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God is Spirit

From the Series: God Is
Speaker: Mark Batterson
Date: May 31, 2009

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Transcript

How’s everybody doing? Welcome to everyone at all five of our locations, podcast listeners, webcast listeners. We are going to dive right in. Turn to John 14. We continue the ‘God Is’ series. You ready?

On Friday night, the Batterson family went to see Night at the Museum – Battle of the Smithsonian. Here’s the cool thing, we saw it at the Smithsonian because it was showing at the Air and Space Imax and I thought it would be cool to go watch the movie where it was shot. It was like watching the movie on the set of the movie. So, if you haven’t seen the movie, I apologize, because I might ruin it, but it’s been out for two weeks so that’s your fault! Bottom line is, there is an Egyptian tablet that animates all of the statues in the museum, so when the sun goes down, they come to life and when the sun comes up, they turn back into wax statues. It’s really cool with all these historical personages and in this one, it actually incorporates the National Gallery of Art, which I love, and the paintings are actually animated. For example, in one scene, Ben Stiller, the night guard, there is this painting of a winter scene and they are skating and a snowball comes out of the painting and hits him. It was cool. Maybe you had to be there. And then he and Amelia Earhart jump into the scene where the sailor is kissing the nurse in Time Square, it’s really cool. So anyway, after the movie, I wanted to find out what everybody’s favorite scene was and I knew what Josiah was going to say, because I know him well enough. There is a scene where Larry is trying to figure out the combination to this Egyptian tablet, so he takes it to the Thinker, the famous sculpture. He asks him the question and the Thinker says, “I’m thinking, I’m thinking, I’m thinking” and then he get distracted because there is this beautiful statue of a woman and he starts hitting on the statue and puts on a gun show. You know what a gun show is, right? In a thick New York accent, he says, “Hey baby, look at these guns, boom boom firepower!” Josiah is much better at that than I am, but I have heard it so many times this weekend that I think it will be forever etched into my cerebral cortex. Try it. Boom boom firepower! I feel like I am all alone. Where am I going with this?

Without the Holy Spirit, there is no gun show! We got nothing, but with the Holy Spirit, you want to try it one more time? Boom boom firepower! Yeah! I am still all alone. Just in case you care, I made a decision a couple years ago that if it’s funny to me, I’m going to say it. I’m going to take you along for the ride. That’s what we celebrate this weekend. Pentecost weekend, when God poured out his Holy Spirit. Without it, we can’t do a thing. With the Holy Spirit, there’s nothing we can’t do. That’s our firepower. I think we should be excited about that this weekend. So, this weekend, God Is Spirit.

I want to talk about the Spirit of God. There are so many dimensions, it’s hard to know where to go, but I want you to turn to John 14, starting in verse 15, and I want to zoom in on one dimension of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives.

“If you love me, obey my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later (a reference to the day of Pentecost) will be in you. But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative—that is, the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you. “I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid.

Don’t you love the Word of God? Let’s start unpacking this passage. Verse 16: And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you.

A couple of weeks ago, Pastor Joel, our Campus Pastor at Ballston, also my brother-in-law and uncle to my three children, was in LA at the Dream Center, and afterwards, he went out with Matthew Barnett, the Pastor, and a group of people and he wrote an email to the family and told us about the dinner and said, “The third place guy on American Idol went to dinner with us, I had no idea who they were but some of the other guys were pretty excited.” When Laura told Summer, she went nuts. We watched the whole season and the family favorite was the third place guy, Danny Gokey! And I’m thinking to myself, ‘Dude, you could have at least gotten your niece an autograph!’ Not that I’m bitter or anything, but as I was thinking about it this week, I thought this would make a good illustration that some people really understand who the Holy Spirit is and love Him, like Summer; and some people have no idea who the Holy Spirit is. In fact, they call him the third place guy, like Pastor Joel. Oh, I’m just having a little fun, but isn’t it true? Not about Joel, but in general. The Holy Spirit, like, we get the Father concept and we get the Son concept, but the Holy Spirit kind of mystifies us, but I want to suggest that the Holy Spirit is a person with a personality. I want to make an observation. Have you ever been in a situation where it’s awkward because people are talking about you like you aren’t really there but you are there? Have you ever been in that situation? Sometimes I wonder if that’s how the Holy Spirit feels. We spend so much time talking or debating or even arguing about the Holy Spirit like He is some inanimate object that doesn’t even hear us. But I’m suggesting that without the Holy Spirit, we are inanimate objects. Read Job 34. If God were to withdraw his breath, the Spirit of God, we would return to dust, we would implode. It is the Spirit of God that animates this stuff. What irony that we talk about Him like He is some inanimate object. No, He is a person.

I want to ask you a question. Do you love the Holy Spirit? Do you love the Holy Spirit the way you love Jesus? Do you love the Holy Spirit the way you love the Father? I know this is confusing business. It’s three in one, three persons, one God, I know that is difficult to understand, but if we could understand it, He wouldn’t be God. So that makes perfect sense. I’m going to push the envelope here, is the Holy Spirit just someone you talk about, or argue about, or maybe you have no idea who He even is, just the third place guy. Or is the Holy Spirit someone that you love and appreciate and realize that without Him, you would be an inanimate object, that you wouldn’t be able to do what God wants you to do. When you sin, do you feel bad because you’ve sinned or do you feel bad because you’ve grieved someone that you love? Those are two very different things and I think that somehow we’ve got to personalize the Spirit of God. Straight up, you can’t be holy without the Holy Spirit! You can’t do anything without the Holy Spirit. So in this passage, Jesus begins to personalize the Spirit of God. He reveals one dimension, He is an Advocate. The Greek word is paraclete, it can be interpreted as encourager, comforter, counselor. It can also be a military term that refers to a battle formation where two Roman soldiers would stand back to back with their shields positioned in front of them, so they literally had each other’s backs covered. I think that is cool. It’s like saying the Holy Spirit is going to cover your back. Aren’t you grateful for that? Don’t you love Him for that? We need him for that.

Verse 17 starts to get into some of the dimensions of what the Holy Spirit does. It says: He is the Holy Spirit who leads us into all comfort. Whoa, that’s what we wish it said. What it really says is: He is the Holy Spirit who leads us into all truth. Here’s where we have a little bit of hang-up and here’s where I love you too much not to talk about this. I think a lot of us, what we want is the Holy Spirit to lead us into all comfort. If not that, then we’ll settle for the Holy Spirit leading us into partial truth, because there are some things we don’t want to know about ourselves. We don’t want to deal with those things. I think most of us want the truth but we’re not sure about all the truth. The truth is, we surround ourselves with people who validate the things we falsely believe about ourselves, and if we do that, we’ll never grow, because we will just stay who we are. Have you ever had someone in your life who was willing to get in your face? And you hate them for it and you love them for it. Those are the people who help us grow. I think this is a beautiful dimension of the Holy Spirit’s personality. Let me put it in counseling terms. Counseling is not really my thing. I don’t think I’m very good at it. In fact, if you come to me for counseling, you are probably going to need additional counseling to undo the counseling that I did. That’s a little bit of an exaggeration but here is some self-analysis. I think my problem is this, I tend to counsel people in a way where my objective is to help them feel better. But if something is wrong, that’s not doing them any favors. Like going to the doctor and the doctor says, “Oh, you’re fine, trust me, really you’re fine.” A limb is falling off your body but he says you’re fine. You are not helping anybody. What the Holy Spirit does, yes, God of all comfort, but He leads us into truth and begins to reveal things so that we can experience growth and change in our lives, but are you willing to go there? I think that’s the question.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone and they reveal way too much information? TMI. I’m in those situations all the time. I’m the guy that reveals too much information, so I know about this. I think sometimes we do that to the Holy Spirit. Too much information, let’s stop here and we never get to the deep places where we deal with the root issues. Typically, it boils down to anger, lust, pride, greed, different variations of those things, but we keep on in the same patterns because we never deal with the root issues. We never let a counselor get in our face and get in our business. The best counselors are the ones who get into the closets, into the crawl spaces, into the attic and say we are going to deal with the issue. The Holy Spirit wants to lead us into all truth, because truth will set us free. Are we willing to go there?

One more thing, please hear it. Some of us, we are frustrated because it seems like God is silent. ‘God, why can’t I hear your voice? Why aren’t you speaking to me?’ Here’s why some of us can’t hear his voice, because we aren’t willing to hear everything He has to say. What I want to say here is delicate. Here’s what I’ve learned, if you tune out the convicting voice of the Holy Spirit, you won’t hear anything else. We ask God for his guiding voice, ‘what’s next, what do I do, where are you taking me?’ But it’s a package deal! You can’t just listen to half of what the Holy Spirit says. So my prayer is that we would have the courage to do some business, listen to that convicting voice so that we can hear those other voices. You aren’t going to hear those other voices if you don’t listen to that convicting voice. What’ I’m getting at is this, the Holy Spirit wants to take you places you don’t want to go. He will say some things that you don’t want to hear. But that’s the only way you are going to get where God wants you to go and it’s the only way you are going to become who God wants you to be. It probably starts with getting on our knees and saying, “Holy Spirit, I have grieved You, I love You, I need You, help me.” And as we begin to open ourselves up to his entire voice, it begins to change us and it takes us to a place that is so amazing.

Verse 17: The world cannot receive Him because it isn’t looking for Him and doesn’t recognize Him. But you know Him because He lives with you now and later will be in you.

I’m going to pause here for a moment. This is more than a passing comment. This little verse, this little phrase ‘will be in you’ is a paradigm shift. In the 10^th century B.C., King Solomon built the first Jewish temple. It was an architectural wonder of the ancient world, 30,000 loggers, 80,000 stonecutters, 3,600 foremen to manage that 7-year project, and when it was done, it was the pride and joy of Judaism. It was the epicenter, it was the place they went to sacrifice, to worship, it was the place where pilgrims from all around the world would return during three pilgrimage feasts. In 586 B.C., temple destroyed, they go into captivity in Babylon, they come back and they rebuild a second temple, and that’s the temple that existed when Jesus visited when he was 12 years old, it’s the temple where He threw out the money changers and kicked over the tables, that’s the temple where, in the very moment that Jesus gave his life on the cross, the curtain in that temple separating the Holy of Holies was torn in two from top to bottom. That temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Romans. What I’m getting at is the temple was the place, it was the locus of God’s activity, the locus of God’s presence, that Arc of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies was the place where God would manifest Himself. But Jesus hints at something in this passage. The Holy Spirit will be in you. Immediately following that, He went to the cross, then was raised from the dead. After that, there is an interesting exchange where it says Jesus breathed on him to receive the Holy Spirit, but then it was Pentecost, seven weeks later that 120 early believers are in the upper room praying and something amazing happens. It sounds like a windstorm, tongues of fire descend on the place, they don’t even know what hit them, but they start speaking in other languages and they can’t comprehend what’s happening. They go into these temple courts and they begin proclaiming the glory of God in languages they don’t even understand! Well, there are all these pilgrims from all over the world who are hearing the message of the Gospel for the first time in their native tongue and 3,000 are saved and baptized and they become the first wave of missionaries back to their homelands. Incredible!

Here’s a great irony, this is Pentecost in a nutshell. I don’t think I can fully put this in perspective but I’m giving it my best shot. All of these pilgrims come to Jerusalem and the locus of their journey, the destination is the temple, and it’s almost like Jesus says, ‘Surprise! That isn’t the temple, you are!’ They came to worship at the temple, but became the temple, became walking, talking temples and walked right out of Jerusalem! Temples walking right out of Jerusalem! I Corinthians 6:19 says: Do you not know what your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you? Turn to the person next to you and say, “Nice temple!” You’ve got yourself a new pick-up line, sounds more spiritual than nice body!

Then Peter gets up and tries to explain what is happening but he doesn’t even understand it. Acts 2:40, he says, “You will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off.” Here we are, 2,000 years later, 5,902 miles from the temple in Jerusalem and the promise is fulfilled, because this body is not a physical thing, it is a temple. It was designed to house the Spirit of God. What happens, the moment you put your faith in Christ, the Bible says that the Holy Spirit moves in and takes up residence in you. Whoa man! I don’t understand that! But I don’t get respiration. I don’t totally get how I inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide and it keeps me alive. I don’t even understand what makes me exist. All I know is this, you were designed to house the Spirit of God, and when you come to faith in Christ, that Spirit moves in and takes up residence. When Jesus says, “And will be in you,” He is marking a quantum change in the way things work, it is no longer about a physical building, it is about these walking, talking temples that God builds with him Spirit.

Verse 26: But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative—that is, the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you.

What a promise! He will teach you everything. You’re telling me that the Spirit of God can teach me anything and everything, help me do what I’m doing no matter what I’m doing? That’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m saying that we underestimate the way the Holy Spirit wants to empower us, enlighten us and help us in what we do.

But let me focus on the second part, remind you of everything I have told you. I love this because it is saying that the Holy Spirit is going to jog your memory. This is amazing, if you’ve had this experience, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I can’t tell you how many times, in the context of prayer, God will surface something in my spirit that I had forgotten about or wasn’t thinking about and it will be exactly what I needed to help me make a decision or to help me move forward in my life. Now, this is so critical, He cannot remind you of what you do not know. There are a lot of people preparing for final exams, I would love to be able to pray that God will help you on your exam but it is difficult for me to pray for you to remember what you never learned! This is where we need Holy Scripture and the Holy Spirit, this might be the most important thing, you need to start every day in the Word of God, because as you are in the Word of God, what happens is the Holy Spirit will begin to remind you of those promises of Scripture that can help you. You need to continually be downloading the Word of God so that the Holy Spirit has something to remind you of. Does that make sense? When you open the Bible, God opens his mouth, when you close the Bible, God closes his mouth. You’ve got to be in the Word so that the Holy Spirit can go to work in your life. Trust me, it will be amazing as the Lord begins to bring to memory passages and things that will help you navigate your life.

Not long ago, I came across a fascinating speech by Karl Paulnack, head of the Music Division at the Boston Conservatory. He gave a speech to incoming freshmen and I am no musician but I love this speech. It was fascinating from a non-musical perspective. He talked about the ancient Greeks, that they believed music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin, that astronomy is the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects like stars and planets. Music, though, is the study of the emotional universe within those invisible, internal, hidden objects and he suggests that the Greeks suggested that music essentially helps us figure out the position of things within us. You still with me? Paulnack has performed more than a thousand concerts in countries all around the world. He performed at Carnegie Hall, performed for Heads of State, but in the article, he says that the most important concert he ever performed was at a nursing home in Fargo, North Dakota a few years ago. He tells why. He started out that concert with an Aaron Copland sonata that was written during World War II. Copland had a friend and he dedicated the song to this friend, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Paulnack played that piece and an elderly gentleman seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. Paulnack wasn’t totally shocked because sometimes people cry during his concerts, but he was surprised by this man. He was in his 70s, had a buzz cut from his military days, no idea why this guy would start weeping. After the song, Paulnack talked about the sonata, he would tell the back-story and share that it was dedicated to a pilot who had been shot down in World War II. The man in the audience was so disturbed that he got up and left. Paulnack figured he wouldn’t see him again, but he came backstage after the concert and explained why he left. He said, “During World War II, I was a pilot and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s plane was hit. I watched my friend bail out and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes that had engaged us had returned and machine-gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean realizing that he was lost. I had not thought about his for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this was happening, why now, but when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate the lost pilot, it was more than I could handle. How did that music find those memories in me?”

I read that and then Paulnack went on the say that that is what music does. He said that the Greeks said that the music is the study of this invisible relationship between internal objects, he said for me to play for this old soldier and help him connect with memories of his lost friend, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work, this is why music matters.

I heard that story and my mind starting going in a thousand different directions. For starters, I thought about how true it is biblically. David playing the harp for Saul. Saul was crazy but David starts playing the harp and it was like a different spirit because I think David’s music on the harp helped Saul begin to make sense of those internal objects within him, so I was fascinated on that level. But then I thought to myself, maybe that’s why so often it is in the context of worship that God does some kind of revealing work or healing work in our life that somehow as we are singing these songs and these words that have such tremendous truth, that somehow it helps us re-order what’s going on in our own hearts and lives. Then beyond that, I thought, what an amazing picture of the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit goes to work in our lives as a Counselor and what does He do? He helps us make sense of the position of those internal objects, our internal universe. It begins to change us from the inside out. And the by-product is the next verse, and I’m going to close with this.

Verse 27: I’m leaving you with a gift, peace of mind and heart.

No one can give that like the Holy Spirit. That’s why He says that the peace I give you is a gift the world cannot give, so do not be troubled or afraid. There are some things you cannot explain, you just have to experience it. All I can say is that I’m so grateful for the peace of God that transcends all understanding that guards my heart and my mind in Christ Jesus.

I want to extend an invitation, to those who have followed Christ, maybe you are in a place where you just need to experience that peace again. Are you listening to his voice? You need to tune in to everything the Holy Spirit is saying so that you can hear that voice of peace begin to calm your Spirit. But for some of you, if you were just being real, you would say that you don’t know if you’ve really made peace with God. You don’t know if you have peace where you are spiritually. Today is your day! You can know that peace that God offers. I believe the greatest moment in any person’s life is the moment they put their faith in Jesus Christ because what happens is they come into relationship with the one who created them, the One who has plans an purposes for them, the only One who can heal them of their past wounds, the One who has plans and purposes for their future. It changes your life. When you come into that relationship, what I’ve discovered, having seen hundreds of people over the years come into that relationship, different people experience it in different ways. I think that’s a testament to how big God is. Some people would say that initial feeling was one of tremendous joy. Other people would say it was that feeling that for the first time in my life, I feel like someone loves me perfectly, unconditionally and it is an amazing thing. But if you were to ask me the first feeling, I have to go way back, I was five years old, our family went to see a movie called The Hiding Place. After watching that movie, we came home, this is one of my earliest memories, I remember getting into bed, my mom was tucking me into bed and I asked my mom if I could ask Jesus into my heart. I remember praying that night, and I prayed a lot of times after that too, but that night, I remember praying and it was like the peace of God filled that room where I was. It was one of the first time that I felt that peace that would change my life and guard my heart and mind, and it’s difficult for me now to go back, and what if I didn’t know what I know, what if I didn’t experience that, I cannot image that. All I know is this – my past has been taken care of and my future is in the hands of God. It allows me to live my life with a tremendous sense of destiny because God is in control. I am his child, I am a temple of the Holy Spirit, He fills me and leads me into all truth, never leaves me, always there. I hope and pray that this weekend, you receive that gift that He freely offers. Let’s pray.

Lord, thank You, thank You for the peace of God, thank You for the Spirit of God. Holy Spirit, we love You and we receive You. Spirit of God, we invite You to come and fill these temples, to animate us, to help us, to empower us, to counsel us, to comfort us, to confront us. We are not satisfied with who we are, we want to become who You have destined us to be. So we offer ourselves to You. Lord I pray for those who maybe, for the first time this weekend, will make a decision to invite You into their lives. Lord, we celebrate and rejoice over that person and we believe that this is the beginning of your plans and purposes being revealed in their life. Lord for those who need peace, we aren’t asking You to change our circumstances, we are asking that the Spirit of God would come and help us. We thank You that long before we got up this morning and long after we go to bed tonight, the Bible says that the Holy Spirit is interceding for us with groans that cannot be uttered, that can’t even be put into words. Thank You for your intercession on our behalf, may we live our lives in the confidence that comes because we know that the Advocate, the Counselor, the Paraclete is in our corner and has our back covered. Thank You. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

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