Manly Life Church

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Sermon – Temples of the Spirit

In this sermon Tim continues our series by looking at how we are temples of the Holy Spirit, how we can honour the Holy Spirit with our bodies and lives, and how we can represent the Holy Spirit wherever we go!

Sermon preached by Tim Giovanelli on Sunday August 21, 2022./

05/02/23 – John 12:20-33 Following Jesus & Intro – by Tim Giovanelli – The Farewell Discourse Series – Manly Life Church Podcast

In this sermon Tim introduces us to our first sermon series in 2023, The Farewell Discourse Series – messages from John 12-17! Tim helps us understand who John is and the book itself leading up to chapter 12, before diving into chapter 12 vs 20-33 and what it means to follow Jesus! We can't wait for this series so make sure you stay tuned each week! SERMON NOTES: https://manlylife.org/2023/02/07/john-1220-33-sermon-following-jesus-series-intro/ Sermon preached by Tim Giovanelli on Sunday February 5, 2023. Find out more here: https://manlylife.org Find us on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/ManlyLifeChurch

SERMON NOTES

Well we are doing a series on God’s Empowering Presence, the Holy Spirit

Thank you for all of the encouraging feedback. I’ve been loving it too…
So we have looked at the promise of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and the fulfilment of his coming in the New Testament
We have looked at the story of Pentecost and how the Spirit and Word work together to bring salvation
We have contrasted the life lived according to the flesh versus life according to the Spirit.
We have looked at the marvellous gifts the God gives to his people so that the ministry of Jesus may continue in the church
And we have looked at how the presence of God dwells in the church, like the glory that filled the temple.

And that was last week… 1 Corinthians 3:16. The Apostle Paul says;

“Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?

Gordon Fee put it this way… “God himself by the Spirit has chosen to be present in our world in the gathered church.”
And that is what makes our times together when we gather so important and so exciting.
The implication is that God is here…
So last week was kind of talking about the Spirit dwelling amongst us…
And this week is about the Spirit dwelling within us…

So today I want us to think about what it might mean for us more individually to be hosts of the Spirit of God in our lives.

And particularly what is the Spirit’s role in refining our lives so that we not only reflect Christ, but are able to host the presence of God within us.
Now if you remember, I got a bit over excited last week, particularly at evening service
At the mind boggling claim that God has come to be present within us as living stones, hosts of his Holy Spirit.
And surely that has a purifying effect on our lives.

There is just a tension there… as you walk out your Christian life it becomes increasingly difficult to host in your life, both the Holy Spirit and unchecked sin.

To my mind, one of the sure ways that you know you are a Christian is not that you achieve perfection (I mean I know some of you are close…)
But that you know the battle has been engaged against sin. Right?
I mean every human being has a conscience…
But the reality is that the Holy Spirit living in you convicts us of our sin and encourages us on towards righteousness.
And the Holy Spirit enables or empowers this to be made possible! In other words to have victory over what ails us…

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says this;

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies.

So let’s go through this verse today and its massive implications.

The first proposition that I want to look at is that we have been bought at a price.

So talking about the lives that we now live, the Apostle Paul says we were bought at a price, so we belong to Jesus, our redeemer. So it says, you are not your own.
And this is the gospel. And you might remember our series in Ephesians last year…
This bought at a price language refers to the work of Jesus on the cross
Redeeming us from being slaves to sin
And becoming children of the living God, experiencing the freedom of sonship.

Ephesians 1:7 says this…

“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.”

So “You are not your own; you were bought at a price.”

The word redemption is not just another synonym for salvation.
The word has a particular meaning.
Our redemption is a particular kind or element of our salvation

The Australian NT scholar Leon Morris notes that when we hear the word redemption, we think about it in religious terms.

But in Paul’s day, the people thought about it in non-religious terms.
The Greek word Redemption is apollo-tro-sis
The verb form of the word simply means to loose.
Redeem means to loosen. To be bought at a price, means to be loosened from the ownership of one master and come into the ownership of another!

So they would use this word apollo-tro-sis to refer to the loosening of clothing, or loosening tied up animals…

But it was particularly used to refer to the loosening of human beings who found themselves in some form of captivity to another.
One of the great desires of the ancient world was to be redeemed…
To be loosened from slavery. Or a prisoner loosened from jail, or from oppressive debts
And the word normally referred to the loosening happening through some kind of payment
Someone paying the price of redemption. Loosening came with a cost.

So “In him (in Jesus) you have been redeemed, you have redemption through his blood.”

One of the glorious riches of the gospel is that you have been loosened.
What you are oppressed by, what you are captive to, what you are slave to…
You have been redeemed through his blood shed on the cross. You were bought at a price.
And you now have a new glorious Master – Jesus Christ.

The words in this verse in Ephesians 1:7 point us to the human condition, but for the grace of God.

We have redemption points us to the fact that aside from grace we are in bondage and kept captive by sin.
And unless we are loosened or released from this bondage
We will struggle to enter into an experience of our adoption into God’s family
To fully live as a child of God we need to be freed.

In another letter, the Apostle Paul would say “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.”

And so our redemption from sin, comes with the realisation that we need freeing!
This is not something that Paul makes up… Jesus refers to his mission through this lens all the time.
In Luke 4 Jesus says he has come to set the oppressed free.
In John 8 Jesus says all who sin are slaves to sin, but whom the son sets free is free indeed.
In John 1 John the Baptist, seeing Jesus declares “The lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world.”

So back to Ephesians 1:7 Through his blood – through his shed blood… that is what redeems us, it looses us from our captivity to sin.

It loosens us from all that holds us captive.
It loosens us from the compulsion of sin
From the powers of spiritual forces at work in the world
From lies that have ensnared our human hearts and minds
And the footholds of sin that become strongholds of the enemy!

Jesus blood, shed on the cross, as the sacrificial lamb of God… pays the price so that we can be loosened!

Are you with me?
And now… (part of the meaning of the word redemption) is we now belong to him. That is what it means in 1 Corinthians 6:19
You are not your own. You were bought at a price. We belong to the only Master whose desire is our freedom and that we live a whole life…

So it says; “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?”

So like any good purchase, the new owner wants to move in…
Right? It would be weird for you to purchase a house and not take ownership.
When we bought our house the expectation is that the older lady who sold it moves out. And that we move in.
Right? It would be weird to be moved in and then come out to breakfast one morning and there she is her nightie having breakfast.

And that is what this verse is saying… now that we no longer are owned by sin, but by Jesus…

He wants to move into our lives by the presence of his Holy Spirit.
And thus our bodies become the temples of the Holy Spirit… and sin has to move out.
We host the presence of God.
And so it is no great mystery that this new guest in our lives is going to impact the way that we live.

As many of you know, we are fortunate to have a studio at the back of our house in Freshwater

So it was a privilege to be able to have Calum come and stay with us the last couple of months.
He is now in the Ukraine filming stories to share with the world about what is going on…
But for about 2 months Calum, this cool, surfy dude moved in with us.
And I’ve got to say, it was absolutely awesome. He was a very good guest in our home.
But what was particularly nice was how our kids loved it… he really did move in, become part of the family and had a big influence on the kids.
And we knew this when Luca started talking like Calum… I’d walk into the kitchen and Luca would look up and say “Hey broski… what’s up?”
And if something was going well, Luca would make this noise “yew!”

So if we have been bought with a price and our bodies have become temples of the Holy Spirit…

What is the implication for our lives? Well we come under the influence of a new house guest.
And all kinds of good things begin to change as the Holy Spirit becomes resident within us.
His influence from moving in to us, purchased out of slavery and into the glorious freedom of the children of God…
The power of sin begins to weaken… and the empowered life of holiness and righteousness begins.
You see if you are going to host the presence of God, you cannot simultaneously be hosting sin.

That is why Paul says, we honour God with our bodies…

And the context of this is verse 18 where he says “flee from sexual immorality.”
Because our bodies are hosts of the Holy Spirit, it then makes absolutely no sense that we would use our bodies in immoral ways.
We adopt God’s glorious plan for faithfulness within marriage and restraint from sexual activity outside of marriage.
Remember, we have been bought with a price so as verse 20 says “honour God with your bodies.”

Now let’s be honest, I don’t know many people for whom this isn’t a real struggle at some stage in their lives…

We live in a sex saturated world and it must feel like everyone has the big thumbs up to do whatever they feel like doing…
But let me say this, I really wholeheartedly believe this is a worthy, worthy, worthy pursuit for those who follow Jesus.
For not just glorifying him with your bodies and choices, but also in saving yourself from the trainwreck that promiscuity and unchecked lusts can result in.

The context of Paul writing to the church in Corinth

Was that it existed in a grossly sinful atmosphere of sexual looseness which continued to make its mark on the church.
Many of the problems of the church found their basis in the life of the city.
The most prominent site in Corinth was the temple of Aphrodite, a symbol of the lust which pervaded the city.
In ancient Corinth the temple maintained a thousand priestesses who amounted to no more than common prostitutes which men would visit.
The attitude of the city toward immorality involved no condemnation whatever; on the contrary, it was considered to be a normal part of life.
Sound familiar?
Article: Failure of the sexual revolution: promised freedom… hook up culture… oppressive.

I love Tim Keller’s quote

He says; “The early church was strikingly different from the culture around it in this way – the pagan society was stingy with its money and promiscuous with its body. A pagan gave nobody their money and practically gave everybody their body. And the Christians came along and gave practically nobody their body and they gave practically everybody their money.”

That’s good huh?

And one of the things amongst many that I am so grateful to God for is the way he steers our lives towards wholeness and purity!
Your life as a temple of the Holy Spirit should look markedly different and better than those who are still slaves to sin!

I sometimes joke that as a Christian you end up saving money in this world to give away…

The reason is that if you don’t see prostitutes or do cocaine, or go out binge drinking or have a gambling addiction or get caught up in get rich quick schemes…
It is amazing how much money you can save!
And don’t get me wrong, we’re not missing out on the fun.
I think the joy of the Christian life and community and the path we are on is infinitely better than anything the world can offer!

And that has always been the story of revival in the Christian church.

Whether in the early church, or with St Francis or the great awakening in the 1870’s in the US and the UK.
A realisation of the destruction of sin, and an embracing through repentance of the victorious, whole life, found in Christ.

This decade we will be celebrating 100 years since the East African Revival began that greatly impacted the East of Africa, flourishing the church and leading to the conversion of millions of people.

It is traced back to a conversation between a British missionary called Joe Church and a Ugandan man named Simeoni Nsibambi.
They were lamenting the nominalism within the existing church. Nsibambi saying that “while the non Christians sin openly, the Christians are just better at hiding it.”
They sought God, prayed and read their bibles for two days and then revival began to break out.
And this great move of God lead to much public confession of sin and people emptying their homes of destructive vices and stolen goods being returned.
And it was contagious… as people received the Spirit of God, they emptied their lives of their old ways… and then spread the good news of what they had found in Christ.

One report I read talked about one meeting around Christmas in 1933 lasting five days… let me read it…

This included teaching on sin, the holiness of God, the new birth, repentance-, faith, prayer, the Holy Spirit, sanctification, the Christian walk, and the second coming. By the fifth day no spiritual change had yet occurred. During the last prayer meeting scheduled at 3:00 p.m. one of the African Christians stood and confessed his sins. This broke the barrier and the Spirit came in full force… For over two hours men were confessing their sins, moved with extreme joy and happiness.

We titled this series God’s Empowering Presence.

And that is the story of the church, particularly when fresh moves of the Spirit leads to new life in believers and the church as a whole.
The idea being that when we repent of our sins, we get empowered by the Holy Spirit to live lives of remarkable goodness.
And that there is an actual power that enables us.
Romans 8 says; “the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you”

Your bodies, it says, are temples of the Holy Spirit. That Holy Spirit. The one who raised Jesus from the dead!

We have been bought at a price… and God himself now wants to come and reside within you!
So I just wonder, if like in the East African revival which was marked by repentance and joy…
What do we need to boot out of our lives so that we can host the presence of God, empowering us for this new life?
Shall we stand?

1 Corinthians 3:16 Sermon – Presence of the Holy Spirit

In this sermon Tim unpacks how the Holy Spirit dwells amongst us, how we experience the presence of the Holy Spirit, and how we are being built together as temples of the Holy Spirit!

Sermon preached by Tim Giovanelli on Sunday August 14, 2022.

05/02/23 – John 12:20-33 Following Jesus & Intro – by Tim Giovanelli – The Farewell Discourse Series – Manly Life Church Podcast

SERMON NOTES:

Welcome and Introduction

So nice to hear about the HOHI dinner… well done to the two Rachel’s and all the volunteers.
That feels like an amazing thing for all of us to go on supporting!
In the Book of James it says “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress.”
So this is a 101 course requirement for all of us if we are going go by the name Christians!
So well done.

One of the things I have loved in this series on the Holy Spirit has been tracing some of the ideas or themes of the bible through the scriptures

And how they often find their fulfilment in Jesus in the most profound way…
But then remain relevant and available to us as the church today.
We have obviously mainly done this just with the idea of the Holy Spirit.
And we call that a biblical theology… the story of the bible through a theme!
And you can do this with heaps of themes in the bible.

Example: So David is a shepherd who become a King and looks after his people.

Obviously Psalm 23 “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
And in Ezekiel it talks about where have all the good shepherds who will look after God’s people gone… and this promise that God himself will come as a Good shepherd
Jesus then declares himself what? The good Shepherd… my sheep hear my voice
But then as the church gets established… leaders are encouraged to be shepherds of the flock…
Right? So it’s a great way to understand the bible… and specifically who Jesus is.
And you can do this with the theme of Priests, or Kings, or Family or even Vineyards and Light.
Do it… or don’t… whatever…

But the one I want to speak on today is presence…

On the presence of God, and particularly as it relates to how God dwells on earth.

So I just want to go through some bible today tracing this idea…
And then think about the implications for how we live our lives and how we come together as a church in worship?
Sound ok?
I think these are my favourite types of sermons…

Of course the bible starts and ends with God himself being present amongst his people.

In Genesis God walks with Adam in the garden. Now however you understand that story… it shows us God’s original intent for his creation.
To be present and known. The creator with his creation.
In the Book of Revelation at the very end in chapter 21:3 it says “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them.”
OK?
So God dwells with his people at the beginning and at the end of the story…

But what we are really interested in, is what happens between those times, or the time we live in now.

Because to know the presence of God, is to know God.
And that is what I think we are after… to walk with God and to be his people who enjoy his presence.
And that is the kind of church that I long to be a part of. One where God by his Holy Spirit is present in our midst.
That is an exciting place to be! Pete spoke on that last week.
And he encouraged us to be a church of love, life and worship in order that God will come!
That’s the kind of house the Lord loves to dwell in.

So here is the verse I want to focus on today and then we will look at everything that leads up to this reality…

1 Corinthians 3:16 says; “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?”

Ephesians 2:21-22 gives us some more insights into this when the Apostle Paul says, talking about the Jesus and the church;

21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit

1 Peter 2:5 says; “you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house”

So there is this image of the church – that is you and me who follow Jesus and have been filled with his Spirit

That we are like a temple made up of living stones… human stones.
That are constituted by the fact that we are all filled with the Holy Spirit.
That is being built together in some sort of way that resembles the temple in which God dwelt in ancient times.
In other words… when we gather together, we are the temple in which God’s presence and glory manifests.

Gordon Fee puts it this way; “God himself by the Spirit has chosen to be present in our world in the gathered church.”

He says, talking about the Ephesians verse (and this is big);
“the church as the new temple, (is) the present place of God’s habitation on our planet”
So as we gather and worship him, that is the place of God’s presence manifesting.
Not the actual building… you know, this lovely brick and mortar building…
Though that helps to have one… but its not the point…
But you and me. Living stones… a place to host the presence of God!
Amen?

And that is why I two weeks ago, and Peter last week talked about these manifestations of the Spirit’s power being evident when the church meets.

God is here, because he lives in you… and when we meet, we are being built into a spiritual house as it says in 1 Peter
Or in 1 Corinthians 3 a temple where God’s Spirit dwells in your midst.
So we should expect God like things to happen.
And as we will get to later on in this message, how do we most understand what God things we might expect?
Well we look to Jesus who the most perfect example of God dwelling in human form.
Are you with me?

So biblical theology time…

Now in the Old Testament (the time before Jesus) there was an actual temple that God’s glory was found in.

There had been glimpses of this before the building of the temple by Solomon
For instance with Moses and the tent of meeting, where Moses could enquire of the Lord.
And this is during the Exodus when they are wandering to the promised land.
So in Exodus 33:14 The Lord replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
It went with them in the tent of meeting… called the tabernacle.

And again in Leviticus 26:11-12, God promises

11 I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you. 12 I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.

So in the story of God’s people, we then get to 1 Kings. The people of God have finally entered the promised land and defeated their foes…

Then Solomon becomes King after his father, David…
And a lot of his life is dedicated to building a temple in which the presence and glory of God can dwell amongst his people.
If you are into the details… 1 Kings 6 is your place
And there is this elaborate plan for the building of the temple
And it is to be a place where the priests of God’s people will make sacrifices and meet with God.
So it finally gets built….

Then something amazing happens in 1 Kings 8:10-11. It says;

When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the Lord. And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled his temple.

“the glory of the Lord filled his temple” (keep that in your minds)
Can you imagine that…. They’ve spent years building this place for God’s presence to be in their midst…
And then what they can only describe as a cloud of glory comes and it is the Lord filling his temple.
Right? 2 Chronicles 7:2 “The priests could not enter the temple of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled it.”
So when this happens the priests are overwhelmed and fall back.

But of course it doesn’t really work as a dwelling for God as it is just a building… and it is at the whims of being overtaken and desecrated by foreign armies…

And tragically that is what happens… the people of God are not very faithful and they come under judgement.
In Ezekiel 9 the prophet says to them “The sin of the people of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great; the land is full of bloodshed and the city is full of injustice.”
And then tragically in the next chapter we read that the glory of the Lord leaves the temple.

To my mind it is one of the most heart breaking incident in the Old Testament.

Can you imagine… you are God’s people. He has rescued you from slavery in Egypt.
He has driven out your enemies and given you the promised land.
You have received his Word, the law that is designed to give you life…
But then because of your unfaithfulness… the presence of God departs.
Just like that… his glory is gone!
And that temple is actually destroyed by the conquering Babylonians a few decades on.

But like so much of what happens in the Old Testament… there is always a promise looking forward to a saviour figure who will come and fulfil where they have gone so wrong…

So in the Prophet Ezekiel in chapter 37 God promises (verse 26);

“I will put my sanctuary among them forever. My dwelling place will be with them.”

And then… and then what happens… well to be honest its hundreds of years of silence…

But then something remarkable occurs…. And this should get us up out of our seats singing!

We read something remarkable in John’s gospel…
It is the truth that we must behold… that has changed history
It is the single hinge point upon which all history depends.

John 1:14 “the Word became flesh and made his (what?) his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Dwelling… glory… full of grace and truth.
All that language is coming from this ancient story…
If you want to understand Jesus. If you want to understand the Christian faith, it is all here.
It is the story of God’s presence coming to dwell with mankind!
We have seen his glory it says – in Jesus the same glory that filled the temple has filled a man!

The Greek word for dwelling we find here in John 1 is Esken-osen.

It is often translated not just as dwelling but as tabernacling. Sound familiar?
And at its most basic it means “pitching ones tent”
This is the story of Jesus… it is God’s glory coming to tabernacle amongst us… it is God pitching his tent in our camp here on earth, dwelling amongst us!
Are you with me?

So if we want to understand Jesus, that is how we understand what he does.

When he heals the sick… that is God’s glory dwelling amongst us.
When he has mercy on the broken… that is God’s glory dwelling amongst us.
When he teaches with grace and truth… that is God’s glory dwelling amongst us.
When Jesus dies on the cross to take away the sins of the world… hear this clearly – behold (as John would say) that is God’s glory dwelling amongst us!
Like the glory of God that entered the temple… God is most perfectly at home in the person of Jesus Christ!
To know Jesus is to know God’s glory… it is to know God!

So what has all of this got to do with a series on the Holy Spirit?

Well what did Jesus say?

In John 14 “I will ask the Father, and he will give you… the Spirit of truth… you know him for he lives with you and will be (what?) he will be in you.”
Just as God’s glory dwelled in the temple
Just as God’s glory, his Spirit dwelled in Jesus
The promise is, God’s glory, His Spirit will now dwell in you!

2 Corinthians 3:18

“We… are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

Now that is a mind boggling thought after all we have looked at today.
We are being transformed into Jesus image… it says with ever increasing glory!
We are beginning to reflect more and more of glory it says… as we are filled with his Spirit.
Like the glory that entered the temple…
Like the glory that was on display in Jesus…
The goal of the Christian life is this kind of glory transformation…
Are you with me.

Just to repeat it one more time…

If you wanted to meet with God in the Old Testament you would go to the temple, as fleeting and imperfect as this was.
If you wanted to meet God 2000 years ago, you could have met him in and around Jerusalem in the person of Jesus Christ.
And if you or people want to meet God today… then 1 Corinthians 3:16 reminds us… that it happens here in the gathered church!
Temple, Jesus, church… the place of the dwelling of the glory of God!

So back to 1 Corinthians 3:16 which says;

“Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?”

I told you we would get back there! It’s taken us a while…
But I wanted to give you more of the story…
But that friends then is who we are as a church.
Not a Jesus admiration club or just a charitable works society or a place to make friends…
Listen to Gordon Fee again; “God himself by the Spirit has chosen to be present in our world in the gathered church.”

Now I think we will do more on this next week because 1 Corinthians 6 goes on to challenge us in living lives of purification in the knowledge of our bodies being temples of the Holy Spirit…

So there are all kind of implications for this in our personal holiness
And all kinds of implications for how we do life together as living stones being built together
And I think we need to do some more on the refining work of the Holy Spirit in our sanctification…

But I want to finish today on where all of this has really been pointing.

And that is that when we gather it should be an experience of the glory of God manifesting
As each one of us, a Spirit filled follower of Jesus come together like living stones…
Like a temple with God’s Spirit dwelling in our midst.
That our church, that every church might be a place of the presence of God.

Bill Johnson from Bethel Church in Redding California is famous for a line.

He says “we owe the world an encounter with God.”
That is what changes our lives…
That is what will change the lives of the people we love.
That they might meet God powerfully when they come to the gathered church… God’s place of habitation on earth!
Shall we stand?

Isaiah 66:1 A House of Spiritual Gifts

In this sermon Peter Brooks unpacks Isaiah 66:1, where God asks what his House, his Church would look like. Peter explains that Manly Life can be a House of love, a House of Godly Leadership and a House of the Life of the Spirit, especially the spiritual gifts! What will our Church look like? Will it be a place where the Spirit moves powerfully?

Sermon preached by Peter Brooks on Sunday August 7, 2022.

05/02/23 – John 12:20-33 Following Jesus & Intro – by Tim Giovanelli – The Farewell Discourse Series – Manly Life Church Podcast

1 Corinthians 12:1-13 Sermon – The Gifts of the Spirit

In this sermon Tim speaks on the gifts of the Spirit, how it’s better when we all get to play – have a go at using our gifts in the Church and how the gifts of the Spirit build us up as a Church, encourage each other and give God the glory! What gifts is the Holy Spirit calling you to use this week?

Sermon preached by Tim Giovanelli on Sunday July 31, 2022.

05/02/23 – John 12:20-33 Following Jesus & Intro – by Tim Giovanelli – The Farewell Discourse Series – Manly Life Church Podcast

SERMON NOTES:

Read the passage… 1 Corinthians 12:1-13

12 Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. 2 You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. 3 Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.

4 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. 5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord.6 There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.

7 Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 8 To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, 10 to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.

12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

Welcome and Intro myself…

So great to see you all here today!
We were meant to be dedicating baby Sienna with Rob and Gretta this morning… but the dreaded Covid hit! So we will re-organise a time for that.
Hope’s baptism…

Well we started by reading a chunk of Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth.

It is where we will be spending a little bit of time over the coming weeks as we explore the work of the Holy Spirit when we meet together as God’s family!
And for some it will be a familiar section on the gifts that God gives to his people so that when we meet it will be amazing.
And isn’t God’s church just amazing… it’s global, and colourful and diverse
And I tell you what… when the name of Jesus is preached and known… amazing things happen.
And one of the great blessings of my life has been to fellowship and go to church in Sydney, in London, in New York, in the slums of Kenya and South Africa
In massive theatres, glorious cathedrals and in tin shed buildings…
But the same Jesus is being made known, worshiped and experienced.

You know I think there was a bit of a collective slump in the shoulders when the census data came out last month in Australia showing a decline in people identifying as Christians…

Did you see that? Less than 50% of Aussies now identifying as Christians…
And we have got lots of work to do!
But let me assure you, there are so many good things happening in the church in Australia today!
Church revitalization, church planting, huge things happening in ethic communities…
But what we should be really amazed by is what is happening around the world!
Gordon Conwell, a highly respected seminary in the US put out some key data on what is happening around the world earlier this year…

Firstly, and this may surprise you, but there are fewer atheist in the world today than in 1970.

While there is 2.56 billion people identifying as Christians, only 147 million identify as atheists compared to 170 million in the 1970’s.
So don’t worry too much about those angry people in the comments section of the SMH.
They make up about 1.8% of the world population and declining.

So Christianity is still growing… consider this. In 2000 there were 600 million Christians living in Asia and Africa.

By 2020 there were 1.1 billion Christians in Africa and Asia. 20 years… 500 million added! Holy Bejoly Batman… that some growth…
And specifically to this sermon today… in 1900 less than 1 million people around the world identified as charismatic, Spirit filled Christians.
The projection by 2050 is that this number will top 1 billion… 1000 million Pentecostal and charismatic Christians.
Quote “what we call Pentecostal in the West, the global church just calls Christianity.”
So what is behind this stunning growth in alive, Spirit empowered Christianity?

Well I believe there has been a powerful reawakening to what the scriptures say and promise about the Holy Spirit… the presence of Jesus… alive, empowering and transforming the church today!

But there is one more step that is important to all of this… and it has been activation.
Not only have we all had our eyes opened to the powerful work of the Spirit…
But it is ordinary Christians like you and me…. Now doing the ministry of Jesus.
Meeting in groups praying prayers of faith for one another.
Out sharing the gospel believing that the same ministry of Jesus is available to us today.
So, we have collectively experienced the God, and he has moved in our lives and church communities
Amen? What a time to be alive!

That is why last week I spoke about how the gospel advances in the world through Word and Spirit….

Through preaching and demonstrating the kingdom of God.
Through speaking the truth about Jesus and experiencing the power of Jesus.
I came across this verse I’d never noticed before this week.
Mark 16:20 the very last verse in Mark’s gospel! It says;
“Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.”
My gosh, there it is, spelt out clearly if we were ever to doubt how the good news of Jesus goes into the world.
Preached and accompanied by miraculous signs….
And that is what we see in Acts and then church history!

So we then mentioned last week, that the rational and the transrational are not just for evangelism, but also powerfully at work when we gather as God’s people!

So let’s have a look at this passage…. Afterall, Paul starts by saying, “now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed.”
So we probably should get informed! And not be what??? Uninformed…
And this passage, the context is that the Corinthian church was elevating certain gifts of the Spirit when they met, making their times together a bit of a mess!
Right? So when they gathered… things were kicking off in supernatural ways… but not always helpful for unity and clarity!

So the first thing we note is that no one can say (verse 3) “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.

And I think that is important to start with…
There are no second class Christians… tongue speakers and non-tongue speakers… or prophetic and non prophetic…
The truest mark of being filled with the Holy Spirit is the confession that Jesus is Lord.
It says, you cant do this except by being marked with God’s presence!
Amen?
So don’t stress if when you read the next bits you think… well none of that ever happens through me or around me.
The most important mark of the Spirit is your confession of faith and as Paul will say in chapter 13… that you love others well!

Alright, verse 4 -6

So, if you have never heard anything about this mentioned before, and you’re wondering what on earth we are talking about today… let me try and explain…

The basic idea is that God loves his church and wants to see it be filled with the life of Jesus
So to have Jesus present in the church means that God empowers us all with gifts…
The Greek word being charismata… hence the charismatic church… known as a place where the charismata occurs.
So it says verse 4 that the Spirit distributes gifts and verse 5, that they all come from the Lord.
It’s like Jesus is present and saying “you know how I healed someone while I walked the earth… well I want to give you that gift”
And I give you that gift to give to someone else…

It is pretty cool – and here is the key… verse 7, “the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.”

All these gifts that Paul is about to mention that are at work when the church gathers together are given that we might be encouraged.
That we might be amazed…
That we might be built up.
That we might see the mission and ministry of Jesus continue to occur in our churches today!
Surely that is the common good…

And just a quick side note, I remember a few years ago that it occurred to me, that all the gifts God gives to his church are seen in Jesus life. Right?

Words of knowledge? That is what Jesus is doing when he speaks to the woman at the well and know that she has had several husbands…
Healing… well that has dozens of examples
Miraculous powers… think Jesus feeding the 5,000 or walking on water
Wisdom… have you read the sermon on the mount?
OK? So this is Jesus continuing to work in his church through his Spirit empowered people.
And as we will see… not through a few holy hucksters… but through you and me!

So verse 8-11 then lists a whole bunch of gifts.

Wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miraculous powers, prophecy, speaking in tongues, interpretation and so on…
And this is not a comprehensive list.
In Romans 12 he mentions a lot of these gifts but then also serving, teaching, encouragement, generosity and mercy.
And the key according to Paul is diversity… this great diversity of ways that God will empower you to play your part… and how that leads to unity!

I found Gordon Fee, the biblical scholar helpful on this. He notes in this list in Corinthians you could maybe group these gifts together…

Firstly, you have gifts of instruction (wisdom and knowledge)
Secondly, you have gifts of supernatural power (faith, healings and miracles)
And finally you have gifts of inspired utterance (prophecy, tongues and interpretation)
But the key is… whatever gift you might get given by the Holy Spirit… it is to be exercised in love, and for the common good… and for the building up of the church!

You know I loved being up here this last Wednesday night. I know Joey and others having been buzzing for days about what happened!

Because beside some truly anointed worship and praise…
These gifts of the Spirit were in operation.
I saw people giving words of knowledge and encouragement to people that they believed they had received from God.
I saw people praying in tongues and being filled with the Holy Spirit.
I saw lots of people having a go at ministering to others… praying for healing…
And I got to tell you… happy Pastor!

Because you know, here is the thing… I love my job… but its super stoopid and to be honest super boring, if it is just me talking each week.

It’s so much more exciting when we all get to play!
I used to have a sign in my office that said “Ministry Hunter” – be a ministry hunter… daily reminder…
Some people hunt deer, others rabbits… I want to be looking for and hunting down opportunities to minister to people like Jesus did!
It might be a word of encouragement… or an opportunity to pray for someone, or to invite them to church…
But we can all be doing that. Say something… something will happen, say nothing and nothing will happen.

I don’t know about you but around summer I always find myself wanting to play cricket…

Bit obsessed… love the Tests, love the 20/20. Victoria is noooooot interested!
Mate Scotty called me up a few years ago inviting me to come and play in the nets with a mate of his… proper pads, gloves and cricket balls
I don’t think Ive played in over 10 years… felt my shoulder going after bowling about 2 balls – but kept going… and my lower back go while batting
By that night (do you remember this) we went to see that movie about Churchill…
And I couldn’t walk…

Stretching the anaology…

Fine to be a fan of Jesus, but what he is calling us to do is to come and play in the game with him…
And a bit like the cricket… when you have a go yourself, if you’ve never done it or haven’t in a while… might bring a bit of pain, or fear…
But that is where the life is? Right? Its in the game, not on the sidelines…
Pilavachi: church is like a football match… 22,000 people desperately in need of some exercise watching 22 people desperately in need of a rest… flip this!

So that is my hope – as we learn about how Jesus ministered, we will take courage, get inspired and bring the same life that Jesus brought to people!

Well finally how does this happen?

Let me finish with two suggestions…

Be a part of the body

John Wimber used to say; we’ve got all this teaching… but how do we get it into our chubby legs and get going?

The Western church is not dying from a lack of information….
It is dying from a lack of obedience to doing the stuff…
And you have a role to play in Jesus’ glorious, grand mission of bringing salvation to the world.
It might be in business or education or health or a trade!

But you know as this is really a sermon on the church, let me just say this.

We can do this on a Sunday… join a team! And come ready to use the gifts God has given you.
But really what we do on a Sunday is a bit more limited because you know… there are lots of us, and kids church is happening… and we are trying to do lots of things…
Share about Jesus, orient our hearts towards God through worship, pray for one another at the end of the service, welcome new people… Right?

So what I want to say, is the best place to really get going in using the gifts that God will empower you with is in your Life Group.

And can I just say, I really want everyone attached to a life group. You may not get there every time its on, but it connects you to the rest of the body.
And it is the best place to give this stuff a go!
That’s where you can share your first teaching… that is where you can pray for someone who is sick
That is where you can be asking God for encouragements and words of knowledge to build each other up. Right?
So please do yourself a favour and get connected to a Life Group!

Drink from the Spirit.

Do you want to get equipped to do this work? Verse 13 says we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

I really saw God moving powerfully last Wednesday night.
But it came from the time of worship and as we talked a few weeks ago, being filled with the Spirit which is what worship helps us in.
But I see Manly Life on nights like that and here on Sundays and in Life Groups… hungry for God.
And what seems to happen is that when we drink of the Spirit… when we consume Jesus presence… ministry gets released amongst us!
Amen?
You know, the kingdom is flitting… it comes and go… and you get discouraged… but then God does something incredible and you are hooked again.
We are just beginning… but we must drink deeply of God

Shall we stand?

Romans 15:18-19 Sermon – The Power Of The Spirit & The Word

In this sermon Tim preaches on the power and works of the Holy Spirit when combined with the preaching of the Word and the Gospel! The things Jesus promised are available to us today, to quote John Wimber: when I prayed for no-one, no-one got healed, when I prayed for everyone, some got healed! How will this impact you this week?

Sermon preached by Tim Giovanelli on Sunday July 24, 2022.

05/02/23 – John 12:20-33 Following Jesus & Intro – by Tim Giovanelli – The Farewell Discourse Series – Manly Life Church Podcast

SERMON NOTES

I want to start today by showing just a quick clip of Pastor John Wimber preaching on signs of power accompanying the preaching of the gospel.

I know I often mention him here at Manly Life…
He was the keyboard player for the Righteous Brothers… who got saved and ended up starting the Vineyard movement of churches…
But he also had a profound impact on the Alpha Course, and modern worship music and so much of my understanding of Jesus and the kingdom of God.

His basic testimony is he got saved, went to church, started reading his bible and then began to ask…

“when do we start to get to do this stuff…” told, oh, we don’t do that anymore…
Well that was not his reading of the bible and what Jesus promised… so he began to “do the stuff” of the bible and low and behold amazing things began to occur….
Famously said, “when we prayed for no one, no one got healed, when we prayed for everyone, some got healed… so what would you prefer?”

Show video.

I want to speak today on the Word and Spirit…

On the bible and the presence of God…
On proclaiming and demonstrating the kingdom of God through word and deed
I want to speak on truth and power
I want to speak on how healing and miracles is often a result of telling people about Jesus.
Or as Wimber would call it, the rational and the trans-rational working together…
Because our faith is not just an intellectual consent to a truth about God… it is a relationship and experience of his power and glory…

Privilege as a young man of spending some time in Kenya with a marvellous mission organisation called African Enterprise…

They are actually coming to Manly Life in two weeks time…
And being there for 10 months as a 21 year old felt a bit like doing a practical work placement…
You know, up until then I had learnt about Jesus and the kingdom…
Got to have a go… did some preaching in schools and open air meetings… got to pray for people, got to visit amazing development projects…

Actually I was reminiscing up at the AE Sydney office last week. They were filming an interview with me for their 60^th anniversary celebration is Zambia later this year…

White suit… and the storm… so that was the end of my pristine white suit!

One of the things that struck me as I went on this practical work placement for Jesus, ministry and all things his kingdom was the expectation that my Kenyan Christian friends had!

When they shared the good news about Jesus they expected two things to happen.
Firstly they expected people to respond to the message and that they would come forward in faith to receive Jesus as their Lord and King
But it was the second thing that almost shocked me more.
And that was they expected that God would move in power and do miracles of healing or restoration in people who responded.
And that was exactly what would happen time and time again… you would see people getting visibly impacted by the Holy Spirit.

So what does it look like when God’s kingdom comes close? When heaven breaks in…

The word salvation in the bible is the Greek word Sozo… has many many meanings…
Definition: To be saved. To be healed. To be made whole and well.
Or as one scholar puts it; “Salvation, then, must mean more than simply being saved to go to heaven when you die. To be biblically saved means there are also earthly effects on our lives today. Not only are you free from the judgement of God, this salvation also includes the ability to resist temptations to sin, to be set free from oppression, and to receive healing in our physical bodies.”

And for that to happen you need not just a natural explanation of Jesus… but supernatural power to work in your life!

1 Corinthians 4:20 says; “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.”
Right?
If God is in the business of sozo’ing people… getting them saved, healed up, made whole
Then we should expect that the Spirit of God and his Word will be at work to accomplish these things!

And of course what I would go on to learn is that this is exactly what we see in the bible… in Jesus, in the early church, in Paul’s letters and through church history!

Paul says this in Romans 15:18-19…

18 I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done— 19 by the power of signs and wonders, through the power of the Spirit of God. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ.

Gordon Fee on this verse says this: “Paul begins by indicating the two means through which Christ has effectively been at work through him: By ‘word’ and ‘deed’. Word surely refers to his proclamation of the gospel, but deed calls for some explanation, so he immediately adds, “by the power of signs and wonders.”
The expectation for Paul was that as the good news of the gospel went out through the world it would be preached and demonstrated with power…
For Paul a full proclamation of the gospel of Christ, the good news of Jesus…
It meant preaching and signs and wonders. And both of those were a demonstration of the power of God.
I wonder do you have a testimony of this? Hearing the truth, encountering power… (say again)

Well, if this is what we are to go after… in our lives, our ministry and our church gatherings, where do we see this or get encouraged into this. And I want to suggest 4 quick, good places…

In the life of Jesus
In the early church
In Paul’s letters to the churches he planted
And finally in church history.

So firstly, Word and Spirit in Jesus…

Come with me to Matthew 9:35-36. It says;

“Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

So motivated by a deep compassion for the people that he encountered…

Jesus who sees the people as harassed and helpless ministers to them in word and deed, with truth and power.
He proclaims the good news of the Kingdom of God
And he heals every disease and sickness…
He tells them the good news of God’s grace and mercy and demonstrates this new reality with signs and wonders, with power!
Can you imagine being there? People getting healed… wild!

So this is Jesus. In Luke 4 we are told about him that he was “full of the Holy Spirit”

And we can read what this means for his life and ministry.
One of my favourite Jesus stories is just a few chapters on in Matthew in Matthew 11
John the Baptist sends a messenger to ask Jesus if he is the Messiah?
It’s not exactly the biggest vote of confidence in Jesus… are you it?
Anyhow Jesus replies “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.”
The rational… and the transrational… word and Spirit. Good news and signs and wonders. That’s the proof that the Messiah has arrived.
Of course I could give you dozens more examples in the gospels of this…

Secondly this is in the Book of Acts and the early church

Come with me to Acts 3 and 4…

So basically as you know after Pentecost, Peter full of the Holy Spirit gets up and preaches in Acts 2 and it says 3,000 people get saved.
So then in the next chapter… Peter heals a lame beggar…
So it’s always this combo or preaching and then miracles… or Word and then Spirit!
Here is the Boom, mic drop moment… verse 6 “Then Peter said, ‘silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.”
And this poor bloke gets up, starts to walk and begins praising God.
And it says the people were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

Now, it’s a cool story right. The stuff Jesus was doing is now continuing to happen through his Spirit filled followers.

But remember what Wimber said in that video… it is the demonstration of the power of God that leads to the explanation of what has happened in Jesus.
The order isn’t that important… sometimes its healing then preaching. Sometimes preaching then healing…
But it’s the rational working in tandem with the trans-rational again!
So now that Peter has got everyone’s attention… once again he preaches the good news.

You can read it yourself as he has lots to say…

But again… here is the Boom, mic drop moment… we hear in Acts 4:2-3 that the religious leaders aren’t happy that Peter is proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead
So they chuck them in jail… bummer right…
But here is what Peter says, verse 8; ‘Peter filled with the Holy Spirit said to them’… verse 12 ‘Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”
There is that word again – salvation… in all of its meaning and glory!
So the transrational healing is followed by the rational proclamation… all works of the Spirit. All works of salvation in a persons life.
Of course I could give you dozens more examples in the Book of Acts of this…

Thirdly this is the life of the churches planted by Paul

Now I don’t want to do too much on this as this is where we are heading in the next few weeks in this series…

But simply to say, these demonstration of power and the preaching of the truth are not then limited to evangelism and outreach
The gatherings of the early churches in Corinth and Ephesus and Rome all experienced the continued work of the Holy Spirit in their meetings.
So we are going to look at that next week in 1 Corinthians 12 where Paul compares the church to a body with different parts
And each part has a role to play…
And he explains the gifts of the Holy Spirit at work when they gather as… well verse 7…

“the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. (then he lists the gifts given through the Spirit) including the message of wisdom, knowledge, faith (it says), to another gifts of healing, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy…” and so on…

So for Paul, as we become followers of Jesus and are filled with the Holy Spirit, the same inspired words (that is messages of wisdom and knowledge)

Are accompanied by supernatural gifts of healing and miraculous powers, prophecy and so on….
In other words in our meetings, as Jesus is powerfully proclaimed, people full of the Spirit will also do the wonderful deeds that Jesus did in his ministry!
Is this building? Is this compelling?
Do you want in on this?
Because there is a bit of a randomness to all of this and when it happens…
But in general I would say that when Jesus is preached there is a grace for healing… (Stop there… REPEAT – whole point of this sermon)

OK, and finally, this is all through church history.

Of course the story of Jesus being proclaimed and signs of healing has continued through the ages…

If you go to the writings of the early church Father Irenaeus who was writing in the second century, he talks about the sick being healed.
Or Origen in the third century, wrote that “the name of Jesus can take away diseases”.
I was very interested to read St. Augustine of Hippo – fourth Century theologian, perhaps the greatest theologian of the first four centuries of the church.
He wrote a book called The City of God and in that book there are page after page after page of stories of people being miraculously healed, set free by God.
He talks of a blind man’s sight being restored in Milan.
He talks about a lady called Inno-centius who was cured of incurable breast cancer.
He talks about a doctor healed of gout in the very act of baptism, an old comedian who was cured of paralysis
So the story continued and continues today…

I loved Kirrily’s story of her mum being filled with the Holy Spirit and laughing for a couple of days and being healed and transformed from a whole bunch of ailments…

So finally, how does this all work? How might this even occur right here today? That we might encounter not only the truth of Jesus, but the power of Jesus through his Holy Spirit. 3 suggestions…

Get yourself in an atmosphere of faith

It seems to me that there is a link between the presence of God, faith and power…

Sometimes in a room of God’s people there is such an atmosphere of faith and presence…
Go with it!
Church aint always going to be like that every meeting… sometime we just come and get a really encouraging message from the Word and that is awesome. …
But we know this here at Manly Life right – there are services where the presence of God is thick. …
I’ve known people who don’t know the Lord to come to our services and just start crying (not because they are terrible services…) but because of something they’ve never felt before.
It’s the presence of God… so press in!
Throw the script… significant for Annie…

The name of Jesus…

If we want to see the Kingdom of God manifest, remember it’s about the King. His name is Jesus!

Techniques… even Wimber had his 5 step model of healing…
When we pray for healing it is simply in the name of Jesus
That’s what Peter says in Acts 3, “in the name of Jesus, walk.”
In Acts 4 they pray this to God; ‘Lord stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.’
And just as Jesus had compassion on the helpless and harassed, start praying with mercy, and end with mercy… just pray and love.

When you start praying for someone for healing… you are loving on them – you’re obeying the highest commandment… so be gentle and loving, considerate…

And just proclaim the powerful name of Jesus to heal.
And when Jesus and Peter and others do miracles, they use simple prayers…
Things like… See! Come forth! Walk…
Command… (only if you know the Holy Spirit is with you)
You know the anointing is coming upon you! Spirit of the Lord was on Jesus… when the Spirit is on you – go for it. You will know!

Practice makes perfect

Famous John Wimber quote is ‘when I prayed for no one, no one got healed, when I started praying for everyone, some got healed.”

We live in an age of scepticism and doubt and unbelief… but people are strangely open to prayer!
Just start… offer prayer and, do it then and there… not I’ll pray for you later…
Wimber – after a season of praying for the sick and nothing happening, people leaving, complaints… felt God say; “do not preach your experience, preach my word”
That’s when things started to happen. That’s when God began to really show up!

Shall we stand…

Galatians 5:16-25 Sermon – Life in the Spirit vs Life in the Flesh

In this sermon Chris continues our series by looking at Galatians 5:16-25 and how the Spirit helps us to grow and develop a family likeness in the Family of God. Chris encourages us to walk in the Spirit rather than indulging the life of the flesh, and that this produces good fruit in us that helps us look like Jesus! Are you walking in the flesh or the Spirit this week?

Sermon preached by Chris Roberts on Sunday July 17, 2022.

05/02/23 – John 12:20-33 Following Jesus & Intro – by Tim Giovanelli – The Farewell Discourse Series – Manly Life Church Podcast

SERMON NOTES:

Good morning everyone, if I haven’t met you yet my name is Chris and I am full time here at Manly Life coordinating all things Kids, Youth and Scripture. We have had such a wonderful term, I think some highlights for me included hosting our first ever combined youth night where other youth groups came to us for the first time, as well as launching our Kids Church Band and getting Kids back in here for once a month worship. I’m also so excited for this winter festival so get excited for that! So it is such a privilege to be here and to be speaking to you this morning, so

I have always wanted to be a parent! As you may know now I have been a dad for around 8 months, with my beautiful daughter Elsie growing up very fast! It is a special and beautiful time of life and Beth and I had 9 months of dreaming what our little baby might be like. Would she look like us? Would there be a family resemblance? Would she look more like Beth, or would she look like me?

Well of course we weren’;t just dreaming and wondering if she would have a family resemblance in terms of appearance, we were also wondering if her personality would be like ours, what about her interests, what she was good at? Would she inherit our skills, our hobbies, our love of food?

But the work doesn;t stop there for Beth and I, over the years Elsie will be shaped by how we parent. We want to raise Elsie to be all that God made her to be, and we want her to resemble the family in that way too, her faith, her character, we want to be a family who is known for loving others and loving God!

Last week Tim preached on how the Spirit assures us that we are adopted into God’s family and pours his love into out hearts. We are in God’s family and are unconditionally loved, so what does it mena to start looking like God’s family and develop the fmsily likeness? What does it look like to be in the likeness of God’s family and how does the holy Spirit help us? What role does the Holy Spirit have in helping us grow? What we will discover today it is the Spirit that develops the likeness in us!

Yes and as you may know, we are well into our series on the Holy Spirit called God’s Empowering presence, its been great hearing from the Word about the Holy Spirit but I’m sure you’re like me and have also been enjoying hearing each person’s personal stories about the Holy Spirit, they are so encouraging to me and I’d love to share a bit about my journey with the Holy Spirit today as well as we dive in. I’ve also loved the extended worship at the end of each service and the chance to encounter the Holy Spirit in a fresh way, there will also be a chance for that at the end of the service.

So why don’t you open your Bibles to Galatians 5:16-25

16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever[c] you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit!

1. Two Ways Spirit versus flesh – two ways of living no middle ground

So very quickly, Paul is writing this letter to the churches in the region of Galatia, many scholars believed it was to be passed along so all could read Paul’s message inside. The story of the churches in Galatia is that Jewish Christians were preaching a false gospel of following the Law, including physical circumcision to new Gentiles believers, ie. people who weren’t Jews. So Paul spends the whole letter of Galatians directly speaking against physical circumcision or following the law to find freedom in Christ, but instead to follow the way of the Spirit which brings true freedom.

Paul was adamantly clear that because of everything Jesus Christ had done on the cross, his resurrection and his gift of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost, there was a completely new way we can live our lives and was for Jewish and Gentile Christians alike. And this way is still for all Christians today.

So we arrive to our passage.
Let’s look at verse 16-18 – 16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

You’ll notice two ways of living mentioned, the way of the flesh and the way of the Spirit. What does that exactly mean. Let’s very quickly unpack it because it’s vital to understand this message of liberation and freedom that Paul is trying to tell the churches in Galatia.

Firstly, the Flesh. Simply put, the flesh is our ‘sinful nature’ our human brokenness that is weak, lured by the world and by the temptations of the devil, that rebels against God. Tim spoke about this last week when he mentioned what Paul says in Roman 7:19, lets read: verse For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.

This is our human struggle, we are incapable of defeating our flesh. We need help.Well the good news is that Paul tells us of the life of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a person in the trinity, God himself living inside of us who provides a new way of life to live where the Spirit produces good fruit in us.

And I want to take the time to mention my journey with the Spirit. I gew up in a fantastic Church with many wonderful friends and it realy established my faith. But the life of the Spirit was rarey, if ever, mentioned. It was only went I wnet to a new church after high school wa sover that I first heard about the gifts of the Spirit!

Up until then I had been living a spiritual double life, I was trying to have the life of God and the life of the flesh but it was a disaster I kept hidden from everyone. On the outside I was achieving in my sport life, academic life and leadership in school and at church, but inside I was struggling with sin and lies I believed about myself that held me back from experiencing life in the Spirit. Particularly an onoging sin of lust, and a diagnosis of mild aspergers as a child where I believed lies about my ability to have friends, feel belonging, be liked and even what I felt I couldn’t do in my future career and calling.

It was at this new church I heard about Bible College and where I discovered the work of the Holy Spirit in changing my life. I confessed my sins in a safe and nurturing place and found incredible freedom and forgiveness as I begun the journey of growth. The Holy Spirit healed those places where I believed lies about myself, revelaing his truth to me and giving me calling into ministry. It involved being vulnerable, confessing, repenting and doing that all paver again when weakness struck, but this past decade of knowing the Spirit has been profound in experiencing growth and breakthrough. Yes I have all kinds of seasons and setbacks, but writing this semron has reminded me HOW MUCH I NEED THE SPIRIT IN MY LIFE to keep the transforming work going!

So that’s the instruction of this passage:. WALK BY THE SPIRIT, We willt lak more pactcially about that later. Read verse 17, these two lifestyles are in direct contradiction to each other. There is no middle ground. You are either walking in the Spirit or indulging the flesh. We can’t follow the Spirit in half of your life and let the flesh run wild in the other. It just doesn’t work that way. Neither does trying to follow the rules on your own. but you’ll read in verse 18 there’s a solution to that too. If you are led by the Spirit, you fulfil the law. No need for a rulebook, or to memorise 600 rules, if you are living by the spirit. The job is done!

So where does Paul go next, well he is led by the Spirit is called to give us some examples. To get specific, to really get to the nitty gritty of the outcomes of living these ways. Because we can sit in church and loom around and not really know where everyone’s spiritual life is at. But Paul says we can see people’s lives in what they do. Firstly he gives us 19 terrible words to describe the acts of the flesh: we read in verse 19-21.

19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Oof. That is a hard-hitting list. Paul knows that we know what this stuff is. They are obvious. You don’t need me up the front telling you how you fall short and sin, because you know it already. But Paul is specific for a reason, he deliberately calls out these things to force us to have to cinfornt these things in our lives!

I won’t go through all of these, because most of it is pretty self-explanatory. But there are in four categories of sins mentioned in this list sexual sins, religious sins, relationships and sins of excess. And Paul says “and the like” there are more he hasn;t mentioned! I encourage you this week to take a closer look and reflect on where you are at with these.

I want to mention a few that I think are particularly relevant to us today. Firstly, sexual immorlaity and impurity. Our world is sex-saturated, there are websites where you can organise to have an affair, access to secual material is as easy as its ever been in the history of mankind. The world has perverted God’s gift of sex and when we live in the flesh, we pervert it to. The Holy Spirit has never led anyone to cheat on their wife, watch porn or have be sexually impure in our mind or actions.

Idolatry. On the Northern Beaches and in the western world we have an idolatry problem. It is so easy to worship and live for money, to worship and live for our careers, our lavish lifestyle, our property portfolio and investments, our children, our cars, our houses, or another person, or it could even be the things we watch, listen to, our hobbies. The enemy wants us to take God from his rightful place as lord of our life and replace Him with something that cannot be God. All these things are good but they will ultimately fail us one day, something God will never do.

What about factions? This is an act of the flesh we must be on guard in the Church. Are we people who form factions, cliches or ‘inside’ groups? Do we divide people with our words or opinions? Do we leave people out or are so inward focused in our friendship groups that no one can break in? We risk becoming a petty landscape of warring factions rather than a united Church if we allow ourselves to form factions. Of course there is nothing wrong with having a group of friends, and we won’t hang out with some people as much as others, and that is okay, but God’s Church is to be as welcoming and loving as Jesus himeself, who welcomed and ate with the sinners while the religious Pharisees sneered at him.

Maybe you’re all good with these three acts of the flesh. Maybe something else is on the list you struggle with more. So what does the result of the life of the Spirit? What maybe the most important thing is Paul’s words in:

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Everybody wants these things right? As Paul says there is no law against these things. And they all revolve around characteristic – love. The other fruit of the Spirit all come from this, so if you forget everything today you can remember one thing: love.

Also notice that it is not the ‘fruits’ of the SPirit. It is the fruit of the Spirit. We can’t say, oh I’m just an impateint person or I’m just not self controlled, this fruit is produced by the Spirit in all believers! So every believer will grow in all these areas by the work of the Spirit.

So in my previous examples, To counteract sexual immorality, the Spirt produces Godly love so that we express our sexuality in healthy and Godly ways, we have self-control to manage temptation.

For idolatry, when we love God and love others, have faithfulness, we aren’t tempted to put other things above God.

The Holy Spirit’s kindness, patience, love and goodness in us will help us not to from divisive factions or cliches but instead show God’s love to everyone.
So follow the Spirit, and God promises the fruit will start to grow in your life.

2. Keeping in step with the Spirit (application) how do we crucify theflesh and live by the Spirit?

So its all well and good to know this, but walking out the door today and moving into your week, how do you actually reject the life of the flesh and embrace the life of the Spirit?

24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit!

Crucify the flesh

Paul says that those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. I think Paul uses the word crucified to remind us of Jesus’s crucifixion, death and resurrection. It reminds us of Jesus words to take up our cross daily. Part of our daily practice as a Christian is to put our sinful passions and desires on His cross. Where they belong. Where Jesus has paid the price. We can do this in prayer. Right from wake up to ehever we feel tempted, instead of indulging, nail it back to the cross instead.

We also have to be careful what we are feeding our hearts and minds as Christians. The reson it can be SO HARD ro resist temptation is that we have fed the life of the flesh and made it strong, whereas we allow no room for the Holy Spiirt, spend no time strengthening that relationship.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. PHILLIPIANS 4:8

So what are you watching? Listening to? Thinking about? Feed your spiritual ife instead! Strenghten your relationship with the SPirit! He will help you until that sin is no longer tempting. Be careful not to feed the life of the flesh!
Remember that the practice of these sins is condemned, we will sin out of weakness, so that begs the question, are there any sins that are a practice in your life? Clinging on to these sins is a sign that you might need the help of a trusted friend, mentor or counsellor to help- and that is okay!
What is your daily pracxtice with the SPirit? Readinding, prayer, worship, life groups ect?

Keep in step with the Spirit

Going on a walk with my extended family is really fun, but we all have to accommodate each other’s walk, we have to keep in step. There’s the person walking Penny, the dog. Then there’s the person carrying or wheeling Elsie in the pram. Some walkers are faster than others. To enjoy a walk together we all have to stay in step. And you probably don’t even consciously have to think of that when you go on a walk, you just do it.

So the goal is to have our lives in step with the Spirit. Imagine if it became so natural we did it without thinking?

If we’re in doubt about where the Spirit is guiding us and what the Spirit is saying to us: remember these things:

Everything the Spirit will lead us to is in line with the Bible – the Spirit will never lead anyone to those works of the flesh – check your Bible!

Get our mind off ourselves – start serving and loving others! Ultimately the Spirit wants lead us into a Christ-like that is others focused. So if we’re in doubt, we can show love to someone. Make someone a meal, catch up with someone you know is struggling, welcome a new person, call someone with encouragement, write a thankyou note, volunteer at church or helping others. Love is the fulfillment of all things, so let’s start just doing it!

Baby steps – no mother or father is upset at their son or daughter who is learning to take their first steps, wobbling about, falling over and only able to do a short distance. They know their child is heading in the right direction. The same thing applies here – its your walk with the Spirit. COMPARISON doesn’t matter here! Let’s not look at your neighbour and think how ahead they are or how behind we think we are. Focus on your own steps. You might be taking the very first baby steps in your walk with the Spirit, or crawling even. Because if you keep that up, the Spirit will make you stronger. You will grow the fruit.

The good news is that there is no waiting to be done! Don’t be stuck trying to keep the rules all by yourself, you will fail and it only leads to self-hatred and de[sair. Also don’t disrespect Jesus by using this freedom to do whatever you want. You also are NOT FREE if you do that, you remain a slave to sin! Tonight you can nail those habitual sins to the cross. Jesus has paid for them. The invitation is always there, He is waiting to receive you with open arms. Confess, repent and experience the joy and filling of the Holy Spirit as he forgives you, cleanses you and begins to produce His fruit in your life.

Choose the life of the Spirit Many Life.

John 8:35-36 Sermon – God’s Love Poured Into Our Hearts By The Holy Spirit

In this sermon Tim continues our series on God’s Empowering Presence by looking at how the Spirit pours his love into our hearts, and assures us of our adoption into God’s family as sons and daughters!

Sermon preached by Tim Giovanelli on Sunday July 10, 2022.

05/02/23 – John 12:20-33 Following Jesus & Intro – by Tim Giovanelli – The Farewell Discourse Series – Manly Life Church Podcast

SERMON NOTES

I am speaking today on the role of the Holy Spirit in assuring us of the love of God.

Now I am aware that we represent a lot of families here in this church community… and many of our families, mine included are far from perfect!
And yet hopefully in some way, in glimpses or regularly… we experience something of unconditional love with our children or parents.
But of course the gift of God, is that we all get access to His unconditional and unfailing love.
So I want to start today by showing a video that is kind of a modern retelling of the Prodigal Son.
And it poses the question: what does it mean to experience the unconditional love of a heavenly Father.
Show video…

So we are doing a series on the Holy Spirit…

So far we have talked about the story of the Holy Spirit through the bible and how He is now available to all of God’s children.
Kirrily spoke on Ezekiel and God’s promise of a new heart and a new Spirit.
Last week I spoke on Pentecost and then mainly on Ephesians 5 and the exhortation to “be filled with the Holy Spirit”
And I talked about how the similarities and differences between being drunk on wine and filled with the Holy Spirit… let’s just say you had to be here!
But one of the lovely things that has been happening has been the ministry times and extended worship!
God wants to meet with you!

I want to talk today on the love of God and our adoption into God’s family

And specifically the role of the Holy Spirit in assuring us of this love and adoption into God’s family.
Ephesians 1:5 say “in love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ”
Romans 5:5 says “God’s love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”
Romans 8:15 says “the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”

So it is the Holy Spirit’s role in helping us to know that we are God’s children and to encounter and be filled with the love of God…

A love that is evident in our adoption into this amazing family of believers around the world. About two and half billion people at last count.
And a love that is made tangible… or felt… or assured by the role of the Holy Spirit in making this real to us.
As it says; “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”
So God is not just a concept or an idea. God to us, is like a Father, one who can be an experienced reality of love.
Are you with me?

Gordon Fee: “salvation… as effected through the death of Christ… is the outworking of God’s love. And this is appropriated experientially through the gift of the Spirit, whom God has given to us and through whom we actualize the love of God in Christ.”

Right? What he is saying is that the love of God is a historical fact. It has happened.

We are not left in the dark about who God is, or whether he is for us.
It’s most lavish and expansive expression is shown through his Son, Jesus Christ’s death for sinners like you and me.
Right? How do we know God is love as it says in 1 John… we know this because we look at the cross.
Jesus in love pays for your debt and my debt through giving his life. He takes our punishment and reconciles us to God.
The love of God is a historical fact!

But as Gordon Fee says; “neither is such love merely an object historical event. God’s love, played out to the full in Christ, is an experienced reality in the heart of the believer by the presence of the Spirit.”

So we know God’s love because of the cross.
But then we also know God’s love because of the gift of the Holy Spirit, the presence of Jesus poured into our hearts.
This is an experienced reality for the children of God!

And to be honest, that’s why it’s ok to cry, it’s ok to laugh in church. That can be such powerful moves of the Holy Spirit at work within us!

In my church in London, I remember one particular Sunday where I came in having not walked particularly well or closely with God that week.
Worship leader at the end of the service must have kept playing just for me, because when I came out of what felt like a trance, I realised everyone else had left the seats of the church.
But as I worshipped I had waves of sadness and joy sweep over. And that manifested as uncontrollable laughter followed by tears… followed by laughter, followed by tears…
Over and over again.
And I think what was happening was something like a deep reassuring of God’s love over my life.

This is more than just a worked up emotionalism… I don’t think that is our chief threat in the Western church!

This is a deep knowing and assurance and experience of God’s great mercy and love towards us!
It’s the difference between being an outsider of a family, and that of belonging… of being brought in… of knowing a permanent place in the family of God.
And just like in our earthly families we feel things deeply…
So in God’s family, it is a heart felt reality!

Ephesians 1:5 “In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ”

So what is all this adoption talk about?
Just a quick note, the language in some of these texts is very male.
But don’t worry as, in other places, the same author Paul uses the phrase sons and daughters when referring to the family of God.

For instance 2 Corinthians 6:18 ““I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty.”

And of course at Pentecost and the fulfilment of Joel’s prophecy that “your sons and daughters will prophesy.”
OK… so this is referring to all of us. Not just the blokes.
But sometimes, even though the truth is for both males and females, the bible doesn’t always use the most gender inclusive language.

In the Roman world when Ephesians was written, a wealthy man would want to pass on their fortune and their name…

And if they had no son of their own, or if the relationship was broken
They would select out of their trusty servants who was often a slave, and they would adopt for themselves as an heir.
Can you imagine how a servant would feel about that?
From rags to riches overnight. From being a slave to being the chosen son!
No longer a servant… but now an heir.
It would be like winning the lotto… from a place outside the family… to now destined to inherit all the blessings of being in the family.

In listing the riches of the gospel. In declaring the reasons to give praise to God in Ephesians.

Paul wants us to know, that we, being chosen by God, have been adopted into his family.
A people that would be heirs to all the riches of God’s family.
A people that would take on the name “Christians”… which means little Christs. Or children of Christ. Right?
A people who would take on the family likeness as we are transformed into becoming holy and blameless…
That this happens through the gift of adoption!
And what a family… where ever you go… you meet brothers and sisters!
Bangladesh…
What do we have in common – we met Jesus, we met with undeserved mercy. We came to believe that he is Lord of all! We became the children of God.

And this happens out of sheer grace, God chooses broken humanity and brings them into his family.

JI Packer in his book Knowing God says: Adoption is the highest privilege the gospel affords us.
Adoption is a higher privilege than even justification in which God declares that we are not liable to the punishment that we deserve.
Packer: “to be right with God the judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is greater.”
In adoption, God establishes us as heirs, as his beloved children!
And in that, we find a closeness, affection and generosity that are at the heart of any good family.

Of course this idea of being a child of God versus being a slave with no permanent place in the family is found all through the Gospels.

One of the places you find this is in John 8. Let’s have a look…
In this discussion about who the children of God really are Jesus says;
“Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

Now there is a lot going on here in this passage. And it is the contrast between slaves and sons that is most interesting to me.

So Jesus says the default position of humanity is being a slave. Specifically a slave to sin.
And we know this right. We know this about our own hearts and the condition of our lives.
I’ve never particularly had an issue with the doctrine of original sin…
Paul reflects on this when he says in Romans 7…
15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do… 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.
Does that resonate with anybody?

Right, so we are not born Christians. We are not automatically in the family of God just because of a believing great aunt. Right?

But as it says here in John 8… if the son sets you free you are free indeed.
And again, the image here is of a slave being set free and adopted into the family.
A slave has no permanent place in the family. But hear this!
A son belongs to it forever. Jesus sets you free into sonship.

So go back to John 1… how does this happen? Verse 12…

“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become the children of God.”
It is a gift. It is the mission of Jesus to seek and save the lost. It is the great story of God…
Sweeping up every tribe and tongue and gender and class and ethnicity in the big family of God!
All adopted into a permanent, loving places as heirs to God’s blessings.

Sometimes when people speak about the story of the prodigal son, they use such terms as the scandal of grace.

The idea being that in human terms, the story is shocking that a Father would welcome back a wayward, disgrace, prodigal child.
Even that video we watched, you sense in the son, a real unease about what to expect when he returns…
And yet in one sense, if we know John 1. Indeed if we know the nature of God from the Old Testament
Think Psalm 86:15 “But You, Lord are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.”

If we know this…

Then the prodigal son story is just the fulfilment of what God has always been like.
Once you’re in the family… no matter how far you may then wander, if you come to your senses, you will never be kicked out or forced to work for God’s love!
Are you with me?

I was thinking about unconditional love a bit this week… where I have experienced it, and what effect that has…

My parents ticket home!
Never did get in trouble, but having that unconditional backing and love frees you from fear.
And it says that in Romans 8 right… slaves live in fear.
At any moment if you don’t have that backing and support, you are at the whims of fate and paying the consequences of your mistakes
But as it says in Romans 8… if you know we are adopted as the children of God, we need not live in fear.

So what has the Holy Spirit got to do with this…

Well as Gordon Fee says; “God’s love, played out to the full in Christ, is an experienced reality in the heart of the believer by the presence of the Spirit.”

In ancient world… when you were adopted into a family you would often receive the family ring.

It was a seal or proof that you were the heir to the parent’s name and riches.
For those with a keen ear, you will know that when the prodigal son returns the Father says this…
“Quick bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Let’s feast and celebrate, for this son of mine was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.”
Did you notice the ring. It’s a sign of sonship.

Well what is the sign of your and mine sonship in God’s family.

Well according to Paul it is the experience of love poured into our hearts
And in Romans 8 it is the Spirit of God testifying with our spirit that we are God’s children.
Or as it says; “the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”
In our adoption we don’t get a ring or a certificate… we get a far better gift and assurance.
It is the gift of the Holy Spirit coming to reside within us!

Let’s finish with that idea. That God’s residence in our hearts is our assurance of adoption.

For us the children of God we receive 2 great gifts upon believing in Jesus and becoming a disciple of his.
Upon the repentance of sins and calling him Lord we receive the gift of salvation.
And we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
And through these two gifts, God in love, is creating a people for his name!

I want to show one last video… Alpha Holy Spirit video – Romanian girl…

Acts 2 & Ephesians 5:18-19 Sermon – Filled With The Spirit

In this sermon Tim continues our God’s empowering presence series by taking a look at the Holy Spirit coming at Pentecost and the believers being filled with the Spirit, and then looking at Ephesians 5 where Paul says not be to be drunk on wine but to be filled – Tim compares drunkenness and being filled with the Spirit and implores us to keep being filled with the Spirit in our daily lives!

Sermon preached by Tim Giovanelli on Sunday July 3, 2022.

05/02/23 – John 12:20-33 Following Jesus & Intro – by Tim Giovanelli – The Farewell Discourse Series – Manly Life Church Podcast

SERMON NOTES:

Well did you know that at Manly Life we have a beautiful values statement. You can find it on our website…

And there will be a pop quiz to make sure you all know them, sprung on you at any moment…
Firstly, the gospel is good news…
Secondly we value relationship with the Father…
Thirdly, kingdom community…
Our fourth is ‘We value Spirit Filled Community.’

“We desire to be known as people of God’s presence continuing the works of Jesus. It is the Spirit of God who assures us of our adoption, who transforms our character and empowers us with gifts to serve. We seek God’s presence in our meetings and in our mission.”

Old joke about Sydney… Father, Son and HS all return to heaven from holidays on earth.

Asking where have they been…
God the Father, says I’ve been to London… oh, says Jesus and the HS – we’ve been there, great city
Then the Holy Spirit says I’ve just been to Cape Town… oh says God the Father and Jesus… we’ve been there – amazing place!
Jesus says I’ve just been to Sydney…. “oh” says the HS… I’ve never been there…
Not true these days… lots of amazing churches full of the presence of God!

Sometimes the church has had these unhelpful dichotomies…

We are a bible teaching church… all about the Word… the word, the word, the word…
We are a social justice church…. all about transforming society… fairness, fairness, fairness…
We are a charismatic, Holy Ghost explosion church… power, power, power…
In Kenya, I knew of a church called the Maximum Miracle center…
Never made sense to me… why not go for it all!
John Wimber used to say “all Word we dry up, all Spirit we blow up, but Word and Spirit and we grow up!”

And of course that was Jesus! That was the Apostle Paul! That was the Apostle Peter!

Jesus was an incredible teacher of the truth (think the sermon on the mount – greatest ethical teacher in history!)
Jesus was an agitator for social justice showing incredible mercy on the poor and modelling compassion to his followers…
And Jesus was full of the power and presence of God… healing the sick and defeating evil
I want to be like that!

And I think that is why I was drawn in the UK to the amazing church I ended up at…

First time I walked in St Paul’s Hammersmith London as a 22 year old… in a service and they started talking about projects in the local community… then preaching from the Word… then beautiful worship… and prayer time where they invited the Holy Spirit to come and minister…
I remember thinking… whacko… now we are away!
This is what I have been looking for in an alive local church!

So what kind of church is Jesus wanting to build? I want to suggest he wants to build a church full of his presence… that is, the Holy Spirit.

Why? Because of the fruit that the HS brings in our lives and in the church…
Interview with Nicky Gumbel… talking about the waves!
At HTB in the mid 90’s… secretary was hiding under her desk – come back…
My friend Ash was there – sovereign move of God!
Well that birthed Alpha and the Marriage Courses and extensive church planting and Worship Central and training ministers…

And that is what is important with any move of the Holy Spirit: The fruit it produces!

What matters is the long term results… Are lives changed, are ministries launched? Does Jesus become more real to people…
Joey and I scratch our heads… most charismatic people we know are also some of the most difficult people we have ever met! Experience chasers… but its not changing them…
What the Holy Spirit is about is producing fruit in our lives.
Transformed character, boldness and power in ministry, hearts for the poor and downtrodden!
Amen?

Well of course if you know your bibles you will know that God’s presence, his Holy Spirit is all through the scriptures… and we did a bit of this story 2 weeks ago… go back and listen.

In the Old Testament we see at times the Spirit of God fill people for extraordinary tasks at certain times – think Daniel who interprets dreams…
But you then get these promises that the presence of God is going to be a more full, more available, more empowering presence for all of Gods people.
And Kirrily spoke so well last week about the promise in Ezekiel of a new heart and a new Spirit poured out on God’s children.

Or do you remember in our Isaiah series last year in chapter 44:3 it says;

“For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.”

Isn’t that a beautiful image… God pouring his spirit on his children… like pouring water on a thirsty land…
Seen the wet season come to the desert in outback Australia… soaks the parched earth and what seems desolate comes to life with wild flowers and fauna!
Well the Holy Spirit in a community will do this… bringing life to what looks dead!
Part of why we gather and invite the Spirit to come… we come having had tough weeks, carrying burdens… then God’s presence comes and touches us… and…
So the promise is that God will pour his Spirit… called a blessing on your descendants… that is us!

So who is the Holy Spirit?

One thing that I have been enjoying in preparing this series is reading the biblical scholar Gordon Fee’s book called God’s Empowering Presence.
And we can get an idea for who the Holy Spirit is from the names given to him in the New Testament…
In Acts 17 he is called the Spirit of Jesus. Same in Philippians. The Spirit of Jesus.
In Romans 1 he is called the Spirit of holiness
In 1 Corinthians he is called the Spirit of our God
In Ephesians 1 he is called the Spirit of wisdom and revelation
In 1 Corinthians 5 he is simply called the power of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And so in Acts 2… after the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus… this is the Spirit that is poured out on God’s children!

The Spirit of Jesus, of holiness and wisdom and revelation and power!
In Acts 1 Jesus appears to them and says “wait for the gift my Father has promised…”
Then he says, in a few days “you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit!”
The word baptise was used to describe a ship sinking under the water… in other words you are going to get drenched in the presence and power of God!
He will plunge you into holy power. That is the promise of the scriptures. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.

So Pentecost happens and in one sense the church is born… Acts 2 says,

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole 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.

And what happens? Well they get accused of being drunk! The people mock them… I can only imagine it is quite a scene…
A rushing wind fills the room and tongues of fire come to rest on them…
And then they head out to get on with the mission of God… an afraid group huddling in an upper room get launched into the world with the same message and power of Jesus!
Within a generation that message has brought salvation and new tribes and tongues into Jesus kingdom all across the Romans world and beyond…

Isn’t this just the best story ever!

Honestly… I don’t understand why people don’t want in on this?
The average punter doesn’t realise that we are not just talking about Jesus but also experiencing Jesus presence in our lives.
And honestly it is the main reason I know that Jesus is Lord…
We are not just compelled to this story because of what we read in the bible..
But because we have experienced the love and power of God poured into our lives.
So knowing God is not just an intellectual affair. There is an element of knowing God that is experiential.

Census stuff… people need an encounter…

Well look what happens to the first disciples. Acts 2… They get plunged into the presence of God and they look like they are drunk.

So a huge crowd comes together in bewilderment at what is going on. And it says “they hear the wonders of God in their own languages…”
So some people make fun of them saying ‘they have had too much wine!”
Clearly to outsiders they look intoxicated. I find that so interesting.
And I find it interesting that the same drunk comparison is used in Ephesians.

Ephesians 5:18-19 “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit.”

What an interesting comparison… for Paul here being drunk on wine and being filled with the Spirit have similar and yet very different effects. Enough that to him this is an obvious comparison…

Of course drunkenness is a classic alternative to filling the hollow.
Often when we realise that money wont fill the hole in our lives we turn to drink
Often when we realise that sex wont fill the hole in our lives we turn to drink…
Friend – real estate guy… owned his own very successful agency before he was 30… on the outside it looked like he had everything… but he revealed to me he was drinking a whole bottle of spirits just to get to sleep at night…
It is about escapism. People drink because they can’t handle the pressure or maybe the boredom of life. Want to escape into a different world.

Now of course in the scriptures, alcohol is not forbidden. Jesus first miracle in John’s gospel is turning water into wine. Paul recommends some wine to help illness in 1 Timothy.

In the Old Testament a sign of the messianic age dawning is an abundance of good wine!
But drunkenness is warned against repeatedly!

So we get this comparison… don’t get drunk on wine… but get filled with the Spirit of God!

And the tense of be filled is present, continuous. This isn’t meant to be a one off experience…
It’s meant to be an ongoing experience…
Leaky vessels… think a spounge…

So what do drunks look like that made them think the early Christians were drunk at Pentecost?

Have you ever wondered that?
So to finish today I want to suggest that being filled with the Spirit is like being drunk… and nothing like being drunk… (this could go either way…)
Being filled with the Spirit makes you bold!

You know when people are drunk they often act in a carefree, irresponsible kind of way…

Call it Dutch Courage… I remember at university that I had these friends who wouldn’t dance until they had drunk about 6 beers… and then the dancing was not pretty… a lot of…
People drink because they want to be bold to approach the opposite sex or say things they wouldn’t normally say… shy people become outgoing…

Well when you get filled with the Holy Spirit you get a different kind of courage or boldness!

Think Peter… he goes from hiding in an upper room to preaching in the open air!
I remember when I worked in London I gave all my colleagues a copy of the Message NT…
Victoria and I were out at dinner the other night and I started to share about Jesus with our waitress and then Victoria prophesied over her!
So being filled with the HS is a bit like being drunk… you get a holy boldness!
We need to be a Spirit filled church, courageous for the Lord!

Being filled with the Spirit takes God from your head to your heart!

You know sometimes people drink because they want to get out of their heads and start expressing their emotions…

Have you ever had a mate at the pub come up to you and tell you “I looove you…”
Drinking does that… quite rational people become quite touchy feely, and expressive!
And you get sad drunks too… they have a drink and the tears flow and the emotions bubble up!

Well when you get filled with the Holy Spirit, often we go from head knowledge of God to an experience in our hearts of God

Romans 5 says God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit!
So we have this encounter with God.
First Alpha weekend away in London… Minister invited the Holy Spirit to fill us… had this encounter with the love of God…
I’m not usually very emotional guy… I cried at my wedding and… well I cry at every wedding…
But we need these experiences of God’s love as they assure us of the realness and for-ness of God towards us.
We need to be a church that has remarkable, unexplainable experiences of God, where he just comes amongst us, his people, pouring his love into our hearts!

Being filled with the Spirit changes your character!

You know drunk people often have a change in their character…

Have you ever been the only sober person at a party where people are drinking lots…
Often you realise that drinking brings out pretty obnoxious traits in people.
Quiet people become loud. Reserved people can get aggressive.
Silly people get… well… sillier!
Maybe on the positive, it can bring out the fun and joy in a person…

Well when you get filled with the Holy Spirit it transforms your character from the inside out…

Sometimes we judge other Christians because they are not very transformed…
But maybe you should have met them before they became a Christian 😉
But seriously what God is wanting to do, is make a better version of you. Amen?
It’s the fruit remember of God alive in you… love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and so on…
When the Spirit of Jesus resides in you… you become more like… any guesses?
Yes! Jesus! And who wouldn’t want that!

Finally, when we get filled with the Spirit we sing!

Have you noticed that about drunk people… they often sing?
In my slightly wilder years in London I remember a few nights out where Operatic Tim came out… and you don’t want to have to hear that!
Well when we are filled with the Holy Spirit it leads us to sing!

So it says; “be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit.”

Do you know every time there have been revivals around the world it has always produced new music in the church?
And one of the most wonderful things about being a Spirit filled Christian is our worship!
Amen?
I mean you should have been at our house on Wednesday night. YA’s could have been out getting drunk… but got filled with the Spirit and sung!
Even last Sunday… particularly after the evening service… all in…
Spirit filled worship… and prayer ministry and people lost and intoxicated in the presence of God!

Well, Manly Life do we want to be a church full of the intoxicating love and power of God?

I reckon that’s got to be better than a community full of the wine guzzlers…
Bold for Jesus, experiencing his love and power and being changed from the inside out!
Sing…
Let’s invite the Holy Spirit to come and minister to our lives right now…

Ezekiel 36:26-28 Sermon – A New Heart & Spirit

In this sermon Kirrily continues our series on the Holy Spirit and unpacks the promises found in Ezekiel 36:26-28 where God says to he will give us a new heart and new Spirit! We can today experience the fullness and filling of the Holy Spirit in our lives! Do you want to be filled with the Holy Spirit?

Sermon preached by Kirrily Smeallie on Sunday June 26, 2022.

05/02/23 – John 12:20-33 Following Jesus & Intro – by Tim Giovanelli – The Farewell Discourse Series – Manly Life Church Podcast

Ezekiel 36:26 Sermon – The Holy Spirit is Here!

In this sermon Tim introduces us to our new series on the Holy Spirit called God’s Empowering Presence! He shares a bit of his own story about the Holy Spirit’s work in his life plus the history of the Holy Spirit in the Old and New Testament right up to the time we live in now where the Holy Spirit I being poured out on all believers! This is going to be a great series so don’t miss this one!

Sermon preached by Tim Giovanelli on Sunday June 19, 2022.

05/02/23 – John 12:20-33 Following Jesus & Intro – by Tim Giovanelli – The Farewell Discourse Series – Manly Life Church Podcast

SERMON NOTES

New series on the Holy Spirit and how God’s presence empowers us for Christ like life and ministry.

Today I am going to give a bit of an overview of the Holy Spirit, God’s empowering presence through the story of the bible…
Then in future weeks we will look at particular elements of the Holy Spirit’s ministry
Things like how God’s presence transforms our character, how He gives good gifts to the church… how the Spirit is active in assuring us of the love of God.
And the goal is that we will not just come to know about the Holy Spirit, but also experience the power of God in our lives.

Now undoubtedly the Holy Spirit is and always has been at work in the life of the church since Pentecost, this amazing moment in history when God pours his spirit out on believers…

But there have always been seasons when God sovereignly seems to be moving in remarkable ways.
And I just love, love, love talking to people who have been through such waves.
Greg was involved in such a wave here in Sydney in the 90’s…
And one of my friends Jim who I was in Hawaii with grew up in John Wimber’s youth group… so in Hawaii I just asked him so many questions…
And he had these wonderful stories of these California kids who were just so hungry for the presence of God… and the remarkable things that happened!
So what is it like when God meets with his people?

If you had told someone twenty years ago that I would be speaking on being filled with the Holy Spirit there would have been a bit of surprise…

I actually remember telling some charismatic friends of mine that they might not be Christians…
Gosh if I had a dollar for all of the dumb things I have said… I’d have $15 now…
No, I would be a rich man!

But I must admit, even back then I found charismatic Christians fascinating…

They had a certain quality and life about them that intrigued me…
I had grown up in quite a conservative Christian church and as is so often our theology is shaped by our experience…
I never heard sermons on the Holy Spirit, I never encountered ministry times that encouraged being filled with the Holy Spirit… so I assumed my version of faith was right!
So having never experienced what one might call the more physical or emotional manifestations of the presence of God, I was sceptical of their authenticity.

I would love to share a little of my own journey in discovering the ministry and power of the HS….

The first stirrings for me that there might be more to the Christian life than just knowledge about Jesus came when I was taken along to a Jackie Pulinger evening.
Do people know Jackie Pulinger? Explain her ministry… Walled city amongst prostitutes and crack addicts…
Speaking and she stopped… 21 year old guy here who needs to go to Africa…
Made me think two things…
- Does God still move in more supernatural ways than I thought?
- And is God interested in speaking to me on a personal level…

Not long after I moved to South Africa to work with Michael Cassidy and African Enterprise.

My host family took me along to St Nicholas Charismatic Anglican Church
At the time, I thought, there are two words that don’t go together…
Bit like pretty ugly or business ethics or rap music or deafening silence…

Well one morning I was out ministering in this tragically poor township church…

An African evangelist had shared his story of being healed and then he invited people to come forward for prayer. He asked me to pray for people…

All these desperately needy people started coming towards me for prayer
What on earth do you pray? Run out of things…
Started praying in tongues… amazing experience…
I wondered is this what Romans 8 was talking about… vs 26 “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.”
Caused a few issues for me – just as my theology had been shaped by my lack of experience, now I was in a fuddle… something amazing had happened…
But it didn’t fit into my box of what God does and does not do

But I remember thinking, if this is New Testament I must go for this. This is what I’ve been waiting for!

By this stage I had started reading the New Testament and realised that it was full of Holy Spirit talk… page after page drenched in the language of Spirit…
And the fear is often not – what if we ask God to move in our midst and nothing happens, the bigger risk is that we ask God to move by his Spirit and He does…
What if all these promises and descriptions of the power and the presence of God in the bible are for today!

Well to finish a bit of my story

I then moved to London and had the pieces put together for me…
I ended up at a church that had been planted by HTB (the Alpha Course) called St Paul’s Hammersmith
Wonderful church that held together preaching the Word, the life of the Spirit and a deep commitment to local social transformation!
Alpha weekend – ministry time… assurance of the love of God! Presence… overwhelmed…
That Spirit/Word/Action has really been where my faith is at home until today!

Well what is this all about?

Why should we hunger for more of the Holy Spirit?

Gordon Fee writes, “For Paul the ‘power of the Spirit’ is not only for more visible and extraordinary manifestations of God’s presence, but also for the empowering necessary to be his people in the world”

What is he saying here?
Basically that yes, the power of the Spirit is amazing when we see God move in extraordinary ways… stories of healing… and addictions being broken!
But fundamentally this is about being empowered to be God’s people in the world.
In other words bring on the miracles… but more deeply, we just need the Spirit to be at work in our lives to be Christians…
This is the presence of power of Christ within us!
And so that is how we live the life and calling God intends for us as his people.

On one of Paul’s missionary journeys he encountered a group of new converts to which he asked; “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”

And they said, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
I don’t imagine if you are at Manly Life you would be in that group…
But each of us need to constantly be receiving more of the presence of God in our lives!
But you know too often we back away from pursuing the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.
In fact what we often do with our faith is get infected with the rationalism of the world around us!

I love that in the very first verses of the bible we are told that the Spirit of God was involved in creation…

It says the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
And then at the creation of mankind… however you understand that in Genesis 2, it is the breath of God that creates humanity!

As God then forms a family to bless the nations, we see that the gift of God’s Spirit was specifically given to certain people for special tasks.

It was not generally available nor was it necessarily permanent.
We see this in 1 Samuel 16:13 where the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David or in 2 Kings 2:9-10 where Elisha receives a double portion of the Spirit.
I love Moses in Numbers 11:29 when he states “I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!”
Why? Because amazing power comes when God’s Spirit is released in people
And this is just what the prophets were led by God to foretell for the last days

The Prophet Ezekiel pointing forward to a future time says in Ezekiel 36 that God would… verse 26

“give you [God’s people] a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”

So they are waiting for this move of God that is going to change everything!
And as we saw in our series in Isaiah, it’s always being linked to this coming messiah where God will act decisively to begin to put things right!

So again, the prophet Joel spoke about a time when God would…

“Pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams; your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.”

So all this is pointing forward to a coming new age!
And they are waiting, waiting, waiting…

And then we meet Jesus!

It begins with his baptism. In John 1 it says; “The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God”.

Then, when Jesus announces his ministry in the temple he says: ““The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, to open the eyes of the blind, to set the oppressed free.”
So what they are waiting for, Jesus has in abundance… and it leads to this ministry of healing the sick, offering forgiveness and setting people free!
That is what being Spirit filled does…

Jackie Pulinger – whenever we feel stuck/flat/disheartened we go to the poor and lay hands on people who need prayer… do some Jesus stuff…

And she says, the Holy Spirit moves…
The goal of our faith is not just a ticket to heaven… it is playing our part in the liberation from bondage that covers the world.
Not about building a up a holy huddle…
About being Spirit filled family moving out to transform the world…

So Jesus then says, he’s got to go away but he will send the Spirit…

In Luke 24:49 he promises his disciples “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.”
I mean you can feel the expectancy rising… its been seen in Jesus… and he is going to give his presence to all God’s children just like the Prophet Joel said…

So those who have this Spirit will be empowered for the same mission that Jesus himself initiated.

In Mark 16:17 Jesus says, “these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

I like what John Wimber said… when we prayed for nobody, nobody got healed… when we pray for everybody, some get healed…

Our worship nights… prayer happens… and that is my encouragement… give it a go!
You see God’s church is to carry on Jesus mission, but it needs his Spirit and it needs to get activated!
All this takes power, and that is what was promised in Acts 1:8 in receiving the power of the Holy Spirit to be Christ’s witnesses.

When I was 21 I lived in Africa for a year. Preaching in Kenya – nervousness… Thought it was me who had to make it happen!

Wonderfully liberating to know that it is God who does the work… we are to co-operate, do our best…
But through the Holy Spirit – ministry will be happening!
Uncle Nath: Say nothing, nothing will happen… say something, something will happen.
Same with praying and the ministry of the Holy Spirit…
My little practice at the moment is to just put out a bit of bait… mention church… see if people are interested…
But takes courage… and follow through… not trying to force my beliefs on people…

So at Pentecost we finally reach the moment that changed the children of God forever! The Spirit gets poured out on all believers!

Peter who has gone from denying Jesus to preaching the first public sermon points the crowd to Joel 2:28-29.
The Spirit is evidence that the last days had dawned and the widespread gift of prophecy for old and young, male and female alike testified to the turning of the ages.
We now live in the age of the Spirit. I should hear us all at this stage yell – YES!
It is not just for particular people at particular times… it is for all Christians including you and me!
The waiting is over, the promise is here!

You know, I know you want this sermon to finish before dinner so we’ve got weeks to come….

And we will look in more depth at Paul urging us to eagerly desire the gifts of the Spirit…
Or about how the love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
Or about how in Acts healing accompanies the preaching of the gospel…
Or in 1 Corinthians and the extensive lists of gifts available to you and me in the church!
Or Galatians the fruit of the spirit alive in us being this character transformation…

But clearly this was the experience of the early church…

And whether it is Saint Augustine who four centuries later is still talking about healings happening in the church

Or records of John Wesley and crowds being overcome by the presence of God and falling over in the 18th century
Or what is happening today all around the world in God’s church!
The waiting is over, the promise has come – God’s Spirit is now alive in his people!

So as I come to finish, here is my question for all of us – Have you received the Spirit of God? Have you become a part of this story?

London: Telling kids years ago about Jonah and the whale… bored….
Got them to act it out, to become part of the story… came alive!
For us to come into this story… where God is freeing and restoring his world we are going to need to be Spirit people and then get ministering!

Would you like to stand, I would like to pray for you… if you have been waiting, know and believe God is about to come and move in your life…

Going to ask the HS to come… Hasn’t he been here – yes he has…
Bit like a balloon. There is always more room in us for more of the breath of God…
But we are going to ask him to come and fill you with His presence… Let’s stand…
Some Groups…
- Receive his love and peace… (London story – assurance of his love)
- Others receiving gifts… (laying on of hands..)
- Invite all to come… so really this is just about getting the best spot…