The person and the work of the Holy Spirit, Lesson 2

OK, everybody got lesson two? What I'm going to do, I think, as we go forward, what I'm going to try to do is that sometimes if you have stuff to read, and we're going through, I'm going to start putting references to where you can find it, on what page it's on and what paragraph it's in, so it's easier for us to read and reference the material.

Last week, primarily, the discussion had to do with, is the Holy Spirit a person? So the first question today is, can we conclude that the Holy Spirit is a person? What do you think? Absolutely. Yeah, he is. Is there any place in scripture where it indicates that he is not a person? Yeah, that's interesting. That's a great question, Joanne, because there's lots and lots of scriptures that talk about him as a person, but none that refer to him as anything other than a person. Right.

So, you can't, these 430 says, don't grieve the Holy Spirit of God. You can't grieve a force, you know, or quench not the spirit. In other words, in First Thessalonians 519, only a person can be quenched or praying in the spirit or all of these kinds of verses that if you took the personhood out of these verses, you deprive them of their entire meaning. There wouldn't be any meaning but you'd be praying to an empty idol.

So it's important and I know that whenever this question comes up, everybody lines up and says, oh yeah, he's a person. And within three sentences, they're referring to him as an it, rather than a him. And so it's important to have cemented in your psyche that the spirit of God is in fact a person. And we don't have trouble, I think, with the Father. We certainly don't have any trouble with the Lord Jesus. But we do sometimes, because the Holy Spirit works in the background so much, We have, I think, difficulties thinking about him as a person. Now, any discussion about that?

Mike, just some of those ones that from, and you used it right there, him. Lord Jesus referred to him and, you know, I was looking in John 14, 15, 16, where he's talking about the helper, you know, in 14, 7, you know, for if I do not go away, the helper will not come. But if I go away, I will send him to you. And all of those references in John 14 talk about he him. And it's as you say, it's not it. It's always it's always referenced a person as in him. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay.

The next question is I'm going to spend a lot of time on because I think it's important that we understand. Right out uses the word dispensation and he's going to talk about the Holy Spirit and his influence in the different dispensations. So, let's talk about what a dispensation is. First of all, When you see the word dispensation in the word of God, it's the Greek word oikonomia, which is a compound word oikos and nomos. Oikos means house. Nomos means rule or law. So really what the word dispensation means is house rule.

And I think you can see if you're any kind of a student of the word of God that there are separate house rules and rulerships that take place through scripture. So what I would like to do is maybe change the word dispensation to the word stewardship.

No challenges? Wow, that was easy. That's what we learned from Vern. That's right. That's exactly what we learned from him and that was one of the great contributions he made because there are a number of relationships from the very beginning of scripture that are called and can be characterized as stewardships.

How do you define a stewardship? Let's say, answer the phone. If you have a stewardship, what do you have? Would it be the one that's over this house rule that you just defined? People or persons who are over this house rule at that time? You could say just in a general definition, a stewardship is a person who manages another person's property. or his financial affairs and one who administers anything as an agent of another.

For 40 some years, I was a realtor. I really was a steward. When you employed me to either sell your property or find you one, that was a stewardship. I had a responsibility from you to perform certain duties in order to satisfy whatever your needs were.

That's a stewardship. In the word of God, you find that there are stewardships and they are mostly directed at men, but they vary. Some are really small and some are huge in terms of importance. They work in a thousand different ways. So if you look at the word dispensation as a stewardship, one entrusting a steward to something, a steward to do something else. It makes more sense, I think. And God is the one who hands out stewardship. Do every one of us have at least one stewardship?

Yes. Yes. Sure. Name one that you have. Are you a steward of something? To our family. to your family, to your spouse? Yes. Are you employed? You have a stewardship with your employer? If you're an employer, you have a stewardship with the people that work for you?

So we have all kinds of stewardships. We have stewardships within the church. We have stewardships with our family. If you're a dad or a mom, you got a stewardship. You really do, because you have a responsibility given to you by God to carry out certain circumstances. How about as a grandparent or any kind of thing like that where you have a responsibility? Well, I'm a steward of my finances.

Sure. Yeah, you're a steward of your money. And property. Yeah. And when you finally realize that, wait a minute, It's not my money and not my property. I'm a steward of God's money and God's property. It changes your relationship to the money. It doesn't control you anymore. And I think that's a plus. That's a real plus. Because otherwise you think it's yours and that you can manipulate it any way you want.

So in the body of Christ, are we assigned or do we have arrangements of responsibility? to each other. I look at all of you. I've got uh fifteen seventeen people or seventeen cameras up. Every one of you have a stewardship of some kind. Yes. within the body of Christ. Sure. We all do. So, um let's talk about Adam for a minute. Did Adam have a stewardship? Yes.

Yeah, he sure did. He had a You know, that was what his job was. And it was given to him by God. He had another stewardship to name all the animals. That's pretty cool. You know, and then he had a stewardship because God gave him a wife. And so he had a stewardship there.

God gave him control over what foods could be eaten and what couldn't be eaten. There's lots of instructions that God gave to Adam. that were part of a stewardship in Genesis 1 and 2. The most important stewardship he gave them, though, was not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge in good and evil. Uh-oh, he kind of screwed that one up, didn't he?

So, it's important for us, I think, as believers to be able to identify and understand various stewardships that are in Scripture. It's valuable for us to do that because it gives us an understanding. On Tuesday men's Bible study, we've been working through First Timothy and we're discovering that Timothy was given a huge stewardship, a big, big responsibility. And so far as I can tell, he's not doing all that great a job with it. And Paul is constantly encouraging him to go, to take hold of the stewardship and to fulfill the blessing that God has given him and the ability.

So, if I said to you in 2 Peter 3.18, to grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, is that a stewardship?

Yeah, I would think so. Sure it is. Absolutely it is. you know, as you look through the wherever you see an imperative, a lot of times what you really have there is the responsibility that's god that god has given you. I'm to grow but I can't grow without dependence on the spirit. Oh, that's another stewardship. I have to be dependent on the holy spirit.

So, II find it interesting that here we are uh mankind is a responsibilities that come with that and that's what stewardships are. Okay. Let's see in Ephesians one three, Paul says, for this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles, if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of god's sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? We live under and have stewardship of God's unlimited and unmerited blessings based on the work of, totally adequate work of Christ on the cross. That's a stewardship. That's a responsibility given. Paul says, the stewardship of God's grace, which was given to you, to me, for you, that by revelation there is made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before, in brief.

So, I think we as believers have lots of stewardships. We live under grace. We, like we were talking before, Russ, the guy we prayed for, the family we prayed for, do we have a stewardship to present the gospel to somebody like that? What do you think? Sure. Yes. I read a month or so ago that I think out of one of the hungry hearts where the writer said, it's the first stewardship we have is to be prepared to give it.

So in terms of stewardship, the two basic ones in the Bible is law and grace. Old Testament was law. We live under grace. We have a stewardship about that. We have a stewardship about the principle of grace. So what responsibility is that put on us when you have like a stewardship like grace? Does it give us a responsibility?

Yes. When you say yes, you got to explain. Well, we're under grace, we need to let other people know. I mean, it's an imperative. Can't keep it to ourselves. So maybe make it easier. If you were a Jew living under the law, did you have a stewardship about the law? Sure.

And what was it? Well, the first thing is you had to learn it. That was the first responsibility was to learn what it was, to learn the tenets, to learn the 600 plus things that were required of you. Do we have the same kind of stewardship under grace to learn what grace is?

No, absolutely not. We don't. We have a stewardship to learn what grace is, but not law. I think we have a stewardship not to confuse law with grace, too. I agree. That's right. We do have a responsibility to learn what grace is and what the principles of grace are. I think it's really, really important. And I think in contemporary Christianity under the reform theology, for them to feel like they have a responsibility to learn the law is to be working on somebody else's responsibility. blood under your nails.

What's that? Sorry. Yeah, it kind of was starting to me. Oh, okay. So, learning the principles of grace, how do you learn those? And what are they, you know? You go up to most Christians and say, give me a definition of grace, and they'll say, well, I got what I didn't deserve. Is that it? Is that the total understanding that I'm walking around getting what I don't deserve? Macaulay's fixed that for us. I think Macaulay's done a great job with defining it.

But to learn that it's unlimited, Unmerited. Unmerited. It's unlimited, and that's a, you gotta, there's a whole, a whole field of understanding about unlimitedness. And then you have to, which is the hardest part, is you have to learn about the unmerited of it. That you can't merit it, and it's unlimited.

Those are the two basic principles. And, oh, but it's, It's coming at me full on all the time. All the time. You know, and it's based on what Christ did, not anything that I did. Right. Is that important? Absolutely. I think it's important because most of the problems that you run into, not only in your own life, but others that you're walking besides is that the lack of understanding about what grace really is. That a sovereign God desires to bless us all the time, 24-7, and he works things that way all the time, you know, in spite of what the fed The power and the work of the Holy Spirit as a person enabling us to walk by grace and based on McAuley's definition, understand that is something that is absolutely foreign in any other system of belief. Yeah, I agree.

Yet it's a really difficult, well I shouldn't say it that way, I don't think it's that difficult once you learn it to explain it. But it's just, you know, Lewis Barry Chafer said that grace is the most hated thing in the world. Why would that be? Because we always want to do something.

That's right. That's right, Jim, that grace doesn't leave any room for you to do anything and get any credit for, you know, no matter what the Constitution says. Who would you say were the two greatest proponents of grace in the Bible? Paul. Okay, who's the other one? Paul was the easy one. Who's the hard one? Peter sometimes. Who? Peter sometimes. No, he's not it. This is an Old Testament guy. Oh, Abraham. That's right.

Abraham and Paul are the two grace guys. because all of these promises were made resonant in Abraham. And he was the guy that these principles of grace were resonant in, he and the apostle Paul. Peter, James, and John in the 12 were the apostles to the Jews, and their job was to wean them away from the Mosaic law to grace. Paul's job was to take grace to the entire Gentile world. and he had a greater understanding of it than the other 12 had.

If you live under a law system, a reigning law system, you live under a death system because you get separated from God under law and there's nothing you can do to change that. To live in life, you have to live under grace, have to. So it's important that it becomes that important to us that we learn it and find out what it's all about.

Now, in conjunction with that, with the paper that Vern and Hal Malloy put together, one of the inputs that Hal Malloy put in, he talked about the three people groups on the planet. Do you know what they are? Jews. Okay, that's one. Gentiles. Okay, what's the third one? Church. The church. Body of Christ. So the Gentiles are an ethnic distinction in Genesis from the Jews. The Jews are separate. The people of Israel, there's an ethnic distinction there. But the church is totally different. And what makes the church different from Gentiles and Jews?

Because we're heavenly beings. We're heavenly beings and not earthly beings. That's right. That's really good. And the church only consists of those who have been saved by grace through faith and all ethnic earthly distinctions have gone away. And we are saved and heavenly people again. under grace and under the understanding of being members of the body of Christ, to realize that this grace principle makes us heavenly is a game changer, I think, because the focus is off of the circumstances. And last night in listening to, in a conversation with C, you know, The ignorance in terms of who you are, where you are, and what you have as a believer is rampant. If you don't have those three things at least bubbling up in your life, you're stuck with the principle of law on the earth and condemnation.

So it's really tough if that's where you are. Any more discussion about that? Yeah, I'll throw something out there. Thank you. Yeah, sure. So, I find myself getting into a lot of conversations with people that want to understand political views and such.

I know with Miles on the call here as well, you know, we have stewardships over us that are different governments and There's different rules and there's different relationships and one of the things that's so comforting about having those discussions is that when you can have that with a believer, you can speak to that citizenship. I don't know who said that, but the citizenship that we have is in heaven. Um, and that, that's a differentiator. You know, we oftentimes think of ourselves as Canadian or Americans or, you know, Australians or whatever. And, and that, and that we are, but far more important is that citizenship that we have in heaven. Um, and so it, it tempers, it tempers a lot of the conversations with the climate of what we're dealing with, um, in each of our own, you know, political climates. Yeah.

That's great. That's really right, JD, because it's hard sometimes to get away from what your earthly environment is. That you really are a heavenly person and that you're here because of the will of your father that you should be here to manifest Christ. That's what you're here for.

And that wherever he takes you, wherever he sends you, earthly distinctions really aren't the most important issue, you know, that they're not at all. And so, yeah, it's hard though, sometimes, because, you know, we wonder, how did, how did we elect these idiots that make decisions for us, you know, that have no idea. But I think that's always been the case. Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing it's always been it's always been the case and that's why this this class is so important because The fact that we have the person of the Holy Spirit distinguishes us in a separate way from a lot of those I don't know, not necessarily challenges, but we don't have to get up in arms and frustrated because we do have that grace that binds us into the body of Christ, so.

I agree. Donna? I was going to ask, do you think that your emotions are usually in direct conflict with the stewardship of grace? Oh boy, good question. Yes. Yes. J.D. says yes. I get a lot of head nods, but you got to talk. Yeah. Well, you know, as as you talk with like J.D. was saying, when you talk to other people, it it seems that the what you're feeling emotionally seems to go against what God the dispensation of grace that we live under, direct conflict as to which are you going to, which you're going to believe. Yeah.

Who's fueling that emotion? It's the old man. It's the old man is the one who's in conflict. So when it's in conflict, it's the old man that is always trying to push you away and to, as whoever said, you know, what you have to always wanting to do something and we're not in that mode anymore. And that's where the conflict comes from is always if there's a conflict, it's because the old man is fighting back or the old man deserves something.

Yeah. Yeah. Somehow. Yeah. Or desires to do something in order to get on the deserving end, you know, Oh, I'm going to get rewarded for being a good guy and a swell dancer, you know? Yeah. So that's a good point because I think we're taught, at least in our American society, we're taught to rely on our emotions and our feelings.

You know, if you do something that gets you in front of a microphone with the press, what's the first question they ask you? How do you feel? Last night I'm watching the news and this jet engine blows up over North Denver and parts are falling down and here comes the babe with the microphone. Well, how do you feel about the jet pieces falling on the ground? Okay. Yeah, Donna.

So, so along that same line, then, is the Holy Spirit the only one that moves you from responding to your emotions to trusting what the Lord has said who we are? You know, that that's even a better question, because I think that there's a. As you as we grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, as we become more and more familiar with his word, which means we're more and more familiar with the person of the Lord Jesus. And we understand that we're indwelt by the Holy Spirit, that he's always there. And he is always influencing our thought process, always. And we learn, I think, as time goes on, to trust what his input is, rather than what my emotions are.

Like, I think it was Chafer says, you can't control what comes into your mind, but you can certainly control what happens when you get there. And a lot of times, I think people think they forget that the spirit of God is in them and involved in their thought process all the time. You're driving down I-25 and the next thing you know, you're thinking about Christ. Was that just because you got a really spiritual mind? No, it's the spirit of God.

He does that. So yeah, I think you learn over time to be more tuned, maybe tuned in or sensitive to him and his input. into your life because he's always glorifying Christ always, you know, and he's always applying the cross to the old man. He's always doing that.

And we're, we're, we as believers are unique like that. We're the only ones that know what that's about, you know, so not really the whole, that's the whole focus of this class is what the Holy Spirit does. Yeah. And, and, and how much we, how little we know of what the Holy Spirit does, but the convincing and, and you know, of him putting the Lord before us at all times. That's his job. Yeah. I mean, this will be all of what our class is going to be focused on. The other thing I was going to say, too, when we talk about, we're done, I said the question about the idiots. We talk about the idiots who are in control our government and all that.

Remember from our Romans class, who put those idiots in place? It wasn't us. The Lord put the idiots in there. He may use us as tools and whatever, but it's ultimately, he's the idiot. He's the one who put the idiots there, in our view, but he knows what he's doing. And so we rest in the fact that even though we are citizens of heaven, we are under administrations here that he has put in place. So as much as we think they're idiots, it's the Lord who put them there for his purposes.

Sure, sure. Courtney, that's just to show us that he's got a sense of humor. Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, that humor sometimes is missed, I think. So, you know, that's a good segue because question three is right out matches three dispensations or three stewardships. What are they? So if you go ahead. Oh, no, that's why I've been kind of holding my comments until then, you know, talking about stewardships. And I didn't want to get in and jump to this question. So go ahead and go with this one.

But well, let's I mean, right out mentions him. And there's a lot more, obviously. But he mentions three basic ones that just a general divisions to mark out stewardships in human history. If you read, you'll know what they are. Yeah. Before Christ. Church age in the millennium. Yeah. That's the Christian period. And then the future. Yeah. The future. That's right. Those are the three he talks about now. There's all within that, you know, there's actually discussion about how many quoted stewardships are in there.

There's the there's the stewardship of promise from Adam to the flood. There's the age of government under Noah and his successors. There's the national age from, and the call of Abraham, the establishment of Israel until Christ and those kinds of things. But basically he's talking about the ages before Christ, the present Christian period, which we live in and the future millennial kingdom.

That's, that's where he is. Okay. And, and we can, to get more expansive into the different stewardships as we go along. So that's where my kind of, after the discussion of that, I've been looking at the word about dispensation. You know, it seems like dispensation is more a time term. It's, you know, where you were saying the, the dispensation should be a stewardship. And that, to me, the stewardship is the administration during a period of time. And the period of time is the dispensation. So I'm kind of struggling, but then when I read the definition, it is, you know, to be a manager of a household, the position of responsibility, arrangement of an administration, as a house, you know, and that.

So it is more that the word is more about administration and time, but it seems like we use the word dispensation more as a, as a time period, like what right outputs, you know, there's different periods and it seems like dispensation is more related to a, a timeframe in which there is an administration or a stewardship. the two Not to say that we don't, that we have to have a perfect word for every portion of this, but yeah, like just the ages before Christ, how many different, you know, from Adam to Christ was one, and that footnote that Rideout talks about, you know, we've got those divisions within that dispensation. So, but I don't think that we're off track or anything or that we have to have a perfect word for it, but there's large time periods, and we talk about seven usually, at least traditionally, as dispensationalists. But if we're going to be stewardshipists, I don't know if that's so forthcoming. Then we've got thousands, right? So, yeah, it makes it a little bit harder to teach in a book or communicate in a class.

Well, I think there are some stewardships that are eternal and some that are created in time-space. And so it means that they have a beginning and maybe they have an ending, maybe they don't. You know, like one of the things you notice about The time element is there, but sometimes, like God's grace is eternal. It doesn't have an ending. And it's always been because it's part of his character. Well, we say, well, the church exists in the age of grace. Well, how long is that age going to last? For us, it never stops. That's a really good point.

Under the mosaic law system, I mean, when the millennial kingdom comes back, the law will be written in their hearts, and then off they go. And I don't know what happens to them at the end of this age when the new heavens and earth are created. Are they still have the law written in their hearts? I don't know.

We're going to talk a little bit. probably not today, about the issue of life. Did the Old Testament saints have life to understand? Go ahead. No, I'm just saying, go back to my clarification, and I'm trying to, as I look at the definition, I think it is more, at least from the, looks like from the Greek, it is It's not as much a time as it is administration or stewardship.

I agree. But I, I'm having a hard time reconciling that, that, you know, it is more, more time, you know, cause you said even God's eternal, that's a timeframe. It's eternal. And it always, it always seems like the administration is related during a time period, you know, from Adam to Christ to the present age. I struggle with that, that dispensation means stewardship. It seems like stewardship during a dispensation. During a time frame. Yeah, during a time frame. I have one thought on that I've been thinking a fair bit about lately.

First Corinthians, the forewarning stewards of the mysteries of God. And that, I mean, that concept of mystery, the mystery concept in Paul is the church, the concept of the body of Christ, right? And if you think about that, I mean, that us being, he was a steward of that mystery. We are a part of that mystery and we will forever be a part of the body of Christ.

So we never leave that. that dispensation. So it's not so much a time period as a thing that we're part of, right? Yeah, I agree with you, Miles. I think one of the things that we're getting hung up with on this particular issue is there are time periods. And there are stewardship's the word dispensation kind of gets in the way a little bit for us So Courtney, I agree I've struggled to Because I I was taught very clearly Dispensationalism like that was it and I So to get my mind around, yes, God is doing different things at different times, and those are classifiable, and there are different stewardships within those, and there's also those that are eternal, like Mike said.

So maybe the whole effort to describe some of these things boxes our mind into areas that we shouldn't necessarily be boxed. Right, I think there's more semantics than anything. Yeah, totally. And so it's just, yeah, just trying to clarify my mind. Yeah, that question of the semantics, you know, dispensation. I would say that you have two issues here.

You have the rule in the house of God, and then you have time. And I think we've been taught from the very beginning about dispensationalism as a time-based phenomenon. I really think that stewardship is the most important aspect and time fits into that. And so to get my mind changed away from the time element, the time element's important, but it's not the most important. The most important issue, and I refer to Hebrews chapter one, God after you know, he spoke long ago with uh to the fathers, the prophets and many portions and in many ways in these last days, there's the time frame has spoken to us in his son whom he appointed an heir of all things and through whom he made the world. Well, there's a definite change but there's also a time element there.

You know that he's no longer through men, that now the whole line of communication is going to be through the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, that time frame started when Christ showed up. Yet there are still gifted men who expand God's word, but God's word is actually the Lord Jesus Christ and his input. From that point on, he speaks to us through his son now and he doesn't need a surrogate to do it.

That's what the work of the Holy Spirit is all about. I think the thing is just combining for dispensation, it's a stewardship or administration over a time period. Yeah. It's how things are run, how things are administered by God. Right. During time periods.

That's what a dispensation is. Because, you know, as right out puts out, you know, the three different ones and then the breakdowns below that and all that. And there's different ways that God was working during all that time. So, you know, it's just a dispensation by definition is an administration over a time period.

And that could be from any years to an eternity. Mm hmm. Yeah, you know, and then Hebrews goes into that part about the fact that Moses was an administrator in the house, but the builder of the house gets a lot more glory than the one who administers it. Is there a time frame? Yeah, but administration is the issue. So we've pretty much answered question four, too.

What were all of God's guidance before Christ came? And the write-out says the answer is that all of his counsel centered in Christ until he came and accomplished his work. All of God's ways were of a preparatory and anticipative character. And he refers to the Hebrews 1. During the spirit, the Holy Spirit's work was, of course, in accordance with the purposes of God. He was as ever. executor of the divine will. So, yeah, you know, people, we look at the Word of God, the Old Testament, the whole thing is about Christ himself, anticipatory from the time of Adam to the time that Christ actually shows up and the Holy Spirit is there and involved in all of the administration of what God is doing through that time period, which is, I don't know, 5,000 years, whatever it is. So I'm going to go, I think, until 10 o'clock. Is that OK with everybody? Yeah. OK.

Going back on that, Mike, too, about what's God's guidance before Christ, there was also the Galatians 1 to 3, 24 and 25, before the law became our tutor to lead us to Christ. So everything prior to. was to lead us to Christ. So that we may be justified by faith, but now that faith has come, we're no longer under that tutor. So again, everything in the Old Testament is pointing to Christ.

That's right. That's exactly right. I'm paraphrasing the verse, but a lot of the Old Testament prophets prophesied about things that they really didn't understand, or they did understand them, but they knew it was sometime in the future that it was going to be realized.

And there seems to be a, what's the word I'm looking for? There seems to be a lamenting about that, that they would have liked to have entered in to what they were prophesying about. But they didn't. And so, again, why do we, We should appreciate the grace that we live under. So, let's see, we probably have time for one more question. What were the first works of the Holy Spirit right after the fall? When the ruin of man came in and right out said man was morally waste, wow, and desolate. The blessed spirit of God began his work.

What did he do? What did he do? Well, first of all, God sought out Adam. Isn't that something? Yeah. That is such a significant point, Joanne, because I think that that's really, really critical for us to realize that it was God who was the seeker. It wasn't Adam who was looking for forgiveness. He was hiding, you know.

Right out says that The Holy Spirit broods amid nature's darkness over the heart of man, and light shines into the soul through his instrumentality. I have kind of a crude example of that. The guy that led me to Christ, he kind of sometimes would have crude analogies, but they really made a lot of sense.

He said, all of mankind. after the fall, lived in a cesspool. It had a lid on top of it, and it was shut, and it was totally dark. And all mankind were swimming around in there, bumping into different things, and thinking that they were going to find life in whatever they bumped into, or didn't bump into.

And then one day, the Holy Spirit unloosens the top, opens it up, and for the first time, light shines in there. And now they can see. And so the spirit is the one who opens and brings the light and begins to show. Every one of us who are believers understand how that works. Now, some of us probably were saved as young children. I was saved at 35. And boy, that analogy really fits me because I didn't see a thing until the spirit of God began to shine the light into my heart about. who the Lord Jesus was and, you know, what a wonderful life I was leading.

So, Rhino says, the first glimmers of faith in Adam, giving his wife her name, the mother of living, amid a scene of death. It's a really interesting thing that Adam is able to see that his wife is the mother of all living, even though it's a total scene of darkness, that had to come from the Holy Spirit. It had to. He didn't wise up one day and see, oh, maybe I'll name her this or I can see that she's the giver of life.

Or the other example he uses is Abel bringing a sacrifice to God, witnessing of a divine work in his soul, faith and new life produced where absolute death had come in through separation from God. Cain and Abel are great examples of this, that the Holy Spirit, I think, acted on both men, but one of them responded. The other one didn't. And as a matter of fact, the other one was adamant about not responding to the light that he was given.

So it's interesting that we can trust the Spirit of God Going back to Donna's question, can we trust him to bring light to our understanding at any time in any given situation? What do you think? that's a real And that grows into, as a believer, then it becomes a convincing and there's the illumination factor. We're going to talk about all that, I know. The conviction, I mean, the first thing that Adam struggled with after he had sinned was with hiding. And he was convicted by the Lord himself, but it was through the person of the Holy Spirit that he followed through. So, I don't know, ask the question one more time, just so I can make sure that I'm not misspeaking. Please. What were the first works of the Holy Spirit right after the fall? Yeah. And I would say conviction. Yeah. Yeah.

Overall, you know what, uh, you know, in, uh, uh, Romans, it talks about that men love the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. Well, that, that principle played out, that principle played out immediately and Adam, cause what did he do? He went to hide. He ran away from the light. because that's the only place he felt comfortable. He didn't want God to show up and shine light on him.

And that's what the spirit does. He begins the turning on of the lights, so to speak, right away, especially with us believers who sin, we're convicted right away. He doesn't wait until you have an accident or until some trauma hits your life. It's instant because he does not want any loss of intimacy with the Lord Jesus at any time. I don't think there are lessons to be learned. The lesson to be learned is God's grace and how quickly it's available to us if we turn. Okay, 10 o'clock. So we'll pick up next week with question six, which is a different subject when we talked about life. We'll do those and then I'll send out three questions for lesson three and we'll just transfer into three at the end of two.

So let's pray. Father, how we thank you for your grace and we thank you for the opportunity to be together and to spend this time in your word and to learn more and more of the work of your spirit who teaches us and reveals to us who the Lord Jesus Christ is and who we are in him. And we thank you. We pray in his precious name. Amen.