Theme: Empowered by the Holy Spirit: The Men’s encounter
Text: Ex. 37:1-9; Acts 5:1-11; Lk. 4:16-21
Today is men’s Sunday and I will like to wish all men a very happy and fruitful Sunday. In Ghana more people attend Church services every year than any other event. Many of these people attend church for a variety of reasons. For some it is to meet friends, sing and dance, for others it is to make sure of a Christian marriage and burial, and for others it is just tradition, guilt or simply habit. There are also the few who put God first in their lives and attend Church to worship Him. As we sit in Church today our main reason should be to worship the Lord. How can we worship Him if He does not have first place in our lives? If He does we would know that there are many people in the world who do not know Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. Our own experiences tell us that many people in the world are actually looking for God. How can Christ come first in our lives if we fail to point them in the right direction by our testimony and by our Christian way of life? God has saved us to be a blessing and the greatest blessing in life is to lead another person to Christ. This is the reason why the Holy Spirit comes to indwell the believer after their encounter with Christ.
Different people have different ideas of who the Holy Spirit is. The Bible, however, teaches that He is a person. Jesus spoke of Him as the Spirit of Truth who would guide us to know the truth. The Holy Spirit is not a force or a thing. He is a person. The Bible also makes it clear that the Holy Spirit is God and we rightfully speak of God Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. His attributes are without exception, the attributes of God. He is eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. The Holy Spirit gives spiritual life to the dead so that we can relate to God. God is Spirit and we can only worship God in spirit and in truth. We all need the Holy Spirit.
Many believers do not value the friendship of the Holy Spirit. We all know how we relate to friends and how we relate to strangers. The smile, the word of greeting, the handshake or embrace and the conversation all point to the depth of the relationship. Many believers relate to the Holy Spirit as they would to a stranger. Very often they do not even acknowledge His presence. If we do not value His friendship we end up ignoring Him and only doing what we want to do. Ananias and Sapphira either did not know the Holy Spirit or they did not value His presence and ended up lying to Him, the Spirit of truth. They had a closer relationship with the devil than with the Holy Spirit. The devil, the father of lies, deceived them to seek the praise of men rather than the praise of God by lying to the Holy Spirit and this cost them their lives. Today many people see nothing wrong with lying to the Holy Spirit even those who profess faith in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. They believe it is now all right because they stay alive. It is not. Lying is an indication that they are serving the devil and not Christ. The case of Ananias and Sapphira is to serve as an example to us and lying to the Holy Spirit today still has severe consequences.
When a person encounters the Lord Jesus Christ, the way, the truth and the life he or she receives the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth. The Holy Spirit reveals our sinful nature “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23. He also reveals the way to life through Jesus Christ “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom.6:23). He indwells believers and makes them spiritually alive. This is made possible when the Holy Spirit leads us “to confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in our heart that God has raised Him from the dead. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses unto salvation”. The Holy Spirit not only gives us spiritual life but empowers us to lead the supernatural life. Jesus Christ does not save us to live a life of failure and discouragement but an abundant life of peace, wholeness, success and power. This life is only possible with the Holy Spirit as our helper. The Holy Spirit empowers the believer to witness and serve to the glory of God. Witness without service does not glorify Christ.
The words of God are spirit and they are life. When spoken in the power of the Holy Spirit it is as if God Himself was speaking. God created all things out of nothing when He spoke the Words Let there be...” in the presence of the Holy Spirit. If He created the world out of nothing by the Word of His mouth, how can we doubt His ability to raise the dead? God’s words can bring the dead back to life. In Ezekiel the Word of God brought life to the dry bones. Many scholars believe these verses refer to a prophesy concerning Israel that was fulfilled when Israel became a nation again on May 15th 1948, 2000 years after they ceased to be a nation. This is an unimaginable miracle that confirms God’s ability to raise the dead to life. Christ has made the most effective weapon against the devil available to His followers. It is the Word of God in the mouth of a believer spoken in the power of the Holy Spirit. Allow Jesus to be the Lord of your life and know the Word and you will fulfil God’s divine mission for your life. Let us study and know the Word and will of God. Let us believe that His Words are “Spirit and they are life”. Let us stand on the Word of God and experience the manifestation of the promises of God contained in His Word in our lives.
The indwelling Holy Spirit reveals Christ and His perfect sacrifice. The Holy Spirit’s focus is on God and He is the One who enables the believer to understand God’s revelations. Only the Holy Spirit can reveal Christ because He is God. He glorifies Jesus Christ by revealing His nature, character and ministry. He reveals that Christ shed His blood for the forgiveness of sin and the restoration of God’s divine nature and purpose for man. The Holy Spirit reveals Christ and His divine purpose. The Holy Spirit anointed Christ to preach the good news to the poor. This verse has often been misinterpreted to refer to those who are financially bankrupt. The poor however refers to lack in general. This is clarified in Rev. 3:17 where it states “Because you say I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing, and do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked”. You can have a billion dollars and be poor because you have cancer. You are poor when you are in need of healing or deliverance. You are poor when you have any form of lack in your life. The Holy Spirit reveals that God’s purpose is that we have wholeness in every area of our lives. Not only does the Holy Spirit reveal that God wants us to experience wholeness in our lives but also that the grace of God has made that wholeness available. The grace of God has nothing to do with what we do but everything to do with what God has already done for us.
All believers are saved by the grace of God but by our behaviour and witness we often forget this and expect others to observe certain rules and regulations that we ourselves are not able to keep. Our witness should bring life to our hearers. Unfortunately for many people, the witness of some believers does not lead to life but death. When our witness is about dos and don’ts we are ministering death to our hearers. This is best illustrated by the results of the Law and the results of Grace. The Law and Grace are completely opposite. Their only similarity was that the Law was given 50 days after the Passover on Mount Sinai after Israel had left Egypt and the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of grace was given 50 days after the death of our Passover lamb Jesus Christ at Pentecost. When the Law was given 3000 Israelites died for breaking the Law. When the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples they were empowered for service. On that same day they witnessed 3,000 people believe in Jesus as Saviour and Lord and were saved. The Law leads to death grace to life. As Christ’s disciples our mission statement should be the same as that of Jesus. Jesus Christ came to make man whole again. He came to restore all that was lacking or missing in our lives. Jesus’ mission is our mission. Are we following His example?
We cannot understand everything that God has prepared for us; much less achieve it by your own efforts. We must allow the Holy Spirit to teach and guide us. The Holy Spirit leads us into an abundant life that affects every area of our lives. Only the Holy Spirit can lead us to a true understanding of God and our purpose here on earth. Without the Holy Spirit, we will miss out on God’s power to transform our hearts and lives and miss the incredible rewards that He offers us. Paul was so sensitive to the Holy Spirit that his life was completely transformed. He understood forgiveness in such a way that many of us today cannot even imagine is possible. Like Paul we need to understand that Christ died for our sins, past, present and future. On one occasion while speaking to believers Paul proclaimed “I have wronged no man.” Someone who had persecuted and put believers to death understood the enormity of the price paid for his salvation. Let us allow the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth that we may live a life filled with God’s abundant blessings. A life filled with God’s abundant blessings is to make you a blessing. The greatest blessing you can give another is to preach the good news to the poor. Let us help others to see themselves as Christ sees them so that they also will enter into Christ’s blessings and become a blessing to the glory and praise of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen!
