Introducing the Holy Spirit Rich Nathan February 12, 2012 Holy Spirit: 40 Days to Experiencing the Spirit Series Joel 2:28 - 32
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Introducing the Holy Spirit Rich Nathan February 12, 2012 Holy Spirit: 40 Days to Experiencing the Spirit Series Joel 2:28 - 32 Back in the 13 th century there was a German emperor named Frederick the Second who wanted to know what language children would speak if no one ever spoke to them. So he chose several newborns and he instructed the nurses to feed them but to provide them no cuddling or talking. What language do you think the children grew up speaking? They didn’t grow up at all. All the babies died before they could talk. The rate of infant mortality called “marasmus” among orphans has sometimes reached incredible proportions. Back in 1915 a doctor, who was investigating infant mortality in American orphanages, said that 90% of American orphans died. After World War I a famous doctor, Fritz Talbot, studied marasmus, infant mortality, in German orphanages. He watched an elderly German woman carrying babies on her hip. One of the hospital workers said this, “Oh, that’s old Anna. When we have done everything medically we can do for a baby, and it is still not doing well, we turn it over to Old Anna and she is always successful.” Dr. Talbot published his findings. He said, “Here is the lesson. Orphanage workers need to touch, hold and carry and mother every baby in the orphanage several times every day.” As this message of touch was spread to American orphanages infant mortality went from 90% to 10%. That’s why today nurses working with prematurely born children in neo-natal units are taught how to therapeutically touch babies. We human beings thrive when we are touched. One doctor investigated the health of the elderly who were confined to nursing homes. He found that elderly people who had a pet were healthier and lived longer than elderly people who did not have a pet. Even a pet we can hold and who rubs against us does something positive for our health. Marilyn Monroe once gave an interview to a reporter. She was asked about her childhood. She broke down in tears. She was shuttled from foster home to foster home. She said she never really knew love growing up and she was rarely touched. She said one of her happiest memories was one of her foster moms was putting on her makeup. Young Marilyn came into her room and asked what she was doing. The woman turned around and began to playfully touch her face with powder and put lipstick on her. It was one of the happiest memories of her childhood. Being touched; made to look pretty. © 2012 Rich Nathan | VineyardColumbus.org 1 There was a study done of successful basketball teams that suggest that successful basketball teams communicate affirmation to each other through touch way more than unsuccessful teams. Kevin Garnett, of the Boston Celtics, and Steve Nash, from the Phoenix Suns are “world- class- touchers”. You see them constantly putting their arm around a teammate who is feeling down, or who has just blown a play; high-fiving it with other teammates. We need to be touched. And most of all we need God’s touch. Here is what we read in Romans 5:5: Romans 5:5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. The Apostle Paul says that the thing that secures you, that gives you joy in the face of incredible trials, is this direct experience of love poured out in your heart by the Holy Spirit. The idea is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the profusion, the abundance of this Spirit is something you don’t have to guess about. There is no uncertainty here. What we need is to be assured; to have God reach down from heaven to touch us in a way that we know that we know that God is real and that God loves us. That the Christian story is true; that there is a reason to hope; there is a power to resist; something that goes beyond our intelligence, our deducing, and our reasoning. We need God’s touch. The way God touches us is by the Holy Spirit. The way that anyone today in the 21 st century experiences God is by the Spirit. Gordon Fee, one of the great New Testament scholars of the last century, wrote a massive book on the Holy Spirit called “God’s Empowering Presence”. He opens the book by saying this: I am convinced that the Spirit in the Apostle Paul’s experience and theology was always thought of in terms of the personal presence of God. The Spirit is God’s way of being present, powerfully present, in our lives and communities as we await the consummation of the kingdom of God. Precisely because Paul understood the Spirit as God’s personal presence, Paul also understood the Spirit always in terms of an empowering presence and an experiential presence; whatever else, for Paul the Spirit was an experienced reality. Without an experience of the Spirit, we are living sub-New Testament lives. But many folks today are like the people that the Apostle Paul preached to in the city of Ephesus way back in the 1 st century. Here’s what we read in Acts 19:1 -2: © 2012 Rich Nathan | VineyardColumbus.org 2 Acts 19:1-2 1 While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples 2 and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit .” I’m starting a new series today on the Holy Spirit. The series is titled 40 Days to Experiencing the Holy Spirit. I’ve called my message today very simply, “Introducing the Holy Spirit.” Let’s pray. Let me read to you Joel 2: 28-32: Joel 2:28-32 28 “And afterward , I will 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. 29 Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days. 30 I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke. 31 The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. 32 And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the Lord has said, even among the survivors whom the Lord calls. Joel is an Old Testament prophet. We don’t know exactly when he prophesied. That’s one of the most controversial things about the book of Joel – trying to set a date for this prophet’s writings. But we know that Joel prophesied hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. And in this text Joel speaks about a future time he calls “afterward.” Joel 2:28 “And afterward , I will 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. And he says about this future time that it is going to be a time of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The future, this afterward time, what the New Testament calls the “end-time” is going to be the age of the Spirit. The end-times are going to be characterized by a profound experience of the Holy Spirit. End-times experience Now, Joel in this prophecy speaks about all of the signs and wonders in the heavens and the earth. © 2012 Rich Nathan | VineyardColumbus.org 3 Joel 2:30-31 30 I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke. 31 The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. The imagery that he uses here is taken from the book of Exodus and the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt; the time when God turned the Nile River to blood; where hail and fire smote the land; and when Mt. Sinai was shrouded in smoke from the fire of the Lord’s presence. Just as God delivered the Old Testament people of Israel from their captivity in Egypt, so in the end-times God is going to work a new deliverance, a new salvation not just for the people of Israel, but here we read for all people. Joel 2:28 “And afterward, I will 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. And in Joel 2:32: Joel 2:32 And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the Lord has said, even among the survivors whom the Lord calls. The characteristic of what the Bible calls the “end-times” is that the end times are supposed to be the age of the Spirit. Let me bring this down for you. Some Christians spend all of their time studying and writing about what is called “the end times.” And so they draw up these elaborate charts, graphs, and pictures, and claim to show you how obscure scriptures, lifted out of context from a prophecy in Ezekiel, or Daniel, or the book of Revelation, is being fulfilled today in what’s happening in the Obama Administration, the European Union, or in Israel.