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The Holy Spirit is Moving us to Intimacy

Reverend Rob Grafe

(Fifth in a series of six sermons on the Holy Spirit)

Why were we created? Why were we created? Lots of good answers. I think the underlying, the foundational reason, why we exist, why God created us and gave us life is so that we could please God, so that He could enjoy us and so that we could enjoy Him. I think we were created to find our pleasure in bringing Him pleasure. We were created to have our life and find our being in Him that we might be pleased and be fulfilled in His pleasure.

In the Garden, we walked with God. There was complete intimacy; yet as we know we broke from God. We broke away when we first decided to disobey and go our own way. We were tempted to find pleasure in ourselves and we bit. When we ceased to obey Him we ceased to love Him and we no longer wanted to be close to Him. We ran away and hid; we all know the story. We ran away and hid from His presence. But our God is not satisfied with this lack of intimacy. While He is complete and whole in and of Himself; while He that is God lacks nothing nor does He need anything; while He in Himself is not diminished by a lack of intimacy with us, still our God works to bring us back into His presence. He wants to be in communion with us.

Now, He does this in and through his Son Jesus on the Cross. He does this through the Holy Spirit who draws us to him. In fact, it is through the Holy Spirit that He is continually pointing us and drawing us to the Cross. The Holy Spirit is leading us; he is leading us toward intimacy with the Father through the Son. I have been redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb and I am pretty certain that it was an inside job. The Holy Spirit is not interested in dressing us up on the outside. He wants to transform hearts. Let us pray.

Holy Spirit, we continue to invite you to teach us, to blow fresh on us, to draw us in a real way into the presence of the Father. Open our hearts; remove all that would get in your way. We give you free reign, gratefully, in the Name of Jesus. Amen.

Let's turn in our Bibles to Jeremiah 31. You have perhaps heard me preach enough to know that this is one of my all time favorite passages. I think this is one of the real turning points in God's Word. If you can single anything out that's as wonderful as Scripture--all of it true, all of it timeless, all of it transforming--some of this from Jeremiah is really special. Looking at Jeremiah 31, verse 31, "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah." It's a new covenant. As we read we will discover it's a continuation of the old covenant which is eternal. It's been built upon; it's been completed. "Not like the covenant I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord, but this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my law within them and I will write it upon their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people."

Now, what's the old covenant? We will look at it closely in just a minute but we know that as with all the covenants, God initiated it. God brings about a promise and He elicits from us a promise. God initiating; we responding. The original, and the covenant we are still operating under is, "I will be your God and you will be my people." We could never have initiated that but He brought it upon us. Praise God. We will look at that in a little more detail but I would like to get kind of behind the idea of covenant and one way to do that is to look more closely at our Sacraments.

Now, we all know that we have seven Sacraments--five sacramental rites, if you will, and two full-fledged honest-to-goodness Sacraments that come right from Jesus--and they are special and unique. We can remember from our confirmation class and if you haven't been confirmed and you are interested we have a confirmation class just around the corner, look in your bulletin. It's a great opportunity to press in and learn some stuff that perhaps you haven't learned and get some hands laid on you. It will be a real powerful experience at confirmation. But in our confirmation class most of us learned the definition of a Sacrament. I'm not going to put anybody on the spot but it is an outward and visible sign isn't it, of inward and spiritual grace or truth. Outward visible of something inward, spiritual.

So, let's consider Holy Communion. The two great Sacraments given to us straight from Jesus are Holy Communion and baptism. What are the outward and visible signs of Holy Communion? We of course know that it is the bread and it's the wine. Now, I am going to give you a little secret--this is a trick and you can use it and you don't have to give me credit for it. If you take what you, just in the flesh with the earthly experience you have, and look at the outward and visible signs of the sacrament and say, "What does this bring to mind?", those things that come to mind directly apply to the inward and spiritual truth of those outward and visible signs. (You will just have to trust me on that.) What comes to mind when you think of bread? All of these questions I want you to be thinking about in your head. Don't feel like you have to respond out loud. But what we think of when we think of bread is food or sustenance; just basic, foundational sustenance. All cultures have bread in some form; filling that hunger without which there is not life. We think of community and breaking bread. We think of gathering together and sharing bread.

What do we think of when we think of wine? Again, across cultures we think of celebration; we think of party; we think of something that will inspirit us, you know, revive us and that in moderation can be shared and enjoyed at community. In fact, I was talking to a young man just a few days ago, talking about this very stuff and I asked, "What do you think of, and not being churchy, when you think about wine?" He said, "Aged wine". I thought, "Wow! That's right!" It can be aged and that's an even better symbol that it is special and set apart and it's not something that you go out and drink in mass quantities. It's something that is reserved, set aside and shared at that special moment when the time is right, when the family is gathered.

So, we take what we know about these visible signs and we ask how does this apply to our spiritual truth as it is being manifested to us. And we know that when we are breaking bread and sharing wine at communion we are being fed. We are being fed like we are never fed with spiritual food. We are sharing it in community. The cup is passed and there is party atmosphere; it's a celebration; it's a foretaste of that heavenly banquet. So, all those things that we think of when we think of bread and wine, they directly apply to our understanding of Holy Communion.

Consider baptism. What are the outward and visible signs of baptism. Of course, we are talking about water. So, the next step is what do we think of when we think of water. We think of cleanliness, of purifying, taking a shower or splashing cold water on our face after mowing the yard. We think of that tall glass of water that refreshes us. We could take it one step further and we know living in this area that water is very dangerous and it's very powerful and hurricanes sweep people away. Flooding sweeps people away. I know where I am from in Texas it was not uncommon for people to be camping and hiking through some of the canyons and dry river beds and they might be only 20 feet wide and 15 feet deep and if a flash flood comes it will sweep whole families away. There will be found a few tennis shoes or something like that; by just the raw power of water; it's deadly. It does kill us.

Some of you in the advanced class are thinking of new life, the breaking of water and all the symbolism there. They go hand in glove that there is no new life without that death. It's so important to our baptismal understanding-- that going down and dying with Christ, rising to new life in Him. It's perfect that the Lord chose water as that outward and visible sign of what's taking place inwardly and spiritually. I want to focus on baptism.

Again, if you haven't been baptized, I would encourage you to get baptized in the next couple weeks at the Easter Vigil. We will be having a class next Saturday. I will be doing that at 10:00 a.m. Please give me a call and let me know that you are going to be there if you or somebody you know wants to be baptized. We would love to do it then.

So, we are going to be focusing a little bit on baptism now as we prepare for Holy Week and the Vigil. Go to Genesis 17 and we are going to look at that covenant with Abraham in verses 1-13 and I am going to be picking out a couple here. The Lord promises Abraham that he will be father of many nations. He changes his name from Abram to Abraham here; it's a significant passage. In verse 7, he says, "I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you." Then we look over at verse 11, "You are to undergo circumcision and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. This circumcision, this cutting of flesh, this cutting away will be the sign of what is taking place as they are initiated, brought into the Kingdom, brought into the family.

Just a pivotal point--did you know that this cutting away, this circumcision is the spiritual foundation for our baptism? Some of you knew that; some of you didn't. It is. Let's look at it a little more closely. Looking at Colossians 2:11-12, "In Him you are also circumcised in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with the circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism and raised with Him through your faith in the power of God who raised Him from the dead." So, what Paul is talking about is a circumcision done without hands. How can that be? What is he talking about here? Other translations say "spiritual circumcision". Well, let's find out more by looking at Romans, Chapter 2:28-29. "A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly and circumcision is circumcision of the heart by the Spirit, not by the written code." So, Paul understood that in this new covenant which is a continuation of the old there is a continuation of the circumcision and it's not a physical circumcision; it's not an outward circumcision. It's a spiritual circumcision done "without hands". It's very inward but nonetheless real. Sometimes Paul gets kicked around for being somewhat of a--well, sort of hard on women--but he is really one of the most progressive. Some of the best theology on women come from Paul with his understanding of who we are as men and women and of our equality in Christ. This was radically new stuff; and his theology that we read here on circumcision and it's implications for baptism is radical as well. Think about it, for the early Hebrews how did a woman encounter the presence of God. How was she initiated into the family? It was through her father who was circumcised or through her brother who was circumcised and eventually through her husband who was circumcised. But now with a circumcision done without hands that is inward, a circumcision of the heart, well the playing field as it should be is totally and completely leveled.

We are initiated into His presence in baptism. We are fed of His presence at the Communion table. The Holy Spirit is leading us toward intimacy with the Father through the Son. We share in His life. We share in His death and we share in His glorious resurrection. He's leading us toward this kind of intimacy and let's discuss briefly that we cannot, we must not, confuse intimacy with familiarity. Think of marriage. In marriage, familiarity is unavoidable. It kind of just happens. It happens without us even trying. Intimacy on the other hand is always a choice. Intimacy is usually hard to come by. Unlike familiarity, intimacy must be deliberately and intentionally sought after and then deliberately responded to. We can't, we cannot, just stumble into intimacy.

There is also a big difference on how these two, intimacy and familiarity, affect our relationships. Familiarity, which is not a bad thing it's just a thing, brings with it a sense of comfort. It brings with it a sense of ease. With intimacy, however, the status quo is not an option. With intimacy there is a continual hunger to know more, to press into more, to gain deeper understanding. So, that begs the question, "Are you getting a little too comfortable with your religion?" If you are, the solution is to get a little more intimate with your Savior. We must be on guard against familiarity with our Lord and familiarity with His Word; familiarity with His Sacraments; familiarity with His Presence.

Intimacy is what the Lord is after. He doesn't just want to know about us; He doesn't want us to just know about Him. He wants to know us and He wants us to know Him. And our Lord leads by example. He is not a distant God up on high waiting to be praised; waiting to be grappled after and fought over, fawned over. He is not that kind of God. He is the God who gets involved in our lives now. He's the God who heals; He's the God who saves. He is the God who climbs up on a Cross. Even in our sinfulness, it is God initiating, seeking us out. Our God is a God of redemption and even our redemption is a bold move toward intimacy with God, true intimacy.

After we fell into our sinful desire and after we had been tempted to find pleasure in and of ourselves, God set this mighty work into motion. He wanted to create a system where we could be allowed to come back into His presence. The work of redemption is all about that, moving us back into the presence of God. The early Hebrews found great solace and great power in the fact that they had the Tabernacle but it was meaningless, it was just so much stuff, except for the fact that it contained the presence of God. The flame of the presence was at the heart of the Tabernacle. So, as the Hebrew worshiper would enter the court, the outer court; he would offer blood sacrifice. He would then wash himself next to the altar. He would then pass through the veil and enter the Holy Place; that Holy Place where no natural light was to be found. The only light was cast from the golden lamp stand; perhaps a light that heralded the light of the world that was yet to come. There also in this Holy Place was the shew bread, perhaps pointing to the Bread of Life that was yet to come. In this Holy Place there was an altar of incense, as symbol of unceasing prayer to God. A wonderful place; a beautiful place, but as wonderful as it was this Hebrew worshiper has yet to enter into the presence of God. This is where it ended for him.

You see, there is another veil. There is the Holy of Holies that's separates him from the presence of God. It was in this Holy of Holies that the presence resides and only the high priest is allowed to enter this place and he only once a year. "And I when I am lifted up from the earth will draw all men to myself." At the death of Jesus, the veil was removed. For those who share in the death of Jesus now nothing can come between them and the presence of God. With the tearing of Jesus' flesh, the veil is torn. Wit the cutting of our hearts the veil is cut. Now nothing is preventing the followers of Jesus from pressing into the presence of the Father.

I have been redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb and I am pretty certain that it was an inside job. The Holy Spirit is not interested in dressing us up on the outside. He wants to transform hearts. I know you are familiar with the Lord. Would you like to become a bit more intimate? Let's start now by saying "yes" to the moving of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Let's start now by saying "yes" as the Holy Spirit draws us closer into the presence of the Father. Let's pray.

Holy Father, drive far from us all familiarity we have with you; all those things we take for granted. Drive far from us any inclination to go through the motions. Drive far from us any of our old patterns of religiosity. Holy God, may nothing stand between us and your presence. We praise you for the work of Jesus on the Cross. We praise you that He has gone before us to prepare our way. Thank you that we have been baptized. We thank you that we can partake of your presence at your Table. We pray it all in Christ's Name. Amen.