SPEAKER_01: Hello and thank you for joining us on the Sierra Bible Church Sermon of the Week.
SPEAKER_01: We hope you enjoy this message by Pastor Nate Levering.
SPEAKER_00: Trying to reintroduce ourselves, our lives, our spirits to who God's spirit is and how we are to know him and walk with him and be empowered by him and guided by him and comforted by him and befriended by him.
SPEAKER_00: Want to start with the question this morning.
SPEAKER_00: What is it, or maybe have you ever thought about what you're thinking about when you say or when we sing, come, Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_00: We have songs that sing this, that say it.
SPEAKER_00: The scriptures, in some ways, even that we look at, say some version of that.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've said it before.
SPEAKER_00: We've prayed before that God's presence would fill this place.
SPEAKER_00: What is it that we're thinking about when we're saying things or thinking things like that?
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna start with what we're not thinking about, and then we will build a case for what the scriptures instruct us so that as we say, as we pray, as we sing, come, stir up the spirit in me.
SPEAKER_00: We will be aligned with what the scriptures teach.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we're not saying when we say, Come, Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: What we don't mean is what we mean when we call our kids for dinner.
SPEAKER_00: We are not saying when we say come, Holy Spirit, that in some way the Holy Spirit is out to play and we need them to show up.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So if you say that, if you think that it's not biblical thinking, and we will realign that a bit this morning.
SPEAKER_00: All right, we are going to come in hot and try and uh get with what the scriptures teach us by way of even the sort of meta-narrative, the big story of scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Where and how can we know the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is all over the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: This is not just sort of it after Jesus rose, the Spirit showed up.
SPEAKER_00: In the very beginning, the very initial pages of the story, before we see even God moving, there are a couple verses that just say, hey, this is how things were before things were.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 1 and 2, there's sort of a preamble to God's creation.
SPEAKER_00: It says this in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
SPEAKER_00: This is what he's about to do.
SPEAKER_00: And then he's going to kind of spell that out in the next couple of chapters.
SPEAKER_00: Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody really knows exactly what that means, but the scriptures describe a sense of chaos and darkness.
SPEAKER_00: And the spirit, the Hebrew word is ruach, it's a fun word to say, it means wind breath, presence of God, was hovering over the waters.
SPEAKER_00: There's this sense that the Spirit of God, even amongst and in the chaos of what God was about to do, hovers over.
SPEAKER_00: The picture is like if you've ever seen a bald eagle kind of perched on the side, not sort of just looking around, but hunting.
SPEAKER_00: Power paused, waiting for the Father's word to be spoken through the Son, and creation would be born.
SPEAKER_00: All throughout the scriptures, when life and creation comes, the spirit is there in the midst, present, like wind, power showing up in the midst of creation.
SPEAKER_00: Later on in the story, we find ourselves in the Psalms.
SPEAKER_00: The Psalms are these songs that are actually sort of the heart's language to the revelation of God.
SPEAKER_00: And in the in the Psalms, specifically in Psalm 139, but in lots of different places, the psalmists, people like you and I, are kind of trying to give language to who God is and how God operates in our real lives.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 139, and this is a famous psalm for many of us.
SPEAKER_00: We know this.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the King David writes these words, and there's sort of those rhetorical questions, right?
SPEAKER_00: David sort of calling out to this God.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Where can I go from your ruach, from your spirit?
SPEAKER_00: Where can I go?
SPEAKER_00: Where can I flee?
SPEAKER_00: David asks, from your presence, your face.
SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, this idea of spirit and presence are oftentimes interchangeable.
SPEAKER_00: And he goes on, and this is saying, Can I can I like send myself away?
SPEAKER_00: Can I go to the highest of mountains?
SPEAKER_00: Can I run?
SPEAKER_00: Can I go to the darkness?
SPEAKER_00: Can I go to the light?
SPEAKER_00: Where can I go?
SPEAKER_00: God's answer in the psalm is help me out.
SPEAKER_00: Where?
SPEAKER_00: Nowhere.
SPEAKER_00: Says, you can't.
SPEAKER_00: You can't leave because I am what?
SPEAKER_00: I am present.
SPEAKER_00: I am spirit.
SPEAKER_00: I am here in all of creation.
SPEAKER_00: I am here with you.
SPEAKER_00: There is nowhere, there is no when that you can go where I am not.
SPEAKER_00: This is one way the scriptures teach about the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the only way the spirit is mentioned in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: Because not only, sort of in a general way, we see this spirit that is specifically present in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: If we look and we think about some of the lives of the Old Testament characters, even early on in the story of what God is doing in his people, we see that the Spirit comes upon these sort of specific individuals.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's a leader or a judge or a prophet.
SPEAKER_00: The spirit will come upon a human life and like take hold of it temporarily, selectively, to empower them for kind of a unique task.
SPEAKER_00: Something maybe He God wants led, something God wants said.
SPEAKER_00: And this one's cool, I think.
SPEAKER_00: I think this just captures kind of all of us.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just things God wants said, not just things God wants led, but things God wants what?
SPEAKER_00: Built, sown, cooked, taught.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit gets a hold of lives and does these kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: We think of Joshua, we think of the temple being built, we think of people like David or Gideon, all through the story, God shows up.
SPEAKER_00: And so we see this sort of God present in creation.
SPEAKER_00: God steps in and like almost grabs a hold of someone and is like, this is my will, and we're gonna do it together, whether you like it or not.
SPEAKER_00: And then we get this sense that not even from our longing, the human perspective, but in the biblical story, that God's desire is more.
SPEAKER_00: And we see this written into the story.
SPEAKER_00: If we look as God begins to sort of gather his people, the nation of Israel, and say, I'm gonna do something specific in and through you.
SPEAKER_00: And he pulls them into out of slavery, into the desert, and Moses is kind of forming their the way they're gonna worship, the way they're gonna know each other.
SPEAKER_00: God then steps in with these words in Exodus chapter 25, pointing again to our day and what God is doing now.
SPEAKER_00: He says, This, then have them, the people that are out in the desert, have them make a sanctuary for me, have them make a holy place, uh a dwelling place, have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a fascinating phrase.
SPEAKER_00: And what I think we see is two things.
SPEAKER_00: One is that in the big story of our relationship and God, God's desire and design is that he dwells with his people.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you know the big story, that's how it all starts.
SPEAKER_00: God and us in the garden in relationship.
SPEAKER_00: And in some ways, it's described as like a friendship where there's talk back and forth, there's there's commonality, there's love, there's give and take, there's shared experience.
SPEAKER_00: Sin enters the story.
SPEAKER_00: We are thrown out of the presence of God in that way, east of Eden, some have said, and then in the midst of the story, we get a God who says, Hey, now that I've got your attention, will you build for me a sanctuary?
SPEAKER_00: Because my desire is to dwell with you right in the middle of your community, right in the middle of your lives, right in the middle of how you do economics and politics and relationship.
SPEAKER_00: And what we see in the big story is that that was God's design.
SPEAKER_00: The temple then becomes a picture that points us, track with me, to the end of the story.
SPEAKER_00: Have you read the end of the story?
SPEAKER_00: It's good news.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation, that's sort of the end, it's where we're going.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation 21, 22, it's great news.
SPEAKER_00: What is sort of God's vision?
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna dwell with his people.
SPEAKER_00: If you haven't heard, Jesus actually wins, it works.
SPEAKER_00: What does that then look like?
SPEAKER_00: God says, in the new heavens and the new earth, I will come.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna inhabit a temple, I'm not gonna inhabit a person, I'm going to live among you, I will dwell with you.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Scratch this whole heaven or uh something, because I'm here.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna light the world with my presence.
SPEAKER_00: And it's this picture of how present God desires to be with us.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's the big story: God desires to dwell with us, sin breaks that apart.
SPEAKER_00: The temple then becomes this picture of what God desires to do in the midst of the world, someday fully and finally in the future.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I'm gonna dwell here.
SPEAKER_00: And when the world sees my power and my presence, they will take note, they will be pointed to who I am.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing that we see not only is this sort of temple or tabernacle dwelling as a part of the big story, is this principle that God lays out throughout scripture.
SPEAKER_00: If you create space, I will fill it.
SPEAKER_00: I want to find, I desire to find myself into those spaces.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, what we're gonna do now is we're going to look at the time when uh, you know, so God says to Moses, build this tabernacle, I'm gonna dwell in it.
SPEAKER_00: They get all the pieces together, and then Moses has to assemble them in Exodus chapter 40, and something incredible happens.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have your Bible open, Exodus chapter 40.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna try and lose you right now for a second or two, which I don't always do.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are already lost, and my apologies for that.
SPEAKER_00: But but listen for a second to the setting up of the tabernacle.
SPEAKER_00: God comes to Moses, Moses has all these pieces, God wants them ordered so that something radical can happen.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 1, chapter 40.
SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord said to Moses, set up the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, on the first day of the first month.
SPEAKER_00: Place the ark of the covenant law in it, and shield the ark with a curtain.
SPEAKER_00: Bring in the temple, set out what belongs, or excuse me, the table, and set out what belongs on it.
SPEAKER_00: Then bring in the lampstand and set up the lamps, place the gold altars of incense in front of the ark of the covenant law, and put the curtain at the entrance to the tabernacle, place the altar of burnt offering in front of the entrance to the tabernacle, the tent of meeting.
SPEAKER_00: That part's important.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 7 place the basin between the tent of meeting and the altar, and put water in it, set up the courtyard around it, and put a curtain at the entrance to the courtyard.
SPEAKER_00: Take the anointing oil and anoint the tabernacle and everything in it.
SPEAKER_00: Consecrate it and all of its furnishings, and it will be holy.
SPEAKER_00: Then anoint the altar of burnt offering and all the utensils, consecrate the altar, and it will be most holy.
SPEAKER_00: Anoint the basin and its stands and consecrate them.
SPEAKER_00: Bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting and wash them with water, give them a shower, then dress Aaron in the sacred garments, anoint him, and consecrate him, so that he may serve as priests.
SPEAKER_00: Bring his sons and dress them in tunics, anoint them, just as you anointed their fathers, so that they may serve me as priests.
SPEAKER_00: Their anointing will be a priesthood and will continue throughout their generations.
SPEAKER_00: Moses did everything just as the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Did I lose you?
SPEAKER_00: I tried.
SPEAKER_00: Look over if you have your Bibles open.
SPEAKER_00: If not, it'll be on the screens to what happens next.
SPEAKER_00: Moses does all the things the Lord commands.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 34.
SPEAKER_00: Then, after the anointings, after the consecrations, after the curtains are set up, after the offerings, after the arks and the incense.
SPEAKER_00: Then we're told the cloud, you can picture this.
SPEAKER_00: The cloud covered the tent of meeting.
SPEAKER_00: Whose meeting?
SPEAKER_00: God and his people.
SPEAKER_00: And the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.
SPEAKER_00: Some translations say that the glory of the Lord filled the dwelling, this place that God said, Create the space and I will fill it.
SPEAKER_00: The ruach in the Old Testament or the story of God, we see present in all creation giving life.
SPEAKER_00: We see in very specific ways animating the purposes of God, and we see dwelling in the tabernacle.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in the story, in the story, there's there's like this line of hope that as crazy as that is, that God, the holy God, would desire to dwell with his people, that it's going to get even better, that God desires to be even closer.
SPEAKER_00: And specifically in a number of different places, one of them we'll highlight this morning is through a prophet named Joel, some probably 800 years before Jesus, God, through the prophet Joel, says, Hey, I'm gonna do something about the separation between human beings and me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna act.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to take it upon myself to close that gap.
SPEAKER_00: And then the verses that we have listed here, it says this.
SPEAKER_00: God's speaking through Joel.
SPEAKER_00: Afterward, after I close that gap, I will, God says, pour out, imagine the picture, pour out my spirit on who on the special people, the chosen people, on all people.
SPEAKER_00: Says, your sons and daughters, your old men, your young men, even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days.
SPEAKER_00: This is what I will do.
SPEAKER_00: Fast forward.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, lean in moment in the message, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Lean in.
SPEAKER_00: Fast forward.
SPEAKER_00: I hope already you're like, but but there's a verse in the New Testament that like wraps all of this together.
SPEAKER_00: Where are we going?
SPEAKER_00: What is the better thing that God desires to do?
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember when when Paul, when he's writing to a church in Corinth and he wraps up the truth of what God is doing, his desire to dwell with his people, and he says this, I mean, this is just crazy.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Do you not know he's writing to people like us?
SPEAKER_00: Do you not know that your bodies, okay?
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about like our physical bodies.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're sitting next to someone, just you know, rib check them real quick.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, don't make it inappropriate, but you know, you can do better than that.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you one more try.
SPEAKER_00: That's a body, right?
SPEAKER_00: Paul's saying, hey, this is the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Don't you know that your flesh, your sarks, your flesh are what?
SPEAKER_00: Temples.
SPEAKER_00: They're temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you received as a gift from God.
SPEAKER_00: And what Paul's saying here is crazy.
SPEAKER_00: That that person you just nudged was actually created to be the dwelling place when space is made, I will come, of the living God.
SPEAKER_00: You are you are a temple, and this has incredible implications, as Paul spells it out in Corinthians, for what we do with these spirit-filled temples of flesh.
SPEAKER_00: That is the good news.
SPEAKER_00: That is the closeness that God desires to have with us.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we celebrate when we celebrate salvation in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Now we are trying to look for a few minutes together each week at what Jesus has to say about the coming of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: We set this up in length last week as we were together.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so in Jesus' life, if you weren't here in Jesus' life, you know, he shows up, does a number of miracles, sort of affirming this reality that he's the Messiah, the Messiah to come.
SPEAKER_00: And then he makes his way to Jerusalem, eventually will die on a cross, and he'll be raised three days later.
SPEAKER_00: Right before he goes to the cross, he gathers his disciples together on a Passover evening, has a meal with them, and then in the book of John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it's a gospel, the good news of Jesus story.
SPEAKER_00: He's John records in chapters 13, 14, 15, and 16 this long kind of discourse or teaching of Jesus, and much of what's probably at the primary place in Jesus' life, definitely takes the most ink in the entire gospel of John.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus leans in to talk about the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what it's going to look like to be a temple, the dwelling place of the living God.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where we'll pick up our story for just a few verses today in verse 19 of chapter 14.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have your Bible, we're kind of walking through this.
SPEAKER_00: We'll pick up uh this this story next week as we continue together.
SPEAKER_00: This is John chapter 14, verse 19.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says this.
SPEAKER_00: He's teaching, we're around the table, it's the upper room.
SPEAKER_00: Before long, the world, Jesus says, will not see me anymore.
SPEAKER_00: He says, But you will see me.
SPEAKER_00: Then Jesus is going to promise his resurrection right here.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Because I live, you also will live.
SPEAKER_00: Now we have seven people planning on getting baptized that have given us their testimonies and things.
SPEAKER_00: We had a number of people in first service as well.
SPEAKER_00: And this is part of the picture of baptism, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Jesus says it here, because I live, because I was raised to life, you, when you put your faith in me, are raised to life.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, we're going to take you under the water, and that's a picture of Jesus paying the ultimate debt that sin caused, death.
SPEAKER_00: He paid that.
SPEAKER_00: His life, his resurrection, Jesus says, is the promise that life is in him, and that we have that life.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20, on that day, you will realize.
SPEAKER_00: This gets a little confusing, but we can walk through it.
SPEAKER_00: You will realize that I, Jesus says, am in the Father.
SPEAKER_00: And you, because of our relationship, are in me, and I am in you.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 21, whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me, and the one who loves me will be loved by my father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.
SPEAKER_00: Then Jesus, Judas, not Judas Iscariot, he'd already left the room, says, But Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus replied, Anyone, that's a key word, anyone, anyone who loves me will obey my teaching.
SPEAKER_00: My father will love them, and we will come to them.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the promise, and make our home with them.
SPEAKER_00: How does Jesus fulfill that promise?
SPEAKER_00: Through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: He comes and makes his home.
SPEAKER_00: Look in the other translations at that last, uh, at that last verse.
SPEAKER_00: This is the message, Eugene Treaterson's Eugene Peterson's translation.
SPEAKER_00: He translates Jesus' words this way.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone loves me, he will carefully keep my word, and my father will love him, and we will do what?
SPEAKER_00: Move right into the neighborhood.
SPEAKER_00: This is the plan, right?
SPEAKER_00: That God lives in the neighborhood.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to what the NSB NASB, this is a very literal translation.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone loves me, he will follow my word, and my father will love him, and we will come to him and make our what?
SPEAKER_00: Our dwelling.
SPEAKER_00: Again, what Jesus is doing is he's he's pulling all the way back to the the early parts of the story, that God's desire is that our lives would be without sin and with space for the presence of the living God to dwell in relationship with us.
SPEAKER_00: This is his plan.
SPEAKER_00: And in as much as the temple was to be in its world, a sign.
SPEAKER_00: Of God's power and presence, our lives in a local church are meant to be sign pointing to the world that God isn't done, that he is present, and he is a God of power and purpose.
SPEAKER_00: This is what God is doing in us.
SPEAKER_00: So here, let's wrap this up and then we're gonna have three questions and we'll kind of land this.
SPEAKER_00: The life, the life of the believer in the scriptures is such that you are filled with the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: Three questions, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Because this gets a little interesting as we try and wrestle with the text and the spirit coming in life.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to get some help on these questions.
SPEAKER_00: You don't necessarily have to answer them out loud.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you might feel compelled.
SPEAKER_00: Not all the questions are this choppy.
SPEAKER_00: I told first service when I looked at this, I thought, oh, proof again that I don't use Chat GPT to write my sermons.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but here we go.
SPEAKER_00: Can I, this is our first question this morning, can I be a Christian and not be filled with the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_00: It's a yes or no question.
SPEAKER_00: Can I?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a little bit of a trick question, so that's okay.
SPEAKER_00: Um first service, everybody answered.
SPEAKER_00: Second question, they're like, I'm not answering.
SPEAKER_00: He tricked us the first time.
SPEAKER_00: The trick a bit is what do we mean by filled with the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_00: So uh there's a big F filled with the Holy Spirit, and this is what Paul the apostle teaches us.
SPEAKER_00: And if you said no, can I be a Christian and not be filled with the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_00: The answer is no.
SPEAKER_00: That's the big F filled with the Spirit that comes at salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's very clear.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he uses words like baptized with the spirit, he uses words like filled with the Holy Spirit, and he means what happens to us at conversion.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to what he says.
SPEAKER_00: Here's his teaching.
SPEAKER_00: He says, We are all, everyone who's put their faith in Jesus, baptized, he says, by one spirit, so as to form one body.
SPEAKER_00: This is what God's doing in his church, locally, globally.
SPEAKER_00: Whether Jews, Gentiles, slave, or free, and Paul has his lists.
SPEAKER_00: We were all given the one spirit to drink.
SPEAKER_00: So at salvation, we would say that we are filled with the presence of God, his Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 8 teases out a lot about the Holy Spirit and how we interact with him.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul's super clear in verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: He says, If anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, they do not belong to who.
SPEAKER_00: So if you belong to Christ, in Paul's logic, you are filled with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: That's how it works.
SPEAKER_00: Paul teaches that we are the dwelling place.
SPEAKER_00: We looked at that in 1 Corinthians.
SPEAKER_00: We are uh the body where the Spirit of God is meant to dwell and take uh purpose into our world.
SPEAKER_00: We are to be baptized, we are baptized by the Holy Spirit at salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Now, that is going to look as different as we all are.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna experience that very differently.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a couple places in the scriptures where this goes back to back.
SPEAKER_00: And again, my experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit at salvation will look and feel probably very different than yours because I'm very different than you.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Acts 16, there are two radical conversion stories.
SPEAKER_00: One is Lydia, and it goes like this.
SPEAKER_00: Paul didn't really want to because he wanted to get to Athens.
SPEAKER_00: God sidetracked him by way of the leading of the Holy Spirit, ends up in Philippi, the sort of little military outpost for Romans.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's like, I don't really want to be here, but okay.
SPEAKER_00: So he goes out to worship on Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: What does he find?
SPEAKER_00: Not a temple, but five women.
SPEAKER_00: Those five women worshiping God together by the river, we're told.
SPEAKER_00: Paul just tells them the gospel as they worship.
SPEAKER_00: What we hear is Lydia heard the gospel and said yes.
SPEAKER_00: And then they all went to Lydia's house for brunch.
SPEAKER_00: That was it.
SPEAKER_00: Her life went from death to life because she heard the message of the gospel and it made sense.
SPEAKER_00: Lydia will become, as a spirit-filled part of God's plan, the kind of the patron of the early church.
SPEAKER_00: And her, she's a rock star.
SPEAKER_00: This Lydia, she funds so much of the ministry of the early church.
SPEAKER_00: Through her, you know, she's an entrepreneur, she's rocking it.
SPEAKER_00: Her conversion story, she heard the gospel, she said yes.
SPEAKER_00: And heaven went nuts.
SPEAKER_00: Right after that, Paul and they end up in prison, not just in big prison, but like the small prison within the big prison, the one prison you don't want to be in.
SPEAKER_00: Although I might argue both, they're in the little prison.
SPEAKER_00: What happens there at midnight?
SPEAKER_00: They're singing.
SPEAKER_00: You guys, some of you know the story because you flannel graphed this when you were in kids' church.
SPEAKER_00: It's on the PowerPoint now or the video, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: And what happens?
SPEAKER_00: They're singing, and the Holy Spirit shows up, and the walls shake to such a degree that even this inner chamber where people don't get out, guarded by these guards, begins to rock and roll, and the the very like chains fall off the people.
SPEAKER_00: And it's in that moment that the jailer, having previously experienced the power and the presence of God, said, How do I get in on that?
SPEAKER_00: Remember Paul's answer?
SPEAKER_00: You remember Paul's answer?
SPEAKER_00: Believe.
SPEAKER_00: Put your faith in Jesus, believe that He is the one whereby salvation will come.
SPEAKER_00: Again, if these two people got together, and maybe they did, right?
SPEAKER_00: They were sort of forming this first early church in Philippi.
SPEAKER_00: Their conversion stories looked radically different.
SPEAKER_00: And Lydia might have said, I don't know, that sounds a little like mystical and spiritual.
SPEAKER_00: No, but you, I mean, it was crazy, the jailer would have said.
SPEAKER_00: And Lydia's like, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: The jailer might have said to Lydia, you know, I'm not sure you're saved.
SPEAKER_00: You might have needed something else.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't feel anything.
SPEAKER_00: She's like, No, I just said yes.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the constant challenge that we often have to sort of expect that just simply because we're so different and God moves in different ways, that our experiences in some way are going to be the same.
SPEAKER_00: Can I be a Christian and not be filled with the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_00: Paul would clearly say no.
SPEAKER_00: Next question: Should I expect to be filled by the Holy Spirit more than once?
SPEAKER_00: In other words, am I filled at conversion?
SPEAKER_00: Paul would say, Okay, let me start over.
SPEAKER_00: Tana, you're wrong.
SPEAKER_00: I'm am I filled at salvation?
SPEAKER_00: Paul would say, Yes, thank you.
SPEAKER_00: I knew that's what you meant.
SPEAKER_00: She's a better theologian than most all of us, so I knew she knew it.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we're filled.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the the challenge is that the scriptures and our lives, I hope, leave room for more or a new experience of God's presence in us.
SPEAKER_00: God's spirit comes upon spirit-filled believers and kind of tops them off at times.
SPEAKER_00: Or he reshapes their lives, or he stirs them in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: There's really three big categories.
SPEAKER_00: One of them is sort of unspoken joy.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you've had that.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've been in the midst of suffering and God's spirit just came upon you.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that you weren't filled before, but you got filled.
SPEAKER_00: And you're just like, irregardless of the situation, irregardless of the brokenness, irregardless of the hopenness, I got joy and I got peace.
SPEAKER_00: It's okay, it's his.
SPEAKER_00: I can't explain to your wife's like, yeah, but you need to get a job.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, it's gonna be okay.
SPEAKER_00: God's got this.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but you need I God's, I'm not saying that women are like that and that's our feelings, but right, somebody's saying that.
SPEAKER_00: And you're just like full of joy in the midst of you, like, I got this is okay.
SPEAKER_00: God's in control, he's got me.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing we see when the spirit comes is a sense of boldness to the message of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That people that have been shy before, people that thought, I'm not exactly sure, what if they ask me this question?
SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden they're just bold.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what we see when the spirit comes upon believers.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not that he he sort of fills what's already been filled, but he fills what's already been filled.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a sense with which they say, I have to share this message.
SPEAKER_00: God is alive and I need to.
SPEAKER_00: And then the third category is this place where maybe you've had that lingering sin, called a besetting sin.
SPEAKER_00: It just kind of comes back in our rooted language.
SPEAKER_00: It's called a stronghold.
SPEAKER_00: And when the Spirit comes, not to fill something that hasn't been filled, but to fill something that hasn't been filled, that we say, God, you take it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm done.
SPEAKER_00: I've emptied it.
SPEAKER_00: And we hear testimonies, and they're not always ours.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes God just takes that away.
SPEAKER_00: So can I expect God to fill again what's already been filled?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: His desire is to do that.
SPEAKER_00: It's like the wind.
SPEAKER_00: He wants you to experience joy you've never experienced in fresh ways, in new ways.
SPEAKER_00: He wants you to have power over sin that you've never experienced before.
SPEAKER_00: You look back and you might put yourself in a box.
SPEAKER_00: God wants you busted out of that box.
SPEAKER_00: There's a newness, something fresh he wants to do in your life.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what he does throughout the story of the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we can look at a couple of these times together.
SPEAKER_00: In Acts chapter 1, verse 5, we have the words of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what Jesus says to the believers.
SPEAKER_00: These people are already following.
SPEAKER_00: These are Jesus' disciples.
SPEAKER_00: They're on the other side of the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to do this.
SPEAKER_00: Wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father, which, and then he takes language from another place.
SPEAKER_00: You heard from me, for John baptized with water, but before many days, in other words, in a short amount of time, you shall be what?
SPEAKER_00: Baptized with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: You're getting a new filling, a new freshness, a new awareness of my presence.
SPEAKER_00: And then what Luke, who wrote Acts, tells happened.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus now ascends, he's with the Father.
SPEAKER_00: They wait and they were all filled.
SPEAKER_00: These are already Christians who, according to Paul, were what?
SPEAKER_00: Tana at salvation.
SPEAKER_00: They're already filled, but they're filled with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And this filling causes in them the they begin to speak in other tongues.
SPEAKER_00: Now, these are not kind of spiritual prayer tongues, these are literal languages that God gave them to declare his goodness to people that had gathered in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: This is the all nations thing happening right here at Pentecost.
SPEAKER_00: He says, all tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
SPEAKER_00: They had something they didn't have a few minutes before the Spirit stirred up what was already there.
SPEAKER_00: Now, a couple quick ways that we might think about this.
SPEAKER_00: The first is we need to remember that our relationship with God is that it's a relationship.
SPEAKER_00: If your marriage is anything like Kathy and mine's, we have been married for 30 years.
SPEAKER_00: Not one day in that 30 years were we not married.
SPEAKER_00: There were a lot of times, sad to say, seasons even, when I'll just speak for me, I didn't see more act very married.
SPEAKER_00: And there have been times where we have to look at each other and say, remember what's already true.
SPEAKER_00: We need a little marriage in this marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you know that I'm a big fan of a hot sauna and an ice tub.
SPEAKER_00: One of the cool things about sawning and then jumping into a high icy cold tub is that you can settle into that cold tub and it freezes you at first.
SPEAKER_00: But it's crazy how it works because if you're hot enough, you can settle in, and if the water's still, you can actually insulate your body from that ice cold water.
SPEAKER_00: It actually kind of creates this layer around your body, and you you I'll speak for myself.
SPEAKER_00: You find this like happy place in the midst of that cold water.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the other thing that's happening is you're dying and going numb, but we don't tell that to people that we want to get into the sauna with us.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes in our lives, we create this sort of insulation.
SPEAKER_00: We just keep kind of doing God and church and going through the motions, and those aren't bad.
SPEAKER_00: They can feed us.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we actually kind of go numb in places.
SPEAKER_00: It's the choices we make, it's the way we're distracted, we just get a little too addicted to whatever we're.
SPEAKER_00: And what the Spirit desires to do, and what we see the Spirit doing when he fills what's already been filled.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you're sitting in that cold tub and the water's nice and calm and you're in your happy place, and your wife, who's been talking to her friends and doing whatever, watching the last, and all of a sudden she wants to jump in that cold tub with you, and the water, you squeal like a pig because you're freezing again.
SPEAKER_00: The water temperature didn't technically change, but I all of a sudden became very aware of how cold the water is.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what God wants to do when he stirs in us, when he when he just wake back up to the freshness, the newness, the power, the presence of me in your life.
SPEAKER_00: And again, it's most often in those categories, it's boldness, it's laying down sin, it's being overjoyed.
SPEAKER_00: Last question then is this the Bible talks about a lot of these places where we are filled by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Last question is this how can I, how can I experience the filling of the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_00: When Paul writes to uh the church in Ephesus, he says, he says, Don't get drunk with wine, but be filled with the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Now there's a lot there.
SPEAKER_00: He's actually talking about people that would drink a lot to try and have a spiritual experience.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I didn't say this in first, but I think it's fun to kind of share.
SPEAKER_00: There was a gentleman in our church who we were having coffee a few years ago, and he said, I know how much you love God, and I know a place where you can really go experience him.
SPEAKER_00: And I actually had some ticket, a ticket to go, but I can't go anymore.
SPEAKER_00: So, like, would you want the ticket?
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Well, tell me more about it.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, Well, you go to Costa Rica and they take you out to that place Emily was talking about, and you don't need any clothes for this experience, you're gonna love it.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, this already seems weird.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, What you're gonna do on day two is take some drugs and you are gonna connect with God in ways you've never connected with God before.
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Oh Lord, save me! Like, what?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's happening.
SPEAKER_00: So, what Paul's saying here in Ephesians is a similar kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: They lived amongst a people that said, if we get drunk enough, we're gonna have a spiritual experience.
SPEAKER_00: And God said, That's not how I meet people.
SPEAKER_00: I go chaos to order.
SPEAKER_00: So he says, Don't get drunk with wine, be filled.
SPEAKER_00: It's a it's what we call a passive verb, it's a constant filling, it's a constant, like, God, I need you in new ways today, I need you in fresh ways now.
SPEAKER_00: Would you show up?
SPEAKER_00: Would you fill me?
SPEAKER_00: And I for the sake of time, we'll revisit some of this.
SPEAKER_00: I want us to just look at Luke chapter 11, verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said these words.
SPEAKER_00: He says, If you then, if you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who what?
SPEAKER_00: Ask.
SPEAKER_00: God says, I want to dwell with my people.
SPEAKER_00: Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Make space, come to the cross, get baptized, get yourself into those thin places where the spirit is being stirred so that you'll know him and experience him in new ways.
SPEAKER_00: Step out into mission.
SPEAKER_00: Ask him.
SPEAKER_00: Say, God, I want to I want to know you more.
SPEAKER_00: I want a fresh sense of who you are.
SPEAKER_00: I know that you're present in me.
SPEAKER_00: I know you're in the house.
SPEAKER_00: But God, I desire.
SPEAKER_00: And let the God who promises to send, respond.
SPEAKER_00: Give him space.
SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much for joining us, church.
SPEAKER_02: We hope that you enjoyed this message.
SPEAKER_02: To find more messages like this, or to see where you can get connected or to give financially, please visit sierrabible.com.