The Holy Spirit Frees Us!

The Holy Spirit Frees Us!
Acts 16:16-40 & Romans 6:22-23

Question: The Holy Spirit promises us a future, a new creation, but how do we move toward that?
Bad News: The Freedom of the Spirit is a gift, but it is a challenge to experience it and grow into this freedom.
Good News: The joy of serving and suffering
Celebration: In order to grow into the future that God has promised, the Spirit frees us from our past and present sins, fears, and doubts.

Introduction:

So, we started a new sermon series last week focusing on the Holy Spirit. Instead of getting bogged down in creeds and what they have to say about what the Holy Spirit it, I decided we would focus on what the Bible tells us the Holy Spirit does. As we have also just finished us our Long Range Planning process, and we are focusing on the future of BBC, last week we started with the Holy Spirit’s activity which is promising and creating a future. To make this a bit less theoretical and more practical we looked at Paul’s situation in the church at Corinth which inspired him to write about the future that is promised or guaranteed by the Holy Spirit. Suffering, you may recall, was the immediate problem, the question, the need… Paul’s emotional suffering by feeling embarrassed by a church member at Corinth, watching the church in Corinth struggle to move into the future because some many of the old behaviors, and cultural norms, which went against the ethics and practices of this new community created around Christ, remained so prevalent.

That particular struggle, the struggle of leaving behind, of being freed of that which holds us back from becoming what God created us to be, that we have witnessed is our potential in witnessing and remembering the life of Christ, that is what I want us to consider momentarily today. Paul is certain that the Holy Spirit promises us a future, a new creation. And the first step toward that new creation, that future, is freedom from the past, or even the present. The Holy Spirit Frees Us from that which hinders us from growing into the future the Spirit promises and God is creating.

Which is what the stories we read from Acts 16 poetically illustrate. The Holy Spirit is mentioned, but the presence of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the apostles is the storyline throughout Acts.

First the girl, possessed by ‘spirits.’ She is bound not only by this ‘spirit’ but also by the men who have enslaved her for their own profit. In the greek she is enslaved by a Pythian Spirit, pythian is related to python… which I think gives us a amazing image of a young girl who is strangled, totally constrained by this spirit and these men… with no possible way to be free.

As we read Paul casts out this spirit, and her owners first get incite a mob and then get Paul and Silas arrested, thrown in prison, their feet in the stocks. Another image… bound in chains, locked in stocks…
But the Holy Spirit causes an earthquake which frees them.

And then finally the prison guard himself… distraught at the fact that Paul and Silas were free, and the thought of the reprisals of his superiors for ‘letting’ the prisoners free, draws his sword to do himself in… until again, Paul intervenes. And he is freed from his own sword.


The point is unmistakable. No matter what binds us… the frighting and unknown in the evil spirit, the abuse and oppression of others in the girl’s owners, the mob, the guard,
Regardless of what constrains us… the stocks, even when we feel the sword at our necks… the Holy Spirit will free us, is freeing us.

All this meant to stir not only the heart of the Christian, but the imagination… whatever binds me and holds me back from following Christ and becoming the image of God I’m created to be, the Holy Spirit will free me of.
BUT, as nice as that sounds…

I couldn’t help but think of Brooks Hatlen, one of the characters from ‘the Shawshank Redemption.’ Brooks Hatlen had been a prisoner in Shawshank Prison for most of his life. He had made a life in that prison, working in the library. By the time he was released, he was an elderly man, and he didn’t know how to fit into this new freedom. He couldn’t adjust to freedom and so took his own life.

What happened to the girl, to the jailer? Did they stay free? Did they fall back into old patterns, struggle to overcome the habits that had formed them? What did they do to grow into this freedom, because as wonderful as it sounds that the girl and the jailer were instantly free…
Our experience tells us that we are more like Brooks… it can be tough to adjust to this new found freedom.

Even Paul acknowledges the struggle to live into and up to the freedom we are given.

Rom 7:18-19 I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 19For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.

As exciting and important as the stories found in Acts 16 are… that we can be free, that the Holy Spirit frees us from our past, our sins, our doubts, fears, regrets… I still want more. Acts 16 gives us a promise, a vision… we too are free. But I feel like Paul and Brooks… I struggle to adjust to this freedom and I want some pointers, some steps, some specific actions to take so as to insure that the Holy Spirit is freeing me.

But as much as I look, and I have been looking and reading and thinking all week, I don’t find specific steps in being freed by the Holy Spirit. And this has really frustrated me. What must I do to be free by the Holy Spirit?

Then it occurred to me that if God gave us specific steps beyond believing in Christ and following in his path, if we received specific instructions, we, like the disciples in Corinth from last week, would soon find a way to feel ourselves superior to others. It would cease to be the mysterious gift of the Spirit that freed us, but our own labor and work and will, which we would use to feel superior to others. We aren’t told specifics so that we humbly rely on grace, trust that the Holy Spirit is freeing us… stay focused on the vision of being free.

But then the Holy Spirit did reveal one secret. I almost said, ‘I found one secret’ but it wasn’t me, it was the Holy Spirit really.
This one secret was revealed.

When Paul was freed from his terrorist lifestyle, arresting Christians and supervising the stoning of Stephen, when he was freed from that… it took a community. He was sent to Ananias for prayer.

When the Holy Spirit freed the girl, She (the Holy Spirit) worked through the community of believers represented by Paul and Silas.
When Paul and Silas were freed by the Holy Spirit from prison, they were together…
And the jailer too, depended on Paul and Silas, a community of believers through which the Spirit would work.

It hit me then that the one hint to remaining open to the freeing work of the Holy Spirit is to stay faithful to the community of those who follow Christ. It is in the gutsy work of remaining together in community; in which our fears, doubts, bad habits, sins sometimes rub up against others, hurt them, disappoint them, affect them… that the Holy Spirit, through the support and honesty of others, frees us. We will not be freed in isolation, but experience the freedom of the Holy Spirit when we stick together, lift one another up, prayer, sometimes struggle, reflect honestly, confront lovingly, but always in love and humility… when we are this kind of community, the Holy Spirit, Paul says, makes us free.

God Bless You All