Alright, we want to begin then this morning by looking at John 4 in the context where Jesus speaks to a Samaritan woman at the well. And He responds to her as they begin to dialogue about worship as follows in verse 19. The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father. Ye worship, ye know not what. We know what we worship. for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh and now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. The woman saith unto him, I know that Mosiah's cometh, which is called Christ. When he has come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto you, am he. Can you imagine standing by that well and suddenly having him say to you, I'm he. Amazing. Let's pray together. glorious and faithful God, Thou who art altogether lovely and beautiful and essentially Spirit, manifested in a particularly powerful way in the Holy Spirit, as we shall soon see. Please be with us in teaching this morning blessed our instruction, help us to grapple with the profundity of Thy spirituality, and yet with its simplicity, and that we might know Thee better at the end of this hour than when we began. Lord, we need Thy wisdom, Thy insight, and Thy grace. Come and help us now, we pray. In Jesus name, amen. Well, we've been looking at the knowability of God and began to look at the incomprehensibility of God. I want to finish that in the first few minutes of our class time today, and then spend the rest of the hour on the spirituality of God. So I believe we're at point D on the outline, page two, near the top. Incomprehensibility and the creator-creature distinction. If you look only at 1 Corinthians 2, verse 11, you will feel this distinction. in a rather graphic way. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so, the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God." Or you might want to consider 1 Corinthians 13, verse 12, which at first glance seems to be more problematic. For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then shall I know, even as also I am known." Now, that verse should not be understood as implying simply a temporary provisional distinction between God's knowledge and our knowledge. So that we take it up this way, well, now my knowledge of God is limited and God is incomprehensible. Now I know in part, but then I will fully know God. Then God's incomprehensibility will be overcome and God will no longer be incomprehensible. No, that's not the point of the passage. there will be a continuing disproportion, even in heaven, between the creator and the creature. As Charles Hodge remarks on this passage, the distance between God and us will ever remain infinite. So that's the presupposition with which we must come to a passage like this. And that's the presupposition that we can use in understanding what the Apostle Paul is saying to the Corinthians, that they have the gifts of the Spirit, that they are able to speak in tongues, they have prophesying, they have intimations of the will of God, which they're able to dispense in the congregation. And these are wonderful gifts. But Paul warns them that these gifts had become a source of pride. They were puffed up because of them. And over against that, Paul calls upon the Corinthians, and by extension upon us, to cultivate rather the gift of love in the congregation. For he says, basically, The very gifts that were a source of boasting and pride to the Corinthians shouldn't have made them proud because it doesn't even compare to what we will know one day in heaven of God. Now we just know in part, then we shall know. So yes, our knowledge will be much, much greater in heaven and we would In heaven, humanly speaking, look back and be astonished that we had any reason to be proud ever for the slender knowledge that we had here on earth. But that still doesn't wipe away the essential disproportion between the knowledge of the creator and of the creature. Now, another point about incomprehensibility is that it does not decrease in proportion as our knowledge of God increases. This is point E on the outline. In other words, incomprehensibility remains. In fact, in a sense, it enlarges the more we know about God. Romans 11.33 and 34, Paul says, Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counselor? You remember that these verses actually form the conclusion of Paul's reflections upon God's purpose for Israel. Paul had begun by reflecting on God's election of Israel, which appears to have been overthrown by the rebellion of Israel. But Paul then goes on to argue the broader context. That God's election stands firm. There is a remnant, there will be a remnant, according to grace. And through that remnant, because of the casting away of the vast majority of Israel, as a result of Israel's rebellion, the Gentiles are brought to the knowledge of the truth. And then, in turn, through the engathering of the Gentiles, the Jews will notice that they've been brought into liberty, That will impact them, and they themselves, the Jews, will again become the beneficiaries of redemption. And then Paul goes on to speak of a fullness of Israel that will be brought in. So at least we could say many Israelites will be converted, or many of the Jewish people. So what Paul's reflecting on here is really God's will with respect to his people, his elect people. So in a sense, what we have here is a prophecy of things to come. It's a reflection given to Paul by supernatural revelation upon God's secret will. And so when we get to the end of the chapter, we get to this doxology, we're overwhelmed, aren't we? The question is, well, who could ever have thought of this? Who could have imagined this was happening? Who could grasp this? This is amazing. But, Paul doesn't then say, well, now that I understand the secret will of God, and I've probed the depths beyond what anyone else has ever done for the future, Now God is comprehensible to me. But actually it's just the opposite. Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments. You see, the more he knows of God, the more incomprehensible God becomes to Paul. And he breaks out into doxology. And the doxology is called for, you see, in the very context of the grandeur and even of the mystery of God's will with respect to Israel. So it's precisely here, as Paul gets to know so much more, that the incomprehensibility of God comes to the foreground. And so you have the quotation in verse 34 actually from Isaiah 40. Who hath known, who hath known the mind of the Lord? He would say, wait a minute Paul. You just revealed the secret will of God. You have known the mind of the Lord. But Paul says, who hath known the mind of the Lord? He says it rhetorically. No human being. The answer is obvious. No human being. Not even I, Paul, admitted into the secret mystery of the hidden will of God, know the mind of the Lord. John Murray wrote in a report to the 13th General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church these remarkable words. The more we expand the circle of our knowledge through revelation, the more we increase the circumference of our contact with the incomprehensibility of God. Let me repeat that and I'll explain it. The more we expand I think you should write this down. This is a key thing. The more we expand the circle of our knowledge through revelation, the more we increase the circumference of our contact with the incomprehensibility of God. Maybe I can best picture this for you. This is basically what Murray is saying. Let's say your amount, if we put it in circular form, this is your amount of the knowledge of God. The brother next to you has a, maybe he's got a greater amount of the knowledge of God. And you have yet a greater amount of the knowledge of God. wherever this knowledge of God extends itself, you see. Murray is saying, this is the circumference, this is the edge of your knowledge of God, and there's that much more out here that you don't know. Look how big what you don't know is. It's all this. But the more you know, the circumference just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So the more you know, the more you know, how little you know. Because there's always more, much more, much, much more to God. And that's true even of natural things in life, isn't there? Isn't it? When you don't know very much about something, and you find out a little bit about it, you actually quite quickly think you know everything there is to know until you go to the library and discover you don't know anything. And actually, this has a tremendous pastoral application, implication for ministry. And I'm just going to throw this in as a footnote. You think about it. Think about when you were first converted, how filled you were with love for God, and you started to read the Bible as you never read it before, right? And one month later, you felt ignorant in some areas, but you felt like you were learning by leaps and bounds, and you actually thought you knew a fair amount. In fact, maybe you came to seminary thinking, I feel called to be a minister and I've got to put my four years in, but I'm sure I'll learn a little bit, but I'm pretty well ready to go right now. And by the end of seminary, I said, wow, I know next to nothing. So if you come out of this seminary thinking you know more than when you came in, we haven't expanded your circumference. You should leave this seminary realizing how little you know. More humble than when you came in. And someone like myself, in the ministry for 30 some years now, I can honestly tell you that there are many, many times where I just get overwhelmed by how little I know. And I just think to myself, sometimes on the way to church, I don't know anything. How am I going to preach? So in the ministry, it's really, really true. The more you know, the more you know, how little you know. And then you need great patience, great patience, to deal with people who know just a tiny little bit compared to what you know about theology. You've been trained, you've been reading all your life. And they act like they know everything. And they challenge you as if you know nothing. And you know that you know nothing, but you know that they really know nothing. So you need a lot of patience. When I was a first minister in Sioux Center, Iowa, I didn't know a thing about farming. Nothing, just zero. I was a city boy. And I went to work among 700 farmers. Well, I went with a deacon. I picked the most quiet, most confidential deacon I had. I went to his house and I said, can you take me out to your barn? I asked him the most stupid questions you can possibly imagine about farming. He spent a night teaching me. And I'll tell you, I came home and I thought I knew everything about farming that night. It was just great. The whole farming world opened up for me. When I woke up the next morning, it was all gone. I just didn't want to stick. So that was disappointing. But imagine if the next day I had gone to a farmer in that area and said, you know, this is the way you should farm. You shouldn't plant your corn this far apart in rows. You should get more corn you can put a little closer. He'd look at me and say, what, you? You've never planted a row of corn in your life. What are you doing telling me? I know so much more than you about farming. And he'd be right. But you can't say that to the parishioner that comes to you. You can't use your superior knowledge and say, oh, but you don't know anything about theology because I've been to seminary and I've been reading and I know so much more. No. How can you refrain from saying that? How can you have the patience? You have the patience because you yourself know that even if you're one of these bigger circles, in comparison to other men, your circle is a little tiny, tiny pinprick compared to the vastness of God. And so you can be patient. You see how little you know. So, this ought not to be threatening to us. It actually ought to be exciting. It ought to be exciting. Now, if you're in a really, really good marriage, not an average marriage, but a really good marriage, You are excited 10, 20 years after you get married to still know your partner better. You want to learn more and more. And it's not exciting to think, oh, well, I know everything there is to know about my partner. I know every single thought that runs through her mind. Therefore, I've got nothing to learn about her. Is it really exciting to you as a Christian to be able to say, I know everything about God? That wouldn't be exciting at all. It's far more exciting to be able to say, there's oceans of knowledge about God that I've only begun to dabble in. There's so much more to know and always will be. And that's one of the exciting things that even about heaven, it will be ever learning. Still a full capacity, but the capacity will be expanded and expanded and expanded. So don't view this as threatening. I know some students when they come here and they walk into the library, they're overwhelmed by the amount of books and they find the library threatening. Find it exciting. There's so much more to learn. Incomprehensibility, next point, is not limited simply to the knowledge of God. It's not simply that God's knowledge is incomprehensible, but incomprehensibility pertains to God himself. Remember, not to himself within himself, not to the Trinity, God has a perfect total knowledge of himself, but with regard to the transcendent glory and majesty of God. In other words, it's not just this one attribute, knowledge, that's incomprehensible. But it's everything about God that is incomprehensible. Everything is beyond us. All His being, all His attributes. We can never exhaust one attribute of God. We can never exhaust the glory of God. And we never will throughout all eternity. And so who are we to ever be proud of our knowledge of God? We are always just beginners. We're just at a different level than God, you see. I once heard a sermon of L. Martin talking about ants, little ants, challenging a human being I was talking about these ants standing up on their hind legs and kicking their legs in rebellion against us and saying, who do you think you are? You human being, you know, I've got you all figured out. You see like, are you crazy? A little ant doesn't understand us in the complexity of our brain in anything. Every aspect of knowledge an ant would have of us is trivial compared to who we are. So he then went across the bridge, of course, and made the application. You know where he's going with it. Everything of our knowledge compared to God is very small. The wonder is that God gives us enough knowledge about himself for our salvation. That's the wonder. The wonder isn't that there's so much about God that we don't know, because God is just so much bigger and greater than us. When I went to Western Michigan University, in their bookstore, in my freshman year, my first trip to the bookstore, wondering what it was going to all be about, what the textbooks were going to be like, was there going to be evolution books on every shelf. I was wondering what in the world this textbook store was going to be. I walked in and the first thing I saw on the door, apparently to the stockroom or something, was a huge picture. It filled the door of this earth. On the top, there was a tiny, tiny little man. And out of the bubble of his mouth, There was this quotation, I am the God of the universe. And I stood and looked at that picture. This is amazing. Look how small this man is. And yet he thinks he's got everything under control. He's the God of the universe. When he's really just a little tiny blip. But you see, that's what natural man thinks. I'm everything. The whole world revolves around me. And they think Christians have a small world. At least that's what Satan tells them. Because you can't do this or you can't do that. But actually the reverse is true. We have the big world because we're a small part of the world, yes, of the universe, but the God we serve and to whom we belong and whose we are is faster than the universe. The heaven of heavens cannot contain it. So that's why when I left the army, the day I walked out of active duty in the army, My boss, I was a clerk typist, and my boss came to me and said to me, let me say goodbye. He said, I hope you can make it. I hope you can make it in the world out there. I said, what do you mean, sir? Well, he said, it's a pretty big bad world. And in here, he said, Uncle Sam protects us. So we're bigger than ourselves because we've got Uncle Sam behind us. I said to him, oh, sir, I've got something much bigger than Uncle Sam behind me, the living God of the universe. See, don't let it be threatening, let it be encouraging. The God of the cattle upon a thousand hills, the incomprehensible, is your God in Jesus Christ. So this incomprehensibility should move us, that's my next point on the outline, to humility and to joy, profound humility and profound joy. God is pleased to dwell with me? Do I have boldness of access to God through Jesus Christ? boldness to access when even the Old Testament church was kept at a distance and couldn't come into the holy place or the holy of holies. Think of Mount Sinai. Think of the fence around it. Think of the distance from God. But through Jesus and through the Holy Spirit, I now have access to God. I, a sinner, saved by grace. What an amazing encouragement this is. God who dwells with us is the God who inhabits eternity. And so his incomprehensibility inspires within me a sense of awe and doxology and humility. No wonder Paul cried out, oh, the depth of the riches of the knowledge of God. Augustine put it this way. We see the depth, but we can never reach the bottom. We see the depth, but we can never reach the bottom. Perhaps you remember, in your reading of Bovink, which I hope you're well into now, that at the beginning of his Dogmatics, he says that mystery is of the essence of theology. Sacred mystery. is an element we can never afford to ignore when we speak about the knowledge of God. We are able to know Him because we are appropriate receptors of the knowledge of Himself that He unfolds to us. We've been made in His image. We've been redeemed by His blood. He wants to communicate with us. He wants to tell us about who He is. but we know him only as receptors, not as creators ourselves. We're not creators, we're receptors. We've been made as his image, but we will always remain knowers as image bearers, not knowers as image makers. He's the creator, we're the creature. But the wonder, the wonder of this incomprehensibility slash no ability of God is that He who is ultimately incomprehensible, whom the universe cannot contain, He is willing, desirous to come and dwell. Isaiah, what is it, 57 or 59, to dwell in the heart of Him who is humble and who trembles at His Word. So that our joy today, our joy today at being able to go into the temple of God, into the house of God and worship Him and hear Him speak to us through His Word. and stand in awe in the courts of the Lord with the people of God. Our joy today is that we are communing with Him whom the heavens themselves cannot contain. That is unfathomable. He is altogether different from us, and yet He became one of us through His Son so that He might teach us who He is and save us. Oh, the depth of the knowledge of God! How unspeakable are His ways! And His mind passed finding out Humility and joy should be our response. All right then, that completes our lecture on the knowability of God and the incomprehensibility of God that we've been looking at for a few weeks. Do we have any concluding questions? All right, let's move then to the spirituality of God. That will take up the rest of our time today and probably won't be able to finish it, but we'll go as far as we can. Spirituality of God. Charles Hodge approaches this subject in a rather unique way. He begins by saying that words must be taken in the sense that those who employ them know they will be understood. And then he goes on to say, when we look at the biblical usage of the word spirit, we are naturally prone to think of the human spirit or the human soul. That's intelligible to us. So, Hodge argues that the best way to understand the spirituality of God is to first understand the spirituality of man. Once we understand what we are, we can begin to comprehend a bit more what God is. So, he begins by really listing a bunch of qualities of the spirit of man, or the soul of man. First he says, our souls or our spirits are substances, not physical substances, I actually looked up Webster's dictionary definition, even this morning, of the word substance. I thought I'd look up a modern dictionary, see what it says. And yes, one definition is something physical, but another definition is ultimate reality, ultimate reality that underlies all outward manifestations and changes. So there's something about our soul that is actually a substance. It's the ultimate reality of who we are. Second, souls have individual subsistence. And here he speaks about unity and identity and permanence. You see, there's unity here because we all have souls. There's identity here because my soul is different than your soul. And you have only one person in all the world of whom you can say, this is really me. This refers to your core identity, your soul. No one else has your soul. And this is permanent. No one else will ever have your soul. and you will never have anyone else's soul. That's what he means. Then, thirdly, souls are characterized by power. By power. Through our souls, we think. Through our souls, we're conscious. Through our souls, we have feeling. Through our souls, we exercise volition, acts of our will. That makes the soul very, very powerful. Fourthly, Baha'u'llah speaks of unity and simplicity. And by that He means that our spirits are integral wholes. They are simple substances. There's no body parts in our souls. Our soul is all soul, if you will. So there's a simplicity there, but there's also a unity. It's a whole soul. It's not a partial soul. And then fifthly, they're characterized by personality. Personality. Your soul is unique. My soul is unique. Our souls will not respond in exactly the same way, even to the same stimuli. We each have our own personality. And finally, our souls are characterized by a kind of moral agency. Spirits are moral agents. Implied in that, of course, is the opposite truth that our souls are immaterial. incorporeal. Now from here, Hodge goes on and says, once we understand this, our own souls somewhat, and of course even that's hard to understand, and who can understand their own soul? My first church in Sioux Center, Iowa, there was a Anyone over 80, I would visit once a year on their birthday, even if they were perfectly healthy, the seniors. I go to this one lady and every year I go there, she asks me the same question. Somewhere in the conversation she'd say to me, I've got a real problem. Can you tell me what a soul is? Every time I dread that question, wow, how do you tell this lady what a soul is? I can't really get my arms around it myself, and how do I explain it to her? So I'd stumble along, and I'd try to do my best, and she'd say, okay, she'd be polite and quiet, and the next year I'd come back, she'd say, can you tell me what a soul is? Well, if we scarcely understand our own souls, how are we gonna understand God as a spirit? Well, Hodge says what you do is you take these qualities and then you bring them over into deity. God is a person. God is actually three persons. But God is a conscious, intelligent, voluntary agent. He's a simple being. He has no body parts. He's also a moral being and so on. Now what Hodge says is, you take these qualities of the human spirit because we're image bearers of God, you then speak of them in terms of God, but you remember of course that God has all these qualities to an infinite degree. We are finite. And once you grasp that, then you're ready to look at the scriptural data about God as a spirit and you'll understand it better. Well, I think there's probably some truth in what Hodge is saying, and it does help us to begin to get a handle on things. But there is another way of approaching the spirituality of God, and that is simply going directly to the Bible and seeing what the Bible itself has to say. And we'll probably end up at the same place as Hodge, of course, because he's ultimately looking at scriptural data as well. But perhaps it's better to begin with God and what the Bible has to say about him as a spirit and then move from our understanding of God to understanding our own souls and what spirit means, being image bearers of God. So that's what I want to do now. I want to look with you at some scriptural data. And the most important, and the one we'll take the longest with, is John 4, verse 24. John 4, verse 24. God is a spirit, Jesus says to the Samaritan woman, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. So here we have the basic metaphysical affirmation of scripture, that God is spirit. The article comes before theos, and as the Greek grammarians tell us, that means that God, or theos, is the subject of the predication. So even though the word pneuma appears first, you couldn't translate this as spirit is God, but only as God is spirit. But that pneuma does appear first draws our attention to the point that Jesus is emphasizing, namely the spirituality of God. God is spirit. And Jesus is saying that the fact that God is spirit has far-reaching consequences for how we worship God. For we must worship Him in spirit and in truth. So there is here in the broader context a reflection on the fact that something has happened in the history in the history of God's dealings with his people. Something new is in the making. Now I hasten to add here that it's no less true under the Old Covenant, the Old Testament, than it is under the New Covenant that God is Spirit. God was always Spirit. Spirit under the Old, Spirit under the New. But this feature, this spirituality of God, emerges as peculiarly important in the New Covenant. In fact, I'll go a step further with you and say the spirituality of God stamps the Old Covenant with all its provisions and all its physicalness as temporary, provisional, about to fade away. God is spirit and therefore we must worship him in spirit and in truth. Now there are other spirits of course. These other spirits differ however from God in that they are derivatives. So when we say God is a spirit, We don't simply mean that he's one spirit among many, but rather we remember again, don't we, the creator-creature distinction and the distinctiveness of God as spirit. Hebrews 12 verse 9 actually points this out. Hebrews 12 verse 9, where God is called the father of spirits, Furthermore, we've had fathers of our flesh which corrected us and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits and live? Well, that obviously exudes with distinctiveness. But that brings us then to the question, what does it mean? What does it mean to say that God is spirit? Obviously, Jesus is communicating to this woman at her level. He's saying something intelligible that she can grasp, at least to some degree. And she, of course, being a Samaritan, will be familiar with the Pentateuch, from which she could derive at least some conception of the spirituality of God. I'm not going to go into that now. Suffice it to say, the spirituality of God is there, often in the Old Testament, by way of implication, even embedded in the very commandments. Think of the second commandment. We're not to make images or likenesses of anything, including the true and living God. We're not to worship them or bow down before them. Why? God is unpicturable. God is exclusive. Exclusively spirit. And there is no other spirit like Him. Now to be sure, it's also because God is a jealous God. So there's this exclusivity about God, and there's this jealousy about God. which when combined means we shouldn't make any graven image, any physical conception of this God of Spirit so what Jesus is doing is he's taking those implications of the Old Testament, he's drawing them out and he's saying to this woman but now the new age is at hand and in this new age which is now dawning The ordinances of worship are ordinances which are appropriate to the nature of God, even more so than was the case in the Old Testament. Now, that doesn't mean that the ordinances of worship ordained by God in the Old Testament were inappropriate or inadequate. They were always appropriate, they were always adequate to the stage to which redemptive revelation had reached. But Jesus is saying now something more has come to pass. In fact, so much so that temple worship and the ceremonies connected with it and its restriction to physical Jerusalem, all of that is going to fall away. For God is Spirit. So you see what Jesus is saying, since God is spirit, no earthly house can hold him. And therefore, we don't need to go to Solomon's temple to worship him. Now the worship of God will go forth from Jerusalem to Samaria, and from Samaria to the uttermost parts of the earth. And that will be accomplished by the power of the Spirit of God. For true worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." Now when you see the expression, to worship in spirit, Notice in the King James Version, it's with a small s. And it is possible to understand this of the human spirit, that we've got to worship with the right attitude, we've got to worship with spirit, that is with our heart, as it were, in contrast to worshiping God with only externalism. We must worship Him. in spirit with a right attitude and in truth our conceptions must correspond to what the Bible says about him. That's a fair way of interpreting this text. But when we look at the word truth, aletheia, the truth is referring not so much to our conceptions as it is referring to truth opposed to type, truth opposed to the typological age. Take, for example, John 1.17. We learn that the law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. So here you have a basic conception of contrast. between law and grace. And now we're told that truth comes by Jesus Christ. The truth that comes by Jesus Christ is not truth as opposed to falsehood or misconception. It's not that the Old Testament is untrue. But now truth comes by Jesus Christ because He is Himself the way, the truth, and the life. In other words, the temple and the ceremonial worship are now falling away because He who is the true Temple with a capital T, Jesus Christ Himself is now present. He is our sanctuary of worship. And so we no longer worship just in this mountain or that mountain, but we worship in Jesus Christ. and we worship Him through the Spirit who takes the things of Him and reveals them to us and therefore it's not only that we need to worship Him with the right attitude and with our heart, but we worship Him by His Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is the temple of God. And in Him, the worshippers, we as worshippers become temples, we become dwelling places of the Holy Spirit. That's, I think, most profoundly what Jesus is saying here. And so in spirit and truth refers to the advent of the Holy Spirit and the advent of Jesus Christ. He's the truth. in spirit and truth. We worship Jesus Christ. We worship a Triune God by the Holy Spirit and in Jesus Christ in spirit and truth. This is what the New Covenant will be stressing. And actually, John has already prepared the way for this in the Gospel of John, hasn't he? He's already said in John 1, that the advent of the Holy Spirit is here, as we may know by John the Baptist, that John will come and baptize with the Spirit the Lord Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit. Jesus then goes on in John 3, speaks about the Holy Spirit to Nicodemus, says to him, you need him to be born again. And we have this major pronouncement concerning the necessity of the application of the Holy Spirit in redemption. And then follows chapter four. We must worship Him and the Holy Spirit. So true worship is done, is motivated, actuated, controlled by the Holy Spirit of God. All right. Any questions on that? John 4, 24. Yes, Marty. Okay. Yes. Different kind of spirit. Yes. because you start off by saying that God is the spirit of a small s and then you say the other half of the verse where it says that we have to worship in the spirit and the truth that refers to capital S. and spirit, and in truth, whatever you're referring to, like how Psalm 103 says that we're all souls, all beings. Yeah, that's one interpretation. And that interpretation is not excluded from my interpretation. Because when we worship with the Holy Spirit, with a capital S, we're also, of course, worshiping then with our whole souls and our whole being and our right attitude and all of that. All I'm saying is that when you end there and you don't see Jesus as crossing the bridge and also talking about the Holy Spirit here, I think you're missing something rich that he's been building up already in chapter 1 and chapter 3. So, I think we need to say that we can't isolate the spirituality of God with the small s. from the Holy Spirit with a capital S. And actually the Holy Spirit has a way of focusing for our minds. When we meditate on the Holy Spirit, it helps us understand more the spirituality of God. Because he's particularly the one whose very name reflects the essence of the spirituality of God. Abraham Kuyper makes this interesting observation. He says, we must not confuse the essential names of God with the personal names of God. But at the same time, are we not also compelled to see some relationship between the essential name and the personal name? So the essential name is God is Spirit. The personal name is, God is the Holy Spirit. So I think this will be, let me, I'm gonna flesh this out a little bit more right now, Marty, as we move to the next one, the book of Titus. Interesting, an interesting observation about the book of Titus is that It's got three chapters, and in each chapter you find a characteristic expression. God, our Savior. If you look at Titus 1, verse 3, Paul, a servant of God, apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect, acknowledging of truth which is after godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began, but hath in due time manifested his word through preaching, which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Savior." Then in chapter 2, verse 10, you find the same expression, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things. In chapter 3 verse 4, but after that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward men appeared. Now, I don't know about you, but I tend to think of the word Savior, I think Jesus our Savior. Here, three times over, you have this expression, God our Savior. But if you notice something interestingly, right in that same context, all three times, there's also the expression, Jesus Christ our Savior. Look at Titus 1 verse 4, right behind it. To Titus, my known son after the common faith, grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior. Then look at chapter 2, verse 13, in the immediate context of verse 10, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearance of the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ. And two verses behind chapter 3, verse 4, in other words in verse 6, which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ, our Savior. Now Jesus is, of course, a personal name of the incarnate Son of God. He's called Jesus, which means salvation, as the angel said, because he will save his people from their sins. That's his personal name. But we could also say that Savior is the essential name of God, essential as a predicate. God is our Savior. So here you have this parallelism. Jesus is our Savior in a focused way. But by extension, God is our Savior. So we can make the comparison. God is Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is God. The Spirit is a personal name of the third person of the Trinity. In a similar way in which Jesus is the personal name of God who is our Savior. So what's my point? Well, here's my point. If Jesus is the personal manifestation of salvation, can we not say in a parallel way that the Holy Spirit is the personal manifestation of the spirituality of God? Or to say it as shortly as I can, in the Holy Spirit, God preeminently makes known to us that He is Spirit. Now, there's another set of parallels that I want to just set before you briefly. from, you can see in the outline, 2 Corinthians 13, 14, Ephesians 1, 4, and 5, and John 3, 16, that reflect upon the truth of the gospel that God is love. That God is love, of course, is one of the essential characteristics and even essential names of God. 1 John 4, verse 8, and verse 16. Love is not the personal name of any one of the other persons of the Trinity. You don't say, do you? Jesus is love, the Holy Spirit is love. But it is striking how the person of the Father God often speaks of God as being love. If you think of 2 Corinthians 13-14, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all. Amen. Well, this is obviously a Trinitarian benediction, so obviously the love here, the love of God, refers to the Father. Ephesians 1, 4, and 5, the last few words that are associated with verse 4 in our translation, probably belong to verse 5. It's not so much that we're blameless before Him in love, but rather in love, God the Father has predestinated us to the adoption of sons through Jesus Christ. And then of course you've got John 3.16, For God so loved the world, God in distinction from the Son, so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. A reference here primarily to the Father. The Father has loved us, the Father has chosen us, the Father sends His only begotten Son to be our Redeemer. And so, we get now a whole series of affirmations. God is love, and we see that in the love of the Father. God is Savior, and we see that especially in Jesus Christ, sent to be our Redeemer. God is Spirit, and we see that especially in the Holy Spirit. Now in the day of Pentecost, this all becomes more manifest. The promise of the Spirit is received. The tent becomes too small and confining for Israel. The church expands beyond the boundaries of Israel. Acts 10 and 11 shows us how Cornelius, a Gentile, receives the Spirit and eventually it requires the abandonment of the temple and of Jerusalem as the center of worship. And this is also true for practical reasons. There are simply going to be too many people scattered too far throughout the world for Jerusalem to remain the center of the worship of God. But what Jesus is saying back in John 4 is that that is not really a problem because the spirituality of God necessitates that worship which is bound to particular places and particular utensils in particular ceremonies is now no longer appropriate in the new age it is appropriate for the pedagogy of children children who are underage are trained by means of temple and ceremonies but now the church has come of age and in this new age God is present with His Church, not in terms of the Ark or the Temple, but in terms of His Holy Spirit, who is poured out throughout the earth. God is Spirit, and we must worship Him by the Spirit of God. You see that hinted at already in a sense in Psalm 139 where we're told, whither shall I go from thy spirit? Whither shall I flee from thy presence? The answer is obviously nowhere. God is everywhere. He's not just confined to Jerusalem. But now you see this is realized in a concrete way with a pouring out of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament church. So we don't really have to end up making decisions on whether the name Spirit is an essential name of God or a personal name of God. The association is so close that both are true. Spirit does refer to the spirituality of God, but Spirit can also refer to the person of the Holy Spirit. And in the New Testament, we see what it means for God to be perpetually present with his people in the person of the Holy Spirit. All right, so that's some material then about the personality and spirituality of God. And now I want to move to point two on the outline to consider how we can formulate this doctrine of spirituality positively by the activity of the spirit. And then look briefly at how we formulate it negatively by the fact that God is incorporeal. But let me open up for any questions you have again. Yes. Well, it says that Right. Yeah, we're going to be looking at that shortly when we look at the anthropomorphic statements of God in scripture. Other questions? Okay, let's look then in our remaining time at the spirituality of God positively formulated. I've got three thoughts here under part two. First, the Holy Spirit knows and makes known. The Holy Spirit knows and makes known. I ground this particularly in 1 Corinthians 2 verse 11. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so, the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. So, here you have a Pauline reference to the self-knowledge of God, don't you? No one really knows God except God. God knows His mind. God knows His own will. The Spirit of God knows. God is self-consciously all-knowing of Himself. The Spirit knows all things, we're told. He knows God. He knows God's will. He knows God's plan. He knows God's purpose. He knows God's providence. But also the Spirit makes known. He not only knows, but He's the revealer. He's the revealer. And we have reference to that kind of activity of the Spirit under the Old Covenant. in 1 Peter 1, 10 through 12. of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ, which was in them, did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. which things the angels desire to look into. So in this passage, we have the reference to the Spirit of Christ, who is active under the Old Covenant, bringing the prophets to an understanding that they might further make known God's revelation. And that they might make it known for our benefit today. And then we also have the reference to the Holy Spirit sent into the Church of the New Covenant today to teach us and to show us the things of Christ. And the Spirit does that today, particularly through the fully written Word of God, the supernatural revelation of God, which is, of course, the Spirit's own ultimate authorship. so we don't only have the spirit actively making things known during the ministry of christ and ministry of the apostles but now through inspiration of the scripture second timothy three sixteen seventeen all scripture is given by inspiration of god and you know how it goes is profitable for doctrine for reproof for correction etc so the spirit makes known through the Bible and through the exposition of the Bible, through the exposition of the Bible, through preaching. 1 Thessalonians 1 verse 5, For the gospel came not to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost. and in much assurance, as you know what manner of men we were among you for your sake." So when Paul came and preached to them, when he taught them from house to house, the Spirit was speaking through the Word being expounded. That's why Calvin can say today, or say in his own day, which applies to today of course, that in every sermon, so long as the minister speaks according to the Word of God, he's the external minister and the Holy Spirit is the internal minister. There's two ministers, said Calvin, in every sermon. The Spirit speaks that sermon to the soul. So, when it comes to the spirituality of the Spirit, and of God, we have this wonderful positive affirmation that God, through the Holy Spirit, works in a spiritual way by Himself knowing, not only, but by making known what He knows, at least to some extent, to our salvation. But secondly, the Holy Spirit is powerful. It's powerful. creates being powerful he creates look at Isaiah 31 verse 3 there we read now the Egyptians are men and not God and their horses flesh and not spirit when the Lord shall stretch out his hand both he that helpeth shall fall and he that is hoping shall fall down and they all shall fall together So here you have a parallel between the Egyptians and their horses on the one hand and God and the Holy Spirit on the other hand. And the weakness of the Egyptians with the so-called strength of the flesh is set over against the power of the Spirit. Especially the power of the Spirit to exercise judgment. Judgment is actually a very important theme in scripture as you know. So we think of the Spirit as a spirit who's active in applying the benefits of Christ for the benefit of our salvation. But the spirit has another side to his ministry. He's a spirit of judgment as well. He's powerful, powerful in his judgments. But he's also powerful in his creative power. You find that, of course, in Genesis 1, 1 and 2. Darkness was upon the face of the deep, the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. You find it again in the creation of man. Genesis 2.7, the Lord God formed the man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. It's in breathing into man from the breath of God is in conjunction with the creative work of the Spirit, the life-giving Spirit. It's the Spirit who gave us life physically in our first creation through imbuing us with His Spirit, and it's the Spirit who gives us new life, new birth, and we are born again by the same power of the Holy Spirit. And John, of course, makes that very clear in John 3, verses 1 through 5. And you know the passage so well, I don't have to read it. But only the Spirit gives this new birth, except a man be born of the water and of the Spirit, capital S, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. So, the Spirit is powerful, life-giving in creation, in recreation, in judgment. And finally, we learn that the Spirit is holy and sanctifies. So this spirituality of God, preeminently known through the Holy Spirit, is active also in the whole area of sanctification. The Spirit being holy makes people holy. We were created in the image of God, we destroy that image in many ways, but the Holy Spirit re-enters as it were. He makes us image bearers of God again. He patterns us after our Maker and He creates in us this kind of holiness, this kind of spirituality that is pleasing to God by which we are sanctified. So the Holy Spirit is a personal God, a God of spirituality. But then, finally, there is a negative side as well. By being spiritual, we're also told that God has no body parts. This is the doctrine of the incorporeal, I can never say this word right, incorporeality of God, where mutual exclusion between spirit and body is present. God is without body. He is immaterial, not made up of matter. You can't analyze any physical elements of his being. You see that again in Isaiah 31 verse 3, this parallel between the Egyptians and and God, or rather the dis-parallel, and the parallel between God and spirit, a contrast between flesh and spirit, the one excluding the other. Now Jesus himself, of course, did have a body. And he's made that very plain. Luke 24 verse 39, behold my hands and my feet, that this is I myself, handle me and see. And then notice this, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have. The point that Jesus has hands and feet doesn't mean, however, that he's not spiritual. But it means that in the case of his humanity, of course, he's taken physical attributes to his spirituality, which is not true of the Holy Spirit and of the Father, of course. Now, having said that, we have to take into account of what Tiago just raised of the anthropomorphisms of scripture. What does it mean? when Moses says he sees the form of God, or when God speaks of his feet, and his arms, and his hands, and his mouth. And there are, of course, numerous examples of these kinds of things. Think only of Exodus 24, verse 9 and 11. Moses, Aaron, Adab, and Abihu, and 70 of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. And there was under his feet, as it were, a paved work of sapphire stone. as it were the body of heaven in his clearness upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid down his hand they also saw God and did eat and drink see the same thing in Psalm 98 we'll sing unto the Lord a new song for he hath done marvelous things his right hand and his holy arm has gotten him the victory well An anthropomorphism is derived from the Greek word for man and form. Anthropos, man, morphism, form. So what we mean by an anthropomorphism is simply ascribing to God the form of a man. God has no body. Therefore, to speak of His arm and His hand and His feet is to speak anthropomorphically. Why would you do that? Well, God wants to convey His Word, His truth Himself in an understandable way. If you take Psalm 98, verse 1, his triumph over the powers of darkness is analogous to the triumph of a warrior over his enemies. And we know what's involved. We know hands and arms are involved. Strength is involved. So the power and strength of God, so that we could grasp it more graphically as compared to a right hand and to a holy arm. Now, we need, of course, insight to understand these things when we see them so that we don't get confused. And we ought not be threatened by these things, but understand that God is simply using these things so that we can Grasp him better, grasp him more graphically. God does this with other things as well. He does it with the earth. I worked late last night, about 11.30, I got a call from my daughter and she said, I'm struggling with a question here, can you help me? And I said, sure. And she said, well, I've got to find something that the Bible says about the earth that is physically not true, That seems outdated, but really is true if it's interpreted rightly. And it popped right into my mind, the expression of the four corners of the earth. See, and a lot of our forefathers didn't recognize that this was just an expression to help us understand, well, all the areas of the earth, all parts of the earth are included. didn't mean to say that the earth isn't round. And yet people around 15, 1600, even some of the reformers thought it was crazy to say that the earth was round because we know there are the four corners of the earth. But God is speaking in a way to adapt to our capacity. So we need insight to see that and to understand this. So here's the point. God does this because the only way we can grasp him is if he speaks to us about himself in terms of our experience. In terms of our experience. So what's more powerful for me to tell you that God is powerful and leave it in the abstract or to say that God is a strong right arm and gets victory. That's far more powerful. And so the Bible, don't forget, uses all kinds of literary devices to communicate to us. It's not just this area, it's every area. Metaphors, similes, metonymies, allegorical literature, all kinds of genre. to communicate at our level so that we understand that through our experience God's revelation to us. Now, that's not only true of God's body parts, but God often speaks in the way as if he were a man so that we grasp his various convictions about things as well. So in this whole area, we also have to grapple with things like this. Genesis six, verse six, it repented the Lord that he made man on the earth and he grieved him at his heart. Now, how much of that is anthropomorphic? Well, the word heart is. God doesn't have a physical organ that beats. But, you know, we speak this way to each other, don't we? See, this is the way the Bible speaks, the way that we speak to each other. Sometimes we say to each other, look, have a heart. We're not saying, well, you know, here's my heart and you take my physical organ. We have another meaning to that. Or we'll say to someone, you grieve me at my heart. So we're not speaking literally, but we're speaking figuratively. And we're speaking vividly. So when God says he was sorry that he made man on the earth, We're not saying, we should not interpret this to say, well, God was really upset with his own decree to will from eternity to make man. But God is grieved, the depths of his soul, as it were, the depths of his spirit, at the sin of man. Think of it this way, as a parent, someone really, really, really offending your, say your child really, really offended you and did something terrible and is causing you all kinds of trouble. You don't wish you didn't have the child, but the grief can be such that you understand, you say, this child is a burden to me. So God speaks in these ways as well. I remember one time when one of my children did something that really was not good. It wasn't horrible, but it was not good. But it did hurt me, and we went down in prayer together. We got down and prayed, and I was weeping when I prayed, and the child was weeping, and the child arose with me together. From our knees, the child looked at me and said through tears, You know why I'm crying? I'm crying far more because I hurt you than because of what I did wrong. You see, when the Lord uses strong expressions like this, He grieved him and He made mad. He wants us to sit up and say, do you realize how much sin upsets God? He wants us to grieve. more at what we've done to him than by the actual things we've done wrong. So we ought not be thrown for a loop by these expressions and start readjusting our view of the immaterialness of God or the spirituality of God, but understand that God is speaking in a human way. about human circumstances, about divine circumstances to our human capacity, to make impression on us about important truths. All right, so this is my material to you on the spirituality of God. Do we have any closing questions in the last minute? Yes, sir. I'm not trying to be clever here. How are we to understand our relationship with God then in glory. How are we going to interact with the Trinity? Is it just manifested through Jesus Christ, since he does have a physical body? Or will we somehow perceive the Father? Is this just a mystery of the Scripture? There's a lot about our communication with God in heaven that we don't know, because here we're so limited and so finite. I think all we know is that we will have, if we can even have distinct communion with the persons of the Trinity, through prayer and through scripture, here certainly will be much more so there, but it will all be through Jesus. So I think what you said is correct. Through Christ, who we will see, we will also worship and commune with the Father and the Holy Spirit, whom we do not physically see. But that communion will be very real and very personal and absolutely wonderful. That much we know. It's beyond maybe discourse, but what about the Holy Spirit when it talks about the wind blowing? Is that also a morphism? Right, it's an image, yeah. Because spirit means breath, it's a very powerful image in Hebrew and Greek because it's a picture for us. There are so many pictures for us about the Father. We understand fatherhood. And so many pictures, of course, about the Son, because He came and walked and we can see Him in all these different situations. But how do you picture the Holy Spirit? This is what makes the Spirit sort of the most mysterious person to us, or the third person of the Trinity. Well, the wind is one helpful way. And the fact that this all is coordinated with Pentecost, the Spirit, doesn't say It doesn't say Pentecost, there was a mighty rushing wind. It says it was like a mighty rushing wind. So it's very clear from Acts 2 and other places that John 3, that the Spirit is like a wind and like the breath of God, but he's not just the breath of God. He's not just a power of God. He's a unique person. And of course that gets proved when we look at the doctrine of the Trinity in all kinds of ways. So yes, this is an image that God uses to help us grasp a little bit more of what the Holy Spirit is like. I once preached a sermon on all the comparisons between the spirit and the wind, and how the wind purifies, and the wind destroys, and the wind builds up. Without the wind, the world couldn't go on. Without the wind, you wouldn't have any crops in the field. There's just all kinds of parallels between the spirits, who he is, and what he does, and the wind. All right, it's time to close in prayer.