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July 17, 2005
The Holy Spirit: The Lord, the Giver of Life
Isaiah 32: 9-20 / Galatians 5: 13-26
July 17th, 2005
I’m glad to be standing here this morning. We pulled into town last evening around 7PM, so don’t go to our house now for an exhibit of perfect housekeeping. As things turned out my being in the pulpit today is a bit of an island in being away from the pulpit more than ever before in my years in the ministry.
We have just been off for two weeks to visit our aging mothers and grab a bit of R & R—a time sandwiched in between hurricanes as it turned out. We rode bicycles around the circumference of Key West, Florida last week and saw what havoc Hurricane Dennis inflicted on this beautiful little island. The beaches were piled high with rotting seaweed. Trees were uprooted. The debris stacked along the streets made it precarious to ride bikes. We told our hosts at Nassau House that thankfully we only have tornadoes and blizzards in Indiana.
Beginning next Sunday I’ll be off for at least a couple weeks more. On Thursday I’m getting new knees, and tough as I am, it will take a week or so for me to be able to get around with my new apparatus.
Last Sunday I worshipped with a very small C & MA congregation in Ft. Myers. It was so good to hear another pastor preach the Bible’s message as found in the prophet Jonah. When the pastor discovered I was a Presbyterian pastor I think it un-nerved him, but it needn’t have. I discover that when I get to hear preaching I’m a bit like the deer referred to in Psalm 42 that “pants” after flowing streams in a dry forest. I prepared this morning’s sermon in the wee hours of the morning over the past couple weeks. In my trade it is impossible to escape the sense of duty I feel in preaching.
Today I return to the Nicene Creed, which I began to explore with you a few months ago. We dive in mid-stream on the final section of the Nicene Creed that describes the Holy Spirit. “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life.”
We read this morning the prophet Isaiah’s comforting promise to the nation of Judah that after a time of national suffering for sin, the Spirit of God would be poured out on her. When things bottomed out morally and religiously God withheld His hand of care. The nation collapsed in on itself in injustice and every other kind of immorality. It went spiritually bankrupt. Its priests and prophets lied and stole and preyed on the people they were to serve in God’s behalf. So God let the nation have its way. He did not forget His covenant with them, but He removed Himself. As Isaiah said, “God hid His face.” It seemed as if more than this had happened. It seemed God had withdrawn completely from His people. They were abandoned in a world of powerful and cruel enemies. But Isaiah peered through the mists of time and saw that God would pour out His Spirit on the entire people.
The word for “poured” here in the Hebrew Bible is astounding. Its root meaning actually is “be naked,” and is used nowhere else in this way. The Spirit would be made naked on Israel. It is a very revealing word, we might say. Is the prophet telling us that the Spirit of God would be revealed more vividly to the whole of God’s people than ever before even to prophets, priests, artisans, and kings? They were given this special personal attention from God, but never before the whole nation. But the time would come when God would “expose” His Spirit to His people as never before.
This is actually the second promise found in this chapter. Isaiah 32 begins with the promise of a righteous king whose princes would be “like a hiding place from the wind, a covert from the tempest, like streams of water in a dry place, like the shade of a great rock in a weary land.” So here we have Isaiah describing God not only as Father, but as King and Spirit.
It’s as though the prophet saw the manifestation of the second two persons of the Holy Trinity, the King of kings and the Holy Spirit—the Son of God and the Holy Spirit. This Triune God is the subject of the Nicene Creed. The Holy Trinity is not a uniquely Christian doctrine. It is there in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament.
Now I must back up a bit and remind you that we are trying to understand the Nicene Creed. The Creed isn’t scripture, but it has been of great blessing in keeping Christians on track about the teachings essential to Scripture. It was the first deliberate statement of faith that Christians from all over the world composed because of a threat to the faith that popped up in one of the most important Christian centers in the first quarter of the fourth century.
Actually, the statement of the Creed before us this morning was not composed at the Council of Nicea. It was added to the Nicene Creed later perhaps after the Council of Constantinople that took place in AD 381. This was sixty-one years after the close of the Council of Nicea. Those who composed the Nicene Creed were dead. A whole new body of Church leaders met at Constantinople to address new challenges to the Church.
When we read what the Scriptures teach about the Son and the Holy Spirit it is evident that they are in some mysterious way at one with the Father. They were equal in eternity, equal in power, equal in dignity—yet distinct.
The first thing this expanded Creed said of the Holy Spirit was, “[He is] the Lord, the giver of life.”
It is interesting that they called Him “the Lord.” The Greek word kyrios, “Lord,” was the word the Greek translation of the Old Testament used consistently to translate the unpronounceable name of God in the Hebrew Bible—that is often pronounced today Yahweh. Jesus had been called “Lord” in the New Testament. The Apostle Paul also wrote of the Holy Spirit, “The Spirit is the Lord.” In calling Him “the Lord,” the Holy Spirit was treated with the full respect given to God the Father and God the Son. The Apostle Paul did not quote the Old Testament in describing the Holy Spirit in this way, but I wonder if one of the passages he had in mind was the passage from Isaiah we have read today.
Then the Creed described the Spirit as “The Giver of life.” Perhaps these early Church teachers had in mind the work of the Spirit of God in creation. Genesis 1 tells of the start of creation when the ruah elohim, the wind of God, the Spirit of God blew over the surface of the waters. It was God’s Spirit that preceded everything that follows—the separation of light from darkness, the separation of dry land from water and sky. Are we to assume that every other act of creation was also the product of God’s wind hovering on this planet?
These are mysteries beyond us—how physical life unfurled. But when we turn to the New Testament, and particularly to Paul’s letters we learn details of the kind of inner life the Holy Spirit gives. This is our concern. In his letter to the Galatians he explains that there is a kind of life produced by the untamed flesh. Its result is to make us bite and devour one another. All of the trouble now afflicting every place of conflict on this planet is the result of the kind of life spawned by the untamed flesh.
But the Spirit of God gives a different kind of life. Let us read aloud together Galatians 5: 26. We’ll need to open our Bibles to read this whole passage because our bulletins go only as far as verse 23. Here is a summary of the kind of life given by the Spirit of God.
When we read this and then survey our own lives we may wonder why the Holy Spirit is not more powerful. If the Holy Spirit has been exposed fully to us how can we resist being altogether loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, gentle, good, adaptable, and full of trust? One of the paradoxes of the Bible is that the God who can create galaxies chooses to present Himself before us helpless in us apart from our welcome. You and I have the choice of submitting deliberately to the Spirit of God, or saying “I will be religious in my own way.”
As this has happened in the story of Christianity, the Church has often been a ruthless, cruel oppressor. During the Middle Ages the Church in the Western world was engaged in a power struggle with kings and emperors. When the Church was winning, it was hardly a model of grace. It argued tragically, that the Pope was the Vicar of Christ—who was King of kings. But Jesus never flexed His muscles to dominate people. He never asserted power over Caesar.
This is not the kind of power God exercises over His people. When God’s Spirit is in control, He graciously empowers from within. But what has to happen is a deliberate submission of your will and mine, thoughtfully, reasonably, with understanding, to the will of God. Being a Christian is a thoughtful discipline. God’s will is spelled out so carefully about how we are to live together, how we are to think of ourselves, how we are to love Him. But neither God nor we who have leadership in the Church have a ghost of a chance of imposing God’s will on you. You and I must freely submit our wills, thoughtfully, day after day, to the will of God. It is a kind of discipline we all find hard.
It is here that the Holy Spirit exposes Himself to us in His weakness and power. When you and I are pliable in spirit, the Holy Spirit does His work. We enjoy a kind of inward reward when the Spirit of God is alive in us. I don’t believe in a “feel good” Christianity, but beyond dispute the Bible shows us that when the Spirit of God is at work in us, we will, dare I say it, “feel good.” This is borne out by personal experience.
But when we are hard and strong-willed, the Holy Spirit politely waits. He is the very model of courtesy. The Bible gives you and me a litmus test by which we can know if the Holy Spirit has been given access to us.
Are you and I filled with love for others? Are you and I at peace? Do you and I have joy? Are you and I patient? Are you and I gentle? Are you and I adaptable? Are you and I good? Are you and I trustworthy? In all our range of personalities we display these traits if the Holy Spirit has control of us? If we are otherwise, we may be religious. We may even be Reformed. We may say with conviction, “I believe in the Holy Spirit,” but it’s only theory. And nobody is right before God and other people theoretically. We are or we aren’t submitted to the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit of God is the measure of our standing before God and others.
As the miles rolled by yesterday, I was chewing on this last idea and wondering why it is so hard to submit to the gracious Holy Spirit. And I thought of the demands we place as a society on people who have been seduced by drugs and alcohol. How inflexible the County Correction System is with those who have been caught. Tests are given regularly to see if those who were terribly hooked have dabbled at all in drugs and alcohol. And if they have, they are tossed back in jail.
And yet all of us who are hooked with our various personality limitations—high irritability, anger, impatience, sexual temptation, temptation to lie, temptations to think life is good when we own lots of stuff (self absorption)—when we continue to be hooked by this we plead, “It’s only natural.” This is the battle the Holy Spirit gently fights with us—to overwhelm what is “only natural” with what is good. And for the Spirit to win this battle, that He fights gently, you and I must submit our wills as fully as our court system demands that people snared in drugs and alcohol submit. We’re often hard and harsh on people who have been caught with problems we may not have, but very soft on our own problems.
“We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life.” So we say. And indeed, He is the Lord and the Giver of outer and inward life. But He is this to us at our invitation. I pray you and I are good hosts to the Holy Spirit. I pray He has been invited to sit on the thrones that we have in our hearts, the place from which we are ruled in our thoughts, words, and deeds.
Let us pray: O Lord God, grant to us to welcome your Holy Spirit that He may be Lord indeed, and the Giver of the kind of life that we live. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at July 17, 2005 09:30 AM