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We have studied 6 points about The Holy Spirit:
- The Holy Spirit is Himself a person, just as much as The Father and Son are people
- God fills heaven and earth and knows all things through
- The Holy Spirit The Holy Spirit has been active in the universe since the creation onward
- The Holy Spirit inspired and empowered all the men of God in the OT
- The Holy Spirit in the ministry and teaching of Jesus Himself
- The Holy Spirit was the fulfillment of the promise Jesus made when He fully descended on Pentecost
The Person, gifts and ministries of the Holy Spirit are revealed and function with the greatest accuracy through people who know and understand Him and understand them.
If God, The Holy Spirit, is to function fully in our lives, we must have an open heart and a consuming desire to know all we can about the HOLY SPIRIT -the nature and role of Him!
Jesus gave a promise ➔ said it is expedient (Greek: profitable) I go= so the Holy Spirit (Comforter) will come.
Jesus said, “I cannot be with you always but I will send one who will.”
- You might be your deepest, darkest hour; BUT you are not ALONE!
- God, the Holy Spirit, is with you!
- The Comforter is the Holy Ghost.
The Bible unfolds a mystery that God is both one and yet more than one; three persons, yet one God.
The three persons revealed in Scripture are:
- the Father,
- the Son,
- and the Holy Spirit
One of the most profound and distinctive revelations in the Bible is that of the person and the work of the Holy Spirit.
1. The first thing we must understand is that the Holy Spirit is Himself a person, just as much as the Father and the Son of people
Because of our human parallels, is relatively easy for us to realize that God the Father and God the Son is a person, but it is not always as easy to realize that God the Holy Spirit is a person
2. God fills heaven and earth and knows all things through The Holy Spirit…
- There is no place where God is not
- Through the Holy Spirit, God knows everything
- There is nothing hidden from God; and through the Holy Spirit,
- God is present everywhere at the same time
- These two characteristics are represented by the theological terms omniscient and omnipresent, Respectively
You see it unfolded in various passages of Scripture..
Jer 23:23-24 (NIV), “Am I only a God nearby,” declares the Lord , “and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?” declares the Lord . “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” declares the Lord .
- God fills heaven and earth.
- There is no place God is not
- There is no place where things happen that God does not know about them
Psalm 139:1-12 (NIV), “O Lord , you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord . You hem me in behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me,your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”
- God’s presence permeates the entire universe
- There is nowhere that you can go and be hidden from God…
- No distance can separate you from Him…
- No darkness can hide you from Him…
- God is everywhere, throughout the entire universe.
- He knows all that is happening in every place
The key that unlocks the secret is in the seventh verse, where the psalmist said.. “Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” This is a typical example of parallelism in Hebrew poetry, where the 2 halves of the verse say essentially the same thing.
- God’s presence throughout the universe is his Holy Spirit.
- Through the Holy Spirit, God is present everywhere;
- and through the Holy Spirit, God knows all that is going on in the universe at any time.
3. The Holy Spirit been active in the universe from creation onward.
The psalmist told us about the actual process of creation. “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.” (PS. 33:6 NASB)
Where the English translation says “breath”, the Hebrew can also mean “spirit”.
That would change the reading to: “by the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the spirit of his mouth all their host.” In other words, the two great agents of creation that brought the whole universe into being were the Word of the Lord, and the Spirit of the Lord, or the Holy Spirit.
If we turn back to the verses at the beginning of the Bible the describe creation, we see this unfold in greater detail…Gen 1:2-3 (NIV), “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.”
- When the Spirit of God and the Word of God are united, creation – a new thing takes place..
- In this case, light – is created
- Light comes into being, formed by the Spirit and by the Word of God.
- You can see that the Holy Spirit has been at work in the universe from creation onward and has always been present everywhere in the universe.
- In a sense, the Holy Spirit is the active effective agent of the Godhead.
4. The Holy Spirit inspired and empowered all the men of God in the O.T.
A few examples:
- Bezalel
- Joshua
- Gideon
- David
We cannot effectively serve God without the Holy Spirit… In (2 Peter 1:21), Peter summed up the ministry of all the O.T prophets when he said, “For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
No prophet who brought a true message from God ever spoke out of his own initiative or from his own thinking, reasoning, our understanding; but each prophet was inspired (prompted or carried along) by the Holy Spirit. That made his message more than human; it became a message from God himself.
What a lesson for us…
If they were unable to effectively serve God without the Holy Spirit, neither can we
The Trinity may be viewed in light of the following functions, offering clarity of personage..
- God The Father = Commander
- God The Son = Administrator
- God The Holy Spirit = Worker / Operator
John 16:7, “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth; it is expedient (profitable) for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.”
Acts 1:5-8, “For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” So when they met together, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Acts 2:1-4, “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”
On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came down to earth as a person. He is now the resident, personal representative of the Godhead on the earth.
Jesus the Son, as a person, had gone back to the Father in heaven. Then, from the Father and the Son together, the Holy Spirit came to take the place of Jesus.
Jesus promised the Holy Spirit would stay with us forever, not just a few brief years.
Where does the Holy Spirit “live now”?
There are 2 answers:
First, He lives in the Church, the corporate body of Christ, Paul asked the Corinthian believers:
- 1 Cor 3:16, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?”
- Here, Paul was talking about the corporate temple of the Holy Spirit.
Second, in 1 Cor 6:19 Paul said something even more dramatic.. He revealed that the Holy Spirit dwells according to God’s purpose in the body of each believer:
- “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God”?
- As believers of Jesus Christ, my physical body now becomes the dwelling place of God the Holy Spirit!
We must have an open heart and a consuming desire to know all we can about the nature and role of the Holy Spirit for Him to function fully in our lives.
Love,
