1037. The Work of the Holy Spirit in Creation

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University study series entitled Breath of Life, which is a study on the Holy Spirit.

Today's message I'll comment on revelation and inspiration and spend the majority of our time in creation, just because we have limited time, and I want to spend as much time as possible, but focusing in on that aspect. Really, here's the goal. If you look at this picture, it's a picture of my wife and daughter in Ethiopia, and this was taken just a month or so ago. And this is the edge. It's in Abraham's oasis or Grace Village, and I didn't picture Ethiopia as being lush and green.

This is dry season on top of all of that. But that's a place where you can sit down on this mountain type of rock and look down over the valley and see how amazing God is in his creation. So if I can help you find awe in the Holy Spirit, then this is a sermon well delivered. If I can help you understand that though your life may seem chaotic, and it may seem like it's lacking some structure from time to time, where you feel like things are out of control, I want to introduce you to the reality that the Holy Spirit brings order and structure. He takes what is chaotic and makes it just simple and easy for us to follow.

And I want to encourage you in your own heart in that. But let me comment here on this doctrine of the Holy Spirit and revelation. I think the best way to illustrate this is to ask you to take your Bible and turn over to Acts chapter 1 verse 16, just to highlight these two points.

Acts 1, 16. And what we see here is an example of the Holy Spirit who is responsible for selecting the messengers, and he is one who is responsible for delivering the message. Now he selected a variety of messengers throughout the scriptures, and you can go back and consider Ezekiel 2, 2, where Ezekiel is selected by the Holy Spirit to deliver a message. He even selected a false prophet in Balaam in Numbers 24, 2.

He'll select whomever he wants to, to give the message he wants to deliver to that particular person in Revelation. He used King Saul. When King Saul was seeking after David, the Spirit fell on him and he prophesied. And there was a statement made about King Saul. And it was very clear that the Holy Spirit is greater than man and is able to fall on anyone and communicate a message to them that they will clearly speak. But look at Acts 1, 16.

I think this highlights it. Men and brethren, this scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus. So this is just one proof text that shows that the Holy Spirit speaks a message to a particular person, and he guides that message, and it comes out of that person the way he wants it to come out.

And you can find several other examples of this. John 14, 26. John 16, 13-14 also speak of this. That's his work in Revelation.

Much could be said about that. Also his work in inspiration. When it comes to his work in inspiration, the Holy Spirit is the one who guided the writing of scripture. And in this case, I want to encourage you to consider 2 Peter 1, 21. 2 Peter 1, 21.

You can turn over there if you'd like. 2 Peter 1, 21. If you know this from Bible doctrines or from your Awana or personal memory. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved. And that word moved means carried along by the Holy Ghost. To bring forth, to guide, to lead the Holy Spirit is the one who in essence fills the sails of a boat that directs the message through the personalities of select people. So you see how revelation and inspiration go hand in hand, that God selects the messenger, and he uses the personality of that messenger, but speaks into them what he wants them to know. 2 Timothy 3, 16 is the one that would support that second point about the Holy Spirit infuses life. It says in 2 Timothy 3, 16, all scripture is given by inspiration of God.

It is theo pneumatos, God breathed. And that's important for us to consider as it relates to creation. But God breathes into scripture what is profitable. It teaches us what is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. And when you consider that, I think this is information you have already heard before.

But it's no less amazing. I just want you to pause and consider with me the Holy Spirit's role in revelation and inspiration. He is guiding and protecting. He is selecting whom he wants to and delivering exactly the message that he wants us to have and to hear. And we have a completed canon of scripture and we can hear the Holy Spirit speak to us through the word of God to direct our paths.

And we can find great delight in that. And that's how you can take that chaotic life that we live or that you live and bring it back under order and direction as you follow what the Spirit teaches you in scripture. But as I said, I really would like to focus our attention on creation.

So for the bulk of the message, take your Bible and turn to the very first verse of the very first chapter in the Bible, Genesis 1. I want you to see with me that the Holy Spirit is very, very active in creation. He structures creation. He protects creation and he infuses life into creation.

So let's start with this first one. He structured creation. Look down at Genesis 1.1. In the beginning, God, I love how it is not proving his existence, it's proclaiming it.

It's just a presupposition that God existed. In the beginning, God created. That word for create really has the connotation of something out of nothing. So in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And then we're transitioning from this one into this next verse which creates an opening in our minds as to how the Holy Spirit helped in the structure of creation.

But before I go there, I want you to notice something. The word created does mean something out of nothing. It is not a word that means he recreated.

It's not reformed. The word for reform or recreate, asa, is found in parallel terms with bara or create. And you find it all throughout scripture. There's synonyms, Genesis 1.26 and 27, Exodus 34.10, Isaiah 41.20, 43.7. Nehemiah 9.6 clears up all the issues about whether or not this is something out of nothing. It is God creating something out of nothing because it uses the word asa to refer to the same thing as bara, which is he creates something out of nothing. So in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. What we see here is this next verse. The earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water. So here we are in our doctrine of the Holy Spirit and we find the Holy Spirit right away, second verse in the Bible.

But what these two verses have ended up creating in the minds of some is some tension. And there's a view that between verse one and verse two, there's a large gap of time. It's called the gap theory. And it is proposed to believe that God created the earth and then over a billion or a billion of years, it's just who knows how long is the way the theory goes, there was this time of gap and it allows for an old earth view. And the old earth view says you can look at science in the records and see how the layers of the earth match up and we can say, well, that's the gap is the reason for that. But there's a problem with the gap. The gap theory puts death before the fall and that ends up messing around or challenging the very heart of the gospel that we find in Romans five that says death is the result of sin, the sin that Adam committed. So it's really a big deal to talk about. There have been some big names such as, you may not know all these, but Schofield reference Bible included the gap theory.

J. Vernon McGee has been on a lot of radio broadcasts and he is one who held to this. And there are some that could hold to this and really still believe that they were holding to six literal days of creation, but I want you to know that there are all sorts of problems that come from this. And then it introduces us to this next thought that if you buy into the gap theory, you usually also hold this next phrase, the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep to introduce the ruin reconstruction theory. And here's the theory on that one, is that the word for was without form actually should be translated became without form. That's not the correct translation.

The correct translation was, just as we're reading it in the English, the earth was without form, not became without form. But they use it that way and they say, this is an example of what happened when Satan wreaked havoc on a previous existence, a previous creation. And it was something that created problems and then he, Satan, introduced a type of a flood that destroyed everything and so now, right before we get into verse three, we have a recreation that the account in verses three all the way to verse 31 of chapter one is the recreation of a second existence. Okay, so that's the theory.

Problems. Well, one of the things is that as you're reading this, this is an introduction to God. There's an introduction to his creative work, the introduction to the Bible. And if we just read it naturally, we realize that he goes from stating what he did, creating something out of nothing in verse one, and then he focuses our attention from the heavens and the earth to the earth in verse two. So even the grammar connects our thoughts to, and so we have God created the heavens and the earth.

Now, where do we live? We live in the earth. So let me talk about the earth for a second. And the earth was without form and void, and it's helpful to understand the natural progression.

Psalm 115 16 says, the heaven, even the heavens are the Lord's, but the earth hath he given to the children of men. So as a reader, we're reading this and we're learning about God. He exists, and he created something out of nothing, and we live on the earth. So tell me about the earth.

So he says, Oh, great. I'd love to tell you about the earth. And the earth was without form or void.

So what does this mean to be without form or void? Well, I'm glad you're at least thinking about it. At least you're entertaining my thoughts on that. Let me teach you some Hebrew.

It's really fun, right? Tohu bohu. Say that with me.

Tohu bohu. What is that? It's without form and void. And so this seems to mean, well, obviously, it's some sort of chaos that's created. But actually, no, that's not what's talking about here. It's talking about something that was lacking substance and then received the substance or its fullness.

To put it in simple terms, I have found great benefit from Answers in Genesis, book one on the answers. They illustrate it in this way. Consider the analogy of a potter making a vase. The first thing he does is gather a ball of clay.

What he has is good, but it's unformed. Next, he shapes it into a vase using his potter's wheel. Now the ball of clay is no longer formless.

He then dries it, applies glaze, and fires it. Now it's ready to be filled with flowers and water. At no time could one of those stages be considered evil or bad, because we do know that all of Genesis 1 says it was good, it was good, it was good, all the way to the end.

It was very good. That's in verse 31 of chapter 1. It was unfinished, unformed, unfilled. When the vase was finally formed and filled, it could be described as very good, end of quote. So let me illustrate it in this way. Without form is light and dark. So what we find in day one is light and dark. If you're in the Old Testament literature and interpretation class, you know I've taught you the days of creation.

In day one, light, remember that? So here we have light and darkness, and by the way, if you're a little confused as to what darkness, if darkness has always existed, I found it interesting that in Isaiah 45.7, it says God created darkness, just so that you know. He created everything, something out of nothing. And so this was form, light and darkness, and then we find it full, or fullness, in day four, lights of day and night. And you follow that pattern, and you'll find form and fullness. So form day two, we see the example of sky and sea, sea and sky, and then you have creatures of water and air in day five. Form and then fullness given to us. Form given to us in day three, a fertile earth, and the fullness is given with creatures of the land. It helps us understand that God is a God of love, and He's a God of order, and He structures all of creation, and we can rejoice in that truth. He not only structured creation, so we can take your mess and my mess and give us order to it, okay?

He also protected creation. So I want you to understand that one of the possibilities here of understanding the protection really comes from the second part of the verse. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And then God offered this form and fullness, but it says here, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And we must direct our attention to what is that talking about? And this was interesting as I was studying this out, what in the world is this talking about? The word for the Spirit of God moved, whatever that is, moving on the face of the deep. However you picture that in your mind, I do want you to understand that it is described, the same word is described in the book of Deuteronomy 32-11, as an eagle stirreth up the nest, fluttereth over her young. So the Holy Spirit was doing something to flutter over that which had form but needed fullness.

And I'm just thinking to myself, what is he doing? Is he just putting things in order so it would all work out and protect, or was he structuring it? And I'm bringing up the concept that maybe he was doing something that was protecting creation. Now if I hold to that view, if you actually engage that thought with me, it does introduce a problem to us.

Protecting from whom? Well I guess the answer would be Satan. And if you consider the passages that we find in the Old Testament, we have Isaiah 14, 12-17 and Ezekiel 28, 14-18. Isaiah speaks of the king of Babylon, Ezekiel speaks of the king of Tyre.

Both are real kings and from their lives we have analogies or pictures of what happened to Satan. And in Isaiah it speaks of Satan who says these five I wills. I will ascend to heaven, I will set my throne on high, I will sit on the mount of the assembly, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will make myself like the most high. And then in the Ezekiel passage you have statements, you were in Eden, the garden of God, in verse 13. In verse 14, you were anointed guardian cherub, verse 14. Verse 15, you were blameless in your ways from the day you were created.

Verse 17, your heart was proud because of your beauty. So this is a picture of something that happened to Satan. When did Satan fall has to be asked, right?

Here's the good answer. The good answer is we don't know for sure. I can tell you this, that he fell before Genesis 3 because he's on the scene in Genesis 3. The ruin reconstruction view holds to the fact that Satan somehow was created in day one and then created or wreaked havoc on the earth that God was trying to put into order and created this formless and void type of thing. I don't think that's true because of Job, what it says in Job 38, 4 through 7, it speaks of a time when the morning, and I'm reading from verse 7, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.

Here's my suggestion to you. From Job 38, 4 through 7, the angels were present before the earth existed. When were they created? I know they were created because it tells us in Nehemiah 9, 6 that God created the host of heaven. I know he created them. When did he create them?

I really don't know. My suggestion is that he created angels at some time in eternity past. And that Satan fell and that the Holy Spirit was protecting the whole process of creation.

I know he was ordering it and giving structure to it, and I'm suggesting to you that he possibly also was protecting it. And I want to see if you can follow this logic as we continue to go on with this. The same word is found in Luke 1, 35, and the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, this idea of flutter or move, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And I'm suggesting to you it matches with the very thing he did at creation. The Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary, Virgin Mary, protecting her.

And there's more also going on in there. It's this word that we find in Hebrews, I'm sorry, in Genesis 1, verse 2, move, we have the overshadowing. And that to me is an awesome, it's one of those things that creates awe. An article from Answers in Genesis states this, On this fascinating topic, we should also note that Scripture describes a similar hovering of the Holy Spirit in one of the greatest miracles of all time, the miraculous conception of Jesus Christ. And the angel answered and said to Mary, The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the highest shall overshadow you. Just as God worked through Jesus and the Holy Spirit to bring life into the dark, formless world at creation, so also now he offers eternal life to any who would repent and believe through the Spirit in the name of Jesus.

I encourage you to consider that. Also note in the last point that he, the Holy Spirit at creation, infused life. And where do we get that? In our book, Genesis, the very first book of the Bible, you turn over to chapter 2, you'll notice in verse 7, And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. This is the concept that the Holy Spirit was what was breathed into Adam, and Adam became a living soul. It's supported with the verse that you find in Job 27, 3 through 4, And while my breath is in me, and the Spirit of God is in my nostrils, my lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit. And I'm saying that this is an example of the Holy Spirit not just structuring creation, not just protecting creation, but infusing life into creation.

And if you want another proof for that, here is another one. Have you ever wondered about why Jesus, up in the upper room in John 20, verse 33, breathes on the disciples, the Holy Spirit, and they have peace? But yet they received the blessing of the Holy Spirit later at Pentecost. This was a type of theocratic anointing, or God placing the Spirit on the disciples as a foretaste of what would come, but it is through his breath that the Holy Spirit comes and infuses life. And as you follow this logic, you see it also back in our concept of the virgin birth.

Notice this. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise when his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph before they came together. She was found with child of the Holy Ghost. So that has created within me great awe of who God is, and I have rejoiced in the ministry of the Holy Spirit. So if you need a refresher on what I've said, the Holy Spirit in creation structured it. The Holy Spirit in creation protected it. The Holy Spirit infused life into it. How does that relate to the concept of the virgin birth?

He organized the details. He protected Mary so that it would happen. And Satan's agenda from eternity past was to wipe out God's promise in Genesis 3.15. He did not want Jesus to come. The Holy Spirit says, no, that's not happening. He is coming, and he infused life into Mary as we saw in Matthew 1.18. What about you?

What about me? What about the believer? Well, the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer, the Holy Spirit infuses spiritual life into you. Romans 8.11 says that. It just says he infused life into the body of Jesus when he was in the grave so that he came alive. He infuses life into you when you become a child of God. He protects you from falling away. Ephesians 4.30.

Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God in whom you are sealed unto the day of redemption. And he distributes spiritual gifts to you. 1 Corinthians 12.7. He gives it according to his design and his desire.

The same Holy Spirit who worked in creation, who worked in revelation and inspiration works in your life. Will you yield to him? Will you submit to him?

And here's my simple points of application. Will you join me in standing in awe of who he is? Would you consider the joy that we have to treasure God in his word by digging in and learning more about him? And would you ask the Holy Spirit today to help you bring order out of whatever thing you're facing, which may seem chaotic because he is able? Let's pray together. God, thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for your work in revelation, inspiration and creation. Help us to trust you with the details of our lives. Help us to yield to you. Work your power in and through us and through this student body. In Jesus' name.

Amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Jason Ormiston of the Bob Jones University religion faculty, part of the series about the Holy Spirit. Today, we have Dr. Eric Newton from the Bob Jones University Seminary with us to talk about some of the other aspects of the Holy Spirit. Eric, today's message focused on the Spirit's power in creation, but tell our listeners a little more about the Holy Spirit and the inspiration of Scripture.

Sure. Thank you, David. I think it's very significant that throughout our Bibles, the Scriptures emphasize the powerful word of God. In fact, it talks in Hebrews 1 about how Christ upholds all of creation with his powerful word. And so this doctrine of inspiration isn't that the Holy Spirit breathed some kind of quality into human words. It's actually that these human words that we have in our Bibles are ultimately divine, that the Holy Spirit breathed them out. It's like exhaling.

He breathed them out. And I think it's very significant that we have these words and we have this doctrine of inspiration because it tells us a lot about God. It tells us that he wants to communicate with us, that he wants us to know him. It tells us about the importance of words. We all know that words can be powerful, but these are a kind of power that we know nothing of here on a human level.

It isn't just an awesome experience that somebody had in the past and is trying to relive. These words are powerful now. They are alive because the Spirit breathed them out and because the Spirit continues to teach us the truth of them. And so in a world that has so many voices and opinions and factoids, true or false, swirling around, we need words that have a quality that none of us could give them in and of ourselves. We have a quality in Scripture that actually is from God. They are his very own words. And so as amazing as creation is, and we never want to take anything away from that, it is equally amazing that God's power is displayed through the words of Scripture that he breathed out. And so because of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the Old and New Testaments, the Scriptures that you and I read and meditate on every day can actually change us. They have that kind of power. Thanks, Eric, for sharing that, and we hope these messages will be an encouragement as we explore the power of the Holy Spirit in this series called Breath of Life. Join us again tomorrow here on The Daily Platform.