We have the teaching.  We have the promise.  Henceforth, we have ministry.  In the early seventies, a German theologian of some note wrote a book: The Church in the Power of the Spirit.  I’m not sure there can be any other kind.  What is the church absent the power of the Spirit?  Power is ability.  The Spirit empowers the Church, gives the Church ability to fulfill her ministry, our ministry, for living out our purpose.

In our creeds, we talk about a catholic Church—little-c.  The little-c catholic Church is the body of all believers, past, present, and to come.  The Church is that body of believers who have received the teaching, trusted in God’s promise of faithfulness and salvation, and who therefore engage in ministry.  The Spirit is providing all that is necessary for us to engage in ministry.  The Spirit does not give only to fail on follow-through.  The Spirit does not stop with potential or possibility.  The Spirit accomplishes God’s purposes.  God will do it.  God’s purposes are realized in those who rely upon the Spirit.

This morning, we heard some of what John remembered Jesus telling us about the Spirit.  Now, Luke also has much to tell us about the Spirit.  Apart from the Spirit, without spirit, we are dead.  Jesus calls the dead child to rise and, as Luke tells us, “her spirit returned, and she got up immediately” (8:55).  Jesus has the Spirit, and he is the Word of power.  Jesus speaks, calls, causes life to return.  Spirit responds to Spirit, beloved.  The Spirit is the very principle of life.

It is the Father who gives the Spirit (11:13); He gives to those who ask.  No one can ask without first being given the grace to ask.  Rather than telling ourselves, then, that there are some hearts which God does not open, we might instead look at it this way: for His own reasons, God has not yet fully opened this person’s heart.  There is still hope, and still a place for you to share faith, being attentive and sensitive to signs of the presence of the Spirit.  Sharing faith is offering grace.  Spirit responds to Spirit.

Acts tells us the Father gives the Spirit to those who obey Him (Ac 5:32).  That obedience, also, is from God through the Spirit.  In each case, God always takes the initiative.  To those who have, more will be given.  I’m afraid the opposite is probably true, too, just as Jesus has told us: those who have not, even what they do have will be taken from them.  They do not have because they do not value, do not desire, do not care.  Seek, and ye shall find; ask, and it shall be given to you.  The way to enjoy a greater outpouring of the Spirit is to live according to the Spirit.  The Spirit, remember, is the very principle of life.  Not to live according to the Spirit is to try to install a substitute principle, an impostor, a charlatan and liar.  Beloved, there are lying spirits, too, as Scripture tells us.

Today is Pentecost, Spirit-day!  The Ascension precedes Pentecost, in point of time and in point of necessity.  Our risen Savior arose to rise.  There is a very good reason Jesus is now in heaven: from there, he pours out the Spirit, as Peter told the crowd that first Pentecost (Ac 2:33).  We well know the generosity of our Lord, His goodness and kindness towards us, His love for us being poured out.  We don’t have to wonder or worry whether Jesus sends the Spirit for us, for our blessing and guidance, for courage and perseverance, for holding onto the truth in these times of pretty, pretty lies.  Jesus doesn’t just send a drop here and there—like those rain clouds you can see on an otherwise sunny day, clouds off to the north or the east, a few miles off and not headed your way—someone is getting it, but not us!  Jesus pours out the Spirit: there’s always more!  The Spirit is not a limited resource.  The Spirit, however, is a limiting resource: teaching us true and false, good and bad, right and wrong according to God’s heart and mind, rather than the habitually misinformed inclinations of the human heart.

Scripture tells us people are baptized with the Spirit (Lk 3:16, Ac 1:5), some even before receiving the water of baptism.  Baptism with the Spirit waters the seed of faith, quickens the seed.  God waters the seed.  It begins to open, become what it is, so that we may become what we are, in Christ, who pours out the water.  We are told on many occasions that the Spirit fills people; sometimes Scripture speaks of the Spirit being on a person, like a mantle, the mantle of responsibility, an anointing and consecration for a particular purpose, a special mission.  The Spirit gives ability.  God will do it, in us, and through us.

As the Spirit fills us, it pushes out what is not of the Spirit: the Spirit has the strength, divine strength; the Spirit is ability.  There remains much in each of us that is not of the Spirit, not of God.  It’s too heavy, cumbersome, buried too deep, for us to dig out, shove out!  The Spirit pushes it out.  The Spirit sanctifies.  Others notice.  None of us walk with the Lord perfectly, and we notice those whose walk seems especially bright and joyful—not without trials and sorrows, even stumbling and failure, but bright still with peace, love, and grace even in the hard times.  Each of you can name at least one person known to you who has walked in the faith so beautifully.  We dearly love such people and want to be near them, our dear saints: they make faith in Christ lovely for us, warm.  They show us how it’s done (Ac 6:3, 5).

The Father gives the Spirit; Jesus pours out the Spirit, and especially upon those who ask for the Spirit, which is asking for grace, for God’s love.  To want the presence of the Spirit is to want God in your life, not just there when you may have a need, like a friend on speed dial, but to have God with you, in you, to speak, to guide, to counsel, to caution, and yes, even to forbid and chastise, and yes, to encourage and whisper His Word of love as He calls us upward home.

Peter reminds those gathered that day—many wondering, many ridiculing, many hoping—Peter reminds them all that the Spirit will come to those who turn to Jesus for forgiveness (Ac 2:38).  No one turns to Jesus for forgiveness until and unless he or she has good reason to believe or maybe only strongly suspect that salvation is with Jesus: healing, change, hope.  No one turns to Jesus for forgiveness until and unless he or she understands, and feels, that he or she stands in need of God’s forgiveness.  Who makes us know and feel our sin—not just the words and acts, but the state?  We prefer to think of sin as one or two things we may have done a long time ago.  Scripture tells us sin is who we are without Christ.  Then Jesus comes to us, in the power of the Spirit.  Beloved, we never cease to be sinners, in this life, but we can become forgiven, redeemed sinners, being healed, being sanctified, through the Spirit, who has the ability, the grace, and the love to do it.

The Spirit opens our ears, our eyes, hearts, minds.  The Spirit begets repentance and leads us to the water.  The baptismal waters are sign, symbol, and reminder for us of the Spirit’s sacred work in us.  It’s good to be often reminded!  Sixty-five years ago (during the Baby Boom), a past president of Princeton Theological Seminary could write, without exaggeration, that, “In many Presbyterian Churches the Sacrament of Baptism is administered once a month.”[1]  That would be great!  Oh, if we would only keep this font busy!  Why let the Baptists have all the fun?

The Spirit fills us for life.  We need the Spirit to help us know how to listen for the Spirit.  We are sinners being sanctified; we know other spirits also are speaking: lying spirits, telling such pretty, pretty lies—well, sometimes they aren’t pretty but still so . . . desirable.  Scripture confirms what we already know: just as the Spirit can fill the human heart, so, too, can the Enemy (Ac 5:3).  This is also why, on many occasions, Jesus tells his followers to be vigilant: keep watch, be alert.  The Gospel accounts often tell us of evil, impure spirits.  In our modern hauteur and über-sophistication, we reflexively dismiss all such talk as primitive superstition.  Then we watch the news and see reports of war, murder, drug addiction, human trafficking, abuse, inappropriate relations, voluntary irreversible self-mutilation, and shake our heads in disbelief, confusion, and sighing sorrow.  The spirit of evil is not difficult to discern.

The Holy Spirit is with us, filling us up to overrule the impulses, old hurts, and old appetites directing us otherwise.  The Spirit is active in revealing truth and the way to life, in encouraging us—and Lord knows we all need encouraging!

Scripture tells us the Spirit speaks; the Spirit causes us to hear what we need to hear, as we read Scripture, as we pray, perhaps even in a dream or an intuition, those whispers in the heart.  The Spirit counsels and warns us—please heed the warning!  Take it to heart: it’s always for sanctification, for keeping us on the way of cleansing.

The Spirit makes one way open and closes another way, even ways that might also bring honor and glory to God.  The Spirit is telling us this way is not for us at this time, that we are to honor and glorify God along the way which the Spirit does make open to us, even if it looks like a way we aren’t always exactly eager to go.

To go with the Spirit is to gain wisdom.  To pull away is to remain in fruitless foolishness, the disordered life, making a mess of everything.  The Spirit is with us to teach us wisdom, especially wisdom for testimony.  Well, testimony sounds like something involving the courts and trials, and who wants to get dragged into court?  But beloved, our faith is always on trial in this world, this life.  Testify.  Let the faith speak, let the faith guide.  Others are watching, listening.  It’s the Spirit that opens eyes and ears, opens hearts, and moves people to act, for salvation, for forgiveness, to embark on living that genuinely pleases the Lord.  The Spirit gives us the ability.  God will do it.

There’s a brand of Christianity that seems to have made it a point of pride to take Scripture as, first of all, the work of biased, human writers but that, somehow or other, we can hear the Spirit speaking to us in our time here and there among all these biased words.  Beloved, Scripture is the Spirit speaking to us.  The words of the Bible were written by men, yes, but these men were not writing whatever they felt like saying, whatever they imagined or cooked up according to the prejudices, bigotries, agendas, ignorance, and superstition of their own time and place (and our times have these, too).  The Bible is the Spirit speaking; the Spirit tells us the truth, about God and about ourselves.  The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth.  The Spirit shows us the way.  True, it is a way of sacrifice, even great sacrifice, and also of great blessing.

Scripture tells us the Spirit can be resisted.  People are in the habit of resisting: not listening, disbelieving, shrugging, yawning—an old, old habit.  But, beloved, to resist the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit who has the ability to set us free—to resist the Spirit of freedom is to serve what?  Therefore, testify.  This world needs our testimony, needs the truth, needs the Spirit.  The Spirit is power.  The Spirit is with the Church.  We are the Church, together.

[1] John A. Mackay.  Presbyterian Way of Life.  Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1960.  158.