1036. Introduction to the Holy Spirit

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today on The Daily Platform, we're beginning a study series entitled, Breath of Life, which is a study on the Holy Spirit. The first message will be brought by Dr. Sam Horn, and he'll walk us through the ongoing ministry of the Holy Spirit. I'd like to ask you to take your Bible this morning to the Gospel of John, chapter 14.

We will be looking at two texts this morning out of this Gospel. The song we just sang really is an incredible foundation for what we're going to be talking about this semester in our doctrinal theme that focuses in on the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit of God. And as Dr. Pettit formed this series, and those of us who he asked to participate in it started thinking about the shape of the series and how do we take this topic and bring it to bear on our lives in a way that is actually useful and practical, and yet at the same time in a way that brings us into a deeper connection in a relationship with this important member of the Trinity, we began thinking about a title. One of the titles that came across the table to all of us that just resonated with us is the title, The Breath of God. We don't normally think about the Holy Spirit in those terms, but actually when you think about the animating force that gives life to everything that breathes, all of that life finds its source in God. And as we talk through our series, I think you're going to see how the Holy Spirit is actually incredibly connected in the giving of life to everything that exists. And so I think this morning it's very fitting that we introduce our series on the Holy Spirit by talking about him as the breath of life. Many of you in this room are finishing your eighth semester here, and for eight semesters as you come to chapel every Wednesday during the semester, you have heard a different theological theme. I have been here now five years and I think I've gone through the cycle of themes that make up the major components of the faith that we hold as believers. And one of the reasons that this series is important to us and that having a doctrinal themed chapel is important is because you take the formation of your life and the educationally, or the educational equipping of your life for the vocation God has called you very seriously. And I know that you know this, but Dr. Pettit and the administration and the faculty and staff take that very seriously as well. And a big part of that, a big part of your eight semesters has been spent in this room learning about how your faith affects your life.

And I don't think there could be a more significant, a more weighty, a more relevant, and a more personally applicable topic than the one we're going to spend 10 Wednesdays looking at this semester. And so I want to begin it this morning by looking at a foundational truth and then I want to come to the Holy Spirit and I want us to consider three aspects of his person and his work as they are laid out for us here in John 14 and later in John 16. So let's begin with this foundational truth. And for believers, it is the absolute foundational doctrinal reality of our Christian faith. And we would argue that that reality is the Trinity. The Trinity, in terms of how the scripture advances it, is presented in two major ideas.

And I want to give those ideas to you as we start into our thinking about this incredible member of the Godhead that we are viewing as the breath of God. First reality is this, the God of the Bible is one. The God of the Bible is one. This is articulated in the most sacred text to the ancient Jew, the Shema of Israel in Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 4. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.

Therefore you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul with all your heart and with all your soul and with all of your might. Israel was one of 70 nations. Most of these nations worshipped many gods. You know that as polytheism and all you have to do is read the Old Testament and you will actually find many of these gods named.

Many of you have added to your knowledge not just what the scripture says but you've taken courses in sociology. Some of you all of you I think have taken history courses and you have become acquainted with the way the nations of the world think religiously. And most of those nations like the nations of old continue to think religiously about God in a multiplicity of gods. And out of all of those nations God called one nation and he revealed himself to them and the foundational revelation that he gave to them about himself was that he was one and not only was he one he was the only one. There are no other gods before him and this theological belief that came into being through the revelation God gave to his people became known as monotheism.

And I would say this to you this morning all true Israelites in the Old Testament and all true Christians in the New Testament are monotheists. We're not atheists. We are not polytheists. We don't think and believe in many gods. We are not multi-theists.

We are monotheists and we are not agnostic because we believe that we can know this one God through his revelation. So what has he revealed about himself as he began to talk and as he began to give revelation particularly as we make our way progressively through these 66 inspired books? What is this one God said about himself? And that's the second amazing reality and that is this this one God of the Bible eternally exists as three persons. And there are many texts where this actually is stated but probably for time's sake this morning the one that is most familiar to you is the one you've been hearing all of your life when people challenge you about the Great Commission. And Jesus standing on a mountain looks at his authorized witnesses and he commissions them.

The background to Matthew 28 is actually Psalm 2 in your Bible. Because in Psalm 2 you find the God of heaven counseling the nations of the earth to do something. They are they are encouraged and challenged and exhorted and even warned to submit to the son the king that God has chosen to place on his mountain. And all of the other nations of the world are to recognize him and submit to him. And the way that the Old Testament writer put it was this kiss the son lest he be angry with you. And then we're told that this son on that mountain has been given all of the earth as his inheritance. And when you come to Matthew 28 you find that son you find that king on a mountain with his authorized disciples his witnesses and he is authorizing them he is commissioning them to go to those nations and to baptize those who believe in the son and to baptize them in the name by the authority of and then there are three individuals listed the father the son and the spirit. In other words Jesus is saying as I commission you to go out to those nations with the gospel and you introduce them into the incredible reality that there is a kingdom of God and I am the king and when you embrace that reality and you become part of that kingdom and you come out of the kingdom of darkness and are placed into the kingdom of light you are baptized to show this to the entire world and you're to do so using the authority of God the father the son and the spirit and by the way that's happened to every single one of us if you baptize like the new testament talks about. So this one God is a God who eternally exists as three people who equally share the same nature they possess the same will they have equal authority equal power equal glory equal majesty and this foundational truth that we're talking about is called the trinity. Now let's just be real careful as we think about this the bible is not telling us there are three separate gods who have agreed to work together in unity for a common purpose or an eternal objective that's not what the bible is teaching you when it talks about the one god of the bible eternally existing as three persons nor are these persons part of the godhead and each of them has one third of the divine nature sort of like the divine nature is divided up and a third of it goes to the father and a third of it goes to the son and a third of it goes to the spirit that is not how the new testament and old testament talk about this we are not tri-theists we are monotheists who believe in a triunity and the way that theologians have articulated this over the history of the the unfolding of our faith in the creeds is this God's whole and undivided essence what's that mean his nature his will his will his power his authority his glory his undivided essence belongs equally eternally simultaneously and fully to the three distinct members of the godhead in other words they are a triunity another way of saying this is this they are unified and identical with regard to nature they share equally the same nature but they are distinct in person with each person in the god have having a different role in accomplishing the divine plan with regard to creation and redemption and consummation now that's a mouthful and you will have opportunity to learn more about the trinity in most of you and your doctrines classes that are coming up but that foundational reality sets the stage then for us to talk about a member of the trinity that we know about and we have heard about our entire life but that we really don't know much about and that is the third member of that trinity the holy spirit and most of us know that he exists and he's somewhere in the background of things and he sort of makes stuff happen and we kind of know he's god but if we were actually pressed to kind of lay out what our belief is about him we probably would stumble and it doesn't help that the writers or the translators of our english bible call him a ghost that that doesn't help in the in the process so how do we go about thinking about this incredible person many many people have embraced very wrong beliefs about the holy spirit that either distort his identity or they diminish his ministry in in some way let me give you some examples about many many people have reduced the holy spirit in their mind to some kind of a divine force or divine power that believers can tap into or or if you really hear them talk they can unleash we are just going to unleash the holy spirit we're going to unleash this power and if we can just tap into that power as we unleash it man it will it will propel our christian life and our christian ministry forward in unbelievable ways and i want to suggest to you that that could be there could not be a further from the truth idea about the holy spirit than that another way that people have distorted the identity of the spirit is to kind of reduce them to some kind of magical pixie dust that we can sprinkle in or we could apply and once it is applied it activates stuff it's sort of like a divine miracle grow that we throw in our life and all of a sudden we're more holy and that certainly is not the way the new testament presents the holy spirit and even when we take the time to read about him or you hear messages like this about him and we realize he's not a force and he's not just he's not just a like like pixie dust that you apply and we actually regard him as a person of the trinity sometimes in our mind he is the lesser member of the trinity he's signed he's sort of like the junior partner to the father and to the son and so this morning i want to just in in three very simple ways get our thinking sort of grounded around the scripture in terms of who the spirit is and what he really does and so let's begin first with who the spirit is who is the spirit and his identity is disclosed to us in his names in his divine names and there are many names but let me give you three of them this morning one of them is is the name holy spirit that is the name that he is most commonly referred to by in in our bible and there and the two that would immediately come to your mind are acts 1 8 but you shall receive power after the holy ghost has come upon you and romans 1 4 and declared this is this is paul talking about the resurrection of jesus in which he is declared to be the son of god with power according to the spirit of holiness and that's a reference to the spirit's role in the role in the resurrection and so these terms holy spirit speak to his divine identity and to his unstoppable uncontrollable unpredictable strength and power that he exercises in the trinity to accomplish all of the plans of the father and every mission of the son he is that holy power that holy energy the person whose whose life is characterized by this unstoppable unbelievable unpredictable power like you would see in wind or in fire and then he's also called the spirit of god in the spirit of christ and the place where this is most closely seen is in romans 8 9 you are not in the flesh but in the spirit if so be that the spirit of god there's there's one of the names dwell in you and then now if any man have not the spirit of christ there's the other name and so he is not just the holy spirit he's called the spirit of god and the spirit of christ now what does it mean when you read a verse like that it's not talking about ownership this is not the spirit that the father and the son own it's not talking about ownership and it's not talking about source this is this is not the spirit that that came out of the father or came out of the son now i use the word came out i didn't use the word sent because in your bible you're going to find that god the father and god the son actually send the spirit so i didn't use the word sent i used the word came he did not come he was not created the holy spirit didn't have a source in that sense because he's god the spirit of god and the spirit of christ is the person who shares their full identity their full nature and he exercised every prerogative that the father has and that christ has just like jesus christ is the express the exact image of the father the spirit is the exact image of the father and he is also the exact image of the son and that's an incredibly important thing that we need to think about so so his identity is revealed by his names but it's also revealed his role is revealed by his works he is the member of the trinity that energizes and activates and carries out and accomplishes the divine will in in particular works that god has given specifically let me just let me name some works and you're going to hear more about this as the semester unfolds the spirit of god actually was the energizing force that the father and the son used in the creation of the world in genesis one and two the spirit of god moved over the deep in revelation two i'm sorry he he's he activates creation he activates revelation in second timothy three and in second peter one it is the holy spirit who takes the revelation of god about his son and he threw holy men of old moves them to write it down in an inspired way and then he he illuminates believers so that they actually understand the revelation that he has given to them through the father by means of the son or from the father about the son in first corinthian chapter 2 verses 9 through 12 talk about this eye is not seen or ear heard the things that have been prepared for those who love him so how are we going to find them there is a spirit who knows god who can penetrate into the heart of god where we can't go and that spirit is the spirit who is giving you this revelation and in that revelation you can know the heart and the mind of god first corinthians chapter 2 verse 9 through 12 he was unbelievably inextricably involved in the incarnation of our lord where the second member of the godhead in a most amazing way took upon himself a human body with a human nature yet without sin before this happened if you had seen the sun and there are times where you are given a glimpse into heaven daniel seven is one of them you see god the father the ancient of days sitting on a throne and you see the sun coming before him and they are brilliant nobody in heaven has any mistake about their identity and then one day the second member of the godhead stepped away from his throne and the holy spirit formed a body for him in the womb of a young woman who had never known a man and something happened that had never happened before the second member of the godhead so that he could become the second adam rendering perfect obedience to the law that condemned us that we had no hope of obeying energized by the power of the third member of the trinity was born and lived and died and when it was all done and the wrath of god was propitiated and the sins that you and i have committed were expiated the spirit of god raised that second member of the trinity to life and now in heaven when you look in heaven the second member of the trinity has a body an eternal body this is an amazing thing and the spirit of god was orchestrating that and and and architecting that and then he was very instrumental in our redemption if we had time to look at john three verses five through eight we are told we cannot be born without the spirit and without water and the idea there is that the spirit of god has to wash us it goes all the way back to the book of ezekiel and into the promise that god made in the new covenant and then he's involved in our sanctification and our preservation second our second thessalonians 213 god from the beginning has chosen us to salvation through the sanctification of the spirit and then he is he is the incredible architect of the consummation of it all and as your bible ends revelation 22 17 says the spirit and the bride say come because the spirit has done an amazing thing the spirit of god also took a body we don't normally think about this at the incarnation the second member of the trinity took a body and at pentecost the third member of the trinity in dwelt the body and he becomes the energizing life-giving breath of that body you are here today because the spirit of god gave you breath not just your human breath he gave you spiritual life he enlivened you you were dead in your trespasses and sins in paul's writing to the effusions and then later to the carinthians he said not only were you dead in your trespasses and sins you were blind so that you couldn't see the gospel about jesus and so god intervened graciously and through the spirit of god he enlivened you he quickened you and he opened your eyes so that you could see the beauty of god the glory of god in the face of jesus and he's he has continued to indwell this body that we call the church he indwells you and he indwells me and that means two things as we close it means this the holy spirit comforts us by dwelling in us and he guides us by revealing god's truth to us there's an interesting comment in john 16 i had you turned to john 14 and in john 14 jesus said i will not leave you as orphans i will come to you and then in john 16 he tells us that he has many things to say yet but he can't say them because we're not ready to hear them but he is going to spend a spirit a spirit of truth and when he comes he will reveal the truth to you and he will guide the truth to you and then in john chapter 16 verse 7 he says this i tell you the truth it is to your advantage that i go away i mean think about that for a second if we were here today and i'm not being irreverent here but if the lord jesus christ were here in his glorified body and he said to you i'm going to give you a choice you can have my presence on this campus for the rest of the school year or you can have the holy spirit that for most of us would be a no-brainer we would say we'll take you but jesus is actually saying to us there is a better choice it is more advantageous for you to have the holy spirit think about that for a second for you to have the holy spirit think about it this way if jesus were here in his glorified body he would be with you but he would not be with you wherever you went unless he was physically present with you think about in his earthly life he wasn't always physically present with the disciples he was always with them but he was not always near them physically in proximity and jesus said i have a better way i will send you the spirit who is just like me he has my nature he shares my will he has all of my prerogatives and i will send him and he will indwell you and everything that i am doing for you here while i am physically with you he will do for you when he is spiritually in you and he indwells you and he will do something else he will actually grow your understanding of who i really am you know it's an astonishing thing if you think about it peter james john spent all this time with jesus can i say something that might surprise you this morning most of you in this room actually have a fuller understanding of who jesus is you have a deeper realization of who his true identity is and his big mission in mission in life is and you know how you got it you got it because somebody gave you revelation about it somebody came and gave you revelation and that revelation is in your bible and when you read your bible you start to realize things about jesus that you never saw before and so as we talk about the spirit of god it's an amazing truth for us and i hope that as we go through our semester your heart will be challenged to know the holy spirit more and to cherish him deeply as your very own holy spirit lord thank you so much for your word this morning lord this being a very deep concept and we've talked about some complicated ideas so lord i pray that your spirit would do what you said he would do in your word that he would guide us into that truth so that we would not fall into error or or that we would not deny some rich truth that you have given us or be ignorant of it and so lord this semester may this be more than just a series uh theologically driven by truth about your spirit may we actually encounter him in our own lives personally in jesus name amen you've been listening to a sermon preached at bob jones university by dr sam horn these messages are part of the study series on the holy spirit called breath of life join us again tomorrow as we continue this series here on The Daily Platform you