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Amen. We have a lot to praise
the Lord for. And in our readings, we're going
to be looking at the gift of the Holy Spirit. And I'm going
to be ranging all over Luke 1 through 2, but I'll just read verses
39 through 45 of Luke 1. Luke 1, beginning to read at
verse 39. Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country
with haste to a city of Judah and entered the house of Zacharias
and greeted Elizabeth. And it happened when Elizabeth
heard the greeting of Mary that the babe leaped in her womb,
and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And she spoke
out with a loud voice and said, blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb. But why is this granted
to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For indeed,
as soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears,
the babe leaped in my womb for joy. Blessed is she who believed,
for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told
her from the Lord. Amen. Thank you, Father, for
your word. And as we dig further into it,
I pray that you would sanctify us, comfort us, encourage us,
challenge us to draw nearer to you. We pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen. You may be seated. Well, we've been looking at the
roles of the three persons of the Holy Trinity in the Incarnation. And two weeks ago, we looked
at the Father's mission that He gave to the Son. And Jesus
says that we are sent with the same mission and the same way.
And so we looked at some of the ways in which the Father's mission
needs to grip and challenge and change our lives. Then last week,
we looked at the specific ways in which the Son was a foundation
for everything that we think, say, and do, or should be. Today,
I want to look at the role of the Holy Spirit in the first
Advent and see what difference that He makes in our lives right
now. If we have the Spirit, it will
show. If we do not have the Spirit,
then our Christianity really is an empty religion. It's a
facade. It's like what the Pharisees
faced. In fact, Paul speaks of a spiritless
Christianity as having a form of godliness, but denying the
power thereof. And because we're covering parts
of two chapters. We're not gonna spend a lot of
time on points two through 11. I wanna spend a little bit more
time on point number one, because it's kind of a foundation. First
of all, the third person of the Holy Trinity prepared his elect
for Christ. Take a look at Luke one and verses
13 through 17. And this was given months before
Jesus was born. The Spirit was working in the
life of John the Baptist, and Luke points out that just as
the Holy Spirit raised up a remnant under Elijah, he was going to
be doing the same under John. He was preparing the way for
Christ's ministry. Luke 1, verse 13. But the angel
said to him, Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your prayer is
heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you
shall call his name John, and you will have joy and gladness,
and many will rejoice at his birth. For he will be great in
the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong
drink. He will also be filled with the
Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many of
the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will also
go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts
of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom
of the just to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Now, first
reference to the presence of the Holy Spirit emphasizes the
disobedience of natural man and how men would not and could not
turn to Christ without the Holy Spirit's preparation. Now, some
Arminians speak so intensely about the freedom of man's will. You almost get the impression
that they believe man's will can trump God's free will. And
it's really nonsense. And I want you to look at this
figure here. This is really, I think, a remarkable example
of the sovereignty of God. because it speaks of John the
Baptist being regenerated, being filled with the Spirit right
from his mother's womb. It doesn't appear that God's
asking John the Baptist permission. It doesn't seem as if John the
Baptist is reaching out with his free will. He's a passive
object, just like we are passive in our regeneration. Without
God's prior choice of us, Scripture is quite clear, not a one of
us would choose him. Each gospel account of the incarnation
says much the same thing. Here's how John words it. John
1 tells us that because of man's depravity, no one would receive
Christ, not even his elect, no one. This means that the idea
that God foreknew, he looks down the corridors of time, people
saying he foreknew, okay, that one's gonna choose me and that
one's not, and so the ones that choose me are the ones I'm going
to elect. That's really nonsense because
he says even his own elect did not receive him. He was in the
world and the world was made through him and the world did
not know him. He came to his own and his own did not receive
him. Now, Arminians love verse 12,
the next verse, which says, but as many as received him, to them
he gave the right to become the children of God, even to those
who believe on his name. Now, we love that verse too.
It is an incredibly precious promise, but we need to realize
that the verses before that verse and the verses after that verse
indicate that no one could believe, no one could receive God unless
God's spirit, first of all, regenerated their hearts, even the elect.
rejected Christ until the Spirit worked in their hearts. It says
he came to his own, and his own did not receive him. They can't
believe until they are regenerated. John denies that our will has
any role whatsoever in our regeneration. For example, he says, who were
born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the
will of man, but of God. And in the back of your outlines,
I've put a chart. I'm not going to go through the
chart, but I think I wanted you to at least have it so that you
could refer to it in the future. This is a dividing line between
Reformational theology and Arminianism. This indicates that regeneration
has to occur first And when it does, it always results in repentance
and faith. And so, think of regeneration
as a part of the Holy Spirit's preparation of our hearts to
come to Christ, to receive Christ, to appropriate the things of
Christ. Now, verse 17 also says that
a turned heart will affect our relationships. He will turn the
hearts of the fathers to the children. Well, let me before
I even get to that, before the relationships, let me just apply
this to ourselves. Is there evidence in our lives
that we have been prepared by the Holy Spirit to come to Christ.
If you look at verse 17, it gives some clues on how you can tell.
It says, your heart will be turned to turn the hearts of the fathers. In the scripture, the heart is
composed of the mind, the will, the emotions, the conscience,
it's the inner man. And so you could say that if
your mind is still as undisposed to love the things of the scripture
as an unregenerates, you may not yet have been prepared by
the Holy Spirit for Christ, because the Spirit prepares our minds
to turn to the Lord. If our emotions are just as unruly,
if our wills are just as rebellious to God, we may still need the
Spirit's preparation there. But then verse 17 also talks
about it affecting our relationships. He will turn the hearts of the
fathers to the children. These verses also indicate it
affects our holiness. He will turn the disobedient
to the wisdom of the just. Does our heart hunger and thirst
after righteousness? That's one of the evidences that
the Spirit of God is at work within our lives. Does it constantly
long for the wisdom of this world and long for the approval of
man? Or does it say with David, oh,
how love I thy law. It is my meditation all of the
day. Or with David, longing for the courts of God. Okay, the
Spirit prepares men. He's constantly moving people
to Christ. Okay, so that's the first point. Points two and following showcase
the fact that once the Holy Spirit has done this, has drawn us to
Christ, given us new life, and filled our hearts, the Holy Spirit
will show in 10 ways. These next 10 points show the
overflow of the Spirit within us. First of all, we'll have
a spirit of giving. One of the things associated
with the Spirit in Luke is his giving. He's always giving. He
gives us wisdom. He gives us joy. He gives us
love, all of the fruit of the Spirit, our gifts from the Holy
Spirit. But he's also involved in giving
us the Son. John 3.16 says, the Father so
loved us that He gave us the Son. But I want you to notice
that the Spirit is involved as well. Look at Luke 1, verses
34 through 35. Very intimately involved in giving
the Son. Then Mary said to the angel,
How can this be, since I do not know a man? And the angel answered
and said to her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power
of the highest will overshadow you. Therefore also that holy
one who is to be born will be called the Son of God. So even
though the Holy Spirit gives all kinds of things in this chapter,
the ultimate gift that the Holy Spirit gave was the Son, as the
Son took to himself a human nature. So if gift giving at Christmas
is to have a Christian character, our motives, I think, need to
transcend the motives of unbelievers. And I think it's the Holy Spirit
who enables that to happen. He gives us a desire of generosity. He gives to us the grace of giving.
He takes away selfishness, self-centeredness, and he enables us to give just
as the Holy Trinity gave. So this Christmas, let's ask
God for a genuine spirit of giving. Another thing associated with
Christmas is joy, and when you're reading through this account,
you cannot miss the words. Let me list them for you. Rejoice,
joy, joy and gladness, great joy, exceeding great joy that
keep punctuating the Nativity story. But I especially like
the description of John the Baptist because God alone could have
opened John the Baptist's heart to have this spiritual joy while
he's still in his mother's womb. This is something remarkable.
Well, first of all, let me read verse 14, which describes the
joy of the adults. And you will have joy and gladness.
Many will rejoice at his birth. Now that's natural. People love
babies. It's a very joyful occasion. But verse 15 sets the foundation
for a joy which I think cannot be explained by merely outward
factors. Verse 15 says, for he will be
great in the sight of the Lord and shall drink neither wine
nor strong drink. He will also be filled with the
Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb. Now take a look at what
the spirit-filled baby does when Mary comes with the child Jesus
in her womb, verses 41 through 44. And it happened when Elizabeth
heard the greeting of Mary that the babe leaped in her womb,
and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Then she spoke
out with a loud voice and said, blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb. But why is this granted
to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For indeed,
as soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears,
the babe leaped in my womb for joy. This joy that John the Baptist
had in the womb is a joy that any one of us can have when we
too are filled with the Spirit. The difference between the hatred
of Herod and the joy of the wise men really was the presence of
the Spirit. The difference between the apathy
of the general crowds out there and the remnant was, again, the
presence of the Spirit. Luke attributes Elizabeth joy
to her being filled with the Spirit. Same was true of Simeon.
So if you're feeling particularly joyless this season, the remedy
is not changing your outward circumstances. That's what we
always wanna do. If only I could have this, this,
or the other thing, I would be more joyful. The difference comes
from an inward presence, the presence of the Holy Spirit.
In fact, Peter says you could have absolute misery and suffering. Gary was talking about this last
week. The suffering believers who were so persecuted that you
would think they would be miserable, and yet, Peter said, you have
Joy inexpressible and full of glory. How did they have that
had nothing to do with their outward circumstances? it had
to do with the presence of the Holy Spirit who generates supernatural
joy a J.i. Packer and his book on the Holy
Spirit says that when we are filled with the Holy Spirit it
shows It shows in many different ways and that's what the sermon
is about. It's showing the spirit These are ten ways in which we
demonstrate a spirit-filled life Welcome is another. Christmas
should be a time of welcome, yet for some people, it's a time
for hunkering down and jealously guarding this time for our families,
right? Wherever one finds the spirit
and abundance, you will find an attitude of welcome, hospitality
for God's people. We just read the passage that's
in your outline. But Luke 1, 41 through 45 describes
the spirit-filled baby John welcoming the Lord Jesus, and the spirit-filled
Elizabeth welcoming Mary, the mother of Jesus. And this is
an attitude that God produces in His people. The book of 1
John says you cannot even claim to be indwelt by the triune God. if you don't have welcoming attitude
to the brethren, if you do not love the brethren. One of the
last words of the book of Revelation are the Spirit's welcoming attitude
that he produces within the church. Revelation 22, 17. The Spirit
and the bride say, come. And let him who hears say, come. Whoever is thirsty, let him come.
And whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of
life. So do you have a spirit of hospitality
and welcome? And it doesn't mean you have
to welcome people into your home. You might not even have a home,
but you can be welcoming in this congregation and making people
who are new feel comfortable and somebody who's sad, you go
over and you embrace them and you speak with them. That is
a spirit of welcome. If you really want to get into
the Christmas spirit this year, you not only need Christ, who
is the reason of the season, but you need the Holy Spirit
who produces Christmas cheer, I think is the way one person
worded it, produces Christmas cheer within his people. Now
what about praise? Someone once said that the worst
kind of air pollution is not smog, but a sour disposition. And you've probably experienced
that. You've walked into a room and you think, uh-oh, boy, things
are tough in here. You could almost slice the air.
It's so thick because somebody's got a sour attitude. Let me tell
you something. The Holy Spirit does not produce
sour milk. He produces sweet attitudes within
his people. He produces praise within his
people. Luke 1 verse 64 says, immediately
his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed and he spoke praising
God. Our tongues need to be loosed
more frequently in praise to God during the week. I mean,
we love to do it on Sunday, but praising God, is it the impulse
of our heart? Now, some people excuse their
lack of praise based on their personality, and it is a factor,
I will admit that. For some people, they're much
more outgoing, much easier to give forth praise in this way.
But think of this, if praise were entirely dependent upon
our personality, Why would Revelation 19 verse five say, praise God,
all you his people? If it's dependent on personality,
he's not gonna command all his people, he's just gonna command
the people who got the personalities to really praise, right? And
the reason all people can give genuine praise like this is because
it's not dependent on our personalities, it's dependent upon the Holy
Spirit. Are we filled with the Holy Spirit? Well, the Holy Spirit
is going to produce praise. Another way we show the Spirit
is adoration. Now, we've got many people during
this Christmas season, especially in America, who will go to church,
their once-a-year pilgrimage, and they will pretend to worship
the Lord just like Herod pretended to worship and adore Christ himself. And even in our own lives, this
can be something that is forced. I remember when I was younger,
it really irritated me when people would tell me, Phil, you need
to smile more. Smile. God loves you and has
a wonderful plan for your life. You know, that's hypocritical
to smile if you don't feel like smiling. Now, I must not have
been a very smiley person, because I got this so many times. But
I had a very shy, reserved personality, kind of a depressed kind of a
personality. And I remember even after I was
regenerate, and I really desired to be more energetic in my worship,
it was hard for me. It was hard work to engage in
that kind of adoration. It was sort of like the old-fashioned
pumps that when I was a kid, we'd go to the farm, and you'd
just work like crazy on that pump, and eventually a little
trickle would come, and then the water would start gushing
out. That's the way I felt it was with worship. Yeah, I could
finally get into worship, but it was a lot of work to get to
that place. And I remember the first time
when that was not the case for me, when I prayed for the filling
of the Holy Spirit. And this has happened repeatedly
since then, but it was remarkable. It was not like a trickle. It
was like I was being overwhelmed with the ocean of God's love. Wave after wave, so much of God
coming over me. I thought I was going to die,
but I loved it. And it was easy to adore God
in that circumstance. There was so much of the Holy
Spirit that was being poured into me that it was just the
most natural thing in the world for me to offer up praise and
adoration and to glory in who God was. That is what I long for all of
God's people, the filling of the Holy Spirit. Now that's an image that the
scripture uses of Christ, not a trickle out of a faucet, but
rivers of living water. Jesus said that anyone, anyone
who drinks of Christ out of his innermost being will flow rivers
of living water. You can't stop a river. If a
river is flowing, you can put a dam there. What happens? The
river just flows over the dam or it goes around that dam. You
cannot stop a river. And when you're filled with the
Spirit, you cannot stop these things from showing in your life.
Adoration for the Father will come forth. And there are several
examples of adoration in the Nativity story. You got the wise
men, you got the shepherds, you got others in here. Let me just
read without any comment Mary's adoration and praise in verses
46 through 55. I love this passage. And Mary
said, my soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit is rejoiced in
God my Savior. For he has regarded the lowly
state of his maidservant. For behold, henceforth, all generations
will call me blessed. For he who is mighty has done
great things for me and holy is his name. And his mercy is
on those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength
with his arm. He has scattered the proud and
the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from
their thrones and exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry
with good things and the rich he has sent away empty. He has
helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as he
spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed forever. The
Holy Spirit is given to praise. Now, you might think that's a
strange idea, but if you read the theology books, you'll see,
yes, that's absolutely true, because what does the Holy Spirit
do? He's constantly pointing to the Son and to the Father.
He's not pointing to himself. He doesn't draw attention to
himself. He's always pointing to the Son and to the Father.
So when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we're going to be
pointing to the Son. We're going to be pointing to
the Father. We're going to be ever so grateful for all that
they have done. And so if you feel dry and you
feel unable to do this, cry out to God like David did. David
is noted as being one of the most magnificent worshipers in
the scripture, and yet how many times did he have dryness too?
Don't think poorly of yourself if you have dryness. Just say,
well, I guess I'm like David. And what did David do? He cried
out to God and he said, Lord, I hunger and thirst after you.
I'm like a deer in the desert. I'm gonna die without you. Please
fill me with your Holy Spirit. Now, you may not yet have ever
experienced the ocean of God's love flowing over you, or even
the rivers of that. Doesn't matter. Start where you're
at. Maybe you've just had a little trickle. That's okay. Prime the
pump. And start pumping away and say,
I want water. I want the Holy Spirit's characteristics
within my own life. And how do you prime the pump?
You know those old pumps, they wouldn't pump anything unless
you poured water down it. So you pour water down them,
and I think of priming the pump as like playing worship music
on your iPad or iPod or whatever it is, playing that and singing
along. Sometimes other people helping
you to worship and adore. Music is a great way to prime
the pump, but sing along. And as that water starts gushing
out, you can say, Lord, I bless you for this trickle of water.
Make it into a river, but start where you're at at least. Praise,
that's one of the spirit-generated things. Praise, joy, adoration. Okay, the Holy Spirit is also
described here as the spirit of prophecy. These were inspired
prophets. Luke 167 says, now his father
Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied. And
I think one of the things that we can be thankful for in the
Church of Jesus Christ is we've got a finished canon. We've got
the scriptures that Rodney was talking about. earlier, you know,
he kind of chuckled when he saw me laughing over there. I wasn't
disagreeing. I just think he's a funny guy.
That's why I was laughing, but so thankful for the finished
scriptures. That's an incredible gift, and
we would not even have the story of the Nativity if the Spirit
had not given us the scriptures, and we need to treasure it. It
was by the Spirit that Elizabeth, Mary, Zachariah, Simeon, Anna
all spoke. Now, here's the point. Here's
the point. The Holy Spirit loves the Word of God. That's his gift
to the church. It reflects his heart. He loves
to communicate God's heart to his people. He loves to motivate
his people to get into the scriptures. And one of the evidences we are
filled with the scripture is a renewed hungering for the Word
of God. We want to get into those scriptures.
Deuteronomy 32, 46-47 says, Be careful to observe all the words
of this law, for it is not a futile thing for you, because it is
your life, and by this word you shall prolong your days. Now
in the broad sense of the term, every one of you are prophets,
priests, and kings. How are we prophets? When you
bring these scriptures on your lips to the lives of people,
you act, in a sense, as a prophetic vehicle. You're bringing the
prophecies of scripture into the lives of other people. But
here's the thing. You should never separate spirit
and word. He's the author of the word.
He works through the word. And he is never going to have
you say, eh, I really want the Holy Spirit in my life. I'm not
going to get into the scripture. That's a dry, old, dusty book. I want experience. He never does
that. You start going down the road of neglecting the scripture
for experience, all of a sudden, you've got a counterfeit for
the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, you cannot separate him from
his word. But the second thing you cannot
separate him from is his power. He wants us to experience the
reality of the power. So we can be dry and dusty if
we say the word, but we don't want to experience the word.
So the next point is, it's a spirit of empowerment. You do not separate
word and power. several examples of the Spirit's
empowering work in the lives of his people, and I've just
picked two in your outline. Luke 1 verse 80 says of the child
John, so the child grew and became strong in spirit and was in the
deserts till the day of his manifestation to Israel. Now that thought is
repeated in chapter two and verse 40 and applied to Jesus. And the
child grew and became strong in spirit, just like John, became
strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God
was upon him. Now think about this. Jesus is
a perfect man from the time of conception. If Jesus needed the
Spirit's work in his life as a perfect man, if he needed God's
grace upon him as a perfect man, how on earth can we think we
can live the Christian life without the filling of the Holy Spirit?
We cannot. If we're to imitate Christ, we're going to have to
walk in the power of the Spirit. For many people, Christmas is
just an empty tradition. They talk about Christ, they
celebrate his birth, but there is no reality or power in their
lives. 1 Corinthians 4 verse 20 says,
For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk only, but of
power. So the spirit is what makes the
difference between a Christmas that's just a matter of talk
And at Christmas, yeah, there's a lot of talk. Praise God for
the talk. But it's also the power, the reality of that being experienced
in our lives. Hope is another major component
of Christmas talk. But unlike the hopes of the world,
which are often dashed, the Spirit gives hope, which does not disappoint. I'm just going to look at one
example, and that's Luke 2. And verses 25 through 26, it
speaks of the Holy Spirit's role in giving hope of a coming Messiah
to Simeon. And behold, there was a man in
Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and devout,
waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was
upon him. And it had been revealed to him
by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen
the Lord's Christ." Now, that may have seemed like an impossible
dream, but because it was Spirit-given, it was a hope that could not
be dashed. Okay, Romans five, verse five
says, and hope does not disappoint us because God has poured out
his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given
us. So he's not just a spirit of
hope back then. He continues to give his people
hope today. You may have had failure after
failure. In fact, some of the things I'm
talking about here may discourage you. You say, man, I wish I had
that in my life. You may have had these failures,
but what the Holy Spirit's going to do within you is to say, get
up, Phil. Don't stew in your mess. You
get up, you confess your sin, you keep on keeping on. You continue
to have hope. You never let your hopes be dashed
through your sins, through lack of experience, whatever it might
be. You always focus on Christ. That's because the Holy Spirit
keeps our eyes focused on Christ. He's a spirit of hope. Just very
quickly, taking up the last two points. The Spirit gave guidance. Now, obviously, the direct revelation
that was given by the Holy Spirit to several of these people was
a form of guidance, but the Spirit of God guided them in other ways
as well. Let me give you some examples.
What moved Mary to go visit Elizabeth during, you know, for a three-month
period of time? It may have just been a desire
to meet with her. This was a convenient thing for
her to do. But it was the Spirit, ultimately,
who moved her to do that. You could say, what moved Joseph
and Mary to move from Nazareth to Bethlehem? Say, well, tax
man said, you've got to move there. There's a census. You're
going to be in prison if you don't. You can say, well, yeah,
that factored into there. But God used that providence
to make them go to Bethlehem in order to fulfill a prophecy,
right? So God is even working through
the providences of the taxman. What moved Joseph and Mary to
have Jesus circumcised and later to have Jesus dedicated at the
temple? That's where Simeon met him. You can say, well, they're
just obeying the scripture. Yes, that's true. But it was
the Holy Spirit that motivated them to fulfill those scriptures.
And you can see in many of these people in Mary, you can see Mary's
desires, the providences in Mary's life, the scriptures that drove
her. You can see the spirit behind
all of that. Now, I'm just going to give one
more example, Luke 2, verse 27. This is another example of guidance
in Simeon's life. So he, that's Simeon, came by
the Spirit into the temple. And when the parents brought
in the child Jesus to do for him according to the custom of
the law, he took him up in his arms and blessed him. But it
says he came by the Spirit into the temple. Now, we're not given
any details of how the Spirit moved him, guided him to come
into the temple at exactly that particular time. But we can praise
God that the Spirit is in control of our lives. He continues to
give guidance as a wonderful gift, a wonderful gift. The last
thing I want to highlight this morning was that the Spirit produced
a blessing on the lips of His people. In chapter 1, filled
with the Spirit, Elizabeth says, verse 42, blessed are you among
women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why is this
granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
For indeed, as soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my
ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. Blessed is she who believed,
for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told
her from the Lord. The first impulse of being filled
with the Holy Spirit was that she blesses Mary three times. Simeon, filled with the Spirit,
picks up the baby Jesus and blesses him. The role of blessings in
our lives should not be neglected. Those filled with the Spirit
desire God's blessings on the lives of others. And people like
us who are elders, we're constantly wishing and praying God's blessings
upon our congregation, right? I think you can see how this
ties in with the Christmas spirit rather well. All of these things
we've just gone through are other-oriented. And the spirit produces the miracle,
and it really is a miracle when you think about it, produces
the miracle of thinking of others more highly than we think of
ourselves. The spirit of God produces the miracle of rejoicing
when others are advanced above us or receive things that are
more than what we receive. the spirit purges us of selfishness. We don't compare our gift, our
Christmas gift, to somebody else's Christmas gift and envy what
they have. Well, we can't say we don't always
do that because we got the flesh, don't we? As long as the flesh
resides in us, we're going to have this dual Dual aspect, we're
going to have selfishness, but being filled with the Holy Spirit,
we are enabled more and more to crucify those selfish impulses
and more and more to be like the Holy Spirit in generosity. And so this brings us full circle
in this sermon to point number one. How do we gain the Christmas
spirit? Naturally, we're selfish. We
don't care about any of these things in our flesh. But when
we have the Holy Spirit residing within us and preparing us for
Christ, we can enter into the Christmas spirit as God intended. So if you've never put your trust
in the Lord Jesus Christ alone for your salvation, I would urge
you to do so. And I would urge you to ask for
the gift of the Holy Spirit. He says it's there for the asking.
He says what father who has a hungry son and he asks for bread is
not going to give him that bread? We're generous with our children.
He says, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy
Spirit to those who ask Him? So if this season's joy is to
be more than passing, you need to walk in the Spirit and ask
Him to cleanse your heart of selfishness. So may each of us
find a full measure of the Holy Spirit in our lives so that we
overflow with those rivers of living water. May we show the
Holy Spirit in these 10 ways. Amen. Father, we thank you for
all of the examples that you give in Scripture that we weak,
sinful, selfish, fallen sinners can find the Holy Spirit's overflow
in our lives. They encourage us that if others
can enter into this supernatural in such a wonderful way that
we can as well. We ask for your forgiveness for
the times where we just go on in our own flesh without ever
asking in faith for the supernatural power of your Holy Spirit. And
we pray that day by day, you would fill us with your Spirit,
keep on filling us with your Spirit, that we might walk as
you have called us to walk. And I pray this in Jesus' name.
Showing the Spirit at Christmas
Series Advent
This sermon shows the role of the Holy Spirit in the First Advent, and the importance of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives.
| Sermon ID | 12418828274 |
| Duration | 37:42 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Luke 1:39-45 |
| Language | English |
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