Star Wars - "May the Force be with you"

The hype has hit are the movie-goers bought into it with the release of the last movie of the Star Wars saga. Some people stood in line for weeks prior to the opening of The Revenge of the Sith. At the time of its release two million Americans played hooky from work so they could watch the premiere. Worldwide through last Sunday, "Revenge of the Sith" had taken in $504.4 million since its almost simultaneous debut in most countries beginning
May 18.
George Lucas’ Star Wars series has become nothing less than a cultural phenomenon as well as an incredible marketing phenomenon, too. In fact the last movie sold two billion dollars in movie related merchandise. One commentator said that the famous Star Wars phrase, “May the force be with you” ought to be changed to “May the sales force be with you.”

I myself have been a Star Wars fan since the beginning, with the exception of Jar Jar Binks. I don’t think anybody honestly really liked Jar Jar Binks. And Yoda bugs me a bit, but you’ve got this guy whose supposed to be so brilliant and so wise and so full of wisdom and yet he can’t speak a straightforward English sentence.
“Totally backward his sentences are.
Really annoying the little creep is”

Certainly Lucas has created more than just a raw adventure series. For example he has intentionally added religious overtones to the movies. In The Phantom Menace for example we learn that young Anakin Skywalker was immaculately conceived and that his appearance was a fulfillment of ancient prophecies. Sound familiar? I’m not saying that there’s anything theologically profound about Star Wars but I do believe that part of its success is due to these underlying spiritual themes.
So I (being a Star Wars fan) see this as an intriguing way to ask the question, “What would the Bible say about these spiritual themes that we see in the
Star Wars movies? And what can these themes tell us about the real God?

So over the next few weeks we're going to take a look at spiritual parallels from the movie Star Wars and what God's Word says.

Well we see that: the movies tap in to a desire in each person to connect with something bigger than themselves.

To know that we haven’t been left alone in the universe to kind of figure things out by ourselves. To believe that we can have a supernatural resource to guide us through the crises of life. In Star Wars this sense of the supernatural is represented by The Force. In fact, you remember these famous words, “May The Force be with you.” George Lucas told Time magazine, “I put The Force into the movie for a reason. I put The Force into the movie to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people.” In other words, he wanted to stimulate questions about God and what God was really like. And here’s the amazing thing. If this does succeed in pointing people toward the Bible to discover the real life counterpart to the fictional force what they will find is something even more spectacular, even more astonishing, even more awe inspiring than all of the special effects of the Star Wars movies. Because, as amazing as Lucas paints The Force, to be honest it absolutely pales in comparison to the incredible adventure story that the Bible paints about the Holy Spirit.

How amazing is the Holy Spirit?
For one thing He created the entire universe. The Bible says that the world was created out of the Father, through the Son and by the Holy Spirit. In fact, we encounter the Holy Spirit in the opening scene of the Bible, the very second verse which says this,
“Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
The Holy Spirit is seen in the very process of creation. That’s just the beginning of the Holy Spirit’s feats in history’s biggest adventure story.

He also caused Jesus Christ to be conceived in the womb of a virgin, setting up God’s great redemptive drama. Matthew 1:18
“Mary was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.”

In fact it was also the Holy Spirit who culminated this historic drama by participating in the raising of Jesus from the dead in His triumphant victory over the grave. Romans 1:4 talks about the power of that Spirit of holiness which raised Christ to life again from the dead.
“And Jesus Christ our Lord was shown to be the Son of God when God powerfully raised him from the dead by means of the Holy Spirit” Romans 1:4

And, on top of that, it was the Holy Spirit who inspired the writing of the Bible, working through a variety of people to create the most important, the most profound, the most practical spiritual book ever written, a book that peels back the vale of mystery and introduces us to God Himself. 2 Peter 1:21
“It was the Holy Spirit within these godly men who gave them true messages from God.”

Not only that, it was the Holy Spirit, Acts 2 says, that instituted the miraculous birth of the Christian church when He was poured out in an unprecedented way in what has come to be known as Pentecost. The disciples were all together. Acts 2:4 says this
“All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.”
And because of how He empowered them and emboldened them and guided them the church was born and the church began to thrive despite this relentless persecution by the real life counterpart of the evil empire which was the Roman Empire.

As if all of that weren’t amazing enough this very same Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead, the very same Spirit of God who created the universe takes up residence inside every single follower of Jesus Christ where He does an inside job of recreating them over time to become more and more like Jesus.
1 Corinthians 3:16
“Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you.”
So in the most profound sense a follower of Jesus Christ is never alone. In fact, the very name of the Holy Spirit, the paraclete, literally means the Holy Spirit is our counselor. He is our advocate. He is our comforter. He is our guide. He is our helper.
He will stay with believers. He will guide them into the ways of God.
The Holy Spirit is amazing.

He also gives spiritual gifts. What are spiritual gifts?
(reference: 'At You Service - Discover Your Design - April 10, 2005)
They are a divine enablement to accomplish things for God that we could never possibly do in and of our own talents and our own abilities. And allowing God to energize and use this spiritual gift that He has given to you is one of the most fulfilling, satisfying adventures of the Christian life.
1 Corinthians 12:7 “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” So He gives each follower of Jesus a gift.

The Bible says there’s a number of gifts. And God will give you one if you give your life to Him. And as He energizes it He uses you in the furtherance of that gift, amazing things can happen and you’re going to find fulfillment and satisfaction like nothing else.
Inside of me, inside of every follower of Jesus He also gently but powerfully works to transform us more and more over time into the image of Jesus Christ. To help us act more like Jesus would act, to respond more as Jesus would respond, to make choices as Jesus would make more and more over time.

And that’s not all He does inside of us. The Bible also promises that He will produce nine qualities inside of us that human beings could only experience on a superficial level without the Holy Spirit. With the Holy Spirit we can experience much more fully. This is referred to in the Bible as the fruit of the Holy Spirit. You see in described in Galatians 5:22-23.
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Those are the very nine qualities we need most in life, aren't they? You’re living a stressed out life and you say, “God, I need more peace.”
The Holy Spirit says, I can help with that. “I need more self control.” The Holy Spirit says, I can help you with that. “I want to be more loving… I want to be kinder… I want to be gentler...” The Holy Spirit says, I can help you with that. “I want to know God more fully.” The Holy Spirit says, You can. Through Me.

That’s just a brief summary of the Holy Spirit’s astounding ministry.
Yet there have been a lot of misunderstandings, a lot of misconceptions, a lot of confused people about the identity and the role of the Holy Spirit. So what I want to do today is use this fictional creation in Star Wars of The Force and draw a contrast between that entity and the real life Holy Spirit as a way of helping us understand who the Holy Spirit is, what His role is and what difference it makes to you today in your life.

Some contrasts between this fictional force of Star Wars and the real Holy Spirit.

The first contrast is this. The Force is impersonal.
Star Wars defines The Force as: The Force is an energy field generated by all living things.
Some cults erroneously teach that the Holy Spirit is also a force, an energy. Sort of like electricity or magneticism. That’s what they teach but is it true? It reminds me of something Abraham Lincoln said to his children once, “If you call a tail a leg then how many legs does a dog have?” Five? He said, “Wrong. There would still be four legs because calling a tail a leg does not make it so.” That’s true.
And calling the Holy Spirit a force does not make it so. Because the firm evidence of the Bible shows that the Holy Spirit is not impersonal...
but He is personal.
He is a person. Not that He has hands and feet - He’s Spirit - but He has all the qualities that makes a person a person in the truest sense.
Having character, having personality, having a will, having intellect, having emotions, having the ability to communicate. The Bible says the Holy Spirit can be lied to. He can teach. He can be outraged. Why?
Because He is a person. Those things would not be true of an energy force of an energy field.
Have you noticed the Bible always refers to the Holy Spirit with personal pronouns? It never refers to the Holy Spirit as “it”. The Bible always refers to the Holy Spirit as “Him” or “He”. For example John 15:26
“When the counselor comes, that is the Holy Spirit, He will testify about Me.”
Two things there. First, He, which indicates He is a person not an it, not a force. Second, what is He going to do? He’s going to testify. A force field can’t testify. That requires intellect, communication abilities. So there’s two ways that verse shows us the Holy Spirit is a person.
Why should that matter? Why should that matter to us? Because if the Holy Spirit were merely an energy force we could never personally relate to Him. We can know about the force of magnetism but we can’t know the force of magnetism. But because the Holy Spirit is a person, we can know Him personally. We can interact with Him, we can commune with Him, we can relate to Him. And He can personally respond to us. That’s hugely important.

2. The Force’s divinity is uncertain.
We don’t know if it’s God or not. George Lucas says, “I would hesitate to call The Force, God.” One common characteristic of cults today is they also deny the deity of the Holy Spirit. But the Bible clearly teaches that the Holy Spirit’s divinity is certain. It is clear, the Bible says, that He is God. He is equally God along with God the Father and God the Son who together make up the trinity.
This is illustrated a number of ways in the Bible. One Acts 5:3 where the Apostle Peter is confronting a guy called Ananias by saying,
“How is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit?” Then in verse 4 Peter adds, “You have not lied to man but you have lied to God,” because the Holy Spirit is God.

The Bible makes it clear that the Holy Spirit possesses every attribute that makes God, God. Why is that important for us? For this reason: it means the Holy Spirit when you are going through troubled times, when you are in need of comfort, when you are in need of encouragement is more than a good friend that sits next to you and commiserates with you. That’s all your friend can do is feel bad for you and commiserate with you. But because the Holy Spirit is God, because He possesses the infinite power of the God of the universe He can do more than just commiserate with you. He has the power to make an actual difference in your life. So it’s extremely important that the Holy Spirit is God.

3. The third contrast between The Force of Star Wars and the true Holy Spirit is The Force is both good and bad.
You have the good guys, the Jedi knights and they access the positive side of The Force. You have the bad guys like Darth Vader and the evil emperor Darth Sidious and they receive power from The Dark Side. This is a concept that’s taken from Eastern philosophy where God is both good and bad at the same time. In fact in Hinduism there are millions of impersonal gods. There are good gods and bad gods. In fact in Hinduism there’s actually a goddess of death in whose name people have killed other people in the past.
When you think about this concept, the possibility that God in His infinite power would be both good and bad that’s a frightening thought. But the Bible tells us it isn’t true. The Bible tells us the Holy Spirit, being God, is only good. He is only, only good. Psalm 34:8 invites us to “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”
Not only that but the Holy Spirit opposes evil which is what we would want God to do. Why is this important to us? It’s important to us because the Holy Spirit, you can count on Him to always do what is ultimately in your best interest. You can trust Him to always do what is good and what is right so your trust in Him can be complete, your reliance on Him can be total.

4. The fourth contrast is The Force calls upon people to rely on their feelings.
You see this over and over again in Star Wars. Young Anakin Skywalker is told this, “Feel. Don’t think. Trust your instincts.” And at another point OB1 Kanobe tells Luke Skywalker “Trust your feelings.” Listen to the way George Lucas articulated the thinking behind this. “Ultimately The Force is the larger mystery of the universe and to trust your feelings is your way into that.”

That is a very, very, very dangerous message. Feelings shift, feelings change, feelings get contaminated by evil and by self-interest and by ego and by deception. Feelings are notoriously unreliable. I'm sure you recall the Columbine school killings where these kids went in the school and murdered a bunch of people. What was their reasoning: they were just living out authentically their feelings. This is what they felt they should do. This is what they felt was the right thing, the best thing for them to do so they did it. That doesn’t make it right. This is the danger of relying on feelings.

The Holy Spirit says something different. The Holy Spirit invites testing. He invites testing. He says, Don’t just rely on your feelings. 1 John 4:1 “Dear friends do not believe every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.”
God has given us a standard against which we can measure. When we believe we’re hearing the whispering of the Spirit in our lives, the nudgings of the Holy Spirit encouraging us to do something, to say something, we can measure it against this measuring rod that God has given us of the Bible because the Holy Spirit will never contradict something said in this book.
So if you feel like God is nudging you through His Holy Spirit to do something and this book says don’t do it, that’s not the Holy Spirit that’s urging you to do something. It’s your own self-interest. It may be an evil source. Because the Holy Spirit lives inside of every Christ-follower another way we can test the spirits is by going to a mature, godly Christian who knows us well and say, I feel like the Holy Spirit is encouraging me in this direction. Would you pray about it? Would you see if there’s consistency between what you sense from God and what I’m sensing form God?
I remember when Cathleen and I were praying about something BIG we felt God was doing in our lives. We prayed together, but also separately - I knew the Holy Spirit lives in my wife and He lives in me. He is not going to be inconsistent and tell her one thing and tell me another. We needed to pray, we needed to find out. Is the Holy Spirit consistent? Absolutely! We need to seek counsel from other godly people. We need to look in this book and see the wisdom about making this decision.
The Bible says, Don’t just rely on feelings. Test the spirits because without that we are left tossed on a treacherous sea of emotionalism and relativism that will shipwreck your life. If you base your life on your feelings you will shipwreck it sooner or later. The Bible wants to protect you from that.

5. Another contrast between The Force of Star Wars and the real Holy Spirit is that The Force is reserved only for the elite.
Only a few people are able to access the power of The Force. According to Star Wars. It says this: Through the Force a Jedi knight can see far off places. He can perform amazing feats and he can accomplish what would otherwise be impossible.
But the Holy Spirit is available to all. He is available not to just a few. He is available to all. To each and every person who in repentance and faith receives Jesus Christ as the forgiver of their sins and is thereby adopted into what’s called The Body of Christ which is the church. 1 Corinthians 12:13
“For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body whether Jew or Greek, slaves or free, and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”
Why is this important? Because through the Holy Spirit all Christ’s followers can see and understand and discern things that other people cannot. They can perform amazing feats of courage and love which leave the world astounded. They can accomplish things through their spiritual gift that otherwise would not be humanly possible. Only because God resides in us.

There is a difference between the Holy Spirit entering into a believers life at the moment of salvation – what is called the New Birth or New Life and the Baptism or Coming upon of the Holy spirit.
At salvation each person receives the Holy Spirit, The Holy Spirit now resides in the believer.
“...Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit” Ephesians 1:13
The Baptism of the Holy Spirit comes into a believers life after salvation is a done done. That baptism is to provide:
- spiritual power for living
“But you, dear friends, carefully build yourselves up in this most holy faith by praying in the Holy Spirit” Jude 20

"And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests." Ephesians 6:18

- serving & speaking of Christ
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Acts 1:8
As Christians, followers of Jesus Christ we are called to love God with all our heart and serve Him, in other words, what can I do to further the advancement of God's agenda?

The Force is an entertaining invention of Hollywood. I love going to the movies. I love seeing all the action. But the Holy Spirit is real. He is available to help you and to encourage you and to comfort you and to empower you and to enlighten you and to guide you and to teach you.