The following is a presentation of Grace Covenant Baptist Church, West Monroe, Louisiana. Okay, well, we'll get ourselves going here. Welcome to the wonderful world of technology. And so I appreciate everybody that's here this evening and visiting with us via Facebook. And so if we could, I'll try to answer questions at the end of our time tonight. So I'm trying to keep up with questions in the comments section on Facebook as it comes through. And so just be patient with me. I'll try to do the best I can there. And, but I will try to answer questions tonight once we're kind of through our time. Let me check one thing here. That's interesting. Okay. All right, so tonight we're talking about the Holy Spirit as Creator God. We're in week 25 of this series on the Trinity. And we've made our way through the Father as Creator God, Father as Redeemer God, and Father as Restorer God. We've made our way through the Son, the Son as Creator God, the Son as Redeemer God, and the Son as Restorer God. And so we're starting our last section. related to the three persons of the Trinity, and we're going to be talking about the Holy Spirit. And so we'll start tonight with the Holy Spirit as Creator God. And for that, we will be looking at Matthew chapter 1, verses 20 and 21. Now, as you're kind of turning to Matthew 1, 20 and 21, you'll recognize that these are verses that many people know, they're verses that you hear a lot around Christmastime. It's part of the birth narrative, when the angel comes to Joseph and tells Joseph not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife. But I think in that birth narrative, in the Christmas story, we miss some pretty significant doctrinal information, some things that maybe you haven't thought about. before, some things that maybe once we begin to investigate and think about them, we go, oh, okay, well, I never thought about that before. And what it is is about the Holy Spirit as Creator God. Now, I'll just say this, that that the Holy Spirit is not usually the person of the Godhead that is associated with creation. It's usually the Father, and in some circles, as we've seen in our times together, the Son. Christ as the divine Logos, and in Him, through Him, and for Him were all things created, and so on. Genesis chapter 1, which we'll spend a little time in Genesis chapter 1, 1.1 and 1.2, we'll look at that particular verse again from a different perspective, not from the Father, but from the Holy Spirit. But it's usually the Father and it's usually the Son that we associate with creation. And as we have said, as we've gone through this series before, that it is true, I think it's true, that at least hierarchically, that each one of the three persons of the Godhead has specific roles to play in the redemptive history. The Father primarily associated with creation, the Son primarily associated with redemption, and then the Holy Spirit, which we were asserting that is involved with restoration or the application the gospel message or the redemption that Christ procured on the cross, that usually gets lost. You don't really hear a lot about that with the Holy Spirit. You know, people want to be baptized with the Holy Ghost, people want to manifest the fruits of the Holy Ghost, want to do a lot of different things, but very seldom do you hear the Holy Spirit being equated with or connected with the application of redemption. And so tonight we're going to be talking about that under this particular head, that the Holy Spirit, or in particular the Spirit of Christ, was sent to apply the plan that Christ procured on the cross, that the Father ordained before space and time occurred, and all three persons of the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all agreed before space and time, before Genesis 1.1, in accordance with Ephesians chapter 1 verses 4 to 11, thereabout, 4 to 14, thereabout, that the Godhead purposed to save a people for their own possession. Now, we hear a people for God's own possession, but as we talk about the Trinity, that would be for the Father's own possession, the Son's own possession, and the Spirit's own possession. All three persons of the Godhead were in perfect alignment and agreement, one with another, before space and time, before Genesis 1-1, that these things were going to occur. And so when I say that the Holy Spirit was sent to apply what Christ purchased, what he procured on the cross, what the Father ordained, that is a necessary part of redemption history related to the Trinity, that if you don't have the applying of the cross, If you do not have the applying of the ordination, then you simply don't have salvation. And that might run contrary to what a lot of people think today in that, you know, in evangelical life, salvation is simply just walk down the aisle, say a prayer, you know, sign a card, get into baptistry, whatever, then you're saved. Well, wait a minute. It takes the work of the Holy Spirit to do that. It's the Holy Spirit that applies the blood of Christ. It's the Holy Spirit that takes the ordination of the Father and actually brings it into real space and real time in a real individual's life. And so that's what we're gonna be talking about tonight as we go, or these next weeks together, as we look at the Holy Spirit, but in particular tonight as the Holy Spirit as Creator God. So Matthew chapter one, starting in verse 20, Reading verse 20 and verse 21, we find Matthew recording this from the life of Jesus. Verse 20, but as he, that is Joseph, as Joseph considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. Now verse 21 goes on to say, and she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. And all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. And we know the story that after Joseph awoke from the dream, he was not afraid to take Mary as his wife. He went through that betrothal period, that marriage period, and then Matthew, all the gospel writers, the synoptics at least, are very clear that he did not know her in a sexually intimate way until she had given birth to the Lord Jesus. This is the account of Joseph. This is one of the rare accounts that we have of Joseph in the New Testament. Don't hear a lot about him. Don't hear a lot about Mary either, but you hear less about Joseph. And this is probably one of the premier places where we see God interacting with Joseph. And so, tonight as we look at this, we're not going to be focusing on Joseph. We're going to be focusing on the Holy Spirit. And the first thought that I want to highlight tonight as we look at this is that the Holy Spirit is always present immediately preceding creation. The Holy Spirit is always present, immediately preceding creation. We're going to go to Genesis 1 in a little bit, but I want us just to stop for a second and look at this text in Matthew 1 and just think about it for a second. Verse 20 says, But as he considered these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. And so the conception of the Lord Jesus Christ was not by the union of Joseph and Mary, and it really wasn't even in a weird way by union of the Holy Spirit and Mary. It wasn't as if the Holy Spirit came in and visited Mary in some sort of sexually intimate way, which is not what is found in Greek mythology. We find Zeus doing all kinds of stuff, but that's not the case here with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit just came upon her, or some texts say overshadowed her, okay? That the Holy Spirit was just present, you might say that. And so, as we look at the Holy Spirit being present immediately preceding creation, I want to just highlight two things here. The first one is this, that the Spirit is the one who brings order out of confusion. The Spirit, in this process of creation, just the Spirit being present preceding creation, he brings order out of confusion. Now, look at verse 20 again, here in Matthew 1. It says, but as he considered these things. Well, what things? Well, we could go back and read the verses immediately ahead of this. What's happened is that Joseph and Mary have entered into the engagement period, what's called the betrothal period. In Jewish culture, that tended to be about a year. they would have either moved into her parents' house or might have even probably moved into her parents' house. They might have moved into the young man's house or in with his family, but usually it was with the parents of the bride. And so they were living together as husband and wife in all respects, save the sexual unity. They had not come together in a sexual way through that betrothal period. But in terms of Jewish culture, Joseph and Mary were married. And so when Mary was found to be great with child, when she was found to be pregnant, and it was not by Joseph, then Jewish culture and Jewish law gave the man the opportunity to not only divorce her as a subject of infidelity, But in many cases, there was, if nothing else, pretty strong cultural pressure to judge the unfaithful woman as an adulteress. And according to Levitical law, that would have been stoning. They'd have stoned her. They'd taken her outside the city gates and they'd have stoned her. And if you've ever seen some of the modern representations of this through the cinema, some of them, one in particular, the nativity, movie nativity illustrates this pretty well. I think it gets the point across. And so what Joseph is pondering, what he's considering is, is he gonna divorce her? And it seems to be, from at least what we can gather, that he may have been seriously considering divorcing Mary for infidelity. Now, whether he was going to bring about the judicial part of it and have her stoned, we don't really know. But I just sense this, I don't know, not confusion, but trying to deliberate in what is the best decision. We know it seems to be from the Gospels that Joseph was a righteous man. He was an upstanding man. He was a godly man. He had a degree of holiness. And so this was not a decision that I'm sure that he was taking lightly. And so if you've ever found yourself in a spot like that where you're trying to make a very serious decision, and it's hard to determine, do I do this or do I do that? I have this liberty. I have this right, if you will. I have this different thing that is laid out to me that I can do this. But is that necessarily the best thing to do? You know that in those seasons of time that we all kind of go back and forth, and it can be a very confusing time. It's at times you can't see clearly. You don't know exactly what's happening. Well, it was against this backdrop that it wasn't the Holy Spirit that appeared to him, it was an angel. appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, Joseph, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife. Now, if we leave it right there, there's no explanation why Joseph ought to take Mary as his wife. There's no logical explanation. or cultural reason that Joseph should take Mary as his wife, other than an angel told him to do it. So what I want us to catch here is that the spirit was present, and he was present in that he had overshadowed Mary, and by divine intervention, she had conceived the Lord Jesus in her womb, and the baby she was carrying was not the result of infidelity or sexual activity outside the confines of their betrothal, but it was the divine work of the Holy Spirit that had produced the child that Mary was now carrying, and in the explanation that the angel gives to Joseph, this confusion is brought about or is transformed into order. It makes sense. Now, the Holy Spirit, and she's conceiving this child by the Holy Spirit, that's hard for us to get our mind around, but beyond the kind of the logistics of that, when the angel said that the baby that she carried was the creation of the Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit had overshadowed her, and out of that overshadowing she had conceived this child, then the situation that in many ways seemed confusing now is one of order. Miraculous, hard to believe, kind of get your mind around it, I got all that, but at least we know where the child has come from. We know what's happening. In Genesis 1, verses 1 and the first half of verse 2, at the very beginning of the Bible, Genesis 1, 1, we find, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, okay? And then in verse 2, the very next part, it says, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And you go, okay, I got the confusion part, and as we looked at this verse, Way back when, when we were talking about, we were talking about God as creator, we looked at Genesis 1-1 and we looked at the deep and the chaos and all of the things that were going on related to creation. And we saw that this part of verse two was a very chaotic situation. The earth was without form, it was void, there was darkness, there was the abyss, and just a whole lot of things going on that just was very chaotic and confusing. But at the very end of that, in the very next part of verse two, it says, and the Spirit of God was hovering on the face of the waters. Now, what we have here is we have the beginning. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, so we know what's happening. And then there's a brief interlude between verse 1 and then what happens in verse 3 when Moses begins to talk about the actual creation. In that interlude, there is a demarcation that the Holy Spirit, or in this case, the Spirit of God, was hovering on the face of the water. So the Holy Spirit is preceding creation. All right, the Holy Spirit is preceding creation. He's there. Now, I'm not saying that the Holy Spirit was the means, perhaps, of creation. Yes, it is on. I know because I was holding it away. Hello, hello, hello. I saw that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's okay. Trying to get all the technical aspects of this squared away. What I was saying is, is that I'm not saying that the Holy Spirit was the means by which creation came into being. We have already said that that was the Father and the Son, but the Holy Spirit does seem to be the moving force through the Word of Christ, through the ordination of the Father, that would bring creation into being. He might say he's the power, or he is the mechanism, if you will. Not the inspiration, not the authority, per se, but the mechanism. And so what I'm pointing out here is that because we see the Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit, hovering over the face of the deep in Genesis 1 verse 2, first part of verse 2, that he is present immediately preceding the creation of the world. And I'm drawing that parallel between the creation of the world and in the birth narrative of the Lord Jesus Christ, that because the Holy Spirit had overshadowed Mary, the Holy Spirit had come upon Mary, that he is present immediately preceding the conception of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he's bringing order out of confusion. Well, the second thing that I want to highlight that's very close to this, two sides of the same coin, you might say, is that the Spirit is the one who moves to bring creation about. Now, in Matthew 1, verse 20, 21, no, verse 20, excuse me, it says, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. So the angel tells Joseph specifically that the reason that Christ has been conceived is by the work of the Holy Spirit, or the presence of the Holy Spirit. I would not be uncomfortable saying that, that the presence of the Holy Spirit brought about the conception of Jesus Christ. And so he is the one who moves to bring about creation. And that's not the first time we see that in this Matthew 1 passage, because we see it again in Genesis 1 verse 2, the back half, that the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And if you went on to Genesis 1 and picked up at verse 3, you would begin to see God saying, let there be light, and let there be affirmament, and let there be seas and land. I mean, and so, though the Father is speaking these things, the Father is speaking, the word or the intelligent language that is being spoken by the Father is Christ, the Logos, the intelligent speech. And the breath, if you will, that is carrying that intelligent speech into creation is the Holy Spirit. And so you have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all involved in creation there in Genesis chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. and I'm submitting that it is the same idea, same thing, that as the father ordained that the son would be born of the Virgin Mary and that that ordination is carried out from God into reality by the voice of Christ and the very breath that carries those words is the Spirit of Christ, then we have all three of the Godhead involved in the conception of the Lord Jesus Christ as he comes from the pre-incarnate state into his first advent. And the Spirit is the breath by which all of that was carried along. It's similar to what we find in Timothy, where Paul says to Timothy, all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching and rebuke and training and correction and preparing the man of God for every good work. And so the idea, theonumitas, is God breathes, that, you know, words are going out, but those words are being carried on a breath. And if you know that, if you realize that or start to think about that with how we talk, there are times that we talk, but if I don't have breath, I can't talk, right? You know, if you've ever, you know, got winded or if somebody punched you in the stomach or whatever and knocked the breath out of you, you can't talk. You're, ah, ah, ah, because you don't have any breath. There are times that we just breathe and we don't talk. So the point I'm making is, is that words and breath are two different things. Words are carried on breath. They're, they're formed and the sounds are made by breath, but, but words and breath are two different things. Yes. It's on. Why? Okay. So, as I was saying, words and breath are two different things. And so, the divine logos in Christ and the breath part, or the spirit being the Holy Spirit, we see that in the work of not only creation, Genesis 1, but in the conception of the Lord Jesus Christ here in Matthew 1.20. So moving on to letter B here, the Holy Spirit is always present immediately preceding creation, but the Holy Spirit is always present immediately preceding redemption, too. And here's why I'm saying this. In verse 21, Matthew 1, verse 21, we find Matthew telling this. She will bear a son, he shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. Now as we've talked about each week, just about, as we've gone through this discussion, of the Trinity, we have said each week that any discussion of the Trinity that is devoid of the redemption narrative, if you strip out redemption out of a discussion about the Trinity, then it's just an academic affair. Because the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Their purpose in human history is redemption. So creation is part of that. You know, things had to be created so that they could be redeemed. Something that is uncreated cannot be redeemed. So creation is part of redemption. We know that in the creation narrative in Genesis, that Adam and Eve fell into sin. They disobeyed God and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And when they did that, their fellowship was broken with God because of the rebellion, and so they were then in need of redemption. And that the Lord Jesus Christ came, not necessarily to redeem Adam and Eve, although I believe that possibly he did, but he came to make redemption possible. He purchased redemption on the cross. and that the Holy Spirit is the one who applies that redemption. So you have the Father ordaining it, the Son purchasing it or procuring it, doing the work that would make redemption possible, and then the Holy Spirit applying that redemption. And I think that's part of modern-day evangelical thought or evangelism, especially within Southern Baptist life, that gets lost. You know, when we go to evangelize, when we go to share the gospel with other people, We have to remember that it is the Spirit that opens the mind. It is the Spirit that opens the heart, the Holy Spirit. It's the Holy Spirit that regenerates that person and raises them from the dead and quickens the soul and the ears and makes them even able to understand the gospel message. It's not the illustrations that we give or the personal antidotes that we might add to our gospel presentation. It's the work of the Holy Spirit that actually saves people. And so the Spirit I'm asserting tonight from our text, is present immediately preceding redemption. Now, it wasn't that Mary was being redeemed, at least in this particular instance here, Matthew 1 20, that doesn't seem to be the point. But Jesus was coming to be born and he was going to be born and he came to live on this earth for the expressed purpose of saving God's people from their sins. that what was occurring is that the Spirit was there, brought conception in life to the Lord Jesus Christ, that as he lived and ministered and died, and then now, as the Holy Spirit has been poured out and given, after the day of Pentecost in that first century, that he is present immediately prior to redemption. In John chapter 3 verses 34 and 36, 34 through 36, we find this, and he whom God has sent utters the words of God for he gives the Spirit without measure. Now I want you to just Think about that for a second, and we'll come back to it. The father loves the son and has given all things into his hand. Whoever believes in the son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. Now, what is occurring, what's actually occurring in the lives of people is this, verse 36, that whoever believes in the son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life. Okay, so we have a distinction, we have a contrast between two groups of people. We have those who believe and have been saved, and we have those who have not believed and we know they haven't believed as evidenced by the fact that they don't obey. Okay, Jesus said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. All right, so the ones who love him, the ones that believe in him are the ones who obey. The ones who do not believe are the ones who don't obey, and they will receive judgment. They will not receive life, this passage says, but rather the wrath of God remains on him. So that's what's going on, okay? But immediately prior to this transaction in human hearts, we find the kind of a qualifier, if you will, or how it works, or what the ground that brings about this change. He whom God has sent utters the words of God. So he's speaking of himself. Christ is speaking of himself. He is the one who was sent from God, and he's uttering the words of God. And he goes on to say, for he gives the Spirit without measure. Well, what does all that mean? Well, that those who love the Son and believe in the Son have done so because of the words uttered by the Lord Jesus Christ and the presence of the Holy Spirit that was given by the Father and by the Son. And so it takes the teachings and the words of the gospel The message of the gospel, the Lord Jesus Christ, birth, life, death, resurrection, his atoning work, takes that in conjunction with the presence of the Spirit to bring about life, to bring about belief, to bring about a love for Christ, to bring about eternal life. And if the words in conjunction with the Holy Spirit have not been applied to the hearts or the minds of an individual, then they don't believe and they don't obey and condemnation or the wrath of God still remains on them. And so the point, going back to where we started, is this, that the Holy Spirit is always present, immediately preceding redemption. Now there's some other verses that we're going to look at as we go along. I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag completely tonight, but I'm reminded of what the Apostle Paul says in Romans. He says that you know, the Spirit is the one who raised Christ from the dead. And if the Spirit is present in each, in you, then he has raised your dead soul from the dead. Like, so the analogy is this, so as the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, Jesus had been crucified, he was put in the tomb, he was dead. He hadn't, he wasn't passed out, he was dead. And so, what caused that dead body to come back to life? Well, the soul, the spirit, reanimated that dead body. The spirit entered into the body of Jesus and brought him back to life. It would be similar to your body's laying there, and it's dead, and everybody's confirmed that it's dead, and there's no life in you, and then your spirit come back into you, God send your spirit back into you, and you come back to life. Now, I'm not talking about salvation-wise, I'm talking about just animation, just living. I'm a bit of a trichotomist, body, soul, and spirit, and so the spirit being kind of the connection between this mortal physical life and the life thereafter, the connection with God. And so Paul is making the point in Romans that it was the Spirit of Christ or the Holy Spirit that brought Christ back from the dead. He was dead in the grave and the Spirit entered him and he came back to life. And Paul's making the point that at the point of salvation that your dead soul, your dead spirit, is reanimated and brought back to life, not by the indwelling of your spirit, but by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And just like the Holy Spirit raised Christ from the dead, the Holy Spirit will raise your dead spirit from eternal death. And so it's a connection between this John passage and the Matthew passage where we started and the presence of the Holy Spirit at the point of regeneration. All right, which brings us to the third and final point this evening, which is that the Holy Spirit is always present immediately preceding restoration. Now we're going to be talking a lot about the Holy Spirit and restoration, the application of the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Spirit applying the finished work of the cross to individual hearts. And he does so by the indwelling, his indwelling them, or what we call regeneration. And so we're going to be talking about him being present immediately preceding restoration. Now I want to just highlight something here. before I kind of work through this last point. When I say that he is present immediately preceding something, preceding creation, preceding redemption, preceding restoration, what I'm intending to mean is if the Holy Spirit is not present, then those things don't occur. If the Holy Spirit, if the Spirit of God had not been hovering on the face of the waters at creation, then I would argue that creation would not have occurred. If the Holy Spirit was not present, in this John 3, 34 passage, if the Holy Spirit was not present, if the Spirit was not given without measure, if he was withheld, then you can speak all the words all day long, but they're not going to be made applicable in the ears and the hearts of the hearer. That's an important distinction in terms of redemption because there are people all over the United States that are in churches on every Lord's Day and there's some that are even in, well, probably not in churches now, but they're listening to sermons or they normally would be in churches on Wednesday evening, and they're hearing preaching, and they're hearing prayers and songs, all kinds of stuff, and they seem to be unaffected by what they're hearing. You know, why is that? Why is it that that two people can sit in the same pew for 40 years and, you know, experience all the same things in the life of a church? You know, they can both be in the church for, you know, the entirety of their lives. They can both have very similar lives. They married, had jobs, had kids, lived a relatively peaceful life, had some difficulty in their lives, but they sat in the same pews They heard the same good preaching, they heard the same bad preaching, they went through the same pastors coming and going, they were in the same Sunday school, sat under perhaps the same Sunday school teachers for all those years, did exactly the same thing, sang the same songs, heard the same prayers, came to the same services, had the same invitations, had the same everything, and one of them is saved, what we would say is saved by the evidence of fruit in their life, and the person sitting right next to them that has heard everything exactly the same by the fruit in their life appears to be lost. How is that? It's because it's not just the words. It requires the presence of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the individual. It requires the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the individual to make the work procured by Christ, ordained by the Father, applicable. Now, the application to a particular individual, I would argue, is by the ordination of the Father. The Father ordained that the Spirit would be given to this person, that person, the other person. But You know, that ordination, not to get too deeply into co-contingency and, you know, as an answer for the lapses, super-lapsarianism, trans-lapsarianism, all that jazz. Co-contingency, I would argue that the ordination for God to save his people by name, by individual, was given at the beginning in the eternal covenant. And so obviously we weren't born then, we weren't around then, so how does that work? Well, here's how it works. It was ordained before space and time, it was procured in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it's made applicable by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in each individual person in real space and real time. Okay? And so the Holy Spirit is restoring that lost person by his presence, his indwelling presence in their life, making the redemption of Christ applicable at the ordination of the Father. In Matthew chapter one, the back half of verse 21 says, well, 21 says, she will bear a son and he shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. It's a indication that what Christ was coming to do and what his spirit was gonna make applicable was the redemption, the restoration of fallen sinners back into a holy God. 1 Corinthians 6, verse 11 says this, and such were some of you, well, some of who? Who was some of what? Well, what Paul is saying is you were lost. You lived in the world, you were bound by the world, you were bound under the dominion of Satan, and such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, by the Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit. Okay? So what is Paul saying? Well, Paul is highlighting in the life of the Corinthian believers that there was a transaction that occurred in their lives that took them from from being under condemnation to being brought into life, given eternal life. Okay? In that John 3, 34, whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son does not see life. So there's a transaction that has occurred. And Paul said, and Paul has been pretty Frank with the sins, you know, the carousing and the drunkenness and the homosexuality and all that sort of stuff. And so he's saying, you know, that degree of depravity that I just mentioned, and such were some of you, not that some were saved and some were not saved, they were all lost, but they were living in paganality. And so the contrast is, is you were of the world, 1 Corinthians 6, 11, you were of the world, but You were washed, and you were sanctified, and you were justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, by the Spirit of God. So what Paul is saying here is that the presence of the Spirit is what took the work of Christ and made it applicable in your heart. And so that's what we're talking about. In terms of the Holy Spirit's creating things, though I would argue that he is present in creation, Really what he is most noted for biblically is the restoration. Bringing those things that were created back into a right standing with the Father through the procured work, the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so that's what we're going to be talking about. But he was immediately present in preceding creation. He was immediately present, he's present immediately preceding redemption. and he is present immediately preceding restoration. And so that is the work of the Holy Spirit. Now, I haven't been looking here necessarily to see if we had any questions from anybody, but I'll, as I'm kind of wrapping up here, if our folks who are listening via Facebook have questions, now would be the time to go ahead and kind of send those to me if you will. I'll try to answer them if there are any questions. It's kind of a challenging thought. It's kind of an interesting thought, the work of the Holy Spirit. what he does. It's not one that is really, I think, considered with a lot of depth or thought, especially in our modern world today. The Holy Spirit has kind of been relegated to this mystical force, kind of like Yoda, that just kind of shows up and does some stuff, and we don't really know exactly how it works. But I think that's not exactly the way Scripture paints the picture of the Holy Spirit. We see him I think sometimes we do think of him as something less than one of the three persons of the Godhead. That's an error. He is one of the three persons of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so that means he was involved in the eternal covenant. And it wasn't, it wasn't like an advise and consent role. You know, it's not like, you know, President nominates a judge and the Senate gives advise and consent. No, the Holy Spirit was as much part of the ordination of the eternal covenant as the Son or the Father. He was just as much part of purchasing redemption on the cross as the Son was, and as the Father was imminently present in that moment. He was there too. And as the Holy Spirit indwells a person and regenerates them, the Son is present and the Father is present, but it's the Holy Spirit that has been given, I guess you could say, the task of indwelling people. in making that salvation applicable. And so, you know, I think it's important for us to remember biblically who the Holy Spirit is. And many times I'll refer to Him as the Spirit of Christ, because I really believe that's who He is. He is Christ's Spirit. And that's not me saying that. Jesus said that in several different places in the New Testament. His Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. And so, an important part of salvation that we need to remember. So, has anything come through? No questions? Okay, all right. Well, I guess if there are questions beyond this point this evening, you can message me on Messenger or email me, and I'll be glad to try to answer questions as we go along. And so if there's nothing else this evening, then we'll pray and then we'll be dismissed. Father, again, we thank you for the day that you have given to us. We praise you for your goodness, for your mercy and your grace. And we just simply ask, Father, that you would help us to see your spirit as he really is, as your word shows us, tells us. And that, Father, we would not in any way squelch him, as Paul warns us in Thessalonians, or grieve him, as Luke warns us in his gospel, or blaspheme him, but that we would honor him as we would honor you and as we would honor our Lord Jesus. And that we see that the Spirit is active and present and bringing about so many things. And so, Lord, may we depend upon His power and His guidance and His strength. May we look to His work in saving other sons and daughters from their sins, taking the finished work of our Lord Jesus and making it applicable in the lives and the hearts of others. And just trust Him and bear upon Him, Father. Cast our cares upon Him also. and just be empowered by him as we go and be salt and light in the world. We thank you, Father. We thank you for your son. We thank you for his spirit, the work that he's done in our lives, and just ask, Father, that we would live in accordance with what the three of you have purposed for all of your people. that we might honor and glorify you in all that we do. We love you, Father. We praise you. We thank you. And continue to ask these things in your name. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. All right. Oh, okay. I have a question. Let's see here. The Spirit is a he and not an it. Yes, that's correct. He's a person. And the Bible depicts the Holy Spirit as in a male role, it would just make sense, the father, the son. And if the Holy Spirit is the spirit of Christ, then it would be his spirit. And so therefore he would, as a person of the Godhead, the proper pronoun would be he. The spirit is a he and not an ambiguous it. He's not Yoda, and he's not yin and yang, and he's not the force. He is the person of the Holy Spirit. Yep, exactly. Very good. Very good. All right. Well, without any others, I'll kind of linger a second to see if we pick up another question or two. I'm not going to tell a joke. I've been forbidden from doing that. OK. It doesn't look like there are any others. But it's OK. We've got plenty of time. Just because we stopped the live event does not mean that questions cannot be answered. So again, if you have questions, you can message me or email me or comment here. We'll be keeping an eye on this page for this live event, see if there are any questions that pop up. And we'll do our best to answer them. What's that? Oh yes, yes, thank you. I'm not one given to commercials, but remember to join us on Sunday morning at 11. We will be doing this again, coming to you live from not the basement of all that university up on the East Coast, but from 700 Trenton Street here in West Monroe. Grace Covenant Baptist Church will be doing that again on Sunday morning. Love everybody. Yes, yes, we will. At least we got some questions and some responses. That's kind of cool. I like that. So yes, love you guys and just pray that y'all have a great week and look forward to virtually seeing you again on the Lord's Day. Amen? Amen. All right.