Empowered by the Holy Spirit | 1 Corinthians 12:1-13
This message was preached at Sherwood Community Friends Church on Sunday, October 16, 2022. You can watch the video in full by clicking below.
Last week, Bob preached out of John 14 in an introduction as to what, rather WHO, the Holy Spirit is.
Today we are going to dive into the question of “Why the Holy Spirit?” Why does it matter that I have the Holy Spirit as a part of my life? What impact does this play in my life?
If you have your Bibles, feel free to turn to our main passage for today, 1 Corinthians 12.
Let’s revisit a section of Scripture Bob shared last week - John 14:15-17.
An Advocate Empowers
“If you love me, obey my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you.” John 14:15-17 NLT
An advocate empowers us.
Bob pointed out the word Advocate or the Paraklētos. This was the same word used for lawyer. Paraklētos is a noun that refers to one who helps, advocates, or comforts someone on behalf of another.
When I was a younger mom, raising Brayden through elementary school, I realized I needed to be his advocate on behalf of him with his teachers and administrators.
It was my role to cheer him on, redirect him if necessary, and ensure his work was done. I went on his behalf to parent-teacher conferences. This is what we do as parents, we become advocates for our children.
When I look throughout Scripture to find examples of an Advocate, here’s what I find:
Moses was an advocate for the Israelites, standing up to Pharaoh for their freedom and later advocating to God on their behalf despite their grumblings
Nathan is an advocate when he speaks truth to David, calling out his sins, and bringing him into repentance
Esther was an advocate for the Israelites to King Xerses when they were threatened with mass genocide
Paul was an advocate for Onesimus, a slave who ran away, and appealed to Philemon to bring him back in, not as a slave, but as a brother in Christ
The concept Jesus is communicating by using this particular word combines both the legal and the relational: both advocate and helper.
An advocate helps us to understand the boundaries, what we are capable of, and when to take a stand.
An advocate admonishes us, correcting us when we’ve done wrong.
An advocate goes out on our behalf to defend us when we’ve been accused - justly or unjustly.
It is by the Holy Spirit that we are admonished, encouraged, and empowered to live out the work that God has set before us to do. No man or woman can live righteously without the Spirit.
Living Righteously
This means that we are empowered to live righteously by the Spirit.
That first line of John 14:15… “If you love me, obey my commandments.” There are times when I say I love Jesus, I believe it with my whole being, yet I have failed to obey his commandments. I seek to live righteously, wholly HIS. I create my Christian “self-help” plan, with my checkboxes to complete.
Read my Bible - check
Pray for my friends and family - check
Come to church on Sunday - check
Serve at the food pantry - check
I give myself a successful plan and if I just follow it then I will be more righteous and more holy and closer to Jesus, right?
Liturgy and routine is important, yet I fail miserably when I attempt to do this on my own effort. If the source I pull from is my own efforts at putting in routine, then I’ve missed the spirit of all that God has within these vital and important spiritual disciplines.
Leviticus 19:2 says “You must be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.”
“But, this does not mean that holiness is something to strive for; Israel’s holiness is a reality.” (A Theological Introduction to the OT)
This was a call to the Israelites to live within the truth of the relationship in which the people already stand.
I am going to repeat this… This was a call to the Israelites to live within the truth of the relationship in which the people already stand.
This is the same as to why Paul writes the letters to the “saints” of each church. It’s not necessarily because they were acting like saints! It was because Paul was reminding them the truth of who they were and calling them to act like it.
If Paul were to write a letter today, it would be started with something like this…
“To the saints of God’s church in Sherwood. May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.”
Now, into our main text for today.
Corinthians 12:1-3 “Now, dear brothers and sisters, regarding your question about the special abilities the Spirit gives us. I don’t want you to misunderstand this. You know that when you were still pagans, you were led astray and swept along in worshiping speechless idols. So I want you to know that no one speaking by the Spirit of God will curse Jesus, and no one can say Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit.”
Speechless Idols
When we go along our own path, our own way, we are led on to do our own thing. We worship “speechless idols.” During this time, they literally spoke of formed statues representing other gods. Here are some examples of idols we might worship today:
Our identity and status
Financial security
What we have accomplished
Our appearance
Entertainment
Our opinions
Physical attraction and lust
Comfort
Our families
Our ability to influence
Many of these don’t seem to be “speechless” do they? There is a lot of noise in the world.
But we have to ask if any of these are saying anything worthwhile.
Do these idols or gods drive us to declare “JESUS IS LORD”?
Or do we hold back because we aren’t quite ready to kill our connection to these speechless idols?
What a different image than an advocate who speaks for us and encourages us and empowers us! We know that the Spirit of God is working in us if we can declare that Jesus is Lord.
We can only live righteously by having the Spirit of God working in us.
Galatians 5:22-23 “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!”
We might be familiar with this passage, but let’s continue on.
Galatians 5:24-25 says, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives.”
Killing our desires is so countercultural to what the world communicates to us. Their message is that we are entitled to US. I am entitled to ME. My self-care. My rights. My calling. My path. My identity. What’s right for me?
But when we die to ourselves, it means we seek out what’s entitled to God first. God’s glory. When we wake in the morning, we sacrifice what we think we are entitled to. We lay it on the altar and we look for “the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives.”
So what?
Following the Spirit’s leading isn’t as mystical as it initially sounds. Let’s pick up in 1 Corinthians 12:4.
Verses 4-10: “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all. There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord. God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us. A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other. To one person the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice; to another the same Spirit gives a message of special knowledge. The same Spirit gives great faith to another, and to someone else the one Spirit gives the gift of healing. He gives one person the power to perform miracles, and another the ability to prophesy. He gives someone else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God or from another spirit. Still another person is given the ability to speak in unknown languages, while another is given the ability to interpret what is being said.”
Empowered and Gifted
We are equally empowered and gifted
Equal empowerment and equal gifts do not equal the same thing.
Notice here that there are a number of different spiritual gifts. And not all of them are listed here! What should be noted is that the Holy Spirit is not at work more in one gift over another gift. There isn’t one gift that is superior. Nor is there a different God that is served when we live out what we are good at. It is the same Lord we serve. It is the same God at work in all of us. There is not one gift that is superior to another.
Verse 11: “It is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have.”
I am ushered into the presence of God by my worship leaders.
Our Alpha participants are blessed by our social committee with their gift of hospitality, who ensure everyone is cared for.
We enjoy creativity and craft through our decor team, who make our sanctuary and lobby beautiful.
Our building is well cared for and our budget thought through carefully through the leadership and skill of our trustees and stewards.
When I sit in our women’s group and I hear the “wise advice” and “special knowledge” that is imparted by those sitting around me, I lean in and listen.
I know that we have prayer warriors who are keeping us moving forward with their intercession to God.
What we know is that we are empowered by and with the same Spirit.
Returning to Galatians, 5:26 says “Let us not become conceited, or provoke one another, or be jealous of one another.”
We are blessed to be a blessing, like Abraham was in Genesis 12. We don’t determine which gift we get to have. But we get to receive the blessing of our gift in order to be a blessing to others.
Different Backgrounds But Same Body
Wrapping up our 1 Corinthians 12 passage, verses 12-13: “The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit.”
We all come from different backgrounds.
You might be a true Oregonian. Like me, you might not be.
Maybe you’ve been financially blessed. Maybe you’ve struggled to make ends meet.
Some of you were born and raised in Christian homes, and you’ve never strayed. Some have known Jesus for only a short number of years. You might fall somewhere in between.
The truth is we all are a part of the same body and that is by one Spirit. This is good news! We share the same Spirit that is given to us from God!
This is the same Spirit that Jesus promised us in John 14:16, to be our Advocate that will never leave us.
This is the same Spirit that baptized and filled the apostles in the upper room.
This is the same Spirit that empowers the Christians in Athiest China and Muslim Africa to continue pressing on to declare the truth of Jesus, when their literal lives are at stake.
This is the same Spirit that hovered over the waters before Creation.
This is the same Spirit that invites us to “Come” into life in Revelation 22:17.
Again, we share in this same Spirit that is given to us from God, and we all share in it equally.
Because when the Spirit of God lives in us, we can’t help but to declare Jesus is Lord.
It is by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit that we can both live rightly and step boldly into our gifts, without envy of others, to trust that God has not made a mistake with how he has made us, when he has made us, or that any part of us is a mistake.
Did you hear that?
You are already empowered!
If you are here today, and you just don’t know if you can verbally declare that Jesus is Lord but you want to know more about all that we were talking about today - about the Holy Spirit, about having an Advocate, about being empowered to both live rightly and serve fully - I will be here after the service to talk with you. You may have other questions or aren’t even sure what your gifts are. Let’s meet up and talk through this stuff.
Father, Thank you for the gift of your Holy Spirit. Help us to step into living righteously, as you already have called us holy and saints. Help us to know our gifts and be empowered to live them out. I’m all for Jesus, all my days and hours. Empower us as we go out to live this. Amen
Can I declare in my heart and with my mouth that Jesus is Lord?
Does my inward faith turn outward?
How will I live differently knowing I have the Advocate?
