Well, for years I thought Harry Potter was the work of Satan, and then I decided not to, and I was wrong. And I read this, I read it, I listened to it, I watched the movies, and there's one scene in it that just It always just rips me, and if you don't know the story Harry is living with his aunt and uncle, the Dursleys, and they kind of hate him. They think he's a weirdo, and he definitely hates them, and and he starts getting these letters in the mail, and they won't stop coming, and he keeps stealing them away, stealing them away, stealing them away, stealing them away, and they try to get him away from the letters, and finally they go as far away from civilization as they can get. They go to a hut on a rock in the middle of the North Sea, just as there's one hut on this entire island, not much of an island, it's a rock. Nobody can possibly deliver a letter there. They are alone, and they shut the door, and they're in this freezing cold, a hut, no electricity, no phone, wondering what they're going to do, and they hear knock on the door. And they don't open the door, and a giant of a man comes through the door without them opening it, blows it down, and comes to them and starts talking to them about Harry, and while they hid him, and finally Harry says, he starts to tell Harry who he is, and Vernon, the uncle, said, stop right there, sir, and Harry says, my mom and dad were famous, and this man named Hagrid says, you don't know what you are, and Hagrid looks at his uncle, and his aunt said, you never told him, you never told him what was in the letter that was left for him, you've never told him who he is, you've kept it from him all these years, and Harry says, you kept what, and Hagrid says, you're a wizard, Harry, you're a wizard. His entire life changes, this little boy who's been bullied his entire life, who has all never gotten what he felt like he deserved what he wanted, he didn't get what he deserved, he was never treated as even loved, much less special, finds out that he has powers within him, he had no idea, he had no idea what he was, and his life of fear and sadness and self-pity was all a result of not knowing what he was. I think Christians in our tradition struggle, and I say our tradition, I mean kind of the Presbyterian wing of the Evangelical Church, reformed whatever word you want to use, we struggle with knowing who we are, we struggle with knowing who we are, and as a result of not knowing who we are, we struggle with self-pity, with doubt, with fear, with regret, with failure, we put too much stress on our shoulders, I hear phrases like, I just don't know if I can do it, or I just don't know what's going to happen if X takes place, and I spend a lot of my life looking at people going, you're going to be fine, you're going to be fine because you are, and you see if we struggle with those thoughts and those emotions, because in our tradition we have absolutely no idea what we have, we have the Holy Spirit, we have the Spirit of the living God, living within us, and as I was reflecting on, and I'm going to tell you, I apologize, the scripture text is correct, but that is the only thing in the bulletin is correct, I kept writing the sermon all weekend, I rewrote it on Thursday, I rewrote it on Friday, and I was supposed to do that, I rewrote it on Saturday, and I got to the office at 630 this morning, and rewrote it, it's very much of a living document, and because as I thought more and more about what it means that we have the Holy Spirit within us, that Jesus promises us, right there in John chapter 7, if anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and out of his belly will flow rivers of living water, and John adds on the comment, he said that referring to the Holy Spirit that has not yet been given, everybody that comes to Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes into, and I began to think, well maybe we just need to talk about that, the Apostle Paul says this is first base, this is the first thing that happens to you, when you believe you receive the Spirit, if you really study deep you see that, you believe because you receive the Spirit, and we need to talk about that for a little bit, so please stand as we read this text from Galatians, and knowing that if you are a believer, you are a temple filled with the Holy Spirit, much better than a wizard, here the Word of the Lord, oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, it was before your eyes that Jesus was publicly portrayed as crucified, let me ask you only this, did you receive the Spirit by work to the law, or by hearing with faith, are you so foolish having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh, did you suffer so many things in vain if indeed it wasn't vain, does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by the hearing with faith, just as Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness, know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham, and scripture for seeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham's saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed, so then those who are of faith are blessed alone with Abraham, the man of faith, thus far the reading of God's Word, all men are like grass, and all of our blories like the flowers of the field, and the grass withers and the flowers fall, but not God's Word, God's Word stands forever, you may be seated. If you're in Jesus, if you believe in Jesus, because you have the Holy Spirit, let's talk about that a little bit, let's talk about this text first, because it's deep, it's rich, every word is important, the beginning of it, well the first two chapters of Galatians are all setting up for this moment, Paul writes the Galatians and he repeats the gospel real quickly, and then he starts to talk about how important it is, don't let anybody change that, if anybody changes this message that Jesus has died to save his people from his present evil age, then let them be a curse, he says, and he begins to talk about how confident he is in his message that he received it from God himself, and that the apostles confirmed that he had been called to send this message to the Gentiles, and how even the apostle Peter, when he lived out of consistency, when he wasn't walking in step with this message, he had to be confronted, so now he finally gets to the point of the letter, he probably started with this, and it was like, that's a little too hard, let's go back and add some nice things, and he says first of all, you foolish Galatians, now it's easy to convince, you'd probably be yelling that, he's not, he's writing it, first of all, and there's a tenderness in it, it's, Tim Keller says it could be translated, you beloved fools, okay, like your children when they're eating paper, you sweet, sweet idiot, don't do that, and then he uses a very strong word, he says, who's bewitched you, now when we think of the wish, we think of a blonde woman on a broom, I do anyway, we're wiggling her nose and making things happen, that's kind of cute, but when the apostle Paul uses the word bewitched, there's nothing cute about it, he's talking about a demonic thing, an evil thing who has come and preached this message to you that has enslaved you, that has made you think that your works, your effort, the effort of your body, the effort of you trying to make yourself better, like that is more important than the Holy Spirit, who has taken you away from this message of grace and giving you this satanic message of salvation about works, who's done that? And he begins asking them questions, let me just ask this of you, how do you receive the Holy Spirit? Did you receive the Spirit by the words of law or by the hearing of faith? Oh, you foolish people, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? And that's basically where we're going to stop today, because the apostle Paul asked us a very important question, having begun by the Spirit, are you being perfected by the flesh? Are you so worried about this little rickety ladder that you've built, that you've got to do all these runs on the ladder so that you can get to being a righteous person? Are you so worried about that ladder because you've forgotten that you are filled with the Spirit? I think that demands another question, that demands a question, did you begin with the Spirit? Did you begin with the Spirit?
When I was in Little League, I played on, we didn't have very fancy names for our Little League team, I was on Weekly County Bank, and we were the worst Little League team to ever play the game, we won two games in two years, and I was a big reason for the weakness, I'll wholly and fully claim that I was terrible, but most games we lost like 20, you parents have been there, you know, just walk after walk after walk, and then when we get up to bat and we'll be strike out and just strike out, but occasionally there were glimmers of hope, you know, and I remember, you remember those glimmers of hope, we lost 40 games in those two years, I don't remember any of those, but I remember one that we had a glimmer of hope, and I got on base somehow, it certainly wasn't a hit, and then Matt Melton was behind me, and Matt Melton was growing into a very big mountain of a man, but at this time he was still a little chubby boy, but he swung, he swung hard, and he hit it, and it went high, high, high, never seen a ball go that high, and it came down over the fence, and he did a home run, and I was running around the base, yay Matt, and he'd never seen a chubby little kid so happy, and he was jumping up and down, he was smiling, and he came running around the base, and he kept the home playing, and we hugged, and we went back to the dugout, and we were screaming and yelling, we had a chance, and then we see the pitcher do something weird, he stepped off the mound, he threw the ball to first base, and the umpire called Matt out, he didn't touch first base, he didn't touch first base, Paul says the Holy Spirit is first base, he's first base, and the question we need to ask is have we touched him, do we have the Holy Spirit, now I can say there's a lot of fear in our corner of the world about the Holy Spirit, there's reasons for that, when we when the turn of the century, the 20th century, and the Azusa Street revival was happening, there was the prominent feelogen in the Presidency and Church, where they Benjamin Warfield, and Benjamin Warfield had a wife who had a psychotic break, and she was incredibly anxious and neurotic, and could not stand to be without him for more than two hours at a time, and over and over again, he had people, he had Pentecostals telling him if you had faith, she would be healed, the only reason she hasn't gotten better is because you don't have enough faith, and he responded negatively to that, you can see why, and basically just theologically wrote the Holy Spirit out of the Presbyterian tradition for about a hundred years, and there have been excesses, there certainly have been excesses, and the charismatic movement, especially, there's this very misguided idea that the Holy Spirit comes in the second blessing, and if you have these supernatural, super impressive external gifts, and you have the Holy Spirit and you're more elevated Christian, and that is wrong as well, in between those two we have the biblical model, which is all Christians have the Holy Spirit, you had Holy Spirit before you became a Christian, so the question is, do you? You would know, I mean this is not a good feeling, Holy Spirit is not the same kind of spirit of, you know, that you get when you're at a football game, and the man does the band, and the football team runs through the giant team in the south end zone, and it's football time in Tennessee, it's not that kind of spirit, it's not an enthusiastic, it's the spirit of the living God, it's the spirit who, when Solomon was dedicating his temple, he prayed, Lord, we don't want you to bless this, we want you, and we're told that the chicana glory of God, the spirit of God fell upon the temple, and it's hard, the Hebrew is very literal, and it kind of sounds like it was solid blocks of light, if you can imagine that, filling the temple, and the priests tried to go about their work, and they couldn't, they just had to run out, and the Holy Spirit is there, you know it, and we're told that we are temples of the Holy Spirit, now how could we have missed it? If it's so obvious, how could we possibly miss first base? There's a lot of reasons, I mean, there's a ton of reasons to come to church, and they're all good, I think they're all good, and I want you to come, you know, there's a communal reason to come to church, you come because your friends are here, and you started that probably when your parents brought you to church because they wanted you to have the right kinds of friends, and you know what, I think that's great, I want people to come, I want your friends to be here, I want your children to be here, I want your children to grow up in the church and have the kind of friends that grow up in the church, and that, at least the second reason why people come to church, people come to church for kind of a moral standard, they want their, I've heard this so many times, no, I don't go to church anymore, but I want my kids to grow up in the church, I want them to know the sermon on the mount, I want them to be, you know, the right kind of people, which means what, don't do drugs, that's pretty much it, I just don't want my kids to do drugs, and so I'm going to bring them to church, and you know what, I don't want your, I want to be clear about this, I don't want your kids to do drugs either, bring them to church, it's better than doing drugs, you're that good, and lately in the, you know, in the last 20 years or so, people have started coming to church because they want to have an experience, they want to touch the infinite, they want to have this grand transcendental experience, they want more, and you can get that at church, and I hope, when we sing those wonderful songs, when we break that bread, I hope you feel the presence of the transcendental, and I hope you feel that presence, and it's here, but that's not Christianity either, that's not the Holy Spirit, and honestly, we basically do all three of them, you know, our parents, bring us to church, we to train us up morally the way we should go, and then while we're doing that, we make all our friends at church, so we keep coming, you go to our UF, and you want to marry a good girl, so you go to our UF and find one, I mean, the probably the most common testimony I had as an RUF campus minister was, I came to our UF to meet a girl and ended up meeting Jesus, and that's fine, I like that, and then, you know, you get your middle-aged crisis, and you want to know that there's more, so you keep coming to church hoping for this experience, all of them are good, they're not meeting the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit comes in you, you're born again, you're new, you're different, he comes into you, and he changes everything, it's infinite, it's more, well, how then do you receive it, he says, we ask, I mean, if I haven't, how do I receive it, how would I know if I've received it? Well, you receive it by having Jesus Christ publicly portrayed for you as crucified, that's what he said, he tells you how you received it, Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed for you as crucified, not just, you know, believing the facts, Jesus died for our sins, but having the story told that we were dead in our sins, and the Lord who created us, loved us while we were rebels so much that he came and sacrificed himself to buy us back from our sins, and he defeated death, and he extends to us this call, if anyone is weary, let him come to me and find rest, he told him the story, none of them were there, they lived in Galatia, they didn't live in Palestine, they didn't live in Jerusalem, they didn't see Jesus crucified, but by hearing the story, Paul painted this portrayal, this portrait of Jesus crucified, and they saw it spiritually, they heard it, and they believed it, they believed it, it dawned on them, that's what my mom used to say, it dawned on them, you know what that means, it's a reference to the sun coming up, you know, if you've ever been up early enough and been outside, you know, it gets light, a long time when the sun comes up, if there's no cloudy, not cloudy that day, and if you're inside, you're kind of looking, you could think, man, I guess the sun's up, but when it breaks the horizon, when you're looking at the sun, you know it, right, you don't think, I wonder what that huge orange ball is, you know when the sun has come up, it's dawning on you, Tim Kennedy is this illustration, I think it's a great one, he talks about being a pastor and therefore sitting with a lot of people with their death approaching, and you know the doctor will tell them, especially they were very clear in those days back in the 60s and 70s, you know, get your affairs in order, we're not, we don't have much longer, you're not long for this world, get your affairs in order, and if you've ever been around someone who's received that news, you know it takes it a while, that's a crow, by the way, it's funny, better or so loud, if you've ever been around someone who's received that news, then you know it takes a while for it to sink in, and at first you're in shock, and then after a while, maybe a couple of weeks later, you'll ask the wife how she's doing with this news, and she just breaks down in tears, and she was so hopeful and strong a couple of weeks ago, but it's sunk in that she's about to lose her husband, or you'll be talking with the person themselves, and they'll just break down in tears, and it's sunk in that they are about to actually die, that's the closest thing I can think of as an example of conversion, that you've heard this story, maybe you've heard it for decades, but all of a sudden it sinks in, it sinks in, I reckon the place, not the day, but the place, not been in charge my whole life, and I don't ever, honestly I don't ever remember a day when I didn't believe in Jesus and have something toward love, toward him, but my life was just racked with guilt and fear and anxiety, and I still struggle with anxiety, but not spiritual anxiety, and suddenly I've been reading a book and I realized if I could build a time machine and go back in time and look at Jesus on the cross and say why are you doing this, he would say for you, and when I realized that it sunk in, both my sin, sunk in and my salvation, sunk in, it was a beautiful moment and I changed. Jesus no longer became, it was no longer a teacher for me, he was no longer, something I ought to do, he was beautiful, he was no longer useful to me, but that way he was beautiful, he was beautiful, you know what, that difference, right, like some people you need Jesus, you need him, right, you need him because life is hard, you need him because of bills, you get paying bills is hard, you need him because raising kids is hard, you need him because you know, Texas has a 17 point lead and second half, you just need him, you need Jesus, but that's not beautiful, when it becomes beautiful you just want to be with him, he stops being useful to you and he starts being beautiful, you sin, no longer becomes those things that you kind of want to do, they become odious to you, you see yourself and you see the smallness of your heart and you don't like that anymore, you want to be better, love becomes natural to you, you see people with compassion now that you used to see as rivals, lost people become pitiful to you, you feel sorry for them, you look at them and you see them as sheep without a shepherd and it becomes the most natural thing in the world to close with him, to become a Christian, to believe in him, to throw yourself upon him, it becomes natural, it's the answer to a yearning within you, you've been told that you should for years and you just never felt, it's like, let's just say you were preaching a sermon at 9.49 in the morning and you hadn't eaten yet and you've been up for a really long time, let's just say and you're starving and someone puts in front of you a bowl of Brussels sprouts and Brussels sprouts are something that you've heard your entire life are good for you and you are sure that you would never know by experience that they would fill up that hole in your stomach and people are telling you if you're hungry just eat and you're like, uh, sorry, how back and hunger be and then all of a sudden someone takes away the Brussels sprouts and brings to you a huge cheeseburger and it becomes so natural, right? My mouth is just watering thinking about this hypothetical situation, it becomes natural to want to just consume that and you eat it, right? That's what happens when the Holy Spirit turns Jesus from Brussels sprouts into a hamburger, it becomes natural for you to want him, you want to close with him, you want to consume him, you want to be in him and when you do that then you have done that because the Spirit is in you, you have the person of God within you, how I wish I could convince you of that, you have the Spirit of God within you, how dare you say, I just don't know what I'm going to do, you're going to be fine, you're going to be glorious, you have the Spirit of God within you, why won't you worry about what's going to happen if I go back to my life and you're not going anywhere, the Spirit of God is within you, the Spirit of God is praying for you, the Spirit of God is praying for your children, the Spirit of God knows your soul so well that he's so familiar with you, that he knows the grunts and the groans that you utter in the darkest parts of the night, he knows what those mean and he takes those prayers to God the Father and he says, Ricky's grown to this, can we, what do you think, how can we use that fear and that stress to make him look more like Jesus, the Spirit of God within you, wait better than being a wizard, you've got more, not less,
and if you don't, you know, if you don't, you know, and if you don't, then don't settle for that, don't settle for coming to church for friends, there's infinitely more, and if you want it, you want it because that's the Holy Spirit at work and it's even better than that, you'll look, he tells you how to receive it, you receive it, not by works but by faith, it's really this interesting process that happens as people start to become Christians, the process of becoming a Christian usually looks like this, all of a sudden you realize it's real, it's true and that scares you and you begin working really hard to perfect yourself and you never miss church and you're just working so hard to get things right and do the right thing every moment and you never miss anything and you exhaust yourself and you look back after months and months or years and years of living this way and you say, have accomplished nothing, I'm still the same prideful selfish self obsessed loser that I always was,
I'm going to quit trying, I'm going to quit trying, I'm going to quit trusting myself and I'm going to trust Jesus and all of a sudden he becomes so beautiful to you, this Jesus who's always beforehand, he was always folding his arms, looking down his nose and you go on a little more, come on, you can do three more push-ups, come on, now it's smiling at you saying, oh my dear, dear son, he's so beautiful, he's not, did you receive the Spirit about works of the law or by believing, there's only one way, lay your work down, lay your trust in yourself down, see the foolishness of it, the selfishness of it, trust him, it's like some of you were saying, I just don't know how, I don't know how to, I've tried it so hard and so long, I don't know how, it's like you're basically saying, I'm so tired, I think carrying this weight so long, I don't know how to sit down, you know how to sit down, you do, from sin, throw yourself on Jesus, he'll catch you, and what felt like a burden becomes a joy, what felt like work becomes rest, you finally get to be who you've always been, please pray with me,
well I think it's hardest to see for those who are so close and they've been close for a long time,
I'm afraid that you would open their heart, open their eyes to see Jesus, clearly portrayed as crucified, open their eyes to see that they can't make themselves what they want to be and invite them to just rest in Jesus, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.