Sermon on Lord’s Day 20⤒🔗

53. Q. What do you believe concerning the Holy Spirit?
A. First, He is, together with the Father and the Son, true and eternal God.[1] Second, He is also given to me,[2] to make me by true faith share in Christ and all His benefits,[3] to comfort me,[4] and to remain with me forever.[5]
[1] Gen. 1:1, 2; Matt. 28:19; Acts 5:3, 4; I Cor. 3:16. [2] I Cor. 6:19; II Cor. 1:21, 22; Gal. 4:6; Eph. 1:13. [3] Gal. 3:14; I Pet. 1:2. [4] John 15:26; Acts 9:31. [5] John 14:16, 17; I Pet. 4:14.

Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; 27-13:13

Singing: (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 25:2
Psalm 143:6
Psalm 37:9,12
Hymn 38:1,2
Psalm 133:1,2 & Hymn 37:3

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

We’ve spent the last number of Lord’s Days making confession of what the Lord has told us about the second Person of the Holy Trinity – how the Son of God became man, suffered on the cross, died and was buried, arose from the dead and ascended into heaven. Concerning the ascension of the Lord, we repeated after God that Christ from heaven "sends us His Spirit" (Lord’s Day 18.49) and "by His Holy Spirit He pours out heavenly gifts upon us, His members" (Lord’s Day 19.51). Who, though, is this Holy Spirit the ascended Christ has sent us? And what are the heavenly gifts He pours out upon us through His Spirit? This is the material of Lord’s Day 20.

Who the Spirit is whom Christ has sent us? He’s none less, says the Catechism, than "true and eternal God." And the gifts He’s given? That’s faith, and with that gift the "fruits of the Spirit" mentioned in Scripture. It’s so marvelous: I, a man, become temple of the Spirit of God – and so am equipped to do heavenly things!

I summarize the sermon with this theme:

God the Spirit makes me his temple

1. The marvel of His coming,
2. The consequence of His coming,
3. The proof of His coming.is God.

The marvel of His coming←⤒🔗

With our first point this afternoon, congregation, I need to highlight the contrast between the Holy Spirit and ourselves. The Holy Spirit, says our Lord’s Day, is "true and eternal God", with the Father and the Son. I may refer to a passage of Scripture as Acts 5 to demonstrate the accuracy of this confession. Said Peter in vss 3f: "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God." Notice how Peter in his opening line says that Ananias has lied to the Holy Spirit, while in his closing line says that he lied not to men but to God. That is: the Holy Spirit is God.

This Holy Spirit, true and eternal God (says the church in Lord’s Day 20) "is also given to me." The word ‘me’ in Lord’s Day 20 refers not simply to the authors of the Catechism, but to all who take the words of this Catechism on their lips sincerely. In fact, I would draw your attention here to the Form for Holy Baptism. When one is baptized into the name of the Holy Spirit –and we all were!- "God the Holy Spirit assures us by this sacrament that He will dwell in us and make us living members of Christ, imparting to us what we have in Christ, namely, the cleansing from our sins and the daily renewal of our lives, till we shall finally be presented without blemish among the assembly of God’s elect in life eternal." That, congregation, is the promise: God the Spirit will dwell in us. In who? In you and me! God has made His covenant with us, claimed us for Himself, and God’s covenant is not empty. Because of His covenant, He has sent His Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts, older and younger of the congregation! Then certainly we need to respond to the covenant, and if we respond with unbelief the Lord God withdraws His Spirit from us. Here is our obligation: respond to God’s covenant with faith! Meanwhile, my point now is this: the Holy Spirit has been given to each of us. That is the promise of the covenant God established with all believers and the children He has given to believers. Each of us may by covenant be temples of the Holy Spirit – and therefore need to be temples of the Holy Spirit.

But – and here’s the question that needs our attention today- what are we? Temples of the Spirit, yes, but what sort of temples? The Scriptures are emphatic: we are sinners, are "conceived and born in sin" (as the Form for Baptism has it), are "desperately wicked" (Jer 17:9). God Himself says of the human heart (and that includes yours and mine) "that the wickedness of man [is] great…, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Gen 6:5). The Catechism summarizes it like this in Lord’s Day 2: we are "inclined by nature to hate God and [the] neighbor." It’s not flattering.

Here, now, beloved, is the marvel of the Spirit’s coming: God the Holy Spirit is given to me, is given to a hater, is given to one dead in sin! The Holy Spirit takes what is dead, what is unclean, what is defiled with sin, and makes that His temple! How incredibly, wonderfully marvelous!

We realize, of course, why He has done it. Christ has paid for sin, and so the unclean and defiled are cleansed; our sins are washed away. Through the blood of Christ sinners are redeemed, and that’s why the Spirit of Christ is pleased to make His home in the redeemed. The material of Lord’s Day 20 follows on the material of Lord’s Days 11-19. But none of that takes anything away from the marvel of the Spirit’s coming. True and holy God makes His home in sinful people: how marvelous! Haters of God are made into homes for God the Spirit: who could have imaged such a thing! But that’s what we confess in Lord’s Day 20: the Holy Spirit is true and eternal God with the Father and the Son, and this Spirit is also given to me – who am by nature a hater of both my Maker and my neighbor. From hater to temple: that’s the marvel of the Spirit’s coming!

That brings us to our second point:

The consequence of His coming←⤒🔗

Will the Spirit –holy God as He is!- actually dwell in the hearts of haters? Is the Spirit content to live with people dead in sin? As it is, He is not. Yes, He makes haters into temples; sinners who hate God and neighbor become homes for the Holy Spirit. But when He comes, He makes a change to these sinners-become-temples. What kind of change? To draw this out, I need to lay out for you what the Lord God has told us about the work of the Spirit.

We read of the Holy Spirit in the opening verses of the Bible. Genesis 1:2: "and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." Yet we’re not to understand that the Spirit did nothing more than hover over the waters without any purpose. In the very next verse we read God’s command: "Let there be light." And see, "there was light"! How come? There was light because the Holy Spirit caused God’s word of command to produce results. You see, the Holy Spirit was involved in creating the world. See there something of the power of His work; He does mighty works, works that produce great change.

In the same vein is the psalmist’s word in Ps 104. "You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; And You renew the face of the earth" (vs 30). The reference here is to the marvel that occurred in the paddocks around us this past week. A week ago we received the first good rain of the season. I walked through the paddock some days ago, and the ground is covered with sprouting seedlings. Seeds that had lain dormant in the paddock for months have germinated and given birth to little plants – there’s the work of the Holy Spirit! It happens each year anew in creation all around us: dead and dusty paddocks come alive. See there something of the power of the Spirit’s work; He does mighty works, works that produce great change.

But His work is not limited to creation, be it in making God’s world or renewing it. Judges 3 tells us of how the children of Israel forgot the Lord their God and so God sold His people into the hand of the king of Mesopotamia. When the people cried out to the Lord for deliverance, God supplied them with a deliverer. How? Says the passage: "the Spirit of the Lord came upon [Othniel], and he judged Israel. He went out to war, and the Lord delivered" the enemy into his hand (vs 10). But who was Othniel? He was nobody special, just an Israelite like there were so many. But the Spirit came upon him, and so this man Othniel was changed, was equipped to do mighty works.

Gideon was a nobody, "the least of [his] father’s house" (6:15). But "the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon" (6: 34), and so he was changed, equipped to lead the people against the enemy and deliver Israel.

Samson was a strong man, it’s true. But there came the day that a young lion came roaring against him, caught him by surprise. What happened? "The Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he tore the lion apart as one would have torn apart a young goat, though he had nothing in his hand" (14:5f). Samson was bound with ropes and the Philistines came shouting to arrest him. "Then the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him; and the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that is burned with fire, and his bounds broke loose from his hands. He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand and took it, and killed a thousand men" – with only that little jawbone as a tool (15:14f). Talk about a mighty work, about being changed to do it!

I could tell you of Saul, a farmer by trade. But the Spirit came upon him, and he was enabled to be king over God’s people (cf 1 Sam 10:10). I could tell you of David, a shepherd boy. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him too, and he also was enabled to be king in Israel (1 Sam 16:13). And so I can continue to show you mighty works people did because the Holy Spirit came upon them. For this is what happens when the Spirit comes: He changes people, makes them able to do supernatural things, thing they could not do before.

Consider further the life and work of the Savior, Jesus Christ. The Spirit came upon the virgin Mary, and she conceived without the aid of a man (Luke 1:35) – how marvelous, how awesome! Some years later Jesus was baptized, and when that happened "the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon Him" (3:22). Straightaway (Mk 1:12) this Spirit drove Jesus into the desert to be tempted by Satan (4:1ff). The temptations of the devil were acute, but in the strength of the Spirit Jesus could resist the devil. Once the temptations were ended, the same Spirit drove Jesus to Galilee where He began His public preaching. What He said in His preaching? His text was Isaiah 61: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:18f). We recognize it: this is Jesus’ program for His ministry. So Jesus, under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, preached the gospel of redemption throughout Israel, and He accompanied that gospel with mighty miracles; the blind received their sight, the deaf could hear, lepers were cleansed, the dead were raised, storms were stilled, etc, etc. Mighty works He did, in the strength of the Spirit who came upon Him.

So it is also at Pentecost. "They were all filled with the Holy Spirit," says Acts 2, "and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance" (vs 4). "They": that’s the disciples, common fishermen, uneducated people from the outback. They spoke with other tongues, had no problem with Latin and Arabic and Egyptian and the languages of Parthians and Medes and Elamites! How that was possible? Here’s the mighty work of the Holy Spirit; He empowered these simple Galileans to do what they otherwise could not do.

Do you see, brothers and sisters, how mighty the Holy Spirit is? True God He is, and so He does mighty, almighty, works on earth. He changes people so that these people can do what they could not do before. Talk about pouring out heavenly gifts!

But truth be said: this leaves us with great questions. For we confess in our Lord’s Day that this Holy Spirit is given also to us, to you and to me. Gideon through the Spirit could do mighty works, and so could Samson. But we? What mighty works do you do? I’m not aware than any of us have killed a lion, let alone kill a lion with our bare hands. We confess that the Spirit has made His home in us, but none of us has become king in Australia. We say the Spirit is given also to us, but we can’t speak in tongues like the disciples could do…. Change in us? Mighty works of God in us? The Spirit worked mightily in so many in Scripture, but we don’t see these mighty deeds in us…. So we wonder: has the Spirit really been given to us? Or are we kidding ourselves?

That’s our third point:

The proof of His coming←⤒🔗

Yes, brothers and sisters, what mighty works do you do? What evidence can you find that the Spirit has indeed made you His temple? The question is so important simply because human nature delights in the exotic, in the extra-ordinary. If you could cast out a demon: now that would be proof that you had the Spirit! Or if you could speak in tongues, or heal the sick! That kind of thing really speaks to the emotions; it’s sensational. And that’s why it’s no surprise that Pentecostal churches are attractive and Pentecostal theology popular. The proof that you really have the Spirit, they say, lies in the spectacular things you can do, and if you can’t speak in tongues or heal the sick you need to pray more and try harder to obtain the extra of the Holy Spirit…. And only when you can do such mighty works as speak in tongues and heal the sick and cast out demons can you be sure you have the Spirit….

Consider, then, congregation, what the apostle Paul writes to the church in Corinth. Concerning spiritual things, he writes, he does not want the Corinthian saints to be ignorant (vs 1). Then Paul proceeds to draw out the amazing work of the Holy Spirit. Vs 2: "you know that you were Gentiles, carried away to these dumb idols…." In other words: they were unbelievers, heathens, to whom Jesus Christ was nothing, empty. But look what happens: these same people now say ‘Jesus is Lord’! How come? Says Paul in vs 3: that’s the work of the Holy Spirit! The Spirit has taken these Corinthians, dead in sin as they were, and haters of God and man alike, and worked in them so mightily that the spiritually dead have been made alive –they’re reborn, regenerated- and therefore made to confess Jesus’ true identity: He is Lord! And think about it, congregation: is the fact that a sinner is made able to confess Jesus’ lordship not more marvelous than a sinner killing a lion with bare hands? But we’re so used to that, we don’t see it as exotic, as marvelous…. But remarkable it is!

The apostle continues. "There are diversities of gifts," he says, "but the same Spirit." The one –vs 8- has the gift of being able to give a word of godly wisdom – and that’s from the Spirit. Another has the gift of being able to give a word of knowledge – and that’s from the same Spirit. Another has the gift of faith, another can do healings, another can do miracles, another can prophesy, etc – and these are all gifts from the same Spirit. This Spirit makes earthly, limited, humans do marvelous, heavenly things! And all these different heavenly things the Spirit makes earthlings do is meant for the benefit of others. Vss 12ff: a body has many members, with each part working together for the benefit of other parts. So is the church: the one has this gift and the other has that gift from the Holy Spirit, and each is meant to use his gift for the benefit of the other.

But how marvelous that is, beloved! What, we said, were we by nature? Have we not learned from Scripture that by nature we are haters of God and neighbor alike? Now see: haters are made sharers! Haters receive gifts, the one this and the other that, the one the gift of prophecy (says Paul to the Corinthians) and the other gift of healing. What for? For yourself? To satisfy your own ego? Not at all! These gifts are given "for the profit of all" (vs 7). And that sharing, that giving of self for the other: that, says Paul, is the greatest gift of all! Vs 29: are all apostles? Are all prophets? Do all have gifts of healings? Do all speak with tongues? Those gifts aren’t so important, says Paul; in fact, those gifts all pass away. Chap 13:8: "where there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease…." But there is a gift of the Spirit, says Paul, that will never cease, and it’s the greatest gift of all (12:31). What that gift is? That’s love. Tongues without love is as irritating as a clanging cymbal; prophecy without love is nothing, faith to remove mountains is useless unless one have love…. Love: that’s the greatest gift of all. Love: that the Holy Spirit changes haters into lovers – that’s a mighty work no man can do, that’s a work so great only the Creator can do it, that’s a work so wonderful that Satan can’t even copy it! Love: that is what God displayed when He sent His only begotten Son into the world (John 3:16). Love: that is what drove Christ to go to the cross (John 13:1). Love: that is emptying the self for the benefit of the unworthy, emptying the self for the benefit of those who distinctly deserve the opposite of love. But that’s what God displayed in sending His Son, and that’s what the Son displayed in going willingly to the cross. "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that God sent His only Son to be a propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:9f). And that love is what sinners are allowed to reflect, to display to the world!! How it is possible for sinners to image God’s love? How it is possible that haters become lovers? That’s the work of the Holy Spirit! The Spirit of mighty God changes people, makes people able to do works they could not do before!

What mighty works can you do? What proof do you have that the Spirit has made His home in you? You, beloved, can love! No, the newspapers won’t get excited about this gift, as they would get excited if you killed a lion with your bare hands. But loving the other, loving your enemies, loving those who hate you, loving those who persecute you, that is distinctly a mighty work that comes directly from God the Holy Spirit.

What does such love look like? No, this love is not something erotic, and this love is not something sentimental either. Paul explains the qualities of this characteristic work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those sinners in whom He lives. Love, says Paul in vs 4, "love suffers long and is kind." Love, he says, doesn’t get impatient in the face of another’s failings, doesn’t get agro or mean. Love, he continues, "does not envy," does not desire for self what the Lord has given to another, but rather rejoices in what God has given the neighbor. "Love does not parade itself, is not puffed up." Love does not have big thoughts of self, nor seek to draw attention to one’s deeds of love. Love "does not behave rudely," says Paul in vs 5, "does not seek its own, is not provoked." Love will take a lot of hurt, a lot of verbal abuse –why?- because that’s the kind of love God demonstrated to sinners when He gave His only Son. Israel wasn’t nice to God when they rejected the Lord of glory and crucified Him. Yet Christ’s sacrifice was also for those who demanded His death (cf Acts 2,4). Love "thinks no evil," does not assume the neighbor has done as the rumor mill alleges – unless the evidence is there thick and clear. Even then, love "does not rejoice in iniquity," has no pleasure in hearing evil of the other – whoever he may be. Instead, love "rejoices in the truth". Love "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." No matter what the other does, no matter the evil he throws at you, love continues to love even one’s enemy. That, says Paul, is love, and we well to know that such love is totally foreign to human hearts. Well has the Catechism said that by nature we hate God and neighbor alike, but this is the renewing work of the Spirit in the sinners where He pleases to dwell: these sinners are changed¸ made able to do mighty, heavenly works, made able to love.

Does the Holy Spirit, brothers and sisters, dwell in your hearts? The proof is His coming is in the fruits you produce. The first fruit of the Spirit, the characteristic fruit of the Spirit, the abiding fruit of the Spirit, is love (Gal 5:22). Do you see that love in your conduct toward your neighbor (whoever he may be, whatever he may have done)? Do you see that love in your words about another – never mind to whom you speak? Do you see that kind of love in your attitude to the man across the road, irrespective of how he treats you? The world can’t fathom that kind of love, and all that’s happening in the world today –the selfishness of divorce and abortion, the revenge and hatred of the Middle East- simply demonstrates how foreign this love is to the world. But that’s the love you’re made to produce, congregation, through the mighty work of the Holy Spirit in hearts by nature filled with sin, filled with hate. How comforting, how wonderfully comforting: sinners are made temples, haters are made lovers, the Spirit dwells in me!

Delight in that love, congregation, rejoice and be comforted by this evidence of the Spirit’s coming to you. And because you can love, continue to cultivate that gift, to practice it, to abound in it. In a world of lovelessness, love abundantly – as God loved you abundantly. Amen.