Trinity - The Spirit

We are on our third week of a series that is just called Trinity.

We've talked about the Father and we have talked about the Son.

If you missed either of those messages,

you can listen to that sermon anywhere that you get podcasts.

But if you'd like to see the whole service,

those are available on Facebook and YouTube.

We serve them to both of those places every single week.

If we've never met before, my name is Greg.

I would love to meet you.

Maybe I'll buy you a coffee sometime,

get to know you, hear your story,

maybe even talk about something that you heard in a sermon

or just something that's going on in your life.

I would love to get to know you.

So like I said, the last couple of weeks,

we talked about the Father and Son.

But as we talked about those things the last couple of weeks,

we got into the weeds a little bit about the doctrines

and the history and the people that had ideas about how the Trinity worked.

We talked about how the Father and Son fit into that.

That isn't really how I want to approach the Spirit today.

I don't want to talk about church dogma

and the dates that human beings finally accepted

that the Holy Spirit was co-equal part of the triune God.

I want to talk about the voice and character of the Spirit.

Because whether you believe that the Spirit is just an expression of God

or if you think that the Spirit is God,

I think that the practical question is, what is the Spirit like?

And what does the Spirit sound like?

So if you will please grab your Bible.

If you don't have a Bible, there's blue ones on the table.

Please grab one of those or download a Bible from any one of the digital app stores.

We're going to open up to John 14.

It goes Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts.

So if you see any of those other books around,

you know that you're in the right neighborhood.

We're going to go to John chapter 14.

John 14 · chapter mention

Now we have a tradition of giving the scriptures our full attention

when they're read in the context of a sermon.

You can do that any number of ways.

You can sit or you can stand with me as I read.

Excuse me.

John 14, verse 16.

John 14:16

Jesus says, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate

to help you and be with you forever.

And then 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.

Let us pray.

God of every tribe, of every tongue, every color, every nation,

we thank you for the scriptures.

We thank you that they have persisted throughout the millennia,

that we still have them to read, to consider, to learn from.

And I pray that whatever you have for us to learn today,

I pray that it would stick.

I pray that it would become a part of the framework of our faith,

that our faith would become stronger as we become more like your son Jesus.

Amen.

You can all have a seat.

Thank you.

I've always said that the Holy Spirit sounds like the Bible.

The Holy Spirit sounds like the Bible.

I've also said that the Holy Spirit sounds suspiciously like my wife.

More specifically, Jesus says that the Spirit sounds like an advocate.

That word means one called or sent to assist another.

It means one who pleads the cause of another.

It means one present to render beneficial service.

That is what the Spirit sounds like, a voice that is assisting,

pleading the cause or case, looking to serve.

Let that ruminate for a second.

That's what the Spirit sounds like.

If what you have heard or felt from inside your own heart or from someone else,

or even maybe as you've read the scripture,

if it doesn't sound like one of those three things, like an advocate,

it is wise to slow down.

It is wise to slow down.

It is wise to slow down because that voice that you are hearing,

that idea, that word may not, may need to go through more filters before you accept

that it is for sure the Spirit of God.

I show of hands.

How many of us have been on the phone with customer service and thought,

it just doesn't feel like this person is actually trying to help me?

Yeah?

Sometimes it feels like they are specifically and specially trained

to actively make things more difficult.

I actually think that if there is some kind of white-throated judgment,

it will be us standing there and God going through the Rolodex

of all of our customer service phone calls.

All right, Greg.

On September 13th of 2002, you called Verizon to talk about your texting plan.

Let's listen to that.

Now, how many of us have been on the phone with customer support

and the person just gets it?

They don't fix every aspect of the problem, but they get it.

They do everything that they can on their end, and then they tell us

exactly what we need to do on our end to move forward

and to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

That is what the Spirit sounds like.

An advocate sent to assist, to plead your case,

to offer beneficial service.

Then we should remember that Jesus tells us pretty specifically

the kinds of things that the Spirit will say.

At least initially, he says, I'm sending the Spirit to teach

and remind you everything that I taught you.

That's why I say that the Spirit sounds like the Bible,

because if you spend enough time with the words of Jesus,

then the voice of the Spirit will be pretty familiar to you.

Now, it doesn't mean that the Holy Spirit never says or does anything new.

It's not what I'm saying.

The Holy Spirit, there's plenty of things that are new,

but even something new that the Spirit might say or do

can sound like something old that Jesus said or did.

I'll give you an example.

In the book of Matthew, Jesus is teaching his disciples

about how to watch out for bad teachers, bad prophets, right?

And he says that you can tell them, and if you know it,

just say it with me, you can tell them by their fruit.

He says, a bad tree will not bear good fruit,

and a good tree will not bear bad fruit,

and therefore you will know them by their fruit,

because a good tree bears good fruit.

Later, Paul teaches something very similar.

He's talking about how living by our own flesh

can produce some terrible fruit in us.

But living by the Spirit, he says, will produce something beautiful,

and you will know that it is the Spirit by its fruit.

He says the fruit of the Spirit is love, is joy, is peace, patience,

kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Listen, Paul is teaching a brand new concept,

but it sounds like something Jesus already taught.

Do you hear that?

He's teaching a brand new concept about this idea

that if you live by the Spirit,

there's going to be fruit that comes from you,

and Jesus has already taught about how the good fruit shows you that it actually is real.

Okay, so the Spirit sounds like the Scriptures,

the Spirit sounds like Jesus,

so I think that it's safe to say that our expression,

any of us, that our expression of the Spirit should taste like the fruit

that both Jesus and Paul tells us the Spirit will produce.

Amen?

Our expression of the Spirit should taste like the fruit of the Spirit.

Like honey on your lips.

Taste and see that the Lord is good.

So we ask in your experience, each of us in your experience,

is the Holy Spirit loving?

Is the Holy Spirit joyful?

Is the Holy Spirit peaceful?

Is the Holy Spirit patient with you?

Is the Holy Spirit kind?

In the way that you have seen the Spirit move,

has the Holy Spirit been good and faithful?

Has the Holy Spirit been gentle with you?

Has the Holy Spirit led you into self-control?

Or in your experience, has it felt harsh?

Has it felt judgmental, confrontational, cynical?

Have the words of the Spirit felt biting or bitter?

Have the words of the Spirit that people have shared with you

or the way that you've been told that's the way the Spirit moves,

has it actually produced anxiety in you?

Have the movings of the Spirit been inconsiderate of your emotions?

Have the words of the Spirit led you into self-control?

I've been a pastor for a very long time.

I'm officially getting old, y'all.

I turned 47 last week, and my dad's waving his,

no, no, he says I'm not old.

My knees beg to differ.

I've been a pastor for nearly 25 years, in one way or another,

whether it's youth pastor, worship pastor,

pastor, lead pastor.

I've been a Christian since I was three.

Since I was three years old, my mom says that I prayed the prayer

and that I knew what I was talking about.

I have been around the gifting and the working of the Spirit,

the evidence of the Spirit since I was a small child.

I grew up in a very straight-laced, conservative church,

but I also went to charismatic prayer meetings.

I have worked in charismatic churches.

I heard tongues.

I have prayed in tongues.

I have been given prophecies.

I have given prophecies.

I am experienced in the gifts of the Spirit.

I have tasted the fruit.

That's why today I'm not talking about the dogma and the doctrine.

I'm talking about the voice and the character of the Spirit

instead of systematic theology,

because in all of my years I have found there may be no part of God,

no expression of God that, practically speaking,

can be more easily confused or abused than the voice of the Spirit.

I have tasted the fruit of the Spirit in a well-timed word of encouragement.

One of my favorite examples of a well-timed word that was from the Lord

is actually a word of correction I was given.

It was years ago.

The job that I was working at a church in Georgia

looked like it was going to be ending, and I was talking to one of my mentors,

and I said, I don't know, and I was just trying to think about

what part of it might have been my fault,

and he looked at me and he said with kindness,

the Lord will deal with you.

And I felt no condemnation.

Even if something corrective might need to be said in a moment,

if it is from the Spirit, it will taste sweet,

because it will be good.

But I've also tasted the bitterness of many misguided attempts to speak for God.

It happens for a thousand reasons.

Believers of all kinds struggle with what to do

with what they think they've heard from God.

But I think I can say this.

When we feel that we have heard something,

and we think it is from the Lord,

especially if it involves insight into someone else,

listen carefully, it is not very often that it's meant to be said out loud.

It's not very often it's meant to be said out loud to someone else

while saying, the Spirit told me.

I'm not saying never.

I've got to put that down there.

My disclaimer.

I'm not saying never.

I'm not saying that it shouldn't be shared at all even.

I'm saying how often we share what the Spirit has told us

and say the Spirit told me to say it,

those should be few and far between.

Because if it is the Spirit,

I can trust that when I say it,

especially if there's a healthy relationship there already,

that the Spirit will tell them that the Spirit had me say it.

Some of you have not known me for very long, months, maybe weeks.

Many of you have known me for years, maybe even decades.

And for nearly all of you, I have either asked you a question

or I have said something to you

that I have felt the Spirit wanted me to ask or say.

And almost none of you can tell me a moment where I said,

the Spirit is saying.

And yet many of you can say you felt comforted

by the Spirit in that moment.

This is the way that I have chosen to operate

because I trust the Spirit,

because I am not confused between the role of the Spirit

and my role in the Spirit.

I trust that the Holy Spirit is working in you

just as much as I believe the Spirit is working in me.

And at the very least,

I don't need to say that the Lord said or the Spirit says

in order for me to comfort you,

in order for me to console, to support,

to be an advocate, to serve.

Some of us have come from very charismatic backgrounds.

Some of us have come from backgrounds

that don't think the Spirit does anything anymore.

And yet somehow God has seen it fit

that we are all in the same room together.

And you're all sitting listening to a guy

that will wake up some mornings praying in the Spirit

that sometimes I don't know when it's the Spirit

or when it's just me.

Sometimes I need someone else to tell me it was the Spirit.

It's the truth.

A week before last,

a church that I'm familiar with

celebrated decades and decades of being a church.

And I knew someone that had worked there

and had worked there for more than half of the life of that church.

And the church had put out a video for people to watch online

about the story of the church.

And I noticed that this person was only in one video clip

for like half a second in the course of the whole video.

And so I watched it before I went to bed.

And then I woke up at 4 a.m. just feeling for my friend,

feeling like he'd been erased from the story,

from the life of that church.

And so later in that day I texted him.

I said, hey, just checking in on you.

He said, oh, thanks.

And I said, hey, saw the video.

Between you and me, I was hoping to hear you narrate this.

And he said, he said, thanks very much.

It was actually difficult to see I wasn't in the video.

And I said, I woke up before this morning praying for you about this

because I was worried.

And he said, you're in the spirit because I've been struggling all day.

All those moments where you thought maybe I should text so-and-so,

I haven't seen so-and-so, I wonder how they're doing.

All those moments that we rush past and we go, well, I'm on my way somewhere.

I'll text them when I get there.

Man, you know how meaningful it would be for you to pull over

and text that person the moment that you remembered?

That time where you woke up in the middle of the night thinking about someone

and you thought, oh, it's just something I ate.

It's not.

It's not.

It's not the spicy food.

It wasn't the curry.

It is the spirit asking you to be connected to someone across the world even.

This person lives on the West Coast.

I've not seen them in person in six or seven years.

All the moments that we rush past because it wasn't, man,

I just didn't hang around long enough.

It just wasn't a big enough of a thought.

Oh, it wasn't, ah, how do I know that that was the spirit?

You know why you know it's the spirit?

Because it was a moment for you to serve them.

It was a moment for you to assist them.

It was a moment for you to advocate that their story still matters.

And that's what I told them.

I said, your pages will not be erased from the book of that church.

You will be remembered.

There's something that God is trying to tell each of you as well.

That's not for someone else.

That's just for you.

I don't know what it is.

I don't have a word of knowledge for you in the moment.

But I hope that it feels like love as you hear it.

I hope that it feels like kindness.

I hope that you feel a sense of joy as that thought enters your heart.

I pray that you feel like a gentle spirit of goodness and faithfulness is

surrounding you and holding you as you receive from the Lord what He has been

trying to tell you.

Because He is love.

He is joyful.

He is patient and kind and good and faithful and gentle.

So I just thought that we would end this time of preaching with a time of

listening.

There's journals on the table.

If you want to open one of those up, you can write or if you wanted to sit with

your hands on your knees, you close your eyes, however you want.

I want us to take at least a moment, minute, whole 60 seconds everybody, for

you to listen, for God to speak to your heart.

Let it be sweet.

Let it be sweet.

Let it be sweet.

Let's listen.

Let it be sweet.

Let it be sweet.

Holy Spirit, thank you for being present.

For reminding us and teaching us everything Jesus has taught.

Thank you for creating fruit in us.

Thank you for being active and moving in our hearts.

We are open to you as we are open to the Son, as we are open to the Father.

Amen.