Gift-Giving 3: The Giving of the Holy Spirit
December 9, 2007
God always wanted to enjoy intimate fellowship with man on a daily basis. That is why we were created—to love Him and spend time with Him each and every day. The place He created for us was without sin, sickness, death, or even weeds. We did not have to punch a time card or worry about from where our next meal would come. When we forfeited all of that so we could know evil, He made a new earth so we could live with Him. Christmas, meaning the birth of the God-man Jesus, is a part of God’s plan for getting us into that eternal kingdom of God. As we celebrate this Christmas and give our gifts, let us remember that God gave us Jesus—the greatest gift God ever gave us. Jesus lovingly came into the word to show us how to live. This morning we will discover more about the greatest gift Jesus ever gave us—the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit so that we could live the way He lived on earth.
Luke 11 begins with Jesus off somewhere praying. His disciples observed Jesus praying and wanted to learn how to pray just like He prayed. They asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples” (11:1). Jesus taught them what we today call “The Lord’s Prayer.” The Matthew 6 version of this prayer is the one we memorize, but Luke’s recording, while somewhat shorter, is almost word for word with Matthew’s version as far as it goes.
While the prayer itself is important, this morning we will focus on what Jesus taught should motivate us to pray. It is in the form of a parable. He said:
"Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.' "Then the one inside answers, 'Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs (11:5-8).
As with most of the stories in the Bible, there are historical and cultural differences between Jesus’ audience and those of us sitting here today. Instead of your home and your neighborhood, picture a small village with one road leading into town and one road leading out. Most of the town’s people are subsistence farmers, huddled together in small cottages at night for protection, who work their fields by day. All of the family, parents and children and maybe even grandparents, sleeps in one room. When the lights go out, everyone goes to bed; when the work needs to be done, everyone gets up. The lives of everyone in the village depend on knowing what is going on in the village or more succinctly put, on knowing everyone else’s business. When a new person arrives in town, everyone needs to know why he is in town and to whose family he belongs. People have to share most everything to survive.
In such a setting the cultural rules are tightly held. Everyone needs to understand their role and place. Values like shame, guilt, honor, righteousness, and sharing are what help everyone prosper. When the neighbor goes to his friend at night, he knows who had the bread he needs because everyone knows who baked bread that day. He feels free to ask for some bread, because he knows that friends share with friends in need. Everyone understands the neighbor needs enough bread to set before his visitor because failure to provide for his visitor would bring shame on not only him but the entire village.
Still, for the neighbor in this story to help his friend, he is going to have to climb over his wife and children. Then when he gets to the door and opens it the noise will wake his entire family. And finally, as everyone knows, getting out of a warm bed in the middle of the night when it is cold outside is not anyone’s first choice. Jesus is telling His audience that even though these three things are true, each and everyone of them would indeed get up and give his neighbor all the bread he needs. Jesus is also reminding everyone in his audience that they would feel free to ask their friend for help in their time of need.
That is really the definition all of us have of friendship. Friends ask friends for help when they need help and friends help friends to the best of their ability when their friends are in trouble. We understand these truths.
These truths speak to our prayer life. Jesus wants all of us know that when we are praying our Holy Father (11:2) we are also praying to one who is our friend. So Jesus tells us to: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened” (11:9-10). When we need “our daily bread” (11:3) we are supposed to ask our Heavenly Father and he will open the door and give us the bread we need. How can we be so sure God will give us what we need? Jesus says, "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?” (11:11-12). When our kids are hungry and they want a fish or an egg to eat, we will give them what they want/need to eat. That is not hard to believe. It is our nature. That is what it means to be a parent. Even if we have to go without, if our children are hungry we will give them what they need to eat. None of us would put something poisoned in the hunger-driven outstretched hand of our children.
Thus Jesus’ parable goes right to the heart of what we believe to be true about the character of our Heavenly Father. God chose the title by which we should call Him: “Father.” If we believe He is our Holy Father, a Father of such character as to be defined by the word “Holy,” then we should expect nothing less than what we need when we express our needs to Him. In fact, Jesus is saying we should expect more than our earthly fathers would give us. That is what prayer is; that is how prayer works.
The only problem for some of us in this equation is the “asking” part. Some of us want to live by just sitting down at the dinner table every night and expecting dinner to be served when and how we want it served. God puts “asking” first in this three-part demand because “asking” demands that we acknowledge our dependence on Him. A child is dependent on his or her parents and doesn’t care. Children have no trouble playing while parents do all the work. But somehow too many adults have trouble grasping this truth when it comes to our relationship with God. The same sin that led to our expulsion from the garden, wanting to make our own decisions rather than trusting our Heavenly Father to know what is best, is the same sin that keeps so many of us today from acknowledging our dependence on our Father. Still, if that were all there is to it, I believe almost everyone would be a Christian.
The real problems begin in the next phrase in the Lord’s Prayer and in the second part of Jesus’ three-part demand. After teaching us to ask for our daily bread when we pray, Jesus taught us to ask: “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us” (11:4). When addressing what should motivate us to pray, Jesus told us to “seek and you will find” (11:9). This means our relationship with our Heavenly Father has to go beyond our physical needs to the needs we have in the relationship itself. Our earthly parents cannot take away our sin, although they can forgive us when we sin against them. Their forgiveness and our willingness to “seek” that forgiveness will result in restored relationships no matter what has happened to separated us. We have learned that without the granting of forgiveness here on earth, none of us would have any relationships. Love overcomes the hurts we inflict upon each other and enables forgiveness to do it work.
The same is true in our relationship with our Heavenly Father. He is willing to forgive us the multitude of sins we have committed against Him, but we have to want that forgiveness and be willing to come to Him to receive that forgiveness. That is what it means to “seek” Him. When we come to Him to have our relationship with Him founded or restored, he says our knocking will result in Him opening the door to us.
Still, there is a tremendous difference between our earthly parents and our Heavenly Father that Jesus says we have to learn. He describes it with the words, “how much more!” (11:13). Christianity is not just about going out into the world alone and then coming home to find the table set and the meal prepared. Christianity is not just about doing our best to form healthy relationships and coming to the one we offend and to God to seek forgiveness for our offenses. How much more God wants for us! This is where the great gift of Jesus comes into play.
As a man in a human body, Jesus could only be in one place at a time. He was bound on earth by the same laws that govern our existence. However, when He gave us the Holy Spirit who can and will indwell us, He knew we would never be alone. Instead of relying on our own wisdom and strength, we are now able to call out to the Holy Spirit and receive the answers and power we need to keep from falling or sinning. Through the Holy Spirit we can live the same way Jesus lived on this earth. The challenge comes in doing the work Jesus did to live the way Jesus lived. If we want to live this way, then we must do the following three things.
1. We need to prepare for each day, week, month, and year in advance. As much of our prayer time needs to be spent praying “lead us not into temptation” (11:4) as in spent in asking for forgiveness. If we fail to prepare, we will find ourselves in the wrong places at the wrong times. We will only be able to hear Jesus say, “The spirit is willing, but the body is weak” (Mark 14:38) and begin the work of restoration. If we want victory in life, we need to: “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.” Only God has this greater perspective and knows what is headed our way. When we submit to Him in prayer, His gift, the Holy Spirit, will strengthen us and guide us so that we will either avoid temptation or persevere through it when the trial is indeed of God and not of our own weakness.
2. We need to listen to His guidance every moment. All of us hear the equivalent of voices telling us what to do. The voices may disguise themselves as desires, urges, or wants. They may come through the voice of a friend, an advertisement, or a thought. Fears may surface in any given situation, offers may tempt our selfish desires, or friends may try to override our consciences. We all are bombarded daily with opportunities to do a variety of things. The Holy Spirit who is our true conscience and guide will be one of those voices every time we have a decision to make. The question is whether or not we will hear Him and choose to do what He wants us to do or whether we will respond to some other voice. The more time we spend learning to distinguish His voice and how He talks to us, the more likely we will be to choose His voice.
3. We need to do what the Holy Spirit says. This is a matter of training our will through the trials and errors of life. I promise you we will all make mistakes in the beginning. Some of them are honest mistakes. The Bible says, “Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner” (1 Timothy 2:14). The evil one is smarter than we are and he will trick us. But we should learn from these mistakes. Mistakes are not an excuse to quit learning; death is our only valid excuse. The most important lesson we should learn is to recognize the different voices and training our wills to respond to the voice of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus’ gift, the Holy Spirit, gives us not only hope but the wherewithal to succeed in this world. He tells us we can tap into the right answer to every problem through prayer. He motivates us to pray by telling us when we ask, seek, and knock we have a “how much more” Heavenly Father listening and responding to what we have said and done. When we ask for bread, our Heavenly Father gives us bread for today and a bake shop, the raw materials, and a baking instructor for tomorrow. All He asks is that we show up for work each day and learn from Him.