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Anointed for mission

Luke 4: 16 — 21

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 27 Feb, 2005

A COUPLE of weeks ago, I spoke about the work of the Holy Spirit in our mission, and I warned against either grieving him through sin or quenching him through restraining him.

  Today, I want to consider how the Holy Spirit helps us in mission. If our mission is not under the Spirit’s control, it will never achieve what it sets out to achieve. If our mission is not directed and anointed by the Spirit, people’s lives will not be transformed in any lasting way.

  I want us to look realistically at the Spirit’s empowering work. There is a lot of fanciful thinking on this topic. We need to go back to the plain words of scripture.

JESUS’ ANOINTING

  Jesus said,

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor...

  Think about that statement. Understand what it is saying.

  Who is Jesus? You know he is God come in human flesh. You know he is true God from true God. You know he is light of light eternal.

  Why doesn’t he say, “I have come in my divine power to preach good news to the poor!”?

  Jesus speaks of a mission to bring sight to the blind. Why does he do it in the Spirit’s power, and not in his own God–like power?

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me...

  Something doesn’t quite gel, does it?

  Maybe it is just a poetic way of speaking. Maybe this is a way of describing Jesus’ deity in terms which the ancient Jews could assimilate. They had no concept of trinity, but they did partly understand the Holy Spirit.

  But that theory has a hole in it. It’s a hole you could fly one of those new Super Jumbo jets through.

  And that hole is that, about two months before Jesus preached in that Nazareth Synagogue, he went down to the Jordan River. At that river, John the Baptiser baptised him. Then the Holy Spirit came down on Jesus like a dove, and God’s voice from heaven declared, “This is my own beloved Son!”

  In that Nazareth Synagogue, Jesus explains that event. As he preaches to that Jewish congregation, Jesus ties his Holy Spirit baptism into the entire plan of God for all human history.

  Jesus’ ministry is not so much about displaying his own divine power. It is about displaying what the Holy Spirit can do in a life entirely consecrated to God.

  Jesus was anointed so that we could see what was our birthright when we are anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power.

  And we see that anointing coming when Jesus is baptised.

  Baptism speaks of death. The Holy Spirit’s anointing comes when the old man, when the sinful flesh, is crucified. One weakness of a lot of Pentecostalism today is that the Holy Spirit is being viewed as the easy way into the Kingdom. The cross is being forgotten.

  But that won't work. Without the cross, the spirit you receive is not the Holy Spirit.

  In the Jordan River, Jesus accepted his own coming death on Calvary.

  The way of the anointing is always the way of the cross.

  But that is another sermon in itself.

  Today, we will look at three aspects of the Holy Spirit’s work.

  I want us to see how the Holy Spirit’s anointing helps equip us for ministry.

THE ETERNAL COMPANION

  Several years ago, our church was in an ABC-TV documentary because of the stand we took about brothels. The program was called Sex and the Single City.

  We disagreed with most of the other local churches. We disagreed with the conservative local politicians. We even disagreed with many of the church's own neighbours.

  Prostitution is evil. But God loves prostitutes. He desires them to become his children through faith in Jesus Christ. And we are duty–bound to seek their welfare, as much as we seek the welfare of the people who consider themselves honest citizens.

  I addressed the Council, but it was an unpleasant experience. One councillor made threats which should have had him charged. Another accused me of betraying my Christian calling. None of the other ministers there supported me. The mayor tried to get me a fair hearing, but didn't give me room to speak for myself. Looking back, I see that many demonic forces were loose in that room that night — and there wasn’t a prostitute in sight.

  Finally, I finished and went to find a place to sit down. I felt exhausted and defeated. I just wanted to crawl into a corner and disappear.

  But the seat I had had had been taken. I didn't even have a seat to go back to.

  I found a spot on the floor near the film crew and sat there, holding my knees. I felt very alone. I knew how Elijah felt after confronting Ba’al’s prophets on Mt Carmel.

  Then a hand reached down. It was the assistant journalist on the documentary. She took my hand and held it, and I realised that I wasn’t alone. She was a good journalist. I still don’t know if she agreed or disagreed with me. But I felt strengthened and comforted to know that someone was with me.

  When we stand for Christ, we need to know we are not alone.

  Jesus taught his disciples,

^{JN 14:15} “If you love me, you will obey what I command. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you forever — ¹⁷ the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. ¹⁸ I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. ¹⁹ Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.

  You can’t always take a sympathetic journalist along with you, but you can always have the Holy Spirit in you.

  I was visiting preacher at a weekend convention once, and had a bad experience during the afternoon. It really threw me. I was ready to cancel the service and go home.

  I had to throw myself onto the Holy Spirit, because I just didn’t have it in me to preach.

  And he was with me so powerfully that the whole congregation stood and applauded at the end. It has never happened to me since. But I knew the Spirit’s direction. It was as though I had a prompter saying, “Wait a moment here — people need time to take it in.” or “Keep going... they are with you... carry them forward.” or “Don’t say it that way: say it this way.”

  At other times, you have nothing more than a sense that you are not alone, that you have a companion and strengthener; another one, just like Jesus.

  The Spirit’s anointing empowers ministry with the knowledge that the Spirit is always our companion and friend.

THE JESUS–VECTOR

  But ministry is more than just doing as we are told, and knowing we are not alone.

  We must know what to do and what to say.

  That is where the Holy Spirit comes in.

  In medicine, they talk about “vectors”, the means by which a disease reaches a person.

  For example, the anopheles mosquito is the common vector for malaria. That is, the anopheles mosquito picks up infected blood from one person and transmits the malaria parasite into the next person it bites.

  With influenza, the vector is usually airborne droplets. An infected person coughs or sneezes, a cloud of water vapour is blown out of her mouth, and a person standing nearby inhales enough infected droplets for the disease to begin in his body too.

  The Holy Spirit is a good vector of Jesus; you and I, with the Spirit in us, become co–vectors.

  Jesus said,

^{JN 14:25} “All this I have spoken while still with you. ²⁶ But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. ²⁷ Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

  Here the Holy Spirit brings the teachings and words of Jesus to all who follow him.

  If the Holy Spirit comes to you, then the words and teachings of Jesus also come.

  I have a friend who was very troubled about mixing with some other friends of mine, because he had heard that these friends were Charismatics. My friend said, “It’s all very well to acknowledge the Holy Spirit, but I don’t want to talk or think too much about the Spirit, because I shouldn’t turn my focus off Jesus.”

  I reminded him of this passage. I said, “When you let the Holy Spirit do his work in your life, he will make Jesus more real to you.”

  I don’t know the full story, but I know my friend’s experience of the Spirit has been refreshed. Today he says, “The Holy Spirit has enhanced my experience of Jesus.”

  Many years ago, I worked with a Jehovahs Witness woman — a very caring big sister to everyone in the office.

  Her husband was aggressively Jehovahs Witness, and argued with everyone.

  Dagmar invited Chris and me to come to tea and bring Luke, who was a tiny baby at the time. Of course, Günter wanted to debate the Bible with me.

  I’d prayed before we came out, and I expected some help from the Holy Spirit. But I didn’t expect the help I had.

  For everything he said, an answer came to me. Verse after verse that I didn’t even know I’d read popped into my mind, sometimes even with the Bible reference. I was amazed, but didn’t tell him where the answers were coming from.

  He changed his tack, and began a discussion of Wisdom in Proverbs 8, and suddenly the Spirit gave me insights into that passage that I had never had before. It wasn’t until years later, when I went into Theological College, that we dealt with that same passage, and I saw that the Spirit had accurately interpreted the passage to me.

  So the Spirit went a little further than the words of Jesus, but it was all part of showing who Jesus is.

  The Spirit is the vector of Jesus.

THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH

  Finally, the Spirit helps us by being the Spirit of truth, who guides us into all truth.

  Jesus taught,

^{JN 16:12} “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. ¹³ But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. ¹⁴ He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. ¹⁵ All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.

  It’s in Psalm 51. King David had sinned against God and against his family and against his neighbours by having a sexual relationship outside marriage.

  A junior prophet, Nathan, confronted the King and showed him his sin.

  And David repented.

  As he reflected on his sin, he wrote

Behold, you desire truth in the inner being.

  That’s how it always is with God.

  A large part of what Jesus speaks about in this passage is the way that the Spirit leads us to know and understand what Jesus really meant. He also talks about how the Spirit expands and extends our understanding of the works of Jesus.

  But there is another way that the Spirit guides us into all truth.

  You might remember the famous words of President Bill Clinton. He said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinsky!”

  In a sense, what he said was true. In a strict interpretation, their contact with one another was always limited.

  But Clinton’s declaration was far from the inner truth of the matter. He had seriously betrayed his wife, his daughter, his country and his duties as a solicitor and as President of the USA. And, in a very real sense, he had betrayed himself and Monica Lewinsky.

  Just as the Spirit convicts the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment, so the Spirit guides us into all truth.

  We need truth in our inner being, otherwise ministry slows and grinds to a halt.

  In one conflict situation I was involved in, ministry pretty well ended in many respects, until I recognised my own role. Although I was copping a lot of the unpleasantness of the situation, I was also enabling the perpetrator. I was not prepared to say, “You are going too far, and I will tolerate it no longer!”

  I’d sooner have killed myself than say that.

  When the Spirit led me to see the truth of the situation, I began taking action, and things began changing. But I am still sad at the trail of damage left behind, and the people who were turned away from the gospel during that time. One turning point for me was little leaflet of about 16 pages, put out by one of the denominations and given to me to write a review on. It came at the time I was really praying for a solution. But it took the Spirit to say to me, “This page describes you.”

  Mission requires both inner and outer truth.

CONCLUSION

  I’ve read all kinds of fanciful accounts of people being flung 10m through the air by the Spirit’s power and so on; and maybe it even happens sometimes. But the real power of the Spirit for mission is in what he brings to us when we are anointed with power for the mission of Jesus. And we don’t have to be special people to be used in mission by the Spirit of God. All we need is to be willing and available.

  When we need to know we are not alone, the Spirit of Jesus is there. When we need to recall all that the Lord taught, his Spirit comes to our aid. And when we need truth in our knowledge and in our actions, the Spirit reveals it to us. May we receive his blessing today.

AMEN

© Peter R. Green 2005. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)