The Person and Work of the Spirit of God: Part 1
The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 51:28
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Intro:
“Fifty-eight percent of people who identify as Christian do not believe the Holy Spirit is real. At least that is what the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University found in a study done in 2021. Nearly 70 percent of US adults self-identify as Christian, but many of them express a deeper reliance on their feelings, experiences, family, and friends than on the Bible. Their moral guidance comes from somewhere other than the origin of all morality—God.”
Hinn, Costi W.. Knowing the Spirit (pp. 17-18). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
Overview of the Series
Week 1- The Reality of the Holy Spirit: His work personhood in the Divine Godhead
Week 2- The Reality of the Holy Spirit: His work in applying the finished work of redemption
Week 3- (Adam): Our Relationships and the work of the Holy Spirit
Week 4- (Stuart) Our Relationship with the Holy Spirit
Week 5- (Casey Kidd) Reaching the Lost through the power of the Holy Spirit
I. He is present in eternity and throughout history
I. He is present in eternity and throughout history
A. The Spirit in Creation
A. The Spirit in Creation
In the Second verse of the Bible, Gen 1:2 we read that the Spirit was active
Genesis 1:2 (NASB95)
2 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.
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
God is already present at creation which speaks of his eternality. Before anything was, God existed and as God exists in his being as One God and yet as three persons, each person of the Godhead was present in eternity and at creation.
It is noteworthy that the Spirit is initially mentioned in this creation account. His hovering over the waters is understood to mean is activity in creation processes, although it is unclear exactly how all those forces acted together. What is clear is that God created all things out of nothing because the earth was formless, empty and a void. Then God spoke and created with his words and all things came into be during this 6 day creation event.
The Spirit is described as active in the work of that creation.
27 They all wait for You To give them their food in due season. 28 You give to them, they gather it up; You open Your hand, they are satisfied with good. 29 You hide Your face, they are dismayed; You take away their spirit, they expire And return to their dust. 30 You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; And You renew the face of the ground.
These verses describe the Spirit giving life to all things created in nature, including plant and animal life. This is not just a sustaining activity on the earth, but it is also clearly describing the Spirit as the creative agent of creation by His power. The word BARA in the Hebrew used here is the same used in Gen 1, God created the heaven and the earth.
Also in Gen 2:7, we see the creation of mankind which is described as God “breathing life into man after forming him from the dust of the ground. The term for spirit in the bible is also often translated as wind and breathe. It is fair to connect these words as well to the life giving Spirit active in giving life to our first parents Adam and Eve.
Job recognized this when he wrote:
4 “The Spirit of God has made me, And the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
We won’t go there today, but next week, we will see how the Spirit as the giver of life is also a reality of a person receiving new life in Christ.
B. The Spirit in History
B. The Spirit in History
Not only was the Spirit present at creation, but he was active in the lives of the people of God. We can assume that Adam and Eve’s relationship with God before the fall was a perfect fellowship with Father, Son and Spirit. That relationship with God was perfect because sin did not exist in the world and our first parents communed with God.
But when sin entered the world, that fellowship was broken between God and His creation. Sin corrupted all that had been made, and in this, the relationship between God and man was contentious.
In the dialogue of God given to us as God declares that He is going to flood the earth in Gen 6, he writes,
3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
There is not contention between all persons of the Godhead because of sin has destroyed the fellowship with God and our sin offends his holiness. And yet, in God’s mercy, He still sent his Spirit in particular times and places to aid in carrying out HIs purposes.
He fills those craftsman to make and build items for the tabernacle (Ex 35)
He fills Moses and the 70 elders who help Moses lead the people (Numb 11)
He came upon others such as Balaam, Joshua, some of the Judges of Israel
He came upon King Saul and David (1 Sam 16)
He filled and led the prophets (2 Peter 1:21)
Finally we come to great promise that the Holy Spirit would come and rest upon the Messiah. This is a key prophecy to set up the great works of Christ’s incarnation and ministry, fueled by the Spirit’s power.
1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, Because the Lord has anointed me To bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to captives And freedom to prisoners;
We see the Spirit’s involved with the Messiah, the Son of God, in a number of ways:
He fills John the Baptist, the forerunner to Christ, who will herald his coming (Luke 1)
He is the agent at which Jesus is conceived in Mary’s womb (Matt 1)
He leads others to prophesy about Jesus fulfilling messianic promises (Luke 2)
He is revealed at Jesus baptism (Matt 3)
He leads Jesus to the temptation in the wilderness (Matt 4)
He is present in Jesus casting out demons (Matt 12)
He is promised to his disciples once Jesus dies, resurrects and ascends to heaven
He comes at Pentecost and in the early church time to indwell believers and empower them for ministry (Acts 2, 8, 10)
Finally we have to look an important prophecy that are connected historically to the giving of the Spirit to those in the New Covenant in Christ. What is promised here is transformation of the heart with the Spirit from God that will aid God’s people in knowing the word of GOd and living holy lives among the nations.
26 “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. 28 “You will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God.
Both of these passages speak of the great transition of the Holy Spirit coming in such a way as to restore what was broken by the fall into sin. This connection with the Spirit that Ezekiel describes can be understood as restorative by the work of Christ so that fellowship with Father, Son and Spirit is restored back through redemption.
II. He is a Person and not a force
II. He is a Person and not a force
There has always been misconception and error in the church when it comes to understanding the Holy Spirit and so we must as a church spend time studying and understanding this third person of the Godhead so we can rightly worship him as God, just as we worship the Father and Son.
A. He acts personally
A. He acts personally
I am a big Star Wars fan and I like the fictional plot, action, and character development of those stories. George Lucas, the creator of that world, drew much of his ideas from different films and movies in the 60’s. One unknown film to most, had a profound impact on his creative style and ideas of the Star Wars universe. One such idea was it called the Force. This “energy field that connects all living things” as it is described in the movies has influenced movie watchers to such ideas. Interestingly, the writers of that indie film which inspired Lucas’ idea of the force, commented
"Many people feel that in the contemplation of nature and in communication with other living things, they become aware of some kind of force, or something, behind this apparent mask which we see in front of us, and they call it God."
So the undiscovered reality of God’s existence led to such an idea that sparked the use of the Force in the Star Wars movies. While that is pretty cool to a Star Wars nerd like myself, what I can see by the influence and popularity of those movies is that we allow those impersonal fictional ideas to bleed over into our understandings about God. In other words, we can think of the Holy Spirit as some impersonal force that connects all things instead a relational and personal God.
We will look more at some of these activities of the Spirit in our study this month, but as an overview, Scripture teaches us that we
He Comforts and Helps (John 14-16)
He Knows (1 Cor 2:11)
He Indwells and Fills (1 Cor 2:12 and 6:19)
He Teaches (Jn 14:26 )
He Speaks (Acts 8:29)
He Gives (1 Cor 12:11)
He Can be grieved and quenched (Eph 4:30)
He Can be blasphemed (Matt. 12:31 )
He Confirms( Rom 8:16)
He Convicts and Judges ( John 16:8-11)
He helps us pray (Romans 8:26-27)
That tells us is that personal attributes and activities are being attributed to the Holy Spirit which gives us understanding that He is a person. This is important for the Christian life because a generation before us who thought of the Holy Spirit as a ghost, could have demonstrated a fear or uneasiness in relating to HIm. But we very much need to focus on the importance of a relationship with the Holy Spirit through the work of Jesus Christ. By understanding that He is a person, and not some mystical force that acts upon from afar.
B. He has personal pronouns
B. He has personal pronouns
7 “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. 8 “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment;
13 “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. 14 “He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. 15 “All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.
The word “Spirit" is used in the neuter, which is a genderless grammatical use. Yet throughout the Bible, pronouns are attributed to the Holy Spirit, that helps us not only understand the Spirit as a person and not an it, we can also see the masculine pronoun Him attributed
III. He is a distinct person of the Godhead
III. He is a distinct person of the Godhead
A. Equally God
A. Equally God
It is important to teach you about some heresies that arose in Church history that taught otherwise and were eventually confirmed as heresy in the church.
One important heretic that arose of note:
Sabellius was a third century theologian that denied the personhood of the Godhead. He instead taught that God reveals himself in successive stages in history, first as Father, then as Son, and finally as Holy Spirit. This heresy later became known as Modalism and has become famous for poor attempts to illustrate the Trinity by using water in three forms, Ice, gas, and liquid.
15 “All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you. 16 “A little while, and you will no longer see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me.”
Note with me this emphasis. He(spirit) takes of mine (son), all that the Father has are mine (son). Notice with me the equality and unity of that statement. All of Scripture speaks individually and corporately of the divinity of each person Father, Son and Spirit. Their being and essence as God is one.
19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
At the Great commission, when Jesus states that baptism should be observed in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Spirit is being identified equally as a third person of the Godhead.
Calvin writes,
“Paul connects together these three, God, Faith, and Baptism, and reasons from the one to the other, because there is one faith he infers that there is one God; and because there is one baptism he infers that there is one faith. Therefore, if by baptism we are initiated into the faith and worship of one God, we must of necessity believe that he into whose name we are baptized is the true God”
John Calvin and Henry Beveridge, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: The Calvin Translation Society, 1845), 166–167.
Acts 5:4–9 (NASB95)
4 “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 conceived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.” 5 And as he heard these words, Ananias fell down and breathed his last; and great fear came over all who heard of it. 6 The young men got up and covered him up, and after carrying him out, they buried him. 7 Now there elapsed an interval of about three hours, and his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. 8 And Peter responded to her, “Tell me whether you sold the land for such and such a price?” And she said, “Yes, that was the price.” 9 Then Peter said to her, “Why is it that you have agreed together to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test? Behold, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out as well.”
Finally as Luke describes the great judgment of Ananias and Sapphira, we see a confirmation of the Holy Spirit as equally God. As Peter examines first Ananias, the sin that has been committed is identified as lying or deceiving God. Later, when questioning the wife Sapphira, Peter states that such an act is a testing of the Spirit of the Lord. These were both statements that lead us to see that lying to God and testing the Holy Spirit were not separate offenses but instead one act of rebellion against Father, Son and Spirit.
B. Distinct in Personhood
B. Distinct in Personhood
1. Proceeds from the Father, Sent by the Son
As the equality of the persons of the trinity is present, so are their distinctions in role and function. The Father did not die on the cross and the Spirit is not to whom we specifically pray. We have already looked at the distinction in personhood, the rest of our study in these weeks of preaching will look at the Spirit’s role function as the third person of the Trinity. Look at some examples of distinction
26 “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me,
Notice the Spirit comes from the Father. He proceeds, not as some inferior person of the Godhead but one whom is subordinate to the Father and Son. The Spirit is called the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ in the Scriptures.
6 Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
2. A Helper for the Church (1 Corinthians)
26 “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.