Welcome to Connect with Skip Heitzig Weekend Edition. We're glad you've joined us for today's program. Connect with Skip Heitzig exists to connect you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times through verse-by-verse teaching of His Word. That's why we make messages like this one today available to you and others on air and online. Before we kick off today's teaching, we want to let you know that you can stay in the know about what's happening at Connect with Skip Heitzig when you sign up for email updates. When you do, you'll also receive Skip's weekly devotional email to inspire you with God's Word each week. So sign up today at connectwithskip.com.
That's connectwithskip.com. Now, let's get into today's teaching from Pastor Skip Heitzig. I confess that I stole the title somewhat today from something I read sometime back. The title of the message is Two-Thirds is Not Enough. And I read something a while back by Lloyd John Ogilvie, who at one time was the chaplain of the United States Senate.
And he wrote these words. Sadly, many Christians settle for two-thirds of God. God the Father is way up there somewhere, aloof and apart from their daily lives. Christ is out there somewhere between them and the Father. The Holy Spirit is some kind of vague force or impersonal power that they hear about but do not know intimately.
If that's true in any case in your life, I do pray that will change. And this is a good place to start. Let me bring the context for you.
It's always helpful to know the context before we read the text. This is the last night before Jesus will go to be crucified. He is on the way this very moment that we are reading from the upper room toward the Garden of Gethsemane where He will be arrested. He's with eleven disciples. He's teaching them. They are worried. They are sorrowful.
He has told them that He is leaving. And sorrow has filled their hearts. So to offset the sorrow they're feeling because they don't want Jesus to leave, He does a few things on that night. First thing He does is demonstrates His love for them. Chapter 13, He takes off their sandals. He washes their feet. And He says, As I have done to you, you should do to one another. Love one another.
I love you. Chapter 14, He details several promises to them. He says, Let not your heart be troubled. And He goes to tell them that, yes, He's leaving, but He's going to prepare a place for them and come again and receive them to Himself. He also tells them about prayer, that whether He's there or not, they can talk to the Father in His name and get anything that they will need. He also says, Greater works than I have done, you will do. He also promises His peace and His joy. And then, as if to balance all of those promises, He warns them. He says, You're my friends, but you've got to know that I have a lot of enemies and my enemies hate my friends.
So just a heads up on that. Which would probably emotionally cause them to sink a little bit deeper. He wants them to know that they don't have to face the hostile world on their own, by themselves, in their own power. But rather, He will send the Holy Spirit who will live within them and empower them to handle whatever comes their way. With that in mind, we begin in chapter 15, verse 26. And you also will bear witness because you have been with me from the beginning. These things I have spoken to you that you should not be made to stumble.
They will put you out of the synagogues. Yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think he offers God service. And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor me. But these things I've told you.
When the time comes, you may remember that I told you of them. And these things I did not say to you at the beginning because I was with you. But now I go away to Him who sent me and none of you asked me where are you going. But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart.
Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you.
But if I depart, I will send Him to you. And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. Of sin because they do not believe in me. Of righteousness because I go to my Father and you see me no more. Of judgment because the ruler of this world is judged.
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of Truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth. For He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify me, for He will take of what is mine and declare it to you. All things the Father has are mine.
Therefore, I said that He will take of mine and declare it to you. I heard about a man years ago who wanted to buy a chainsaw. He went to a hardware store. The salesman showed him several models, but then took off the shelf the best one. According to the salesman, the latest technology.
And then came the promise, the sales pitch. Salesman said, let me tell you something about this chainsaw. This can cut 10 cords of wood per day. So the man bought it, took it home, came back to the hardware store the very next day, exhausted.
He said, I don't know, something is wrong with this thing. I work hard all day long and at best I only cut three cords of wood. Now I got to tell you something, with my old handsaw I could do four cords a day.
I only did three with this thing. Huh, said the salesman. That's weird. Let's take it out back and see why. So the salesman took it to a wood pile out back and pulled the cord. The engine started, you know what they sound like, chainsaws. And the customer heard it, jumped back and said, what's that noise? Can you imagine cutting three cords of wood with a chainsaw and never starting it?
Can you imagine how exhausting it would be to put that much labor with an implement like that? And yet, Christians every single day try to live victorious Christian lives without the power and the agency of the Holy Spirit. It's not always easy understanding God, I'll admit that. Some of us I think kind of get God the Father concept. We've all had fathers and most of them have been good.
There's a few bad ones out there, bad eggs, but for the most part we've had good dads who provided so we get the concept of God as Father. Jesus, God, the Son, we kind of understand that because some of us are sons and we had fathers, all of us have, so we understand the relationship. But when we come to the Holy Spirit, what is that all about? It's not always an easy gig to understand.
At the risk of sounding simplistic, let me put it to you this way. We need God the Father for our external life. He created all things. We need God the Son, Jesus, for our eternal life. He's the Savior who washes us of our sins. We need God the Holy Spirit for our internal life.
He's the source of power and strength. Now today there's a lot of verses we want to cover and so I just want to give you some principles that emerge generally from this about the Spirit, sort of form a composite portrait of Him, if you will, and then next week we can select another smaller section of what we read today and look at it more in depth. But there's some things about the Spirit if you don't know already or you need to be reminded of, here's a good place. First of all, the Holy Spirit is a person.
He's a person. The Spirit of God is not an it, but a He, a Him. In the section we just read, there are 13, I counted them, personal pronouns when Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit.
He will do this, He will do that, He will do the other thing. Him, personal pronouns. As an example, look at verse 7 of chapter 16. Nonetheless, I tell you the truth, it's to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you, but if I depart, I will send Him to you.
And when He has come, He will convict, and so forth. Now, last time I checked, personal pronouns are only reserved for persons, not inanimate objects, not a force. But for persons, unless of course it's a boat or a storm, we tend to call them a she and give them names.
But other than that, it's for persons, personal pronouns for persons. Think how weird this sounds. The wind blew yesterday, the wind, He was strong.
You don't do that. Or, I need air on my tires because air, she keeps my car going. You don't use personal pronouns for a force. Here's what you got to know, there is not one version of the scripture that is a respectable, responsible version of the Bible that ever refers to the Spirit of God as an it, but always as a Him or a He. The Holy Spirit is a person.
You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig Weekend Edition. Before we return to Skip's teaching, we want to tell you about this month's resource titled The Holy Spirit Then and Now, which comes with two books by Chuck Smith. The Book of Acts commentary will help you understand how the Holy Spirit worked in the early church, and Power, a biblical balance on the person and work of the Holy Spirit, will help you see how He works in you. You'll be inspired as you discover that the same Spirit who worked in Paul, Peter, and the early church is active and involved in your life today. We'll send you the Holy Spirit then and now as our thanks for your gift of $50 or more to reach people with God's love through Connect with Skip Heitzig.
Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your copy when you give. Now, let's get back to Skip for more of today's teaching. Throughout church history, there have been those who have said that the Holy Spirit is an it, a force, a presence, not a being, not a person. It began in 318, 318 AD, by a guy named Arius who said the Spirit of God is not a person but an essence, an essence that God uses.
That upset the church so that in 325 AD, a council came together at Nicaea. You've heard of the Nicaean Creed or the Apostles' Creed that was crafted in response to what was known as the Arian Heresy, denied the personhood of the Holy Spirit. And since Arius, there have been others who have followed his cue, the Jehovah Witness, for example, denied the personhood of the Spirit. And they say, and I quote, the Holy Spirit is not an intelligent person but an impersonal, invisible, active force that finds its source and reservoir in Jehovah God. The Mormon Church teaches that God has a physical body, that God was once a man who became a god.
And by the way, all devout Mormons can become gods someday, like God. They say that God has a body of flesh and bones and blood and he has a perfect, eternal, physical body and that Jesus is his literal, physical son conceived by sexual intercourse. Lucifer was Jesus' brother, they say, literally. The Holy Spirit was a separate force that God uses to accomplish his purposes. Christian Science is another one founded by Mary Baker Eddy, Glover Patterson Fry.
She had a problem with men. Mary Baker Eddy said that the Holy Spirit is an impersonal principle. The Holy Spirit is the divine science within Christian science, just a force.
Yet here we read personal pronouns and personal attributes. I just want you to notice if you look back in verse 26 of chapter 15 and notice it says that concerning the Holy Spirit, he will testify. It means to speak or to reveal or give testimony. Look at chapter 16 verse 8 again.
He will convict. Go down to verse 13. He will guide, he will speak, he will tell. Verse 14, he will take and he will declare. Those are personal attributes of a person. He will do these things that only a person can do.
There's more. In the New Testament, the Bible says that the Holy Spirit has a mind, the mind of the Spirit, Romans 8, 27. The Holy Spirit has a will, 1 Corinthians 12, 11. The Holy Spirit is said to show love, Romans 15, verse 30. He is said to pray or intercede for us. That's Romans 8, 26. As a person, the Holy Spirit can be grieved, Ephesians chapter 4, verse 30. He can be insulted, according to Hebrews chapter 10, verse 29. He can be lied to, Acts chapter 5.
He can be quenched, 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. Now, a force can't do those things or have those things done to it. You can't say, I grieved electricity today. I lied to gravity. Atomic force cannot love you. You can't say, I grieved my plants today. They're really bummed out at me now.
I guess they have to turn over a new leaf. Couldn't resist. Those are attributes reserved only for people or persons. The Holy Spirit is a person, not a human person, but a person nonetheless. Now, I think that not only do cults err in this, but I think sometimes we evangelical believers often err when it comes to the Spirit. I'm going to explain by reading something to you that was written over 100 years ago by Ruben Torre. R.A. Torre, one of the greatest books ever on the Holy Spirit.
He writes concerning believers. They are reaching out after and struggling to get possession of some mysterious and mighty power that they can make use of in their work according to their own will. But the Holy Spirit is to get hold of them. We must rejoice that there is no divine power, that beings so ignorant as we are, so liable to err, could ever get a hold of and use.
How appalling might be the results if there were. So the issue becomes then, listen carefully, not how can I get more of the Holy Spirit, but rather how can the Holy Spirit get a hold of more of me. It's an issue of surrender to Him. The Holy Spirit then is a person. The second thing to note in our text is the Holy Spirit is a divine person. Nothing will heighten your respect more for the Holy Spirit than to realize this person is God. The third member of the triune Godhead, co-eternal and co-equal with God the Father and God the Son. He is a divine person. He appears in Genesis chapter 1 when God created the heavens and the earth and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. And He is seen and mentioned throughout the scripture. There's a hymn that was crafted to sort of embody this. We still know it and sing it today.
It was written back in 1673 if memory serves. It's called The Doxology of Praise. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures here below. Praise Him above you heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Now I will admit to you that the word Holy Ghost isn't the best translation.
It's an old translation. I suggest you don't teach your young children about the Holy Ghost. But the Holy Spirit would be a better term to employ or they're going to get spooked by God. It's like the little girl who went to church and she heard that hymn being sung and afterwards she said to her parents, why do they want to exclude the West Coast?
And her parents go, what? She said, you know, when they sang that song, praise Father, Son, and the whole East Coast. Couldn't it compute the ghost part of that? It works for a song, but for modern times and I think more accurately, reflecting the truth of Scripture, He is the Holy Spirit, a divine person. You should also know that throughout history, those who have denied the personhood of the Holy Spirit, that the Spirit of God has also been denied deity by some. In AD 200, an individual from Libya actually, a priest by the name of Sibelius, taught that God is not three persons in one, but just one God that goes by three different names to serve His own purpose, that God is sometimes the Father, the same being is sometimes the Son, the same being is sometimes the Spirit. These three names are three forms of God.
It's known as modalism, three different modes of God. We read here when Jesus speaks, verse 26, as an example in chapter 15, He speaks of the Spirit of God as coming from the Father, simultaneous, not in modes, but simultaneous, from the Father, sent by the Son, and then in verse 8, dispatched to the world, and He is active within the world. The Holy Spirit is divine. The Holy Spirit is God. He's active in the world. He comes from the Father.
He's sent by the Son. Now, there is some doubt among some about this. Oneness Pentecostals, for example, teach the idea of Sibelius that God is one being in three different modes, but let's just kind of put a seal on it and move on. Turn with me to Acts chapter 5. There's a scripture tucked away there that is sometimes not really noticed, unfortunately.
I want you to notice it. Acts chapter 5 will seal the deal on this, and if you have a pencil out and you're not opposed to writing in your Bibles, all the better, because I'm going to have you circle two things. Verse 1, but a certain man, this is the early church now, a certain man named Ananias with Sapphira, his wife, sold a possession, and he kept back part of the proceeds, his wife also being aware of it, and he brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles' feet, and Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? While it remained, was it not your own?
And after it was sold, was it not under your own control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? Watch this. You have not lied to men, but to God. If you were to draw a circle around, you've lied to the Holy Spirit in verse 13, or excuse me, verse 13. Verse 3, and then in verse 4, lied to God and connect the two, it's easy to see the oppositional connection.
When you lie to the Holy Spirit, you lie to God, because the Holy Spirit is God, and Peter had no problem putting those two things together. We're glad you joined us today. Before you go, remember that when you give $50 or more to help reach more people with the gospel through Connect with Skip Heitzig, we'll send you the Holy Spirit then and now, featuring two books by Chuck Smith to help you understand how God's Spirit worked in the early church and how he's active in you today. To request your copy, call 800-922-1888.
That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. For more from Skip, be sure to download the Connect with Skip Heitzig app, where you can access messages and more content right at your fingertips. We'll see you next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's word here on Connect with Skip Heitzig, weekend edition. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast your burdens on his word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times.
