Person & Work of the Holy Spirit

Okay, how many times in the Bible, or maybe put it, how early and how late is the Holy Spirit mentioned in the Word of God? Genesis 1-2 and Revelation 22-17. Kind of the bookends, right? And the earth was formless and void, and the darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. And then in Revelation 22, 17, And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let the one who hears say, Come. And let the one who is thirsty come. Let the one who wishes to take the water of life without cost.

Okay. Is there such a person as the Holy Spirit? Yes. Nah. No way. He's the force. Right? Can I see it in that movie? Hey Luke, let the force be with you. Isn't that what he is? It's tough when it says like the spirit of God moved across the face of the waters because you don't really picture a person. You don't, do you? No, you picture like a force. You picture a force. So you say, oh yes he is.

Give me a verse that would say that he is a person. Psalm 139-78. Well don't just give them to me, read them. Read what it says. From thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. Okay. The one I like. was from Acts 5, 3 and 4.

Because when Peter says to Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back from the sum of the price of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control? Why is it that you have concealed this deed in your heart and have not lied to men but to the Holy Spirit.

You can't lie to a force. You see that? If you're going to lie, well, you either lie to yourself or somebody else. I think another thing that people think of a force, in that analogy, it is almost material that you control, that you do something with, that you can manipulate. A person doesn't have that Yeah. Why do you think the Spirit of God took Ananias out of here? What was the lie?

He kept some of the money. That's okay. It says in the verse it's okay to keep some of the money. But he said he gave it all. That's it. See? He said he gave it all. Yeah. And he didn't. He shoved five bucks in his back pocket. It's expensive. Five dollars for him. Right. And for his wife.

Is not all references to a person in scripture simply a striking way of referring to the attributes of God? Now, what Rideout does, which is really kind of cool, and if you don't put the pieces together, he says this question involves a denial of the very being of God and therefore must be treated as all other unbelieving questions. God has been pleased to reveal something of the infinite depths of the mystery of his holy person to us. And that's Romans chapter 1 where God says that all men are without excuse because God has revealed to them in his creation and in their conscience.

So, can you say there's no such person as an atheist? You think there are atheists? They claim to be atheists. They claim to be atheists. They believe in something. But do they believe in God? Well, you know, it's interesting. Romans chapter 1 says, man, you're without excuse. Not just the Democrats. All men are without excuse, because God says, you know that I exist, and you know that I'm powerful. Because of the creation, you can see me.

I put myself into my creation, and not only that, within your conscience, you know that I exist. Now, if you reject him at that point, where do you go from there? You go into abject darkness. And if you want to see how abject darkness functions, just pick up and watch what those fools in Washington do.

A denial of either of these divine persons, I'm sorry, he is in Christianity revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and a denial of either of these divine persons is a denial of God. We seem to be able to tolerate a person called a theist. What's a theist? A person who believes in God? What does a theist believe? That there's just one God, but not the three persons.

What Rite Out says is a denial of either of these divine persons is a denial of God, because he reveals himself as three persons. If it's shocking for a person to deny the divinity of Christ, it's nonetheless so for him to deny the personality of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, you will frequently find these two forms of unbelief together. But you can even find them separately.

To whom do you pray? Oh, great question. Boy, I bet we get three different answers. Who do you pray to? The Father. I read ahead. I don't pray to you. You pray to the Father? Through Christ. That's right. But you don't pray to the Holy Spirit? No, you don't.

I pray in the power of the Holy Spirit to pray what God would like you to do. Say that again. That's going on all the time, right? That sounds like a little mental gymnastics to me. Say that again. pray in the power of the Holy Spirit so that you pray what God would like for you to do.

You guys read The Hungry Heart this morning? It was all about prayer. It was really cool. Where do you get your prayers from? The Spirit. Yeah. So I think the Spirit prompts you what to pray for and how to pray. Okay? But you do pray in the name of the Lord Jesus to the Father. Okay? Now, let's say that you become a Christian and nobody ever explained to you that that's the way it's supposed to be. Do you think the Spirit of God will work that out in your heart? I think He does. I think He does. So does that mean there's no circumstance under which you would ever reference the Spirit or the Lord Jesus. Here's an example.

Paul says in Philippians 3.10, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed unto his death. Who's he praying to? Is he saying, Father, that I want to know Christ? Or maybe he's talking directly to Christ?

Here's the point I'm making. I mean, God doesn't say you've got to do it this way or I'm not listening. However, I will say that the Spirit of God is of such a character that He would deflect you or divert you to the Father and the Lord Jesus. Because you can't know the Father without Christ, right? Do you understand why? Christ is the Logos of God. God the Father is the Spirit. That's why the Lord Jesus is the Word of God because you get us as sentient beings, material beings, get to know God through the Son. And isn't that the whole point of Jesus coming and dying and everything is so that we can have a relationship with the Father?

Yeah. No one has seen the Father at any time. but Christ who reveals the Father has come to reveal him. John 1 some place. I paraphrase that one. So if you want to know God you have to get to know the Lord Jesus Christ. Add the next step to that. The work of the Spirit is to do what? To reveal Christ to the believer. So they have a little plan going. and where, as you behold the glory of the Lord, the Spirit of God is revealing Christ to you, and Christ said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

We're the same. So is not the Holy Spirit simply an all-pervading divine influence? Why or why not? Probably a redundant question at this point, because the reference I put down is 1 Thessalonians 5.19. Don't quench the Spirit. Can you quench an influence? I suppose you could. Can you quench an influence? Broncos did it yesterday. They got quenched.

List four divine attributes attributed to the Holy Spirit in the Word. Do you know what I mean by divine attributes? Give me a divine attribute. Omnipresent. Okay, omnipresent. Give me a verse. Psalm 139, 7 and 8. Okay, isn't that Psalm, is it Psalm 89 or 139? 139. Okay. Where can I go from thy spirit? Or where can I flee from thy presence? If I ascend to heaven now right there, if I make my bed in Sheol, behold now right there.

Those of you who came and watched the carolers, Ken, the guy that was the leader of them, his son is in the submarine service. So he got to do a couple of months ago out of Hawaii, he got to do what they call a tiger cruise, where if you're a parent of a sailor, you can sail a couple of days on whatever boat they're on. So here he is. In a submarine, I don't know, 600 feet down, and he's thinking about this burst. He's down there and he's thinking, my goodness, I'm 600 feet under the surface.

Oh, Lord. You know, I don't know if they go that far down. Do they? Anybody know? You're a Navy guy. Yeah. So I found that and they put him in some little room that used to be something else on the submarine that was real noisy. He was trying to sleep. So you can think about it.

What's omnipresent mean? Everywhere. What does that mean? You can't get away from it. Everywhere present at the same time. Everywhere present at the same time. I like that. That's good. Okay, give me another one. What's omniscient mean? What does all-knowing mean? That's a great answer. Did you guys up here hear that answer? What is omniscient? He said, I don't know. Your mom and you were a kid.

Not only does it mean that he knows all things as they are factually, but he's also capable of knowing all possible things. We worry about which decision we'll make and what we'll do. The Lord would know the consequences of all those decisions. Here's the way I look at it. You and I think sequentially, don't we? We have this thought. and then we have this thought, and then there's a pause, and then we have another thought. Does God think sequentially?

No. He has all knowledge in play right now. So there's no future or past with Him. He has all knowledge in play right now. See that? Now think about that. When we go into eternity, are you going to have that kind of a mind? You'll know as you're known. No, you won't have that, but you will have an eternal mind. You won't be thinking sequentially. That's kind of cool, I think.

Now, omniscience for God has revealed them through the Spirit, 1 Corinthians 2. For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men know the thoughts of a man except the spirit of a man which is in him? Even so, The thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. So the Spirit of God is omniscient just because He's God. He knows all things. He has all knowledge in play right now. That's the best definition I've ever heard of omniscience. It isn't that He has the Library of Congress on a flash drive in His mind.

10 and 11. Give me another one. He's eternal. No beginning, no end. Okay. I put down Psalm 90, ever existent, which is Lord you have been our dwelling place in all generations before the mountains were born. or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. I remember Roland Hedrick, he told me eternity was just until next Thursday. So God is ever-existing, which means he can operate, the Lord Jesus Christ operates in time-space, but he doesn't have to.

Okay, one more. What does that mean? All-powerful. All-powerful. What verse did you give me for that? Job 33, 4. The Spirit of God has made me and the breath of the Almighty gives me life. The Spirit of God being all-powerful, is there anything He can't do? What's that? He can't sin. What is sin? Missing the mark. What's the mark? He's the mark. So the Spirit of God is omnipresent, ever existing, omniscient, and he's almighty. Omnipotent. So what characteristic of the Holy Spirit does Acts 5, 3, and 4 show us? His personhood. That he's a personhood.

Do you think it's difficult to really recognize the Holy Spirit as a person? You'll notice that the title of the book is The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, yet he only spends about six pages talking about personhood, and the rest of it's his work. But I think because he starts there, it's important for us to understand that the Spirit of God...

What is a person, by the way? A being? My dog's a being, he's not a person. What is a person? Sometimes I wonder about Courtney. What is a person? A person who's made in the image and likeness of God? And all people would be persons. All people are persons. All people are persons, but we get our personhood because we are made in the image of God. That's really good, Mandy. Did everybody hear that? No. You've got to speak up. We get our personhood because we are made in the image of God, who is the perfect person. Okay. And persons have certain characteristics about them.

If you're a person, what do you got? No, you don't have temporary life. What's that? Body, soul and spirit. You have all three of those things as a person. Except the problem you have with that definition is the Holy Spirit doesn't have a body and he's a person. You know, a person could work if the Holy Spirit was just an influence. an influence probably doesn't work. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And even if you try to conjure up in your mind that the Holy Spirit is an influence Where did that come from? You see where I'm going? I'm tracing it back.

Like, I keep going to Star Wars and the guy says, Luke, depending on the force or whatever it is, who created the force? The force just show up by itself? Is there some sort of entity in the universe that's called a force? Yeah, so an influence couldn't create either.

That's right. An influence can't do, like, verbs. A guy told me one time that in the Bible, God owns all the verbs. And he does. So, it isn't that the Holy Spirit can't be influential, but he is a person. That means he has a will, he has emotion, he has a mind, but because he's omniscient, his mind is a little different than yours.

Acts 13, 1 and 2, 1 Corinthians 12 and 11, Ephesians 4.30, 1 Thessalonians 5.19, gives us clues to what the Holy Spirit has done in the church. What is it? So let's start with Acts 13. Somebody read it quickly.

And what did the Spirit do? How do you think the Spirit spoke to those guys? How do you think He did it? The Holy Spirit said, set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work which I have called them. Did He send them an email? How did He speak to them?

Out loud. Out loud? What do you think? The Holy Spirit through their minds. Boy, they were very definite about the message. Maybe. Why would the Holy Spirit, maybe the question I'm after is this. Why would the Holy Spirit maybe act a little different in this time than he would today? Because he wasn't inside us. He wasn't inside them? Yes he was. There's no question. Why? Oh it was after the Pentecost? Yeah. What's the difference? That's the difference. He didn't have the word then. It wasn't complete.

So the Spirit of God, in his influence, would speak information. It's like he spoke to Ananias. He spoke to Ananias and said, you go in there and tell Paul, I've got a couple of things to tell him, you tell him. Notice that the Spirit of God didn't go to Paul, although the Spirit of God, or the Lord Jesus himself, spoke to Paul on the day of the day that he's knocked to the ground, didn't he?

Because he saw him and he said, who are you, Lord? And he said, I'm Jesus whom you're persecuting. He could hear him. See? But then he sends another man via the work of the Spirit of God to tell him, you know, to take the blindness away from him and tell him he's going to suffer a lot and that kind of thing. and the Spirit of God is operating in the church early on, communicating to them information there was no other source for them to find it. When Paul went to the Arabian Desert for three years and he was there in school, he was learning. There weren't any textbooks. Who was teaching him? The Holy Spirit was teaching him via the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

Now, do you think that would happen today? Somebody would come into my class and say, listen, I spent all Tuesday with the Spirit of God and I got some news for you. Would that happen today? Why not? Because you already got the Word. And the danger of that continuing again is you get cults like the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormons where they have further revelation from God. supersedes current revelation. Or you get a televangelist. What I love about those guys on TV, somehow the Spirit of God has told every one of them the same thing. You know what it is? Send me money. Write me a check. I got something to sell. So I think it's important to realize that in the early church, the Holy Spirit could communicate with people, with saints, about things that he wanted to get done. But that isn't always the case.

A few years later, Paul gets in a fight with Barnabas and they split up and go different directions. You won't find in scripture where it says the spirit sent them off in different directions. Was the spirit the cause of these guys having a dispute? But you know what's interesting? He let them The issue was that Paul didn't want John Paul to go with him again because he blew him off halfway through the first ministry, chickened out. And he said, he's not coming with me again, you know. And his cousin, or whoever Barnabas was to him, went somewhere else. They went to Cyprus. Paul went on his second missionary journey.

It's interesting that the Spirit of God obviously was the one who influenced that whole thing. And the reason I bring that up is that you have to understand within the life of the believer, there are a lot of circumstances that you, just because they don't have holy water on them, doesn't mean that the Spirit of God isn't in charge of them.

Do you understand what I mean? Can you, Hal Moore used to say, there's no such thing as a tragedy in a believer's life. You know, why wouldn't that, why would that be a true statement? If God is absolutely, myopically focused in on your spiritual growth, then how could there be? He doesn't take a day off. Like your cancer. Oh, gee, the Lord missed that one? No, I don't think so.

When God works all things together for good, He means all things. I think it's really awesome when we take that in context of Romans 8, 28, all things, and add into that the depth of the Holy Spirit intimately working on us. It means that not only do we look at the trials and suffering and say, okay, God's growing me, but he's using the agency of the Holy Spirit in our life to grow us intimately and exactly where we need to be.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Every single one of us. Every single one of us. A couple of quick verses, and I just noticed the time I want to get to dispensations. 1 Corinthians 12, 11, But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually, just as He wills. In other words, every single believer has been called specifically to fit a certain spot in the body of Christ, and they have been enabled by the Spirit to fulfill that spot. Now it may or it may not be something that's visible high-profile, you know, and you can go through the list of spiritual gifts, and we'll talk about spiritual gifts as we get going, spiritual gifts in the Word of God, but I think there's an awful lot of things and an awful lot of equipping that goes on within the body of Christ that you can't catalog. If you're a dad, the Spirit of God has equipped you to be a dad or a mom.

I remember one time, I've told you this before, we were having this Bible study with Miles Stanford and some of those guys in there had him up on a pedestal. And one of the guys said, oh Miles, when we get to the beam of judgment, you're going to be one of the superheroes. And Miles said, no, he said, I'm just going to be happy to be there. He said, all the moms are going to be in the front row. Because they only did what God called them to do.

See, that's really important. To do what God has called you to do. And it may or may not be something highly visible to a lot of people. It may just be an influence that you have on one other person. or maybe you just pray, or you see things, you know, so. The Spirit of God is the one who distributes whatever you're gifted to do, but every single one of us has a gift.

Ephesians 4.30, don't grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

He's the seal. What's a seal? Didn't we talk about this? You know what a signet is? The little wax thing and you bang it with the seal. It's interesting. The seal of your salvation is not anything other than God himself. He's the seal. It isn't that he gives you a seal. He is the seal.

So, do not quench the spirit. A divine person has taken up his abode in the church. So you've got a two-pronged deal going on here. The spirit of God is in you, and he's also in the body of Christ. He controls what goes on with you, just like he controls what goes on within the body. He inhabits the body of Christ, including the Presbyterians. Yeah, that's a corporate thing that he does.

See, I think that when we get raptured out of here and they talk about the spirit of God leaving, I think when the church leaves, this corporate indwelling that the spirit has in the church and the influence the body of Christ has on all of society goes away. It isn't that he isn't here anymore, he'll still be here. But the influence that the body of Christ has, and for the last 2,000 years, the influence of the body of Christ on society has been incredible. what has happened.

Alright, let's jump down to dispensations. Because he's an old brethren guy, dispensation is the word he's going to use. What is a dispensation? I've got God's manner of dealing during a period of time. Okay, not bad. I think it's important to, how do I say this? get the periods of time idea out of it as much as you can and get his dealing in it so we've had a lot of discussions and I would recommend you go on the Holly Hills Bible Church website and look up a paper called stewardship and in that paper there's a discussion about dispensations and I like the word stewardship better because the word dispensation in Greek is oikonomia.

Oikos is the word for house. Nomos is the word for law. So if you put the two together you have the rule or the program under which the house of God functions. Does he function with everybody the same way every time? Answer no. But if you're a good reform covenant guy you're going to say sure he does. all the church is, is an extension of Israel. No, we're not.

So God can have in his house different groups of people doing different things at the same time. Now, there are three people groups in the Bible. Who are they? Three groups of peoples. Let's see, there's the bloods and the Jews, well let's start with the first one. The first one are Gentiles. And then what's the next group that shows up? Jews and then the church. Those are the three people groups.

Now they're not necessarily the three stewardships, but every one of those stewardships is different, okay? So I would encourage you to go read that paper on the website if you have a computer on the stewardships. It's about six pages long. Mike, could you call it an operational system? I kind of like that. It's law operating, grace operating. That's not too bad. It is an operating system on how, with this particular, like the church, the operating system of the church is much different than the operating system of Israel. Okay?

And as Rideout, if you read through that, Rideout was really, really interesting. He talks about seven dispensations, but he says, for our purposes, I'm going to lump some together and talk about before Christ. Kind of cool, you know. Any questions about that? Yeah, go. You said last week that some people that are dispensation is like a bad word.

Because A quote-unquote dispensationalist, someone who says, oh, you're a dispensationalist. If you are one of those, there's a couple of things that you buy that a covenant reform person doesn't buy. The first and most important thing is that you believe in the absolute exegetic study of the Word of God. In other words, you go into the Bible only to take out what's there. You don't read anything into it and you don't try to make it say something it doesn't. So a dispensational viewpoint is the only theological viewpoint that focuses on what the Word of God says.

The second thing is, is that a dispensationalist believes in grace. A Reformed person doesn't. A Reformed person may say you're saved by grace, but you've been indwelt by the Holy Spirit to keep the law. No, you haven't. Okay, those are the two big issues. There are other issues. But God operates on a grace basis now, And it's difficult for someone who's steeped in a law system to realize or to come to agree with the idea that grace can motivate you to live a life.

Romans 6.14 says, Sin shall not have dominion over you any longer. Why? Because you're not under law, you're under grace. So if you exegetically study the word of God, what you discover is, is what law does, is that it exacerbates the sin nature, causes it to act. Where grace is designed to put the activities of the sin nature out of business.

Right out mentions three dispensations. He talks about general division, mostly and clearly in scripture. We have the ages before Christ, the present or church period, and the future millennial period. And then he says, while the first period from Adam to Christ was evidently three divisions, the age of promise from Adam to the flood, the age of government under Noah and his successors, and the national age, from the call of Abraham and the establishment of Israel as a nation into Christ. Yet for our purposes these three divisions may be considered as one. So we're going to talk about the three divisions as he puts it, the ages before Christ, the present period which is the church age, and then the millennial age which is to come.

What were all of God's guidelines, or guidances, before Christ came? What was the Spirit of God doing before Christ showed up? Preparing for Christ to show up? That's exactly what He was doing. He was pointing everything to Christ. Starting in the garden, when He promised a Redeemer, from that point on, everything pointed to Christ. The Spirit's work was in accordance with the purposes of God and he was ever executing the divine will and what he was after was the pointing of everybody up until Christ, pointing everybody to Christ.

Now, this is the one thing I was hoping we'd have time to do. What were the first works of the Holy Spirit right after the fall? prophetic work of Daniel and Ezekiel and so forth. Okay, not bad. Man was morally a waste and then the Holy Spirit came and did work with him. Okay, here's the question.

The real question here is, when Adam fell, was he absolutely, totally separated from God without any spiritual life at all? Answer, yes he was. He had no No, because God told him, in the day you sin, you will surely die. What does die mean? Separation. It wasn't an 80% death. Okay.

Now, when God came to Adam in the garden and brought him the skins and said, here, put these on. And Adam said, yes. What right out is going to say is that the spirit of God gave Adam life so he could accept them. He breathed life into Adam. What do you think about that? So that makes sense. And it was a blood sacrifice. It was a blood sacrifice, yeah. That's right. And a covering. And it was a covering for your sins. And now it's the Holy Spirit. What did the Holy Spirit do? Did He actually give Adam the capacity of life from Him in order to receive the remedy that God offered?

I guess so. What do you think? Otherwise Adam wouldn't have done it. So, yeah. So when any of these Old Testament guys believed in God and walked with Him, was it because the Spirit gave them life to do it? Yeah. Okay, we got the yeses. We got any no's? Oh, we got a no. I have a question. How does that go with the belief that some people believe that you're stone cold dead on the slab and some white spirit acts on you as far as us believing the dead? You know what I mean? And that's more of a covering belief, right?

So how is that different than what you're saying right now with Adam? That's the Calvin viewpoint that God must regenerate a man in order before he can believe? Right. That's it. It's different than what you're saying right now with Adam. Yeah, see it's interesting that Rideout seems to go the Calvinistic way where he says that before Adam could receive the skins that God offered He had to be given life. Right? That's what right out seems.

And that's what he says about others. I'm not sure that I agree with that. I'm not sure I do either. Because the thing is that if God shows up and he's facing you and he's got some skins in your hands, you don't have a lot of options. I wouldn't say that the Holy Spirit has to motivate you to take those skins because God is still dealing with Adam. and the first prophecy of Christ.

It's all right there. And Adam just, it seems to me that Adam just listens. Adam knew Christ, so he didn't have to believe in Christ. He knew God. He didn't have to believe, he didn't have to have faith, because he knew Him. He knew Him, but it's interesting when And this is a discussion you're going to start off next week with, so have fun. The interesting discussion here is that just because Adam knew who God was didn't mean he understood what the remedy was or is.

Well, right, it would have been to confess, right, that he had recognized that he is not... He didn't do any of that. Yeah. All he did was, I'll take the skins, thank you. The Holy Spirit didn't motivate him then to confess. No it didn't. He was also feeling naked and I think he probably needed some skin. So the Spirit worked on his nakedness but Adam had gone and gotten one of those philodendrons cover themselves. In other words, Adam had his own remedy, and God brought him another remedy. And did it take the life of the Spirit in Adam for him to say, oh, I'll take your remedy, God, and not mine? That's the question.

He still had to believe. He still had to believe. You had to believe him. That still comes down to the same thing. Adam still had to believe what God offered. It wasn't anything And all Adam had to do was believe. And he demonstrated his belief by just saying thank you and putting it on. Unfortunately it was poison ivy.

The example that Rideout uses is the fact that when Cain and Abel had to, Abel brought a blood sacrifice, where did he get that from? He obviously got it from Adam, but Cain didn't. Cain had the same information that Abel did. Why did one do it and the other didn't? One was a Republican and the other was a Democrat.

There is a lot of contention in the theory of theology. There really is. Randy will pick up there next week. I would recommend that you find it in the book and read through and see what Rideout says because he does distinguish between the character of the life and just the fact of life. OK. What should we read for next week? We didn't hand them out. Randy's got them. You continue on in Chapter one. OK, so I've got the Randy's got these.

I've got some other handouts and let's pray and I'll get them to you. What we're going to probably do is do three classes per chapter. When you say lecture, then also you mean chapter? Yeah, because what the book is are really lectures and he covered three or four topics per lecture or per chapter. So we're going to work off of what the topics are. Let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you for Your Spirit who teaches us and reveals to us the person of Your Son and His Word so that we might be able to grow together in Him. We thank You, Father, we pray in Your Son's precious name. Amen.