That's what we'll be covering. But as they do that, I want to introduce one thing that I'd like to do in coming weeks here. There's this booklet called Christianity Explained. Several of us have used this as an evangelistic tool. And I'd like to go through this. We're going to take 10 minutes or so each Sunday night in coming weeks here to kind of go through the material in this book. And I want to encourage each one of you, if you don't have one, I know some of you do have it because we've given them to you because you've asked for a tool like this to use in evangelism. But I'd like each one of you consider getting a copy. We can order some copies. We'll get a sign-up sheet out. We'll order some copies. I think they cost about $12 or $13 a piece, but if you're interested in one, the church will underwrite part of it. If you'll just chip in $10 for it, it can be used over and over. A lot of the materials that you would give to somebody you're studying with, you'd get off the computer online and you can download. So we're going to go through this. We'll go through the various lessons piece by piece in this and hopefully encourage one another in outreach. It's a great way to reach out to people. It's a basically it's an evangelistic Bible study through the gospel of Mark. So it's just going through the gospel with somebody through the gospel of Mark. Probably if you just had one per family, that would be fine. Let me say this as well. I know there may be somebody in here who you'd love to have it, but $10 is not in your budget. You need to buy groceries or buy gas. If that's the case, We'll get you one, all right? This is not meant to be a hardship. But for a lot of people in here, $10 is not going to be a hardship. And so it would help the church if you could afford it. But if you can't, of course, and you want to go through this material with us, and you'll still benefit even if you don't have the book. But let me encourage you to consider that. We'll have a sign-up sheet. We'll know how many books to order. And so we'll do this in coming weeks. Probably next week, we'll go through the first lesson and kind of introduce it. Well, maybe not, but I'll remind us next week, but in coming weeks we will do that. So we'll have a ten minute time probably to go through this material and then we'll get into our study of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit each Sunday evening. Again, let me encourage you to pick up. There are yellow copies of our preaching schedule through the end of the year that are available in the Welcome Center on the table. Lord willing, we'll be able to follow that schedule. Sometimes things come up and you can't always completely follow it, but we plan to. It'll tell you what we're going to cover each Sunday morning, Sunday night. You can see the pre-jurish. You can see when we have mission themesis Sundays and missionaries in. And you can see what we're covering. So tonight we're going to go over the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. We're going to look at the personality of the Holy Spirit. Some of you, if you haven't been with us when we've done other doctrines surveys, you won't be familiar with the fact that as we do this, I like us to look at the scripture. So let me encourage you to have your Bible ready because we're going to turn to the passages of Scripture that we won't turn to necessarily everyone, but we will turn to the passages of Scripture that are listed here because it's important not just to have this content, but also to see it from the Word of God. I think that helps it in our souls. It helps us to obviously our authorities, the Word of God. Let me go ahead and get my notes ready here and we'll go ahead and begin this. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit. We're going to look at the Spirit's personality. Now let me introduce what this means. The personality of the Holy Spirit. We're not talking about a personality type. Is the Holy Spirit an introvert or an extrovert? That's not what we're talking about. We're not saying is he an INTJ or is he? That's not what the kind of thing we're talking about when we talk about the personality of the Holy Spirit. In a sense, we could say the personhood of the Holy Spirit. OK, this has to do with the personhood of the Holy Spirit. And we need to think of him in terms as a person and having personal actions and personal relationships. And I hope to show that as we go through these various portions of scripture here. Now, this is really important because Again, as I said last two weeks ago, I think when we began this, it is. It is. There's a lot of false teaching in the Holy Spirit out there. There's both teaching on the Holy Spirit from those who would deny his personality to groups that come to mind when I think of that are the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses that do not believe the Holy Spirit is a person just about anyone who denies the Trinity is going to think of the Holy Spirit in wrong terms obviously. So both of those groups denied the unity of God and so they're going to have issues there they both tend to view the spirit of some kind of. you know, just power, force. You know, he's basically, I hate to oversimplify it, but he's basically electricity or heat or some other form of energy, but just from a spiritual standpoint. And so he's not a person. He's not, you know, we don't talk about electricity being personal, having a personal relationship with electricity or kinetic energy or something like that. You know, if you grab the wrong socket, you might have a personal relationship or something, but that's not really what we mean. You know, what we're talking about here, that's just energy. We're talking about dealing with the Holy Spirit as a person because He is. The Holy Spirit, first of all, we're going to see, possesses the properties of personality. The personality of the Holy Spirit. Not a force nor a power, but a person. It should be thought of that way. And He possesses the properties of personality. In other words, of personhood. What does that mean? Let's look at John 7.37. First of all, one of these we're going to see is life. Now think about this. Anytime you talk about something that's not a person, You're going to think, can we apply this? Would we talk about, for example, kinetic energy having life? Would we talk about something that's non-personal as having life? Not really, maybe in a metaphoric way, but never really in a serious way. John 7, 37 says, In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirsts, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this he spake of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive, for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified." So he talks about rivers of water flowing from the person, but John interprets this for us and says that's a metaphor for the Spirit of God. And how is it described? Living water. The Spirit has life. Romans 8. Romans 8, verse 2. We're going to see another verse that indicates something about the life of the Spirit. Romans 8, verse 2. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ hath made me free from the law of sin and death. Alright? For the law of the Spirit of life. He's described it as the Spirit of life. All right, the living spirit is another way we could put that second Corinthians three, three, just a short few pages over in the New Testament, second Corinthians three, three says. For as much as you are manifestly declared to be epistles of Christ ministered by us, and this is really interesting because Paul is here saying that the Corinthians are his epistle. All right, this is a very personal letter, 2 Corinthians. Epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, so they weren't written with ink like a letter normally is, but with the spirit of the living God. OK, how's the spirit of the living God? Not in tables of stone, not chiseled out of a table of stone like things would have sometimes been done in the ancient world, but in fleshy tables of the heart. In other words, the living people are the Epistles there, the the writings of Paul here, he's saying, in other words, the outcome, the impact of his ministry is seen in the Corinthians themselves. But what do we see? But with the spirit of the living God. All right. If he's the spirit of the living God, he's not dead. He's alive. So he has life. Second, he has intelligence. First Corinthians two eleven. First Corinthians two eleven. 1 Corinthians 2 says, For what man knoweth the things of man, save the spirit of man which is in him? In other words, who knows you other than your spirit which is in you? Even so, the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God. In other words, who knows the things of God? The Spirit of God. Now this is interesting because he has knowledge. Do we talk about something that's not living, knowing something? What does your car know? What does your house know? What does electricity know? What does kinetic energy know? Nothing. See, there's a very personal statement about the spirit of God. Purpose. He has purpose. Isaiah 11, 2. Isaiah 11, 2. All right, and again, as we see this, purpose is really only predicated of person. We don't talk about a force or an object determining a purpose. Saying, I'm going to do this. Alright, they don't make choices. It shows, really purpose here shows will. Right? They have a purpose, shows a will. The ability to make a choice. Isaiah 11, 2. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. And the spirit of wisdom and understanding. The spirit of counsel and might. The spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. What do we see here? The Spirit of the Lord is going to be upon him. And it's described as the Spirit of wisdom. So he has wisdom and understanding. The Spirit of counsel and might. The Spirit of knowledge. We've seen he has knowledge. And of the fear of the Lord. What do we see? He has purpose and direction, counsel and might. Purpose. So the Spirit has purpose. Let's move on. Something else shows up. That's kind of small. I apologize. You have your notes in front of you, but that's smaller than I thought it would show up on here. Another aspect of his personality is that he has action. He acts. He does things. We don't talk about the actions of a non-person. We might ask, what does your car do? You say it drives down the road. But it doesn't do it on its own. The fellow that I'm saying, it doesn't have its own actions. You have to have a driver. Action. Acts 8.29. What does the Spirit do there? Acts 8, verse 29. We see that He speaks. Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near and join thyself to this chariot. So what does the Spirit do here? He speaks. Think about that. Okay, we don't really talk about something really speaking unless it's personal. And if you talk to something that's not personal, people think that's a little unusual. Right? If you talk to your pen, if you talk to, you know, people might, it might be a little quirk and they might put up with it, but they're going to think that's kind of strange. If you talk to something you don't have a personal relationship with, that it's not possible to have a personal relationship with, that doesn't have personhood, that's just unusual. All right, so I'm going to talk to my shoes. OK, that's fine, you can do that, but the shoes, if they talk back, that's when we really get concerned, OK? But the fact is, being able to speak shows personhood and action. He speaks. He intercedes. Romans 8, 26. This is one of the most comforting passages, actually, in the New Testament about the Spirit. Romans 8, verse 26. Romans 8 has a lot about the Spirit in it. Romans 8 26. Likewise, the Spirit also help with our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself or itself make this intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. So what do we see him doing? Interceding. In other words, he is interceding to God on our behalf. This is not a word we use in modern English that often to intercede for somebody, but we have people do it sometimes for us. I think I've told you this story before, but years ago, well over 10 years ago, I was organizing a trip of adults to go down to Brazil to help some missionaries there. And if they were going down to Brazil to help these missionaries, we needed to get our visas. Well, for some reason, I thought I could save money. I learned my lesson. Okay? And what I did is I flew into the consulate, into Chicago, Illinois, where the consulate was, to take the visas there, the passports there myself, and turn in the visa applications to save the $100 a person that it would cost to pay an expediting service to do it. I've learned since then that those expediting services are worth paying. And I experienced it because I walked up to the window, I turned the things in, and I'll tell you what, I've been to Brazil one time, and it's one of the friendliest countries I've ever been to. I really enjoyed meeting the people, And it was just a very warm, welcoming country. But I think they shipped their unfriendly people to the consulate in Chicago. Because it just was not a very friendly place. And I turned in the visas and they said, have a seat. Well, I was there first thing in the morning to get those visas in and I sat down. And it gets to be 5 o'clock. I went out and got lunch, but it gets to be about 4 or 5 o'clock whenever the consulate closes. They're starting to close up the thing and I said, what should I do? You told me to have a seat. Come back tomorrow. I said, okay. So I came back first thing in the morning and they're like, they're not ready today. Come back the next day. I said, this is not going well. So I had a plane to catch because I didn't know it would take that long. So I flew back. And I met a friend at church who had been in the Page School in Congress. And he knew, because of that, many of the people he was in high school with. I guess some of you might remember this. There was a period that there was a shooting in the House of Representatives back in the 50s or 60s. And he showed me some of his scrapbook. He had a newspaper clipping of carrying out one of the wounded congressmen. at the time and it was some terrorists basically that came in and shot in the House of Representatives. And here's a picture of him as a page carrying one of them out to get medical attention. But because he was a page and a lot of his fellow pages eventually became congressmen or members of Congress, he knew a lot of them. So he said to me, he said, do you have a Congress directory? This was before the internet was as available or as useful as people, not everybody had access to it. I didn't, but I think we found it somehow. He said, oh, I went to school with him, let me call him. So he calls up a congressman and he says, I have a friend here and he's trying to take a group to go minister in Brazil and they're having trouble getting their visas. All right, OK. And the guy said, OK, well, I have somebody in my office who can take care of this. So his office, the congressman's office, called me back and said, we talked to the consulate in Brazil. You can pick your visas up tomorrow. I thought, that was easy. One of the things I did notice, though, is when I had picked up the visas, when I went to and waited that whole day in the consulate for my visas, all these couriers kept coming in from these visa expediting services. And they'd come in and they'd talk to the people. They knew all the people that worked in the consulate. And they'd talk to them. And the consulate people would joke with them. And they'd turn the things in. And then they'd have a whole pack of them to pick up. And I thought, OK, now I understand why people pay to expedite it, because it's not as big of a problem. But the congressman interceded on our behalf. And I showed up. And they had the visas ready for me. Now, they still weren't happy. They were really mad at me now because a member of Congress had intervened. But that's kind of interceding. In other words, the relationship I had with that consulate was not good, and it didn't go well, and so a member of Congress intervened in a sense, interceded, and because they don't know that that member of Congress might be the next Secretary of State or something, they don't want to make them mad. And they even granted the request. And so that's a very personal thing, you see. If it was just a matter of, did you check all the right boxes and sign the form right, it would have been no problem. But for some reason, there was a personal issue there. And they just decided either that I needed to use an expediting service, or they didn't like me, or I'm not sure what it was. And so it got hung up. And once there was a personal intercession there, it changed things. What does the Spirit do? He commands. Acts 13, 2. Acts 13, 2. We're going to see a command from the Spirit. Here's another action. Very personal actions here. You don't get commands from non-people. Non-persons. Acts 13, 2. And as they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, and He gives a command here, So what do we see here? A command from the Spirit to the church at Antioch to send Paul and Barnabas out to the missionary labor that the Spirit was leading them to. So we see him commanding. Again, a very personal action. He teaches 1 Corinthians 2.13. 1 Corinthians 2.13. Says. Which things we also we speak, not in words, which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. So what do we see here? The spirit teaching. Again, very personal thing. I don't know about you, but I've never had a teacher that wasn't a person. I had a teacher that told us we weren't people. I had a teacher in high school that said, you're not a person until you're 16. And that was just his view of things. And so he didn't like teaching classes with students who were under 16 in them. And so he'd say, you're not people yet. And then when we were juniors and seniors in high school, he'd say, oh good, you're people, so I'll give you this privilege. But again, the fact is, teachers have been people, the ones that I've had. He teaches, he testifies, John 15, 26. To give testimony to something requires a person. You don't call someone to the witness stand unless they're a person. You might have something introduced into evidence that's not a person, but to testify requires a person. But when the Comforter is come, He's talking about the Spirit here, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of me. In other words, he's going to testify about Jesus Christ. He's going to bear witness about Jesus Christ. He reproves. John 16.8, just over a little bit on the same page in my Bible here. 16.8, when He has come, He will reprove the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. What's the idea of reproving here? Calling out their sin. Calling it sin and pointing out the wrong of it. Calling for repentance. That's a very personal action. He creates Genesis 1-2. I think that's a familiar enough verse that we can just think of it. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God hovered upon the face of the waters. I'm thinking of a Hebrew word that means to hover. I don't remember what the word is in King James. Here's the Spirit of God participating in that creative process. Alright? So He creates. Again, that's a very personal thing. Persons create things. Persons create things. We acknowledge this. What do you have that was created that somebody didn't make? It was designed by a person. It was built by somebody's hands, usually, or someone created a machine to make it. He creates. He empowers. Zechariah 4.6. Zechariah 4.6. Zechariah is near the end of the Old Testament, if you're turning there. Zechariah 4-6. Very well known passage of Scripture. Then He answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the Lord undesirable, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. What does He do? He empowers. He gives power. Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord. He speaks again, we see there, and He guides, Romans 8, 14. Back to the New Testament. I appreciate your patience returning to all these passages, but again, I think if you will take the time to turn, I think it does help us. Forgive me if I'm getting there too quickly and reading them. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. To be led by the Spirit means to be guided by the Spirit. You don't hire a non-person guide, generally, right? Generally, you don't do that. If you go to hire a guide, you're looking for a person. He prays, Romans 8, 26. Likewise, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. He's involved in our prayers. He comforts, John 14, 26. We looked at that passage. He's called, that passage in John, he's called the Comforter. Again, we don't generally get comfort from a non-person. Or what I mean is, we don't. A non-person doesn't comfort us. We may take comfort in something, but as far as the action of comforting, that requires a person. All right? So we see he has action. What else are properties of personality that he has? Hopefully you'll be able to see this one. Freedom. 1 Corinthians 12, 1. 1 Corinthians 12, 1. And again, this is an important one. Let's get the context. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit with all. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom. To another, the word of knowledge by the same Spirit. To another, faith by the same Spirit. To another, the gifts of healing by the same Spirit. To another, the working of miracles. To another, prophecy. To another, discerning of spirits. To another, diverse kinds of tongues. To another, the interpretation of tongues. But all these worketh that one in the selfsame Spirit Dividing to every man severally as he will. Now, what do we see here? This list of gifts that the spirit had given. And what does he say? The spirit is the one who's given these gifts and he does it as he wills. This is according to his choice. This is where, again, some of the false teachings in the spirit come in here. This idea that every Christian is going to have the gift of tongues is not biblical. First Corinthians 12. Verse 11 here is telling us that the gifts we have come by the Spirit of God. Now, in later weeks, we'll talk about the sign gifts and tongues and whether those things are for today and those kinds of things. I don't personally believe they are. I believe that there were gifts that were apostolic in nature and existed during that time and don't exist today. I do think the Spirit still gifts people. But even regarding that, even if you say that it was for today, the idea that everyone would have to speak in tongues is not biblical. All right, it's not because it's saying he gives the one this kind of gift into another this kind of gift. And in fact, Paul says, don't you shouldn't all be seeking. That's the whole point of first Corinthians in the gift section here. 11, 12, 13, 12, 13, 14, especially that during these gifting the work of the spirit, you shouldn't all be speaking, seeking the gift of tongues because it's not. The gift that is the primary one that you should be concerned with. He's saying, be concerned with the ones that will edify people. All right, so he is free to choose whom he gives the gifts to. That kind of freedom is indicative of his being a person. He's self-conscious. 1 Corinthians 2.11. 1 Corinthians 2.11. Sometimes we use the word term self-conscious to mean embarrassed. OK, but that's not how we're using it here. 1 Corinthians 2 11 says, For what man knoweth the things of man, same the spirit of man which is in him. We've read this already. Even so, the things of God knoweth no man but the spirit of God. He is conscious of himself and his thoughts and God's thoughts. What does that mean? We do realize that objects are not self-conscious. In other words, this clicker that I used to advance the slide doesn't sit here and go, why am I a clicker? It doesn't think that way. My automobile, my van, or my car doesn't go, why do I have four wheels instead of six? What purpose am I here for? See, the ability to think objectively about yourself, to think about yourself as if you weren't yourself, that's personhood. That requires personhood. I would contend as well that's an evidence in human beings of the image of God. that part of the image of God is that we can think about ourselves objectively, in the sense of think about ourselves as if we were somebody else thinking about us. Other creatures not made in God's image can't always do that. I don't think a jellyfish floats around going, hmm, why is the ocean so wet? Or why am I here? What purpose was I created for? And it's not just because of intelligence. It's because part of this is the image of God in us. The spirit is like this, and so we reflect God on a finite level. Self-consciousness. Emotion. Have you ever thought about the Spirit of God having emotion? Romans 15, verse 30. Now, I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake and for the love of the Spirit, that you strive together with me in your prayers for God. Okay, now that could go either way. Because the love of the Spirit could be your love for the Spirit or the Spirit's love for you. I'm interpreting it here as the spirit of love for you, but let's look at Ephesians 4.30 and we'll see another passage that indicates emotion, a part of the spirit, probably the best known one. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed into the day of redemption. You can't grieve objects. You know, my basketball is really grieved by me today. You grieve people. Right, so here's the personhood of the Holy Spirit and he has emotion. See again, isn't this one where we can we can? Kind of depersonalize the spirit in our mind. How often we thought about him having purpose and emotion and action and these kinds of things. And we think about him biblically. We will, but I think a lot of times we tend to. I think what we focus on as Christians is the empowering work of the Spirit, which isn't wrong. That's right, that's good. It's in the New Testament, but what we tend to do then is that can Boiled down very much to power because it's empowering. And not just person. So we can grieve the Spirit of God. Also, we see personal pronouns refer to the Holy Spirit. Here's another example of His personality. Again, my letters are way too small here. But personality of the Holy Spirit. Personal pronouns refer to the Holy Spirit. The New Testament uses the word, and I'm going to give you this word, I'm not trying to be fancy here, but pneuma. It means spirit, and it doesn't mean breath, or it means wind, like air. So, if some of you men have pneumatic tools, what does that mean? It's driven by an air compressor. That's the root word here, the pneuma, the spirit. Refer to the spirit. Pneuma is a neuter noun. Now, just a really quick grammar lesson here. In English, we have three genders in our pronouns. He, she, and it. He is masculine, she is feminine, and a neuter object is it. A non-gender object is it. Some languages only have two genders. Spanish, French, Italian have two genders, masculine and feminine. But in Greek, they have three. But here's the issue. Pneuma is neuter. So, for example, if I said... Let me just pull out a name here. Susan went to the store. He bought cereal. You'd say, he? It's a boy named Susan. You'd say, didn't you mean she? Well, if it's indeed a woman, you'd say, well, no, you should have said she because the gender both in reality and in in grammar needs to agree. And if I said. George went to the store, it bought cereal, say it, you called Georgian it. Why is he? Alright, now here's the interesting thing. It's really bad grammar to refer to a he as an it or sometimes insulting. Or for the same way, you know, I bought a new pencil. He's great. Say he? Don't you mean it's great? Now here's the interesting thing. The New Testament writers are very good at being consistent when they have a noun. If that noun is masculine, they use a masculine pronoun. If it's neuter, they use a neuter pronoun. If it's feminine, they use a feminine pronoun. They're very good at getting that grammar right. Their grammar was pretty good. But here's the issue. You go through the New Testament and what you find is that you see the spirit referred to. We've already read some of these verses, John 14, 26. John 15, 26, John 16, 7-8, John 16, 13-14, Ephesians 1, 13-14, the spirit is neuter, but he's referred to as he instead of it. Well, why would you do that? Because you don't call a person it. See, it's bad grammar, but it's good theology. Grammatically, looking at it, a Greek reader would have said that's strange. Why would you call it? Why would you call the spirit he? Well, because the spirit is a he, not an it. He's a person. All right, now we won't look at all those all those passages because it's kind of just a grammar point, but that's a really interesting one that they're intentionally using bad grammar to have good theology. All right, also, we see the term comforter. Denotes personality, John 14, 16 through 17, we've looked at the actions of the spirit, personal associations are ascribed to the Holy Spirit. OK, if you have your notes in front of you, he has personal associations with the father and the son. Second Corinthians 13. Second Corinthians 13 says. 1314. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all. Amen. So what do we see here? The communion of the Holy Ghost. He's not talking about taking communion. He's talking about fellowship. So here we see that the Holy Spirit has communion. He has fellowship. Matthew 28, 19 as well, we'll see fellowship on the part of the Holy Spirit. Matthew 28, 19. What do we see here? What a well-known passage in the Great Commission. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. All right, and this is under the authority of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Now, most people don't look at this passage and go, the Father's not a person, the Son's not a person. Those are very personal words. But here, when we see the Holy Spirit, the term is clearly referring to a relation. There's a relationship between these three members of the Triune Godhead. He has personal associations with Christians. Acts 15, 28. Acts 15, 28. Says. For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things. What do we see here? The Holy Ghost has a relationship with Christians. The Holy Spirit has a relationship with Christians. He has personal associations with Christians. That's really important. And I think we started with this idea that the Holy Spirit is a person and he's related to personally. We will get to the idea of filling in later later sections, but let me just mention here, one of the wrong ideas we think about the filling of the spirit is we tend to think of the spilling of the spirit as if we're a glass getting more of the spirit than us. That's not what the filling of the Spirit is. The filling of the Spirit isn't you getting more of the Spirit. It's the Spirit being more involved in you. It's personal. Alright? In other words, sometimes we've said it's the Spirit having more of you. It's that deepening of the relationship between you and the Spirit of God. The New Testament describes people behaving toward the Spirit. This is very interesting. The Holy Spirit can be tested. Acts 5, 9. Acts 5, 9. We're using the word tested here because it says tempt in our King James Bible, but that's not, obviously, God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man. So Acts 5, 9 says, Then Peter said unto her, How is it that you have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? In other words, that word is often translated test through uttering the Bible as well. To test the Spirit of the Lord. Behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out. This is Ananias and Sapphira. Here's Sapphira. She's lied to the Holy Spirit we see in this passage of Scripture. And so what do we see? He can be tested. It's a very personal thing. How can the Holy Spirit be resisted? Acts 7.51. Here's Acts 7. It's Stephen's sermon. Stephen's sermon just before his martyrdom. This is interesting. He's pretty bold here. It's the kind of thing you're not supposed to say from the pulpit. But he does. These stiff necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears you do always resist the Holy Ghost as your fathers did, so do ye. He's saying you're rebellious and your fathers resisted the Holy Ghost and so do you. He can be resisted. The Holy Spirit can be blasphemed. Matthew 12, 31, okay, where the Lord says that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. Wherefore, Jesus says, I say unto you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, but the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven unto men. Now, what is the nature of the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit or blasphemy of the Holy Spirit? Let me say this. I don't believe this is something that a Christian can do and therefore lose their salvation. Sometimes, especially I find this among young Christians or sometimes young people, where they're worried, did I commit the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? Or could I commit the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? I would contend if you're worried about it, you didn't. My personal understanding of it is, if you look at the nature of the context, you have the Pharisees saying that Jesus is casting out demons by the power of Satan. And who is He really casting demons out by the power of? The Spirit of God. So they're saying what God is doing is being done by Satan. They're attributing the acts of God to Satan. And my personal opinion is this something that really could only be done when Jesus was on Earth. I'm not sure somebody can blaspheme the Holy Spirit today, but even if we assumed that somebody could blaspheme the Spirit today, it would have something to do with attributing God's works to Satan. And therefore, in other words, it's a rejection of the truth, if you follow what I'm saying. You're looking at the fact that here's God clearly working, and you're so hard-hearted that you say, that's not God, that's Satan. It's not something you can just speak or do. It's not something you're going to do inadvertently. This has to do with hard-heartedness clearly. The Holy Spirit can be blasphemed though. The Holy Spirit can be insulted. Hebrews 10.29. Hebrews 10 talks about Verse 24, let us consider one another to provoke and to love and to good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another. And so much the more as you see the day approaching. For if we sin willfully, after that we've received knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment, fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses. of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden underfoot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing, and hath done despot unto the Spirit of grace." In other words, you've insulted the Holy Spirit. This isn't just talking about a word you've said, but what he's talking about here is here's somebody who's through their rejection of the Gospel, and they're turning away. Remember what the Hebrews were being tempted to do. They had professed faith in Christ, and now they were being tempted to turn away from that faith in Christ and go back into their former life of Judaism and to give up on Jesus. And he's saying that would be denying, that would be insulting the Spirit and treading underfoot the blood of the Son of God. Don't do that. It's going to bring condemnation on you. The Holy Spirit can be lied to. Acts 5.3, we saw that Ananias and Sapphira passage. He's a person. The Holy Spirit can be obeyed. Acts 10.19-21. Let's look at that passage. Acts 10.19-21. While Peter thought on the vision, the Spirit said unto him, Behold, three men seek thee. Arise, therefore, and get thee down, and go with them, doubting nothing, for I have sent them. Then Peter went down to the men which were sent unto him from Cornelius, and said, Behold, I am he whom ye seek. What is the cause? Wherefore, a year come. And they said, Cornelius the centurion, a just man, and one that feareth God, and of good report upon all the nation of the Jews, was warned from God by an holy angel to send for thee into his house, and to hear the words of thee. Then called he He them in and lodged them. And on the morrow, Peter went away with them and certain men from Joppa and accompanied him." What do we see? We see Peter hearing the Spirit of God telling him, these men are going to come from Cornelius. They're going to look for you. Go with them. Don't worry. Don't doubt. For God says, I sent them. And what does Peter do? He obeys. And who is it that commanded him to do this? The Spirit. The Spirit commanded him to do this. Alright? So the Spirit can be obeyed. All of these things point to the fact that the spirit is a person. Any teaching that says he's not is completely out of step with the New Testament. I mean, how many passages did we look at? I mean, books of the Bible here. Every one of the Gospels, First Corinthians, Romans, Acts. OK, and then the Old Testament, Zechariah and Isaiah. Ephesians, Hebrews, we're looking at several of the five or six of the all of the gospel and the book of Acts and several passages all giving testimony to the fact that the Spirit is a person is personhood and his personality and therefore needs to be interacted with as a person. Now I realize that it is it is. We can sometimes get nervous about the doctrine of the Spirit because we've seen people abuse it. Like I mentioned this last time, we've seen the abuses of people who claim things are from the Spirit when they're clearly not and teach things about the Spirit that are clearly not there. OK, we do want to be careful, though. He is a person, but I would be careful about people, commands people give that the Bible doesn't command. So, for example, since the Spirit is God and since he is a person, I do believe we could pray to the Spirit. I do believe that would not be illegitimate to pray to the Spirit. He's God. He can receive prayer. However, as a preacher, I'm not going to get up and say, there's a very famous sermon. that I know of a preacher that preached. And what he said was, some of you have not seen God's soul winning power in your life and in your witnessing because you've never been praying to the Holy Spirit. And if you would start praying directly to the Holy Spirit, then you'll start seeing fruit in your soul winning efforts. And my contention is the New Testament never teaches us that. That actually the New Testament teaches us that what's Jesus say to do when we pray? Pray our Father. right in the name of Christ interceded for and by the Holy Spirit. And that seems to be the order. So this idea that, you know, you've somehow grieved the spirit because you haven't prayed directly to him. You've been praying to the father. That's not Bible. That's a new theology. That's not Bible. It's not in the New Testament. But I I mean, I know this famous preacher used to go on and preach this. And he'd be invited places to preach it. And you'd see, you know, pastors conferences where pastors are going forward. Because, you know, I as a pastor, you labor and you labor and labor and the fruit comes slow. And you think, I want to see more fruit. And so you hear this and you think, I've been missing out. But the fact is the New Testament doesn't teach us that. Now, can we pray to the Spirit? I don't think it's unbiblical to. But let's face it, the New Testament doesn't command us to. So I'm not going to get up and say, you have to. You must. All right, there's a song that we've sung sometimes here. Gracious Spirit, dwell with me. I myself would graciously. Can we sing praises to the Spirit of God? Yes. However, what happens is among some in the charismatic movement, who have especially gone to excesses, everything becomes about the Spirit. When the New Testament tells us the Spirit would speak of Christ. All right, the genuine mark of the Spirit's work is that he speaks about Christ. He's a person who points to the person of Christ. Now, he is a person and we interact with him as a person, but I don't think, in other words, grieving the Holy Spirit is also going to be grieving the other members of the Godhead, right? So a sermon that says, you've been praying to the Father and He's happy with you, but the Spirit's not. That's silly. The Father and Son aren't going to be pleased with you and the Spirit be grieved with you. Do you follow what I'm saying? That's not going to happen if the spirits grieved with you. The father and son are grieved as well. All right, because they have the same will. They have the same desires. They have the same mind. But he's a person. We need to interact with him as a person. In other words. We need to avoid the traps that say, you know, we're only looking for the spirit to give us some kind of power. Because he's actually working in our souls. I mean, what are the implications of things like don't grieve the spirit? I mean, what are the implications of that in our souls, don't grieve the spirit of God? What kind of things would grieve the spirit? Well, when you read or hear the word of God, not responding to the spirit's work, grieves the spirit. I don't think we need to make it too subjective. I think it's a fairly objective thing. We've all experienced this, haven't we? We hear someone say something from the Bible and we go, yeah, but that'll mean I have to change this in my life and I don't like that. So I'm just going to kind of ignore that for now. Well, you know what? That action grieves the Spirit. That action grieves the Spirit of God. That's a very objective thing. You can say the Bible says it. I don't want to do it. I'm resisting doing it. I'll have to do it. Whatever. That grieves the Spirit of God. All right, it's not an issue of something, you know, you can kind of get out in this realm as well, where we start to go. I just didn't I didn't have enough quiver in my liver during the service. And so because my liver wasn't quivering enough, the spirit must be grieved with me. No, no, no, no. All right. The definition of the grieving of the spirit doesn't have to do with whether or not I got an emotional jolt during a service. Let's face it, there's a possibility to have emotionalism without the spirit being there at all. It exists all kinds of places. There's all kinds of emotionalism at voodoo ceremonies. Is the Spirit of God involved in that? No. However, the Spirit is a person, so does He have emotions and does He interact with our emotions? When you have a relationship with another human being, you have a relationship with them on an emotional level, you have a relationship on a mental level with facts and truth, You have a relationship with them on a volitional level. You make choices to do good for them. Okay, all of that, the whole person is involved. You don't have a relationship with just a part of a person. You know, I have a really good relationship with his thumb. No, that would be silly. And in the same way, we don't say, I only have a relationship with the person's mind. No, I have a relationship with their mind. We talk about their heart, meaning their emotions. In the same way with the Spirit of God. All right, we can't have. In other words, let's not atomize him. He's a person. What that means is we can tend to think, I think right about God. And so I'm OK. Just because I have the right ideas in my head, that's not a relationship. But on the other hand, let's not go so much to the place where we where we become so subjective about it that we can get. It becomes how do I want to describe this, it becomes a certain amount of spiritual navel-gazing. Do you understand what I mean by that? In other words, if you, you know, we kind of joke about this, that certain religions will sit there and, you know, contemplate their navel. We can get, in other words, we can get so worked up about whether or not we've grieved the Spirit that we're actually really not thinking about the Spirit anymore at all. We're thinking about ourselves. You know what I mean? In other words, we're thinking, oh no, have I done this or is that right? And we get so worked up about it. Did I have the right emotional experience? And we're not really thinking about the spirit at all being grieved. We're thinking about how I felt. In other words, that doesn't work in other relationships either, right? If you're married, If you only do things for your spouse in order that you would feel good. You start to go, there's something not quite right about that. Right? Well, I did this for my wife, but I didn't feel good about it, so maybe I didn't. Let me put it this way, okay? Let me give this example. I go and I buy flowers for my wife. And I bring my wife flowers, she gives me a hug, thanks me for the flowers, she's smiling. And I gave them because I genuinely love her and I want her to have the flowers, I know she'll be pleased by them. And then later on I go, you know, I just didn't have the quiver in my liver when I gave her those flowers. So maybe she really wasn't pleased by them. You'd say, what? Because of the way you felt inside you're wondering about whether she was pleased? that becomes so self-introspective that it's actually not helpful or healthy for the relationship. Because I'm really more worried about myself than I am about the other person at that point. I didn't feel good enough about it, so therefore, therefore, you know, it must have been wrong somehow. Let's not, let's be careful not to fall into those kinds of thoughts and those kinds of Let me just caution you here. There is some devotional writing that's of this nature. There's some devotional writing that I've read and I read it and I go, I understood what you just said, but I'm really confused. And it really doesn't help me to become more like Christ. It doesn't really help me grow in my sanctification. It just makes me go, huh, did I do that? It really makes me feel like I'm never going to measure up. some book devotional books and things of that nature. And. That's not healthy for us. All right. That's not what we don't mean getting so worked up about having a relationship with the Holy Spirit that I become. It's all about me and how I felt about it. And that is a danger that we can fall into. I don't know if you... I'm seeing some blank looks. I see I'm not communicating what I'm trying to communicate here, but there is some devotional literature that's of that nature. Let me mention one. I don't think he's evil. Maybe some of you, I'm going to probably offend somebody, but the devotional writings of Andrew Murray sometimes fall into this category. I don't know if you've ever read Andrew Murray and his devotional writings. Very godly man, but you read some of his devotional writings and you go, talk about full surrender and some of these kinds of things where I'm just thinking, I don't really think anybody on this side of heaven ever really gets there. And it becomes so introspective about myself that it's really not, I mean, it talks about the spirit, but at a certain point I really think this is so much about me and how I feel and my surrender that it's really not really about the spirit in a relationship with God anymore. And I'm not sure it's really that helpful. Now, there's probably six people in here that love Andrew Murray are now offended by me, but I'm just going to say from a pastoral standpoint, I have not found that to be the most helpful the most helpful thing in regard to my sanctification. Now, it doesn't mean there's nothing he's written that's not helpful. I mean, I think he's written many things that are helpful, but there's some of his books where I just sit there and I go, hmm, I don't think that is a help as far as understanding the Spirit of God and the relationship with the Spirit of God. All right? All right. Let's go ahead and close in prayer.