Sermon Tone Analysis

Mighty Inner Strength

The Holy Spirit, Part 2   |   Shaun LePage   |   March 12, 2006

 

 

I.

Introduction

A.   Illustration:

1.

When I was a boy, my father owned an old Ford pick-up.

He spent a lot of hours restoring it.

My brothers and I helped sand it down to prepare it for painting and my Dad spent many hours in the garage under the hood.

At one point in the process, he had pulled the engine and was having trouble getting it back in.

So, he put the engine in the back of the truck—in the bed—and, with the help of a chain and one of our other cars, pulled the truck to the shop of a friend to get help putting the engine in.

As I recall, my mother drove the car and my Dad steered the truck.

As we pulled up to the shop, the chain disconnected and when my Mom pulled into the shop, the truck—with my Dad at the wheel—was left sitting in the street.

A man driving down the street stopped, rolled down his window and surveyed the situation.

He saw the truck sitting in the street.

Dad was sitting at the wheel of the truck.

The engine of the truck was in the bed of the truck.

He then said—very matter-of-factly, “That thing’ll work a lot better if you put the engine up there in the front.”

2.     That picture illustrates for me what we are trying to do today.

We are studying the Gospel According to Matthew and we’ve come to the Sermon on the Mount.

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve explained that the Sermon on the Mount is for the disciples of Jesus Christ.

The standards of moral and ethical living presented in the Sermon on the Mount are only possible for the followers of Jesus Christ.

But the question is, “How are we supposed to live out the commands of Jesus in this sermon?”

a)    The first answer to that question is grace—we must be strong in the grace of Christ.

The Sermon on the Mount is law—a higher law.

A law for those who have been ushered into the kingdom of Christ.

We cannot hope to obey these commands apart from the grace of Christ.

We cannot hope to live the abundant, Christian life apart from grace.

The grace of Christ provides the strength we need.

Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:1, “*You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus*.”

We are to be strengthened by the grace of Christ.

We must recognize that apart from Christ, we can do nothing, and then live in total dependence upon Him.

I believe this grace comes to us as we “abide” in Christ.

As we walk with Him.

As we believe Him.

As we obey Him.

So, first of all, if we are going to live out the Sermon on the Mount, we must be strong in grace.

b)    The second answer to the question, “How do we live out the Sermon on the Mount?” is *by walking in the Spirit*.

c)    Charles Stanley has assessed the situation well in his book, /The Wonderful Spirit-Filled Life/: “For too many believers the Christian life boils down to simply doing the best they can.

There is no dynamic, no power, and there is no real distinctive that can be attributed to anything other than discipline and determination.

I meet believers all the time whose doctrine can be summed up in two statements: 1. Nobody’s perfect.

2. God understands… Jesus let it be known, however, that God was looking for more than our best.

He was looking for a life-style and attitude that superseded our best, a life-style and attitude that we could never attain through our own efforts.

And so He said, ‘But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper shall not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you’ (John 16:7).

Think about this.

If we don’t need any help, why send a Helper?

The promise of a Helper presupposes that we need help.

The promise of a Helper was Jesus’ way of tipping us off to one of the most profound truths concerning the Christian life—it’s impossible!

The quality of life Jesus expects from His followers is unattainable apart from outside intervention.”

(pgs.

3, 8)

3.     We want to be a people—a church—that lives out the kind of life Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount.

In order to do that, we must have the engine, the power, the Holy Spirit in the front—in His rightful place.

We must know Him and be in relationship with Him and be led by Him in order to be the people—the church—that our Lord, Jesus Christ, desires us to be.

We can do our best, but that’s about as effective as if my Dad would have started pumping the gas pedal on that old Ford.

Until the Holy Spirit is providing the power, we will struggle to get nowhere.

4.     How do we get that power—that “*mighty inner strength*” Ephesians 3 speaks of?

How do we walk in the Spirit?

We begin by taking a fresh look at the Holy Spirit—we reintroduce ourselves to the Holy Spirit.

Last week, we looked at the nature of the Holy Spirit—that He is a Person (not a force) and that He is God.

Because He is a Person, we can have a relationship with Him.

You can’t have a relationship with a force.

But, you can have a relationship with a Person.

Because He is God, that relationship is more than significant.

That relationship requires that we understand His work because much of what it means to be in relationship with the Holy Spirit is to simply let Him work and cooperate with Him as He works in our lives.

II.

Body—A lot can be said about the work of the Holy Spirit, and we will not cover everything today.

In fact, I intend to spend at least the next three weeks exploring the subject.

For lack of a better way of describing it, let’s call today’s study “What the Holy Spirit has done.”

Past tense.

Next week, we’ll look at what the Holy Spirit is doing in the daily life of a believer.

But before we go there, we have to understand some other things.

A.   *The Holy Spirit’s work in creation.*

1.     Genesis 1:1,2.

2.     Genesis 1:26,27.

I’ve heard lots of explanations for why these are not references to the Trinity, but none are satisfactory.

A plain reading of these verses reveals the first indications that God is One, but three Persons in the One Godhead.

3.     Job 33:4.

4.     So, the Holy Spirit—as God—fully participated in the work of creation.

B.    *The Holy Spirit’s work in revelation.*

1.     Ezekiel 2:1-4.

This is Ezekiel’s call to the ministry and clearly, God spoke through Ezekiel after the Spirit of God entered him.

2.     In 1 Samuel 10, when Saul was anointed as king of Israel, we’re told that “*the Spirit of God came upon him mightily, so that he prophesied*…” He spoke for God.

3.     David—in 2 Samuel 23—after being described as the “sweet psalmist of Israel” was quoted as saying, “The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me, And His word was on my tongue.”

In other words, The Holy Spirit wrote the Psalms.

4.      The New Testament confirms this. 2 Peter 1:20,21 tells us the Holy Spirit “moved” the writers of the Bible.

He used their pens and their personalities and their vocabularies, but the Holy Spirit moved them to write it exactly as He desired so that it is without error.

5.     So, the Holy Spirit worked to reveal God’s Word for us.

C.   *The Holy Spirit’s work in the Life of Christ.*

1.

As we’ve seen in our study of Matthew, the Holy Spirit was constantly at work in the life of Jesus Christ.

Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

He was anointed by the Holy Spirit at His baptism.

He was led into the desert by the Holy Spirit to be tempted by the devil.

2.     We’re also told that that Jesus was empowered by the Spirit to do His miracles (Matthew 12:25-27), His teaching was done in the power of the Holy Spirit (Luke 4:14, 18-21) and at one point, we’re told that He “rejoiced in the Holy Spirit” (Luke 10:21)—now that’s a picture of a Spirit-filled life.

3.     So, the Holy Spirit worked in the life of Jesus.

D.   All three of the above are truly past tense.

These are three of the most significant works of the Holy Spirit that are past tense.

For the rest of our time, I want to explore the work of the Holy Spirit that is past tense for each believer, but future tense for you if you have not yet believed in Christ for salvation.

Let’s look at … *The Holy Spirit’s work in salvation.*

This is what I want to spend the majority of our time on today.

1.     *The Holy Spirit convicts unbelievers.

*In other words, the Holy Spirit shows the world its need for a Savior.