Sermon Tone Analysis

INTRODUCTION

In our last study together we asked the question, “Who is the Holy Spirit?”

We said this question can be answered in two ways: according to false teachers and according to biblical revelation.

When we examined it according to false teachers, we looked at false teachers in the early church and in the modern-day church.

There were three individuals we looked at in the early church:

Montanus (150 AD) - He had two followers with him, Prisca and Maximilla.

They taught that new revelations were still given and this was the age of the Paraclete.

Sabellius (215 AD) - He taught that god is a unity but that He revealed himself in three different modes or forms.

These three forms were three roles or parts played by the one God.

This was the first major attack on the Trinity.

(TD Jakes is a good example of this today).

Arius (325 AD) - He distinguished the One Eternal God from the Son by saying that the Son was generated from the Father and therefore had a beginning.

He also believed that the Holy Spirit was the first thing the Son created.

(Jehovah’s Witnesses are a good example of this today).

Now we also asked looked at what is being taught in the modern-day church concerning the Holy Spirit.

Jehovah’s Witnesses - “a force”

Christian Science - “Divine Science”

Spiritualism - “The spirit of a holy person who once lived”

Mormonism - “Influence of deity” “like electricity”

Unification Church - “a female spirit”

New Age - “Psychic force”

Hinduism - No belief

Baha’i World Faith - “divine energy”

Islam - “Gabriel / Jesus”

Evangelical Church - “power, influence, passive”

The second part of our question was Who is the Holy Spirit according to biblical revelation?

We said that the Bible teaches that He is a spirit—He is referred to as being a Spirit and called “Spirit” in both the Hebrew and Greek language.

He is also a Person—He possesses intellect, will, and emotion—and personal pronouns are used when referring to Him (always the masculine gender).

He is also God—He is called God, He possesses the same attributes as God the Father in that He is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, sovereign, eternal, truth.

He is also presented in Scripture as being equal with the Father and the Son.

Now I want to ask a second question, “What does the Holy Spirit do?”

As we consider this question, we will answer it in five ways: in relation to creation, in relation to the Bible, in relation to Christ, in relation to unbelievers, and in relation to believers.

So let’s begin tonight with asking, “What does the Holy Spirit do in relation to Creation?”

I. Who is the Holy Spirit?

According to False Teachers

According to Biblical Revelation

II.

What Does the Holy Spirit Do?

In Relation to Creation

He created the world

Edwin Palmer says, “Although we do think of the Father chiefly as the Creator, yet because of the basic, essential unity in the Trinity, it may also be said that the Son and the Holy Spirit created” (The Holy Spirit, 20).

Scripture does ascribe Creation “to all three persons of the trinity: the Father (Rev.4:11), the Son (John 1:3), and the Holy Spirit” (Henry Thiessen, Lectures in Systematic Theology, 251).

Palmer goes on to say that “In this world there are special functions and works performed by each Person of the Trinity in distinction from the other two.

When we think of creation, for example, we think chiefly of the Father, and not of the Son or the Holy Spirit.

On the cross, however, it was Jesus who died, and not the Father, nor the Holy Spirit.

Jesus even distinguished Himself from the Father on the cross, when He cried out, ‘My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ and “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.”

And when we think of sanctification and the working out of salvation in our lives, we do not think chiefly of the Father, nor the Son, but of the Holy Spirit.

He is the One who dwells within Christians” (20).

Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

“God” is the Hebrew word Elohim.

This is “the name of God which stresses His majesty and omnipotence.

This is the name used throughout the first chapter of Genesis.

The im ending is the Hebrew plural ending, so that Elohim can actually mean ‘gods,’ and is so translated in various passages referring to the gods of the heathen (e.g., Psalm 96:5).

However, it is clearly used here in the singular, as the mighty name of God the Creator, the first of over two thousand times where it is used this way.

Thus Elohim is a plural name with a singular meaning, a ‘uni-plural’ noun, thereby suggesting the uni-plurality of the God-head.

God is one, yet more than one” (Henry Morris, The Genesis Record, 39).

John Walvoord says that “every use of the term implies a work not only of any one person, but all three persons” (The Holy Spirit, 39).

Genesis 1:1 says “Elohim created”

It was ex nihilo (out of nothing)

The Hebrew word for “created” (bara sheith) occurs in the creation account 6 times (1:1, 21, 27 [3x]; 2:3]

It primarily refers to creating out of nothing, without preexisting material

John 1:3, “All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.”

Isaiah 45:8, “Drip down, O heavens, from above, And let the clouds pour down righteousness; Let the earth open up and salvation bear fruit, And righteousness spring up with it.

I, the Lord, have created it.”

It was everything

God created “the heavens and the earth” is a way of saying God created everything in the universe

Everything that exists, whether you’re talking about galaxies or nebulae or solar systems, or those things that are the farthest reaches of the universe in space, or whether you’re talking about the smallest grain of sand or whether you’re talking about a bacterial microbe on the planet earth, absolutely everything was created by God

He is the creator of all things visible and invisible

All things means everything, from various ranks of angels, every form of life from whales and elephants to viruses, everything

All things includes every form of energy, every form of matter, the speed of light, nuclear structure, electromagnetism, gravity, every law by which nature operates was created within the framework of this creation (MacArthur)

Genesis 1:2 says, “The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.”

All three members of the Trinity are mentioned in verse 1 by the term Elohim, but in verse two, the third member is specifically mentioned by name as “moving over the surface of the waters.”

RC Sproul says in The Mystery of the Holy Spirit, “There is a question concerning the exact meaning of the Hebrew word in Genesis 1:2 that is sometimes translated "hovering" and other times translated "brooding."

The word occurs only two other times in the Old Testament.

We find it in Jeremiah 23:9: My heart within me is broken because of the prophets; all my bones shake.[emphasis

added] Here the word conveys the idea of shaking or trembling.

Again we find the word in Deuteronomy 32:11: As an eagle stirs up its nest, hovers over its young, spreading out its wings, taking them up, carrying them on its wings . . .

[emphasis added] When we think of the activity of a mother bird "brooding," we are inclined to think of her sitting on her eggs to keep them warm before the eggs hatch.

In the imagery of Deuteronomy, however, the eggs have already hatched.

G. C. Aalders comments, The word brooding just does not fit once the eggs have been hatched and the mother is involved in training her young.

Thus it is more likely that the word here refers to the mother bird watching over her young as they learn to fly.

When they falter in flight she swoops beneath them and rescues them from falling.

When all is considered the translation "hovered" still has the preference.

Aalders continues in his explanation of this passage: What then is the purpose of this hovering of the Spirit of God over the waters?

It is obvious that it does not indicate a mere presence of the Holy Spirit.

The purpose apparently is that an active power goes forth from the Spirit of God to the earth substance that has already been created.

This activity has a direct relationship to God's creative work.

Perhaps we can say that the Spirit preserves this created material and prepares it for the further creative activity of God by which the then disordered world would become a well-ordered whole, as the further creative acts unfold.

When we consider the full meaning of "create" (bara) in Genesis, we realize that what God creates, He also sustains, upholding all things by His power.

Creation is not a staccato work.

It is, to use another musical term, sostenuto, sustained.

We think of staccato notes in music as short, crisp, striking tones.

Their duration is quick and terse.

A sustained note lasts.

It has endurance.

It is never abrupt.

A note on an organ can, in theory, last forever, so long as a key is being pressed.

Creation is like such a note.

Part of the Spirit's work is to "hover" over creation, keeping things intact.

In this regard we see the Spirit as the divine Preserver and the Protector.