12/17/06 The Spirit Without Measure
We are going to stay with our study of John for one more week
before we take a two week break
to look at some Christmas and New Years themes.
And even though there are some more things
in that interview between Jesus and Nicodemus
that I’d enjoy spending more time on,
I think it’s best if we move ahead
to yet another personal interview,
and one that I think you may find even more fascinating
than the one we’ve spent the past few weeks on.
This one takes place
between Jesus and a woman
who is coming from a very different background than did Nicodemus.
But before we get there
let me say just a few words
about the verses that connect these two interviews.
The interview between Jesus and Nicodemus
ends with chapter 3 verse 21.
Then in verses 22 through 36
John gives us an account of the Lord’s actions
in the days immediately following His departure from Jerusalem.
As you may recall,
throughout His public ministry
Jesus used the regions to the north of Israel around the Sea of Galilee,
and especially the city of Capernaum, as His home base.
Though He was born in Bethlehem in the south of Israel,
when Joseph and Mary returned from their exile in Egypt following Herod’s death
they established their home to the north in Nazareth,
the town in which Jesus then spent His childhood.
The north was where He grew up,
and the north was where he centered a significant amount of His public ministry.
But His offer of Himself as the promised Messiah
was an offer He was making to the nation as a whole
and so, following this first public appearance in Jerusalem,
the one that we have recorded for us
in the last few verses of John chapter 2 and the first few verses of chapter 3,
when Jesus leaves the city
He first goes south, not north,
so that He can present Himself and His message
to the southern regions of the nation.
Certainly there were many from that region
who had been in Jerusalem for the Passover feast,
people who had seen and heard Him there
and who had then returned home with accounts of what had happened.
But that was not the only thing
that tied Jesus to this region.
Thirty years earlier
there were some there
who had been invited by their God
to share in Jesus’ remarkable entrance into this world.
LUK 2:8-14 And in the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields, and keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. And the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths, and lying in a manger." And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased."
The memories of such events in small towns
and rural communities do not die.
Those shepherds who heard the angels announcing the birth of Christ,
spread the word of what had happened
to many throughout that region.
And people remembered,
and certainly they wondered what had become of that child.
And then, too, there was the arrival of those foreigners from the east,
with their great caravan
and obvious wealth,
looking for a child to worship,
a child born king of the Jews.
Such things simply didn’t happen in small towns in Israel,
and when they did,
the memories of such events did not fade.
And then, of course,
there was the hideous slaughter of all of those infant sons by Herod
in his frantic attempt to destroy this child born King of Israel.
All those events had happened just thirty years earlier,
easily within the memories of many who were still there,
and following His departure from Jerusalem, when Jesus returned to this sothern region as an adult,
He found an eager audience
and received a strong positive response to His message and Himself.
In fact, the response was so strong,
and so positive
that word of what was happening in the south
traveled quickly to the north
where John the Baptist and his loyal disciples
continued their call for repentance to the Nation.
And it bothered some of those disciples of John,
the ones most loyal to him and to his bold proclamation.
They were concerned because, to them,
it seemed as if this new comer,
this Jesus was overshadowing John and his great prophetic work.
And they were concerned, too,
because John didn’t seem to be concerned in the least.
And what we have recorded for us in the last half of John chapter 3
is a conversation between John the Baptist and his disciples,
a conversation in which John gives his final, absolute public validation of Christ.
In this passage he describes himself
as the friend of the bridegroom
who sees the joy of the bridegroom as he prepares to receive his bride,
and he shares in his friend’s great joy.
He describes Jesus as the One from heaven
and describes himself as the one from earth,
and then, in effect says, “So obviously, if one of us is from heaven,
and the other from earth,
which of us should have the greater authority?”
And then he concludes his public validation of Jesus
with what is certainly the clearest
and, at the time it was spoken,
the most significant prophetic words spoken about Christ prior to the resurrection.
They are words that leave no doubt as to why Jesus later referred to John
as the greatest prophet who ever lived.
These are those words of John:
JOH 3:33-36 "He who has received His witness has set his seal to this, that God is true. For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand. He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."
A big part of the reason why
we do not appreciate the remarkable power
and prophetic nature of these words
is because we forget when they were spoken.
We read them looking back,
bringing to them our knowledge
of the full revelation of God’s work through Christ.
But when John spoke these words
he knew almost nothing of what was to come.
In fact, he was killed long before most of it took place.
He never traveled with Jesus,
never heard any of Jesus’ own prophetic statements about the cross,
or the resurrection,
or the Church to come.
All he ever knew
was what was revealed to him by the Spirit of God.
And yet here, at this point in Christ’s presentation of Himself,
literally just a matter of weeks following Jesus’ entrance into public life,
he reveals with power, simplicity, and clarity
everything the human race most needs to understand about Jesus Christ.
He begins with the truth from which all others flow.
He who has received His witness has set his seal to this, that God is true. For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God...
To believe the words of Christ
is to believe the words of God.
Any voice,
any supernatural revelation of any kind,
any religious authority that does not point us directly to Jesus Christ
is calling God a liar,
which, of course, is what the human race has been doing
since Adam and Eve first accepted the voice of Satan as truth,
GEN 3:4 And the serpent said to the woman, "You surely shall not die!
And the first thing John says here
is that when we believe Christ
we are reversing this, the greatest evil of all,
our refusal to believe our Creator,
and we are setting our seal to this, that God is true.
Then, the next thing John says
is one that his listeners would not understand,
and certainly would not have believed
until the day of Pentecost following the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
“...for He gives the Spirit without measure.”
And that “measure” thing is the one
that no one could have expected.
Certainly Israel had a history
of a relationship with God
in which He would, at times,
place His Spirit into one of His people
for a limited time,
in a limited way,
for a specific purpose.
It was a measured, temporary intervention of God in a person’s life
to accomplish a specific purpose.
Some examples may help here.
Under the leadership of Moses we read of the following incident that took place.
NUM 11:24 So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord. Also, he gathered seventy men of the elders of the people, and stationed them around the tent.
NUM 11:25 Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him; and He took of the Spirit who was upon him and placed Him upon the seventy elders. And it came about that when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do it again.
But they did not do it again...
They had one brief encounter
with the working of the Spirit of God in their lifetime,
and then He was gone.
This particular incident fascinates me
because of a statement Moses makes a few verses later.
Two of those who received the Spirit during that brief time
prophesied publicly in the camp
and one of the Israelites who heard them
ran and told Moses what they were doing, urging Moses to restrain them.
But Moses responded,
NUM 11:29 "Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!"
Even then Moses felt the longing,
the hunger for the time when somehow, some way God would pour out His Spirit
on all of His people.
But for Moses it was only a longing
that he knew could never become a reality.
And when we read through the book of Judges
there is a pattern we see repeated again and again,
a pattern of Israel falling away from the Lord,
and their lives becoming so miserable that they finally cried out to Him,
and then God responding by placing His Spirit upon some man or woman for a brief time,
a person who then,
through the working of the Spirit of God in them,
brings a measure of relief, and redemption, and stability to the nation.
JDG 3:10 And the Spirit of the Lord came upon (Caleb’s younger brother), and he judged Israel....
JDG 6:34 So the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon...
JDG 11:29 Now the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, ...
JDG 14:6 And the Spirit of the Lord came upon Sampson mightily...
1SA 11:6 Then the Spirit of God came upon Saul mightily ...
Always it was just one person,
for a brief time,
for a specific purpose,
and then the Spirit departed.
But then we come to this remarkable prophetic statement made by John,
a statement in which he says, “...for He gives the Spirit without measure.”
And that statement is remarkable for two reasons.
First, it is remarkable because he attributes to Jesus
the authority to give the Spirit of God,
an authority that obviously rests with God alone.
And second,
he says that when He gives the Spirit
it will be without measure.
It will not be for just one person,
or for just a few,
or for just a brief time and a specific purpose,
but it will be...well, without measure - without limits.
How could such a thing be?
How could the Spirit of God
take up permanent residence in anyone’s life?
How could He take up residence in everyone of God’s people?
How could anyone know God’s plan,
that through Christ He would not just forgive our sin,
but that He would remove it from us forever,
as far as the east is from the west,
and that we would become, at the spirit level of our being,
His holy ones,
as righteous, and pure, and holy as God Himself,
making the impossible possible, 2CO 6:16 ... For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, "I will dwell in them and walk among them; And I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”
And since I’ve gotten us into this,
maybe I should say a little bit more about it
before we look at the final words of John’s prophecy.
I know from my own past
that this Holy Spirit thing can be a little,
or maybe a lot confusing to us.
The truth is,
like all of the crucial truths about our life with the King,
Satan has done a superb job
of corrupting and distorting and religionizing this one as well.
And maybe the easiest and quickest way for me to do this
is simply to share with you
what I consider to be the top nine evidences
of the presence of the Spirit of God within a person.
Most of these become a part of our lives
in greater and greater measure
as we grow in our walk with the King,
but none of them can exist within a person
apart from the working of the Spirit of God.
And all of them stand in sharp contrast
to the type of things produced within us by religion.
Religion will seek to bring about change within us
through group pressure,
or through fear,
or through guilt or shame,
or through promised rewards,
or through ego motivations that promise to make us look good to those around us.
But the key motivational tools of religion
are always emotion-based,
promising either good feelings
or relief from bad feelings if we submit and comply.
That is not what the Spirit of God does within us.
Once He takes up residence within us
He literally begins a life-long process
of recreating us from the inside out.
And let me give just a sample list
of the type of things He does.
First, He creates within us
a hunger for God.
What are you doing here this morning?
Why in the world would you invest half of your one day of freedom from work
to be here?
It doesn’t improve your social standing in the community.
There’s certainly no financial benefit to it.
With many,
and I think probably with most of you
the answer to that question is rooted in a hunger within you
that you may not have even dared put a name to.
It’s a hunger for your God,
and what happens here on Sunday mornings
seems to help with that hunger.
Well, I want you to know
that that hunger could not exist within you
apart from the working of the Spirit of God in your life.
And there are many other evidences of His presence in our lives as well.
Submission to His Word is one.
Every single week I stand before you
and present to you truth from the Bible
as if what we have written here
is the bottom line in all of life,
absolutely reliable,
with absolute authority over us.
But I’ll never waste my time or yours
trying to convince you of the absolute authority of Scripture.
Only the Spirit of God within a person
can bring about that assurance.
Only the presence of the Author within us
can give us assurance of the reliability of what is written.
A third evidence of the reality of the Spirit of God within us
is a growing awareness of His love.
And this is a far greater achievement of the Spirit than most of us realize.
Any fool can and should fear God,
but only the Spirit of God
can open us to the incredible reality of His love for us,
a discovery that is designed by Him
to become the root motivation of our lives.
A forth powerful evidence of the presence of the Spirit of God within us
is conviction of specific sins with a pathway to change.
Religion is very good at bringing us a sense of shame,
a feeling of unworthiness,
even a sense of guilt over specific sins.
But that is not what the Spirit of God does within us.
When He steps into our lives
and targets some specific behavior or attitude,
He does so because He wants us free - free from the bondage that sin always brings into our lives.
And one of the key evidences of His work in this area
is that when He addresses some issue in our lives
He always does it within the context of some pathway to healing He offers us,
a pathway that will help us to break the power of the sin.
Yet another evidence of the life of the Spirit within us
is what I’ll call the fellowship of the saints.
I don’t really like my wording in that one
because it sounds very churchy,
but maybe I could express it best
by saying that He gives us the ability
to recognize the Spirit’s presence in others
and when we do
we discover a sense of connection with them
that has nothing to do with doctrine, or denominations, or race, or culture, or heritage.
We are simply drawn to the presence of Christ in those around us.
Another huge evidence of the Spirit within us
is found in His giving us the ability to love those we once hated.
Only the Spirit of God can accomplish that,
and when He does
He brings with it, too, a longing within us
for the redemptive work of God in their lives.
And another is what I’ll call
the loss of the love for the lies.
Those things that once drove us,
that once fueled our lives,
that once gave us our reason for getting out of bed in the morning
begin to loose their power over us.
Maybe I could say it best
by saying simply that we find ourselves
no longer wanting to be who we once were.
Another evidence of the presence of the Spirit within us
is the ability to hope in God.
And by that I mean simply
that we find that HE becomes an anchor in our lives
as nothing else ever has been or ever could be.
We find ourselves thinking and feeling,
“Lord, because You are,
I have hope.
Because you are,
I can face today,
and not fear tomorrow.”
I can’t explain that,
I only know it is a work of the Spirit within us.
And the last evidence I’d mention
of the presence of the Spirit of God within us
is the way in which He creates within us
a longing for a life that honors the King.
And here again,
it is not a fear thing,
or a shame thing,
or a guilt thing,
it is a love response within our spirit to Him.
We simply long for a life that honors Him.
With all of these, of course,
there is very much of a growth aspect to them.
But if that growth is not evident,
if there is not a growing reality of these things within a person,
there is, at the very least, something profoundly troubled with that person’s relationship with God.
Well, let me quickly bring us back to John’s remarkable prophetic words about Christ.
He describes Christ as the One who will give the Spirit without measure,
and then He goes on to say,
The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand. He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.
And here again
we find the clear message
that Jesus Christ is the one and only dividing line in the human race.
And let me emphasize that John includes that final statement about the wrath of God
not because God actively brings wrath on those who reject His offer through Christ,
but because being under the justified wrath of God
is the default setting for the human race.
We all enter this world separated from Him,
with spirits in defiant rebellion against Him,
believing we have both the right and the ability to run our own lives.
God’s goal for our lives
is to free each of us from the natural consequences of our sin
by our accepting His offer
of having our sin, all of it,
transferred to the account of Christ,
so that we then stand righteous before Him forever.
And all we have to do is ask.
Well, obviously I didn’t get us into that next personal interview
that I told you about when we started,
but we’ll come back to it after the first of the year
when we return to our study of the Gospel of John.