Psalm 51 is where we're gonna start off tonight. And as you're turning, let me just encourage you, if you have not yet signed up for the Christmas banquet, please do so. Okay, we're down to the wire now. Heidi and Rosie need to know how many mouths would they have to feed. So that's important that we have those numbers. And even if you think, well, I don't know. It's better for us to have extra than not enough. So if there's a chance you may be able to come, please sign up. So Rick, do you know, has anybody said anything to you about any special music? Okay. All right. All right, and I want to encourage you to please sign up so we're prepared Friday for the banquet. All right, Psalm 51 is where we're at. I'm going to start at verse 1. And David says, Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies. Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. Behold, I was shaped in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence. and take not thy Holy Spirit from me." Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your love and grace. And I ask you to help us now tonight as we come to your word. Would you give us clarity and understanding of that which we're gonna look at tonight? We do lift before you these requests and ask that you might be gracious. We pray right now for the SWAT teams that are involved in the incident and Bozeman. Father, you know all the details. And so we ask that you'd be gracious and bring that to a resolution and that you'd grant safety to the officers involved. And specifically, Father, we think of Rick Jr. and just give him the strength he needs to do what is required. Would you guide and direct and watch in that? Father, we thank you for Those first responders, both officers and firefighters and ambulance workers and others, Father, we don't even think about them often until we need their help. And we are thankful for those who serve in that capacity. And would you guide and direct and bless them. Father, we thank you for our fellowship. and for brother hoover and his wife and just continue to work through them encouraging the churches in our area and guide and direct and bless in that father please we pray for bruce and shirley we pray for bruce with this condition he has this cancer and father we know that you are the great physician and you can heal if that is what would bring you the most glory and accomplish your purposes so we We ask, Father, we don't presume to know, but we do ask. We certainly pray that you'd be gracious there and give his wife strength, help her to be a blessing to him in this time. Thank you that Bev was not hurt terribly as in this recent fall and we pray now that you just touch her body and just kind of heal her up from the bumps and bruises and help her father just put a hedge about her protection so that she can be fully healed. God in direct Father place. We continue to pray for Wayne and for Paul both who have physical needs and I pray for both their wives for Barb and for Maggie give them the strength they need to be a help to their husbands Would you guide and direct in that father? Would you pray for? Heidi's friend Kira her daughter that Has this condition and perhaps there may be a return They don't know but we ask for your grace you'd touch your body and just guide and direct in that place help us we pray as Christmas time is upon us and Father, we enjoy the festivities and the celebrations and all those things, and yet the greatest thing about Christmas is that our Savior came. I pray you'd help us to be mindful of that as we celebrate and greet folks, bless even and the outreaches that we're going to do here from our banquet all the way through to the distribution, Sunday school programs, the parties that'll take place, the cantata that evening, and then as we have a candlelight Christmas communion service on Christmas Eve. Would you bless in all those events, please? Guide and direct now, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. We're in the midst of a study on the Holy Spirit. And a couple weeks ago, because we had Thanksgiving in the midst of that, we were looking at specifically out of the book of Acts when the Holy Spirit comes and they speak in other tongues. And we were talking about the promise of the Father. And Jesus said that power would come upon them and they would be witnesses. And we were stressing that the promise of the Father is not the speaking in tongues. Now that's the blossom of it, if you will. But the promise of the Father is the presence of the Spirit. The presence. And I want you to notice here, of course, this is David, so we're in the Old Testament, we're in a different dispensation, and things are not the same, but I want you to notice something very important. As we begin to move past maybe the event of Acts 2, and think in a broader sense about And I can't describe it any other than saying, the evidence of the Spirit's presence. What is that? What is that? It's interesting here in Psalms 51, we have David, and he's talking about the Holy Spirit, okay? He says in verse 11, cast me not away from thy presence and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Obviously when he says that, it would mean that the Holy Spirit's presence is there. And he's asking God not to remove the Holy Spirit's presence. He wants that presence to remain. Now that's pretty significant because Psalm 51 is his big confessional psalm. This is, in fact you may have the little tiny print there at the top, to the chief musician a psalm of David when Nathan the prophet came unto him after he had gone into Bathsheba. So after that whole sordid affair takes place and Nathan comes and says thou art the man and David breaks down and takes accountability for what he's done. And you know, we remember the story and there was a, it was bad. Okay, because that was the pivot point in David's reign. He went, it was all downhill from there. He never recovered, and the nation never recovered from that. Just as a side note, it's important for us to realize our sin, especially grievous sin, doesn't just affect us personally. It touches those around us. It may touch those we don't even know. In David's case, it affected an entire nation. That's pretty significant. And yet he says, take not thy spirit from me. Now, I'm starting here because we know in Acts, Jesus says, wait for the promise of the Father. Right? and the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and ye shall receive power, and be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and unto the outermost part of the earth. And we read a lot about the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, but I want us to just stop for a moment and remember the Holy Spirit is not a new idea. It's not like the Holy Spirit is only in the New Testament era, and that's not an Old Testament thing. That's not true. Because the Holy Spirit is God. And we could go all the way back to the very beginning, in Genesis 1, and read about the Spirit, moving about in the face of the deep, right? Right, okay. So the Holy Spirit's active in creation, not just, you know, years and years and years down the road, to enable us and gift us, etc., and then use us. The Holy Spirit is present through much of the Old Testament, especially when we think about the difference in how, maybe we could say, the Holy Spirit's ministry to God's people. There is a change. from the Old to the New Testament. Or I should say, from the era of the Old Covenant. Maybe it would be better to say Old Covenant to New Covenant. Because if we say Old Testament to New Testament, we draw the line between Malachi and Matthew. And the New Covenant, In the Gospels, the New Covenant isn't functioning yet, until after Christ goes to the cross. It's after the Savior pays for our sins, and now there's this New Covenant. There's a lot more to that, but I don't have time to get into all that tonight. I want us to recognize The gospel era is transitioning from how God's functioning in that presence to how God's now functioning slightly differently. The same but broader, maybe, would be a good way to put that. Typically, in the Old Testament, we read phrases like, the Spirit came upon him. came upon and maybe sometimes theologians stress that as if the spirit came upon like a coat and then you know the magical coat appeared and then magically disappeared obviously here in Psalm 51 that's not the case because David did something really bad and the Holy Spirit hasn't left him. That's important. We're going to get to that in just a moment. But just by way of explanation, let's look at some Old Testament passages about the spirits I'm going to describe it using New Testament terms. Let's look at some Old Testament examples of what today we would call the Spirit's filling or enabling. All right? And we're just gonna look at a few, because I forget how many hundreds of times we might, we don't have time for all that. As Joe said, he's trying to finish before I get done, and I'm trying to get done before he gets done. So, Exodus 31. And I know we've looked at this before, but I think it's quite important. It says in Exodus 31, in verse 1, And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, See, I have called by name Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have, what's the next word? Filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom and in understanding and in knowledge and in all manner of workmanship. Here the Spirit is residing upon Bezalel and Aholiab specifically to enable them, now this is spiritual enablement, this is like, if it's the Spirit, it's supernatural, isn't it? It's not just that, oh, there's this guy who's this master craftsman, his name happens to be Bezalel, I'm gonna hire him to do this. No, God's saying, I picked out Bezalel and I filled him with my spirit for the purpose of doing craftsmanship. That's interesting, okay? So here's the spirit of God coming upon them for the purpose of workmanship it says to devise cunning works to work in gold and in silver and in brass and in cutting of stones to set them and carving of timber to work in all manner of workmanship Pretty amazing. He's he's exceptionally gifted in all of these Handcraft, you know type of things by the Spirit of God All right. Let's go to another one go to numbers chapter 11 Numbers 11 and verse 25. And we're going to find maybe what we anticipate typically when we think about the spirits filling or enabling what happens. Because it kind of matches Acts, what's promised in Acts. But in verse 25 it says, and the Lord came down in a cloud and spake unto him and took of this Moses, the hymn there refers to Moses, and took of the spirit that was upon him. Remember, Moses had this amazing relationship with the Lord. The Lord told Aaron and Miriam that I talk to Moses face-to-face like a man talks to his friend, which was different than how he interacted with Aaron or Miriam or other prophets, talks about maybe I'll give them visions or signs, etc, etc. He says, but not with my servant Moses. So that was kind of an amazing sort of relationship. All right, so the Lord comes down and he takes some of that off of Moses, it says, that was upon him and gave it unto the 70 elders and it came to pass that when the spirit rested upon them, there's that phrase, they prophesied and did not cease. So these are the elders. These would be like the princes. These 70 elders, they're like princes. We would presume because they're called elders that maybe they're older, more mature, whatever, but they're leaders. But the Spirit of God is on them and they prophesy. Now go to Numbers 24. And here's an interesting, we're in the midst of the whole story, Balaam and the donkey. Is Balaam a good guy or a bad guy? I don't know, actually. I'm not so sure. Yeah, he's kind of like us. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. Sometimes good again, sometimes bad again. In his case, he ended up bad bad. Because he gets executed, but anyways. He's not a Jewish man. But all the people in his hometown recognize him as a, we could say a spiritual man of some sort. That's why Balak the king has come to him to cast the curse on Israel. Balaam's response is I only can say what God tells me to say which was a smokescreen because then He got up and went anyways Which is why the whole thing with the donkey and the flaming the angel in the flaming sword and all that stuff happened, okay? Here's what I want to look at chapter 24 verse 2 and Balaam lifted up his eyes and he saw Israel abiding in his tents according to their tribes and the Spirit of God came and upon Him. God can do what He wants, can't He? With whoever He wants to. If He wants to enable Balaam, who maybe generally we would say he was not really a good guy. He was a wishy-washy guy. But if God wants to use somebody who's flippity-floppity, that's up to the Lord. And that's good because sometimes I'm flippity-floppity and I'm glad the Lord just doesn't fry me. I'd already have been fried a long time ago. But I want you to notice that the Spirit of God came upon him and then he gives this whole prophecy, okay? All right, go now to Judges and chapter 3. Judges chapter 3 and We're looking at verse 10. We're looking at Caleb's younger brother His name is off Neal it says and the Spirit of the Lord came upon him okay, and he judged Israel and went out to War. The Spirit of God came upon him, enabled him to be a judge, and to lead the armies of Israel to victory. We could look in Judges, we could look at Gideon chapter 6 and verse 34, and we know the story of Gideon. We could look at chapter 11 and verse 29, the story of Jephthah. Both of them talk about the Spirit of God coming upon. But go to chapter 14, I just want you to see some variations of things. Judges 14 and verse six. And here's Samson. It says, then went Samson, I'm in verse five, sorry, verse six, and the spirit of the Lord came mildly upon him. And he rent him as he would have rent a kid. This lion comes out. And he had nothing in his hand but he told not his father or his mother what he had done. There are many events we read about Samson where the Spirit of God comes upon him and he does this amazing feat of strength. ties the fox's tail to tail and burns up all the Philistine stuff. He wipes out a whole battalion almost with nothing but a donkey's jawbone in his hand. He grabs the gates of the one city, which is not like the doors to the auditorium. I mean, I could almost rip those off. Maybe. But once ripped off, I could carry them up a hill because they're hollow corridors. They're like super light. But the gates of the city that he ripped off, they were like 15, 20 feet tall, four to six or eight inches thick of solid wood, not to mention the iron hinges. How much would that have weighed? I don't know, a lot, more than I could have picked up for sure. But the Spirit of God came upon him and he was able to do that. Now, we know when Samson lost his strength, didn't he? when he cut his hair. He violated his covenant as a Nazirite. And it says that he knew not that the Spirit of God had left him. And that's a sad story. But the key there is the Spirit of God came upon, enabled, stayed however long God chose to stay in that kind of enabling setting. and then when the time is appropriate, then the Lord would remove his presence. Hmm. In, for sake of time, we're not gonna turn to read, but we could look at Saul, King Saul, 1 Samuel 10 and verse 10 and chapter 11 and verse six, both of those talk about the spirit of God coming upon Saul and he prophesies like a prophet. That's pretty amazing. In, go to 1 Chronicles though, and verse 12. First Chronicles and verse 12. Twelve. First Chronicles 12, 18. David's running from King Saul at this point and Some people come to to join up with him. They come to the hold. Okay in verse 18. It says then the spirit came upon a Massey who was chief of the captains and And he said, Thine are we, David, and on thy side, thou son of Jesse, peace, peace be unto thee, and peace be to thine helpers, for thy God helpeth thee. Then David received them and made them captains of the band. Interesting, the spirit of God comes upon a messiah for the purpose of being a follower, not to be a leader. Though he's made a leader, he's a captain of the band, but he's not the leader. David's the leader. But the Spirit of God enabled him to arrange himself. This is a struggle for us. I don't mean that in a broad sense. You know what that is? Here's what that is. That is an act of submission. Submission can only be properly done to the filling and enabling of the Holy Spirit. For you to voluntarily, or for me, to voluntarily arrange myself under the authority of another, I naturally do not want to do that. And neither do you. We all want to be the boss. The boss of our life, the boss of our house, the boss of our family, the boss of our work, whatever. I mean, it's good to be the boss. But in order to arrange yourself under the authority that God's intended, for whatever that setting is, you have to go against the grain. And here it's the Spirit of God that enables this man, who already is a warrior and a leader, to say, I don't need to be in charge, I've come to help. And he puts himself under. Now, since we started with David, let me just give you, 1st Samuel 16.13, I'm not going to turn there, but that's when David gets anointed, where the prophet anoints him. Samuel anoints him to be the next king, and in that passage we find that the Spirit of God comes upon David, but he doesn't prophesy, he doesn't do a miracle, we don't see him do anything. except be obedient to his father. Play the harp for the king. We don't find that this, the Spirit of God coming upon him, it's not like, like we've read in these other places, and he prophesied, and he was filled to do this workmanship, and the Spirit of God was upon him, and he ripped the lion to shreds. But the Spirit of God comes upon David, okay. Okay. We never find David a record that says, and the Spirit of God came upon him and he prophesied. Now David, in many ways, filled the office of a prophet because he wrote the Psalms. Much of the Psalms are prophetic. They're not just future. Some of them are futuristic. They talk about the Messiah, et cetera, and others are not, but he's proclaiming the truth of God. And that's what a prophet would do. But we don't find it recorded that way. And I'm highlighting that specifically because there's no mention of miraculous strength, no mention of some amazing prophecy or some other event that he did. There's just this faithful service. to the Lord, a sensitivity of the need of God's leading. Several times, David, as he's running from Saul, he's like, Lord, you know, those guys over there, I'm gonna help them, but they're probably gonna rat me out. Is that gonna happen? Yep. Okay, what should I do? Well, just wait here till you hear the wind blowing in the tops of the trees and then go around and whoop them, a big one. I'm paraphrasing, of course. So he had this amazing sensitivity to the Lord that he could speak to the Lord and the Lord would speak to him directly. So then we come to Psalm 51. And apparently the Spirit of God has never left him. In spite of his failures, and especially in that big failure, The Spirit of God has not left him. And that I think is important because certainly the Spirit of God could have left him and David knew that and that's why he asked for that not to happen. He could have lost what I like to call the favoring presence of God. I think that's what happened with Saul when it says the evil spirit comes upon Saul I've said before, I don't think the Lord has demons on his payroll. But if the Lord removes his favoring hand, you're open game. You're vulnerable. I think that's what happened to Saul. And David knew that could happen to him. And he didn't want that to happen. And God was gracious and didn't do that. Now, the difference from Old Covenant, if I can say it that way, and New Covenant, is that now, according to Ephesians 4 and verse 30, we can grieve the Holy Spirit. And 1 Thessalonians 5, 19, we can quench the Holy Spirit. But we also know, under this New Covenant, if you don't have the Spirit of God, you're not His. So the Spirit doesn't come and go. You do not have to pray and say, don't take your Holy Spirit from me, because he's already not going to do that. The Holy Spirit is the seal. He's the, he's the, the term just left me, but. Earnest, thank you, that's the word I want. He's the earnest of all that's the future promises of what God's going to do for us. So that is a difference in this present era compared to the past era. But the Spirit's enabling his manifestation of his presence in the actions of his people, that's nothing new. But His presence doesn't always mean you're gonna carry four-ton gates across the city, or you're gonna rip a line apart, or you're gonna preach a sermon. It might just be His presence enables you to be exactly what He wants you to be. So let's look at, in the three minutes we have left, Let's look at one New Testament illustration, Luke chapter 1. Obviously, being Christmas season, we can't help but see illustrations of wonderful truths in the Christmas story. And verse 35, the angels come to Mary, right? And she's afraid, as we can understand. She's confused, she's troubled, it says in verse 29. She wants to know how can this be, you know, what you've said. Verse 35, and the angel answered and said unto her, the Holy Ghost, is that not the Holy Spirit? shall come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. Then he talks about Elizabeth. What is Mary's response? Verse 38, and Mary said, behold, the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her. I would say that's an illustration of meekness on her part. That certainly is submission, isn't it? And why is the Lord coming? Why is the angel sent to Mary in the first place? She's highly favored above women. Isn't that what it says? Blessed art thou among women. It says 28, and the angel came in unto her and said, Hail, thou that art highly favored. So this is a young lady who's, she is a godly young lady. And the Spirit of God is gonna come upon her just like in the previous Old Covenant illustrations we've looked at. The Spirit of God comes upon And something is done. Whether it's simple enabling them to do right, enabling them to follow, submit, enabling Samson to rip lions to shreds, enabling Bezalel to create the amazing tabernacle. But always the presence of God comes upon in order to accomplish. And in her case, It came upon her in order that she could be the mother of Jesus. Now, let's make a quick application, and we're done. So what does it mean for us? If the Spirit of God's presence does not mean that I'm going to, you know, ha-shamah, ha-shamah, ha-shamah, shalai, you know, I'm just going to spit out some gibberish stuff, okay? You know, it's not that. Now, how do I know the Spirit of God is there? And I understand those, you know, and there are actual born-again people who are charismatics and so forth, okay? They just are, I think, wrong on this doctrine, but nonetheless, I understand, perhaps a desire, I want to know I have the Spirit of God. Do you want to know the Spirit of God is with you, enabling you, helping you? But see, if I link it to an experiential thing, now I'm searching for that all the time. I have to have revalidation, confirmation once again. It's gotta happen again and again and again and again and again. And then I think we're missing it. Because the presence of the Spirit of God isn't you exercising the gifts of the Spirit, that's something a little different, but it's you manifesting the fruit of the Spirit. Galatians chapter five, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness. I don't think I have them in the right order. This is against such, which means the list is not exhaustive. You know you have the presence of God when there's the evidence of the fruit of the Spirit. You're willing to submit even though you don't really want to. You're willing to remain under and endure difficulty, that's long-suffering. You're willing to love, meaning be committed toward and encourage and lift up even those who are not very loving to you. You're able to be joyful in the midst of difficult circumstances. That's evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit. Which is why it's so important that we don't grieve him or quench him, because if I grieve and quench him, I won't see the manifestation of the fruit. And if I don't see the manifestation of the fruit, I'll start to doubt whether he's even there. And that's a terrible road to go down, isn't it? Yeah, that's a bad road to go down. So, the fruit. We could look at several others, but the fruit, in just Galatians 5, because it also talks about, if ye walk in the Spirit, ye shall not fulfill the loss of the flesh. So that's the key, is that you've got to walk in the Spirit. I have to be submitted to Him. Father was leading and he'll fill me and enable that fruit to blossom out so that I don't have all those other problems. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your love for us. I pray you might help us. how important it is that we, not just that we're saved, but that we are sensitive to the moving and the leading of the Holy Spirit so that your spirit would have free reign in our lives to accomplish what he wants to do through us, enabling us, yes, gifting us for certain functions, But certainly there ought to be evidence of His presence through our demeanor and our attitude and all those other things that we see in that list and others. Would you help us with that? Bless pleased now I pray. Give us safety as we go our separate ways in Jesus' name. Amen.