Speaker: Mark Driscoll
Venue: Together on a Mission 2008 Conference
Location: Brighton, England
Topic: Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in Luke and Acts

Romans 8:9-11

⁹But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. ¹⁰But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness. ¹¹If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you.

I would like to try to show from God's Word this morning that if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then he most certainly is going to give life to your mortal bodies. God promises clearly and unmistakably that if his Spirit has taken up residence in your heart, then, even though your body dies, he will raise it from the dead like he did the body of Jesus. Let's rivet our attention on Romans 8:11 and let God write it on the table of our hearts as the supreme personal relevance of Easter.

Matthew 12:18-21

Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my Spirit upon him, and he shall proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will any one hear his voice in the streets; he will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick, till he brings justice to victory; and in his name will the Gentiles hope.

As I have tried to prepare my heart to meet Christ on Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Resurrection Day, a series of pictures has come back to my mind again and again. Let me try to describe it for you.

John 4:16-26

If people are spiritually asleep you have to shock them, startle them, scandalize them, if you want them to hear what you say. Jesus was especially good at this. When he wants to teach us something about worship he uses a whore. "Go call your husband!" "I don't have a husband." "That's right. But you've had five, and the man you sleep with now is not your husband." She was shocked. We're shocked. But Jesus simply sits there on the edge of the well with his hands folded, looking at the woman with razors in his eyes ready to teach us about worship.

The first thing we learn is that worship has to do with real life. It is not a mythical interlude in a week of reality. Worship has to do with adultery and hunger and racial conflict. Jesus is bone-weary from the journey, hot, sweaty, thirsty--and he decides: "Yes, even now, just now I will seek someone to worship God--a harlot, a Samaritan adulteress.

Luke 4:16-21

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the sabbath day. And he stood up to read; and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

In Luke 4:18-19 Jesus reads Isaiah 61:1-2. He sits down, looks at the crowd of worshipers in the synagogue at Nazareth, and says, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." They may have thought that Jesus was another prophet like John the Baptist, announcing that the Messiah would soon come. But that is not what Jesus meant.

Luke 4:1-14

Jesus said in John 8:44, "The devil was a murderer from the beginning and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him." A murderer and a liar by nature--that's Satan. But we don't always see our enemy so clearly.

Last Thursday Noel and I took about three hours of our day off visiting computer stores to find out what sort of word processing possibilities we might be able to afford. We went to the library and read the latest Consumer Reports and then went to four stores downtown. It was an amazing experience. I came home with a stack of literature and with my mind reeling. Here's what I learned.

Luke 1:26-37

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!" But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.

He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there will be no end." And Mary said to the angel, "How shall this be, since I have no husband?" And the angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.

2 Peter 1:20-21

First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

On June 27, 1819, Adoniram Judson baptized his first convert in Burma. His wife, Ann Hasseltine, described how Moung Nau had responded to the Scripture: "A few days ago I was reading with him Christ's Sermon on the Mount. He was deeply impressed and unusually solemn. 'These words,' said he, 'take hold on my liver; they make me tremble."' God spoke through Isaiah the prophet 2700 years ago and said, "This is the man to whom I will look, he that is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word … Hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble at his word" (Isaiah 66:2-5).

Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him." Jesus answered him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicodemus said to him, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?" Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born anew.' The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit." Nicodemus said to him, "How can this be?" Jesus answered him, "Are you a teacher of Israel and yet do not understand this?"
(John 3:1-10)

Can the Ethiopian change his skin
or the leopard his spots?
Then also you can do good
who are accustomed to do evil.
(Jer. 13:23)

Can a man in love with his money enter into the Kingdom of God? "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle"
(Mt. 19:24)

Can the natural man welcome the things of the Spirit of God? "They are foolishness to him and he is not able to comprehend them, because they are spiritually assessed"
(1 Cor. 2:14)

Can the human mind, as it comes into being and grows by merely natural processes, please God? "The mindset of the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God"
(Rom. 8:7-8)

Can a man enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born when he is old? Do you feel the shock of what Jesus was requiring of Nicodemus when he said, "You must be born again" (John 3:7)? It is impossible for a man to cause himself to be born again. We can't change the color of our skin. A leopard can't change his spots. A camel can't go through the eye of a needle. A natural man can't welcome spiritual things. The mindset of fallen humanity can't please God'. And old men can't be born.

Acts 2:32-42

³² This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. ³³ Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you see and hear. ³⁴ For David did not ascend into the heavens but he himself says, 'The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, ³⁵ till I make thy enemies a stool for thy feet.' ³⁶ Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom You crucified."

³⁷ Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brethren, what shall we do?" ³⁸ And Peter said to them, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹ For the promise is to you and to your children and to all that are far off, every one whom the Lord our God calls to him." ⁴⁰ And he testified with many other words and exhorted them, saying, "Save yourselves from this crooked generation." ⁴¹ So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. ⁴² And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

The two questions I want to try to answer today are: 1) What does it mean to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit? and: 2) How do we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit? Our focus will be on the book of Acts and on Luke's intention as he wrote it.