The Spirit of God

Transcript

It's my pleasure to, an opportunity really, to present for the next five weeks. So I'm going to be taking, God willing, the month of November, and what you see on the screen in front of you is our title for the month. We're going to be focusing on the Spirit of God, and we're going to see how this Spirit of God presents for us, you know, one of the most foundational, and perhaps one of the most misunderstood themes in Scripture. From Genesis to Revelation, the Spirit of God appears again and again as the power, the presence, the purpose of God at work. We're going to see how the Spirit of God really shows us God creating, and revealing, and restoring, and giving life to creation. So this is our title, and at the bottom here you can see a verse that I've selected. This is a key verse that I think is going to guide all five weeks of our classes. It's a verse from Zechariah chapter 4, verse 6, and just to put this in context, what's happening here is this is a verse that was given to Zerubbabel. He was the one who was working after the Jews had left Babylon and had returned to Jerusalem where they discovered that for 70 years the land had been neglected, where they came after hearing these stories. These children now who grew up in captivity heard the stories of the temple, and they came back to despair to see that not only had the land been dormant for 70 years, but the temple had been burned to the ground and all these great things that they had heard were just in the past. And so there was really a lot of dismay. So this verse in Zechariah chapter 4 that says, The verse was given when he was rebuilding the temple, and he faced these huge obstacles. He had limited manpower. He had political adversaries. And what God was trying to – and he had the discouragement of the people. And what God is saying here in Zechariah 4 was a simple message. He was saying the success of this work doesn't depend on human power. It doesn't depend on the might of political machinery. The success that you are going to experience is based solely on my spirit. It's by my spirit, says the Lord God Almighty, that this place will be rebuilt and you will experience the success. And so I think that what I want to focus on and have you think about right now is that while that was true then, it's equally true today. It's true for us today. It's still true. God's work, whether it's in our own lives or in our families or in our ecclesia, is not dependent on our might, but it's wholly and solely dependent on being sustained by God's spirit, by his word and God's power working in us. So let's just stop there for a second. So that's sort of a brief overview. Any questions or any comments that anybody wants to make about the spirit? When you think about the spirit, what do you think about? Comments? Yeah, Chris. It's good pleasure. I'm thinking of Psalm 51 where Davis says, do good in thy good pleasure and build the walls of Jerusalem. So what's well pleasing to God? His good pleasure. Yeah, I mean, that's his purpose, right? I mean, that was the purpose of his creation, right? Yeah, thanks, Chris. Okay, so one of the things that we're going to see as we come into this is that the spirit of God describes the power and the presence of God at work. As I said before, it shows God creating and revealing and restoring and giving life. The spirit of God is the way that God's power works. It's how he operates. It's the means by which his purpose unfolds. When we think about the spirit of God, we want to think about, I think, the way that God interacts with us. God's spirit is how his presence is revealed to us, how he draws near to us. So these are some of the thoughts that I want you to be thinking about as we get into this subject of the spirit of God. And one of the things that I hope to do in the course of the five weeks is show that the spirit is one of those great golden threads that runs throughout the Bible narrative. We're going to see the spirit in creation. We're going to see the spirit in the words and the messages of the prophets. We're going to see how the spirit worked in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. And in the first century, believers. We're going to see how the spirit works in our lives as believers today. And finally, we're going to see how the spirit will be revealed in the glorious kingdom to come. So from creation to kingdom glory, we see the spirit weaving its thread through the story of the Bible. So here's an overview of our series. We've got five classes, okay? Class one is what we're going to focus on today. And it's in this class where we'll see the spirit as God's personal animating presence. His animating presence. It's how he works. It's that invisible energy that works in creation to bring life and to bring beauty and to bring order out of chaos. So in this first class, we're going to focus primarily on God's Holy Spirit and how he uses it in creation and also in inspiration. Because not only does he create, but he inspires us. And we're going to talk a little bit about that today. That's class one. So again, just as an overview, Class two, we'll then move to the Old Testament message. We're going to see how God created beauty in creation. But soon, man sort of rebelled. Didn't sort of. Man rebelled against God and reintroduced chaos into what was God's perfect creation. And so what God does is God doesn't allow this chaos to continue. Instead, he uses his spirit to work through the prophets so that they could have and recognize God's power and God's message and could reveal that to others. So we'll explore how mankind rebels against God, reintroduces chaos into God's good world. In class two, we'll see that God doesn't give up. And instead, certain individuals, whether it's prophets or whether it's craftsmen, we're going to see how certain individuals are given, they're empowered with God's spirit so that they can understand God's point of view and share God's point of view with people. So that's class two. Class three, we're going to turn to the New Testament. And here we're going to see, of course, how the spirit was manifested without measure in Jesus. Class four, we'll look at the Holy Spirit gifts and how they were used to build up that first century ecclesia. We'll see how Jesus breathed on the apostles right before his ascension and they received the Holy Spirit. We'll talk about that. And then in our last class, class five, at the end of the month, we'll talk about the Spirit today and how the Spirit continues to work in our lives and what we can expect the Spirit to reveal in the glorious Kingdom to come. So there's the overview. Any thoughts, comments? I want you guys to feel free to jump in at any point. Yeah? Particularly with the first century ecclesia, are you going to explore a little bit how the third person of the Trinity kind of came into place? I don't know that we'll get into sort of the development of that heretical teaching, but I'll certainly open it up to the historians in the room. I don't know anything about the process, you know what I'm saying? So maybe that's something I can look into, but it is just interesting how the power of God became God, the Holy Spirit. Yeah, that's right. Oh, yeah. What did you say? Yeah, you got a book for it? All right, thank you. As of last Wednesday's book review? Yeah, good. Okay. Yeah, yeah. All right, so yeah, we will be looking at the Spirit, and I think that when you talk about the Trinity, for a lot of people, a discussion about the Holy Spirit is like a mind shift for them, because they're viewing the Spirit as this third person of the Trinity. And when we come to the Jewish Scriptures and we look at how the Spirit is described in the Jewish Scriptures, it sort of changes everything from their perspective, because it teaches something so completely different than what the Trinity teaches. So let me give you an example. When we come to Genesis chapter 1, let's just do that right now. Let's look at Genesis chapter 1. We'll read just the first five verses. It says, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty. I'm reading the NIV. There's one version that I particularly like, and it says that the earth was wild and waste. Wild and waste. I think the Hebrew is something like, and Brian, if you're listening, you can jump in, tohu v'vohu, or something like that. It's this like rhyming word. And so when you think about the world as it stood on the first day of creation, it was this place that was, in the mind of the ancients, chaotic. It was wild and waste. It was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. The Spirit of God was moving over the waters. What you see on the slide here is that this movement, this hovering, is God's first action in the Bible. Before He spoke, before He did anything, His Spirit, His power, was hovering. It was waiting to act. And whenever the Spirit moves, chaos becomes order. So think about the ancients, who are reading the story of creation, and from their perspective, the scariest places in the world, the most dangerous places in the world, were the desert and the ocean. These were things that they couldn't control. You know, if you think of the land of Israel, and you sort of move eastward, you know, you come to that huge expanse of desert, and if people got into that desert, they would be lost and they would die. There was nothing that would give them a point of reference. It wasn't like they could see a tree and walk towards the tree. They would just wander. And so for them, this idea of a created world or a world that was wild and waste described their greatest fears. And there on those chaotic waters over the surface of the deep was God's power just floating. You know, just imagine that. And what we're going to see here in the Jewish Scriptures is how this Spirit is described as the invisible energy of our God. It's how God turned chaos into order, how God turned darkness into light, and how God turned nothingness or death into life. And so for the ancients, the desert and the stormy seas were the most dangerous places that could be imagined. But for the Spirit, chaos was not a threat. The chaos was instead an opportunity. And it was through this word, through this Spirit, that God was able to create a beautiful world that is teeming with life. It's how He did it. Thoughts, comments, anything on the first few passages in Genesis chapter 1? Yeah. Rich. No. There's a button that you can push up. What's up now? There we go. Thanks, Steve. I was just wondering if you had thought of any other meanings that hovering could have? Because I agree with what you're saying, and I've heard a nice thought from someone in the past. I wonder if you think there's any truth in this that another possible meaning is trembling. Trembling, yeah. And it's almost like this could be showing us the emotional side of God. He's like a father with a newborn almost trembling at this new creation that He's just created. That's awesome. And it only comes up a couple of other times in Scripture, I think, and that is one possible thing. Just another thought, perhaps. Yeah, I like that a lot. I think you do see that movement, but I think what I hear you saying is what really resonates with your comment is this idea of the emotion that you see behind the word. That's a good analogy with the young dad spoken as a soon-to-be dad. You want to pass that back to Chris? One of the verses that Joel was thinking of is, I believe, in Matthew 23 where Jesus says unto Israel, How often I would have gathered you like a hen gathers her chicks. And it's the same idea of brooding or sitting upon, very much like hovering over, how God hovered over Israel, trying to gather them, but they would not. Yeah. Thanks for that. So, I think that when we look at Genesis 1, one of the things that stood out to me was that this hovering or trembling was the first action in Scripture. And I just think that's really kind of interesting. This is the first action that we read about in Scripture. And so as we continue this thought about the Spirit, we might ask the question, what does the Spirit mean? And in the Jewish Scriptures and in the Greek Scriptures, the New Testament Scriptures, there are really two words that are often used to describe Spirit. And those words are breath. Breath or wind. So in the Jewish Scripture, the Hebrew word is ruach. Like that guttural sound, ruach. And it means breath. In the New Testament, it's the Greek word nouma. And if you think about the ancients who are reading the creation story and they're reading about this Spirit or this breath that's hovering or trembling over the waters, you can imagine them trying to understand it by perhaps just putting their hand up over their mouth. And if you just say breath or hello or ruach, you can feel something. There's something that's coming out of you, right? You can feel it. It's this invisible thing, but there's some movement to it. There's some power to it. So just like the wind is invisible, just like breath is invisible, God's Spirit works unseen. But it's powerful. The ancients could sit and look up at the sky and they could see somehow the clouds moving. They didn't know how, but there was something in their mind that was causing these clouds to come across the sky. What was it? It was the breath of God. Unseen, but there was power to it. The ancients could sit and they could look up at a tree and they could see the leaves flutter. They didn't know how it worked, but they understood that it was moving because of the Spirit or the breath of God. And at times, this breath was so powerful that it would not just move the leaves, but it would tear the limbs from the trees. The Spirit of God that we learn from the Jewish Scriptures is not this third person of the Trinity. The Spirit of God is described throughout the Scriptures as the power and the energy of the living God. It's His breath. It's His life. It's His mind in motion, in action. When God acts, it's by His Spirit. So I think it's really helpful for me and perhaps for you to come to this subject with the mindset not of the 21st century believer who's understanding that the wind is caused by pressure changes or whatever it is, but we come to it with the mindset of the ancient who's trying to make sense of this world that he's living in. And for them, the breath of God demonstrated how God acted in His creation. So let's continue this thought, and we'll do it by looking at the Spirit of God in creation itself. And what you'll see here on the screen are several passages where the Hebrew word that has been translated as breath in English or spirit in English is actually that Hebrew word ruach. Again, it's this idea of God breathing. So let's turn to Genesis 2, verse 7. It says, The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. And so, again, picture yourself as an ancient who is seeing this clay man, this atom, dirt, this inanimate thing all of a sudden come to life. How was it that this thing came to life? Genesis 2, verse 7, The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath, the ruach of life. And the man became a living being. It's through God's Spirit that things come to life. And this is one of the things that the ancients believed and we see it today throughout the Scriptures. Turn to Job. We'll look at two passages, a couple of passages from Job. We'll start in chapter 27. Again, Job is one of those very early books in the Scriptures, one of the oldest books in the Scriptures. Job, chapter 27, verse 3. What's happening here is Job is sort of complaining. He's complaining that God has denied him justice, that he is experiencing the trouble that he's been going through without cause, without reason. He says in verse 2, As surely as God lived, who's denied me justice, the Almighty who's made me taste bitterness of the soul, he's complaining here. And he's so emphatic about his complaint that God is denying him justice. He says, as long as I live, as long as I have life within me, the breath of God in my nostrils, my lips will not speak wickedness, and my tongue will it utter no deceit. Think that what I'm getting from this particular passage is the idea that Job recognizes that his life is sustained by God's Spirit, by God's breath. As long as I have life within me, the breath of God in my nostrils, as long as I'm alive, I'm never going to speak an ill word, is what he's saying. Job recognizes that not only did God create Adam through his breath, but God sustains life through the breath that he gives each one of us. Any comments about that? Anybody want to add anything? Yeah, Gordon. Let me get our runners coming up the aisle with the… I'm not impressed. I think what Genesis reveals is God's absolute authority, majesty, and power. And while he doesn't go into detail on how he created everything, he does tell us about his plan and purpose. So that's speculation about how things are, how about dinosaurs and all that sort of thing. It's just speculation. That's right. Think about it, Gordon. He told us everything we need to know. Yeah, I think you're right. And the way I think of it is the ancients had no idea of what science was. They had no idea of understanding. And so the Bible is not a science book. It's a book that teaches us why God created. And what's important for us is not how, in my view, it's not how he created, but why, and the fact that he is the creator, and that it is God who created, and it's God's power that creates and sustains life. Let's go on, and we'll look at Job chapter… we just looked at Job chapter 27, and if you just turn a couple of pages, we come to the 33rd chapter. And here we see Job continuing his discourse, and he says in verse 4, the Spirit of God has made me. That word Spirit that you see highlighted there on the screen is the Hebrew word ruach, which is often translated breath. The breath of God has made me. The ruach, the breath of the Almighty, has given me life. Given me life. It's the breath of God, the Spirit of God, that creates and sustains life. Look at this in the next chapter, chapter 34, and I think this shows us the sustaining aspect of God's Spirit. Verses 14 and 15. If it were his intention, speaking of God, if it was God's intention, and he withdrew his breath, his ruach, his spirit, all mankind would perish together, and man would return to the dust. If God decided to take back his spirit and gather his breath back to himself, all mortal creatures would expire. We'll look at one more I don't have on the screen, and this is from Ecclesiastes 12, so turn that up if you would. Ecclesiastes chapter 12, and we'll look at the seventh verse. It says, we'll start in verse 6, Remember him before the silver cord is severed or the golden bowl is broken before the pitcher is shattered at the spring or the wheel broken at the well, and dust returns to the ground it came from. He's speaking about the death of man. And the spirit returns to God who gave it. The breath returns to God who gave it. So sometimes people take this Greek idea of an eternal spirit that does not die ascending to the heavens, and they will look at this passage as evidence of that doctrine. But what this doctrine is instead showing is it's not this spirit that ascends to the heavens. It's the breath of God that once gave life to creation is now returning to God. It's this sustaining breath, the sustaining power of life, returning back to God. And I think that's an important thing for us to understand. Comments? Thoughts? So when God breathes, things live. When He withdraws that breath, those things die. The spirit is the power and the energy of the living God Himself. It's His breath. It's His life. It's His mind in motion. When God acts, brothers and sisters, it's by His spirit. So Genesis and Job and Ecclesiastes, those things that we just looked at, they show us how God's spirit acts. And in Genesis, the spirit hovered over the dark, chaotic waters. These are the things that happened. The creative work, though, brothers and sisters, and I think this is one of the things that I really want to emphasize. The creative power of God is still at work today. God's spirit still brings order to chaos, both in creation and in our very human lives, in our human existence. God's spirit gives us the opportunity to turn the chaos of our lives into peace, just as God's spirit turned the chaos of the waters into order. We are given this great opportunity to open God's Word of truth and let God's Word reshape our thinking. And when we do that, we are experiencing the same power, that same creative process that began in Genesis. And so what I want you to think about now is this idea that God not only used his breath to create, but he used this breath to communicate his thoughts, his ideas, his purpose to mankind. He did it by speaking, breathing, through the prophets. One of the great passages in Scripture, from my perspective, is this passage found in 2 Timothy chapter 3. And I love the way the modern translations interpret it or translate it. It says, all Scripture is inspired by God. But the modern translations use this word, God breathe. All Scripture is God breathe. It's profitable for teaching and for instruction in righteousness. It's the Word of God. It's God's message. It's his thought. It's his purpose. Breathe out so that we can feel it. So I want you to think about this. When we read the Word, are we reading it for knowledge? Or are we reading it so that it will change us? So that it will move us? And to me, there's a great distinction. We've got to learn through the maturity of life in Christ that reading the Word is more than just reading for understanding. Yes, it's critically important. But we need to read so that it changes who we are. And God breathe his message to the prophets so that we have the opportunity to read these things and have God's power change us. When the prophets spoke, it wasn't through their imagination. It was God breathing these things into their minds and into their words. 2 Peter 1 tells us that holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Spirit. It's that same word, moved. God's Spirit moved over the chaotic waters. God's Spirit moved the holy men of God. That word moved. It's like a ship that's being carried along by the wind. The prophets were born along by the Spirit as they spoke his words. I like what we read in Samuel. The Spirit of the Lord spake by me. It wasn't his words. It was God's words that spoke through him. And his word was my tongue. These were not his thoughts. These were not his thinking. These were God's words, God's thoughts. God used his tongue as the mechanism by which he delivered that message. The Spirit works today, brothers and sisters. The Spirit of God and the Word of God are inseparable. And I really think that's an important and critical lesson in our study of the Spirit. Because often when we think about the Spirit, we think about it as something that happened in the past. The Holy Spirit gifts, they came, they were available in the first century, and they stopped. But the Spirit still moves. The Spirit still hovers. The Spirit still acts. And it acts in our lives through the reading of the Word. The Spirit and the Word are never independent of each other. I've got two passages here that we'll look at. Psalm 33, and it shows this interconnection between them. By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made. By the breath of the Lord were the heavens made. We just read that in Genesis. And the host of them by the breath of His mouth. So it's the Word and the breath. They're together. The Word and the Spirit, they're inseparable. Jesus Himself said, the words that I have spoken to you are Spirit. Jesus' words, inspired words by God, were Spirit. And just that word that I just referenced, inspiration. It's got the word Spirit right in it. So the Spirit isn't something that was only revealed in the past. Today, our reading and meditating on the Scripture allows God to work in our minds, to enter our minds. It's the way that God transforms us. And brothers and sisters, this is so critically important because each one of us has a mind that's independent of God. We have a carnal spirit. We read about that in Romans 8. We read about Paul struggling with the things that he knows he wants to do but doesn't do. And each one of us has that same challenge in our lives. So there is a spirit of man, and there is a spirit of God. And we're going to see next week how the spirit of man turns the beauty of the garden of perfection back into chaos. We're going to see how man's desire to please himself caused the perfection of the garden to be destroyed and caused life to turn to death. And our goal in the course of this week is to understand how we can allow God's Spirit into our minds and into our hearts so that we are guided by the Spirit. So that we can have the character of God and the character of Jesus live in our hearts and overcome the default position of serving ourselves. We want the Spirit to live and move within us. So that's our goal this week. We'll finish our class here. Let me open it up to any questions or comments.

Transcript

Well, we are going to continue our class on the Holy Spirit today. The focus of our Sunday school, our adult Sunday school in the month of November, is this subject of the Spirit of God. Whether we refer to it as the Spirit of God or the Holy Spirit, these things are really interchangeable. And what we're going to be examining is this power, the purpose, and the presence of our God in our lives. So that's the subject. And over the next five weeks, last week we started with creation, and we'll work through these five things. So let me just take a look at my notes. The same breath of God that gave humanity purpose, that purpose which was to reflect God's glory, to reflect His image, to fill His earth with His glory. We saw in our class last week that this power of God isn't something that was just resigned to the history books. God's Spirit still works through His Word today. It's quietly shaping our minds. It's shaping our hearts. That's really what it's designed to do when we read and speak and live His truth. So the whole series is really designed to follow the story of God's Spirit throughout the pages of the Scripture. It's a theme that runs throughout the entire Bible narrative, from creation, to the prophets, to the Lord Jesus Christ, to the early Ecclesia, and even today in our own lives. So each step and each class is going to reveal one of the, you know, it's going to reveal one continuous purpose, and that is that God's desire is to bring order to the chaos that man has introduced into His creation. God's purpose in bringing forth His Holy Spirit is to reintroduce order into the chaos that man has brought into His creation. So you know, on the right-hand side here is sort of a summary of what we looked at last week. It's where, you know, in the beginning, God's Spirit, the Jewish word, the Hebrew word for that is ruach. It's the word for breath, and it moved over the dark, chaotic waters. We talked about the Hebrew words for that, and one of the great translations says not that the world was empty and void, but one of the translations refers to it as being wild and waste, and there over that chaotic waters of the deep, God's Spirit hovered. You remember Joel, Joel and Lisa were in the back row, you know, Lisa's expecting, and Joel said, you know, the word hovered has this idea of trembling. Do you remember that from last week? And it was as though an expectant father is trembling, is just eagerly anticipating what's about to happen. And I think that really gives us an idea as to what the Spirit is. It's not simply God's power, but it's His presence, and it shows us that He really desires to have a relationship with His creation. God's Spirit is hovering over the waters, and He's about to bring this chaotic, wild, and waste land and sea into order. And that Spirit that created the world as we know it also created within us a purpose. God's desire was for mankind, men and women, to reflect His image, and He gave us the breath of life, and we became living beings as a result of that. And our purpose was to go forth and multiply and fill His creation with God's glory. And today, we looked at how the Word of God and the Spirit of God are never separate. The Word of God, we're told in the New Testament, is active, it's living. And while the Spirit doesn't manifest itself in the words of the prophets today, it does manifest itself in the words of Scripture. And we know that the Scriptures are God-breathed. This is God's Spirit showing us what He wants of us. And so even today, through the Scriptures, God is still speaking to us. And so in a couple of minutes, you know, that's really what I tried to try and present last week in our first class as it relates to God's Spirit in creation and in inspiration. It's the way that God can demonstrate His power and demonstrate His desire to be present in our lives. So before we move on, are there any questions or is there anything that anybody wanted to bring up about last week's class? Okay. So now what I want to do is I want us to focus on this powerful contrast between God's Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and man's Spirit. I think Paul, the Apostle Paul explains it really well in 1 Corinthians. So if you've got your Bible open, you can go to 1 Corinthians chapter 2. This is going to be the reading today, so I don't want to get into it too much. I'm not sure whether Jason is going to be covering this in his exhortation, but I want to have you look at it. We'll start in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, and we're going to look at the sixth verse. And what Paul is doing here is he's writing to this Ecclesia in Corinth, and he's explaining that God has revealed a message that has until this point really been misunderstood, not known. And he says, we do, we, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not this wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age. So if you go down to verse 8, he goes on, he says, none of the rulers of this age understood the message, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, it's written, no eye is seen, no ear is heard, no mind is conceived what God has prepared for those who love him. And here's where I want you to focus your attention on these next two verses. But God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. So the message of truth is being revealed by the word, by his Spirit. Then it says, the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God, for who among men knows the thought of a man except the Spirit within him? In other words, sisters, there is a spirit of man that's only within men. It's our inner consciousness. It's our thinking. It's the thing that separates men and women from the animals. It's what God gave us that he didn't give the other creatures. It's that ability to reflect his image. None of the other creatures can do that. And we've been given this inner consciousness. But there's a problem with that. And the problem is that while we've got the ability to think and the ability to reason and the ability to choose, the problem is that since the fall in the Garden of Eden, human spirit, man's thinking has been misdirected. The mind of the flesh is hostile to God. But you used an expression that has stuck with me for I don't know how many years. And it's this idea that we have a default position. And I think the expression you used was our default is. We are inclined to sin. And this is really the heart of the matter, right? Mankind's spirit has a default position where we seek to serve ourselves what's in my best interest, what's in my family's best interest, what's in my tribe's best interest, even if it's against your best interest or against the best interest of God. And that's the problem when we that's the distinction that we have between the spirit of man and the spirit of God. So we all have this inner consciousness, this ability to think and reason. And since the very beginning when Adam and Eve decided that they saw something that was good to eat and they chose to do what was in their best interest, mankind has been misdirected. Paul says in Romans, for I do I do not do the good I want, but the evil I don't want is what I keep on doing. And that's the struggle of man's spirit. Turn to Romans chapter 8. We'll see a little bit more about this struggle here. And this is a passage that's probably familiar to most of us. We'll begin in the fifth verse. This is Romans chapter 8. And we're going to look down through verses 5 through 8. It says, Those who live according to the sinful nature, man's spirit, have their minds set on what the natural desires, on what that natural, what that nature rather desires. But those who live in accordance with the spirit of God have their minds set on what the spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the spirit is life and peace. The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. And I think this is really the come to the subject of the Holy Spirit. We're really comparing man's spirit with God's spirit. We can look at Ezekiel chapter 11, and I've got it, do I have it quoted here? I don't. Let's go to Ezekiel 11. I do. So the idea is, you know, we've got mankind's spirit that is running rampant in the world. And we've got God's spirit that we are, you know, trying to get in tune with. And God is sending forth his spirit for a purpose. And that purpose is described here in Ezekiel. So let me just turn up Ezekiel chapter 11. And it's verses 19 and 20. And we'll see a similar passage in Ezekiel later on in our class today. So verse 19 says, I will give them an undivided heart. Right? That divided heart is what we see Paul struggling with here on the slide. You know, the good that he wants to do, he doesn't do. The evil that he doesn't want to do, that's what he does. That's the divided heart. And in Ezekiel 11, he says, I'll give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them. I'll remove from them their heart of stone and I will give them a heart of flesh. Why is God going to do that? What's God's desire? It's found in the next verse. Why is he going to give them this new spirit? Because then they'll follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Remember, God's purpose in this whole creation is to fill the earth with his glory. And when we as his creation begin reflecting our own will, it does just the opposite. And while we want to do right, we do evil. And the promise of scripture is that God is going to remove that divided heart that we have by giving us a Holy Spirit so that we can fully accomplish the things that God had set out from the beginning, that all the earth will be filled with his glory. Comments? So let's go back to Genesis. In the garden, as we said, Adam and Eve followed their own spirit instead of God's. And the result was chaos. So if you think back to the creation, we've got the chaotic waters, the land that's wild and waste, and we have God's spirit trembling or hovering in the air. He's hovering over the waters, and the first thing he does is he creates order out of this mess. And God looks at it, and he says, it was very good. And almost immediately, we see that man, through their own decisions, reintroduced the chaos into creation. There was the result of this chaos was an immediate separation between God and man. You know, when things were in order again, when God looked out and saw it was very good, man and God were walking together in the garden. And after the fall, they were separated. So the order was disrupted. Not only was there separation, mankind experienced shame and guilt, and soon death was introduced into the world. So Genesis 3 tells us that when the woman saw that tree was desirable, she took it, and that simple act of self-will reintroduced chaos into the world, into God's perfect creation. It's as if the spirit-filled wind was replaced by a contrary wind. Like, when I'm out riding on my bicycle, there's nothing more pleasurable than to have a tailwind. You know, you're riding along, and the wind is blowing, and it's behind you, and it's just pushing you along, and you just feel like you can go forever. But when you turn around and you face that contrary wind, it can be a pretty miserable experience, right? The sailors have an expression of fair winds and following seas, and I think that what happened in the case of man's spirit rebelling against God's spirit is there was this reversal of God's plan, and now there were these headwinds, and God's spirit-filled wind was replaced by a contrary one. It continued. That same spirit of, man's same spirit of rebellion spread, and by Genesis 6 we read that every inclination of the human heart was only evil continually. So even after the flood, man's spirit still resisted God. You'd think that after the flood, you know, that we'd get our act together, but it wasn't the case, because man's default position, man's inclination to sin continued. So after the flood in Genesis 11, humanity says, you know what, we're supposed to build an image for God. Let's instead build a city for ourselves. Again, it was, you know, the difference, we're trying to identify the difference between man's spirit and the Holy Spirit, God's spirit. I think if we have that clear in our minds, it will really help us understand the study of the Spirit of God. Brother Chris. Fallback position, you know, you had used that term earlier. So the Tower of Babel, you know, God says you won't flood the world, the earth again, but let's make a fallback position just in case we need it. And, you know, they build a tower. So yeah, yeah. So the idea is, you know, the earth has just been flooded. And God has said he's not going to flood the earth again. And yet they're not so sure. So they build this tower that reaches to the heavens as if to say, if the floods come, now we have an escape route. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, that's their fallback position. So rather than trusting God, they trust their own spirit. And again, the focus that I'm trying to get us to be clear on, the subject that I'm trying to get us to be clear on is this contrast between the spirit of man and the spirit of God. So is that clear to everybody? Yeah. Okay. Now, even as mankind rebels and continues to rebel, we need to know that God never wanted to and will never abandon his plan. Even in all that failure, you know, the failure of Adam and Eve, the murder, you know, Cain and Abel with murder coming onto the earth, we see that mankind's heart is evil continually. And even after the flood, they continue to disobey and they decide that they want to build a name for themselves. So instead of, you know, spreading forth, go forth and multiply, they do just the opposite. They come into a city and they're not going forth or congregating in one place, building a name, not for God, but for themselves. All of these things, even in the midst of all of that failure, God never abandoned his purpose and his spirit began to hover, began to tremble again. But this time, it wasn't over the chaotic waters of creation. This time, the spirit was hovering, trembling over the lives of certain individuals. He began to take this spirit, this godly spirit, and empower individuals with it so that these individuals could be a contrast, could be a light in a dark place, so that these individuals could show the people through word and through example what God's intention was from the beginning. So God's ruach empowered specific ones to push back against the chaos of man's spirit. So when man's spirit began to spread chaos, God's spirit began to restore order in human life. It was designed so that certain individuals would be empowered with this spirit, and those individuals could then prepare the hearts of the people. Those individuals could begin shaping nations so that God's purpose would stay alive. Every time God's purpose was sent to an individual, it was as though God was pushing back against man's spirit. He wanted to reclaim the order that he had established in creation. He wanted to make sure that the evil spirit of mankind didn't permanently undo what he had set forth. Each act of empowerment kept his purpose alive, and I think that's the key. God's purpose begins to hover again. He's looking out and he's seeing the mess of mankind, and he says it's not going to remain that way. Just as the spirit hovered over the waters, he now hovers through the people. Look at Ezekiel. This is a great passage. It's Ezekiel chapter 36. So we were in Ezekiel 11 before. If you just flip over a couple of chapters, well I've got it written right here. He says, I will give you a new heart and put my spirit in you. Why? I'll put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees. That's the reason that God is empowering these individuals, and so we see it throughout the Old Testament. We see certain individuals throughout the balance of the Old Testament, the Jewish scriptures, being moved by the spirit, being empowered to do God's work. So the first one that we'll look at is Joseph. So let's turn to Genesis chapter 41, and this is the first time we see an individual being given God's Holy Spirit, and we'll see why as we look at the study of Joseph. So Joseph is in Genesis chapter 41, and we'll start in the 38th verse. So the context here is Pharaoh has had some disturbing dreams. Verse 38 says, Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, since God has made all this known to you, Joseph has interpreted those dreams, since God has made all this known to you, there is no one so discerning and wise. You shall be in charge of my palace, and all my people are to submit to your orders. Only with respect to the throne I'll be greater than you. So Pharaoh said to Joseph, I hereby put you in charge of the whole land of Egypt. So what we see is, oh, I, verse, so Pharaoh, I'm sorry, I started too late. We want to start in verse 37. So Joseph interprets the dream, the plans seem good to Pharaoh and to all his officials, so Pharaoh asked them, and here's the point I wanted to emphasize, can we find anyone like this man, one in whom is the Spirit of God? This is the first time we see an individual being acknowledged as having received the Spirit of God. It's Pharaoh looking out at the wisdom of this man and recognizing that this wisdom is an earthly wisdom. This man has been empowered by something greater. Pharaoh asked his officials, can we find anyone like this man, one in whom is the Spirit of God? So that's the first one. Joseph is given wisdom by God that allows life to be preserved in the midst of this famine. The next one we're going to see is Bezalel. Bezalel was given very specific gifts. Bezalel was the one who received God's Spirit and was given wisdom and was given the ability to have great artistic ability so that he could craft God's temple, the Tabernacle. He was the one that crafted the Ark of the Holy Covenant. He was the one that took this Tabernacle and crafted it in such a way that there would be examples of creation. The Tabernacle had so many reflections on what the creation in the Garden of Eden was like. Bezalel was the one who was given these great gifts. I think I've got the wrong passage here. I list Ezekiel 31. Let me just double check that. Exodus, thank you. All right, let's turn to Exodus chapter 31 and we'll look at verses three through five. Verse one, then the Lord said to Moses, see I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of her of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God with skill, ability, and knowledge in all kinds of crafts to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver, and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and then to engage in all kinds of craftsmanship. So this is the second time we see the Spirit of God being empowered on an individual. It was given to this man who was going to be responsible for crafting the Ark of the Covenant, for crafting the Tabernacle of God, and if you think about it, this is the place where God and man were to dwell together again. This was known as the meeting place where heaven and earth could meet again, and since the fall in the garden, there was a separation between God and man. After Adam and Eve were dismissed from the garden, Adam and Eve, mankind, no longer walked with God, but now through this empowerment of Bezalel, receiving the Holy Spirit, he was in a place where he could create a meeting place where God and man could dwell together again. You see it was this reversal of the chaos that had been introduced in mankind. We see it also in judges, where the judges are given leadership and the ability to fight back against Israel's enemies. We see time and again that these individuals were given the Spirit of God, and of course we see it with the prophets. They were given power to speak God's truth, even when they were up against corrupt governments, corrupt leaders, people who were taking advantage of the people. These prophets were given the Spirit of God so that they would have the courage to speak these things. We won't get into the details of looking at judges and prophets just because of the time, but I think those things are probably pretty clear to us. The point here of this slide is that individuals now are being moved by the Spirit of God. Any comments or questions? So that's how God was doing it, and the question that we might ask now is why. Why was God empowering these people? And I think the answer was so that God's purpose could go for, but what we find is that while the Spirit could empower these people to do these good things, the results weren't long lasting. The transformation of the people was short-lived. Even with the greatest of these Spirit-filled servants, they couldn't transform. They couldn't change human hearts, and so their victories were temporary. Their reforms were incomplete, and that's really the story of the Jewish Scriptures. That's the story of the Old Testament. We see great examples of them bouncing back, doing the right thing only to fall back again, time and time again, and I think that's the lesson for us. Israel's story showed that humanity, all of us, we need something deeper. You think about our own spiritual journeys. We have highs and lows. We have times when we are just focused, when we are in tune with our God, and there are other times when the cares of this life interrupt our thinking. Even in our own lives, we can see how the reforms that we enact in the way we live are sometimes short-lived. So Israel's story shows us that we need something deeper. We don't need God's Spirit to be placed on us as it was placed on individuals in the Old Testament. We need to change our hearts. The Spirit life has to fill us just as it was designed as it needed to, you know, as the Old Testament story tells us that their lives needed to be reformed from within. There are human limitations. Even these great people who have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament had human limitations. While God gave these people these certain gifts, they're still human, and they experience the frailties of life. They experience their own desires. They experience their own temptations, and I think the clearest example of this is with King Saul. King Saul anointed the King of Israel gifted with the Holy Spirit, and yet we know that in his life his temptations became so great, and the spirit of man in his life became so great that he turned from God, and Saul's life was not in tune with the Spirit of God. Let's take a look at 1st Samuel chapter 15. Somebody want to turn that up? I can turn it up. 1st Samuel 15, if you look at that, and we'll start in, we're going to look at two passages, one from chapter 15, and then we'll turn over to chapter 16. So chapter 15 verse 10, Then the word of the Lord came to Samuel. I'm grieved that I made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions. This is the clearest example of one who has been given the Spirit of God, who's turning away, whose spirit of man sort of overwhelms him, and because of this what happens is God now withdraws his spirit from Saul. We see this in chapter 16 verse 14. Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. It just goes to show us that while God can empower these certain individuals, he can place his spirit on them, there were times that their hearts weren't transformed, and that's the promise that God has made. There will be a time, brothers and sisters, when all the earth will be filled with his glory. There will be a time when our hearts will be changed, but at this point in the Jewish Scriptures, this point in the story of the Bible, we see that these changes, these successes, are temporary, and that the Spirit can be withdrawn. This was the worry that David had after David sinned with Bathsheba. He looked at the example of what happened to Saul, and he saw how God withdrew the spirit from Saul, and David worried that the same thing was going to happen to him. He's now the king. He's been empowered with God's spirit. He sins with Bathsheba, and Psalm 51 gives us an insight as to what he was thinking during this whole fiasco. So Psalm 51, we see the worry that David had. We'll look at verses 9 through 11. David is praying to God, hide your face from my sins and blot out my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart. See, this is the thing that Saul didn't have. Saul had the power of God, but his heart wasn't changed. David had the power of God, but his heart was so weak, it was so filled with the spirit of man, that he could sin with Bathsheba. And he says, create in me a new heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence. Don't do to me what you did to Saul. Do not take your Holy Spirit from me at the end of verse 11. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. Then I'll teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you. Save me from blood guilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. This is what God wants. He wants our hearts to be changed. But David knew that if he didn't change his heart, God could and would withdraw his Holy Spirit from him. So the answer to these problems, these repeated failures, these examples where people were transformed but only fell back, where there was a restoration but it was incomplete, where there was a victory and it, too, was incomplete. The answer to these problems, these repeated failures, was not to empower another leader with the Holy Spirit, not to give the Holy, you know, continue to give the Holy Spirit to Bezalel or to Joseph or to the prophets or to David, but it was to change the hearts of all people. And that's the promise. That's the goal. That's the Holy Spirit's eventual result. So through prophets like Ezekiel or Isaiah or Joel, God shows us today, we can look at his word, we can see the Holy Spirit of his word working in our lives, we can see his long-term plan, that the Spirit that once came upon a few would now dwell within many. So instead of it just being placed on people, it would become part of them, it would fill them. God promised to replace hearts of stone with hearts shaped by his Spirit. So here are three passages from the Jewish prophets. Ezekiel, we looked at this passage earlier, I'll give you a new heart and put my Spirit in you. Isaiah, I'll pour out my Spirit on your children. Joel, I'll pour out my Spirit on all people. That's the goal. That's where God is going. That's how God is going to take the chaos that we introduced into his creation through our human-like thinking, and he's going to replace it with godly thinking. And there will be, brothers and sisters, a new creation. God will renew all things. The same Spirit that hovered over the waters in Genesis now hovers over the hearts of God's people. All we have to do is think about Ezekiel, go back to his vision of the dry bones, and we'll conclude by doing that. So let's turn to Ezekiel chapter 37. And we've got this story of Israel, the nation, being represented by dry bones, dead bodies, in the wilderness, in this valley. And we're going to see how God's hovering, trembling breath is over this nation. Ezekiel chapter 37 will start in the first verse. The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley that was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. And he asked me, son of man, can these bones live? And I said, O sovereign Lord, you alone know. Then he said to me, prophesy to these bones and say to them, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. This is what the sovereign Lord says to these bones. I will make breath ruach. I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make your flesh come upon you and cover you with skin. And I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together bone to bone. And I looked at the tendons and flesh appeared on them, and skin covered them. But there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, son of man, and say to it, this is what the sovereign Lord says. Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these bones. Then he said to me, son of man, these bones are the house of Israel. They say our bones are dried up and our hope is gone. We're cut off. Therefore, prophesy and say to them, this is what the sovereign Lord says. O my people, I'm going to open your graves and bring you up from them. I'll bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you my people will know that I'm the Lord when I open your graves and bring you up from them. Verse 14, I will put my spirit in you, and you will live. And I'll settle you in your land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, that I have done it, declares the Lord. And so brothers and sisters, this is our hope, that God's spirit will breathe life, and that God's spirit will eventually renew his creation and cover the earth with his glory. Psalm 104 says of that day, and you will renew the face of the earth. So this is our hope, brothers and sisters, and we'll conclude with this exhortation. The spirit of God is how we concluded last week. The spirit isn't something that was revealed only in the past. Today when we read and we meditate on the word of God, the scripture, it allows God's spirit to enter our minds. And in that way, it can transform our manly, our carnal thinking into godly thinking. Every time we read the Bible in faith, every time it corrects us, every time it comforts us, every time it challenges us, the spirit of God is at work in our lives at that very moment. It's designed to change us, and to change the way we think, so that carnal thinking can be godly thinking, so that the spirit of man can be turned to the spirit of God. That's our hope as we seek to reflect his image in all that we do.

Transcript

I'm not going to say I was panicked, but when I tried to turn my iPad on, my presentation wasn't there, and happy that it's here, so it arrived. So this is, welcome back, this is our series on the Spirit of God. We've been thinking over the last couple of weeks about God's Spirit, God's own power, his presence, God's mind at work in his creation and in his people. When we started the series, we discussed how this series was going to be a chronological study of God's power, and we're taking this over a five-week period. In our first class, we started by looking at how God's breath, his Spirit, his power hovered over creation and caused the creation to come into being. How God took what was chaos, the wild and waste of the early globe, and created order out of it. In the second class last week, we focused our attention on the Old Testament, and we saw a disparity between the Spirit of man and the Spirit of God. And we traced God's Spirit throughout, really through the entirety of the Old Testament. We saw God's power come upon certain people, people like Joseph, or like Bezalel, or the judges, and then eventually into the prophets, and how God empowered these individuals with his power so that they could do, so that they could say, so that they could perform certain acts that would bring forward his purpose. How God, through these individuals that were empowered with his Spirit, could begin to return the chaos that man had introduced by exerting his Spirit. God was able to empower individuals to show what his Spirit and his purpose truly was. And while we saw people like Bezalel, and people like the prophets, people like Saul, who were given the Spirit, we saw that there was a problem. And the problem was really two-fold. Even though God's power came on them, human nature itself didn't change. And consequently, victories that were established as a result of God's power tended to be temporary. Hearts that were changed often turned backwards and inward. And we might remember that King Saul had the Spirit removed from him as a result of that. So we saw people, we saw in last week's class, people were empowered for God's work, but while the Spirit could empower, it really didn't have the long-lasting transformation that has been promised. And so the prophets came out at the end of the Old Testament, and they began to promise a new Spirit. And through the prophets, God was promising that individuals would experience a new heart and eventually a new Spirit. The prophets, for example, in Ezekiel, he said, I will put my Spirit within you. So it wasn't something that was empowered on them, it would be within them, it would be within their heart. Later, he talked about how their offspring, their children, would experience these things. He said, I will pour out my Spirit, not on the select few, but on all people. And so when we came to the end of the Old Testament, sort of the question that hung in the air was, how will God finally do this? How will God's Spirit go forth to all people rather than a select few? And how will God's Spirit have that transformation ability so that the victories won't be short, won't be incomplete? How will it happen? And I think that then brings us to the New Testament. And it's here in the New Testament, and in our class today, we're going to focus on the life of Jesus, and how the Spirit of God, God's power, worked within this man, this child, who was conceived by the Spirit. So we're going to see how God's power, his mind, his purpose, all came to play in the life of the Lord Jesus, his Son, the Christ, the Messiah. So it begins, as we say, with the dawning of a new creation. From the beginning, Jesus' life is the direct result of God's Spirit, his creative power. The angel tells Mary, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. And that's really creation language, isn't it? This is where we see that new creation. Just as in the Old Testament, the Old Testament began with the Spirit hovering over the chaotic waters, the same God, whose breath moved the waters in creation, now works by his Spirit not over the waters, but over Mary's womb. And Matthew confirms it. He says in chapter 1 verse 20, what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. So this is where it all begins. It begins with God's power causing Mary to conceive this child that would be empowered by God's power. So when we read the Holy Spirit here, and you might notice it on my slides. We come to the body of the slide. I've made sort of an editorial choice, and that is that when we see the word Spirit, I'm not capitalizing that letter S like many of the translations do. If you look at a lot of the old Christadelphian magazines, particularly the older ones, most of those articles do not capitalize the letter S in Spirit. And I think that for me, it's helpful to see it in small letters because it helps us realize that this is, you know, that we don't need to be afraid of this word, if you will. This is not the Spirit as in a separate entity. This is God's power. This is God's purpose. So before I move on with that, are there any questions or any comments about sort of that editorial choice? Does that make sense to you guys? Can you see why we're doing that? Yeah? Okay. Yeah, yeah, so like, yeah, it's a good question. Yeah, so Sharon asks the question, you know, why when we are reading the Scriptures from the platform, for example, and we come to the word Holy Ghost in the King James Version, why do we, you know, change that word and read it Spirit? And I think the answer, Sharon, is that, you know, most of the translators today recognize that Ghost is really a mistranslation. The word is Spirit. If you were to go to the Greek language, you would see that it's that. And if you look at the ESV or the NIV or, you know, any of the modern translations, they will translate it that way. Anybody have any further comments on that? Yeah, Kathy. So when we read the word Holy Spirit, we're reading about God's power here. When we read about the Holy Spirit, you know, what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. We're reading about God's power, which is bringing Jesus into existence. So right from the start, God is beginning a new creation in his Son. So where Adam failed in the Old Testament, where Israel failed, where humanity, where mankind brought sin and death into the world. This new beginning, this new creation that we're reading about here in the New Testament is going to bring success. It's going to bring obedience. It's going to bring life. So class three now really begins with this simple conviction that Jesus' life begins with God's Spirit, with God's creative power at work within the womb of Mary, okay? Now, the child is born, and when we come to Luke chapter two, towards the end of Luke, you know, we see that Jesus has been separated from his parents when he's 13 years old. They're coming back from one of the pilgrimage festivals. They realize that their son isn't there. We know the story. They find him in the temple conversing with the scholars, and then he goes back home with his parents. And chapter two, verse 52, ends with this passage that says, Jesus grew in favor with God and with man. Jesus grew in wisdom and stature in favor with God and man. This was something that, you know, that gives us a meaningful glimpse, I think, into the early life of our Lord. I think this passage is important because it tells us that Jesus' character was shaped over time. He grew. It wasn't something that was there immediately. This was something that was shaped, that was molded over time. There's a passage that I've found really helpful in Isaiah, and you see it here on the screen. It's Isaiah chapter 50. I'd like to just turn there, and I want you to think about, I've, Dad, I've told this story before, but I remember as a child, you would often wake me in the morning and you would say to Susie and to me, this is the day the Lord has come. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. And as a teenager, you know, it was not, it was not the welcoming words that I wanted at, you know, 6 a.m. as I'm getting ready for, but I look back on that and I think what a way to sort of start the day. And the scriptures tell us that we are to, you know, when we are walking along the way, we are to speak about God. We are to teach our children, we're told, right? Teach your children these things. And if God asks us to teach our children in these ways, how much more will he be doing that for his own child, the one that was conceived by his power? And I think Isaiah 50 gives us this glimpse of how that works. So this, of course, is this passage that says in verse 4, The sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught. The sovereign Lord has opened my ears and I've not been rebellious. I've not drawn back. I've offered my back to those who beat me, my cheek to those who pulled out my beard. I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting. This, of course, is a passage that gives us a glimpse of what's going to happen in Jesus' life. But it begins, this passage begins by saying that the Messiah is going to be woken every morning and instructed. He wakens me by the morning and I listen like one being instructed. Jesus' character is being molded and is being shaped as he grows and that's how he grew in favor with God and man. And what was it that allowed Jesus to grow this way? It was the Spirit of God. Isaiah chapter 11 is that passage that says the Spirit of the Lord will rest on him. This is the passage that says a shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse. From his roots a branch will bear fruit. And then the second verse of Isaiah 11 says the Spirit of the Lord, the breath of the Lord, the power of the Lord will rest on him. The Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. So as we think of the life of Jesus, we can see his character being molded and shaped by God's influence in his life. Jesus' mind is being instructed by our Lord. And as a man, this child now has become a man and we come now to the Jordan River where Jesus' ministry is about to begin. And we witness not only his baptism but we witness his anointing. This is where Jesus is publicly being acknowledged as the Messiah. Where God is indicating in a public way to all of those that are there in attendance that this is my son, my son, God's son. He anoints Jesus not with oil but he anoints him with the Holy Spirit, we're told. This is the power and the strength that's resting on the Messiah as he begins his ministry. Luke chapter 3, the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. So Jesus' public ministry then begins. And the voice appears. The voice is heard. You are my son whom I love. With you I'm well pleased. And this is the moment at the start of Jesus' ministry that the voice publicly confirms that Jesus is his chosen servant, the Messiah. Those that were there that day, they would have recognized. Those that were studying, those who were going to the temple services on the first day of each week, on the Sabbath day of each week rather. They might have recognized the words that came from Isaiah 61 had really come to be realized. They were being put into action. Isaiah 61, the Spirit of the Lord is on me because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. Because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. And Jesus, you know, he goes, he's in the temple later on, we'll come to that, and Jesus reads this passage from Isaiah 61 and he closes the scroll and he says, this has been fulfilled. This day, this prophecy has been fulfilled. Up until that point, the prophets could prophesy, but the power that God gave Jesus allowed him to not only prophesy, but to be the fulfillment of these prophecies. Peter later summed it up and he said, God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power because God was with him. And I think that's the key. God was with this man, with Jesus. The Spirit was God's presence working in his Son to heal and to teach and eventually to redeem. So at the Jordan, we see Heaven's approval, if you will, Heaven's power, Heaven's mission all coming together in one man, Emmanuel, God with us because the Spirit was on him. Immediately, right after his baptism, right after his anointing, Jesus doesn't go to the crowds. He doesn't begin performing the miracles. Instead, we're told that the Spirit led him into the wilderness. So instead of going to the crowds, instead of performing the miracles, he's led to the wilderness and I think that's important. I think it's important because what we're seeing is God is not removing Jesus from testing, but he's putting Jesus in a place to be tested. God's power is strengthening Jesus not to spare him from temptation, but to teach Jesus how to endure and to overcome temptation. The Spirit of God was putting Jesus in a place where he could learn from the things that he suffered. He's been tempted in every way as we are, as the Hebrew says, yet he did not sin. The temptations that Jesus faced in the wilderness are those familiar temptations. He was tested with the lust of the flesh, the appetite. He was tested with the lust of the eyes to seek glory and power then and there. If you bow down for me, all the world will worship you. He was tempted to exalt himself by proving to people that he was God's Messiah by throwing himself down from the pinnacle of the temple and then God will catch you up and you can put all these naysayers to rest. He was tempted with all of these things, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. But each time Jesus responded to these temptations the very same way. He responded by saying, it is written. And it just shows us the training that Jesus had as a child. Like the Word of God, the breath of God, the written Word of the Old Testament Scriptures were in his mind. And I think that's the Spirit at work as well. It's not just God's power at the moment going out into Jesus. It's the God-breathed words of Scripture that have become part of who this man, Jesus, was. He made it himself. He made it who he was. It was a core part of his identity. And so we see Jesus being led into the wilderness to be tested and to be strengthened so that he could endure temptation and be an example to us. With each temptation, Jesus responded the same way. It is written. And as you see here on the screen, that's the work of the Spirit. Jesus' mind was shaped by thinking through the God-breathed Scriptures he had meditated on, the things that he woke up reading and thinking about as he went to bed at night. And it's in that way that the mind of Christ truly reflected the character of his Father. And I think that's the lesson for us too, brothers and sisters. So Jesus now comes out of the wilderness having been tested and tried, having been strengthened, and the first thing he does is he goes to Galilee. That same Spirit that empowered the Old Testament prophets is now empowering Jesus not just to prophesy, but to fulfill prophecy. And this is what I had said before. So let's look at Luke 4. Verse 1. Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. And so we read there in chapter 4 the passages about his temptation. But now we come down to the 14th verse. And it says Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit. And news about him spread through the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And on the Sabbath day, he went into the synagogue, as was his custom, and he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him, and on rolling it, he found the place where it is written. And what does Jesus focus on? God's power. He says in verse 18, The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim freedom to the prisoners, and recovery of sight to the blind, and to release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. Verse 21, Jesus says, Today the Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Today the Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. So when we read in Luke 4 that Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit, we can say that Jesus was preaching with God's power, with His Father's authority, and in harmony with His Father's will. He had the power of the Spirit. He was powered to preach. And now as He's beginning His ministry, we start to see the miracles unfurl. And the thing that I want to remind us all about is that these miracles had a purpose beyond the immediate cure of the one who was at the receiving end of Jesus' touch. And I think the bigger picture here was that there is a Kingdom that's coming. And what you are seeing when I perform these miracles is you are seeing coming attractions of what that Kingdom will be like when finally the chaos that had been introduced by mankind will be done away with and when man will no longer suffer with the infirmities of the flesh, when man will no longer experience the death that sin brought into the world. Instead, as Jesus performs these miracles, these people will recognize that there is a day coming when something better will be here. They were public signs, visible evidence that God's Kingdom, God's rule was coming. In Matthew Jesus said, I've got it here, Matthew 12 verse 28. He says to the disciples, but if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, if I'm healing these people with mental illness, if I'm healing these people of their diseases, then you can be sure that the Kingdom of God has come upon you. There are two things that I think we see happening in this verse. The first is that Jesus acknowledges that the miracles are a result of God's power, not His own. You see it there in verse 12, it's by the Spirit of God, it's by the power of God that I drive out these demons. This is not some magic that I'm performing on my own. This is the power of God that's working through me. That's the first thing. Secondly, Jesus is saying to the crowds, if these things are happening through God's power, then you're seeing the coming attractions, a preview of the Kingdom. So when we read of Jesus performing these miracles, the other thing I think is critical is to note the character of the things that He does for the people. He lifts the broken. He restores the outcast. He shows compassion to the sick and to the sinner. And that, brothers and sisters, that's the Spirit. It's not just the power, but it's the merciful power. It's God's compassionate heart expressed in action through Jesus. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. It's the compassion. It's not just the strength of the power, but it's the compassionate power that we see happening in these miracles, the Spirit of compassion. So these were the public things in Jesus' life, the public side of Jesus' life, the miracles, the teaching, the casting out of demons. But underneath all of this public expression of God's power, there was a private life of prayer. There was Jesus going in a quiet time of the day, ascending into the mountain to be alone, to converse with His Father in prayer. Everything Jesus did, everything that Jesus accomplished, grew out of His prayer life. The point was that He wasn't relying on His own strength. He was relying on His Father's help, His Father's guidance, His Father's Spirit. Jesus required these things, and He made it a priority to find the time to converse with His Father, to commune with His Father. Later in Luke, Jesus says to His disciples, He tells His disciples, how much more will Your Father in Heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? In other words, Jesus is asking His Father for the Holy Spirit. He's asking that God's influence be part of His life. From the early time of His life, we saw Jesus growing in wisdom. We saw how God helped mold Jesus' character so that Jesus could be that perfect reflection of His Father. And Jesus tells His disciples that the Holy Spirit would be given to those who ask. The Spirit is God's help. It's His power. It's God's guidance that's given to those who seek Him. And I think for us, brothers and sisters, it's a very practical lesson. So, what I'm saying now is when we think of the way Jesus would commune with God in prayer, when He would go up at night into a mountainside and pray all through the night, He did it because He was inviting God to help Him. He was asking God for guidance. He was seeking His Father's Spirit to be that influence in His life. And I think there's a practical lesson for us here. And it's that prayer is how we can lean on God's power. It's how we can invite God's mind and purpose into our own decisions. Prayer is often where the Spirit quietly does its deepest work. It aligns our hearts with God's will. That's what we want. We want our hearts to be aligned with the purpose of God just the way Jesus did. So, it all culminated with Jesus being obedient to His Father. And Jesus' obedience truly was shaped by God's Spirit. And I think one of the clearest places that we see that when we think of the Spirit in Jesus' life, I think it's easy for us to think about the miracles and the power, but the clearest way to see God's Spirit at work is to actually look at Jesus' obedience in the steady day-to-day choices that Jesus made to follow His Father, to follow His Father's will. Hebrews says that Jesus learned obedience from what He suffered. It doesn't mean that He was ever rebellious. It means that He faced real pressures, real challenges. And with each pressure, with each challenge that Jesus faced, He learned what faithful obedience required. His faithfulness wasn't automatic. It was shaped and strengthened over time. This is why Jesus was taught by His Father every morning in Isaiah 50. Was it that God sent angels to teach Him? We don't know, but the Spirit was on Him. And this is where God's power comes in. Jesus says in John 5, By myself I can do nothing. By myself I can do nothing. I seek not to please myself, but Him who sent me. It's God helping His Son to see things as He sees them. Helping Jesus choose the harder road when the road is right. Helping Jesus stay committed when obedience comes at a cost. So when we watch Jesus refusing temptation or trusting His Father or staying patient under pressure, when we see Jesus choosing His will, God's will, over His own, we're watching the Spirit of God in action. His Father's strength and purpose enabling His Son to stay faithful. And I think that's the deepest work of the Spirit. It's not in the miracles, but it's in the formation of our Lord's obedient heart. It's in how Jesus' heart was so perfectly attuned to the will of His Father. I think that's the greatest work of the Spirit in Jesus' life. Not the flash, not the miracles, but the way Jesus was able to perfectly reflect, perfectly manifest His Father's character. And so we now come to the last hours of Jesus' life. He approaches His final hours, and Scripture lets us see that inner struggle. Earlier in the week, Jesus had said to His disciples, now my soul is troubled. He says, what am I supposed to say? Father, save me from this hour? No. John 12, verse 27. Jesus says, it's for this very reason, it's for this very purpose, it's for this hour that I've come. Right? That was where Jesus was at. He knew the purpose of God. It was so built into Him over the years of training. That purpose in Gethsemane came into the sharpest focus. Jesus says, not my will, but thine be done. You know that He feels the full weight of what obedience requires. Knows that He's going to be shamefully treated. He knows that He's going to suffer at the hands of wicked men. Knows that He's going to hang on a public execution post across for hours. He can feel the weight of that obedience. He's got, you know, the same human will that we all have. And it, you know, that human will naturally, naturally it shrinks from suffering. We want to avoid it at all costs. That's why we sometimes hide our bushel, hide our light under the bushel. Jesus had that same will that was pushing Him to shrink from the obedience that was required, but He chose His Father's will instead. He did it by leaning on His Father's strength. Look at what it says in Hebrews 9, verse 14. I think it really helps us understand it. Christ, through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself unblemished to God. The eternal Spirit here in my mind, it's that same purpose that Jesus said, this is the very reason I came to this hour. The eternal Spirit is that eternal purpose, that unchanging purpose that all the earth will be filled with My glory. It's God's steady, unchanging plan. It's God's strength that's working in Jesus, giving Him the resolve to continue. So from Gethsemane to the cross, Jesus is not relying on His own willpower. He's leaning on God. He's leaning on His Father. He's reminding Himself of His Father's purpose, His Father's presence, His Father's Spirit giving Him the strength to obey. And that obedience reaches its climax. It reaches its fulfillment on the cross. Philippians 2 says He became obedient even unto death, even death on the cross. And of course, the story doesn't end there, right? The Spirit continues. This is a chronological study of this Spirit. And while Jesus is dead and buried in the tomb, the Spirit, the purpose of God, continues. And the same Spirit that brought Jesus to life now raises Him from the agony of death. Romans 8, Paul shows us that the Spirit is God's life-giving power. The power that reverses death and begins that new creation. In the resurrection, God vindicates His Son's obedience. God shows that His power is stronger than sin and death. And God opens the way, brothers and sisters, for us to follow. Jesus becomes the firstfruits, the first of many who will be raised by that same divine Holy Spirit power. And so, you know, we conclude by saying that the whole purpose of this class isn't just to admire how the Spirit worked in Jesus. We can admire that. We do admire that. But it's something that's far more than that. The purpose of the class, I think, is for us to remember that the same God, with the same power that worked in Jesus, also works in you. Also works in me. Paul says, do not conform to the pattern of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The Spirit of God is still at work, changing the way we think and shaping us into His image. So next week, we're going to see Jesus breathe out onto His disciples, the Holy Spirit. We're going to see how the Holy Spirit then begins to work in that early first century community of believers, so that the community has the opportunity to grow, and so that others, like Jesus, can experience the power of God.

Transcript

I would like to begin our class this morning, brothers and sisters, with a thought experiment. You know that we are speaking this month about God's Spirit, the Holy Spirit. And I'd like to begin our class with sort of an exercise that will help us think again about the big picture before we get into the details of our class today. So if you'd like, imagine for a moment, close your eyes if that's helpful, but I want you to imagine our God in heaven. Invisible, yet very real. The God who is all-knowing. The God who is all-powerful. The God who is ever-present. And I want you now to think about the immeasurable force that God used in creating this world. I want you to imagine His life-giving energy that sustains this world and sustains our very lives. I want you to pause and I want you to reflect on that energy and on that immeasurable force. If God is unseen, how do we describe how He moves, the way that He moves? How do we speak about God's power? How do we think about His presence, His influence, the way He reaches into human lives and into the world that He has made? And I think the Bible gives us the language, brothers and sisters. The inspired writers have searched for images that are big enough that would help us get a sense for the active presence of God. And so when the inspired writers spoke about this immeasurable force, spoke about this life-giving energy of our God, they used phrases like the breath of God. They used phrases like the hand of God or the arm of God or the mind of God. They spoke of the voice of God. They spoke of the presence of God. So these things, the breath of God, the hand of God, the arm of God, they're all the language of power. God's force in motion, His energy that's been extended. God reaching from the heavens, the invisible, powerful God, reaching from the heavens to His created world, the world that He formed. And I think this is the image that I'd like you to have when you think about the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit is this energizing force. It's this presence of God Himself, His breath that gives life, His hand that acts, His arm that delivers, His mind that reveals wisdom. It's His voice that spoke creation into existence. When we think of the Holy Spirit, it's His presence that surrounds us. And I think every metaphor that the scriptural, you know, that the inspired writers use to describe this point to one truth, and that is that the Holy Spirit is God in action. And I wanted to begin our class with that because I think that sometimes when we come to the word or the phrase Holy Spirit, it's something that we see so often that we just read it without really thinking about what it's all about. And the thing that's helpful to me is to think of it as I say it, this energizing force, God's active presence in our lives. So in class three last week, we watched God's Spirit work in the life of Jesus, His Son. We saw how God's Spirit energized and shaped Jesus' life, shaped His mind, developed His compassion, His obedience. And this morning what I hope to do is follow that same Spirit into the early Ecclesia to see how the Spirit of God impacted the early Ecclesia, how God begins to form this new creation community through ordinary men and women just like us, men and women who trust Him. So that's where we're going to go this morning, God willing. And as we get started, I thought it would be nice to just quickly look back at the question that was raised last week. I think it was you, Sharon, you asked about the word Holy Ghost. And I gave some thought to that, and I think that Kathy was really helpful in her response. Older English Bibles like the King James used the word ghost because at the time in the 1600s, the word ghost simply meant breath or wind, just like the word gust. You know, gust is, I think Kathy talked about the German word geist. And it was only centuries later I discovered that the word ghost took on this sense of an apparition or of a disembodied dead person. And as the English language changed, and it does change, the Bible versions changed with it, and they stopped using ghost. And the reason why I think most of us when we read from the platform will substitute spirit for ghost is because of the connotation that that word has developed in the century since the 1600s. The other thing that I wanted to emphasize or remind us all is about the capitalization of the words Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost. The Greek manuscripts, they don't distinguish. They don't have capital letters for spirit or holy. So when we see spirit with a capital S, that's really often just a reflection of the translator's theology. It's not something that's inherent in the Greek text. So because scripture presents the spirit as God's power and presence, not as a separate person, you know, as we understand it, right? I think it's important to remember that when we use the words Holy Spirit and Holy Ghost, things like that, Christadelphians tend not to capitalize these things. And I think the word Holy itself is again worth remembering. It's not a title. It's not anything other than describing the character of the spirit. So I think our first or second class, we drew a distinction between the spirit of man and the spirit of God. You might think of it as a common spirit, man's spirit, and a holy spirit, God's spirit. And so that may be helpful for you if you think about it. Any questions or comments about that sort of an aside? Okay. So as we get into the heart of class four, let's remind ourselves where we are in the story, right? We started with creation, God's spirit moving over the waters, bringing order out of chaos. Then in the second class, we watched the same spirit guide the prophets and empower God's servants throughout the history of Israel. And then last week in class three, we looked at how the spirit formed Jesus' whole life, from his early years to his ministry, to his obedience, even up until and through his sacrifice on the cross. And that then brings us to where we are today, to the spirit in the early ecclesiast. How God's empowering force impacted the lives of the brothers and sisters that formed those first ecclesiastes. The story is really, brothers and sisters, about how God begins building this new creation community. So it begins with the spirit being poured out like water. After Jesus' resurrection, one of the very first things he does is he's raised from death to life again. And one of the very first things he does is he seeks out his disciples. He's worried about them, and he goes to find them. He finds them as we might expect, and I think it would be helpful to just open up your Bibles and look at the Gospel of John. And we're going to look at John chapter 20, and it gives us an insight into the mind of these men who had just seen the man they had devoted their lives to die on a cross, cool and wicked. So John chapter 20 will start in the 19th verse. On the evening of the first day of the week, when the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace, peace be with you. After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side, and the disciples were overjoyed when they saw their Lord. Again, Jesus said, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I'm sending you. Verse 22, And with that he grieved on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit. So when Jesus comes to them, he comes to them with compassion. They are fearful for their very lives. They're afraid, and the first thing Jesus does is he comes to them in compassion and says, Peace. The opposite of peace. And with this compassion, he shows them his hands and his feet and his side, and he speaks to them. And then he demonstrates this great promise by breathing on them. And he says, Receive the Holy Spirit. It's as if he's saying to them, Everything is going to be okay. I know you're afraid, but everything is going to be okay. Peace. And just as God breathed over creation, just as God breathed over the chaotic waters in creation back in Genesis, Jesus breathes on his disciples as a sign that there's this new creation that's about to begin. And I think it's important to note that while Jesus says, Receive the Holy Spirit, nothing happens at first. Nothing miraculous seems to change in their lives. They don't go out preaching. They don't heal anybody. They're still afraid. You know, they're still hiding in locked rooms. The power was going to come, but it wasn't going to come just yet. It was as though Jesus was saying, This is going to happen. The timing of the promise is clarified later on. So if we turn over now to Acts, this is right before Jesus goes up to heaven, right before he ascends to heaven. We see that Jesus speaks in the future tense. So look at Acts chapter 1, and they ask him in verse 6. So when they met together, they asked him, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? And he said to them, It's not for you to know the times or the dates the Father set by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes to you. So again, what we're seeing here is the promise of something that will happen when the Holy Spirit comes. You will receive this power when the Holy Spirit comes on you. And I think it's clear, the empowerment, the power that's been promised is still ahead. Disciples still need to wait. They can't run off. They're not doing their own thing. They're not jumping ahead of God. They're waiting. And Jesus is telling them to wait for God to move. And I think we can only imagine, we get a sense for their anticipation when they ask them, Are you at this time going to establish the kingdom? There's a level of anticipation there. And what they don't yet realize is that the kingdom is coming, but they need to go out and they need to share the good news with the kingdom. And so Acts chapter 2 is where we begin to see the growth of the Gospel and the growth of the early Christian church. The new creation began to take hold. And I think Acts 2 is one of the most meaningful scenes in the New Testament. Let's look at the first few verses. It says, It says, And came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. So what we see here is the disciples, they're gathering together. They're in one place. I imagine they're still afraid, but they trust in Jesus and they're waiting, just as Jesus told them to wait. And then suddenly there's this gushing sound. There's this wind that comes, a rushing wind. It's the kind of language that takes us right back again to the Spirit in Genesis, that God's breath, that ruach of God, that begins to hover, to tremble, as Joel says, over the waters and brings new creation to life. And when the disciples are there in that room, they see what looks like tongues of fire resting on them. And I think that that's a significant phrase, tongues of fire, because fire was a familiar symbol of God's presence. Fire was a symbol of God's presence. Like, think about the Old Testament. There was the burning bush with Moses. God's presence was there. There was the fire on Mount Sinai, where God spoke from the mountain and there was fire there, indicating that God's presence was in that place. They wouldn't put their feet on that place. There was the fire that consumed the sacrifices that were offered. There was Elijah's fire on Mount Carmel. There were so many other moments where God's fire appeared. And when it did, it seemed to appear to one person, or it seemed to appear in one place. And it indicated that God's presence was with that person or was in that place. But look what happens here, different. Acts 2. Here at Pentecost, something new is happening. The same symbol of God's presence, the fire, it now rests on each believer. It doesn't rest simply on one leader. It doesn't rest on one prophet, or it doesn't rest on one place. The whole community, everybody, becomes the place where God dwells. Because what God's interested in is changing our hearts. God wants us, God wants to dwell in our hearts. And I think what we're seeing here is this beautiful reversal of everything that happened at the mountain of Babel. They built the tower of Babel. They built this tower of Babel. Because they're trying to make a name for themselves. And God reverses them. And now all of the disparate languages of the world become known, become understood. God's spirit is bringing unity where human pride once brought division. So Pentecost here in Acts chapter 2, it marks the moment when God begins to make this creation people. And I think that it's important to know that Pentecost isn't so much about the wind and the fire as it is about God forming this new community through his energizing spirit, his energizing force. And I think that's what we're seeing here at Pentecost. Any comments or questions? Okay. So now, right after Pentecost, Luke gives us this beautiful little window into what the life was like. What life was like in that early church, that early ecclesia, that community. I think it's a beautiful passage. And it shows how the spirit worked. It shows the beauty of the spirit's work in the everyday life and the rhythms of life among those early members. So let's take a look at Acts chapter 2, verse 42. And I think this is likely a well-known passage for us. It says, speaking of those early believers, that they devoted themselves to the Apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the Apostles. All the believers were together, and they had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes. They ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. And this, brothers and sisters, is what it looks like when God shapes a community. It's not so much about the dramatic miracles. It's about the everyday moments. It's about the shared meals, the shared prayers. It's about the shared community, the generosity, the joy. A spirit-filled community like this wasn't defined by the excitement or the spectacle of having these miraculous powers. It was defined by a way of life that was reflecting God's character. Reflecting God's Holy Spirit as opposed to the common spirit. It was about unity and about joy, about a deep yet simple devotion to God. And I think this slide really shows that the Spirit isn't just about power. It's really about forming a family. And so as we go through the Acts of the Apostles and we see how this community began to grow, where God was adding to their numbers daily those who were being saved, we see how God works in the lives of these men and women who were dedicating their lives to the memory of Jesus, to honoring Jesus' memory, to sharing the good news of the Gospel in the name of Jesus Christ with those that they met. And I think one of the striking things about Acts is how often God quietly redirects their mission. The disciples, they were working hard, they were dedicated, they were giving of their lives. They were traveling, they were working, they were preaching, they were sacrificing. But again and again, God shaped the path in which they were. He shaped the path, He directed them in ways that they probably never would have imagined, they never would have planned themselves. And we're going to take a look at some of the examples. So look at Acts chapter 8. So flip over to Acts 8. This is the story of Philip and the Ethiopian. And we'll jump in at the 26th verse. It says, now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, go to the south, to the road, the desert road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. So you can see how the Spirit is directing their path, pointing them in the right direction. And so the passage says, verse 27, that Philip started out and on his way he met an Ethiopian unit, an important official in charge of all the treasury of Candace and queen of the Ethiopians. This man has gone to Jerusalem to worship. On his way home was sitting on his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet. Look what it says in verse 29, the Spirit told Philip, go to that chariot and stay near it. That's it. That's all the Spirit directed them to do. Go to the chariot and stay near it. It's such a small instruction, but it leads to an entire household coming to the place. That's the Spirit's work. Or consider, like turn the page to chapter 10. Peter is puzzling. He's had this vision. He's followed the Jewish dietary laws all his life. He's remained separate from those who are unclean as prescribed by the law of Moses. And he has this vision about eating unclean food. And he's just struggling with it. It just doesn't make sense to him. And it's here in Acts 10, let's look at verse 19. While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, Simon, three men are looking for you, so get up and go downstairs and do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them. And Peter went down and said to the men, I am the one you're looking for, why have you come? And the men replied, we have come from Cornelius the centurion, the gentile, the unclean one. He was righteous and a God-fearing man who was respected by all Jewish people. A holy angel told him to have you come to his house so that he could hear what you have to say. Now brothers and sisters, this man, Peter, who always followed the Jewish laws, never in a million years would have thought to enter the home of a gentile because it was not permitted under the law. But the Spirit here redirects him and says, well, that's how the Spirit was working. Turn the page in chapter 13. We've got this ecclesia there with these men of import, you would say. In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Menean who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. And while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, Set apart Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. With that we read about Saul being sent out on his first missionary journey. That's the Spirit working in that early community, directing their way, showing them the path that they should go. It's at moments like this that I think we see that same pattern. The disciples, they all worked faithfully, but the direction came from God. In other words, they didn't assume what was best. They didn't assume that they knew what was going to happen. They let God open the right doors for them. They walked, they served, they preached, and they trusted that God would show them the way. Acts 16 verse 10, it says, After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. At one point the Spirit prevented Paul from going into Asia where he wanted to preach, and instead directed them to Macedonia. And so he was guided by the Spirit. So what we see here in this slide is how the early ecclesiast, the early ecclesial members worked tirelessly, but they took their direction from God. They were really guided by the Spirit. Now what we see is how God's energizing power confirms their message. So they're going out, and they're being directed, and they're coming to people whose ears presumably are open to hear the message. And the disciples are speaking the words and telling their stories. But Acts shows again and again that God doesn't leave their words to themselves. In other words, what happens is God supports their message. He confirms the message. And Hebrews, it actually tells us this directly. Hebrews tells us why and how God was supporting those that were dedicating their lives to them and the way that God supported them. He put an exclamation point on their words by demonstrating the power that these men and women have. And Hebrews talks about it, so let's flip over to Hebrews chapter 2. Hebrews chapter 2, we'll look at the third and fourth verse. It begins in verse 1. It says, We must pay careful attention therefore to what we've heard, so that we do not drift away. The brothers and sisters, one of the principles of the truth is that God loves us so much that He sent His Son to die that we might live. And we will live. We are promised the Kingdom so long as we endure to the end. We know that. We can't give up on our faith. We can't walk away from our faith. God wants you in His Kingdom. And yet the spirit of man is so strong. There are times when we're willing to walk away from it all. And that's true today, but it was also true in the first century. And that's what we're reading here in Hebrews chapter 2. The writer of the Hebrews is exhorting, encouraging the readers in Jerusalem, Ecclesia here, not to give up. Don't walk away from your faith. He says, We must pay careful attention to what we've heard, so that we don't drift away. For if the message spoken by angels was binding and every violation of disobedience received its just punishment, speaking about the punishment under the law of Moses, if you turned away from the law of Moses, you would be punished according to the law. He then says, How shall we escape if we have received such a great salvation? In other words, you've been given something so much better than the law of Moses. You've been given promise. And if you walk away, it's to your eternal death. Verse 3, How shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. So in other words, there were witnesses to Jesus' resurrection. They confirmed that, look, I saw Jesus die on the cross. I can confirm that I saw him when he was raised to life again. I touched the hand. I saw the hole in his side. I spoke with the man. They confirmed that Jesus was alive. And then it says in verse 4 that God also testified to it by signs, wonders, and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit. And so throughout the book of Acts, we see so many examples of God's energizing power coming upon people, healing people, proving and confirming that the story of the risen Lord and the coming Kingdom was real. These miracles were coming attractions of the Kingdom to come. It was giving the people and us a glimpse of how wonderful the Kingdom will be. So in Acts chapter 3, Peter heals a man who's been unable to walk for more than 40 years. People knew this guy, and then they saw him walking? It's a sign that God is verifying the apostle's witness to the resurrection. The fact that this man is walking amongst them, it shows the power of the Kingdom to come. That's Acts 3. Acts 4 is this moment where the believers are praying for boldness. They are filled with the Holy Spirit. And they were able, in the face of persecution, they were able to have the confidence and the courage because of the energizing Spirit of God that had been given to them, that they could speak boldly, that they could say the right word at exactly the right moment. Acts chapter 9, Peter heals Ananias. Acts chapter 9, at the end, he heals Dorcas. And Luke emphasizes that because of these things, many people believed in the Lord. Jesus was accredited by God through miracles. They believed it was validating the message. The Holy Spirit powers, the miracles that were taking place were validating the message that these men said. It wasn't just mere words. They weren't tall tales. There was evidence behind what they said. And so I think that's the power behind it. But again, the focus of the Holy Spirit discussion shouldn't be centered on the dramatic parts. We shouldn't think only about the healings and the visions and the bold preaching. Those things were important. They really were. But the main reason for the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the deeper work of the Holy Spirit, was actually much quieter than the boldness of the miracles. The deep work of the Holy Spirit was the steady transformation of character. The deep work of the Spirit was how it impacted the lives and the minds and the hearts of these individuals. So turn to Galatians. I think Galatians is an interesting letter because as we know, what's happened here is just like the Jerusalem of Clesio was tempted to fall away and to walk away from faith, the same was true for the brothers and sisters in Ephesus. They were tempted to give it all up and to walk away and to say, I don't want to, you know, I'm not going to follow Christ anymore, either because they were too tired or because they had conflicting messages, different priorities. So Ephesians, we're going to jump in at chapter four, verse eight. Galatians, rather. Galatians chapter four, verse eight. Formally, when you did not know God and were slaves to those who by nature are not gods, but now that you know God or rather are known by God, how is it that you're turning your back? How can you who are known by God, I mean you've been given the message of God, God knows you. Your name is written in the book of life. How can you turn your back? So this is where Paul is. And he's personally feeling pain when he sees the backsliding of people, just as Jesus is pain when he sees us walk away. Look at what it says in verse eight. Here's Paul's thought. Verse 19. He says, My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth. He says, I'm in so much pain, you know, when I see you walking away from the faith, it hurts me as much as it does a woman who's experiencing labor. I'm hurting when I see you falling away. And I'm going to hurt until, until what? Until Christ is formed. That's the work of the Spirit. That's the deep work of the Spirit. Changing our minds, changing our hearts so that our hearts, so that our character reflects the value of Jesus. When we begin to resemble Jesus, that's the real goal of the Spirit. Forming Christ within. Not just temporarily empowering people to perform miracles, but to do something remarkable by shaping who they become. That's the goal. So when we look at this transformation, you know, being transformed, it's about the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithful, quiet, self-control. These are the fruits, and they don't appear instantly, brothers and sisters. It's not like these things just happen in our lives when we become followers of Jesus. They grow over time, the way fruit grows on a branch. They don't grow through excitement or emotion or moments. They grow through scripture. They grow through prayer. They grow through community, like what we're experiencing here. They grow through daily faithfulness. And it's in this way when we go through Acts and we look closely, we see that people are becoming more courageous. They're becoming more generous. They're becoming more forgiving. The Spirit doesn't just give it, it forms it. It grows over time. And I think that's the goal. One last slide, and we'll pause for the day. And this relates to the gifts of the Spirit. Paul reminds us that when the Spirit gave gifts, it was done for a holy purpose. Paul reminds us that God equipped the early brothers and sisters with gifts, not to elevate individuals, not to make them look good, but to build up the body, to build the community. Sometimes when I think of the Spirit-given gifts, I think of those dramatic moments, the showy things, the flashes of power, the impressive ability to speak in tongues. But when Paul speaks about the gifts, whether it's in Romans 12 or 1st Corinthians 12 or even Ephesians 4, he emphasizes something that is very different. The gifts, brothers and sisters, they were practical. They were purposeful. They were given to build up the early agreement. They were given to help with teaching. Think about what the gifts were. It was teaching, it was encouragement, it was generosity, it was wisdom, it was leadership. The gifts were about compassion. And yes, there were these miraculous things that happened which confirmed the gospel, but their whole purpose was about service, not spectrum. Let's take a look at Romans 12. I'll just cover it here because we're running out of time. Romans 12 gives us the first thing. Paul lists in Romans 12 verses 4 through 8. He lists gifts like prophesying, which is a modern word for prophesying. It's not about foretelling the future. It's about encouraging. It's about exhorting. I think that's probably a better word. That's how they used it in those days. Paul lists gifts like encouraging, serving, teaching, giving, leading, and showing mercy. These are the practical, everyday gifts that help to shape the character and the life of the community. Some taught, some encouraged, some led, some served, but every gift mattered. And so how did these gifts build up the body? Well, I think they met real needs. They strengthened faith, they kept the ecclesia anchored in sound doctrine, they protected the community from false ideas, they offered compassion and guidance and unity as they matured in faith. So next week we're going to, God willing, talk about the spirit in our lives and in the lives of our community. And we're going to explore how these gifts that were given then, they played an essential role in the growth of the early church, especially before the New Testament was widely available. And so we see, brothers and sisters, we'll conclude with this joy of the spirit. The spirit that was given to the early believers was a joy that hardship couldn't take away. They experienced hardship, but their joy was rooted in something that was longer lasting. It wasn't about their situation, it was about the promise. And so we've got a lot to be thankful for. And again, the greatest work of the spirit is not the miracles, it's what happens in your heart.

Transcript

Well, brothers and sisters, we are coming towards the end of our five-week series on the Spirit of God. My goal for the month of November has been to present a chronological study that shows how God's life-creating and life-sustaining force, His Holy Spirit, has been actively at work since the creation. I've tried to show that there's this golden thread that runs from Genesis through Revelation, and what I hope to do is show that this thread not only runs through the pages of Scripture, but that the Spirit of God continues to work today. This morning, what I hope to focus on is what God's Spirit is doing now, and also what God's Spirit will accomplish in the age to come. So that's really what our focus is, the Spirit today and in the age to come. Now, before we get into that, I think that I want to briefly acknowledge something from last week, and that is that we didn't have time to cover the last two slides. I got a little carried away, I think, maybe with one of my earlier asides. The slides that we missed were the ones about how the Spirit strengthened the early brothers and sisters in their trials, how they were strengthened to overcome and really maybe to endure the trials that they faced in life. And also, there was a slide that talked about how the Spirit gave them a level of joy, even in the midst of suffering. So these were two of the aspects that the Spirit provided to the early Ecclesia. And I wanted to acknowledge that here because that same theme of the Spirit working in the lives of the early brothers and sisters leads really naturally into what we're going to focus on this morning. So that really brings us to the idea of this last class, the Spirit of today. This is the series that we've been covering, going from Genesis to Revelation. Last week we talked about how in the first century of Ecclesia, God formed this new creation community. The Spirit came down at Pentecost and it shaped the lives of ordinary believers. The early Ecclesia was really guided by the force of God, the Holy Spirit. We talked about how the word the Holy Spirit is not referencing a title, but it gives us an idea of the character of this Spirit, the character of God. And when the Holy Spirit, as compared to the spirit of man, was put into the lives of these early believers, we saw how they became more Christ-like. They began to exhibit the character of God. And the Spirit gifts were used to build up the Ecclesia, to demonstrate that God was behind it all, and to allow the Ecclesia to grow and to bring more members into salvation. So God's Spirit strengthened the Ecclesia in those early days. And today, as I say, what we hope to do is carry that forward. This week's class is really about continuity. It's about showing that the Spirit was never a scattered set of miracles. It was never about things that were designed and done only in the past. The Spirit is about God's purpose throughout history. It's about His purpose. It's about God accomplishing what He intended to do from the very beginning. The Spirit, as we know, hovered over the waters at creation. The Spirit moved the prophets so that what they said was what God intended them to say. The Spirit rested on Jesus, and the Spirit was poured out at Pentecost. And brothers and sisters, that Spirit that we just talked about, from creation to the prophets to Jesus to the early believers, that Spirit is the same Spirit that works in you and me today. I think Paul really puts it beautifully in Philippians. This is that passage that tells us that we ought to work out our salvation with trembling and fear. But that's Philippians 2 verse 12. So how do we work out our salvation with trembling and fear? I think the answer is that we allow God's Spirit into our hearts. That we allow God to work in us. Because the next verse, verse 13, says, Therefore it's God who works in you to will and to act to fulfill His good purpose. That's the Spirit of God working in us to fulfill His purpose. Galatians chapter 4, as we see on the screen here, says, God sent the Spirit into our hearts so that you're no longer slaves but children. And since you're a child, God has made you heirs. You're heirs to salvation. That's how the Spirit works in you. It changes our hearts. It allows us to put aside the common way of thinking, man's spirit, and develop this God-like or this Christ-like attitude in our lives. That same Spirit, brothers and sisters, is the thing that will fill the earth. That is God's purpose, as we know from Habakkuk. Any questions or comments? Jump in if you'd like. Okay. This was a slide picture that we had in our early series where it showed originally, the picture showed the ancients, the early Ecclesia, and today what we have is a modern family sitting around a table sharing fellowship. The work of the Spirit is something that was never, as I said before, never destined only for the history books. Scripture never treats the early church as unique. It was never described as a one-time moment that was left in the past. Instead, I think as we go through the Book of Acts, as we look at the Acts of the Apostles and the early Ecclesia, what we see is a pattern, a prototype, of what God's Spirit has always done and continues to do. Think of it this way. There's a passage in James. You might be able to think about it. James, at one point, says that the believers were a kind of firstfruits. Do you remember that, firstfruits? What was the Spirit doing in that early Ecclesia? God's power, His energizing force, His Holy Spirit, was creating Christ-like character in these men and women. It was forming communities that were marked by love and by unity. They had all things in common. His power was empowering ordinary men and women, fishermen, tent-makers, the ordinary folks of life. These people were empowered to serve God. They had the courage to say things that they might not normally have the courage to say. God's power was strengthening the faith of those early believers, even in the midst of terrible suffering and persecution. That was God's Spirit at work. It was producing joy in circumstances where you'd think, how could someone be joyful in prison? It was advancing the Gospel message so that other people could be saved. That's what the Spirit was doing, brothers and sisters, in those early years of the formation of the body of Christ. While the early Ecclesia received these miraculous Holy Spirit gifts, I think we need to remember that those miraculous gifts weren't the focus. They were simply a way of God confirming that He was behind it all. It was a way of God sort of previewing to men and women, ordinary people, what the future Kingdom would be like. So what we see again in Acts is not this one-time moment. It's a model. What began in the early Ecclesia, God continues today in our Ecclesia and in our lives. The same Spirit that strengthened the brothers and sisters way back then, that same Spirit strengthens us today. That same Spirit forms Christ in us today. That same Spirit calls us into unity and into generosity and into love and into courage. These things are no different than what that first Ecclesia experienced. That's the work of the Spirit today in our lives. What God began then continues now. And I think that's so important to remember. The Spirit is alive in our lives and in our Ecclesia, and we need to recognize it and let it in. So we're going to be talking this morning about the Spirit work in the future and in the coming Kingdom. But I think we need to pause. Not to analyze the Spirit's work in detail, but as I said a moment ago, but to invite God's power, God's Spirit, into our hearts. I hope that makes sense. We need to recognize that the Spirit is a force that's working today, and we need to recognize that it's our responsibility to allow it to work in us. What did Philippians say? We need to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. And that simply, in my mind, means we need to allow God's Spirit to work in us. We need to invite it into our experience. God promised in Ezekiel 36, he said, I'll put my Spirit in you and move you to walk in my ways. That's applicable to you. It's applicable to me. The promise wasn't only for Israel, brothers and sisters. It's for every believer who wants to follow Jesus. I'll put my Spirit in you and move you to walk in my ways. That Spirit can form that Christ-like character, the fruits of the Spirit that we've looked at. And the early Ecclesia showed us what a community that let God shape its heart looked like. They forgave quickly. They shared generously. They prayed fervently. They remained joyful even in suffering. That's what that early Ecclesia was doing, and we can do the same thing. It's not beyond our reach. It's exactly what God wants from us. Romans 8 verse 26 tells us that the same Spirit can help us in our weakness. So if you examine yourself, as we do on Sunday mornings, and you find that you want to be more patient, the Spirit can help you with that. If you want to be more forgiving, the Spirit can help that forgiveness grow in you. If you want to be more loving, the Spirit can grow that in you too. God never forces the process, though. He doesn't make us become more forgiving. He doesn't make us be more generous. He invites us to do these things. It's as though He's saying, let My Spirit work in you, work in your heart. Let Me shape you into the image of My Son. It's an invitation, brothers and sisters. And when we work out our salvation, it's simply inviting God to work within us. And if that Spirit is at work today, quiet, steady, forming the character of Christ in our lives and in our hearts, I guess the question is, what happens next? If the Spirit is working in us, what happens next? What will the Spirit complete in us? What will the Spirit complete in the age to come? And I think, brothers and sisters, this is where our hope becomes bold. This is where our hope becomes bright. So in Paul's letter to the Ephesians, he speaks about the Spirit's work today. So I want to look at Ephesians chapter 1. There are just two verses here that we'll focus on. Ephesians 1, verse 13. As we read this, let's remember that the people that Paul is writing to here are not the people that walked with Jesus. They're not the people that saw Jesus at the resurrection or ascending to heaven. This is that second generation of believers. These are the people that came after. So he's writing to them in Ephesians 1, verse 13. And he says, and you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having believed you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit, guaranteeing our inheritance. I love the way the modern versions translate that, that this Spirit is a seal guaranteeing our inheritance. I think the message that Paul is delivering to this second generation group of believers, they didn't experience the Spirit at Pentecost. These people came much later, like us. They came after. And his message to them was simple. It's reassuring, I think. The same Spirit who worked in the first disciples works in every generation. That's the point. He says, you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, when you believed you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, that's a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession, to the praise of his glory. So notice that phrase in verse 14. I think it's easy to overlook, but I think it's also really incredibly important. He says, it's a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance. A deposit. A deposit is the beginning of something, right? It's the first installment of the Kingdom. That means that a small piece of spiritual growth in our lives isn't temporary. It's a deposit. It's going to be continuing. It's going to be growing. It's the beginning. It's a taste of what life in the Kingdom is going to be like, brothers and sisters. It's God saying, what I've started, I'm going to finish. That's what a deposit is. What I've started in your life, I'm going to finish. So if you think about it, every moment of love, every step of obedience that we perform in our lives, every act of forgiveness, every time that we choose faith over fear, these aren't small things. They're just the early formation of the person that you're going to be forever. When you show love in your life today, while it might not be perfect, it's the start. And your love, brothers and sisters, in the Kingdom will be perfect. When you desire to be forgiving and you struggle with it, but you forgive anyway, it's a start. It's giving us a glimpse of how life in our character will be in the Kingdom. The Spirit's work in us today is the first chapter in the story that God will complete in the Kingdom. And I think that to me is a really helpful thought, that while we try and exhibit the character of God, while we try to be Christ-like in our lives, and we are often, but when we fail in the Kingdom, we're not going to fail. God's going to complete the work that the Spirit is doing in us when Christ returns. And I think that can give us a great hope, great encouragement. And that's what Paul was trying to encourage the early believers to understand, the second generation. You didn't see the Spirit at Pentecost. You didn't walk with Jesus, but the Spirit's in you and guaranteeing your inheritance. And I think that's something that we need to be encouraged to think about. If you think about the early Ecclesia, the early Ecclesia had a multitude of Spirit gifts. Some of them were like joy and suffering. Some of them were like teaching and encouraging. Others were miraculous, like the ability to speak in foreign languages or interpret foreign languages when they had no skills or the ability to heal. And we think to ourselves, well, those things were given to the first century before the Spirit of the Word in the New Testament was created for us to read. And since we don't have the Holy Spirit gifts, well, maybe the Spirit isn't involved in our lives at all. And I think what I'm trying to emphasize is that while the miraculous gifts are no longer available to us, the Spirit of God is and continues to work in us. Is that a good explanation or helpful? Okay, anybody else? Okay, so when we turn our eyes forward now, we've talked about how the Spirit worked in the early Ecclesia. We've talked now about how the Spirit works in our lives. I want to now turn our eyes forward not to imagination, not to speculation, but to the very real, the specific, the concrete hope that God gives us in the pages of His Spirit-breathed, His God -breathed Word of Scripture. Romans chapter 8, verse 11. And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, that's the point, right? If the Spirit is living in you, then He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of His Spirit who lives in you. Notice the logic here, okay? The power of God, the Spirit, raised Jesus. That Spirit lives in you today, therefore, God will raise you too. That's the logic. Resurrection is not this distant theological concept. It's the natural continuation. It's the natural continuation of the Spirit's work in our lives. The Spirit that softens our hearts, that grows the fruit of the Spirit, that strengthens us in weakness, that Spirit, the power of God that shapes the mind of Christ in our hearts and in our lives today, that same Spirit will one day breathe life, eternal life, into our mortal bodies. That same Spirit will raise us from the dust. And I think Paul ties resurrection directly to the Spirit's work in us today. The Spirit that's shaping Christ-like character in our lives will do it when He raises us. The early church lived with that confidence, didn't they? They believed that they would be raised to live again, and that gave them confidence to do things and to say things that normal men and women wouldn't. We saw it in their own lives before the resurrection of Jesus. They were fearful. They hid. They didn't want to walk with Jesus. They wanted to follow at a distance in the garden, or they deserted Him completely. But the Spirit worked in their lives, and the early church lived with that confidence that the resurrection was assured. They weren't fearless because they loved danger, right? They weren't joyful because the circumstances were easy. They weren't courageous because they had strong personalities. They lived with courage because they believed resurrection was not just possible or probable. They lived with courage because they knew that the resurrection was promised. That's the difference. They believed the promise. And I think that's so important for us today. So when we think about resurrection, it's not God hitting a reset button. It's God continuing the work that He's already doing. The spiritual transformation that's occurring in our lives, it's not going to be wasted, brothers and sisters. Nothing that God has shaped in us is going to be lost. If you think about your life, we have grown because of the things we've suffered in life many times. The hardships are a way that God teaches us. Every lesson that we've learned, every act of love, every act of growth and patience, all of it is going to be carried forward into the Kingdom. God doesn't disregard or discard those things, those lessons in our lives. He finishes them. He makes our love perfect. He's going to make our patience perfect. He's going to make the fruit of the Spirit ripe in us. He's going to finish what He started. And resurrection is the moment, I think, when God completes His work in us through His Spirit. So we have this assurance in the resurrection. But you'll remember when we were looking at Philippians chapter 2, where it talked about how the Spirit works in us to will and to work, to complete God's purpose. It also says that we're to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. And I think that that is a reminder to us that He calls us to be faithful. He calls us to have a life of faithfulness. He's going to complete His work in those who continue to trust in Him. He's going to give the Kingdom to those who value the Kingdom and don't throw it away in this life. He's going to give it to those who, in other words, hold fast to the faith, who endure to the end. Paul says in one point, and I've written it down here, we've come to share in Christ if we hold our confidence firmly to the end. If we hold our confidence firmly to the end. God's Spirit is the guarantee. God is going to keep His part of the bargain, if you will. But it doesn't replace our responsibility to remain faithful. We need to have lives of faithfulness from beginning to end. And the Spirit, God's power, His enduring force, shapes our hearts now. Let's remember that. And the Spirit shapes our hearts now so that we will want to live a life that God is preparing. Resurrection is God's gift, but it's a gift that's only given and received by those who endure. Thoughts? So to understand God's future work or the Spirit's future work, I think we need to revisit one of the most enduring visions, one of the most dramatic visions in the Scripture, and that's Ezekiel 37, the valley of the dry bones. A couple of classes ago we touched on this briefly. God brings Ezekiel into this valley that's filled with bones. They're not just dead bodies, but they're dried out. They're long forgotten. They're long decayed remains. And he asks Ezekiel, he says, son of man, can these bones live? And Ezekiel, he gives the only answer that I think one could give. He says, sovereign Lord, you alone know the answer. I don't know, but you do. So then God commands Ezekiel to speak. And as Ezekiel prophesies, the bones rattle. They assemble, flesh covers them, and breath, the ruach, the Spirit of God, enters them. So this is the story in Ezekiel 37, the valley of dry bones. And what does God say then? He says, I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live. So this is the promise. And earlier in the series we talked about how the Spirit begins God's work in us personally, the personal character development, giving us new hearts, shaping Christ and Christ-like thinking within us. Ezekiel 37, though, it lifts our eyes to the bigger picture, the larger vision. Because what we're seeing here is that God will one day restore his people on a national and on a global scale. It's not about the person. We've been talking about the individual and how the Spirit changes the individual. But in the Kingdom Age there's going to be this global transformation. The vision in Ezekiel 37 isn't about individuals. It's about God restoring his people, plural, about a community that had become spiritually dead, a community that was exiled, a community that was scattered, a community that was hopeless. It's about God promising to revive them, that group, the larger community. So this isn't just about Israel returning from exile. It's not just about Israel today returning to the land. It's looking forward to a far greater resurrection, brothers and sisters, right? It's looking forward to the Kingdom of God when God gathers all people who have died in faith and raises them from the dust, and he makes them one family in Christ. That's the eventual work of the Spirit. Not about one person at a time, but about creating one unified family, the children of God. The Gospel tells us that in the age to come, God is going to complete his work. He's going to gather his people. Abraham's descendants, Abraham's seed, Israel restored, the faithful of all nations. And God is going to breathe the Spirit of God, the Ruach of God. God is going to breathe eternal life into them, into us. The Spirit that gives us hope today is the Spirit that one day will make the dry bones live. The Spirit who unites us today is the Spirit who will unite God's whole family from Abraham and back to Abraham and the future, the whole family, God's whole family united in Christ. The Spirit who begins restoration now will complete restoration then. One people, one future, God again is going to finish what he started. That's the work of the Spirit, finishing what God started. Let's take a look at Isaiah 11. Isaiah 11 gives us one of the clearest and I think one of the most beautiful pictures of the Kingdom Age, the age when God's Spirit fills the whole world through the reign of Jesus, his Son. The chapter begins as we're familiar, a shoot will come out of the stump of Jesse. From his roots a branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him. Have you got it there? Verse 2, the Spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Yahweh. And he will delight in the fear of Yahweh. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes or decide by what he hears with his ears, but with righteousness he will judge the needy. With justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. The wolf will lie with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together, and the child will lead them. The cow will feed the bear, the young will lie down together, the lion will eat straw like the ox, the infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child will put his hand into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on my holy mountain, for why? The earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Beautiful, isn't it? We've talked in earlier classes about how Jesus was that ultimate Spirit-filled man. His whole life was guided, his whole life was empowered and sustained by God's Spirit. And in the Kingdom, his rule, Jesus' rule, will express that Spirit perfectly. The Spirit of wisdom and knowledge, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of the fear of the Lord. So think about it, when Christ reigns, the world will finally see what it looks like to have a leader that's not driven by ego or pride or insecurity or corruption, but instead is driven by the fullness of God's Spirit. That's what it's going to be like in the Kingdom, with Jesus reigning in righteousness, the Spirit-filled man reigning the world in that way. His judgments are going to be true, his decisions are going to be righteous, his leadership is going to be gentle but firm, and everything will be completely just. Then I think Isaiah describes this breathtaking conclusion, a world where even creation itself is healed. When the wolf lies down with the lamb and children play on a cobra's den in safety, this image I don't think is poetic imagination or exaggeration. It's a picture, brothers and sisters, of creation restored. The violence and the fear that entered when man sinned against God, that's going to be restored. Isaiah brings us to the climax and says, the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. I think that phrase is so deeply connected to our subject this month, because when we ask the question, what's the knowledge of the Lord? It's God's character, it's God's Spirit. That's what's going to fill the world. The Kingdom, it's not simply a political system, it's a Spirit-filled world, a world that's shaped by righteousness and peace and the presence of God. And I think here's the connection, the same Spirit who will fill the world then is transforming our hearts now. When we forgive, brothers and sisters, we're practicing the Spirit of Isaiah 11. When we pursue peace, we live out the future in the present. When we act with gentleness, we bring the Kingdom life into today. When we choose righteousness, we anticipate the world that God is creating. The Spirit that's working in you today, the Spirit that's working in me today, is preparing us to belong in the world that's coming. That's the work of the Spirit in our lives. It's preparing you so that you belong in this amazing place that's described in Isaiah 11. Psalm 104 gives us this profound perspective on creation. It reminds us that God's Spirit that sustains us renews all life. The psalmist says, when you send your Spirit, they are created and you renew the face of the ground. So from the very beginning, the Spirit is not only the power of creation. It's the power of re-creation, the power of renewal. I think this helps us understand the coming Kingdom of God. The Kingdom is not God abandoning this world. It's not God wiping his hands and saying, that was a failure. It's God renewing and restoring this world. It's going to be a world without decay, a world without violence, a world without suffering or death. It's not a replacement world, but it's a world healed and filled with God's glory. Eden wasn't discarded, right? It's going to be restored. It's going to be magnified. It's going to be brought to fullness. I think we see this pattern in the life of Jesus. His resurrection is the first sign of the new creation, the beginning of the world that God is making. What God did for Jesus, he's one day going to do for his creation, for those who maintain the Spirit in their lives, for those who endure to the end. They'll be raised and they'll be given eternal life. The same Spirit who renews creation is renewing our hearts now. Our transformation, the way we live our lives, brothers and sisters, it's not an isolated spiritual experience. It's directly connected to God's plan for his creation. Just as the Spirit softens and heals and reshapes our hearts, God is one day going to soften, heal, and renew this world. The renewal of creation begins with the renewal of our hearts. That's why Paul says that creation in Romans 8, creation waits in eager expectation. Creation is looking forward to the work that God is going to finish in our hearts, because on that day the world will be complete. One Spirit, one purpose, one new creation. So let's close with this. As we come to the end of this class, as we come to the end of this series, I want to leave you with some simple and quiet encouragement, brothers and sisters. An exhortation, if you will. You're not alone in your spiritual life. We're not. The Spirit of God, the same Spirit who moved the waters of creation, the same Spirit who spoke through the prophets, the same Spirit that rested on Jesus, the same Spirit that strengthened the early ecclesia, the same Spirit that will renew the earth in the age to come. That same Spirit of God is at work in you and in your hearts. Not usually in dramatic moments, not always in ways that we can feel, but in the ordinary daily rhythms of life. In our prayers, in our prayers when we don't know what to say, in our efforts to love when it's hard, in our quiet acts of faithfulness, in the moments that we choose humility over bravado, in the tears that we shed in times of weakness, in the hope that we hold onto even when things seem confusing and when faith is wavering. The Spirit is shaping us, brothers and sisters. It's shaping us sometimes slowly, patiently, faithfully. It's shaping us into the likeness of Christ. And that Spirit isn't going to stop. God is going to continue his work until the day that Christ returns when all things are made new. And so we conclude with a prayer. May the God who began his good work in us by his Spirit bring it to completion in the day of Christ. And may our lives today reflect the world that God has created. Amen.