The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit
“The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit"
{Audio File: https://mega.nz/#!PcEklKDS!QiibLY3ibJw3_Pv7tF6yI0GSANcrQpI7yp0BS4HDT90}
In our series on the person and work of the Holy Spirit we’ll be taking time to really get a handle on not only Who the Holy Spirit is, but also the work of the Holy Spirit within our lives and within the life of the church. And the reason is because this great doctrine has been kind of muddied up within the church.
And let me just say that what we’re going to be talking about today will literally blow some of you away as you now consider what the Holy Spirit desires to do, and who He wants to be in our lives.
In Paul’s closing remarks in his last letter to the Corinthian Church he said,
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” (2 Corinthians 13:14 NKJV)
This word, “communion” in the Greek language is the world “Koinonia,” which is most often translated as “fellowship,” and the fellowship that Paul is talking about is what we should be having with the Holy Spirit.
But why is Paul so adamant that we need fellowship with the Holy Spirit? Isn’t having fellowship with the Father and Jesus enough?
To understand, there are three major categories or aspects about relationships and fellowship that are involved, and each one plays an important part in our relationships with the Holy Spirit, and why we need to have fellowship with the Holy Spirit.
Last time we were together, we made it pretty clear that the Holy Spirit is not only a person, but He is the 3rd person of the Godhead, and therefore, He isn’t some force or influence. And again I need to make this point, and that is we can’t have fellowship or a relationship with a force or an influence. We can only have fellowship and a relationship with a person.
And so having this communion, this fellowship with the Holy Spirit involves three aspects of every relationship.
1. Companionship
Fellowship means companionship, it means sharing life together. Companions are those who freely and willing interact with one another, but for there to be companionship there needs to be communication.
Can you imagine traveling for any length of time with someone who doesn’t say a single word? It’s where we’re traveling in a car and the person sitting next to us just sits there with a blank look on their face not saying a word?
Or maybe as we’re traveling and the other person cranks up the radio, or puts in a pair of ear pods so they can’t hear us, even if we wanted or needed to say something.
Now, let’s take that into our fellowship with the Holy Spirit. We spend days at a time not saying one word to Him. We also become so busy and there’s so much noise in our lives that there’s no way we could even hear Him when He does try to say something.
Another thing that is stopping our fellowship with the Holy Spirit is that we don’t think of Him as a person, but rather as something other, like a bird or a flame, or as some supernatural apparition, like a ghost.
You see, the reason we don’t have fellowship with a bird is because people will call us a birdbrain, or we don’t have fellowship with fire because we don’t want to get burned. And if we ever do run into a ghost, we usually run away.
Michaela told me a story of her first encounter with a Pentecostal church. Michaela grew up Catholic, but when they moved to Las Vegas one of her neighbors said she and her brother needed to come to church. And it was one of those Holy Ghost churches.
Well, somewhere during the message or worship some of the ladies started to shout out “The Holy Ghost is here, the Holy Ghost is here,” and they were falling down. Well she and her brother, who were just little kids, ran out of the church and down the street crying “There’s a ghost in the church, there’s a ghost in the church,” and the lady who brought was running behind them trying to catch them.
But this wasn’t the way it was with the first church. Look at the type of fellowship the Apostle Paul had with the Holy Spirit.
“And now I am going to Jerusalem, drawn there irresistibly by the Holy Spirit, not knowing what awaits me, except that the Holy Spirit has told me in city after city that jail and suffering lie ahead.” (Acts 20:22-23 NLT)
This was an ongoing conversation Paul was having with the Holy Spirit. Notice that in every city he went he and the Holy Spirit were having this conversation, and the Holy Spirit was telling Him what to expect, that is, the persecution he was going to experience and what he was going to suffer for the sake of the gospel message.
As an ongoing conversation, what this means is that this wasn’t one-sided. The Holy Spirit was telling Paul the whole time that he was going to jail and would suffer persecution, and if Paul is anything like myself, I’m sure his response was something like, “Can’t we do this some other way? Let’s talk.”
When the Holy Spirit told me what lay ahead in my life, and what I would be experiencing, I reverted to the persuasive speech lessons I learned in college and Dale Carnegie, and I tried to tell Him that I really didn’t think that it was a good idea, and then how I wanted it to be done. Didn’t work, but the idea is that we were constantly talking about it.
The Holy Spirit was Paul’s and the church’s constant companion, and as such they were constantly communicating.
Phillip had the same sort of relationship with the Holy Spirit. There he was holding evangelistic campaigns in Samaria, seeing hundreds, maybe even thousands coming to salvation, when it says an angel spoke to Him and told Him to go down to the road that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza (Acts 8:26).
When Phillip gets there the Bible says, “The Holy Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over and walk along beside the carriage.’” (Acts 8:29 NLT)
This is what I want you to catch. Phillip knew the difference between the voice of an angel and the voice of the Holy Spirit. And this can only come through time spent with someone. Phillip knew when the Holy Spirit was speaking because he had that constant companionship and conversations with Him.
How many times has someone called you and you knew immediately who it was. I’ll get a call from someone, and if I have spent any time with them I’ll recognize their voice and say their name before they have a chance to tell me.
Therefore, in this fellowship with the Holy Spirit we will have such a close companionship that we’ll know immediately if it’s the Holy Spirit, or if it is our own flesh or Satan that is talking.
The next aspect of this fellowship and relationship we have is that of …
2. Partnership
With partners there is a continual ebb and flow. In other words, there’s conversation going back and forth.
Our relationship with the Holy Spirit is such a partnership. Individually and as a church we need to be working with the Holy Spirit. We should be working together, not working separately.
Let me just say that we can do a lot more together with the Holy Spirit, than we can do separately without Him. When we’re not working in tandem, or in partnership with the Holy Spirit, the results are disastrous, like some of my sermons when I don’t consult Him.
But truthfully, this idea of partnering with the Holy Spirit is a strange concept for most Christians, because we don’t think about partnering with God, rather we think that if God says it, we do it, no questions asked.
But that isn’t how the Apostle Paul describes this relationship. In talking about sharing the gospel message, he said that sometimes he planted and Apollos watered, or Apollos planted and he watered, but he said that it was always God who did the increase, and then He said,
“For we are God's fellow workers” (1 Corinthians 3:9 NKJV)
Not only do we work for God, but we also work with God. We’re partners in this great undertaking known as the Great Commission.
I love the way the New Living Translations puts it. It says, “We work together as partners,” which is how the disciples viewed it when they sent a letter to the Gentile believers in Antioch.
“For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay no greater burden on you than these requirements.” (Acts 15:28 NLT)
Notice it seemed good to both the Holy Spirit and the disciples. The only way this could happen is if they were working together for the good of the church and for this ending.
It was a partnership. And this isn’t a once in a while partnership, but an everyday, 24/7/365 partnership. Why, because the Holy Spirit lives inside all those who believe. The Apostle Paul says that our bodies are now temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19).
And so we’re having this communication in fellowship and in partnership with the Holy Spirit every day. Like when we’re in the grocery store and He tells us to go down the baby isle, and we say, “I’m way to old for another baby.” But then we do it and there find someone we need to talk to. Now, not only is that when we say, “Whew,” but we know that we’re in communication with the Holy Spirit.
This is why Jesus said it was better for the disciples, and hence for us, that He dies, because through His death not only will all who believe in Him receive the forgiveness of sin and eternal life, but also they will receive the Holy Spirit (John 16:7).
But there’s even more, and that is, this partnership is a close mutual association. In other words, we want to hang out with people who like us. We don’t want to associate or hang out with those people who hate or ignore us.
The same can be said about the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit likes to hang out with those churches and with those people who like and love Him and who genuinely want to hang out with Him.
When studying the history of revivals, there was something that caught my eye, and that is, when revival broke out in various communities, not all the churches were experiencing it. It was only those who were expecting God to show up.
And this leads to the last aspect of having fellowship or a relationship, and that is intimacy.
3. Intimacy
This is a deeper form of fellowship, in that it goes to the thoughts, intentions and the desires of the heart. It’s a deep and intimate friendship.
Now take a moment and think about this. The Lord God, the 3rd person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit wants to be our personal friend.
Look at what the Apostle James says in chapter 4, verse 5.
“The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously.” (James 4:5 NKJV)
The word “yearn” means to long for intensely and consistency. Again, this goes to the personhood of the Holy Spirit, because a force doesn’t yearn or intensely desire.
King David knew and experienced such an intimacy with the Holy Spirit.
“How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand” (Psalm 139:18-19 NKJV)
Think about how much God is thinking about us. His thoughts towards us are more in number than all the sand upon the earth. Now that’s a lot of sand. It’s said that one cubic foot of sand contains 1.8 billion grains of sand. And that’s just scratching the surface of how much God thinks about us. And this is not some hyperbole, or over the top exaggeration, because God cannot lie (Numbers 23:19; Hebrews 6:18).
With this in mind, now consider that the Holy Spirit is always yearning intensely for us. He’s jealous for us, that is, He doesn’t want us to have fellowship with anything or anyone else.
Right before James says how the Holy Spirit yearns jealousy for us, he says that we’re not to seek this intimate friendship with the world, and that’s because God and the world are diametrically opposed to one another. And when we spend more time in the world than with the Holy Spirit, James says we’re committing adultery.
Now, go back with me to what the leaders of the first church said, “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us.” (Acts 15:28:NKJV).
What they’re saying is that they had such a close relationship with the Holy Spirit; they had such an intimate mutual partnership that the Holy Spirit permitted them to represent Him without Him even saying a word. They knew the Holy Spirit so well that they could speak for Him.
Now, to be intimate with someone, we need to know them. We need to know their personality.
What do I mean? Do you know what grieves and sorrows the Holy Spirit? It’s how we live, and it’s how we speak harshly to and about others.
The Apostle Paul said, “Don't use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them. And do not bring sorrow to (or grieve) God's Holy Spirit by the way you live.” (Ephesians 4:29-30a NLT)
This tells us that the Holy Spirit is tender and sensitive, while at the same time strong and powerful.
What I found interesting is that the only person who had the Holy Spirit throughout the entirety of their life in the Old Testament was King David. The Bible says that when Samuel anointed David that the Holy Spirit came upon him from that day forward. And so, when he sinned with Bathsheba he prayed and asked God not to take the Holy Spirit from him (Psalm 51:11).
Here was the most powerful king ever in Israel, but who also at the same time was the most tender, and that’s because he was filled with the Holy Spirit. This is the personality of the Holy Spirit, and one we need to understand so we can have that same intimate relationship with Him.
And so to have that fellowship with the Holy Spirit, we need to get to know Him, which first comes through being born again, that is when we come to faith in Jesus Christ, where our bodies become the temple of the Holy Spirit. This is then followed by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and then asking to be filled by the Holy Spirit every day.
And when we do this, we’ll have that close intimate companionship and partnership with the Holy Spirit where we’ll know what to do even before we know that there is a need to do it.
This then is what it means to have fellowship with the Holy Spirit, and this is what we need to desire if we want to be effective in our walk with God in this world.
