Speaker 1: 0:13

Thank you. All right, let me read to you first from Acts, chapter 2, verse 1. It says house, where they were sitting, they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now they were staying in Jerusalem, god-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven, and when they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked as we walk through this series on the Holy Spirit, we have represented in just this faith community, in this room, different people who speak different languages and are from different places of every nation in heaven. And so this week we have our friend Frank Sorgensen, who's going to read our scripture for the day in Danish.

Speaker 2: 1:32

Jesus said again. This translates into Again Jesus said Peace be with you, as the Father has sent. Said Peace be with you as the Father has sent me. I am sending you. And with that he breathed on them and said Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone's sins, their sins are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven. This is the word of God.

Speaker 1: 2:15

Thanks be to God. Thank you, frank.

Speaker 1: 2:19

You can stay back. There are not forgiven. This is the word of God. Thanks be to God. Thank you, frank.

Speaker 1: 2:21

All right, so I want to actually get to that scene, but I actually want to begin today, just 72 hours prior to what Frank just read, when he said something, when this final night of Jesus's life, when he actually said something that's very difficult to understand, when even for the most seasoned of disciples, and it went something like this I'm going away, but there's something that's coming that's going to be so much better. You see, in the gospel according to John, chapters 14 through 16, there's this one long conversation between Jesus and the 12 disciples, right in between the Last Supper and his arrest at Gethsemane, where Jesus cracks this wry smile and says something like look guys, my days are numbered, but I'm sending you my spirit, and that's even better. So, according to Jesus and he's remarkably clear about this the Holy Spirit is a staggering improvement to a direct face-to-face conversation with God in the flesh. This indwelling presence surpasses God in human form and it's not even close. That's what he said, and the most interesting thing about that, to me at least, is we don't buy it. Like how many of you, honestly, if you could today trade your experience with the Spirit of God so far for a direct conversation face-to-face with Jesus right now, if you could.

Speaker 1: 3:56

Regardless of maturity, commitment, gifting, education, most, if not all, of us are a bit underwhelmed with the experience. The very promise that Jesus got so excited about, the better plan that Jesus made, that even made him like a touch giddy on the way to his own execution. He knows that we're not going to be left behind and I think a lot of us would trade it if we could. So I want to talk to you today about the Holy Spirit and the biblical understanding is of this triune God. You have the Father, the Son and the Spirit, and we mostly get the Father. I mean, it's God in heaven. He's parenting all of us, his children. We're here on earth and we understand the Son. He is God in human flesh. He came to live among us to experience what we experience and then reveal God to us from down here on our level. But the Holy Spirit for many of us is like this urban legend, like we've heard the rumors, but has anyone actually spotted the Bigfoot, the Yeti, yet? But from Genesis to Revelation, the Spirit is present, it's active and it's essential. And despite that, the tragic truth is that for much of the church in the modern West, the Holy Spirit is kind of like a familiar stranger.

Speaker 1: 5:23

Christianity Today did a survey a couple years back where they asked one simple question and they just wanted to know true or false, which was the Holy Spirit is a force, not a person. True or false? 51% of responders said true that the Holy Spirit is a force to be used, not a person, 7% said they didn't know and 42% said false. So over half of American Christians think that the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, is a force to be used, not a person to know or to be known by. So I want to introduce you to the person of the Holy Spirit, and today, friends, is going to be a bit like trying to take a sip of water from a fire hose. I'm going to give you far more than you could take in, and that's okay, it's actually by design. I want to douse you in the imagination of Jesus for your life, empowered by his spirit, and then we're going to spend the rest of this summer working out all of the implications and everything that it means for you and I. So this is a shove in the deep end, if you will. It's a playful, gentle shove. But here comes the shove. I want you to get acquainted with the Spirit in five biblical scenes the Spirit in creation, the Spirit in the Old Testament, the Spirit in Jesus, the early church and us. And we're going to work our way today all the way throughout the scriptures, because I want you to see the Spirit in every scene in the story. And so, just so you have an anchor to hang on to as we make our way through, a key word to pay attention to as we go through this would be tabernacle or temple, so just put that there. They're mostly interchangeable in the biblical narrative. So here we go, way back to the very beginning. We're going to start in Genesis, chapter 2. We're going to start with creation.

Speaker 1: 7:20

It says this in Genesis, chapter 2,. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord, god, caused the man to fall into a deep sleep and while he was sleeping he took one of the man's ribs and then closed up the place with his flesh. So this is the first surgery in human history with complete divine anesthesia. Then the Lord made a woman from the rib that he had taken out of this man.

Speaker 1: 7:45

Now, for a lot of you this is a familiar passage, but the word rib here is pretty interesting. In Hebrew it's selah, which probably doesn't mean rib in the biological sense. As we read this, it's the exact same word that actually appears more than 40 times elsewhere in the New Testament, and never again is it actually translated as rib in English. In almost every other instance, selah refers to the side of a sacred piece of architecture, almost always referring to the side of the wall of the temple or the tabernacle. In fact, you actually see it representing the side of the wall of the temple or the tabernacle. In fact, you actually see it representing the side of the Ark of the Covenant. Now, what that means is for Genesis 2 is that in the very beginning, adam and Eve's bodies are called temples or tabernacles. Temples are houses for the presence of God, and so are our bodies. That's actually the revelation. Moses for the presence of God, and so are our bodies. That's actually the revelation. Hang on to that, because it's going to matter as we keep going.

Speaker 1: 8:44

Now we'll move on to number two, the Old Testament. So throughout the Exodus story, the presence of God is being described as like a dense cloud. There's other descriptions in here, but it's a cloud that actually guides the Israelites through the desert, and a cloud that then descends on Mount Sinai when God meets with Moses face to face, as a friend, and eventually God instructs Moses to build a tabernacle. That's the Old Testament word for a tent, which sounds ridiculous Like build me a tent so I can go camping with you as you wander in this journey throughout the wilderness. But actually this was a revolutionary thought at the time, because every conception of God that would ever been recorded up to this point in history has God bound to a particular location. So now, here on the move, is God with his people. It's strikingly personal God walking with us, staying with us, traveling with us wherever we go. And this was a revolutionary idea that set Yahweh apart from every other conception of God up to that point, from any kind of people.

Speaker 1: 9:48

So Exodus 40, the final verse of this book, reads this way Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because of the cloud had settled on it and the glory of the Lord had filled the tabernacle. So now fast forward your way in history and Israel's history, just a little bit to first Kings. Israel is now settled. They're not nomadic anymore. King Solomon upgrades God's house from a tent and he adds a guest room to the tabernacle and so they start calling it the temple, and the tent becomes more of a permanent home and it sits right in the center of the city. And when they finish construction on this house, we read something very familiar. It says in 1 Kings, chapter 8, when the priest withdrew from the holy place, the cloud filled the temple of the Lord and the priest could not perform their service because the cloud for the glory of the Lord had filled his temple.

Speaker 1: 10:47

So here's this pattern that you'll see repeated throughout the Old Testament that the tabernacle is good. It's good, but it's incomplete. It's good because God's presence is clearly among his people, and that's wildly progressive. No one's arguing at this time about the existence of God in ancient Israel, like where is God? They would say well, he's at the dense cloud that's going around or that's filling the tent. But it's incomplete because there's no intimacy. See Moses in the tabernacle. He couldn't even go in because of the glory of God, was so powerful. And so, as for the rest of the people, they're told that if you even put your foot at the base of the mountain where I'm meeting with Moses, you'll drop dead instantly. So in Solomon's temple, the priest would perform service when God showed up. Only the high priest could enter the presence of God, and only once a year, on Yom Kippur. And even when that happened, they would tie a rope to his ankle just in case he dropped dead in God's presence. So there was a way to retrieve the body. So no one was arguing about the existence of God. But no one knew God on a personal level either. And the tabernacle was the place where his presence was there, without intimacy. But there was a plan to fix that.

Speaker 1: 12:01

Fast forward to John, chapter 1. This brings us to Jesus. The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and the only son who came from the father, full of grace and truth. Now the English word here for dwelling is the Greek skinono. This is an ancient Greek for the word tabernacle. The most direct translation then of this verse would actually be the word became flesh and tabernacled among us.

Speaker 1: 12:42

The Old Testament pattern was build a temple, then God fills the tabernacle with his presence, and now John describes Jesus as a tabernacle filled with God's presence and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. That filled the tabernacle that filled the tabernacle has now filled. The body of Jesus. Now he is a living, breathing, walking, talking tabernacle. Now, that's a lot more than just a clever play on words to open up a biography for John. This is the basis by which we understand Jesus's life, because Jesus goes around acting like he's a tabernacle, like the tabernacle.

Speaker 1: 13:24

This is one of the reasons that Jesus got himself into so much trouble with the priests is because he does a bunch of stuff that you could not do outside of the temple, and I'm not talking about, like minor social taboos. He was literally breaking the Torah. For instance, jesus walks around saying to people you're forgiven, to which they would be like what, like, no, no, no. It doesn't work like that. Jesus, like, if you're in need of grace, you go through these elaborate series of cleansing rituals. You enter the temple, you offer the right sacrifices and are granted grace by the priest who's qualified to offer God's forgiveness to someone else. Like, and then to which you'd say well, really, where did you get that? He's like we got it from Moses, the founder of the tabernacle, the author of the law. You can't just go around breaking the Torah and then here comes Jesus no temple, no cleansing, no sacrifice, no priest. Do you want to repent? Good, you're forgiven, you're set free.

Speaker 1: 14:23

In Luke's gospel, jesus returned to Galilee and the power of the Spirit and the news about him spread throughout the whole countryside. He was teaching in their synagogues and everyone praised him. He went to Nazareth, where he'd been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue as was his custom. He stood up and read the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it was written the spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Now, after this, the entire congregation literally tried to push him off of a cliff. This is how bad his sermon was. But here's the issue, this one right here he said the Spirit of the Lord is on me Now. This was extremely offensive.

Speaker 1: 15:26

Jesus claiming to be the tabernacle. Literally what he's saying here is I'm the container for God's presence, I'm the vessel that's filled with God's Spirit. And that was just a bit too much for them. But to be fair, jesus doesn't just expect them to accept it. He reads directly here from their own scriptures about what it would look like when God's presence actually fills a person. It'll look like priority toward the poor, like freedom for the imprisoned, the healing of incurable diseases and the outpouring of God's favor.

Speaker 1: 16:01

In the days after this declaration, what do we actually see? Does Jesus proclaim good news to the poor? Yes, we get to call that the gospel. What about freedom for the imprisoned and the oppressed? All the time, he literally built a movement that by defining, by dignifying the oppressed. And what about the blind receiving sight from Jesus? They certainly do, spiritually and literally, in every town that he goes to.

Speaker 1: 16:27

And eventually he makes this claim in John's gospel. He says in chapter 2, destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days. Now it's important to understand that Jesus said this actually while standing on the Temple Mount, which was one of the architectural wonders of the world. It had been under construction for two generations at the time, and so priests were offended because they hear this and they think he's talking about the building. But John goes on to write. But the temple he had spoken of was his body. Jesus was talking about his Selah. He's talking about Adam's rib. He's talking about the first temple. He's hearkening it all the way back to creation his body, the living, breathing, walking, talking temple.

Speaker 1: 17:17

Jesus was talking about talking temple. Jesus was talking about the Holy Spirit. And you may be building a container for God's presence. So am I. I'm just making a container for God's presence, just like I did at first, and what I'm building in three days through my death and resurrection is a dramatic upgrade. In fact, it's a replacement for what you've been working on for generations. That was what Jesus's point was. So, moving right along, we'll go to the early church.

Speaker 1: 17:51

We flipped just a few chapters ahead in the gospel, according to John, to chapter 20, and we've arrived now where we began today with Frank. Jesus said peace, be with you, as the father has sent me, so I am sending you, and with that he breathed on them. So Jesus's message delivered to his disciples on the resurrection evening was receive my spirit, the presence that has been tabernacling in me I am now giving to you. Actually, you can even use some of that same language and hark it all the way back to creation. When Adam was created, the spirit breathed into dust and created man. Just as the father, he said, sent me into this world as a living, breathing tabernacle, I now send you into this world as a living, breathing tabernacle.

Speaker 1: 18:41

This is more than just poetry. Notice the line that follows Like, what do we make of that? If you forgive someone's sins, they're forgiven. This is Jesus talking to ordinary people like you and me, saying if you forgive someone's sins, they're forgiven, but if you do not forgive them, they're not. To which we would say are you sure that's in the Bible? Like, is that how that works? Because I don't know if I want that power, I don't know if it's the power over me.

Speaker 1: 19:09

Like, look, this is message number one off the lips of Jesus to his followers after his resurrection. So then we ask well, what on earth does that even mean? Remember, jesus got himself into trouble for doing things that you could not do except if you were a qualified priest in the temple. And he's now saying now you go, and you go do those very things, and he promises his spirit to his followers. And then he says now you do it, so does this mean I should go around forgiving sins? No, what it means, friends, is that people should experience God's forgiveness by proximity to you, because you are a temple, carrying his presence with you wherever you go. And so Jesus is saying this that the presence and the power of God that you have seen at work in me is now in you, and it's not this comforting theory or this poetic metaphor, but it's an actual practice.

Speaker 1: 20:11

And right after that we encounter the book of Acts, when those very disciples go around doing stuff that you could not do outside of the temple. They're preaching forgiveness. They're preaching forgiveness, they're baptizing, they're praying, they're healing, and they go around doing the very stuff that Jesus did. Now remember the evidence that Jesus listed off. The Lord anointed me to proclaim the good news. They preached the gospel. The church has always done it and will continue to do that. This is a practice that we come from here. But they did more than just preach the gospel, because the evidence of the Holy Spirit also includes freedom and healing and forgiveness. And in Acts, in addition to that, the Lord added to their number daily, those who were being saved.

Speaker 1: 20:51

We also read many stories about prayer, where jail cells fling open and Peter and John Hill, a paraplegic man, elderly man, on the way to church, and then he dances in front of the opening worship song and then Paul preaches a sermon that's so long that someone dozes off. See, it's happened from the very beginning. They doze off and they fall out of a window and die, and then somehow gets healed before the benediction, before the blessing at the end. That was a long one. Daily they're serving food to the oppressed and to the vulnerable and in the midst of all that supernatural outbreak that we see and we read, they also suffered. They continued to grieve, they questioned, they doubted, they went through spells, sometimes long ones, of spiritual apathy. They were us. And you have to ask how can those two things coexist? How can the supernatural power and the natural pain and hardship exist together in one community? Pain and hardship exist together in one community? Well, it's because we're talking about a relationship with a person, not a box of magic tricks.

Speaker 1: 22:07

The church led by the Spirit looks like a continuization of everything Jesus started and it looks very flawed because everything was given to ordinary, flawed people like you, not me. You didn't hear that. I didn't land right, but you got it. Like ordinary flawed people like you and I. The rest of the Bible is essentially just a bunch of ordinary people tabernacling, ordinary people filled with the Holy Spirit carrying on the ministry that Jesus started. Now, finally, us.

Speaker 1: 22:49

The final stop on our whirlwind tour through the Bible is in 1 Corinthians. Now, what I'm about to read to you is actually a letter that was written by the Apostle Paul, and it was to the Church of Corinth. It's much like a letter that was written to be read in a gathering, much like this one, and like a church like this one and a city, a whole lot like this one, starts out with this Don't you know that? You now, this is important right here, you. Right here. That's the plural you.

Speaker 1: 23:23

English doesn't do a good job, as many other languages have a way to make this more of a plural you. I think that's why you know back east, it's y'all right. We want to talk about the plural way to do it. That'd be the most simple way, and so in English we just have one word for you. It's just you, and so it's hard to translate, but here he's talking to this whole gathering, this gathered community. We're talking about the church.

Speaker 1: 23:44

So he says don't you know that you yourselves which is such a weird sentence right there are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in your midst? So what he's saying is there's still a tabernacle, there's still a place where God's glory dwells, and it's you, or actually it's y'all it's the gathered church, it's not the building. It's whenever the collective's lives of Jesus' followers come together as a community. We are bound together by the Holy Spirit, and when we come together, the glory of the Lord is in the atmosphere, just like in Moses' tent or in Solomon's temple, and like Jesus' body. But there's even more.

Speaker 1: 24:27

He continues on and says don't you know that? Your bodies? Now he switched this. This is now singular. It's time for your individual physical body that we're talking about here. Your bodies are actually temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God. You are not your own. You have been bought with a price. Therefore, honor God with your temples, with your own. You have been bought with a price. Therefore, honor God with your temples, with your bodies. Your physical body is now a selah, just like it was at first, it's the dwelling place of God. Through the Holy Spirit, you are filled with the very Spirit of Jesus. So here's just a quick recap of this.

Speaker 1: 25:10

There's a familiar stranger in the background of the whole Bible, getting closer and closer as the story moves forward. So at creation, god affirms Adam and Eve's bodies as dwelling places for his spirit, living temples. And in the Old Testament God fills Moses' tabernacle. And in Solomon's temple God's spirit comes to live in the heart of the city with his people. And in Jesus God's spirit fills a person whose life, death and resurrection breaks every barrier between God and us, so that the church is a community of people bound together by God's spirit. And then, every time we gather together, god is here in our midst. That's us. But it's even more intimate than that you, any one of you who accepts Jesus's offer of life by grace is then filled with God's spirit, exactly as he was. That's the story of the Bible, and if I had to sum it up in a single sentence along this theme, I would say God's spirit has been given to us and to you, and I think this is so beautiful. But it's way more than just poetry, it's actually practice.

Speaker 1: 26:37

Let's go back real quick to the last night of Jesus's life, that long conversation that he was having about going away and then sending his spirit. Jesus also said that same conversation very truly, I tell you. And Jesus is saying why is he saying very truly, he's saying this isn't hyperbole. I actually mean conversation very truly. I tell you. And Jesus is saying why is he saying very truly, he's saying this isn't hyperbole, like, I actually mean this Very truly. I tell you that whoever believes in me will do the very works I've been doing, and they will do even greater things than these because I'm going to the Father. Now there's so much debate among scholars about exactly what Jesus meant by even greater things Like is it quantity of works? Is it quality of works Jesus is talking about here? This is what we know, at the least that Jesus doesn't mean less or not as good as what I have been doing.

Speaker 1: 27:24

And to fixate on that part actually is to miss the most staggering claim in the verse. The key word here is whoever. Whoever See Jesus has made us all tabernacles filled with his presence, his power, by doing and doing the very things that we see him doing. And who is that offer for to be able to do that, whoever, whoever the power of God has been shared with, which is whoever will actually receive it. This is the supernatural core, a lived resurrection, holy Spirit, core of the Christian life.

Speaker 1: 28:01

And, to borrow a phrase from Jordan, seeing the Holy Spirit's job description is to make the impractical practicable.

Speaker 1: 28:10

The Holy Spirit makes the totally impractical, the supernatural, the miraculous. The gospel ministry of Jesus is not just practical, but it's actually practicable. It's not only possible in extreme situations by super spiritual people, but it's actually practicable by the high school student struggling with pushing the envelope with his girlfriend and the really stressed out businessman who's financially in over his head, and the mom who can barely pay attention right now because she's sure her kids are going wild and ballistic in the kids ministry, and by the half-interested guy that's only here because she's here, and by the doubter, right now with her arms crossed, who has an objection and a counterpoint to what I'm saying, and by the woman who's on the edge of her seat because she wants it so bad she can't even stand it. Everyone, every child of God, everyone who has received Jesus, has been filled with his spirit to make the impractical practicable. And who is it? For? Whoever, whoever believes in me, and this is what you can expect from your life, to which some of us would say well, yeah, if that's true, then like what about?

Speaker 1: 29:24

or like what about that or this thing? We'll get there. I promise we'll get there. We have the whole summer to go to talk about this. But for a moment, will you just dream with me?

Speaker 1: 29:38

What if God's biggest dreams for us as a church aren't only that more people would fill our seats? Don't get me wrong. It definitely includes that. But what if it also includes the addicted finding freedom? In a city with a long history of substance abuse, a new reputation emerges for freedom by the name of Jesus.

Speaker 1: 30:01

And what if it includes people who are obsessively distracted with their appearance and the success of their startup finally finding freedom to go to work because it doesn't have to hold the weight of their worth anymore? What if it includes being free enough to spend a Friday night at a high-end restaurant with some of your best friends, or at a nursing home serving food entrees to widows, and actually be present, actually be happy and equally alive in both of those places? What if it includes the terminally ill rolling into this church, because there's a rumor that people here actually pray for healing and every once in a while it actually works? And what if it includes a simple word that cuts all the way to the hardest heart, and prayers that carry the weight of the king himself, and a sense of joy that cannot be stolen. And I'm going to tell you, friends, if it includes all of that, you've got to admit, doesn't that sound a lot more fun, Worth it? This is the dream that, I think, put a light in Jesus's eye even on the night of his execution that everything that he has might be ours. And one of the great tragedies may be that the greatest tragedy in the church of our time is that the Holy Spirit has just become a familiar stranger. I mean, it must break the heart of Jesus. The spirit that he was actually so eager to give us has become unknown, feared and even divisive. The Holy Spirit for many is unknown, and the reason that so many of us would reverse the deal with Jesus if we could, where we would just trade in the intimacy of the Spirit for just a chat with the Son, is because the Holy Spirit has become a stranger. And some, even in this family, sit here and honestly feel like you know what, Like. If this is my experience up to this point, if everything that the victory of Jesus has won. For me, then, like honestly, I'm a bit underwhelmed and a touch disappointed if this is really all that is accomplished.

Speaker 1: 32:16

Billy Graham, he says everywhere I go, I find that God's people lack something. They're hungry for something. Their Christian experience is not all that they had expected and they often have this reoccurring defeat in their lives. Christians today are hungry for spiritual fulfillment. They're in desperate need of the nation. The desperate need of the nation today is that men and women who profess Jesus be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 1: 32:48

Now, those are words from a not particularly charismatic, theologically sound gospel preacher who traveled the globe seeing the church in every variety and form, and after all of that, his major takeaway is that the church is missing the Holy Spirit, longing for the Holy Spirit, needing the Holy Spirit. Now, everything that I've just said to you is just an introduction for the coming weeks, but here's the big idea for today the Holy Spirit is a person to know, not a force to capture, and I don't want to get you all wound up about the power of the Spirit or about the experience of the Spirit. I want to introduce you to the power of the Spirit or about the experience of the Spirit. I want to introduce you to the person of the Spirit, and you cannot know a person just by learning or reading about them. That's the terribly limiting aspects of these sermons.

Speaker 1: 33:44

To know the Holy Spirit, to experience what Jesus was talking about on his last night, that requires more than us just listening to a sermon series. It requires a risk of relationship. It means personally interacting with God as Spirit. It means learning to enjoy the presence of God, to tune your ear to a still small whisper and to walk then in step with the Spirit. It is so much more personal and it is so much better. So I wanna invite you to buckle up and now I wanna offer this for you to engage in this worship song and experience and be attuned and aware that the Spirit is actually on the move. May it be so. Will you stand and worship with me?