Pray: that Jesus be exalted and that as Jesus lived in the power of the Holy Spirit while He was here on His mission we too would go forth in the power of the Holy Spirit while we are here on His mission

3 Questions We’ll Answer in These Messages This Summer
1) Who am I?
2) Why am I here in this world, in this area, at this time and in this moment?
3) How do I live out this mission? (People, place, message, lifestyle, thinking, etc.)

Banner Verse: [John 17:18] “As You have sent Me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

One of my favorite lines quotes of Spurgeon that has been hanging in my office since I’ve been in the ministry is this one where he says, “I would that the Church would burst forth from all her bonds, and send out her chosen warriors to do battle against the infidel hosts. And what if they should die? With the Spirit of Christ inflaming our hearts, we should go forward, our courage nothing damped nor our ardor abated for all that—each one counting it an honor to die for Christ, each one throwing himself into the breach determined to win for Christ, and spread His name through the whole earth, or else to perish in the attempt. God give to His church this zeal and ardor.”

I want this for you. I want this for this church. I want to see battle! I want to see Christian’s counting it an honor to die for Christ, throwing themselves into the fight determined to win for Christ and with a zeal to spread His name through the whole earth! But we won’t have this unless the Spirit of Christ is inflaming our hearts. We will not do anything without the Spirit of the Living God. So tonight I want us to see that Jesus was sent into the world in the power of the Holy Spirit and that like Him, we too are sent into the world in the power of the Holy Spirit. But before we dive into this, let’s begin our journey in amazement seeing that…

Jesus Had Authority Over the Spirit Yet Submitted to the Spirit
We need to make this point and see this so that when we talk about Jesus’ relationship with the Spirit we don’t minimize the humanity of Christ and His full submission to God’s designs and the example He lays before us. In Systematic on Wednesday nights we’ve been looking at the “taxis” of the Trinity and how the Godhead relates. Now I know this is pretty early in a sermon to throw ourselves into the deep end, but let’s love God with our minds and go expecting to see wonders.

In Bruce Ware’s book “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” he brings this question up saying, “What we find are two themes that appear, at first glance, to be in conflict, two themes that simply do not easily join together. On the one hand, Jesus follows the lead of the Spirit and relies on the Spirit, and so is shown to submit to the Spirit in order to accomplish His mission. But on the other hand, Jesus has authority over the Spirit, so that as Jesus gives the Spirit to those who believe on Him, the Spirit comes to “glorify Me,” says Jesus. This raises the question, then, of who has authority over whom?” In summary, looking at the Gospel of Luke, which we will do tonight, Ware writes, “Luke wants us to know that Jesus is living His life by the power of the Spirit, obeying the Father and resisting temptation as the Spirit works in Him.” So what we see is a Jesus not living out His life by the power of His own divinity but living dependent upon the power of the Spirit in His humanity to live the life we could not live in that dependence and to set for us an example to follow in our own lives as we relate the Spirit He will send to us.

Ware goes on to explain, “Yes, Jesus lived His life in the power of the Spirit, for Jesus came as the second Adam, the seed of Abraham, the son of David, that is, a human being who needed supernatural enablement to live the human life of obedience and sacrifice that the Father had ordained for Him to carry out. In short, the “human Jesus” needed the Spirit in ways that the “divine Jesus” simply did not and could not need Him. But since Jesus came as “one of us,” as it were, as a full human being who lived our life and died in our place, He came in need of the Spirit of God to empower His life, ministry, obedience, miracles and all that He did in obedience to the Father.” (Bruce Ware, p. 87-88; bottom of 89 and mid 91)

So this is what we see in Jesus. We see Him living in the power of the Spirit and we should be amazed and in awe at the absolute humility of Christ in His condescension and life. We should also see that if Jesus was completely dependent upon the power of the Spirit to live His life as a sinless man, then we need the Spirit of God even more! Let’s look at Christ’s life in dependence upon the Spirit and we’ll do this like a movie that starts with one scene and then back tracks several years and leads us up to the scene we began with. Let’s go to…

The Spirit of the Lord is Upon Me
[Luke 4:16-21] “And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as was His custom (He’s apparently done this before. It’s not unusual for Him to be here, but today will be special and there is a reason why this day is different from all the rest.), He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and He stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to Him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And He rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

The reason why this day was different than all the rest is because the time was at hand for proclaiming good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, setting at liberty the oppressed and for proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor and why, why could Jesus say this in absolute confidence this day unlike any other? Answer: the Spirit of the Lord was upon Him and He had been anointed for this special mission.

Now let’s look back in the Gospel of Luke and see some events that lead up to this point and see also how Jesus was sent into the world…

Jesus Was Conceived in the Power of the Holy Spirit
[Luke 1:31-35] “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.” And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.”

How does a virgin hold in her womb the Holy Son of God? By the overshadowing power of the Most High and the rushing upon her by the Holy Spirit. That is how the Son of God, the God-Man must be conceived. Even at Jesus coming into the world, the Holy Spirit does His work to make Him known, even in the womb of Mary.

Jesus Was Empowered by the Holy Spirit for His Earthly Ministry
[Luke 3:21-23] “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on Him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are My Beloved Son, with You I am well pleased.” Jesus, when He began His ministry, was about thirty years of age…”

As a side note here, though it is important, just not part of our main task today, there are actually two things that send Jesus powerfully into His ministry: one, of course, is that He was empowered by the Holy Spirit and we’ll get to that in a second, but the other is that He knew the pleasure of the Father. He wasn’t going into His ministry, which was basically a road to wrath, unsure of the Father’s pleasure with Him. That’s what made Jesus sweat drops of blood…He knew that the pleasure He felt and had known in His ministry was about to turn on Him for a while as He was punished for sinners! Think about this: you took away that voice of pleasure from the Son on the cross as He suffered for your sin! Jesus knew that for three dark hours as blow after blow of wrath fell on Him, the word from heaven would only be, “This is my Beloved Son, with whom I am displeased!” And because of that, all who put their faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins will never face the displeasure of the Father, for it has been spent on Christ! Amen!

But back to our point, it was the anointing of the Holy Spirit that sent Jesus into His ministry. That’s what changed! That was the difference! Up until His baptism things were as normal (if you can even say that) as they could be for the Son of God, but after His baptism, He turns the world upside down in the power of the Spirit!

After this Jesus begins by destroying the works of the devil by resisting temptation and sending Satan away frustrated of his designs. Then we see Jesus preaching in the power of the Spirit and declaring to all His Messiahship in the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 61. Then the sermon that He preached at Nazareth is seen visibly in His healing of the demon oppressed, the sick and His preaching to and calling of the poor and outcast. Liberty is proclaimed and the witness of the year of the Lord’s favor is seen wherever the Spirit-anointed Christ goes.

What we’re seeing in the Gospel of Luke is the work of the Holy Spirit upon the life of Jesus Christ and everything we’ve seen is not only the fleshing out of one prophecy in Isaiah 61, but the fleshing out of another prophecy in Isaiah 11:1-5 which says…

“There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what His eyes see, or decide disputes by what His ears hear, but with righteousness He shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of His waist, and faithfulness the belt of His loins.”

So that is how Jesus came and lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. But remember what Jesus said in John 17:18 “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” What this means is that the Spirit that anointed Jesus’ ministry is the same Spirit that He put within us in the new birth that we may be Spirit-anointed and Spirit-empowered in our ministry! And that’s what we see in Luke’s second book. We see the power of the New Covenant at hand. We see what the promise of Ezekiel 36:26-27 looks like in action, which says, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”

Luke and Acts: The Story of the Empowering Work of the Holy Spirit to Magnify Jesus
And here’s the cool thing about the Gospel of Luke; it is just one half of the message Luke is communicating to Theophilus, book two is the Acts of the Apostles. These two books should be read back-to-back to really understand them, and when you do this you see something incredible and I believe what you see is in Luke’s Gospel you see the power of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus Christ and then in Acts you see the power of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and the early church. In many ways, both books began in the same manner. In Luke the Holy Spirit comes to magnify Jesus in the events surrounding His incarnation and ministry. In Acts the Holy Spirit comes to magnify Jesus in the events surrounding and following His ascension. What we see is the full work of the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ life and in the life of the church. Or if you take it back to our banner verse John 17:18 the summary of the Gospel of Luke is “As you have sent me into the world…” and the summary of the Acts of the Apostles is “…so I have sent them into the world.”

So let’s turn to the Book of Acts, Luke’s second letter and I’ll give you four points from that speak to the empowering of the Holy Spirit.

1. The Holy Spirit Gives Power to the Powerless
It doesn’t matter how strong you are, it doesn’t matter how knowledgeable you are, it doesn’t matter how persuasive you are, how cool you are, how lovely you are, how gracious you are, how much truth you know, or even how you present that truth because apart from the Holy Spirit empowering your work you have nothing but powerless chatter! I believe this was a great part of the point of Pentecost and this fact was the reason that Jesus told the disciples not to proclaim the Gospel yet, because if they did they would have been powerless. In Luke 24:36-49 we have the record of Jesus encounter with His disciples post-resurrection. Listening to Jesus speak after being sure you would never hear Him speak again, much less see Him again must have been powerful.

You can just see them lifting up their slumbering heads, pulling back their slouching shoulders, straightening their backs, and watching the stream of their sorrowful tears be overcome by the flood of joyful tears as they see Him and hear Him speak life into them, especially at verse 45 where we read, “And He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures (You know that moment, where the Spirit opens your eyes and you see wonders in the Word of God that you’ve never seen before, like you have just found some uncharted gold-mine of gladness), and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” And at this point you could see them, chomping at the bit to get busy proclaiming Him to the nations! They are sure! They are confident! They know the Word, especially now, as it all makes sense to them. They have never been more alive in their life!

But Jesus doesn’t end there; He pulls them back and says in verse 49, “And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” You see this? You see what He does? He essentially says, “You have everything right now, but one thing; the most important thing, and without the Promise of my Father, you are naked without power, you are powerless. But hold on, stay in the city, shortly your clothing is coming and then and only then will you be ready for the task of proclaiming the message of repentance and forgiveness of sins.”

In Acts 1:8 it’s clear what this promise is when Jesus says, and note the language, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” The power that Jesus sends the disciples from the Father is a dynamite power! The word for “power” there is the Greek word “dunamis” for which we have “dynamite.” It is this kind of power that was given to the disciples and it is this kind of power that God places within everyone who is born of the Spirit. And it takes this kind of explosive power for mission. The stakes are too high, the task is too great, and hearts are too hard not to be living out the mission in this world without the power of the Holy Spirit.

2. The Holy Spirit Gives Power to Proclaim
A) With Effectiveness: Acts 2:41 “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.” You know, Peter had to have been blown away by this response. I mean think about what they had seen, how they had seen people walk away in large numbers at Jesus’ teaching, how they had seen people who praised Him, scream for His death, and now at the end of his first sermon, after the Holy Spirit had come upon them a mega-church happens! Three-thousand people!

B) With Boldness: Acts 4:23-31 (Specifically v. 29-31) “And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of Your Holy Servant Jesus.” And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the Word of God with boldness.”

3. The Holy Spirit Gives Power to the Witness of the Church
In Acts 2:42-47 we see what a Spirit-filled, Spirit-empowered church looks like. “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

4. The Holy Spirit Gives Power to Suffer
One of the other things in Acts that we see from those filled with the Spirit, is intense suffering and many times death. Just because you are Spirit-filled doesn’t mean this is so you can go crazy on Sunday mornings with flags, tambourines, and musical instruments running up and down the aisles, sometimes what being Spirit-filled means is going to your death assured of the Father’s pleasure and with power to suffer. Let’s just look at one example: Stephen. Stephen was one of the first deacons of the early church and there was a reason that he was chosen to serve in this capacity, in Acts 6:5 we read, “…and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit…” And being filled with the Spirit Stephen, who was full of grace and power was doing great wonders and signs among the people (v.8), which made some angry so they began disputing with him (v.9), but the problem is that they couldn’t withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking (v.10). So they went further and called him a blasphemer for what he was speaking in regards to Jesus and he sat before them with his face shining like that of an angel. Stephen was then questioned if the charges were true, and Stephen, in the power of the Spirit preaches instead of answers their question and incites them to a rage when he says in 7:51-53 “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have no betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by the angels and did not keep it.” And the result? What is the result of the Spirit-empowered preaching from a Spirit-filled man with the face of an angel and a wisdom-confounding voice? Rage! “Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him.”

And there under a pile of stones, pummeled to death, a Spirit-filled man lay having preached faithfully, served faithfully, forgiven his enemies, and seen the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. The Holy Spirit gives power to suffer, and that’s what we see throughout the book of Acts. We see people full of the Holy Spirit suffering at the hands of their enemies, yet loving them the whole time. The Holy Spirit radically transforms how we suffer!

The Spirit of the Lord is Upon Us For the Mission of Jesus
Now what we have seen, I believe, is that our mission in this world, though radically different than Christ’s on several fronts, is not so different on other fronts. Much of what we saw in the Spirit upon Christ’s life is seen in the followers of Jesus in Acts and is still upon us today to empower our life and mission. Think about it: What do we have the Spirit in us and upon us for if it is not to continue Jesus’ mission? I believe that we can safely say with Jesus, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” It shouldn’t be different! It should be the same! Jesus coming in the power of the Holy Spirit not primarily because He needed the Spirit, but because we need to know what a Spirit-empowered life looks like. Jesus not only came to suffer for us but to set an example.

1) The Spirit Has Anointed Us to Proclaim Good News to the Poor: First of all we have to determine who the poor are? And second, what is the Good News that the poor need to hear? To answer the first question there are 2 types of poor people: the spiritually poor who can be both physically rich or physically poor, and then there are the physically poor who may be spiritually rich or spiritually poor. We cannot neglect either. Often we fall to one side or the other and a lot of times we do just do nothing. We must do both. Everyone is poor apart from Christ and in Him are the unsearchable riches of grace…Oh proclaim it!

2) The Spirit Has Sent Us to Proclaim Liberty to the Captives: Captives to sin and Satan we proclaim liberty through the blood of Christ.

3) Recovering of Sight to the Blind: The spiritually blind and maybe even the physically blind we pray for.

4) To Set At Liberty Those Who Are Oppressed: Demonic oppression, oppression due to sin and the physically oppressed.

5) To Proclaim the Year of the Lord’s Favor: This is the time for the gospel because the day is coming when Christ will finish the verse in Isaiah 61 that He stopped short of and it is this, “and the day of vengeance of our God.” Our duty and privilege now in this stage of redemptive history is to proclaim the Good News of Christ in that sinners may be reconciled to a Holy God. Oh, may we boldly proclaim as the Spirit of Christ infuses us and inflames us!

I don’t know about you, but when I look at Acts, I see something I desperately want to see here and I desperately want to be apart of a Spirit-filled and empowered church, a church that gets this and understands what the mission is all about, but to get there and stay there we have to ask…

What Then Must We Do?
1) Be Filled With the Holy Spirit: Ephesians 5:18 says, “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit…” Are you daily seeking to be filled with the Spirit or are you filling your life with other things besides Him? Are you continually seeking to empty to self and full of the Spirit?

2) Keep in Step With the Spirit: Galatians 5:16-25 “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit (Notice it’s not fruits, plural, as if you can have a few of them, you must have all!) of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.”

3) Do Not Grieve the Holy Spirit: Ephesians 4:30 “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” Grieving the Holy Spirit leads to a lack of power and blessing upon ministry, therefore repentance should mark the Spirit-filled church. In what ways are you grieving the Holy Spirit and therefore weakening His power in your life by your sin? What do you need to repent of?

4) Eagerly Maintain the Unity of the Spirit: Ephesians 4:1-3 says, “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” How are you doing in eagerly maintaining unity? In what ways are you weakening the ministry of the Bride of Christ by something you have against someone or by failing to love the way Christ has called us to love?

5) Seek to See and Savor Jesus: If you want to know the power of the Holy Spirit, then know this: it doesn’t come by seeking power from the Holy Spirit, it comes by seeking to see and savor Jesus. Remember what the work of the Holy Spirit is? It’s to glorify Jesus! In John 16:14 Jesus says of the Spirit, “He will glorify me…” So the more you see of Jesus, and the more you savor the glory that you see in Jesus the more the power of the Spirit will be felt in your life and mission. John Piper calls this an indirect pursuit. If we want the power of the Spirit we need Jesus. He writes, “Therefore, in seeking to filled and empowered by the we must pursue Him indirectly—we must look to the wonder of Christ. If we look away from Jesus and seek the Spirit and His power directly, we will end up in the mire of our own subjective emotions. The Spirit does not reveal Himself. The Spirit reveals Christ. The fullness of the Spirit is the fullness that He gives as we gaze on Christ. The power of the Spirit is the power we feel from the promises of Christ. Many of us know what it is to crouch on the floor and cry out to the Holy Spirit for joy and power, and experience nothing, but the next day devote ourselves to earnest meditation on the glory of Jesus Christ and be filled with the Spirit. Devote yourselves to seeing and feeling the grandeur of the love of God in Jesus Christ and you will be so in harmony with the Holy Spirit that His power will flow mightily in your life. Christian spiritual experience is not a vague religious emotion. It is an emotion with objective content, and the content is Jesus Christ.” (Sermon Excerpt from “Christ Conceived by the Holy Spirit”) D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says it this way, “Seek not an experience, but seek Him, seek to know Him, seek to realize His presence, seek to love Him. Seek to die to yourself and everything else, that you may live entirely in Him and for Him and give yourself entirely to Him.” (Great Doctrines of the Bible, p.253)