#380 Advantage Series# 4, The Anointing

#380 Advantage Series# 4, The Anointing
By: Zach Sloane

(See download links at the bottom of the page for the Sermon & PowerPoint)

RECAP

John 16:7 NKJV
“Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.”

The Advantage is a Person, Who is God, and is our Helper.
He empowers us with the necessary gift of tongues and 9 spiritual gifts that we are all qualified for. They are available today, for us, and God wants us to use.

These gifts are all about demonstrating and making known God’s great love, and are best demonstrated and exercised when love is the motivation, the intent, and when love informs the faith and method we employ for using the gifts.

INTRO
Today’s topic: the anointing. Defined as “the person and power of Holy Spirit working through humanity to accomplish the or a divine purpose.”

It literally means to smear.

Important because all that God wants to do, He said it’s not going be by might nor by power, but by His Spirit.

Foundations Matter!

1 Cor. 3:11 “no foundation can be laid, other than that which is laid, which Christ Jesus,” and we must insist that this includes any discussion about the the Anointing.

Foundations are important especially when we speak of experiential things like the anointing because they keep us from being flakey.

1 Corinthians 2:10 “the Spirit searches everything, even the deep things of God.”
Holy Spirit is deep! Personable, fun, full of joy, but deep. In other words there is substance, or weightiness to Him.
One of the Hebrew definitions for the word glory – kavod or weight.

Have to make sure that you do not bring in OT law and works-based thoughts that the pictures and imagines are encapsulated within.

Galatians 3:1-5 (NKJV)
O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?  Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?

Must resist the lie that saved by grace, but used by God because of our works.

Before you know it, you’re frustrated, you’re not seeing results you believe you should see, because somewhere along the line you stopped believing in order to see results, and started working for them. 

So we have to stay rooted in Jesus and the Word of His grace.

The anointing – “the person and power of Holy Spirit working through humanity to accomplish the or a divine purpose,” speaks of intimacy. partnership, close personal relationships, at a personal level. But also speaks of purpose.

Luke 4:18 where Jesus says “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me for he has anointed me to… and it lists what he was anointed to do.

Partnership with God in eternal purpose and everyday life. Don’t despise your life, or the tasks in it. Life itself, in this flesh and blood existence is not to be denied, rejected, avoided, anything like that, but invaded and smeared with God.

One of the enemies of the anointing, the spirit of antichrist, is so effective because it gets us to divide our lives up into spiritual and un-spiritual activities, pursuits etc.

Christmas! The anointing invading stuff!

And Jesus, the one who brought grace and truth is called the Christ, the Anointed One.

Jesus is identified and distinguished as the one who was smeared with Holy Spirit. He was the Anointed One.

What does this mean? To the people who called Jesus the Christ, they would have had a very concrete idea as to what this meant. 

OT pics of anointing
Prophets – 1 Kings 19:16
Priests – Lev. 8:30
Kings – 1 Samuel 10:1

Bezalel – anointed for craftsmanship – Ex. 31:1-6
Tabernacle/ Temple and worship instrument – Lev. 8:10

Mostly Prophets, Priests, and Kings.

The smearing of people with the Holy Spirit, indicated by the anointing oil that the one anointed with oil was the one who had the authority and the power to do and to be what God had designated them to be and do.

Jesus, the anointed One, that would have been understood in the day as Jesus, the One who has authority and power to be God’s chosen Priest, Prophet and King.

The Jews had scripturally informed expectation as to what the Anointed One would look like.

Jeremiah 23:5 (KJV)
A King shall reign and prosper, And execute judgment and righteousness in the earth.

Isaiah 11:2-5 (NKJV)
The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him… He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked.  

Jeremiah 33:15 (NKJV)
‘In those days and at that time, I will cause to grow up to David
A Branch of righteousness; He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the earth.

Imagine the dissonance when Jesus stands up in the synagogue and reads the words from Isaiah 61:1-2

“The Spirit of the Lord God isupon Me, Because the Lord has anointed Me

To preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to those who arebound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, 

And he stops short of saying, “and the day of vengeance of our God,” and then proceeds to tel them in that room that today in their very hearing,  that Scripture has been fulfilled.  

Context:  In Luke 4 When Jesus went to Nazareth he went to the synagogue, the scripture says, as was his custom. (v. 16)  

Ray Vander Laan, tells us that:
“The synagogue was school, meeting place, courtroom, and place of prayer. In some towns, the synagogue may even have provided lodging for travelers. It was the place where small groups of Jewish students assembled for Scripture reading and discussion of the Torah and oral tradition. This meant that worship and study, friendship and community celebration, and even the governing of the community were all done by the same people in the same place.”^[1] 

Now, on the Sabbath at the synagogue that Jesus would have attended Vander Laan says: “The service would have began with began with Shema and a reading from Torah, and then Following the Torah portion, a section from the prophets (called the Haphtarah) would be read by the same or another reader.”

After all readings, a short sermon would be offered, often by the reader of the Torah or Haftarah. Any adult member of the community was eligible to speak the sermon called the derashah. The sermon was frequently quite short (Jesus spoke only a few words, Luke 4:21). The service ended with a benediction using the Aaronic blessing found in the Torah (Num. 6:24-26), if a priest was present to offer it. 

So Jesus in this environment, in a room full of people who he knew, knew Him, most likely did life with stands up and says that this is fulfilled today in your hearing. I am the one Anointed to do these things.  

Mark 6:1-5 tells us that when he went to this place, his hometown where he first proclaimed the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, the place where he wasn’t able to do many miracles, he was met with this very response: 

Mark 6:3 (NKJV)
3 Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Mary, and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?” So they were offended at Him.

They had an expectation for what the anointed one would look like and Jesus didn’t match it and they were offended.

They were familiar, and that familiarity killed their ability to receive from the anointed one the benefits that the anointing can bring.

Familiarity and wrong expectations will rob you of the benefits of the anointing and of partnering with Him in it.

The anointing comes, and it can look different to what you expect, and if you despiseit, treat it with contempt or familiarity, you won’t enjoy its benefits. 

What does it look like. 

It was demonstrative and powerful.

Acts 10:38 New King James Version (NKJV)
38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.

Destroys yokes, delivers, heals, sets free.

Jesus baptized in Holy Spirit, Anointed, gifted, He was smeared with Holy Spirit and power when Holy Spirit came down upon Him, yet somehow, on top all of this… God was with Him.

2 Corinthians 1:21 (NKJV)
Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us isGod,

We are all anointed and endowed with power by virtue of our having been smeared with the Holy Spirit, yet sometimes, on top of this God will smear you with the Holy Spirit in a special way, at special times and seasons, for particular tasks, assignments or roles. This can be ministry, it can be an office, it can be to excel at work.

Luke 5:17 it says of Jesus that while he was teaching “the power of God was with Him to heal.”

He recognized that there was special smearing of God in that place and time to do something specific.

We can be aware of that too. And we are. One way we experience that is the corporate anointing when we gather together in his name.

What does it look like?

It is happy!

Hebrews 1:9 New King James Version (NKJV)
You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness;
Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You
With the oil of gladness more than Your companions.”

God’s view of participating in the Holy Ghost has to do with abundance and delights.

“They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights.” Psalms 36:8

Proverbs 9:4-5
“Whoever issimple, let him turn in here!” As forhim who lacks understanding, she says to him, “Come, eat of my bread And drink of the wine I have mixed.

It was in fullness and without measure.

John 3:34(NKJV)
34 For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God does not give the Spirit by measure.

You have limitless measure of Holy Spirit, limited only by your own capacity.

2 Kings 4 – A widow who was married to one of the sons of the prophets, who had anointing oil…  says to Elisha that she is in debt, her creditor is going to take her sons and she says to Elisha all I have is anointing oil.

2 Kings 4:3-7
“Then he said, “Go, borrow vessels from everywhere, from all your neighbors—empty vessels; do not gather just a few. And when you have come in, you shall shut the door behind you and your sons; then pour it into all those vessels, and set aside the full ones.”  So she went from him and shut the door behind her and her sons, who brought the vesselsto her; and she poured itout. Now it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said to her son, “Bring me another vessel.” And he said to her, “There isnot another vessel.” So the oil ceased. Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, “Go, sell the oil and pay your debt; and you andyour sons live on the rest.”

Oil flows as long as it flows. Freely you have received, freely give.

How?  – By faith!

1 John 2:27
But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.

It’s a relationship.

“The Hebrew mindset dictates that the power of God is his very nature manifested through his presence or connection to us. It’s not a live wire of current or spiritual electricity; it’s his love nature and the manifestation of his personhood.” –Shawn Bolz Translating God. (p. 109)

Freely you have received so freely give!

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