We’re going to continue to look at the subject of the Holy Spirit, and, if you remember, last week I brought the subject up. We talked a little bit about the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and I began with this little diagram which tells you about the three persons of God.
As we see here, the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, but the Father is NOT the Son, the Son is NOT the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is NOT the Father: Three Persons in One.
We said that God is a personality of ‘Three in One’. Each One is a Person. They’re not divided, yet they’re not the same.
The classical description of the Three says that They’re consubstantial, co-equal, and co-eternal. Each One is God from the beginning to the end, and each One is equally good.
Can you understand it? It’s difficult to understand and as I said last week, there are many things in the Bible which we have difficulty in getting our heads around, and trying to understand with the mental capacities we possess.
In fact, none of us can actually work out what God is like by our own wisdom and understanding, All we can know about God is what He reveals to us, what He reveals to us by the Spirit or by the Word of God.
Some people say ‘If I could understand it, then I would believe it’.
Actually, it works the other way around:
If you can believe it and have faith, then you will understand it.
Tony Pearce
Faith comes by hearing of the Word and the Word gives us understanding.
We can understand what God is like and we can really only know God as much as He reveals Himself to us. If we don’t accept God’s revelation to us, we can be as clever as we like, we can be as religious as we like but we won’t make our way to God.
5 “Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess. 6 Therefore be careful to observe them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes, and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’
Deuteronomy 4.5-6
We have to accept God on His terms as He tells us what He is like.
The Holy Spirit, as I said last week, is the Person who really communicates God to us. He’s active in bringing God’s Word to humanity.
12 For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Hebrews 4.12
He comes to people to be born again of the Holy Spirit, to be filled with the Holy Spirit. He comes to convict us of sin and to restrain evil.
Last week, I did say that although God is unchanging and eternal in His nature, there is a change in the way in which God relates to us as human beings after the death and resurrection of Jesus, and after the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit came upon people to anoint them for service. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit comes into our lives so He might give us new life in Jesus and that He might dwell within us in a way which was not possible under the Old Covenant.
2 You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; 3 clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.
2 Corinthians 3.2-3
Last week I also gave this second diagram of the nature of human beings which tells us that we are basically tripartite in our nature.
We have a body, we have a soul, and we have a spirit. Many people deny the spirit part of us and that’s actually the problem of the human race. Because the spirit part of us is made to be filled with God’s Spirit. And, when the Spirit part of us, when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, then, the soul, the mind, the emotions, and the will are all under the control of God and we have the harmony with our being which is meant to be there as the Holy Spirit dwells within us.
We also have God working in our bodies to heal us from our sicknesses, to bring us ultimately to the resurrection, to newness of life in Jesus the Messiah.
God wants to dwell within us by the Holy Spirit and the problem, even if we become Christians, is that then, we have the battle in the spirit between the flesh, the old nature, and the new nature in Jesus Christ.
That’s why Jesus, the Bible, tells us He wants us to be filled with the Holy Spirit that we might have God’s presence within us and that God might be influencing our mind, our emotions, our will, and He might be ministering to us in our bodies and preparing us for that time when we will go to be with Him and we’ll have the resurrection body.
Of course, when Jesus comes again, the Bible says that those who are alive in Jesus will be caught up to meet Him as He comes in the clouds of heaven.
How is He going to recognize those who are His? By the fact that they’ve got the Holy Spirit within them.
When we die, how are we going to go to the Lord and be going to a better place? It’s as we have the Holy Spirit within us.
That’s why we need to be born again of the Holy Spirit.
