The Spirit Poured Out

Life in the Spirit --Allen Snapp
 --Grace Community Church

June 30, 2013  ---  Isa. 44:1-5 

The Spirit Poured Out

This will be the last message of the series Life in the Spirit, and I thought it would be appropriate to close the series by reminding us of the church’s need for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We need more than a sound biblical theology of the Spirit, we need to experience the power and presence of the Spirit in our midst. We need more than an understanding of the Spirit, we need an outpouring of the Spirit.

I had the privilege of pastoring a church on Long Island for almost a decade and though I don’t like tags I would describe Lamb’s Chapel as “charismatic lite”. After I had been pastoring there a few years I began to attend SGM conferences and over time the Lord began to show me that we were deficient in the exposition of God’s Word and our understanding of the gospel of Jesus.

So when we came to Corning to plant a church, it was very important to me that we anchor this church in expositional preaching of God’s word and keeping the gospel of Jesus Christ central to all we do – and that’s a commitment I pray we never move away from - because the good news of Jesus is the only message God has given the church and the only name given under heaven by which men can be saved (Acts 4:12).

But as I look back, I think the pendulum swung too far the other way in that my confidence in the power and fruit of God’s word caused me to de-emphasise our desperate need for the power of God’s Spirit. Don’t get me wrong, I knew we needed the Holy Spirit –– it’s just that I think my confidence in the Word and the gospel to some degree crowded out my recognition of how deeply we need the Spirit to empower the word and the gospel. The Bible doesn’t tell us that we need one or the other, it assures us we need both. We need God’s word, and we need God’s Spirit. The old saying is true: The word without the Spirit will make us dry up, the Spirit without the word will make us blow up. We need the word of God to keep us from going off the rails of error and subjectivity and we need the Holy Spirit for the word to come with power and do the work God intends for it to do. As the Lord says through Isaiah, the church needs an outpouring of the Spirit upon thirsty ground.

My message this morning is really just two simple statements about the outpouring of the Spirit:

I. There is no substitute for the Spirit’s outpouring on the church
. There is power in crying out for the Spirit in the same way that thirsty.


I. There is no substitute for the Spirit’s outpouring on the church
The great 19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon said, Without the Spirit of God we can do nothing. We are as ships without wind or chariots without steeds. Like branches without sap we are withered. Like coals without fire we are useless.

Jim Cymbala writes in his book Fresh Power:
We need something with the mark of heaven upon it. Too much of our religious life is made up of programs and human ideas, talents and strategies. While these have value, they pitifully fail to meet the need of the hour. What is missing today is something from heaven itself, something from God the Holy Spirit that fills and floods our lives... Everything in the service may be doctrinally sound—but there’s nothing from heaven that grips them.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with programs and ideas and talent and strategies – but there is something wrong when the church relies on man’s programs and abilities to do what only the Spirit can do. Nothing but the Spirit can save souls or deliver hardened hearts or heal ruptured marriages or comfort the broken hearted or give boldness to the fearful or hope to the suffering or joy to the dying. Something from God the Holy Spirit, something from heaven that grips them. There is no substitute for the outpouring of the Spirit.

A survey of the OT reveals that often when God spoke of His reviving work in His people, the Spirit was central to that revival. Speaking of the last days, the Lord says through the prophet Joel:

“And it shall come to pass afterward,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.
Even on the male and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit. Joel 2:28-29 ESV

Peter would later preach that this prophecy began to be fulfilled on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the church in power.

In chapter 37, Ezekiel sees a vision of a valley that is full of dry bones and the Lord asks Ezekiel, “can these bones live?” and then has Ezekiel prophesy that these bones would indeed live again. Ezekiel then watches as the dry bones come together and muscle and skin covers them. But at this point there is the form of life, but no life yet. So the Lord has Ezekiel prophesy that breath would breathe on them, and they come alive and form a great army.

In verse 11, the Lord explains the vision:

Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you
shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”

Ezek 37:11-14

Even though the bones come together to form a man, and muscle and skin form it to look like a man, it is not until God puts His Spirit within them that they live. In a similar way, the church needs structure and programs and traditions. Some people look down on tradition, but as someone has said, the minute you do something twice it’s a tradition. We need tradition. We need structure. We need bones. But we also need the Spirit or all those other things are just form without life. Sadly, there are churches that have come to be content with their programs and traditions and think that is enough. The Bible tells us clearly that we desperately need the Holy Spirit to make the form come to life!

Ordinary people in the hands of an extraordinary God

Last week I spoke about how God has ministry assignments for every believer. Ministry isn’t just for the pastors or deacons or community group leaders. Ministry is for every believer. The church is God’s vehicle for carrying on the mission throughout the world. And throughout the Bible we see God using ordinary people to do extraordinary things. If you feel too ordinary to make any difference for the kingdom of God then you are qualified! But over and over again we see that it is the Holy Spirit who takes ordinary people and uses them to do extraordinary things.

Power behind the speaker

Years ago, while on vacation, Janice and Jennifer were shopping for some clothes, and Jared, Matthew and I found ourselves in a Bose electronics store just to kill the time. Soon we were watching a presentation called True 2 Life and they had this massive sound coming out of speakers that were only a foot high. But there was a surprise at the end of the presentation: the salesman came in and pushed down the foot high speakers revealing little cube speakers only about 2 inches high. All that power was coming through 2” inch high speakers!

God delights to pour a lot of power through very small vessels. It’s so that He, and not the vessel, gets the glory.

Gideon was timid and afraid until “the Spirit of the Lord clothed” him (Judges 6:34) to lead Israel against their oppressors.

David was the least of all his brothers, left behind to tend his family’s sheep, but when a lion or a bear came to attack the sheep, the Spirit of the Lord came over him and he tore the lion apart with his bare hands. When Samuel anointed him as king, it says the “Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward.” (1 Sam. 16:13). David’s legacy isn’t a testimony to how great he was, but how great God was through him. He was a 2” inch speaker used as a vessel for the Spirit’s power to flow through.

Then in the NT we come to the upper room. 120 ordinary men and women. Fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes, farmers, carpenters, homemakers - ordinary men and women. Now they had been discipled and taught by Jesus the greatest teacher and mentor ever. They had witnessed miracles and the twelve had performed miracles. Yet Jesus said they weren’t ready for the mission until they received power from on high - the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost the Spirit poured, fire fell, and they turned the world upside down. The power wasn’t the vessels, it was the Spirit working through them!

DL Moody probably led more people to Christ than any other person in the 19th century, yet he was an ordinary man with no formal credentials and who mispronounced words frequently. Why was his ministry so effective at winning the lost? Moody himself tells the story about a day when he was supposed to be trying to raise money to rebuild buildings that he had lost in the great Chicago fire, and yet he writes:

My heart was not in the work of begging...I was crying all the time that God would fill me with His Spirit. Well, one day, in the city of New York – O what a day! – I cannot describe it. I seldom refer to it, it is almost too sacred an experience to name...I can only say that God revealed Himself to me and I had such an experience of His love that I had to ask Him to stay His hand. I went to preaching again. The sermons were not different; I did not present any new truths, and yet hundreds were converted...

The sermons weren’t different – the size of the speaker wasn’t changed. The size of the power coming through the speaker was changed. It was something from heaven that gripped him – and then gripped thousands of others for Christ too. May we be praying for the Spirit to revive His church again, that the infinite power of His Word would flow through small vessels to His glory and praise. Not talking extremism, or emotionalism, or trying to work something up. God isn’t into hype or pretence or sensationalism and we don’t want to be, either. We are talking about God’s people longing and asking for Him to pour out His Spirit on us so that we might see God do, as Isaiah puts it, “awesome things that we did not expect.” Lives touched, souls saved, and hearts convicted. Something from heaven gripping them. Gripping us. There is no substitute for the Spirit’s outpouring on the church. Let’s pray for it!

And that brings me to a second simple statement:

II. There is power in crying out for the Spirit the way that thirsty ground cries out for rain

Let’s go back to Isa. 44:3

I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour My Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessings on your descendants.

How do we move God’s hand to pour out His Spirit in a fresh way upon His church and revive us? I am often amazed at the grace that we see in this church. Over the years we have seen salvations – not as many as we want, but each one precious to God and to us. We have seen lives and hearts changed by the gospel, we have seen young people not lose their love for Jesus as they grow into adulthood. We have seen the Lord build us into a grace-filled congregation that loves Jesus and cares about each other. I was talking to Bill Thomas the owner of the building that we are seeking to buy and he was saying how impressed and surprised he was by the warmth and friendliness of everyone in the church. He also mentioned to me that as he watched us interact one with another it was obvious that people cared about each other. The gracious and loving spirit of this congregation is, I believe, the fruit of the Spirit working through the gospel of grace of our Saviour Jesus Christ.
So I am often blessed and amazed at the grace we’ve experienced, but I am not content. And I hope you aren’t content either. I believe the Lord is calling us into a new season of kingdom expansion. Next week we begin a month long series called “On Mission” – where we will be taking a fresh look at the mission God has called this particular local church to. On July 21st John Bennett from NTM will be sharing with us about missions to unreached people. If the Lord is pleased to give us this building in Painted Post, it’s not to be a resting place where we can kick back and say we’ve arrived, but a launching pad for more ministry and more mission. And the mission of the church cannot be disconnected from the Spirit’s work in and through the church.

So here’s the question: how do God’s people move God to pour out His Spirit? What power, if any, do we have to move God’s hand? Can we command God? Can we, by faith, force His hand? Can we, by discovering certain spiritual principles, virtually guarantee that God will do certain things in certain ways? No, I submit that the power we have to move God’s hand is the power of a plea. The plea of thirsty land and dry ground. God isn’t moved by manipulation, and He certainly can’t be commanded to action. God isn’t impressed by our strength and He isn’t intimidated by our demands. But He is moved by our need, and when the church sincerely and earnestly begins to feel its need for the Spirit, like thirsty ground feels its desperate need for water, then God promises in response to pour water on the thirsty land, and His Spirit upon our children. The power of thirst isn’t strength, but weakness. Not what it gives, but what it draws. Thirst says we need God, and because God is merciful and compassionate and loves to meet people when they are longing and seeking for Him, He responds to our thirst by pouring out life-giving rain.

Crying out to God in our need says we long for God’s power more than the world’s pleasures. Crying out to God in our need says we want to live for eternal things and not for temporal things. Crying out to God says we are thirsty for His presence, not apathetic about whether He shows up or not. Crying out to God says we aren’t content with what we have, we long for more. There is power in crying out for the Spirit the way that thirsty ground cries out for rain.

It was very interesting: on Friday as I was working on this very point in the message, while the sun continued to shine, it began to rain. The rain got harder and harder until I began to write in the message about how it was happening, and as I was writing that the rain was falling hard, it fell even harder. And all the while I could see the sun shining.
And I realised that in that was a fitting metaphor for God’s Spirit poured out on His people: as the Spirit is poured out on the thirsty ground of the church, dry places become wet with streams and eternal fruit springs up – and the glory of Jesus shines brighter on the church. The Holy Spirit never obscures the Son’s glory but gives us eyes to see and hearts to know the glory of Jesus all the better. The Spirit will always be working in us to love Jesus more!
Church, let’s be thirsty ground. Let’s cry out for the Spirit to be poured out on us in the coming months, years, and even generations, in power and life-producing grace, for the glory of Jesus.