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Today’s message is the third in a three-part series dealing with the Trinity. To date we have looked at how our images of God affect our daily lives. We learned that the risen Christ can have different faces. Today we will try to catch a glimpse of the Holy Spirit. Of the three persons in the Trinity the Holy Spirit is probably the most difficult to understand. This is by design. One of the purposes of the Holy Spirit is to draw attention, not to itself, but to Christ. For example, you’ve all seen a building or a sign or a tree brightly lit in the winter darkness by floodlights. When floodlighting is well done, the floodlights are placed so that you don’t see them. In fact, you are not supposed to see where the light is coming from. What you are meant to see is just the object on which the floodlights are trained. The intended effect is to make it visible when otherwise it would not be seen for the darkness, and to maximize its dignity by throwing all its details into relief so that you can see it properly. This is one of the roles of the Holy Spirit, to throw its light on Christ. In the Bible the Holy Spirit is imaged as water, oil, wind, fire, a dove, and a seal. In addition to these images there are six major ministries of the Holy Spirit. 1. THE HOLY SPIRIT POINTS TO CHRIST. The Holy Spirit is the power that leads people to faith in Christ. Our scripture lesson from Corinthians says that we cannot discern the ways of God without the Holy Spirit. 2. THE HOLY SPIRIT CONVICTS. Through our conscience it lets us know when we have sinned. This is one area where most of us have experienced the Holy Spirit even if we did not know its name. We have known that feeling in our gut when we have done or said something that hurt someone else. 3. THE HOLY SPIRIT FILLS US UP. It fills up the heart of the believer and gives us the strength to live out God’s desires. Do you feel empty? Ask the Spirit to fill your emptiness. 4. THE HOLY SPIRIT COMFORTS. It seals the heart and assures us of our place with God. It’s that calm assurance, that peace that passes understanding. I hope when it is your time to walk through the valley of the shadow of darkness that you will fear no evil because the Spirit of God will give you comfort and inner strength 5. THE HOLY SPIRIT IS GIFT-GIVER. The Holy Spirit gives gifts to all persons. Part of our task as Christians is to discover our spiritual gifts and use them. The problem for many of us is that we are doing things in the church, in our jobs, in our personal lives that are NOT our gifts. We are being drained of life energy. But if we know our Spirit-given gifts and use them it gives us life energy. 6. THE HOLY SPIRIT IS OUR HOLY GARDENER. The Holy Spirit grows fruit in our lives. Check out Galatians 5:22. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. You may not have all these fruits in your life, but I bet you have all of the seeds. In cooperation with our Holy Gardener we can see those seeds grow to mature fruit. Roald Amundsen, the great Norwegian explorer, was the first to discover the magnetic meridian of the North Pole and to discover the South Pole. On one of his trips, Amundsen took a homing pigeon with him. When he had finally reached the top of the world, he opened the bird's cage and set it free. Imagine the delight of Amundsen's wife, back in Norway, when she looked up from the doorway of her home and saw the pigeon circling in the sky above. No doubt she exclaimed, "He's alive! My husband is still alive!" The Holy Spirit is about life. Its role is to always point us to the new life of Jesus Christ. Theologian Paul Tillich said that the Holy Spirit is another word for "God present." Whenever we feel the presence of God the Holy Spirit is there. The Hebrew word for spirit is Ruach which means breath or wind. The Holy Spirit is the breath of God. The Spirit is God's active force, our helper, our counselor, our comforter. Once there was a little fish living in a stream who was consumed with one quest. He wanted to find the ocean. None of the fish in the stream knew how to help him. So he swam until he reached a lake. But none of the lake fish knew where to find the ocean. So he swam down a river asking the river fish his question. Finally he found himself surrounded by saltwater. He asked a big fish, "Where is the ocean?" The big fish replied, "It’s all around you." But the little fish did not believe the big fish and spent the rest of its life searching for the ocean. Like fish in an ocean we don’t have to go searching for the Spirit. It is right here! It is in the air we breathe. It is in an act of kindness. It is in a loving word. It is within our hearts. Our task is to put ourselves in the best position to become aware of this love force pulsing through our lives. When we become aware and open to the Spirit’s activity mighty and powerful things can happen. If you stand on six inches of rubber, 5,000 volts will refuse to go through you. The Holy Spirit is like that. It works best when it moves through us to reach out to others. Our job is to remove the rubber, anything that blocks the flow of God’s Spirit through our lives. Paul writes in Corinthians that our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit. What kind of care are you giving to your body, that temple of the Spirit? Are you eating right? Are you exercising? Are you getting regular check ups? It’s not just a physical thing. It’s a spiritual thing. Ever have times when you couldn’t pray? Ask the Holy Spirit to teach you to pray. Ever felt that you didn’t have the words to say to someone? Ask the Holy Spirit to give you the words. Ever felt that you couldn’t love a difficult person? Admit that you have no love in your heart for that person and ask the Holy Spirit to give you a new love. It can happen. We can experience more of the power of the Holy Spirit if we will only ask. At this point let’s look at the Holy Spirit in the context of the Trinity. I want to pose a few questions. Do you think it is possible to experience the Holy Spirit apart from God or Jesus? Is it possible to experience Jesus apart from God? Or is it all the same experience but which we name differently? Some have said that the Trinity is more about how we experience God. For example, we experience God as Creator during those times when are aware of the awesomeness of God’s creation. We experience Jesus Christ in the faces and actions of other people. We experience the Holy Spirit when we sense God is very close to our heart. In doing this series perhaps we have raised more questions than answers. After last Sunday’s sermon one person said to me, "You blew me out of the water with that sermon!" I must confess that I see the preacher’s role to stimulate your thinking when it comes to our spiritual lives. We ought to be talking about the scriptures and how they impact our lives. But this issue is particularly complex. Listen to an essay by Jerry McAllister at Michigan State University. "I wonder if the reason the discussion of the trinity is so complicated is because we try to look at it from the most difficult side, that is, using it as an absolute physical, mechanical definition of God. Although it is about God, Trinity is not a God thing. It is a human thing. God is. God's name is "I am". God is all being, or better stated, God is being. God doesn't need a Trinity to know wholeness. God is." "Humans glimpse being at times but are limited. Humans have difficulty perceiving the whole of God. God allows us humans to take it in chunks so we can relate it to that with which we are already familiar. The Trinity, then is a human tool to have a relationship with God. It is not God. "As creator, God is the power, intelligence, strength and control. As being, we see God in other people, most notably in Jesus the Christ. As spirit we experience God's presence well up in us to comfort, challenge and energize us. The Trinity is a human way of explaining the aspects of the nature of God. We say "Father, Son and Holy Ghost" because we need to in order to express the range of our experience of God. But God is not limited to a three piece jigsaw puzzle. God is." "Trinity describes three ways God is revealed to us. It does not define God. Definitions not only reveal something to us, they also apply limits, boundaries to what was defined. God may not be limited by our definitions. Too many ungodly wars have been waged over how to define God which really comes down to how to confine God inside our limited vision. Thousands, maybe millions of people have been slaughtered because someone described the Trinity with a slightly different emphasis in arguments that miss God altogether." "I think the reason talking about the Trinity is so tricky is because we are trying to split hairs in human definitions. We should really just be saying "I experience and understand God in these ways." Then there is room for lots of poetry and eloquent prose and song trying to share that experience with others." An elephant was enjoying a leisurely dip in a jungle pool when a rat came up to the pool and insisted that the elephant get out. "I will not," said the elephant. "I demand that you get out this minute!" said the rat. "Why?" "I shall tell you only after you are out of the pool." Finally the elephant lumbered out of the pool, and stood in front of the rat and said, "Now then, why did you want me to get out of the pool?" The rat said, "To check if you were wearing my swim trunks." All too often we imagine God fitting into our image of what we want God to be. It’s like trying to fit an elephant into a rat’s swim trunks. The Trinity may help us understand something about God. But it will not tell us all there is to know about God. We need faith. We need trust. We need love. Once we have this we have everything we need. |
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11/19/00 - Trinity Series: Images of the Holy Spirit
