May 30, 2010 John 16:12-15 Proverbs

8:1-4, 22-31 “Wisdom Calling”

Dr. Ted H. Sandberg

This is Trinity Sunday, the Sunday set aside by the more liturgical churches to look at the doctrine or
dogma of the Trinity, God Three-in-One, God as Father, God as Son, God as Holy Spirit. Rather than
try and explain the doctrine of the Trinity itself, something I confess I don’t understand all that well, I
want to think with you about the Holy Spirit, because I suspect that it’s the Holy Spirit that’s most
foreign to us here this morning. We know about God the Father, God the Creator, the God of the Old
Testament, the God whom Jesus Christ calls, “Abba,” “Daddy.” We know too about God the Son,
Jesus Christ. It was Jesus who was born of Mary, suffered under Pilate, was crucified, dead and
buried. The third day he rose again from the dead, ascended into heaven, and now sits on the right
hand of God where he will come to judge the living and the dead.
The Holy Spirit, however, is a bit more difficult to pin down. Unfortunately, the concept of the Holy
Spirit has been misused both by church scholars and pious individuals in the pews. A friend of mine
says, “The Holy Spirit gets blamed for more claptrap than any other being. If someone wants to
justify his claim to infallibility, he points to the Holy Spirit. If someone wants to justify a particular
doctrine, dogma, or biblical term without much backing, she claims the Holy Spirit. If some fanatic
wants to justify his whims, he invokes the Holy Spirit. If some preacher wants to sanctify a poorly-
prepared message, he lays it onto the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has been made a substitute for
intelligence, credibility, authorization, and plausibility for so long that just the mention of the term is
enough to send us into retreat or hiding.”1
Yet as misused and abused as the doctrine of the Holy Spirit may be, one of the great comforts we as
Christians have is the knowledge, but even more the experience, of the Holy Spirit in our lives. When
the Holy Spirit was given to the disciples on Pentecost, the church was born. Before that event, the
disciples were at a loss as to what to do without Jesus. Following the gift of the Holy Spirit, the
disciples went throughout the world proclaiming the Good News that Jesus was the Son of God. Just
as the disciples were filled with God’s Spirit, so too we are filled by God’s Spirit even today.
As used in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit means a manifestation of God’s presence and power in
those who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord. Although it carried a certain mystical aura, the
presence of the Holy Spirit was always demonstrated by certain fruits in life, which Paul outlines with
some care in his letter to the Galatians: “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, temperance.”
Many years ago, someone2 pointed out that four great qualities have always been associated with
persons who’ve felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives: POWER The power of God
manifested through the Holy Spirit sent Peter to declare, “We must obey God rather than men;”
empowered Martin Luther to face the entrenched powers of his day and declare, “Here I stand! God
helping me I can do no other!” Empowered by this same Spirit John Wesley was able to face the taunt
that he was a priest without a parish by declaring, “The world is my parish!” Wherever the Holy
Spirit has invaded the life of a man or woman, it has come wrapped with the kind of power that the

1 1. Romney, Rodney R., “The Holy Spirit, God-With-Us,” preached at First Baptist
Church, Seattle, Washington, October 17, 1982.

2 2. Bosley, Harold, A Firm Faith for Today, Harper, 1950.

1
world can neither give nor take away.
TRUTH Christians have been able to move forward with a strong sense of God’s will for human lives
and of God’s presence in human history. Where they have truly listened and waited for God’s truth,
men and women have discovered that remarkable promise that Jesus made to his disciples. “Do not be
anxious about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given you...
it is not you who speaks but the spirit of God speaking through you.” (Mt. 10:15-20).
RIGHTEOUSNESS The experience of the Holy Spirit didn’t pull the disciples away from ethical and
moral relationships with others; rather it deepened and enlarged their notions of what constituted
God’s will of righteousness for their lives. It is the experience of the Holy Spirit that prevents
righteousness from deteriorating into self-righteousness. In the passage from John that Doris read
earlier, Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit will “not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he
hears.” In other words, the Spirit speaks what has been revealed to us through God and through Jesus
Christ. The Holy Spirit doesn’t reveal to us things that aren’t in the Bible, doesn’t give us new
doctrines or teachings, but only illuminates what’s already before us. If what we believe is from the
Holy Spirit differs from what the Bible teaches or the church teaches, we need to return to the Spirit,
because the Spirit only gives what has been given.
LOVE The love of God is the crowning gift of the Spirit. God’s Spirit literally enables us to grapple
with anger, hatred, and injustice and to come out on the other side of these in love, a love literally born
of God beyond the realms of human love.
To these 4 qualities, I would add Wisdom, though there’s debate as to whether the wisdom of which
we read this morning in Proverbs is the Holy Spirit, or is another characteristic of the Spirit. As we
read, Wisdom says “The LORD created me at the beginning of his work.” Wisdom was from the
beginning, and thus is “identified with the Holy Spirit. It has 6 important elements: knowledge,
imagination, discipline, piety, order, and moral instruction.”3 It’s the distinctive texts we call “wisdom
literature,” but also the means to obtain and understand those texts, and therefore is a gift from God,
even a part of God, at the least, another aspect of the Holy Spirit.
So it needs to be clearly seen here that when we talk about the Holy Spirit we’re not merely talking
about the human spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, who as holy spirit is sharply
distinguished from the unholy spirit often found in humans. The Spirit is no other than God: God
close to persons, God close to the world, God as comprehending but not comprehensible; God as self-
giving but not controllable. The Holy Spirit is God’s personal closeness to God’s children, but always
on God’s terms. The Holy Spirit is not independent or apart from God.
I confess that I can’t explain how this doctrine of the Trinity works. We can see God at work as
Creator. We know Jesus Christ. Jesus himself tells us of the Holy Spirit, God’s Spirit. How God the
Creator, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one but three, I don’t claim to know.
I believe that a full understanding of the concept of the Trinity is beyond my understanding, and
perhaps beyond yours as well. What I can understand is what the doctrine of the Holy Spirit means
for me, and here I borrow again from my friend, Dr. Rod Romney, former pastor of First Baptist
Church in Seattle, WA, because he expresses my belief better that I can.4
3 3. Perdue, Leo G., Proverbs: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and
Preaching, John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 2000, p. 4.

4 4. Romney.
2
“When I say I believe in the Holy Spirit the first thing I mean is this: God is always at work in my life.
I always have the need to be lifted up to higher levels of light, out of my sin and shoddiness. The
miracle of the transforming touch of God, given to me each time I seek it, bringing wholeness out of
all my sense of division, is still the greatest miracle of the Holy Spirit for me.
“The second thing I mean when I say I believe in the Holy Spirit is this: God is always at work in the
world. God is no absentee Deity, who once came to earth in Jesus Christ and then left it. God is here,
active and concerned in all that is or is to be. God works through reality from atom to galaxy, from
ameba to cosmos. God is not limited to any one period or people or faith or segment of history.
Evidence of God’s work as creator, sustainer, and redeemer is found everywhere.
It’s immensely comforting for me to know that God is at work today in the complex and troubled
situation in the Middle East, in [Iraq and Afghanistan], in Somalia, and in the United States. There’s
no room when talking about God’s Holy Spirit to talk about “privileged nations,” or even “a chosen
people” any longer. Either God loves all of his creation and thereby gives the Holy Spirit to all who
ask and believe, or else God has made some awful mistakes in what has been created, and I don’t
believe that at all.
It is very comforting for me to know that if this world is blown up by nuclear madness or destroyed by
human greed that essentially God will not desert us. But it’s even more comforting for me to know
that God is at work in the world today, seeking to awaken his people to a new urgency of cooperation
in redeeming this planet from total annihilation. When we say that we believe in the Holy Spirit we’re
saying that we believe God is with us, releasing power, truth, righteousness, love [and wisdom] into
the hearts and minds of those who are willing to surrender themselves consciously to receive these
gifts.
“The third meaning of the Holy Spirit is that God is at work in the life of the Christian community, the
church. From the beginning of its historic career, the church has been founded on the reality of the
Holy Spirit in its life. Without the Holy Spirit as a vital fact, the New Testament would never have
been written, the church would have never been established. All those who proclaim that the church is
dead, the church is irrelevant, the church is inconsequential are looking at the church only as human
institution and fail to understand that the church only succeeds, has only ever succeeded to be the
church, when it has been lead and filled by the Holy Spirit.
“What is the Holy Spirit? It’s another way of talking about God. But more than that. It’s a way of
knowing that God is with us, that God has pitched his tent beside us and has promised to be with us,
always and forever.” The Holy Spirit is the power of God that gives you and me the strength and the
courage, the power and the will, to face a world of sin. It is the Holy Spirit that allows the word of
God to be proclaimed to a world of darkness and sin. It is the Holy Spirit that carries us when we’re
too burdened by grief and despair to go forward. It is the Holy Spirit that rejoices with us when we
celebrate victory in Jesus. May we give thanks for God’s Holy Spirit ever with us.