Keeping in Step with the Spirit to Live the Kind of Life Jesus Died to Give Us

Current Series for the Season of Lent

Daniel Wallace, Ph.D Professor of NT Studies

Dallas Theological Seminary

“Through this experience I found that the Bible was not adequate. I needed God in a

personal way—not as an object of my study, but as a friend, guide, comforter. I

needed an existential experience of the Holy One….

“I found a longing to get closer to God, but found myself

unable to do so through my normal means: exegesis, Scripture reading, more

exegesis.…

“I believe that I had depersonalized God so much that when I really

needed him I didn’t know how to relate…. I looked for God, but all I found was a

suffocation of the Spirit in my evangelical tradition as well

as in my own heart.”!

The Holy Spirit is not !an impersonal force, but!the personal presence !

of God in our lives.

Review Implication #1

The Holy Spirit is meant !to be the experienced,!empowering reality of !

God in our lives.

Review Implication #2

Tune in to what Jesus !through His Holy Spirit !wants to do in your life!and through your life.

The Indwelling Presence of the Spirt

!~ Selected Scriptures ~

“The People of the Presence”

Rescued From Slavery, Yet Still Enslaved

Nicolas Poussin, ca. 1634 National Gallery, London

“If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us

up from here. For how shall it be known that I

have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us,

so that we are distinct, I and your people, from

every other people on the face of the earth?”

~ The Prophet Moses In Exodus 33

The Tabernacle as the Place of the Presence

“The Tabernacle at Sunset” Pat Marvenko Smith

The Glory of the Lord Departs from the Temple

The Promise of the Renewed Presence of God

“My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they will

be my people.”~ The Prophet Ezekiel

in Ezekiel 37:27

image: Christopher Brown

The Presence of God in the Person of Jesus

~ John the Apostle The Gospel of John (1:14)

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt

[lit. “tabernacled”] among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the

Father, full of grace and truth.”

The Presence of God in the Church

“…you are…members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the

cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the

Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”

~ The Apostle Paul in Ephesians 2:19-21

“Do you not know that you are God’s temple

and that the Spirit dwells in you…? For

God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.”

~ The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17

“For we are the temple of the living God; as God

said, ‘I will make my dwelling among them, and

I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’”

~ The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 6:16

The Presence of God in the Believer

“The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the

Lord, and the Lord for the body…. Flee from sexual

immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually

immoral person sins against his own body.

~ The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:13, 18-20

“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom you

have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So

glorify God in your body.”~ The Apostle Paul in

1 Corinthians 6:13, 18-20

The Spirit is God’s personal presence in our

individual lives AND in our midst as we gather for

worship and mission.

Main Idea

Come together!as the church!

with a sense of !expectation.

Application #1

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the

catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the

foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing

on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to

kill a Sunday morning.

“It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we

should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they

should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday

and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we

can never return. ”

Cultivate a sense of !the indwelling presence !

of God within you !personally.

Application #2

http://www.artbible.info/art/large/269.html

Ted: http://www.flickr.com/photos/frted/8186711792/

flickr images courtesy of:

other images:

http://www.dts.edu/about/faculty/dwallace/

Ian Britton: http://www.flickr.com/photos/freefoto/2747072912/

Brandon MacEachernhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/maceachb/8055580939/

“The Tabernacle at Sunset” by Pat Marvenko Smith

http://www.bible-lands.net/cities/jerusalem/375-jerusalem-and-solomon-what-was-the-first-temple-like

Christopher Brown: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7853490@N07/3531948937/

http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/gustave-dore/the-descent-of-the-spirit