Who is the Holy Spirit?

My first sermon of the series on the Holy Spirit was about who the Holy Spirit is. This was a general introduction of the Holy Spirit. It was by no means exhaustive but it was the basics of introducing someone to the Holy Spirit. Here is the basic outline I used.

I. The Holy Spirit is a person.
         A. He has a mind (Rom. 8:26-27)
         B. He has a will (1 Cor. 12:11)
         C. He has emotions (Eph. 4:30).
         D. He communicates (Acts 13:2, 16:6-7)
II. The Holy Spirit is Deity (God)
         A. God’s characteristics
                  1. He is omniscient (1 Cor. 2:10-11)
                  2. He is omnipotent (Luke 1:35)
                  3. He is omnipresent (Psalm 139:7-10)
         B. God’s existence
                  1. He is eternal (Heb. 9:14)
                  2. He is part of the Trinity (Matt. 3:16-17)
III. What are the Implications?
         A. We can have a relationship with Him.
         B. We should worship Him.
         C. He is not far off

This provided a nice introduction to the whole series. The main aspects I portrayed through this sermon was first, that the Holy Spirit is a person and not a force nor an idea. Scripture shows He possesses characteristics of personhood which is an important aspect of understanding who the Holy Spirit is. It should be noted that "person" here is used in the classical sense of the word and should be distinguished from "human." Saying the Spirit is a person is NOT saying that He is human but instead it is saying that He is an individual being.

Secondly, while He is a person, He is fully God and possesses the same characteristics as the other two persons of the Trinity. It is important to understand that the Spirit is wholly God and is equal to the Father and Son. While taking a different role, much as the Son took on a different role, the Spirit is still an eternal part of the Trinity and is God.

Finally, I emphasized what different these truths should make in the daily life of every believer. Because the Spirit is a person, we can relate to Him. Because He is God, we should worship Him. Because He is God AND a person, it means that He is not far off but is active in our lives. Again, while not exhaustive, these implications should change how we relate to our God and how we live our lives.

Summary of the Work of the Holy Spirit

OK. So I took a "brief" break from blogging and during that time have preached through a series on the Holy Spirit. I think it was really good for me to preach through that series and I think it was good for our body at Summit as well. In teaching about the Spirit, I truly think He worked in the hearts of many in our congregation. I really enjoyed it and grew through the process.

What spurred my thoughts on doing this series is something with which I challenged my students at Pikes Peak Bible Institute. During our Christian Theology class, we discussed Pneumatology, or the study of the Spirit. I found a nice visual aid on the internet HERE (page 31), which I gave to the students for an overview about the work of the Spirt. I challenged them that this handout would make a great sermon series on a topic which sometimes gets overlooked.

So, I took up the challenge myself. I preached a seven-part series on the Holy Spirit. I will post the sermons but I will note that many of my thoughts came from Systematic Theology books which populate my bookshelf and various sermon outlines morphed into original outlines. In short, I borrowed from everyone to make new outlines which works for my style of preaching.

In the next few days or weeks, I will post my sermon outlines and some thoughts about it. After that, I will go back to my posts on Matthew. I hope these will be helpful and I hope you will leave some feedback.

Matthew Section 8: The Great Commission

In our overview of Matthew, some scholars see a final section of Matthew in 28:11-20. Personally, I believe this should actually be part of the seventh section for several reason. First, I think being a good Jew, Matthew may have made seven sections for his gospel, much like there are seven days to the week. This would be interesting in that the last day of the week was the Sabbath, the rest, and Matthew's seventh section is about the true Sabbath, the rest which comes through Jesus (Heb. 4:8-10).

The second reason I believe this section should be included in the previous section is that every section in his gospel has a major section of Jesus speaking (see the posts regarding the first six sections). However, in the post for section seven, you can see there is no discourse. However, if section 8 was part of section 7, then the Great Commission would be the discourse for the final section of Matthew (I am not sure that all made sense).

The final reason I think this section 8 should be part of section 7 is because if this is a separate section, it seems much too short. It is only 10 verses long. It does not seem like 10 verse constitute a section compared to the other sections Matthew has contructed.

That all being said, I posted this as section 8 just so you all could make your own decision. Here is the visual aide for this section (click picture for large image):


This is either one or two sermons, depending on how much time you want to spend on the Great Commission.

This is the overview of Matthew. I will be posting the individual sermons I am developing for this series. Hopefully, I will be doing so a bit more regularly than I have with the overview. I would love to hear any comments you have on this overview and if the visual aides have been helpful.

Matthew Section 7: The Passion of Christ

The pinnacle of Matthew's gospel his recording the last week of Christ's life on earth. In this section, he does not spend time detailing the whole week as the other evangelists do. Instead, he focuses in on the night before the crucifixion, the crucifixion, and briefly on the resurrection. Therefore, we have a short story about Judas' betrayal and the institution of the ordinance of the Lord's Supper.

An interesting characteristic found in this section is that there is no major discourse found. In all the other sections, Matthew records a major discourse or sermon from Jesus. In the Passion section, Jesus needs no sermon as his sacrifice on the cross says more than any words can capture. And I think Matthew intended to capture this idea. Each section, Jesus preaches, teaches, rebukes, or something. In every section a powerful discourse to remember what Jesus said. But this section records the most powerful, loving, amazing thing Jesus had ever done: sacrificed Himself for us. Therefore, the real discourse of this section, and of the whole gospel, could be considered Matthew 27:32-56.

Here is the visual aide for this section (Click picture for larger image):

I anticipate maybe 20 sermons from this section. However, knowing that this is the purpose for the gospel to be written, and since this part of the gospel is the crux of the Christian faith, I could see possibly moving slower through this section.

While there is a brief section Jesus' resurrection, which is the real hope for believers, Matthew focuses mostly on Jesus sacrifice. This makes some sense. As he was writing to Jews, he paints Jesus as the ultimate Passover Lamb. What an amazing God we serve and how thankful I am that Jesus did pay the price for us!