We’ve been learning about the Holy Spirit. Who He is, what He does in us and how He moves in the church. Today, we talk about the Spirit, the empowerer. It’s one of the incredibly important ways the Spirit works in each of us, as individuals, but also in the corporate body of the church. Without His power, we cannot do what Jesus commissioned us to do when He told us to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, and teaching them to obey all He commanded.
I want to invite you to look at the Scriptures this morning, in fact, I want you to stand for the reading of God’s Word as I read Luke 24:46-49, “He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” (NIV)
Let’s frame this passage. Jesus had risen from the dead. He’d appeared to the women, to Peter, to John, to the other disciples, to the men on the road to Emmaus, and He appears to them again and gives them instructions. They are told to wait for the Spirit so they would empowered to go and make disciples. Right? He says that the repentance and the forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations, starting in Jerusalem, and that His disciples, then and now, are witnesses of these things. What follows is the promise of the Spirit, the power from the Father on high to be the witnesses He calls us to be.
The Holy Spirit gives us the POWER of the Almighty Father from on high! This might not be news to you. You might be thinking, “Yeah, Pastor, we know.” Stick with me. I want us to trace the power of the Holy Spirit in Scripture and grasp what it means for us.
Listen to Acts 10:38, “You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.” (NASB)
This is where we must start our understanding of the power of the Holy Spirit, with Jesus, who is one with the Spirit and the Father. Christ is our example of what it looks like to live a Spirit-filled and Spirit-led life. And what we see here is the through the power of the Spirit, Christ was able to do the good He did, to heal and deliver those who were in bondage to the devil through a life of sin. He was able to do this because God was with Him through the power of the Spirit.
Sometimes I think we operate under this misconception as Christians in the church that Christ did all the amazing, miraculous things He did because He’s God, but that’s not what we see explained in Scripture. He, Christ the Son is one with the Father, worthy to be worshiped, part of the Godhead. But when Scripture talks about His mighty deeds, His miraculous works, we’re told that He did those things through the power of the Holy Spirit of God living in Him! Paul reminds us in Romans that this same Spirit, the Spirit that worked in Christ to raise Him from the dead and do mighty things, is the same Spirit that lives in each person called “disciple of Jesus”. It’s the same power because it’s the same Spirit. The Spirit given to you and me is no different and no less than the Spirit of Christ with the same mighty power to do the same mighty things!
Jesus went on to tell His disciples this, which is similar to our passage in Luke 24, but not quite the same, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8, NIV)
You are His witness, to all the ends of the earth. You could go to the remotest parts of the earth and your call would be the same: be His witness. And the Spirit has come upon you for the express purpose of giving you power to be the witness you are called to be!
This isn’t a passive experience. When the Spirit came upon believers and people in the Bible, it was an unforgettable moment where there were divine things that happened. Look at the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out on believers of all backgrounds, ages, genders, cultures, etc. “When the day of Pentecost came, all the believers gathered in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound came from heaven. It was like a strong wind blowing. It filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw something that looked like fire in the shape of tongues. The flames separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit. They began to speak in languages they had not known before. The Spirit gave them the ability to do this.” (Acts 2:1-4, NIRV)
And what happened after that? Peter preached boldly the word of God and the gospel good news of Christ’s death and resurrection and the forgiveness of sins and over 3,000 were saved that day.
This is not meek power, this is not small, timid power. This isn’t, “Wow, the Spirit really moved in power this morning during worship,” power. This is shake the house with the sound of violent, rushing winds, Spirit-visions of fire, POWER!!! Joel 2:28-32 says that in the days that the Spirit would be poured out on all believers, there would be prophesies and visions! This is POWER!
Ezekiel had an experience with the power of the Spirit, and Ezekiel 3:12-14 says this, “Then the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard a great rumbling sound behind me: “Blessed be the glory of the Lord from His place!” 13 And I heard the sound of the wings of the living beings touching one another and the sound of the wheels beside them, even a great rumbling sound. 14 So the Spirit lifted me up and took me away; and I went embittered in the rage of my spirit, and the hand of the Lord was strong on me.” (NASB)
Ezekiel met the power of the Spirit and he had visions of heavenly beings, he heard loud noises that shook him as the glory of the Lord overtook him and the Spirit’s power was strong upon Him!
This isn’t, “Spirit give me power to do a good job at work today.” This is soul-saving, heart-pounding, mind-transforming, dead-raising, life-changing, power that should bring us to our knees in humility and awe and wonder that such a powerful God should look down upon such sinful and unworthy people and impart to us His power to dwell in us!
Paul reminds us in 2 Timothy 1:7 that we were not given a spirit of timidity or cowardice, but of power and love and discipline! We have nothing to lose! We have everything to gain, and the victory already belongs to Christ in all things! We aren’t cowards! We have power! We have Holy Spirit power!
I heard a good illustration at General Assembly, and it applied to God’s love, but I’m going to apply to the Spirit’s power. See this little dump truck? When we talk about the Spirit’s power in our lives, this is what it looks like. We think it’s a lot. We think it’s filled to the brim and if it is dumped out on us it would probably cover us. But the Spirit’s power we see displayed in Jesus and the early church is more like this second dump truck. It’s big power. Huge! And it should overwhelm you and flow over you and pour out of everything you do and everything you say, and enable and empower you to do even more mighty deeds than Christ!
Romans 15:13-19 gives us Paul’s personal mission statement, and also his prayer for the church, “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. 14 And concerning you, my brothers and sisters, I myself also am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able also to admonish one another. 15 But I have written very boldly to you on some points so as to remind you again, because of the grace that was given to me from God, 16 to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, ministering as a priest the gospel of God, so that my offering of the Gentiles may become acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. 17 Therefore in Christ Jesus I have found reason for boasting in things pertaining to God. 18 For I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me, resulting in the obedience of the Gentiles by word and deed, 19 in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Spirit; so that from Jerusalem and all around as far as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.” (NASB)
Paul prayed for the church, that they would be filled with the big, earth-shaking power of the Holy Spirit, and he was convinced that his example of his ministry and life lived would urge them to live in the power of the Spirit in the same ways he had. Could you imagine what it would look like if we even took just a part of Paul’s testimony to heart and decided that we wouldn’t boast in anything except the things of God or speak of anything except what Christ has done in us by the power of the Spirit? How different would our conversations and relationships look? There’s power there.
So here’s the question for us…where is the power?
Where is the power, church?
J. Lee Grady said this about the power of the Spirit, “But too often the American church has tried to confine the Holy Spirit, muzzle Him, constrain Him, or shoot Him with a tranquilizer gun so we can maintain control. I fear that in some cases we have begged this wild Spirit of God to stay away from us so we can play our tame version of church without His unexpected interruptions. If we are honest, we will admit that the church has become so weak, so timid, and so compromised with the world that we do not even remotely resemble the powerful Christians in the first century who bravely preached the gospel, worked miracles, and even gave their lives in martyrdom to serve Christ.”
If we are honest, each of us is guilty of this treatment of the Spirit. We don’t want Him to wreck us. We don’t want Him to disrupt our comfort. We don’t want Him to pierce our hearts with His word. Because if He wrecked us, disrupted our comfort, and pierced our hearts we would have to be radically different than what is deemed “acceptable” in Western churches.
We need this big power, to make disciples, to boldly preach and proclaim the gospel of Christ, to heal and mend the broken and sick, to do the work of His Kingdom come. You don’t need His power to sit in the chair on Sunday. You don’t need His power to come to another Bible study. You don’t need His power to live life according to the status quo of the world. You need His power if you are serious about being a completely devoted and transformed disciple of Christ who brings His message to every dark corner of this lost and broken world and every heart that is need of healing and mending and saving. This is Holy Spirit power! This is the power that has been poured out on you, the church.
Where is the power? We don’t look like this, yet the promise remains. Any Christian daring enough to invite the Spirit to empower them like this can experience all the manifestations of power that pushed the early church into a force of God’s glorious redemption and kingdom come on earth. Are you daring enough?
Questions to form your quiet times this week:
1. Reread the passages that record the power of the Spirit in Acts. What manifestation of this same power do you see in your own life?
2. Take a few minutes to dream big. What would our church look like if we all walked in this power with our daily lives? What might God do with hearts not afraid to be radically empowered?
3. What’s holding you back? What needs surrender, resurrection, renewal, and reignition in your life to live more in the Spirit’s bold power?