Tonight, Garry spoke from Acts 1:1-8, continuing our teaching on the Holy Spirit. Some say (particularly Jehovah’s Witnesses) that the Holy Spirit is a ‘force’, not a person, but Acts 5:3 makes it clear that the Holy Spirit can be lied to and Jesus drew comparisons between Himself and the Holy Spirit, saying that the Father would send another advocate (of the same type as Himself.) It is clear that the Holy Spirit is God (see Matt 29:19, Acts 5:1-4) and God gives us the Holy Spirit when we first believe (see Eph 1:11-14, 1 Cor 6:19).

However, Jesus told His disciples that they would be baptised with the Holy Spirit and would receive His power to witness, a promise fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost. Witnessing involves living life according to God’s ways and loving as God loves. As we follow God, we need to live holy and chaste lives, forgiving others and receiving God’s joy and hope, but we also need to explain why we need salvation and how Jesus purchased salvation. It’s not a question of either/ or, but of using every method we can to draw others to God.

Jesus Himself lived life on earth in the power of the Holy Spirit (Luke 3:21-22, Luke 4:1). His ministry involved the gifts of the Spirit listed in 1 Cor 12; He displayed heavenly wisdom (Luke 20:21-26) and knowledge (Luke 6:8), demonstrated gifts of healing (Matt 4:23), fed thousands through miraculous provision (see Matt 14), prophesied (Matt 24:1-2) and used the gift of faith on several occasions (see John 11, Matt 14 and Mark 1).

The book of Acts shows us that Jesus’s disciples displayed these gifts too (see Acts 2:1-4, Acts 8:14-17, Acts 10:44-48, Acts 19:1-7) and we need these gifts today in the church. 1 Cor 12:31 tells us to ‘desire the greater gifts’ (spiritual gifts). We need to earnestly seek God, for we too need to see these gifts in evidence and need the power of the Holy Spirit to witness to the amazing things God has done and continues to do in our lives. Are we ready to plead with God as our forefathers did for the baptism of the Spirit and for Him to re-ignite us? Nothing less than the fire of the Holy Spirit will change our world.

Ps 123 reminds us that if God is Lord over all, we are His servants. We much prefer to be friends of God and co-heirs with Christ than to acknowledge God as our Master and Lord. But Paul reminds us ‘You are not your own; you were bought at a price.’ (1 Cor 6:19-20) Formerly, we were slaves to sin, but Christ’s sacrifice for us means we now are urged to ‘count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.’ (Rom 6:11-14) Becoming a Christian means a transfer of ownership: God now is our Lord and Master and our eyes now look to Him.

Often, we find this idea off-putting because our experience of earthly masters is so negative. In the world, we have endured no end of ridicule from the arrogant and contempt from the proud. (Ps 123:4) Instinctively, we assume that God will be like that too. However, what we find when we approach God is that He is merciful and gracious towards us. He is the God ‘who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s’ (Ps 103:3-5) and ‘who does not treat you as your sins deserve.’ (Ps 103:10)

We pray ‘have mercy on us’ ultimately because we know that is how God acts. We know something of His heart and His character. Kutless sing,

‘Even though You reign high above us,
You tenderly love us.
We know Your heart
And we rest in who You are.’ (‘Even If’, Kutless)

When we realise the generosity and kindness, grace and mercy of God, being His servant is no hardship. We serve a God who demonstrates servanthood to us through His Son (see John 13:13-17, Mark 10:42-45) and so we choose to give ourselves freely to God, to be bound to Him by the cords of love, to have our ears pierced as the masters did to those slaves who, when given their freedom chose to remain with them out of love. (Deut 21:5-6) It’s a choice only we can make, but it’s the wisest choice we ever make, for ‘the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your ancestors, which he confirmed to them by oath.’ (Deut 4:31)

This morning’s sermon continued our series on the Songs of Ascent by looking at Ps 123, a short psalm that reminds us of our relationship with God as servants. Ps 121 started with us lifting our eyes to the mountains, but with Ps 123:1, our gaze is lifted even higher! Having an upward gaze is vital if we are to make sense of life and to keep going on the pilgrim journey towards God. Paul reminds the Colossians that the secret to success is to keep our hearts and minds fixed on God: ‘Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.’ (Col 3:1-2)

God sits enthroned in heaven. Ps 9:4 says that God sits enthroned as the righteous Judge. Ps 80:1 says that God sits enthroned between the cherubim, a phrase which brings to mind Isaiah’s great vision in Is 6:1-8 when he saw ‘the Lord high and exalted, seated on a throne,’ with angelic seraphim flying around crying out ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty.’ These visions continue in the New Testament, for Paul reminds the Ephesians that God’s power raised Christ from the dead and ‘seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.’ (Eph 1:20-21) We will never make any progress in our journey with God if we’ve got our eyes fixed down on what we can see all around us. This psalm reminds us that if we want to get anywhere in life, we need to spend time looking up at God. We need to be alert to what is going on around Christ, because ‘that’s where the action is’! We won’t find the answers we are looking for or the help we need from the media; watching the news and reading newspapers can only tell us about this visible world, not about the invisible, spiritual realm where God is working all things together for good for those who love Him. We won’t find answers or help from social media, however interesting we find other people’s opinions and views. We won’t find answers from our friends and family ultimately, because they too are fallible people like ourselves. Only God can satisfy the ache in our hearts; only God is strong enough to meet our needs and help us every day of our lives; only He can give us the answers and help that we require to make sense of life. Jesus reminds us that our heavenly Father knows all our needs and that worrying is unnecessary (see Matt 6:27-34). We have a God who is more than capable to taking the initiative and more than capable of providing for us. Our everyday human concerns will be met in God. Our part, the thing we have to do, is steep our lives in this God-reality and understand that He is Lord and Sovereign over all.

When I was first saved in the 1980s, a popular worship song by David Hadden was ‘Awake, awake, O Zion.’ Its lyrics came from Isaiah 52:1-3:

³ For this is what the Lord says:

The water boiler at church which provides hot water for teas and coffees has been under scrutiny recently. It stopped working a few weeks ago, with the ‘ready’ red light flashing persistently but never stabilising and the water temperature never getting sufficiently warm as a result. The boiler is still under warranty, so the service engineer came out and fixed the problem. He mentioned that the boiler was getting very scaled up and so this week we have had it descaled.

This flurry of activity has provoked quite a lot of conversation. As we mused on how the water boiler works, we decided that it was rather an apt metaphor for the living water Jesus describes in John 7:37-39. The rivers of living water which the Holy Spirit provides are not meant to become stagnant pools in our lives. We receive living water from God and this overflows into the world so that we become His servants, offering this living water to all around us. Just as the boiler does not look particularly big and in a way can only hold a fixed amount of water, so we too don’t look anything special! (see 2 Cor 4:7) Nonetheless, because the water boiler is plumbed to the mains supply, there is a never-ending supply of water from which we can draw. So, too, if our lives are plumbed in to the Master Plumber, we need never run dry.

Then we got to pondering scale. Limescale is the hard, off-white, chalky deposit found in kettles, hot-water boilers and the inside of inadequately maintained hot-water central heating systems. In order to remove it, descaling agents (typically acidic compounds such as hydrochloric acid that react with the alkaline carbonate compounds present in the scale) are used. Then the boiler can function at its maximum efficiency.

Our lives can very easily run dry if we allow sin to entangle us and the weeds of this life (chiefly worry, anxiety, lack of trust in God and worldly attitudes) to choke the word of God in us. We have to be ruthless with everything that hinders us and the sin that entangles us (Heb 12:1) so that we can run the race God has marked out for us, so that His living water can flow freely from us, rather than trickling out in dribs and drabs.

We’re glad the boiler’s working again, but we’re also glad for the spiritual insights it has given us!

Continuing the series on ‘Everyday Church’, our everyday witness can only be done effectively if we know the fire of the Holy Spirit in our lives (see Acts 2). The disciples had been commanded by Jesus to wait in Jerusalem until they received the gift of the Holy Spirit (see Acts 1:4-5, 8) and this they did. Obedience and expectation are key; as Mark discussed last week, attitudes are crucial, and we need to understand the importance of gathered meetings (see Matt 18:20) as well as coming before God with expectation and anticipation. Hunger and thirst for God are essential if we are to receive all He has for us (see Ps 42:1-2, Ps 63:1), a longing which Paul expressed in Phil 3:10-14.

The Holy Spirit came to the disciples as wind and fire (Acts 2:2-3). Jesus talked to Nicodemus about spiritual birth using the metaphor of wind. (John 3:5-6, 8) Wind cannot be controlled or seen; in the same way, the Holy Spirit is God; we cannot control where He moves, how He moves, in whom He moves, when He moves. He gives life to people as He desires. He leads people in the ways they should go. He comes when He wishes. Fire, too, often cannot be controlled and can be devastating, but its purifying, cleansing force is needed in our lives. We often find this frightening and daunting, but we need to understand the sovereignty of God and be sure that the gifts He gives are for our benefit and good. A sense of unworthiness will always be our response to a vision of God’s majesty and holiness (see Isaiah, Job and John, for example), but God does not give us this vision to terrify us. He gives us His Spirit to empower us for service.

All of us need to be filled with the Spirit if we are to be witnesses to what Christ has done and to live the Christian life by the power of the Spirit rather than in our own strength (Eph 5:17-20, Gal 3:2-3) We should not be afraid to ask God to fill us (James 4:2 reminds us that we often don’t have things because we don’t ask God), for His will is that we should be filled with His Spirit.