Utumishi Blog

We’ve argued before that preaching that is led by the Spirit will be Bible-driven preaching. Now to add another thought that should flow naturally from that but is worth stating on its own: Spirit-led preaching is all about Jesus.

At least things point in this direction:

1. The content of the Spirit’s Word

Taking it that the whole Bible was written by the Spirit it’s interesting to look at the balance of mentions of the different persons of the Trinity. In the Old Testament there are about 14 references stating or implying the fatherhood of God and roughly 90 mentions of God’s Spirit. When it comes to the Son, there are around 25 theophanies (which I take to be the pre-incarnate Son), 52 references to ‘the Angel of the Lord’ (again I would take to be the Son) and somewhere over 300 explicit messianic prophecies. This is without beginning to try to enumerate the thousands of references related to typological offices (e.g high priest), characters (e.g. David), events (e.g. Passover) and objects (e.g. tabernacle). Jesus was not twisting things when he said (John 5; Luke 24) that the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms are all about him.

Then coming to the New Testament, there are 128 references to ‘the Spirit’, 243 explicit references to ‘the Father’ (beside hundreds of references to ‘God’ where God the Father is implied), and 950 mentions of ‘Jesus’ (not to mention hundreds of separate references to ‘the Son’, ‘Christ’, ‘Lord’, ‘Son of Man’ etc.).

Now admittedly statistics are a very crude indicator but this should immediately give us some sense of who the Spirit is most keen to talk about. He talks relatively sparingly about himself. Some have called him a “shy and retiring spirit” or “the elusive person of the Trinity” (this may be one reason why there is so much controversy about the doctrine of the Spirit – there is simply not a huge amount of biblical data). The person the Spirit seems most keen to write about is Jesus. If we imagine the Spirit as an artist, we might say that he doesn’t go in for self-portraits in a big way, his great work is a massive mural of Christ.

2. The Spirit’s stated work

The night before he died Jesus gave the most detailed explanation of the Spirit and his work that we have (John 14-16). J.I. Packer gives a great summary:

The Spirit… would be sent, said Jesus, “in my name” (14:26), that is as Jesus’s courier, spokesman, and representative… the Spirit would be self-effacing, directing all attention away from himself to Christ and drawing folk into the faith, hope, love, obedience, adoration, and dedication, which constitute communion with Christ… the Spirit would make the presence of Christ and fellowship with him and his Father realities of experience for those who, by obeying his words, showed that they loved him (14:21-23)… Again, the Spirit would teach… and the Spirit’s way of teaching would be to make disciples recall and comprehend what Jesus himself had said (14:26)… the Spirit would attest Christ in the manner of a witness… (15:26; 16:8-11)… Thus the Spirit would glorify the glorified Savior (16:14)… a floodlight ministry… It is as if the Spirit stands behind us, throwing light over our shoulder, on Jesus, who stands facing us. The Spirit’s message to us is never, “Look at me; listen to me; come to me; get to know me,” but always, “Look at him, and see his glory; listen to him, and hear his word; go to him, and have life; get to know him, and taste his gift of joy and peace.”

3. The apostles’ Spirit-led preaching

The Spirit was given that the apostles would bear witness to… Jesus (Acts 1:8).

On the day of Pentecost there is a spectacular outpouring of the Spirit, Peter is filled with the Spirit, his hair is on fire, he stands to preach an expository sermon on a text from Joel, a text which is one of the clearest Old Testament passages about the Spirit… surely we’re going to get a sermon on the Spirit – if ever there was a time for an exposition on the doctrine of the Spirit this is it… but no… “Men of Israel, hear this: JESUS” (Acts 2:22). And this most Spirit-filled of sermons continues with a relentless focus on this Jesus – his life, death, resurrection, exaltation. The Holy Spirit is only mentioned once (v33) as a confirming sign of Jesus’ exaltation and his identity as the Lord of David and the LORD of Joel.

You get the same pattern again and again in Acts – Peter is “filled with the Spirit” and preaches about salvation in Jesus (Acts 4:8-12), Stephen, a man full of the Spirit, gives a Bible overview focussed on Jesus (Acts 6-7), Philip is led by the Spirit to preach from Isaiah “the good news about Jesus” (Acts 8). We find the same pattern in the ministry and letters of Paul.

So a couple of questions:

• When did you last hear a sermon series on the Spirit?
• When did you last hear a sermon series on Jesus?