Teaching Notes

It has always amazed me to see a child exhibit characteristics of a parent. Sometimes you can watch the way a child walks, or talks or features they have and you can tell who they belong to. That is not something you can pretend to have, either you have it or you don't. Many of those characteristics are picked up because of prolonged exposure to that parent. It is the same way with God. We cannot pretend to have his ways, either we do or we don't. When we belong to him we have his "spiritual DNA" and that is what makes us look like his Son. We pick up his ways because of prolonged exposure to our Heavenly Father and we look and act in such a way than many can say, I know who your Father is.

The Spirit of God

Matthew 3:11-12 (The Message)

I'm baptizing you here in the river, turning your old life in for a kingdom life. The real action comes next: The main character in this drama—compared to him I'm a mere stagehand—will ignite the kingdom life within you, a fire within you, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He's going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He'll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he'll put out with the trash to be burned."



Notes: John the Baptist was called the forerunner of Jesus. He was baptizing people as he called them to repent. In this scripture he is speaking to the religious groups of his time, the Pharisees and Sadducees, of who many were showing up because it was the popular thing to do. He was rebuking them because their hearts were not right. He begins to speak of the one that would come behind him (Jesus) that would do more than cleanse their outer bodies with water but would change them inside with his Holy Spirit.

Question: What does John say the Holy Spirit will do?



Answer: He says Jesus will give to you a fire that will ignite inside of you. That fire is the fire of the Holy Spirit. It will be a fire that burns but will not destroy you. Instead this fire inside will burn off all the unclean things. The bad habits, the bad thoughts, the wrong way of doing. This fire will begin the cleansing on the inside and it will work outward into your life. What this means as a Christian you may not see the evidence of God working right away from the outside of a person, but know that God is working on the inside to change the person and to put everything in its proper place. This is one of the duties and purposes of the Holy Spirit. He empowers the Christian to become more like Jesus. We are not to be a cheap representation of Jesus, but he comes to change us to look just like Jesus. We cannot do that, if we try we come out as a poor duplication. If we want to look like the real thing, then that is the job of the Holy Spirit.



Prayer: Lord thank you for your Holy Spirit which comes to change us, remove from us wrong ideas, thoughts and ways. Thank you for loving us enough to want us to look like your son. Have full control of me so that you can show through me. I do not want to be a poor substitute, I want to be the real thing.