably had at various points throughout your life. We say, you know what?

There aren't there, like a lot of people in the Old Testament who believed in Yahweh as the one true God. What happened to them, like, after they died, where are they at? What's going on with them? Like, they didn't necessarily know Jesus. They couldn't trust in Jesus because they didn't even know that that was going to be his name.

And so what happened to these people, what this is telling us is that every Old Testament saint who had faith in Yahweh, all of us are justified by our faith. But the faith, faith, even though they couldn't see what it was in, was pointing to Christ. So that in Christ's atonement, what happens is Christ dies on the cross and his atonement reaches backwards into history and forwards into the future and redeems all who would ever believe.

So that's the power of what happened on the cross. And those who died with faith in Yahweh, though they were condemned by the law, they were redeemed by Christ's blood. Just as believers in Jesus are redeemed by Christ's blood today. So verse 25. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith. So here's the thing. He's like, the law is no longer determinative on who we are or what we are to become. The law is not even like the guide. It can help us understand who our God is better, right?

It can do all of that. It can instruct us, and it can help shape the way that we think about God. But we are not under the command of the law. We are under the command of the Holy Spirit. And so it is the Holy Spirit, not the law, that determines how we live.

And that's really our main point this morning, the Spirit. This is what he does. He joins us together with other parts of the faith community. The Spirit writes God's desires on our heart. The Spirit speaks through us in order to be able to instruct others and through others in order to be able to instruct us.

The Spirit convicts us of sin, which means he shows us when our sin is getting in the way of our relationship with God. The Spirit shows us falsehood. The Spirit enables us to discern other spirits. The Spirit reveals when idols sit on the throne of our hearts. The Spirit empowers us.

The Spirit transforms us. The Spirit captivates our attention with Jesus. The Spirit reveals God's will to us. He makes the word of God living and active and transformational for us. The Spirit is our Creator come to be united with us.

And the Holy Spirit is the gift of ages past who has been promised to us.

So what.

Relate to Holy Spirit like He is a person with whom you have a relationship.

So what does this mean? It means that as I'm praying, as I even go to prayer, I ask, Holy Spirit, would you show me how to pray in this time? Would you direct my heart to what I should be praying for? It means that as I'm making a key decision, Holy Spirit, would you reveal to me your desires? And this decision, would you show me maybe even things that I'm not seeing?

Means that as I'm overwhelmed or anxious, I say, Holy Spirit, would you remind me what is true so that I can rest in you? Means that as I'm walking through my neighborhood, Holy Spirit, would you show me what it looks like to love my neighbors as if Jesus were loving my neighbors? Means as I'm reading the Bible, Holy Spirit, would you highlight what is true here and plant it in my heart as I listen to a co worker? It means Holy Spirit, how do you want to reveal your power here in their situation? How do you want to reveal your love in this life?

I say this because we need to just get clear. He is not a theory or an idea. He is a person. And he has made himself available to all of us. And some of us need to repent of putting him in the box of a theological concept without expecting him to be a part of every day that we spend in the kingdom.

We need a life actually more like what is described in John chapter 3, John 3:8. The wind blows where it wishes. By the way, the word wind also the same word as the word spirit. So the wind blows where it wishes and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. And so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit wants to work with us as if we are leaves that get blown around wherever he pushes us.

So our second so what then this morning is this come to the end yourself. You cannot usher in the kingdom, you cannot make yourself right with God. You cannot reconcile your friends to God, your own effort and rule keeping or whatever, it just doesn't do it. He is the one who does everything and he's waiting on you to surrender. Like whatever your idea of control is that you have to hold on to, or whatever, you know, picture you have of like, oh, I can't do that with that person because that'll make me look bad.

Like he's like all of those little things that you make excuses for not listening and obeying the spirit. Like those are things he's calling you to surrender so that you can be responsive to him, right? It's not like, it's not like, oh, you know what? Holy Spirit brought me to faith and you know what I gotta do now? I gotta work hard to manage my sin.

Now. That's not what it is. It's that Holy Spirit is the one who brought me to life and he is the life that I am now living. And so when my conversation and my schedules and my habits and my skills are in his hands for his purposes, the kingdom comes near. So with all of that being said, I just invite you to pray.

Pray with me, Holy Spirit. We just recognize that we need a greater surrender to you.

So, Lord, I don't know what you want to do among us, but I ask that you would reveal anything that is keeping us from trusting you to speak and guide and work and empower.

Lord, even as we come to the communion table, would you cause this space, this time to be something that clears out more space for you to do what you want to do. And I ask this in Jesus name, Amen.

See, by his sacrifice, Jesus provided the cleansing for us that would make space for the Holy Spirit. And there are two really significant issues that keep us from experiencing more of the Spirit's work in and among us. The first is unresponsiveness to his conviction, right? When he convicts a sin and he reveals to us what is disordered in our soul, what is disordered in our actions, he's showing us that so that we can surrender to him and repent, right? And us responding to kind of that call, he's like, okay, I'm working with somebody who's responsive now.

And so there's that kind of first issue is the one to point out that we can be unresponsive to his conviction and therefore we experience less of his power. But then the second thing I would draw to your attention, the second reason that we experience less of him is that we're often listening to the voice of the enemy instead of to his voice. Right? The enemy's voice is fear. Enemy's voice comes to us through culture.

The enemy's voice comes to us through self criticism, through doubt. The enemy says stuff to us like, you can't hear the Holy Spirit. What a lie. From the pit of hell. Jesus said, my sheep, hear my voice.

The enemy says to us, you won't ever fit in if you do that.

Fit in? Who do we need to fit in with if the Father has adopted us into his family?

The enemy said, you know what? You know God uses other people better than he uses you.

What? Like, did you know that you have a sphere of influence and you have people and you have a way of being in the world that no other person in this room can be in the world, and the Holy Spirit is trying to use you in that space, in that time to influence the people who are around you that nobody else can influence in that way. What a lie to say God. God uses other people better than he uses me. We all have a place to fill in the kingdom.

Or how about, nobody values what you do. Nobody here really cares that you've done this.

In the book of Revelation, all the saints get these things called crowns, which the implication is the crowns are the rewards, like the things that we've done for Jesus. And you know who values those? Jesus. We lay those at his feet, the things that we do at his feet, and they speak of the glory of what he's done in the world. Maybe nobody does value what you do, but I can tell you that Jesus values what you do, and his opinion is what matters most of all.

And on and on those voices go. And the body and blood of Jesus provide resolution for us for both of those things. So if it's the conviction of sin that you're not listening to, your Lord Jesus Christ says to you, repent, turn from your sin, and know that the richness of his love is full and is not withheld from you at this table, that his forgiveness is real and clears out all distance between you and Him.

And to those who listen to the voice of the enemy, every lie, the enemy speaks over you. The blood of Jesus speaks something better. So we celebrate this table as a place where we can come into better living relationship with the Holy Spirit.