The Holy Spirit - Part 2

Preached at Cornerstone Church in Cascade, IA On October 11, 2015

Last week we began our journey in unpacking the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Before we begin, I want to speak briefly about the preaching of a sermon series. As I prepare each sermon, I do so with the general assumption that all of you will hear all of the sermons within a series. That assumption allows me to build upon each sermon, without having to rehash things over and over again. So with that said, if you do miss a Sunday, I encourage you to go back and watch or read the sermon you missed so that you can have a fuller understanding of the topic. You can find these sermons, and all sermons, on our website www.cornerstonecascade.com.

The second thing I want to say briefly, is something I said before, but what to remind everyone. When I preach, I fully recognize that I am preaching to a wide range of people. My role as a Pastor is to edify the immature Christian and the mature Christian. My goal for all of you is that you will all grow in your knowledge of God. In light of that some sermons are not theologically difficult, but others are. Today may be one of those days that some of you really struggle with the sermon for you will see it as too deep. But I do want to remind you that someday it won't be, and you will be the ones in the seats longing for meat instead of milk

With that said, last Sunday, in the short time that we had we established two foundational truths 1) God is one, in three Persons and 2) the Holy Spirit is one of those persons. As I said last time, many of you have always believed this, but your belief was not because you discovered it in God’s Word, but because you were taught it through a song, or through a pastor or teacher. There is nothing wrong with listening to music or being taught, but we must always be mindful to hold everything up against the Bible, for it is our standard of truth. I want you to believe in the Holy Spirit as the Third Person of the Trinity because you see it on the pages of Scripture.

With that said, today we are going to examine the role of the Holy Spirit. Last Sunday I stated that we would be looking at the Holy Spirit as he is revealed in the Old Testament, and we will do that to some extent today, but I have chosen to be more intentional about understanding the general function of the Spirit.

Our Relational God

As I stated last time, the Holy Spirit makes his debut in scene 1 of God’s Story.

• Genesis 1:2 – “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.”
  
  

But this is not the beginning of the Holy Spirit. Before there was time, there was the Spirit. With this in mind, I want to discuss the role of the Holy Spirit within the Trinity. As we all know God is eternal. He has always existed, even before time began: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. They have always existed as the Trinity. And the Trinity before time, is the same Trinity that exists in this very moment. Malachi 3:6 tells us, ““For I the LORD do not change.” Therefore we can take the attributes of the Trinity and apply them to before time began.

The first thing I want us to be encouraged by this morning is that God is a relational God, not only in the sense of relational to things outside of himself, but also relational within himself. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have always existed in perfect harmony within themselves, as divine community.

Why should this truth encourage us? Because we have a God who at his core, longs for relationship, not that God needs us to fill a void in his life, for God is perfectly satisfied within himself, but that God's orientation is relational, therefore as he engages with us, it is not a distant engagement, but an intimate one. He longs to sweep us up into the perfect love of the Trinity, and how he sweeps us up and binds us into this heavenly relationship is largely the role of the Holy Spirit, and we will talk more about that next week.

Operation of the Trinity

But for now, how does this relationship of the Trinity operate? This is going to get heavy for a second. This is how John Piper explains it, “the Son is the eternal image that the Father has of his own perfections, and the Holy Spirit is the eternal love that flows between the Father and the Son as they delight in each other.”

So what does that mean? God the father, who is all knowing and all powerful, has a perfect and complete view of himself, and this view of himself is so perfect and so complete that his image stands forth as a second God, a duplicate. This is Jesus. In this image of God there is nothing lacking.

• Hebrews 1:3 – “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature”
  
  

God has eternally radiated his glory so completely and perfectly that out of this radiance Jesus comes forth. There has never been a moment that God did not image forth His Son. This is why Jesus is eternal, and fully God, but this is one reason why we see Jesus as taking a submissive role. He is eternally and always has been begotten. Now I want to be careful here. I am not saying that Jesus is created. There was never a moment that Jesus didn't exist. Why? Because there is never a moment that the Father didn't exist, therefore as long as their has been a Father, which is forever, the Son has always existed as the radiance of himself.

Louis Berkhof, a renowned theologian in the early 20th century said this, “It is that eternal and necessary act of the first person in the Trinity, whereby He, within the divine Being, is the ground of a second personal subsistence like His own, and puts this second person in possession of the whole divine essence, without any division, alienation, or change. (Systematic Theology, pg. 94)

So where does the Holy Spirit fit in? Let me first say that words fail us in describing this, but words are all we have, so bare with me. The Holy Spirit is all that God is proceeding, or going forth, from the Father to the Son, and all that Jesus is proceeding, or going forth, from himself. The text that supports the procession of the Spirit is John 15:26.

• John 15:26 – ““But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. ”
  
  

The Helper in this text is the Holy Spirit. Jesus states that he will send the Spirit to us. This Helper, the Spirit, proceeds originally from the Father. Within the Trinity this process of the Spirit flowing back and forth between Father and Son, is so pure and so strong, because of who the Father is and who the Son is, a third person of the Trinity is eternally manifested. Now, again, I am not saying that the Spirit of God is created, for as long as the Father exists he radiates the image of the Son, and as long as the Son exists the Spirit proceeds back and forth between the two of them.

This is how Jonathan Edwards explains the person of the Holy Spirit, “The Holy Ghost is the deity subsisting in act, or the divine essence flowing out and breathed forth in God's infinite love to and delight in Himself.”

Is this hard to understand? Absolutely. The Holy Spirit is “other.” But I think this discussion will help us in wrapping our heads around the Holy Spirit’s manifestation in the World, and role as it relates to our lives. I also think it will help us in illumine certain text regarding the work of the Spirit. For now, if I lost you during that explanation, I want you to think of the Holy Spirit's role as the bond that holds the Trinity together. The Holy Spirit is what unifies the Father and the Son in such supernatural way that God exists as one in three persons.

The Name of the Holy Spirit

With that under our belt, I want to get back to Genesis 1:2 and talk about the name that God chose to describe His Spirit.

• Genesis 1:2 – “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.”
  
  

The Hebrew word Spirit in this verse is ruwach (rü'·akh). This word can be translated to mean wind, breath, or spirit. This same word is used in Genesis 7:15, “They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath (ruwach) of life. “ And again in Genesis 8:1, “But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind (ruwach) blow over the earth, and the waters subsided.”

In the New Testament we also see the Spirit of God in scene 1.

• Matthew 1:18, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. “
  
  

The Greek word for Spirit is pnneuma (pnyu-ma). This word, pnneuma, can also be translated as a current of air, breath, or spirit. Now flip a few books forward to Acts 2. Here we see the Holy Spirit coming onto the scene at the beginning of the New Covenant age, when Jesus had ascended to the Father and the Church was about to be unleashed into the World.

• Acts 2:1-4 – “When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. 4And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit…”
  
  

The coming of the Holy Spirit is associated with the sound of a mighty rushing wind.

What is interesting is this is exactly how Jesus describes the Spirit in John 3. If you will, turn with me there so you can see it for yourselves.

• John 3:6-8 – “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
  
  

This wind we are told by Jesus in John 3 has a will. Look at verse 8, “the wind (pnneuma) blows where it wishes.” Who is this wind that has a will? It is the Holy Spirit.

So we see a consistency throughout Scripture of God using this idea, or understanding, of wind to reveal to us the Holy Spirit.

Every good bible student is equipped with one thing, curiosity. If you want to go deep in studying the Bible you should always be asking why? So let us take a moment and ask why. Why does God give the name of wind (ruwach and pnuema) to the third person of the trinity? What is God telling us about Himself?

What is wind? It is unseen force that comes from one place and pushes into another. It is power manifested, not in a tangible way, but in an effectual way. It is an invisible force moving from one place to the other. When we measure the velocity of wind we are not examining the wind, but we are measure the effect of wind upon an object. So what is God telling us about the role of the Holy Spirit? Wayne Grudem describes his role as the active manifestation of God’s power.

When you think about it, this fits into what we talked about earlier regarding the Trinity. The Father pushes forth all that he is, and likewise the Son pushes forth all that he is. This pushing forth is of their beings, which is omnipotent power. In between the Father and the Son, it takes no tangible form, but it exists, and when this power breaks forth into the world, you do not see it, but only its effect. Let's briefly look at some examples.

• Exodus 31:2-5 - “The LORD said to Moses, 2“See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah,3and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, 4to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, 5in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft.
  
  
• Numbers 11:25 - “Then the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the Spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders. And as soon as the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied.”
  
  
• Judges 14:6 - “Then the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon him, and although he had nothing in his hand, he tore the lion in pieces as one tears a young goat.”
  
  
• 1 Samuel 16:13 - “Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward.”
  
  

Each one of these examples, and every example in the Bible show that when the Spirit of God comes upon a person there is a change in their life. How do you know that the Spirit of God is upon them, you can't see Him, but only His effects. For Bezalel he increased in intelligence, knowledge, craftsmanship. For Moses and the elders it was prophecy. For Sampson it was physical strength. For David it was the ability to lead a nation.

When we read stories like these it causes us to want these things, and I think this is one of the reasons God reveals these stories to us, to produce this longing for the presence of the Spirit of God in our lives. And for those who believe in Christ the presence of God does dwell in us. The same Spirit of the Trinity has been given to us. The same Spirit that came upon Bezalel, Moses, Sampson and David dwell ins us, and God wants us to depend, to live by this Spirit.

• Luke 11:13 - “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
  
  

As I said earlier, God is a relational God, he desires for us to be caught up in more of Him. He wants us to abide in the Trinity. He wants to give us wisdom when facing difficult decisions, he wants to have the right words to say in the hardest of times, he wants us to have physical strength in the midst of our battle with cancer, he wants us to lead our families and our Churches well.

How do we do this? We must walk by the power of God, we must walk by the Holy Spirit. So let us do today what Jesus encouraged and pray for the Spirit of God to lavish us with his Spirit.