The Spirit of the Lord

Who is the Holy Spirit? When you think about the last century in the Christian church, the aspect of the Spirit that people have been most interested in are the things the Holy Spirit does in and through me. He's not just a power that does powerful things.

He is a person. The third person of the Trinity is personal, and his role in the life and ministry of Jesus proves that fact. The Spirit is the lifelong companion and friend of Jesus.

The two were never apart and never will be. That's amazing, and our wonder should increase as we consider Jesus' role in sending His Spirit to dwell with us. Our teacher is Sinclair Ferguson. In our last study, we were thinking about the way in which the Holy Spirit ministers throughout the days of the Old Covenant. There's a wonderful illustration of that ministry in the writings of the great Princeton theologian B.

B. Warfield. He describes the Old Testament Scriptures and the Old Testament period like a darkened room full of furniture. He says now all the furniture is in the room, but it's only when you turn the light on that you realize all the furniture is there. And he says this is very like the Old Testament revelation of God. The God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New Testament.

He is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. But there's a sense in which for believers under the Old Covenant, they lived in a kind of darkened room. There were moments. You've ever done this, you've gone into a room, turn down the light switch, you've had a moment of light, and then there's been a fuse and everything becomes dark again, and you think, was it really there?

Was it really here? And he says there are moments in the Old Testament Scriptures where the character of our triune God seems to burst into light, and then people are groping a little. Remember what Peter says about the Old Testament prophets. Think of Isaiah, writing Isaiah 52 and 53, wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, and then looking at the page that he's written and asking himself the question, who is this I'm writing about and when is it going to come? This is the principle of progressive revelation. God, little by little, unfolds His true character and His glorious triune being. Jesus is the One who reveals the Father. Remember how He's asked the question in the upper room, if you would just show us the Father, then that would be fine, that would suffice us, said Philip. And Jesus says, have you been all this time with Me and yet you still don't know that I and the Father are one? If you take the Sermon on the Mount, just put it in between your fingers, there are probably three or four pages in your Bible, there are more references in those three chapters in Matthew's Gospel to what it means to know God as your Heavenly Father than there are in the whole of the Old Testament put together. God is spoken of as Father who is the Creator.

He's spoken of the Father who created Israel by bringing them out of bondage in the land of Egypt. But there are very few, if any, obvious references in the Old Testament Scriptures to the ordinary believer coming to God and saying, our Heavenly Father. Now the same is true of the Holy Spirit. And it's fascinating to me that in that same chapter, in John chapter 14, where Jesus says to Philip, Philip, haven't you understood the Father by knowing me? That Jesus then goes on to say, and this is in John chapter 14 and in verse 17, I'm going to ask the Father and He will give you another Helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. You know Him for He dwells with you and will be in you.

Now a couple of things here. First of all, notice the parallel between the way in which Jesus reveals the Father and the way in which Jesus now reveals the Holy Spirit. Then narrow down, focus down on these words, you know the Spirit for He dwells with you and will be in you. What does Jesus mean by that? By saying, you know the Spirit because He dwells with you and will be in you. One very popular way of understanding these words is that Jesus is describing the difference between an old covenant believer and a new covenant believer.

Perhaps you've heard that. In the old covenant, the Spirit was with God's people. In the new covenant, the Spirit is in God's people. I am very confident that that is not what Jesus meant.

What Jesus meant, I am fairly confident, is this. You know the Spirit. Well, how did they know the Spirit? Because, as Jesus, the Spirit has been with you. Now, where has the Spirit been with them?

The Spirit has been with them in the person of the Lord Jesus through the ministry of the Lord Jesus. Everything the Lord Jesus has done, He has done in the power and with the companionship of the Holy Spirit. And what Jesus is actually saying here is, just as you have seen the Father because of my fellowship with the Father, oh that's what the Father is like. Some of you become Christians that way.

You saw a Christian believer and you thought, oh that's what being a Christian really is. And so, all the way through His ministry, the disciples have been seeing what it means to have fellowship with the Father because they've seen it in Jesus. And now, Jesus is saying exactly the same kind of thing is true of the Holy Spirit.

You have seen who He is and what He does as you've watched my ministry. Now He's saying, and we'll come back to this, that is the Holy Spirit who will dwell in you. The Spirit who has been with me and in me all of my life, all of my ministry, that is the Holy Spirit I'm going to give to you.

And so, He says, I'm going to ask the Father, and He's going to give you the Holy Spirit who has been with me. Now actually, there were prophecies about this in the Old Testament Scriptures, especially in the prophecy of Isaiah. Isaiah is the prophet who makes Christ clearest to us in the Old Testament Scriptures, although Christ wasn't all that clear to him. And Isaiah is also the prophet who makes clearest the ministry of the Holy Spirit in relationship to the Lord Jesus. So, for example, in Isaiah chapter 11, we have these marvelous words about the Spirit's relationship to the coming Savior. The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, and His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord, Isaiah 11 verses 2 and 3. And then later on as Isaiah begins to describe the servant of the Lord who is going to come, remember how in the second half of Isaiah there are these four poems in chapter 42, 49, 50, and then 52 to 53, the best known, the description of the suffering servant. But when that servant is introduced in Isaiah chapter 42, he is introduced as the one who's been upheld by the Lord and on whom the Lord has put His Spirit so that He will bring forth justice or righteousness to the nations.

And then later on in Isaiah chapter 61, perhaps the most famous of these several statements, the words that Jesus quotes in His first sermon, the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, sent me to bind up the brokenhearted and to proclaim liberty to the captives, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. So these prophecies are pointing forwards to something very special, that when the Son of God becomes incarnate, right from the very beginning of His life and all through His ministry, the Spirit of the Lord will come upon Him and equip Him and empower Him for that ministry and will be, here's the point to notice, and here's one of the most marvelous ways to think about the Holy Spirit and His character that will draw you out in love for the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the lifelong companion, supporter, encourager, counselor, and director of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Think about that. You know, so often in the Christian life we're more concerned about what the Holy Spirit is doing in me. And when you think about the last century in the Christian church, the aspect of the Spirit that people have been most interested in are the things the Holy Spirit does in and through me. That's why I say the Holy Spirit is actually an unknown person. He's not just a power that does powerful things. He is a person. And the most important thing about His person in all and in all the things He's done throughout the whole history of the world is that He was with the Lord Jesus Christ throughout the whole course of His ministry, His constant companion.

We might even be bold enough to say His very best friend. And in the Gospels there are four points really in the 33 years of Jesus' ministry where this comes to the surface. First of all in His birth and infancy, second in the inauguration of His public ministry, thirdly during the course of that public ministry, and fourthly in His work, in His passion, resurrection, ascension, and the giving of the Holy Spirit.

And I want to spend a little while on each of these aspects, and this will take us into the next study as well as interest us in this. So let's begin with the infancy and childhood of the Lord Jesus. What's the role of the Holy Spirit in the infancy and childhood of the Lord Jesus?

Well, Luke tells us, doesn't he, in Luke chapter 1 in verses 31 and in verse 35, that the Holy Spirit's ministry was engaged with the life and humanity of the Lord Jesus right from the very beginning. The angel Gabriel comes to the Virgin Mary and says, verse 31, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus. He will be the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. He will reign over the house of Jacob. His kingdom will never have an end.

How is this going to take place? Answer, the Holy Spirit, verse 35, will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Now, there's so much in this, isn't there? This is the last in a whole series of childless women whom the Holy Spirit enables to conceive. And the miracle here is that it's not just a barren woman, it's a virgin woman.

But you notice the language that Luke records the angel Gabriel using? The Holy Spirit will come upon you. The power of the Most High will overshadow you.

That's supposed to remind us of something, isn't it? Genesis 1, verse 2, the Holy Spirit coming on the darkness of the original created mass. Now the Holy Spirit is coming on the darkness of the womb of the Virgin Mary. Interestingly, the Holy Spirit does perhaps His most significant work where prying eyes can never see creation, the conception of the Lord Jesus, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the regeneration of the individual. He loves to do things in personal secrecy.

That's part of His humility, part of His modesty. But do you see what He's doing here? He's beginning a new creation.

That's what He's doing. The first creation He brought order out of disorder, fullness out of emptiness, and now He comes to a disordered world that has no capacity to save itself, to a world of emptiness and barrenness that can contribute nothing to its redemption, to a virgin girl who has no capacity to give birth to a Savior. And what He's doing is He's coming upon that old creation, the humanity that is found in the Virgin Mary, and there within her humanity, within her womanhood, He's bringing to conception the Son of God, sinless, who will become the Savior of the world. But there's an echo of something else here, I think, not only of the Spirit hovering over the waters in the original creation, but the Shekinah glory cloud, the presence of the Spirit hovering over the Virgin Mary, in order to point out that this is the One who is going to bring about the true and the real exodus, not just an exodus from physical bondage and barrenness, but an exodus from spiritual bondage and barrenness. And so it shouldn't surprise us that when Jesus preaches His first sermon, when He enters on the public arena of His ministry, it's precisely this that He points His listeners to. So right from the very beginning of Jesus' life, from the moment of His conception, the Holy Spirit is present and ministering. The Holy Spirit was the companion of the Lord Jesus when He was an embryo. I see something from time to time in one of the billboards as I drive, marvelous picture of an infant in the womb and the words beside it saying something like, Did you know my heart begins to beat after 18 days?

It's awesome. But before 18 days, before the heart of the embryonic Lord Jesus was consciously beating in that way, the Holy Spirit was present with Him. That's something that leads us to worship, isn't it, and awe, to think. Just think about it this way, and we'll come back to it.

The Holy Spirit who is given to me is the Holy Spirit who is working there in the womb of the Virgin Mary, who knows the Lord Jesus with that kind of intimacy. But let's fast forward, well, fast forward twelve years, shall we, to the narrative at the end of Luke chapter 2. You remember the incident Jesus is in the temple. His mom and dad make off. Dad thinks He must be with the women, and presumably Mary thinks He must be with the guys, and they're away, and suddenly they realize that He's not with either. So where is He? In a panic they go back to Jerusalem.

They're all over the place. The last place they think of looking is the temple, and you can catch the flavor of this situation when Mary says, now, this is typical in a family, isn't it? You know, there would be mom who would say it. Son, she says, why have you treated her? Your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.

She's almost hysterical. And then Jesus says this, which has always fascinated me partly because it's a puzzle to the scholars. They really don't know what to make of this. Jesus said to them, why were you looking for me? Did you not know I must be in my father's house? I imagine myself as a twelve-year-old, and my parents have been looking for me for an hour, and they find me in my mother's hysterical, which my mother actually never was, but imagine my mother is hysterical, Sinclair, where on earth have you been? If I had said to my mother, you should have known where I was, I might not have been able to sit down for the rest of the day.

So, why is it? Now, here's the question, and it really is a puzzle, isn't it? Why is it that Jesus is not being a recalcitrant, disobedient child when He says to His parents, you should have known where I was?

I think, now, it's not possible to be dogmatic about this. I think the reason must be because it was His parents who had taught Him that the place where He would see the face of God was in the temple. Remember the twenty-seventh Psalm when God says to the worshiper, seek my face, and He's wanting to stay in the temple.

He says, your face, Lord, do I seek? I think Jesus was very gently saying to His parents, maybe especially to His mother, Mother, you know the ministry of the Holy Spirit in my life, and you know that the great thing the Holy Spirit does is to unveil the face of the Heavenly Father, and in that sense you should have known where I was. And then without actually mentioning the Holy Spirit, Luke makes it clear that the Holy Spirit was upon the Lord Jesus because, verse 52, Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in… Now, it's hard to take these words in. He increased in favor with God and man. Now, we all understand He increased in favor with man. Increased in favor with God?

How could that be? Because, and this is the point of this whole story, as a twelve-year-old boy, he was walking step by step in fellowship with the Holy Spirit who was giving him wisdom. He was fulfilling the prophecies of Isaiah that when the Savior came, one of the marks of his life would be that the wisdom of God would be on him. And that wisdom of God was given to the Lord Jesus as the Spirit worked in his life. I think one of the sweetest ways to describe the relationship between the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit is the picture that John will later give us when he describes Jesus saying that the Holy Spirit is the Counselor, the Paraclete, the Companion, the Supporter, the Guide, the Friend. So that right from the very beginning of his life through infancy and into childhood, the Lord Jesus was keeping in step with the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit was shaping and forming his life as his nearest and dearest companion. What a beautiful picture of the active role of the Holy Spirit in Christ's life. We are thankful for Ligonier teaching fellow Sinclair Ferguson and the series that he's sharing with us this week here on Renewing Your Mind.

It's called Who Is the Holy Spirit? We'd like to send you this 12-part series. Simply contact us today with your donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org, or if you prefer, you can call us with your gift at 800-435-4343. Ligonier Ministries exists to help growing Christians know what they believe, why they believe it, how to live it, and how to share it. And this series is one that needs to be shared.

You heard Dr. Ferguson say today that there's been confusion in the church about the Holy Spirit. So again, we'd be happy to send you this two-DVD set for your donation of any amount. Our number again is 800-435-4343, and our web address is renewingyourmind.org. And after you view the series, you may want to consider donating it to your church. Here at Ligonier Ministries, our desire is to encourage you in your understanding of Scripture. And one way we do that is through our monthly Bible study magazine, Table Talk. It provides guided studies through the Bible for each day of the month. Plus, you'll find helpful articles from trusted pastors and theologians.

You can learn more and subscribe at tabletalkmagazine.com. Jesus was led into the wilderness by the Spirit so that He could be tempted by Satan. Tomorrow, Dr. Ferguson will show us that Jesus didn't undergo those trials alone. I hope you'll join us for his message titled, Dwelling Within, Friday on Renewing Your Mind.