Series: “Jesus’ Message: You Are God’s Presence”
“Filled With The Holy Spirit”
Isaiah 6:1-8
John 3:1-17
True north differs from magnetic north, which varies from place to place due to local magnetic anomalies. A magnetic compass almost never shows true north. To find true north from a magnetic compass you have to know the local magnetic variation and how it is varying over time. Finding true north is essential for accurate navigation. Hence the metaphor. In life’s journey we are often uncertain where we stand, where we are going and what is the right path for us personally. Knowing our true north would enable us to follow the right path.[1]
In the winter of 1968, Brennan Manning lived in a cave in the Zaragosa Desert in Spain. The cave was six thousand feet above the sea, and he never saw another human face or heard a human voice apart from Sunday mornings when a Franciscan brother would bring him food, water, and kerosene for his lamp. Brennan Manning in The Importance of Being Foolish: How to Think Like Jesus writes, “On the night of December 13, 1968, I heard Jesus say, ‘For love of you I left my Father’s side. I came to you who ran from me, who fled me, who did not want to hear my name. For love of you I was covered with spit, punched, and beaten, and fixed to the wood of the cross.’”[2] What a statement of God’s love for us and how resting in that love gives us true north direction, through the Holy Spirit, for our lives.
Isaiah saw God and heard the seraphs cry out “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty.” God had a vision for humanity…for Isaiah. King Uzziah had been a godly man until the latter years of his reign. He lost direction for his life and that of the kingdom. Following King Uzziah’s death, God gave Isaiah a vision for his life and the lives of the people of God. Isaiah was created in the image of God. The Holy Spirit resides in the image of God. Isaiah cried out to God, “Woe to me!” Isaiah confessed his sin to God. Self-awareness is not negative. A seraph came to him, touched his lips with a burning coal, declared to Isaiah that his guilt had been taken away, and that atonement had been made for his sin. God then asked, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Isaiah responded, “Here am I; send me!”
John 3 addresses one’s recognition of being filled with the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit that is with us in the image of God. Being filled with the Holy Spirit is the beginning of conversion or what in John 3 is called being born again. Wayne Grudem defines born again as “the scriptural term referring to God’s work of regeneration by which he imparts new spiritual life to us.”[3] Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council came to Jesus by night. He said to Jesus in John 3:2-3, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God. Jesus answered him. ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born from above.’” Nicodemus responded immediately to Jesus’ statement in John 3:4-6, “How can anyone be born having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Sensing Nicodemus’ urgency Jesus replied, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.” By being born of the Spirit, we are a new creation. We receive this new life from the Spirit by faith. Jesus does not condemn us, but gives us life. Being born again is rooted in God’s love for God’s creation, not condemnation. God freely chose to love you and me, despite our sinful condition. It is by no merit of our own that caused God to love us. God freely chose to love you and me, despite our sinful condition. Being born of the Spirit negates death having the last word. Being filled with the Holy Spirit means we have freedom to love God and one another creating community that does not hold on to the spirit of this world.[4]
On this Trinity Sunday, let us not forget that God dwells within us. God is fully engaged as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of our lives…all of life…in all ways and at all times. Again, Manning writes,
How long have you been a Christian? How long have you been living in the Spirit? Do you know what it is to love Jesus Christ? Do you know what it is to have your love unsatisfied, endured in loneliness, and ready to burst your restless, ravenous heart? Do you know what it is to have the pain taken away, the hole filled up, to reach out and embrace this sacred Man and say sincerely, “I cannot let you go. In good times and bad, victory and defeat, my life has no meaning without you.” If this experience has not illuminated your life with its brilliance, then regardless of age, disposition, or state of life, you do not understand what it means to be a Christian.[5]
God’s eternal being as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is present in the world bringing about salvation through you. Wherever we see works of love, peace, and justice, we know God is at work. For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn, but to save.[6]
Like Nicodemus, be born again. The Holy Spirit is the Christian’s true north. Self-awareness is the beginning of clarifying true north for one’s life. Being filled with the Holy Spirit is necessary for accurate navigation in one’s life. Living in the Spirit, you are connected to God and others. Jesus loves you. Know God’s love for you. Rest in it. Be filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit leads you to discern true north. Alleluia, Amen.
This sermon was preached on Trinity Sunday, 26 May 2024 by the Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh
at Grace Presbyterian Church in the Great Room and Sanctuary in Wichita, Kansas.
Copyright © 2024
Steven M. Marsh
All rights reserved.
[1]Webster’s Online.
[2]Brennan Manning, The Importance of Being Foolish: How to Think Like Jesus (New York City, New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 173.
[3]Wayne Grudem, Bible Doctrine (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1999), 480.
[4]In the two paragraphs of textual analysis above, I have benefited from the thinking of J. Clinton McCann Jr., Robert A. Ratcliff, Joel Marcus Lemon, Erica A. Knisely, Claudio Carvalhaes, Renata Furst and Susan K. Olson in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery, Cynthia L. Rigby and Carolyn J. Sharp, editors, Connections, Year B, Volume 3 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2020), 2-4, 4-6, 7-9, 10- 11, 12-13, 14-16 and 16-18.
[5]Brennan Manning, The Importance of Being Foolish: How to Think Like Jesus, 174.
[6]Some ideas in this paragraph are gleaned from Donald K. McKim and Kristen Emery Saldine in David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 3 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 26-31.
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