Misconceptions of the Holy Spirit

Taking the Lord's name in vain could be defined this way, to speak of God in any untrue or irreverent way. What would that be? To misrepresent his attributes? To misrepresent his works? to misrepresent his words.

Anything that misrepresents God is taking his name in vain. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Not too many years ago, John MacArthur preached a series of unique messages on God's character at the Masters University, where John serves as chancellor. What made this study unique?

Instead of examining the various attributes of God, His holiness, His sovereignty, His love, and other traits, John took aim at some misconceptions about God that many people, including Christians, often believe. It's a compelling series that we call Consider This. But before we get to John's lesson, I want to read a letter that we recently received. If you ever wonder how God is working through the Grace to You broadcast, this story is a great example. Here's what Allison told us: She writes, I wanted to let you know that your books and sermons have been so edifying in my pursuit of Christ.

I became a Christian a few years ago, and I first came across your books in a small home group. One book led to another, and another, and another, and I then purchased your entire New Testament commentary. A friend from my home group also loves your resources, and so we meet regularly to discuss God's Word, and we often find ourselves digging into scripture along with the MacArthur Study Bible notes and your sermons, which we have come to rely on for a deep and accurate understanding of God's Word. We especially appreciate your unwavering commitment to truth in a dark culture that rejects God. And as a side note, I first heard of Grace to You in the 1990s.

A co-worker's husband worked for Grace to You, and I didn't even understand what Grace to You meant. Who is Grace to You, and what do they do? And she tried to. Explain, but as an unregenerate person, I never really grasped your ministry or even knew what a ministry was.

Now, all these years later, I see God's plan for my redemption, particularly as it relates to the seeds that were planted by my friend, who, by the way, Howled with excitement when I told her I'd been baptized.

Now I understand what Grace to You is, and even that that phrase comes from Paul's well-used epistolary greeting.

So thank you, Pastor MacArthur, and all your fellow workers at Grace to You who seek to spread biblical truth to all the nations, including this new believer who is growing ever stronger in the faith. Thanks to your devotion to proclaiming the one and only gospel. And she signs her letter, Allison.

So from all of us, thank you, Allison, for that encouraging letter. And friend, when you support Grace to You, you help strengthen longtime believers and also newer Christians like Allison. I'll tell you more about how you can partner in this work before we end today. But right now, here again is John MacArthur showing you the dangers of misunderstanding the ministry of the Holy Spirit. There is no More maligned.

No more. misunderstood, no more misrepresented. No more insulted, no more dishonored, and no more blasphemed member of the Trinity in our contemporary. church culture than the Holy Spirit. And we sort of give a free pass to people.

But we need to We need to rethink that because the Holy Spirit is God. Listen to Exodus 20. I'll read the opening seven verses. Then God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God. Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery?

You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol. or any likeness of what is in heaven above. Or on the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them.

For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God. visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children. on the third and fourth generations of those who hate me. but showing loving kindness to thousands, to those who love me. And keep my commandments, then this.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God. In vain. For the Lord will not leave him unpunished. who takes his name. In vain.

That is the first. Clear command. to worship God. And God alone. That's kind of at the beginning of the Bible.

At the very end. There is kind of a repetition of that command. Let me read it to you. It's in Revelation 22. Worship God.

Verse 9. Worship. God. That's how the Bible begins and that's how the Bible ends. Jesus said in John 4 that he had come to seek Worshipers.

Who would worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The whole reason for redemption is To create True worshipers of God. That's what we'll do forever. You get a little visit into heaven in the fourth and fifth chapter of the book of Revelation, and we find the saints there surrounding the throne. All they're doing is worshiping and worshiping and worshiping God.

That will be our everlasting occupation. And the true worship of the true God assumes A true worship of the Father and a true worship of the Spirit and a true worship of the Son, that also assumes a true understanding of the nature of the Father and the Spirit and the Son. The most fundamental of all human duties is to worship God. In fact, that is so fundamental again that that is the very reason we have been redeemed because. The whole fallen world refuses to worship God.

And then rather than worship God, they They recreate God in their own image or they make idols. This is the Standard issue rebellion of the fallen human heart. But God, in His grace and mercy, has called out a people to become true worshipers. We worship him in spirit and in truth, and will do so. Forever.

Now thinking about verse 7 for a moment. We are warned not to take the name of the Lord your God in vain, or we will not go unpunished. What does it mean to take the Lord's name in vain? It doesn't mean to say a swear word simply or only, although that's certainly one way to take the Lord's name in vain. But taking the Lord's name in vain could be defined this way: to speak of God.

in any untrue or irreverent way. To speak of God in any untrue or irreverent way. What would that be? To misrepresent his attributes, to misrepresent his works, to misrepresent his. Words, anything that misrepresents God is taking His name.

In vain. It is Emptying God of some of his glory. To think of him or speak of him irreverently. To diminish his glory is to attribute words and deeds and attributes to him that are not true, or remove from him. Attributes and words and deeds that are true.

The most important thing you'll ever do in your life is get God right. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You cannot come to God unless you know him. Taking his name in a vain way is to ignore what is true about him or to declare things about him. that are not true of him.

This is such a serious Sin That it is the one sin condemned in those opening seven verses of the Ten Commandments. You do not want to misrepresent God. Again, it is that which caused our Lord at the beginning and the end of his ministry to throw people out of the temple. That is a Graphic illustration. of the kind of punishment Meet it out on people who take the Lord's name in vain.

Serious sin. And I would say that the most commonly Dishonored. Member of the Trinity is The Holy Spirit. And all that warning applies to how we think and how we speak. of the Holy Spirit.

Taking his name in vain will not go unpunished. Diminishing his true glory and ascribing to him things that are not true of him. will not go unpunished. In spite of such a serious statement, in spite of such a serious reality from the very Word of God itself, the Holy Spirit is incessantly misrepresented in the church. His name is taken in vain incessantly by whole movements within evangelicalism.

In the name of unity and in the name of love, we tolerate it. As if somehow we could clearly define the character of God and clearly define the character of. Of the Son of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, but somehow the Holy Spirit can just be anything we want Him to be. We can just kind of shape Him like a piece of clay. My objective in thinking about the Holy Spirit is to help you to worship and glorify Him in a way that does not take His name in vain and does not go toward divine punishment.

So let's talk about the Holy Spirit a little bit. His titles speak of his majestic Glory. He is called the breath of the Almighty. He's called the Eternal Spirit. He is called in Psalm 51 the generous spirit.

Psalm 143, the Good Spirit. Psalm 51, Ephesians 1, Ephesians 4, the Holy Spirit. He is also called the Spirit of the living God, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Father, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of the Son, the Spirit of life. He's the Spirit in Isaiah 11 of wisdom, the Spirit of. Counsel, the spirit of might, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of fear or worship, the spirit of the Lord.

John 14 and 15, he's the Spirit of Truth. Romans 1, the Spirit of Holiness. Revelation 1:4, the sevenfold Spirit, which harks back to Isaiah 11. And then that beloved title, he is called the comforter, the paracletas, the paraclete. In Luke 1.35, he is called the power of the highest.

This is the Holy Spirit. The term for spirit in Hebrew is ruach. And the familiar word in Greek is pneuma. Ruach is an onomatopaeetic word. That means its meaning sounds like it.

Rock. That's air in motion. The fundamental meaning of Ruach is power, energy, life. It's not about something that's immaterial, that's not the essence of it. It's about power, something that goes forth.

From life, with life, conveying life. That is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the very life of God. coming out from God, energizing all other Life. The Holy Spirit is fully God, has all of God's attributes, participates in all God's works and words, is in perfect harmony with the Father and the Son.

He is as holy as the Father, as gracious as the Son, as powerful as the Father, as merciful as the Son, as sovereign as the Father, as loving as the Son. He is to be worshipped fully as is the Father and is the Son. Puritan Thomas Goodwin said this, our worship is sometimes with the Father, then with the Son, and then with the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes the believer's heart is drawn out to consider the Father's love in choosing. And then the love of the Son and redeeming, and sometimes the love of the Holy Spirit that searches the deep things of God and reveals them to us. We should never be satisfied in our worship until all three persons, I love this, lie level in us. And we sit there in the midst of them. While they all manifest their love to us.

I think it's time for Uh to restore To the blessed Holy Spirit no worship he is due. Where are the sermons on the Holy Spirit? Where are the books on the Holy Spirit? Where are the songs of praise to the Holy Spirit? No, someone says, he points us to Christ, yes, as a ministry.

But he doesn't therefore divest himself of the right to worship. That's just his ministry. Over the last 50 years? The evangelical church has faced strong attacks on God the Father and met them with clarity and force, defending the biblical truth about God. I think about the openness theology controversy a few years back.

We have faced strong attacks, we always do, on God the Son, from the cults. Formidable forces. And we have acted to defend the sun. Organizations have come into existence like Together for the Gospel and the Gospel Coalition and. But All kinds of Blasphemous things are said about the Holy Spirit.

Where's the outrage? Where's the response? You know, we're living in a time of pragmatism. Pragmatic churches are. Growing and pragmatic churches, seeker movement churches, have a general indifference to the Holy Spirit.

He doesn't really play a role in their world. Because their results are all based on technique.

Now their success is all predicated on style. How well they can suck up the cultural familiarities that make people feel comfortable. The Holy Spirit really doesn't play a role in the seeker movement. It's all about a kind of baptized cultural psychology that attracts people because it feels. familiar and makes them feel good.

The Holy Spirit plays no role that I can perceive in pragmatism. If you think that you can do it by your style and your technique and your methodology, what role does the Holy Spirit play when salvation and sanctification are really the work of clever church innovators? Then you have the sort of the rock star churches designed to appeal to worldly taste, built around some massively sort of featured personality. And if you go there, you're going to see him, but you're not going to see him like a normal human being. You're going to see him 24 feet high.

On screens everywhere. Really um The Holy Spirit's not necessary there because you have a guy with all kinds of theatrical ability who can. pretty much entertained people by himself. Total indifference. To the Holy Spirit is the essence of all market-driven pragmatic churches.

I can't find anybody in one of those churches who ever talks about the Holy Spirit, preaches on the Holy Spirit, writes about the Holy Spirit, just not. necessary. They have the power They have the personality. They have the strategy. And then of course There is the prosperity gospel.

The essence of the prosperity gospel is that you are God, or you have enough of God, or a strong enough connection with God to create your own world. You can speak it into existence with your words. What role does the Holy Spirit have? In that. What do you need the Holy Spirit for?

You are God. You are, as Kenneth Copeland says, little gods. You are this Powerful God-men hyphenated. the language they use. You can speak your own reality into existence, decide what you want, visualize it, speak it into existence, and you have it.

What role does the Holy Spirit play? Zero. No role. You know, I I want to remind people. Of uh A verse that is equally frightening as the one I read you in Exodus 20.

Listen to uh Matthew 12, 32. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, It shall be forgiven him. But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit It shall not be forgiven him either in this age or in the age to come. What? You better be careful.

About how you speak of the Holy Spirit. In one way To dishonor the Holy Spirit is to elevate yourself as if you Have all the power to do the things that Scripture says. Only the Holy Spirit can do. You have now made yourself into God? You are gods.

You are little gods. In the prosperity gospel movement. You don't need the Holy Spirit because you're connected to God yourself. You are the hurach of God. You are the force of God.

You are the blast of God. It comes through you. This writer doesn't get the theology of this whole movement. Because at the end, she critiques the thing after doing all the history, and she says, you know, it's really it. on its face a good thing.

Because it It helps people rise above their circumstances. It helps people think there's a better future. It is inveterately Here's the word. Optimistic, she says. It's optimistic.

It's wonderful to go into places where people are poor and have very little and make them feel optimistic about life, and it makes them feel optimistic about life. And that's a good thing. And my response is. That's a lie. You're telling them that their optimism about the future is predicated upon their own innate power.

That's a bad view of man and it's a wrong view of God. It's a lie. It's deception. On the other hand, you have the Pentecostal movement, the Pentecostal charismatic movement. They don't deny the Holy Spirit.

They just attribute to the Holy Spirit things he doesn't do. I can go back. And Give you an endless run of things. The Holy Spirit heals dogs and cats. The Holy Spirit filled my cavity.

The Holy Spirit Gave me a vision. The Holy Spirit talks to me personally. The Holy Spirit escorted me to heaven. Holy Spirit does none of these things.

So, you can, on the one hand, in the name of evangelicalism, literally dismiss the Holy Spirit altogether. Which is a Terrible dishonor. Or you can Ascribe to him things that he would never do. And does not do. Be warned.

If you speak anything against the Holy Spirit, Anything that is not true of him That's not going to be forgiven you. And that was in the context, of course, of. Saying that the works that Jesus did by the Holy Spirit were actually being done by Satan, and that was the ultimate blasphemy. They said that what the Holy Spirit was doing, Satan was doing. Flip that on its head, and you have the modern charismatic movement.

They say. What Satan is doing. is what the Holy Spirit is doing. It's a frightening Frightening time. The movement that purports to honor the Holy Spirit really completely dishonors the Holy Spirit.

No movement in the last hundred years has grown faster, done more damage to the church, probably half a billion people in that movement. They do more than grieve. The Holy Spirit will warn not to do that. They do more than Dishonor the Holy Spirit. More than do despite to the Holy Spirit, as it says in Hebrews, they actually blaspheme the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit does not give visions. contrary to that whole movement, does not give current revelations. Does not enable people to speak in tongues, does not give people future prophecies. Does not do Fake miracles. These people are literally attributing the works of Satan And false things To the Blessed Holy Spirit.

But this movement has demanded acceptance for its myriad unbiblical ideas, deceptions, confusion, and lies. It has corrupted the church in a thousand ways. By blunting its will to discern and expose error, it is a haven for self-promoters. Whose brash egotism has spilled over into evangelical churches. And it is the It is the wife.

It is the wife, the spouse. of the prosperity movement. The charismatic movement has basically motivated and cultivated the desire for emotion-driven, superficial, carnal stimulation, falsely called worship, polluted the biblical doctrines of prayer, faith, contentment, humility, attacked the sovereignty of God, spawned all kinds of unrighteous forms of religion while condemning as loveless anyone who questions the validity of any of it. In earlier times, the people in that would have been called heretics. You need to be discerning on these things.

What is the current work of the Holy Spirit? Does he use his power now to knock people down? To produce silly giggling and uncontrolled laughter, hypnosis, trances, convulsions, hiccups, stupor. Quivering. Temporary paralysis, gibberish, animal sounds, thrashing, levitation.

Punching, slapping, jumping. These are the claims. This is not the Holy Spirit. We would not sit by, I don't think. If they were claiming that the Father was doing this, Or the sun was doing this.

But it's almost as if we've all short-changed the Holy Spirit to begin with. If we're going to be engaged in true Trinitarian worship of the Father. The Son and the Spirit. Thankful that the Father initiated salvation. The Son validated salvation.

And the Spirit activated salvation. We must glorify each member of the Trinity. It is the Spirit. Blessed Holy Spirit. Who gave us The revelation.

The 66 books of the Bible are inspired by the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who convicts us of sin and righteousness and judgment, John 16. It is the Holy Spirit who regenerates us, John 3, gives us life and faith and repentance and salvation. It is the Holy Spirit, according to 1 Corinthians 6, 11, who justifies us. I know you don't think about justification as a work of the Spirit, but listen to what it says.

You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus by the Spirit of our God. He gave us the revelation. He gave us conviction of our sins. He gave us regeneration. He granted us justification.

Romans 8 says We're adopted. The doctrine of adoption is the work of the Holy Spirit, Romans 8, 14 to 16. The Holy Spirit has taken up residence in us. Romans 8:9, 1 Corinthians 6, we're the temple of the Spirit of God. It is the Holy Spirit who baptizes us, placing us literally through Christ into the body, 1 Corinthians 12.

It is the Holy Spirit who empowers us. Ephesians 3. It is the Holy Spirit who gifts us with our spiritual gift, our capabilities. To minister to the body of Christ, that the body would be built up. Into Christ's likeness.

It is the Holy Spirit who has poured love in our hearts, and along with that love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control, all the fruit of the Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who is illuminating us all the time. 1 Corinthians 2, 1 John 2:27, the anointing we have from God, so we don't need human teachers because we have an anointing from God, the Holy Spirit who illuminates the Word of God. When is the last time you've run down that list and said, Blessed Holy Spirit, thank you. Thank you for the revelation you gave me in Holy Scripture.

Thank you for the conviction of my sin that led me to fear judgment. Thank you for the regeneration of my dead soul. Thank you for justification. Thank you for adoption, putting me into the family of God. Thank you for taking up residence in my life and living in me permanently.

Thank you for placing me into the body of Christ, mercing me into the union of all believers with the Lord himself. Thank you for empowering me. Thank you for gifting me. Thank you for producing fruit in me. Thank you for illuminating me.

Thank you for Filling me. You've been listening to John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. Consider this. That's the title of his current series here on Grace to You.

Now, as I mentioned before the lesson, your support of Grace to You makes a tangible difference in the lives of people the world over. To partner with us in verse-by-verse Bible teaching, get in touch with us today. You can write to Grace2U Post Office Box 4000 Panorama City, California, 91412. Or you can simply call us at 800-55 GRACE. That, by the way, translates to 800-554-7223.

You can also give at our website, gty.org. And whether or not you're able to make a tax-deductible donation, I encourage you to let us know how you're benefiting from John's verse-by-verse Bible teaching. If a specific radio study has benefited you, perhaps John has helped you understand a passage that was never clear to you. We'd love to hear your story. Our email address is letters at gty.org and our regular address, one more time, box4000.

Panorama City, California, 91412. And to keep up to date on the resources available from Grace to You, make sure you follow us on social media. You can find us on X, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

Now, for John MacArthur and the entire Grace TU staff, I'm Phoenson. Thanks for making this broadcast part of your day and join us again tomorrow as John helps set the record straight on who Jesus Christ is and equips you to share that truth with others. Be here for another 30 minutes of Unleashing God's Truth one verse at a time. On the next, grace to you.