Good morning. Welcome to Bridgewater. So glad to have you with us this morning. And I will say my family, we just returned from Arizona. And we had a great time. But we're glad we back here went to visit my family out there. And we're glad to be back with you here with our family here. I tell you what, when we did make it back, I thought to myself, I really appreciate the 100 degree temperatures in Arizona. And the no humidity. That is wonderful. But anyways, it's good to be back here with you all. If I haven't met you yet, my name is Kurt. I'm one of the pastors here at Bridgewater. And I'm thrilled that you decided to join us this morning. If you're new, if I didn't get a chance to meet you, please come and introduce yourself this morning. Love to get to know you. We've been in this series called Under the Hood. This is our second week now. And last week, Kevin talked about the chassis. Chassis. Yes, I said it wrong. Last service. I always say it wrong. But I think that's right. The chassis of Christianity is the death barrel and resurrection of Jesus. And that pushes us to move, to take action, to lead other people to Jesus. But as we move, it may look impressive. We may see people coming to know Jesus, making their next steps in their walk with Jesus. And it may look really good on the outside. But just like a car that looks amazing and capable of doing great things, there are important aspects of maintenance that are necessary in order for a car to have peak performance. And as it relates to our lives, that is the power to transform lives. And that power comes first and foremost from the Holy Spirit. My Bible calls the fifth book of the New Testament, the Acts of the Apostles. But it could actually instead say the Acts of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit occurs 55 times in the book of Acts. So Acts mentions the Holy Spirit more than any other book. In fact, more than all the other New Testament books combined. So why do we talk so much about Jesus if the Holy Spirit is important? Because the Bible does. Jesus is mentioned even more in Acts in the Holy Spirit. Jesus is mentioned 76 times. It's over 10 times more in the New Testament than the Holy Spirit. But just because the Holy Spirit is talking about less doesn't mean that we shouldn't talk about him, right? In some churches, he's the forgotten person of the Trinity. And that may be one of many reasons that why so many churches are devoid of God's power. Last month, I had the opportunity and the privilege to go watch a race. I watched my brother-in-law race. And here is my son Ezekiel and I sitting on the top of a camper trying to get a good view of the race. And it was pretty exciting. I don't know about you. I find it exciting to watch a race. But I don't really know that much about cars, as you can tell by my inability to pronounce the right word. But I don't know all the work that goes into that car that's about to race. A lot goes into it. I do know this, though. You can have the fanciest-looking car that impresses and causes people to say, "Wow!" when they look at it. But if it doesn't run as a designer intended it to run, then not only would you not win the race, you can't even compete, right? Here is my brother-in-law's race car. Pretty cool, right? Yeah, so that's pretty cool looking. And I look at that and I expect that it will do great things, right? Because it just looks cool, right? But one of the things that I learned is that my brother-in-law replaces all eight spark plugs every time he goes to race. Every time. You see, the spark plug works by creating a tiny explosion of gas that causes the engine to start, and the car cannot run without it. You can even have an amazing engine, but without the spark, nothing happens. When asked my brother-in-law, he said that he replaces these before each race so that he can have peak performance from his race car. The Holy Spirit is like the spark plug in a car, right? And on the screen behind me, you'll see all these different ways that talks about how a spark plug can go wrong. If your engine's not running right, it could be a problem with your spark plug, the lowly spark plug. How many of you thought this morning you started your car up and you're like, "Oh, thank God, that the spark plug worked." Right? I don't think anybody? No, I don't think anybody, right? You don't get up in the morning saying that, but the reality is we take that for granted that the spark plug needs to be working, and it is the one that causes the engine to work. Without the spark plug, your car will sit and rust. The Holy Spirit is the spark, the power behind the engine of the Christian life. Let's see what that looks like on the first day of the church in Acts chapter 2, we're going to read verses 1 through 4. On the day of Pentecost, all the believers were meeting together in one place. Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting. Then what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them, and everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages as the Holy Spirit gave them disability. So, Pentecost literally means 50. It's a Jewish festival of weeks or a harvest that takes place over 50 days after the Passover. Jesus, when he went up in the resurrection, he told his disciples to remain in Jerusalem for these 50 days until the Holy Spirit came. And at this time, all the believers that were present were filled with the Holy Spirit. Acts 1, 15 indicates that there were a dozen or more languages of all the people that were there. And these believers were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they were speaking, and everyone was hearing in their own language, or the disciples were all speaking different languages. Either way, this was a supernatural event where the gospel of Jesus was being spoken by the power of the Holy Spirit. What an awesome event, right? Can you imagine being there to witness such an event, hearing a sound like a mighty windstorm, seeing flames of tongues of fire settling on each person's head? And now, imagine being a person there, you wouldn't imagine that they would know your language, right? And they're speaking your language. You're like, "Wait a second. How is this happening?" Just let that sink in for a moment. What a sight this must have been to behold. The Holy Spirit gave them disability. But let me take a moment to talk to you about the feeling of the Holy Spirit in the Bible, because there's several different things that happen as it relates to the feeling of the Spirit. It relates to the feeling of the Spirit of God. It'll give us some more clarity as it relates to what's going on here and also in your day-to-day life. So, in the Old Testament, the feeling of the Holy Spirit was temporary for a particular task. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit wasn't something that was permanent. For example, King David, the prophet Samuel, anointed him with oil, and he received the Spirit of God for the purpose of being the King of Israel. So he received the Spirit of God for that purpose. And that's why we see in the book of Psalms when he prays, when King David sins, he prays and asks, "Don't take the Holy Spirit from me for a reason." Because he knew, he just had the Spirit of God for that task, and he did not want it to be taken away. So in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit was given temporarily for specific tasks. Now, in the New Testament, we see the Spirit of God indwelling believers at salvation. So the moment that you put your trust in faith in Jesus as your forgiver and leader, the Holy Spirit of God lives inside you. You have the Spirit of God permanently at that moment in time. And this is called Spirit Baptism and occurs when the person puts their faith in trust in Jesus for salvation. And then as far as feeling of the Spirit after salvation, this can happen when we submit control to the Spirit of God that is within us. And I'll talk again later about that, about submitting to the control of the Holy Spirit towards the end of the message. But in this passage particularly, and a couple other passages in the book of Acts, we find evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit was speaking in other tongues. These were literal human languages, right? This event marks the beginning of the church, and the purpose of speaking in tongues was to authenticate the ministry that this was from God. And that God was beginning a new thing. The purpose of speaking in tongues here was that so all would hear the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and recognize Him as their forgiver and leader. Let's take a look at how Peter responds to some criticism. They receive some criticism when they're all speaking in these other languages. Verses 14 to 21 of Acts, chapter 2. Then Peter stepped forward with the elders, with the 11 other apostles, and shouted to the crowd, "Listen carefully, all of you. Fellow Jews and residents of Jerusalem, make no mistake about this. These people are not drunk, as some of you are assuming. Nine o'clock in the morning is much too early for that. No, what you see was predicted long ago by the prophet Joel. In the last days God says, "I will pour out my spirit upon all the people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. In those days I will pour out my spirit, even on my servants, men and women alike, and they will prophesy. And I will cause wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below. Blood and fire and clouds of smoke. The sun will become dark and the moon will turn blood red before that great and glorious day of the Lord arrives. But everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." Peter calls out the critics and clarifies what is truly happening here, right? They are experiencing a fulfillment of prophecy where the Spirit of God is being poured out and the purpose. So the Spirit of God is being poured out. I always find it funny here that they are assuming that they are drunk. I don't know about you, but anyone that has ever been drunk suddenly would know another language that they never learned. That makes no sense to me, right? Why do they assume they are drunk? I don't know, but that's what they assumed, right? Because they just couldn't figure it out. But the reality was the Spirit of God was working in their lives, right? Drawing people to Him. And really the purpose is being voiced in verse 21. But everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. The purpose is to draw people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Because the reality is that the Holy Spirit transforms lives. Because the Holy Spirit transforms lives. Why do we meet here every week? Why are we so passionate about what we do here at Bridgewater? Our mission is to make more and better disciples of Jesus Christ. The purpose of the spark of the Holy Spirit is to see more people know Jesus. How many of you are attending each week and you enjoy the service, you enjoy the friendly, welcoming atmosphere, but you struggle to know and understand the Bible. You struggle to know the presence of God in your life. One of the things that I find one of the most awesome things that I find is that when somebody comes to know Jesus as their forgiver and leader is that they'll take this book and they'll be like, wow, I actually understand some of these things now. I actually get it. My eyes are opened. Why is that? That's because of the Spirit of God. It's because of that spark. Sometimes I think we get it confused though and what's from the Holy Spirit and what's just a feeling that we have, right? So many times I'll hear and I have to admit that I've done this myself. I'll say, I know this is from the Spirit of God. It's telling me to do something and then I find out later, no, I really shouldn't have done that. So that can happen. But how do we know? How do we tell the difference? How do we know if the Spirit of God is leading us? The spark of the Spirit of God may not show you exactly what to do as far as God's will. But if the Spirit of God is at work in your heart, then the characteristics that I'm about to describe about the Spirit of God will describe your life. And so we're going to talk about both living by the Spirit's power and living by according to our flesh. I'm going to take you over to Galatians chapter 5 in verse 16. It says, so I say that the Holy Spirit guide your lives, then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves and skipping down to verse 19. When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear. Sexual or morality, impurity, lust, full pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division. Envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and the other sins like these. Let me tell you again as I have before that anyone living this sort of life will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things. Those who belong to Christ have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and have crucified them there. Since we are living by the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit's leading in every part of our lives. Let us not become conceited or provoke one another or be jealous of one another. The spark is the Spirit's power. And these two, the descriptive statements of what it looks like when we're living according to our flesh or living according to the Holy Spirit, I have there up on the screen. I'm not going to go and talk about every individual one, but it helps to give you a picture. It's not that these things on the left-hand side of the screen, it's not that those are like never happened. It's like, is this characteristic of your life? You're living according to the flesh in these ways. And then on the other side, on the Holy Spirit side, it has the other part which has love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. If you're living in a way that has contrary to the Spirit of God, do not expect to have the Spirit's power at work in your life. You see, we all do this, I'm going to include myself in this category. Sometimes we want to just do whatever we want and then have the blessing and the power of God and the Spirit of God in our life. No, if we're living according to our flesh, if we're living in a way that God is not a proof of, then the Spirit of God, that spark that we need, that's not active. We need to change the spark plugs out, we need to allow the Spirit of God to work by taking care of the sin that might be in our lives. And so that is the evidence of either the Spirit of God or the flesh. Another passage that helps us to understand this a little bit further as far as the Spirit's power goes is found in Ephesians 5 verses 15 to 20. It says this, so be careful how you live. Don't live like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Don't act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. Don't be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life, instead be filled with the Holy Spirit. Singing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves and making music to the Lord in your hearts. And give thanks for everything to God, the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. So what we have here, as I mentioned previously in the message, being filled with the Spirit after baptism of the Holy Spirit, meaning after you come to know Jesus as your forgiver and leader has to do with control. Sometimes the focus of the passage that I just mentioned, people want to focus on the alcohol part of that passage, and that is a part of the passage. It says don't be drunk with wine, but it's much more than that. What it's essentially saying is that do not allow your thoughts and your behaviors to be controlled by your flesh. Don't allow yourself to be controlled by something other than the Spirit of God. That's what the passage is saying. So you can't dismiss the passage and say, "Well, I don't get drunk, so this doesn't apply to me." Nope, sorry, that plays to all of us. It plays to all of us because there's things in our lives that tend to take control rather than the Spirit of God. So, therefore, to be filled with the Spirit and to experience His power, we need to allow Him to control our lives. The obvious application to that one is not to drink alcohol, but this extends to anything in life, including our own passions and desires that lead us away from God. So then the question for you and all of us today is that is He transforming your life? Are you allowing the Spirit of God to transform your life? Let the Spirit of God control your life and your decisions. So let's break that down. What does that look like? If you want the spark of God in your life, which is incredible, by the way, it is incredible when we submit ourselves to Spirit of God and He works in our hearts. It is an amazing thing. And despite what the world has to say, it's better. It's a better life living submitted to the Holy Spirit. And you might say, "All right, well, how does that happen? Might be sitting there. How does that happen?" So we're going to take you through these list of questions here to help you experience knowing what the Spirit of God can do in your life. Number one is, do you have a relationship with Jesus? Has there been a moment in your life where you have given your life to Jesus? You've recognized I am a sinner because of my sin, I fall short. And I choose to embrace Jesus as my forgiver and leader because He died in the cross and rose again for my sins. Has there been a moment in your life where you have done that? Because that's the initial spark. That's where those brand new spark plugs are put in. All right, that's the initial spark. Without that, the spark plugs are never going to work. All right, so that's the first and most important question, is that do you have a relationship with Jesus? The second was, do you have sin that you have not turned away from? Like I said before, sometimes in life we just want to do whatever we want, yet we still want the power of God while we're doing whatever we want. It doesn't work that way. We want the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, then we need to turn away from sin. Okay, that laundry list of sins that I listed before need to turn away from that sin so that we can experience that spark. Number three, are you studying God's Word to know and understand for yourself how to live for Him? That's the awesome thing about God's Word, is that God's Word can transform our lives, but we actually have to spend time reading it and build into that relationship with Jesus. And then in those moments, because we've studied God's Word, the Spirit of God will bring to memory the passages of Scripture that we've studied in those moments that we needed, and we will experience that power of God in our lives. And number four, are you submitting to the Spirit of God by allowing the Spirit to control you rather than your own ungodly desires? This is a daily event. This is something daily that I need to do. I need to do this daily. All right, God. I'm submitting to you today. You are Jesus, you're the author and the finisher of my faith. I pray that your Spirit would work in my life today, work in my heart, help me to lead others to you, help me to respond to others in a godly way, right? With that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, all that, right? That is a daily, daily submission to the Spirit of God, and we need to do that in order to have that spark that we're talking about. So if you want to experience the transformed life, the engine of your life cannot be started and run to its peak performance without first having the spark of the Holy Spirit. So please consider these questions this week. All those I just mentioned, how can you take your next steps in your walk with Jesus this week? I encourage you to have a conversation with me or Kevin, someone with a name tag on, maybe somebody that brought you today about any of those questions today and what God may be working on in your heart. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you for this day, thank you for your love for us, and for sending your Holy Spirit. God, we need you each and every day, and I just pray, God, that we would submit to you, and that we'd allow your Spirit to work in our hearts and our lives to draw us close to you, and Lord, to be an example of those who believe. Lord, I thank you for your love for us, and I pray all these things in your son's precious name. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]
