I'm very excited to be teaching this quarter on the Holy Spirit. It's a topic I think probably much neglected and of extreme importance for us as believers, for all believers of every stripe. I have a lot of great books on my shelves on the Holy Spirit. From time to time I've gone through the whole library and just pulled them out a little bit so they stick out so that as I'm seated in my office I can look around and say, oh yeah, that one and that one and there's one. And I want to read them all and digest all of that and then put together an awesome class. I did not have time to do that, nor could I do it as well as Sinclair Ferguson has already done it. And so just both by way of just full disclosure, Because I'm using a lot from Ferguson. This book, The Holy Spirit, it's getting to be a bit old. 96. Doesn't sound old to most of us. But I just say that because it's not the easiest thing to get your hands on. If you want a copy, I'm not sure it's still in print. Unfortunately, some of the best stuff is the least purchased, right? And publishing houses are, after all, businesses. And if it doesn't sell, they can't print it. But this is from a series that University Press did on the contours of Christian theology. They asked Sinclair Ferguson to write the volume on the Holy Spirit. He's done a lot of that reading, a lot of that digesting. He's got his way of organizing it. If you were in the men's study this past year and did the blueprints for Christian sanctification with us, Devoted to God was the title of that book. I know all of the men just Loved that book. So many comments about how great that was. This is just as good. Probably a little bit less accessible, but not by much. And just very good. And Ferguson is just so helpful and writes so well. And so both because if you want to pick up a copy, I don't have time to cover everything he says. You'll get more if you purchase a copy of the book and kind of read along. Also because I'm just using a lot from him and I can't slow down and tell you every time I'm using a phrase from him or This next part comes, you know, it's his organizational Structure verbatim. I'm just not gonna say that. I'm just gonna run with it So just so you know, that's that's always gonna be here behind in the background, I think Let me go ahead then and open us with prayer and we'll see how far we get and Father, we thank you for your multitudinous goodness to us. We thank you for the Holy Spirit and for His role in calling us and in equipping us and sustaining us. We thank you for this opportunity to gather together and to learn together more of who the Holy Spirit is and how crucial He is for the Christian life and to commune with Him and through Him and in Him with you and with the Son. our Savior Jesus. Lord, we ask that by your Holy Spirit you would be with us in this hour to bless us and to teach us and to grow us and to draw us nearer to yourself and to conform us ever more closely to the image of your Son. We ask it in his name. Amen. All right, the Holy Spirit, lesson one, is on the Holy Spirit as creator, as redeemer, and as a personal power. We'll see if I get to all of that. Have your Bibles handy. Sometimes I will just read the Scriptures because there are a lot of them, but sometimes we'll look them up together. The Holy Spirit seems a little vague to most Christians. Just the very title, Holy Spirit, conveys less for most of us than do the titles Father and Son. We know what a father is, we know what a son is, and those very titles give us some idea of how we are to think about those persons of the Trinity. But we are less certain what a spirit is. Abraham Kuyper wrote, we know not what spirits are, nor what our own spirit is. It reminds me of something Augustine said. Everybody knows what time is until asked to explain it. And then we find out, I don't really know how to say that. And spirit might be somewhat similar. We have fairly vague ideas that come with Holy Spirit. Perhaps even worse, Ferguson says, at least psychologically and emotionally, is the older Holy Ghost. What does that mean exactly? And we have a tendency to think something ethereal, something kind of insubstantial, not material, invisible. Those are the kinds of ideas that tend to come, I think, when we think of spirit. As you've probably heard, the biblical words for spirit in Hebrew, ruach, and in Greek, pneuma. Both denote air in motion. So wind or breath, we would get the same words, the same word used if we're talking about either of those things. And we'll look at some places where it's used in that way. We tend to focus then on the not quite material or substantial nature of wind and breath. But that would not be the most helpful or most biblical way to think about it. The biblical focus is on the power or the energy or the life that is in breath. so that the power that is in the storm and the wind that can, well we had a storm here not long ago that took all of the HVAC units off the roof of some government building back behind Walmart there, right? That just kind of raw power Or again, with breath, that's where the breath of life is, that biblical phrase, right? This is where the life is, is in the breath. So those kinds of ideas. We can see that in uses in scripture, for instance, in Job 119. We know that first chapter describes the whole tragedy of Job and this series of servants that come to him, telling him, all the camels are gone, all the sheep are gone, everything is gone. That culminates then when the servant comes and says, suddenly a great wind came from across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house and it fell on the young people and they are dead. And I alone have escaped to tell you. So Job's children are taken from him by this powerful wind. In 1 Kings 10, the Queen of Sheba has come. She has seen all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his servants, the service of his waiters and their apparel, his cupbearers, and his entryway by which he went up to the house of Israel. When she saw this, there was no more spirit in her. The NIV translates that, she was breathless. It's that same word there again. Isaiah 31, 3. Here, spirit is contrasted with flesh. Now again, we have a tendency to then think immaterial versus material. But if you listen for the significance of the text here, what's really being contrasted is the flesh that is characterized by inertia and lack of power, which can only be removed by the Spirit of God. The Spirit is motion and life, vivification. So Isaiah 31.3 says, Now the Egyptians are men and not God, and their horses are flesh and not spirit. When the Lord stretches out His hand, both he who helps will fall, and he who is helped will fall down. They all will perish together. So the horses are just flesh. When the spirit of the Lord moves, the enemies of God shall fall, because they're just flesh. In fact, this theme of power and energy and motion is sometimes almost violent in the scriptures, and I think we've already seen that. Isaiah 59.19 says, So they shall fear the name of the Lord from the west, and His glory from the rising of the sun, for He will come like a rushing stream which the wind of the Lord drives. So there's this kind of imagery of when the Lord comes, He just blows over the whole surface of the land, and there's just destruction in His wake. which we get from Isaiah 40, verse 7, is, well, the grass withers, the flower fades, because the breath of the Lord blows upon it. Surely the people are grass. There is nothing before the, what, spirit or breath of the Lord. So that much just by way of sort of introduction to just help us think first of all about the term spirit. Where's the biblical emphasis? It's not on the ethereal, the sub-material, the invisible. Though those things are true. Those things are, broadly speaking, those are biblically implied, and I'm not saying that God is material or physical and can be seen, I'm not suggesting that, but rather the emphasis in scripture lies with this idea of power, energy, motion, life. Having said that, then, we want to look at the Holy Spirit as creator, or his involvement in creation. bringing God's intended order and life to what is unfinished, bringing the fullness of God's purpose to bear in what has been begun, but is not yet what God intends for it to be. That's how we see the Spirit introduced to us in Genesis chapter 1 verse 2. This is probably a familiar text for you. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." It's a disputed text, but traditionally, and Ferguson spends some pages arguing, that the traditional interpretation is correct, that the spirit of God hovering over the waters is the right translation, and that Moses does mean, inspired by the Holy Spirit, to communicate that this third person of the Trinity was there at creation. God has called something into existence, but what immediately comes into existence is chaotic and without form. And it is then the spirit that brings order and perfection to what God has made. And then we get the breath of life just in the next chapter, as we get the second telling, a more zoomed-in version of creation, specifically of man in chapter 2. And verse 7 says, the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. So there again, though it does not say that it's the spirit of God that breathes it in, it uses that same word for the breath and for the breath of life. God breathed into the man. It communicates the idea of spirit, and you see it bringing life there in that case as well. And so it is at least suggested there, the Holy Spirit's activity in bringing life to man as the pinnacle and completion of this ordering of creation. I feel like I'm just moving so fast maybe there isn't time for digestion. Let me just pause and ask if there are ideas that have come to mind, thoughts that make sense out of this over here, or something I've run over that I don't see how that fits in. The idea, too, of spirit is linked and still Speaking of his role in creation here, we'll get to that when we read the text. I can have you looking that up. Psalm 104. We'll talk about it a little bit, so I'll give you a little bit of time to find Psalm 104, verses 29 and 30. And here we'll see that the idea of the Spirit of God is linked to the face of God. which is indicative of the covenantal presence of God. Think of the Levitical blessing that Moses taught the priests to use in order to put God's name on his people. Part of that blessing is, may his face shine upon you. One indication of the displeasure of God is that he would turn his face away from you. And so the face of God is tied directly to the covenantal presence of God to bless His people and that is linked to this idea of spirit tied here to creation. Somebody want to read Psalm 104, 29 and 30 for us? You hide your face, they are troubled. You take away their breath, they die and return to dust, to their dust. You send forth your spirit, and they are created, and you renew the face of the earth. to just all of the living creatures on the face of the earth. You hide your face, and they are troubled. And then, of course, Hebrew poetry doesn't use rhythm and rhyme, right? It uses parallelism, says the same thing over again. And so the same way to say, you hide your face, they are troubled, is to say you take away their breath, they die, and return to the dust. And then he does it again. The flip side of that, right? Rather than depriving, here's the giving. When you send forth your spirit, They are created and you renew the face of the ground. So, I just, I find that profound in ways that I find difficult to express. That the Spirit of God is for us, the presence of God with us, which is His face turned toward us. the answer to that biblical blessing upon God's people. May His face shine upon you. What that means is may His Spirit be poured out on you and in you. The fulfillment of which we find then at Pentecost and in the New Testament age. We'll be spending most of today, almost all of today in the Old Testament. A related text tying face and spirit in his presence from Ezekiel 39, 29, I will not hide my face anymore from them when I pour out my spirit upon the house of Israel, declares the Lord God. So there again, it's that parallelism. Pouring out of the spirit is identical with turning his face toward his people. To continue with the idea of creation, the idea that the Holy Spirit equips God's people for order, government, for sense as opposed to nonsense, and for beauty. We see a lot of this come out Well, in equipping men like Moses and Joseph and Daniel for governing with wisdom, with the building and furnishing of the tabernacle, according to the images that were shown to Moses, there are men who are equipped, what, by the Spirit of God, for that task. I think maybe, I've got a bunch of texts there, Maybe we'll skip most of that. Let me just ask if that rings bells for people enough. kind of biblical background in those specific areas where we can think of, for instance, when Moses takes his father-in-law's advice, and there's going to be elders in Israel who will handle most of the judging, and only the most difficult cases will come to Moses, then upon that occasion, what happens? God takes some of the spirit that was in Moses and distributes it among the 70 elders, whereupon they prophesy, which they never did again. Why that spirit taken some from him and given to these 70? Because they need wisdom for governing. for bringing order to the people of God, for structuring this new nation. Just like the Spirit was there in the beginning to bring structure to what God had brought into existence out of nothing, now there's a new nation that needs ordering and structuring and wise governing. And so the Spirit is there again to bring that and to equip the people for that purpose. And again, it's Bezalel, I think, and Aholyab, artisans who were given the spirit of God with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship to devise artistic designs and so forth. In order to carry out the beautification of the tabernacle, to represent the beauty of God's holiness with his people, these artisans had to be equipped to bring that order, structure, beauty to the tabernacle. And again, we find the spirit of God there doing that. I compute without reading through the list of difficult texts. Nobody wants to say, no, I don't know what you're talking about. Sorry, I try not to ask questions that you can't answer. Either for embarrassment or for the type of question I call the guess what I'm thinking question. It's like so vague, you just take a stab in the dark. Well, that's true, but it's not what I'm looking for. I try to avoid that. I've got a quote here from Ferguson. The beauty and symmetry of the work accomplished by these men in the construction of the tabernacle not only gave aesthetic pleasure, but a physical pattern in the heart of the camp which served to re-establish concrete expressions of the order and glory of the creator and his intentions for his creation. A hint was thus given that the work of re-creation must begin with the chosen people. Here, already in the Exodus narrative, we find the principle which will emerge with full clarity only later in the New Testament, namely, the Spirit orders, or re-orders, and ultimately beautifies God's creation. In the Garden of Eden, the tabernacle, and the temple, the worshiper discovers the beauty of holiness, which is but a reflection of the beauty of God himself. In the final temple, the man filled with the spirit, Jesus, this pattern will reach its apex. So is that why this occurs in the wilderness as well, in a similar motif? As related to the chaos to which you brought order, is that what you're thinking? Yeah, just as far as... It's an interesting thought. Could be. The tabernacle is a recreation of Eden. Right, in the midst of wilderness, yeah. Yes? I'm just trying to... If there's a chaotic... period, or the surroundings are chaotic at Pentecost, I guess there's lots of different languages. There's lots of, I don't know if he goes into, or that fits there as well. I guess that's my, what am I thinking question. Does that make sense? Yeah, well, sure. And I think it's broadly recognized that there's an undoing of Babel that goes on. at Pentecost. So where there's a disordering at Babel and a driving apart Then here's there's a bringing together, which again, we're living in the between times, right? That's already been accomplished at Pentecost. But we don't see that continue, where when you're converted to Christ, you magically can speak Hebrew. And we all speak Hebrew around the globe. We wait for heaven. Hebrew prophets are fond of suggesting that we'll all speak Hebrew. John Owen said so, I believe, so that gives them authority to say so. So that idea of creation, that ordering, but then also the reordering, you hear that coming in. He's also the agent of reordering, bringing order back to where chaos had been brought into the world through the fall. And so we look at the Holy Spirit not only as creator, but then also as recreator, the redemptive power of God centered in the Spirit as well. We begin to see it already in the Old Testament, though admittedly this idea of the Holy Spirit in recreation, in regeneration, in effectual calling and in equipping the church and all of that kind of thing really comes to its fullness in the New Testament. But if we read the Old Testament like we're supposed to in light of the New Testament, then we do see beginnings there already. For example, we've just been talking about his role in reestablishing order in this new nation for government and the building of the tabernacle and its furnishings and all of that. That's not just the ordering of an external theocratic nation. There's a moral reordering that's going on there at the same time. And we can see, for instance, David's understanding of that in Psalm 51. Probably a familiar psalm to most of us, Psalm 51, verses 10 through 13, David says, Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Parallelism identifying those two there again. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you. David's concern is no doubt some that he will lose his public office as his predecessor did. Saul was rejected by God and removed from being king of Israel. David now finds himself to be in breach of God's commandment and in a way that I'm sure a year earlier he would have said, never happen, you're crazy. I'm the man after God's own heart. You have no idea who you're talking to. But now he finds himself having committed this grievous sin and convicted of it through the words of God to him, the prophet Nathan. And he writes Psalm 51. So his concern, no doubt, some, that he might lose his public office, but it clearly goes beyond that. He says, do not take your Holy Spirit from me. And that's explained in the psalm itself as, do not cast me from your presence. Not just from office, but from your presence. He says, restore unto me the joy of your salvation. There's a personal, moral, relational concern that David has here. And he puts it in terms of the Spirit of God. He recognizes his need for the presence of God, which is the Spirit of God with him. He recognizes his need for the Spirit of God to restore in him a right spirit. That's something he can't do for himself. Again, to look at the Old Testament in light of the New, if we look at things in the New Testament about the Old Testament, We find that the New Testament makes use of Old Testament examples to point us to spiritual qualities and spirit-enabled faith. So there are moral and spiritual qualities that the New Testament says are only produced by the Holy Spirit. For example, in Galatians 5, the fruit of the Spirit. That's where these things come from. Well, we can look through the pages of the Old Testament and find Old Testament saints that exhibit these qualities. Where did they come from? Well, they came from the Spirit of God. The New Testament teaches us that. So we see the Spirit there active in these moral and salvific ways. Romans 4.11 makes use of Abraham as an example of justification by faith. Well, how does that happen? That's the work of the Holy Spirit, who brings faith. Hebrews 11, the hall of faith, as we call it. Many of the saints delineated as examples of the life of faith, or what the New Testament, in parallel, calls walking in the Spirit. Here are lots of examples from Hebrews 11 of people in the Old Testament who were walking in the Spirit, demonstrating a life of faith. So even in the Old Testament, though, we really need the New Testament to shine a light on that. Once it does, then we can see in the Old Testament there the Holy Spirit active in this recreative, regenerative, restorative, reordering redemption of God. Now I wish I had it. I could probably find it. Just because now having named my child after B.B. Warfield, I like him even better than I did before. There's a great quote in here from him about the relationship between the Old and the New Testament. He likens the Old Testament to a well-furnished but dimly lit room. He says when you bring light into that room, then there's nothing, there are no furnishings in that room that weren't already there. But now you can see them. And so he says, that's like when we read the Old Testament in light of the New. We're not importing things into the Old Testament that weren't there already before the New Testament was written, but with the light of the New Testament, now we can see them. Why can't I think of stuff like that? That's just great. As part of his role in recreation and redemption, there's a close association throughout the scriptures between the Holy Spirit and the Word. The Word that tells us about redemption. both in the inspiration of the Word and in the illumination of the Word for which we pray every Lord's Day, that the Lord would send forth His Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds that we might understand it and apply it as we should. You can see both of those happening in Isaiah 59. Let's turn there, where Isaiah conjoins the Spirit and the Word. Isaiah 59, verse 21. Somebody read that for us. Yes, for me, this is my covenant wisdom, saith the Lord. My spirit is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed-seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth forever. Okay? So the Lord speaks to the prophet, says, my spirit is upon you. What does that mean? My words I have put in your mouth. And then he says, these will not depart neither from you nor from your children or your children's children forever. There's this ongoing fidelity to that word that I have put in your mouth. So you see both the inspiration of the word, he gives the word in the first place through the prophet, and then he sustains that word within the covenant community, again by that same spirit. The idea of inspiration, some have asserted, the inspiration of the Scriptures is invented in the New Testament. The Old Testament didn't know anything about that. Again, we could access Warfield as he writes on Scripture. It's another volume I have on my shelf I want to read sometime. 2 Samuel 23, verse 2, The Spirit of the Lord speaks by me. His word is on my tongue. That's David. David didn't know anything about the New Testament doctrine of inspiration. Really? He wrote, the Spirit of the Lord speaks by me. His Word is on my tongue. That's pretty direct. Not only is inspiration happening, the one through whom it's coming, the Word of God is coming, is aware of it. Consciously aware of it. The prophets are always saying, thus saith the Lord. We just read from Isaiah, who was told by the Lord, my Word I have put in your mouth. It's actually somewhat common, it's somewhat ridiculous that anyone could assert that the doctrine does not exist in the Old Testament. So I think what Warfield points out, and I've heard others kind of say, sometimes when you're debating with liberals, you wonder if they've ever read the book. This isn't hard to figure out, guys. We could debate obscure things, but this isn't one of them. The New Testament asserts this about the Old Testament. 1 Peter 1, 10 and 11, concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. Now, you can't make any sense out of what Peter says there unless you acknowledge that the prophets of old understood the Spirit of God was moving through them. And they wondered, what is that about, exactly? They didn't make up the words. They were perfectly aware of the fact that what is coming through them is just that. It's coming through them from the Spirit of God. And they wondered, what is all of that about? How does that happen? Some people want to know. That's inspiration. There are some things we could say about that, but ultimately we have to say we don't know. The Scripture doesn't talk very much about that. The writers of Scripture seem a lot more interested in the product than the process. What we have as the Word of God is just that, it is the Word of God, because inspired by Him. Just how that works is not really revealed to us. Alright, try to very quickly here wrap up and I'll just, I'll be reading a whole bunch of passages of scripture. I may not even tell you where they're from. I'll tell you why in a second. Early in the first chapter of the book here, Ferguson says one of the things that we need to talk about, the question that we need to ask and answer is, is the Holy Spirit a divine person? After having given the same introduction, we kind of went through where the emphasis of scripture for the word spirit is on power, motion, energy, life. says, so then people suggest that it's impersonal, that this is like when the scriptures talk about the arm of God. The arm of God is not shortened, that he cannot say. Nobody thinks there's four persons in the Godhead, the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and arm, right? That's just a way of talking about the power of God, the movement of God into the world, to say. Maybe spirit of God is that same sort of kind of way. And so can we say that the spirit is personal? Ferguson's good here, I think, clear insight. So we can see clearly that the spirit is divine. Find passages of scripture where clearly divine attributes are asserted of the spirit. that the Spirit is personal. That, too, we can find. I'm accustomed to arguments that basically stop there. If the Spirit is divine and personal, then he's a divine person. We're done. But Ferguson, maybe because he's engaged with arguments to the contrary, says, so then we need to ask, is the Holy Spirit distinctly personal? In other words, we could say the Spirit is divine and personal, and yet still assert that the person we're talking about there is the Father, and that this power designated by Spirit is still that way of talking about the Father's activity and power. So do the scriptures teach, that's the right way to ask it, do the scriptures teach that the Spirit is distinctly personal? Not just personal, but not the same person as the Father or the Son. In light of the New Testament, we can see the personally distinct Holy Spirit even in the Old Testament. For instance, in the us of Genesis 1-26, let us create man in our own image. Ferguson has some interesting things to say about that, which I must pass over. Basically, in Genesis 1, chapter 2, the Spirit hovering over the waters is the only referent for the us that we can find in the passage. Who's us? Well, it has to be God and the Spirit of God. There's just nobody else there. But clarity only comes in the New Testament. And it comes most especially in places where especially Paul puts the three persons all together. notably in the benediction that you receive almost every Lord's Day. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. What kind of sense does that make if we're not talking about three different somethings, three different persons. That's 2 Corinthians 13, 14. And then Ferguson says, there's a whole bunch of places where Paul does that. Most of these have all three. Sometimes there's just the two in these passages. But he says, I could write an extensive argument here, but really what's most powerful is just to pile the passages up. So I'm going to finish with that. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. Paul is thankful to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. I appeal to you brothers by the Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith. But the law is not of faith, rather the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who hanged on a tree, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith. but on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being. Just two in that one. For we are the circumcision, who worship by the spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. Athanasius wrote about the Great Commission. We are bound to see both the hypostatic character of the spirit. So hypostasis is just the Latin word that gets translated as person for us. So if you've heard of the hypostatic union, sounds like this really complex, difficult doctrine. It is. But it just means personal union, the divine and human natures in one person, hypostasis. So Athanasius, he spoke Latin. We are bound to see both the hypostatic character of the spirit and his full deity, for otherwise, baptism takes place in the name of God and two of his creatures. which, that would be weird, right? So Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. Behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. Now is Christ with us? It's the Spirit. It's the Spirit. And we'll get to that, I think, next week. Some really wonderful stuff either next week or the week after that, I think, kind of answering questions we tend to have about the significance of Pentecost. If we assert that the Spirit is active in really essentially all of the same ways in the Old Testament as He is in the New Testament, then what's the deal with Pentecost? What's so special about that? So that will give you something to look forward to. Questions, comments? So is it the Holy Spirit that softens our heart? I'm sure in the name of Jesus. Yes. So here's one of the difficulties of the doctrine of the Trinity. Historic orthodoxy says that when one person of the Trinity is active, all persons of the Trinity are active. And yet, on the other hand, we discern biblical emphases. So, is it the Spirit that softens our hearts? Yes. And there'd be a biblical emphasis on the Spirit when talking about that particular topic. Does that mean that God the Father is not active in that? No. The Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and is the Spirit of Christ, and they are active also. So, you know, we've looked at the Spirit in creation. Well, we could look at the Father in creation and the Son in creation also. Anything else? They just are getting restless now. Okay. Let me close with some prayer. Father, again we give you thanks for your Holy Spirit, through whom alone we can come to know you, by whom alone we can walk in obedience to your We ask that you would be at work in us, as you have promised to do, to complete that work you have begun in us, and conform us to the image of your son. In whose name we pray, amen.