Mentoring Men for the Master

WHO IS THE HOLY SPIRIT AND WHAT DOES HE DO?

  1. Who the Holy Spirit is not: Not a force, not an energy, not an emotion, not a “ghost”, not an it.
  2. Who is the Holy Spirit?   The Holy Spirit is a Person, possessing all the attributes of personality:
  • He possesses intellect – 2 Cor. 2:11
  • He possesses emotion – Romans 15:30; Ephes. 4:30
  • He possesses will – 1 Cor. 12:11
  • The Holy Spirit is God:
  1. He is called God in the Bible – Acts 5:4-5
  2. He is  associated with the Father and the Son – Matthew 28:19-20;  2 Cor. 14:13.
  3. He does all the actions of God, like creation – Gen. 1:2
  4. He possesses all the attributes of God – Omnipotent, Omniscience, and  Omnipresent.
  • The Holy Spirit is the Personal Representative (Agent) or Communicator of Jesus to human kind.  He performs in the  believer all that Jesus has done  or the  believer by His cross and resurrection.  The Holy Spirit is the member  of the Godhead, whereby human beings experience God.
  1. The Father thought redemption – Ephesians 1:2-3.
  2. The Son bought redemption – Ephesians 1:7.
  3. The Holy Spirit brought redemption – Ephesians 1:13-14.

Without the Holy Spirit, Christ would be only an intellectual concept.   Because of the Holy Spirit, He is the living God in our souls.  The believer is His living Temple on earth – 1 Cor. 6:19-20.

  • The Work of the Holy Spirit can be summed up in three statements:
  1. The Holy Spirit gives the believer his POSITION in Christ through the  new birth – John 3:5 – and the baptism of the Holy Spirit – 1 Cor. 12:113.
  2. The Holy Spirit imparts to the believer his spiritual CONDITION by the infilling. The Holy Spirit indwells every believer, that is, dwells within.  He is present, but He is not President until He fills us (Ephesians 5:18).
  3. The Holy Spirit makes possible our VOCATION (Ministry) through the special anointing, which is the “special touch for the special task.”
  4. Moody, “You can breathe without lungs, see without eyes, eat without a tongue sooner than you can live the Christian life without the infilling of the Holy Spirit.”

Summary of His Work expressed in “Cant’s:” 

  1. You can’t be SAVED without the Holy Spirit.  “Except a person is born of the Water (the Word) and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5).
  2. You can’t KNOW you are saved without the Holy Spirit.  “The Holy Spirit Himself  bears witness to our spirit that we are the children of God” (Romans 8:16).  If you ask me if I am a Christian, I would admit that I can’t explain it, but would go on to say, “I just know inside.”  Illus.:  Ed Hackney, Duke class mate, carried papers on campus, overflowing with God’s love, many students asked Ed, “How can you be so sure you are saved?”  He always replied, “I have inside information.”
  3. You can’t UNDERSTAND the Bible without the Holy Spirit.  “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God…nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14). I have a microfilm reproduction of the entire Bible – all 1245 pages and 773,747 words printed in a one inch square.  But I can’t make out one word of it.  Only with the aid of a high-powered microscope can it be read.  And only with the aid of the Holy Spirit can I understand the Bible.
  4. You cannot PRAY without the Holy Spirit – Romans 8:26.  Ilus.:  A pastor visited a woman dying of cancer, and she said, “I am so racked with pain that I cannot gather my thoughts together to pray.” A pastor said, “Well, you can groan, can’t you?” “Oh yes, she replied, “I do that all the time.” “Well, never mind that you can’t formulate prayers.  The Holy Spirit translates your groans into eloquent petitions and presents them to the Father.”
  5. You cannot LIVE A HOLY LIFE without the Holy Spirit.  Gal. 5:16; Romans 8:2-4.
  6. You cannot SERVE GOD without the Holy Spirit.  The Bible says when you are saved you not only get the GIFT of the Holy Spirit but the “gifts” of the Holy Spirit.  1 Cor. 12:7; 1 Pet. 4:10.  Many of God’s people are running around with their tongues hanging out trying to serve God.  What’s wrong?  They are trying to accomplish a supernatural task in the energy of their own flesh.  It’s insanity but we do it all the time.
  7. You can’t WITNESS without the Holy Spirit  (Acts 1:8).  Jesus Himself never preached until after the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and He commands us to “Tarry” for power before we try “to carry” the gospel to the world (Luke 24:49f).  Illus.: Why have thousands been trained to share their faith who never win a soul to Jesus?
  8. You can’t BE LIKE JESUS without the Holy Spirit  – the fruit of the Holy Spirit is a portrait of Jesus (Gal. 5:22-23).  It isn’t your fruit.  It is the fruit of the Holy Spirit.  You can’t sit in a church or a chair and try to work yourself up to love, to joy, to peace, etc.  Such is a natural product of the Holy Spirit living in you.
  9. You can’t have ABOUNDING JOY AND HOPE without the Holy Spirit   (Romans 15:13).
  10. You can’t HAVE THE KINGDOM OF GOD DWELLING IN YOU without the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17).

There would be no Christians, no Christian churches, no Christianity without the Holy Spirit.

  • How do you receive the Holy Spirit?      Repent and trust Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior – Acts 2:38.
  • Do you receive the Holy Spirit when you are saved? Yes – Acts 2:38.
  • Does every Christian have the Holy Spirit?   “If any person has not   the spirit of Christ, he is none of His- Romans 8:9b.
  • When do you receive the Holy Spirit? The moment you repent and turn your  life   over to Jesus – Acts 2:38; Romans 8:9b; Galatians 4:4-7.
  • If one receives all of Him when he is saved, why does one need to be filled?

When saved, the Holy Spirit enters to dwell in you.  He is thereafter present in every believer, but being present and being President is not the same thing.  He desires and demands to control every aspect of your life.  This is the meaning of the “Infilling” (Ephesians 5:18).  You have the Holy Spirit if you are saved; if you do not possess Him, you need to be saved.  You may have Him, but He may not have you (the infilling).  Thus Paul commands persons who have truly been saved and indwelt by the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 2:8-10, 2:20) to be “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18).

  •  What is the anointing of the Holy Spirit? The anointing is the special touch, enlightenment, freedom and ability to minister   our gift(s).  Jesus did no ministry until after His anointing – Luke 4:18.  If the   Son of God did not attempt ministry prior to His anointing, how dare we attempt      to do so.
  • What are the requirements to be filled?
    • Be sure you possess the Holy Spirit. Have you truly repented and surrendered your life to Jesus?
    • DESIRE to be filled more than anything on earth – Matthew 5:6; John 7:37.
    • DENOUNCE all known sin – confess and forsake – Proverbs 28:13.
    • DEPEND or Surrender to Him totally and without reservation (Romans 12:1-2). :  The crucial difference in commitment or rededication to surrender.
  • What are the requirements for anointing?
    1. A life of holiness – Heb. 12:14
    2. A life of yield ness – Romans 12:1-3
    3. A life of yield ness – Phil. 2:5-11.
  •  The Secret of the Anointing.  “While he (Jesus) prayed, the heaven was opened.  And the Holy Spirit descended  in bodily form like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from heaven which said,“You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased”- Luke 3:21-22.  As we have observed already, Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit from His mother’s womb – Luke 1:35; His birth and His subsequent life were “overshadowed” by the       power of the Highest.  But His anointing took place when He presented Himself to His Father for His life’s ministry.  The secret of this anointing is best summed up in three words: holiness, yielded ness, and prayerfulness.

The Life of Holiness.  God declared from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; in you I am well pleased” – Luke 3:22.  Looking back over thirty years of His hidden life, the Father affirmed with the writer to the Hebrews that He was “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners” – Hebrews 7:26.  this amazing statement is three-dimensional.  In relation to His God, He was – and is – “holy,” for all His words and actions reveal the very nature of His heavenly Father.  In relation to His fellow man, He was – and is- “harmless,” for His life and ministry were totally free from all malice.  In relation to Himself, He was – and is – “undefiled,” for as Prophet, Priest, and King, He was not stained with any kind of impurity, having no defilement to Himself.  Moffatt suggests that the language may be intended to show a contrast between the deep, ethical purity of Jesus and the ritualistic purity of the Levitical high priest who had to take extreme precautions against outward defilement.  In this three-dimensional sense He was therefore “separate from sinners.”  This was true of all of His life; but when God said, “You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased” (3:22), He was obviously referring to those first thirty years.

God can only bless with the anointing of His Holy Spirit those who pursue a life of holiness.  This is what He expects of all of us – Hebrews 12:14; 2 Cor.7:1.  As we face our respective ministries week by week, we must ever hear and heed those words of Jehovah through the prophet Isaiah: “Be clean, you who bear the vessels of the Lord – Isaiah 52:11.

The Life of Yielded ness .  Addressing John the Baptist, Jesus insisted, “Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” – Matthew 3:15.  Then we read that “Jesus…was baptized” – Luke 3:21.  In yielding Himself to John the “baptizer,” Jesus demonstrated His total obedience to the will of His Father – an attitude and activity that characterized the whole of His life and ministry.  In another verse we are reminded that “though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things, which He suffered” – Hebrews 5:8.  Obedience does not imply that Jesus was previously rebellious or disobedient – that is unthinkable!  At the same time, in His humanity He had to  evidence obedience to the will of the Father in order to qualify as the Author of eternal salvation – Heb. 5:8-9.  Indeed, as God’s servant, Jesus was “obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” – Phil. 2:8.

We, likewise, must be obedient if we would know the anointing of the Holy Spirit, for God gives “the Holy Spirit…to those who obey Him” – Acts 5:32, (emphasis ours.)  We must initially obey the gospel to know the gift of the Spirit; but we must continually obey to know the fullness and anointing of the Spirit.

Bobby Richardson, former New York Yankees’ second baseman spells out this attitude of obedience.  On one occasion he offered a prayer at a meeting of Fellowship of Christian Athletes.  It was classic for its brevity and poignancy: “Dear God, Your will – nothing more, nothing less, nothing else, Amen.”

The Life of Prayerfulness.  Luke records that as Jesus was being baptized, He was praying – Luke 3:21 – note present tense.  Later the Master reminded His disciples that if they were to know the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives, they would have to ask in prayer.  He declared, “If you then,  being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him” – Luke 11:13.  Commenting on this verse, G. Campbell Morgan affirms that “the highest in prayer is that attitude that seeks and obtains from God His Holy Spirit.  That is initial, but also contagious.  This is where we begin, and when we receive the Holy Spirit at first, we are born again; but the prayer-life is the life that is always seeking and always receiving – the infilling, the infilling and overflowing of the Spirit” (emphasis ours).  That is why the verbs ask, seek, and knock – Luke 11:9 – are in the present tense.  We are to go on asking for God to go on giving.  The reason why we do not know anointing in our preaching is because we do not know anointing, and the reason we do not know anointing is because we do not go on asking.  As Professor Leon Morris points out, “Luke is interested in the work of the Spirit and here he sees the gift of the Spirit as man’s highest good…The reference is..to the Spirit’s work in the Christian’s life generally, as in Romans 8.”  (Dr. Stephen Olford).