c.v. of the Holy Spirit

Romans 8:10-13

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

I received a phone call from a friend this week to tell me he had watched pornography on his computer. He does not want to do this and yet he does it. I hold him accountable for this and I appreciate his honesty in telling me when he submits to this temptation in his life. The fact that he called me indicates that he is struggling and not giving in to temptation. But this struggle has gone on for a long time with him. How long will he have to struggle?

All of us have things we do that we wish we would not do. We spend too much time playing computer games or too much time watching TV. We continue to make judgements about others while ignoring our own faults. We get discouraged or mildly depressed and medicate ourselves with buying or eating something. We tell ourselves we need to get up early in the morning and read the Bible, journal and pray, but we stay up too late at night and find ourselves muttering a quick prayer as we get dressed and head out the door to meet the day.

What was it that Paul struggled with? Was he just talking philosophically when he wrote, What a wretched man I am! I think he was making a philosophical point but I believe this was Paul’s personal struggle as well. I am sure Paul struggled with sexual temptations. Perhaps he struggled with the desire to pack it all in and go back to Antioch and relax. He might have had a gambling problem. Who knows what he struggled with. But we know he struggled. We know because of what he wrote and because this is every man and every woman’s struggle.

There is not one of us here this morning who has given his or her life to Christ and does not now struggle with the tension between our spiritual life and human, sinful life. There is a lot that lies beneath the surface of those who attend RIC.

It would be very strange indeed if I would walk up to someone in the church and say, “Hi, my name is Jack Wald and I struggle with homosexual desires.” There is a time for public confession of sin, but this is something that must be orchestrated by the Holy Spirit and not something we do as a ritual of the church. We all live lives of secret desperation. It is important that we share that struggle with people close to us who are committed to helping us but not helpful to make public announcements of our sin.

I say this because it can seem that you are the only one who struggles. You look around and everyone else seems to be living such a good Christian life. It is only you who has such struggles. This is not true. All the saints of the church have struggled. I struggle. You struggle. We all struggle.

So what do you do when you struggle to live a godly life and seem to get stuck at the same point over and over again? Is there hope for you?

Paul’s concern in his letter in chapters 6, 7 and the first part of 8 addresses what he calls the second stage of salvation, sanctification. How do we become holy? This is Paul’s topic in this part of Romans.

We have come at this from a variety of angles over the past few sermons. I want to take a another approach this morning.

Let’s say you have a basketball team. And imagine that in the league in which you play, you are in last place. Your season record is 25 wins and 45 loses. It is very discouraging to go to the locker room, change into your uniform and sneakers and go out on the court to warm up. Another night and another game and most likely another loss. It is not that you don’t try. It is not that you don’t practice. You are in good shape. You work hard, but you just don’t have the talent to win games. You finish the season with 29 wins and 55 loses and when someone asks you what you do for a living, you tell them you sell cars or something other than play basketball because it is too depressing to think about it.

But one year later, at the end of the next season, you finish with a record of 61 wins and 21 loses. The year before you won just 35% of the games you played. This year you won 74% of the games. What made the difference? One new player, a superstar, joined the team and what a difference it made. Now the players joke as they enter the locker room. They look forward to the game and the outcome. There are still loses, but not too many. You are the same player. You practice the same but now you have someone who passes you the ball at the right time so you can shoot a basket. You have a player who makes things happen.

This happened with the Boston Celtics, the team I rooted for in the US. Larry Bird was drafted by the Celtics in 1979 and it was his presence on the team that transformed the team’s record so dramatically. In that one year, they went from last place to first in their division.

Larry Bird’s skills transformed his team and the players on his team became better players just because he was there. Passing improved. With the expectation that they would win a game, players tried harder to win.

Let’s take this analogy and apply it to our situation. We struggle because although we know what we should do as Christians, we find ourselves not being able to do what we need to do. And although we know what we should not do, we find ourselves doing it anyway. So what we need to do is find a star who will be able to help us. We may not win every battle, but we will make definite improvement.

When the Boston Celtics were looking for the right person to select in the draft, they looked for qualities that led them to Larry Bird. When we look for the right person to help us in our struggle with sanctification, what are the qualities we look for.

Imagine that you receive the c.v. of a number of people interested in helping you with the process of making you more holy. You flip through them one by one and then you come to this one.

Holy Spirit

Address: 1 Heaven Place

That sounds like a nice address. Must have a nice view.

Date of Birth: Pre-existed the creation of all that is seen

This is obviously an unusual c.v. unlike any of the others you have seen.

What is it that we are looking for? We are caught in the struggle between our desire to live a life pleasing to God and the pulls of our sinful human nature. We need someone to help us resist sin so that we are able to make choices pleasing to God. Ultimately what we want is that when we die our physical death, we are brought safely to heaven.

And what does the c.v. of the Holy Spirit say is his objective?

My objective is to help you grow in holiness and bring you safely to the Father.

What we most need, the Holy Spirit is committed to do.

This sounds good, but can the Holy Spirit help me? I know he has helped others but I have struggled for years and am stuck. My life is so complicated, I can barely figure it out myself. He may be able to help others but my struggle is too difficult.

So what relevant qualifications does the Holy Spirit bring to the job?

The Bible begins in Genesis with this
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

At this point in the creation story there is no land, no sea, no plants or animals, there is nothing except a mass of mater in the midst of the heavens. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. The creative energy of the Triune God built up and then in an explosion of creativity, the world was created. The most delicate of flowers and the massive peaks of mountain ranges were created. Butterflies and dinosaurs were created. The extravagant variety of creation is astounding. Not just one flower or one color of flower was created, but thousands of flowers in all colors were created. Thousands upon thousands of insects were created.

Study the human body and you will be amazed at the intricate complexity of cellular structure and the network of nerves that make our bodies move. Compacted into the limited space of our skulls is a brain that puts any computer to shame. Our eyes can do what no camera can do.

The laws of nature, physics and chemistry, were created and the creative energy behind all this is the Holy Spirit who hovered over the waters.

You say that you are complex and your struggles are unique? Don’t flatter yourself. You are not that different. There is nothing in your life the Holy Spirit has not seen many times before. There is no struggle in your life that is too difficult for the Holy Spirit to resolve.

Let me look at the c.v. and see what it says under references. Millions of people have experienced the help of the Holy Spirit. There are millions, from all cultures, all ages, all races, all of time who can testify about the help the Holy Spirit has offered. Do you seriously think that among all of those millions and millions of people, you present a more difficult case than any who have come before?

When you go in to the hospital for an operation and you want to make sure the doctor knows what he or she is doing, you can ask about the procedure, but the critical question is this: how many of these operations have you done.

When you come to the Holy Spirit and ask how many people like you has he helped, the answer is that each person is a unique creation of God but the struggles we deal with are not so unique. There is nothing we experience that the Holy Spirit has not seen before and successfully dealt with thousands and thousands of times.

Here is an interesting part of the c.v. Under relevant information there is this: I am the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead. I guess that legitimately belongs under relevant information doesn’t it? Do you think this might be a case of c.v. exaggeration? Paul lists this reference in Romans 8:11
And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.

The single greatest act in all of history was the resurrection of Jesus. This is the one event in history that turned the world completely around. This was the decisive battle between the supernatural forces of good and evil in which death was defeated. The greatest weapon of the devil was taken from him. And the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead will also give you life. Does that impress you? It should. This person is playing on your team.

I think that we too often forget who it is that is working on our behalf. We get caught up in our struggles, our concerns, our worries, our fears, our desires and we forget who it is that is working for us, with us.

Where will I get the money I need to pay this month’s rent? Where will I get the money I will need to live when I am too old to work? What if I lose my job, what will happen to me then? Why doesn’t she love me the way I want to be loved? Why is it that he dislikes me so much that he works against the things I am trying to do? What will happen if this lump in my breast is malignant? What will happen if the pain in my back gets much worse and I am not able to walk? Will I ever be able to really speak and understand this language I am trying to learn? How will the church grow when it faces such opposition? What will happen to the church if people keep fighting among themselves?

We get caught up in all these issues and forget who it is that is working on our behalf.

This is why we have confidence that we will prevail in this struggle between our desire to be godly and our human nature. Just as a sports team has confidence because of their star’s ability to lift the team to victory, so do we have confidence in the Holy Spirit because he will make us successful in the work to make us holy and righteous. And he will bring us safely to the throne of God when we die our physical death. We walk confidently into the future, not because we are so talented or because we are so disciplined or because we have the correct theology or because of anything else we can do or believe. We walk confidently into the future because the Holy Spirit is walking into the future with us.

There is no one more qualified to help us than the Holy Spirit. There is nothing the Holy Spirit lacks that would enable him to do a better job of helping us. It is not that the Holy Spirit looks at one of us and says, “You know, if I only had a bit more power or a better idea, then I could really help this person.” That doesn’t happen. The Holy Spirit is all powerful and all knowing and all loving and that is why we have confidence in his work on our behalf.

We open ourselves as completely as we are able to his work and cooperate with him in every way that we can because he will bring us safely to God the Father and he will work with us to make us more holy.

And because the Holy Spirit is so good at what he does, we become better at what we do. When we work with the Holy Spirit and we begin to trust his efforts, we try harder because we know we have a better chance of success in our struggle than we once did. We get better at working toward holiness as we develop a better working relationship with the Holy Spirit.

The unlimited creativity and power of the Holy Spirit is working for us and so we do not lose hope.

Therefore, says Paul. Remember what I said a couple weeks ago? When you read therefore, try to think what the therefore is there for. At the beginning of chapter 8 Paul’s therefore is a comprehensive therefore bringing the whole of his letter thus far into mind. In this case, the therefore is more limited, bringing just the previous verse to a conclusion.

Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation

Because the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, and because he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you, therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation.

What is an obligation? The word comes from Latin and meant to bind. So you would tie up a person or animal and oblige them to do what you wanted them to do.

In the way Paul uses this word, we are bound by the force and grandeur of what has been done for us to set our minds on what the Spirit desires.

If someone risks his life to save yours, you are obliged to be grateful and obliged to do what you can to show how grateful you are. In a movie titled, Saving Private Ryan, a platoon of men are sent to bring Private Ryan out of the front lines of the battle to safety. At the end of the movie the captain says to Ryan as he dies, “James… earn this. Earn it.” And the scene changes and now Ryan is an old man at the cemetery standing by the captain’s grave. He salutes the grave and says that he hopes that he has been able to live a life good enough to repay the debt he owed to the captain and the others who died to bring him back. Ryan was obligated to life a good life because of the sacrifice that had been made for him.

If you have the Spirit of Christ in you, if you have the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus to life in you, if you are a Christian and the Holy Spirit lives in you, then you are obligated to set your mind on what the Spirit desires. You have a moral obligation to set your mind on what the Spirit desires because of the enormity of the sacrifice made on your behalf.

So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!

There are some cultures where when someone saves your life, you spend the rest of your life serving the one who saved you. Because of who sacrificed to save you and because of the future life you have been saved for, you are under a grand obligation to live and serve the one who saved you.

At some point you need to realize that although your feet are planted firmly in the mud of this earth, your future lies in heaven, not on earth. Realizing this makes all the difference in the world.

Set your mind on what the Spirit desires. The Spirit is the superstar on your team. You walk into the game with confidence because you know the Holy Spirit is at your side. Victory will be yours because of the way he plays the game. He will bring you safely to the Father when you die your physical death. So work harder at your spiritual life because you know you can be successful.

There is no reason you need to feel despair, no reason to feel helpless, no reason to feel hopeless. You have someone on your team that can sink the winning shot in the game. You have someone on your team who will bring victory.

Set your mind on the desires of the Spirit.

You are obligated.