Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost
Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost
Light of Christ Anglican Church
The Rev. Michael Moffitt August 24th, 2025
The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit- Week 8
Years ago Teresa and I were visiting with some friends in Alabama. It was a gathering of family and friends to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. As clergy I was to take part as they renewed their wedding vows. They had six children that were all grown but two of their sons were fraternal twins. One of them was an Army Ranger and the other was a Navy Seal. One evening as we all sat around talking the brothers shared about when they went through the physical and psychological abuse testing to qualify for Special forces in their branch of the US military. I remembered that the final week for the Navy Seals is called “Hell Week” and I personally think it’s apply named. But here’s the important part for us this morning, these men after years of being in special forces and still active were in top condition. They never stopped training and pushing themselves to their limits, and beyond. Why? Because in order to survive in their world they could never just work out like normal human beings. Two things I’ve learned from those I’ve known who were in Special forces is that they are always preparing and they operate as a band of brothers.
This past week as I considered the gifts of the Holy Spirit, I saw a similarity between the importance of the conditioning in special forces to remain ready and our lives as Christians. We are both involved in warfare and we each need special abilities in order to accomplish our goals. Those abilities were given to us. For special forces the training is given to them by other specialists in the military. For Christians we are changed and equipped by the work of the Holy Spirit. We would never persevere without God’s intervention in our lives. We also must depend upon God’s equipping and stick together as brothers and sisters in Christ.
The past 7 weeks we’ve have focused our attention on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Weekly I have reminded you that in the Scriptures we find our first introduction to the Holy Spirit in the creation story from Genesis 1:2 where the earth was without form and empty. There was no light and no land, as there had been no word from God. There was only darkness, a great nothingness but the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters waiting for the word to be spoken. Then God spoke, “Let there be light and there was light. And God saw that it was good.” It’s important to see what happened. There was darkness and no land then God spoke and there was light and land that would be perfect for man and all other creatures to dwell. It was the Spirit of God who brought light and order to what had been dark and chaotic. In this series we have seen examples of the Spirit of God moving against the darkness representing evil, and bringing order and blessing. It’s interesting to note that according to Revelations 21:1;25 that in the New Heavens and New Earth there will be no sea, and there will be no darkness. Restoration complete.
This event began the story of God speaking and the Holy Spirit moving to accomplish the very thing that God commanded. I believe that when Moses wrote the creation story it was for the children of Israel to learn that the God who brought them out of bondage and slavery in Egypt was the same God who was the creator and sustainer of all things, past, present, and future. However, everything that has been written in the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, has been written so that God might be known by everyone who calls upon His name, both those who wandered in the desert for 40 years all the way to those who are called to follow Him today.
The Holy Spirit’s indwelling can be defined as his “special presence within, and spiritual union with, believers.” As God, the Holy Spirit is omnipresent — he exists everywhere throughout creation at the same time. But he doesn’t manifest his presence the same way at all places and times. And his indwelling of believers is one of the most personal, intimate and powerful ways he manifests his presence and love.
One of the most amazing facts about salvation is that God himself lives within us. Once the Spirit sanctifies us at our conversion, we become worthy vessels for his presence. And because he loves us so much, and because he’s determined to influence our hearts and minds for the better, he lives within us and never leaves us, providing that we are in Christ by repentance and faith.
When the Holy Spirit regenerates us, he doesn’t simply repair our spirits and then leave us to our own devices. Rather, he takes up residence within us. We see this in places like 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, where the Apostle Paul gives the most compelling reason to flee sexual immorality, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God. You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.” (2 Timothy 1:14, and James 4:5) It’s his indwelling presence that actually gives life to our spirits.
The Scriptures also speak of a ministry of the Holy Spirit that is closely related to his indwelling, which the New Testament calls the filling of the Holy Spirit. Different branches of the church understand the filling of the Spirit in different ways. But we can all agree on at least two things.
First, the Holy Spirit always indwells true believers. It’s the out with the old and in with the new.
And second, his filling, or the level of his influence in our lives, varies. From time to time he fills us and influences us more powerfully than at other times. This is why the Scriptures never commands us to be indwelt by God’s Spirit, but they do command us to be filled with the Holy Spirit. As the apostle Paul put it in Ephesians 5:18: “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.”
In Colossians 3:15-16 Paul shows what it means to pursue being filled with the Spirit.
“And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”
When the Holy Spirit fills us, our goals change and what has in the past been of primary importance changes with it. Acts 16:16-40 is the story of Paul and Silas in a Macedonian prison for preaching the Gospel. At midnight they’re singing hymns and praising God. How can they possibly be singing and praising God when they have been so unjustly treated. Because they were filled with the Holy Spirit and were therefore waiting on the Spirit to move and reveal to them why they were there. It’s a great example to us of being prepared for whatever happens. They weren’t puzzled when finding themselves in prison, this was warfare. I can only assume that they were looking forward to how this whole debacle turned out.
I love the example of that kind of anticipation in Psalm 22:3, where the psalmist speaking of the effect of our worship of God. “Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.”
God dwells or is present where His people offer Him praise and worship. This suggests that praise is not just a reaction to God’s presence but that it draws His presence and power, allowing believers to enter into His glory, experiencing His attributes like love, peace, and grace. In Galatians 5:22-23 Paul gave us a glimpse into the fruits of the Spirit that result; “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, against such things there is no law.”
Through the filling and indwelling of the Holy Spirit, believers are empowered to perform works that God approves, just as Paul taught in Romans 8:5-9 “that those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, which is hostile to God…. But the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace.”
In the Spirit we’re able to worship with joy bowing before God in genuine submission and appealing to him for strength and faithfulness. As Jesus said in John 4:24: “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth”.
I’ve mentioned a few times in this series that the congregations of many if not most churches are comprised of believers and unbelievers. Unbelievers are certainly capable of worshipping God outwardly. They can render prayers, bring offerings, sing, preach and teach. But they can’t do these things in ways that God finds acceptable. Their hypocrisy, sin, and spiritual deadness prevent their worship from pleasing him. But with the indwelling Spirit, believers are able to approach him through the Spirit’s internal leading and prompting, and in ways that properly acknowledge and honor God’s persons, works and attributes.
This has always been the work of the Holy Spirit even in the Old Testament times. Believers in the Old Testament were certainly regenerate and that could only be true because the Holy Spirit indwelled them as well.
Last week we looked at Exodus 35 the story of God filling Bezalel and Oholiab and all who were assisting them with the Spirit of God. Because they were tasked to build the tabernacle for God to dwell in the midst of the people of Israel. Everything within the tabernacle in the wilderness was to be an exact copy of the Temple of God in Heaven. They were able to accomplish amazing things that previously would have been impossible for them without the anointing of the Spirit of God.
Many other things that were true of Old Testament believers also depended on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit: They had faith. They performed works acceptable to God. They worshiped rightly and they had the fruit of the Spirit in their lives. There are certainly aspects of the Holy Spirit’s ministry that are richer in the New Testament. But indwelling believers has been part of the Spirit’s task in every age.
The Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence also grants believers insight into God’s revelation. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 2:12-16:
“We have … received … the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us… The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for … he cannot understand them … But we have the mind of Christ.”
The Holy Spirit is given to believers as a resource, as the power of God in their lives, as the wisdom, the “mind of God” in their lives, as the presence of God in their lives because, of course, the Holy Spirit is God… Jesus said in John 16:8 that when his Spirit came that it would convict the world of sin and righteousness and guide the apostles, and by extension believers, into all truth.
So, the Spirit functions in our life as a companion from God to guide our lives. And so, we all experience times when we feel as though the Spirit … that God is speaking to us, that God is asking us to do this or that or not to do this or that. And that’s a real relationship, an actual person-to-person relationship that God has with the believer.
Paul wrote in Romans 8:10-11, “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who dwells within you.”
When the Holy Spirit fills us, he exercises great, and sometimes overwhelming, influence over us. Our hearts overflow with joy, thankfulness and love for fellow Christians. Or as Paul put it in Galatians 5:22, 23, we see the fruit of the Spirit in great measure.
Let’s turn to the purpose for gifts of the Spirit. For the most part all Evangelicals tend to believe that the Holy Spirit continues to grant spiritual gifts today. They even tend to agree that he grants them to all believers. But they have varying views regarding the nature of the gifts he currently gives — especially with regard to gifts that are spectacular in some way. Here we have in mind those gifts that are undeniably works of the Spirit because they don’t mirror natural human abilities and talents. For instance, miracles, healing, raising the dead, dreams, speaking in tongues, interpreting tongues, prophesying, and messages of wisdom and knowledge, are all examples of the gifts that Evangelicals debate.
In general, evangelical approaches to these spectacular gifts fall between the complete cessation of these gifts, and their widespread continuation. For those who believe that they are longer for today it’s generally argued that the spectacular gifts belonged to an earlier age of history, and that they ended with that earlier age. Some equate that earlier age roughly with the lifetimes of the apostles. They often see this apostolic age as a period of bearing witness to the truth of the claims about Jesus Christ and establishing the church. This view appeals, in part, to Ephesians 2:20, which says that the church is: built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.
The belief here is that the spectacular gifts were foundational. They pertained only to the period of the apostles and prophets, when the New Testament church was first being established and distinguished from Israel. In the eyes of many cessationist, these gifts were manifested only for the purpose of validating the gospel and apostolic authority. Once these had been sufficiently validated, the Spirit ceased to give these gifts. Some end this period as early as the death of the last apostle, typically thought to be John, who died at the end of the first century A.D. Others extend this foundational period farther — even to the formal closure of the canon of Scripture in the fourth century A.D.
For those who believe that the spectacular gifts belong to the entire church age, and that they won’t end until Jesus returns. Some continuations hold that, since the New Testament, all believers have had access to all the spectacular gifts. Some believe that the normal Christian experience should include at least the spectacular gift of tongues and I’ve even encountered a few who insist that people who don’t manifest tongues probably aren’t saved. But most simply believe that the Holy Spirit still has the freedom to bestow spectacular gifts where and when he wants to. They insist that he’s not bound to withhold these gifts simply because the apostolic age has passed. And they point out that the only passage of Scripture that specifically mentions the end of spectacular gifts places the timing of that end at Christ’s return. In 1 Corinthians 13:8-10, Paul wrote: “Where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears”
The continuation view tends to argue that “perfection” is either Jesus himself, or our final state of glorification at his return. In either case, prophecy, tongues and knowledge will continue until then.
Of course, between the ends of the continuum, there are a variety of perspectives that blend elements of cessation and continuation. Some believe that spectacular gifts can continue, but that they’re extremely rare throughout history. Others hold that some spectacular gifts continue, but that they’ve been modified so that they’re no longer spectacular. For example, they might say that prophecy is now limited to preaching and teaching and no longer includes receiving special revelation from God since the canon is closed.
But whatever view we hold regarding the spectacular gifts, we need to remember the range of beliefs that are held by Bible-affirming, evangelical Christians. The Spirit has given us the gifts to build up the church. So, we shouldn’t allow our view of the gifts to become a reason to tear each other down or to think more highly of ourselves because of the gift of the Spirit.
Before we go further let me remind you of a principle that I shared with you in Week 4 of this series. “The Holy Spirit will never move in a way that is not consistent with Scripture. The Holy Spirit is God and will never lead believers to act or believe in ways that contradict the teachings and principles found in the Bible, the word of God.”
I wanted to make sure that we understand that when God’s word is clear and we ignore it God will not bless. One of the gifts of the Spirit that tends to be abused is speaking in tongues. The gift is most often used in private worship, praying in the Spirit to praise God or because we don’t how to pray. The Apostle Paul gave us the rules to abide by when there are messages in tongues in the assembly.
1 Corinthians 14: 27-28, “ If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn, and let someone interpret. 28 But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God.”
I have been in large gatherings where 1000’s of people are standing and speaking in tongues together. When asked why this was allowed considering the Apostle Paul’s command, the answer was that the Holy Spirit does what he wants. The Holy Spirit doesn’t want to violate His own command. Remember that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are used to empower us to accomplish the mission of building the kingdom of God and are not badges of honor.
I am not a cessationist. I believe that all the gifts of the Spirit listed in the Word are available to God’s people today. But I also believe that the list is only partial, and God’s Spirit has many more ways of moving through us. We are limited but the Spirit is not. The Apostle wrote in 1 Corinthians 14:1, “Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.”
Let me close with this observation. Going back to my opening statement concerning the correlation between the two sons of our friends who were both in Special forces and Christians. These men were trained to fight the enemy’s before them and win. I believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are gifts to enable the Christ follower in taking authority over the enemies of our God and King. The gifts are given so that we may fight and overwhelm the enemy. If we are not seeing or experiencing the gifts of the Holy Spirit in our walk with Christ, the first question that comes to mind is, “Am I at war? Am I doing battle”
Those who are believers have the opportunity to ask God for the gift(s) that I need for whatever you are called to do within the church and in the world. Let’s Pray.
I’m including these passages for those who will receive sermon notes via email. 1 Corinthians 12:4:11 ESV, 1 Corinthians 12:27-31, Romans 12: 4-8, Ephesians 4:11-13,
