2002-01-01
Good Morning Dear Ones,
Through this entire series of messages the Lord has revealed one example after another in the Scriptures of people choosing to obey His commands even at times when they didn’t make sense to them. The net result has been that God’s will was done, the person obeying was blessed, and mankind was benefited. Another result is that God’s attributes were exposed in the process. People like Moses, Gideon, Isaiah, Ezekiel, David, Abraham, and all the others through history willing to do this had their human agendas interrupted or even scrapped altogether. They were willing to lay them aside to make the Lord’s agenda first in their lives. Often this was at great cost to themselves. We certainly know that was true of Christ’s disciples who ended up facing imprisonment and martyrdom. Yet, the blessings they receive transcend the grave. Wow! That’s a hard concept for our limited human perception-some act on our part being so important that its benefits go beyond our physical death. To appreciate that, we are asked to stretch our ability to perceive toward that of God! While not an easy task, it is certainly a worthwhile one-one that often involves delaying our gratification.
Today, we will look at the presence of the Holy Spirit in the NT. I purposely didn’t spend as much time on this, not because it isn’t important, but because we are so familiar with it. Christ’s disciples presented a poignant example of obedience. Their humanness emerges as we see them at times struggling to understand Christ’s teachings and coping with the persecution coming their way as a result of their courageously faithful decision to lay aside their own work to join Christ in His. Obviously, the time in MT 10 when Christ speaks to his disciples about the persecution they will face comes before the Pentecost. Yet, there is the Holy Spirit on the job. MT 10: 20, [Christ speaking to the disciples] “For the words you will speak will not be yours; they come from the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” This is huge! It explains how ordinary people can carry out God-sized assignments. It is my belief that the Holy Spirit indwelt in each of us can, at God’s will, give us the ability to speak God’s words. Consider the implications of this in your life as I do in mine. But, when doing this we must be careful that we really know the words we are speaking are God’s. Whether you are speaking publicly, as I often do, or whether you are speaking to only one or a few people, ask yourself if you are speaking God’s words. The discernment to know the answer to this question comes from studying the Word and through prayer.
No mention of the Holy Spirit in the NT would be complete without citing IS 42: 1 and MT 12: 18 which repeats it. You will remember that IS 42 is the passage on the Lord’s Servant, “The Lord says, ‘Here is My Servant, Whom I strengthen-the One I have chosen, with Whom I am pleased. I have filled Him with My Spirit, and He will bring justice to every nation.’ “ See what we learn from IS 49: 10 about this Servant while we are at it. “…They will never go hungry or thirsty [people who come to faith]. Sun and desert heat will not hurt them, for they will be led by One Who loves them. He will lead them to springs of water.” Now, look at MT 12: 18, “Here is My Servant, Whom I have chosen, the One I love, and with Whom I am pleased. I will send My Spirit upon Him, and He will announce My judgment to the nations.” Further down in (21) we learn, “He will persist until He causes justice to triumph, and on Him all people will put their hope.” I am very certain that when Isaiah asserted in IS 42: 6 and again in IS 49: 6 that the Jews were to be “a light to the nations,” that God would send the Holy Spirit to them to give them His words and not their own human ones to carry out this God-sized assignment.
MK 1: 10 is in a passage about Christ’s baptism. The overall humility He demonstrates here really impacted me. You will remember that John the Baptist’s first reaction to Christ’s request that he baptize Him was to question whether Christ needed that. When you put this together with the Pauline concept that Christ is the “first among many brothers,” you can’t miss the significance of this event. “As soon as Jesus came up out of the water, He saw heaven opening and the Spirit coming down on Him like a dove.” The very connection we know exists between the three persons of the Trinity stands out amazingly clearly in this scene. To me, it points out that anyone who has the Holy Spirit also has access to this connection and can be guided by it to join God in His work. A willing and open heart, the desire to know and obey God, and the courage to act on God’s commands even when they are not conveniently timed or don’t make sense are required. Yet, this is the way that God takes ordinary, undeserving people like you and me and brings them to accomplish tasks that can change the world. We may be doing some small task, as small as tying a baby’s shoe, and never know that it began a series of events that lead to huge numbers of people coming to faith in Jesus Christ. The point here is to be willing to obey God’s commands.
JN 3: 5, “I am telling you the truth. No one can see the Kingdom of God unless He is born of the water and the Spirit,” Christ said to Nicodemus. God’s will was being done in this late night rather furtive visit to the roof of the house where Christ was staying by a respected leader of the Pharisee sect of traditional Judaism. Another valuable soul was being brought to faith, and we were learning what it means to be “born again.” A dear friend sent me a spiritual gem of a story about an old ragged man smiling at a child in an ice cream shop. The child’s parents didn’t recognize this incident as a blessing, because all they could see was the old man’s dirty, ragged appearance. How do we know that the next seemingly undesirable person we see isn’t God’s Angel there to bless our lives? If we read the Scriptures, we soon learn that some of the people being used by God to carry out faith-building are the ones we would least expect to be qualified for that job.
AC 2: 1-4 is the story of the Pentecost, which I hope you will read. Look at the power of the Holy Spirit in (4), “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to talk in other languages, as the Spirit enabled them to speak.” It is so significant that in this one aspect of the Pentecost, God provided a remedy to the problem that began way back in GN 11 with the Tower of Babel. If we ever questioned that all things are possible with God, how can we question it after knowing this incident really happened? Faith-building is a God-sized task that everyone of us has been asked to do. We need to look at our lives to see if we are obeying God’s commands in doing it. Let me close this series by citing GA 5: 22-23: “But the Spirit produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control….”
PRAYER: O Lord, we come before You today in humility and with open hearts. Teach us to listen for Your commands and give us the willingness to lay our own agendas aside to take up Your causes. Help us to make whatever major adjustments are necessary in our lives and give us the courage of faith to join You in Your work when You ask us to do that. Help us to accept that Your timing is best and that our lives will be blessed by obeying You. While we may not know Your whole agenda and about all the lives our obedience may touch, encourage us on to do Your will. In Christ’s name, amen.
My hope is that you will feel the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control that are produced by the Spirit in your lives. God’s presence and yours in my life and Peter’s blesses them.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn