From the moment of conversion, all true Christians have the Holy Spirit dwelling within them. But if many of us are struggling with grievous sin, what’s the Spirit’s role in our process of becoming more like Christ? Pastor Lutzer prepares us to relate to the Holy Spirit as a person. We can experience the filling of the Spirit, walking in his power.
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Transcript: Welcome to “5 Minutes with Pastor Lutzer.” I’m so glad that you’ve decided to join us today because we’re beginning a brand new series on the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Specifically, I’ve entitled it, “When the Spirit Has His Way” and if I’d give it a subtitle it would be “Recapturing the Wonder of God Within Us.” In this series we’re going to be talking about the Holy Spirit, that we might get to know him better, that we might learn to walk in the Spirit. But also I want to emphasize we’re going to be dealing with some difficult issues, such as the baptism of the Spirit, speaking in tongues. There are many people who are taught that speaking in tongues is proof of the baptism. Is it? What was speaking in tongues all about in the New Testament anyway? What was God trying to do? So those are the kinds of issues we’re going to be discussing, but primarily I want this series to touch your heart, to help you to become familiar with the Spirit, and that we might all walk in the Spirit’s power.
First of all, a couple of comments as to characteristics of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a person. Now, in order to be a person, you have to be one who has mind, emotion, and will. The mind of the Spirit—the Spirit has intellect the Bible tells us, and there are verses of Scripture that substantiate that. The Spirit has emotion: “Let us not grieve the Holy Spirit,” “Don’t quench the Holy Spirit.” And then, of course, the Holy Spirit also has will in this sense, that it is the Spirit that basically decides where we fit in the body of Christ and what our gifts are going to be.
More than that, the Spirit of course is God, and that leads us directly to the doctrine of the Trinity. So many different verses but I’m going to choose just one. Do you remember in the Book of Matthew when Jesus gave what we call the Great Commission? And how he said, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”? He didn’t say baptizing them in the names of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but rather baptizing them in the name (singular). The Holy Spirit of God, the Father, and of course the Son, all bound up in one, namely God. Three in one. So when we talk about the Holy Spirit, let’s remember we are really talking about God.
Something else which is very obvious: He is the HOLY Spirit. A couple of years ago I heard Anne Graham Lotz (who wrote a book on the Holy Spirit) say that she was lecturing at a seminary and a professor said, “I didn’t really realize that the Holy Spirit was holy. Well, obviously the Holy Spirit is holy and what he wants to reproduce in our lives is holiness.
“Be ye holy for I am holy.”
Now we’re going to discuss next time—we’re going to be talking about representations of the Holy Spirit, but for today I want to give you an assignment before we meet together again next time, and the assignment is this: Ask God to show you if you are grieving the Holy Spirit. Here’s what the text says, it says, “Put away falsehood.” Speak the truth! And then it goes on to say, “Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down upon your anger and give the devil an opportunity…” It goes on to say that we should not “grieve the Spirit by which we are saved and sealed onto the day of redemption…”
By the way, we’re going to be having a session on the sealing of the Spirit. That’s several episodes from now but we’ll be talking about the various ministries of the Spirit, and the sealing of the Spirit is one of those ministries.
But it goes on to say, “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and slander be put away from you, with all malice. Be kind one to another.”
If you want to know what grieves the Blessed Holy Spirit, go to Ephesians 4, begin at about verse 26 and read following, and it will have a list of sins and embedded in that list of sins, that’s where those words occur:
“Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by which you have been sealed unto the day of redemption.”
Would you ask the Holy Spirit to pinpoint sins that grieve him? Would you confess those sins? By his grace, would you forsake those sins?
Well, we’re going to be speaking about the representations of the Holy Spirit. I certainly hope that you join us next time. It’s very important. Subscribe, follow, and share, but as for today, well you already know, you just go with God.