We put my ability to tell the truth to the test. I'm not in a rush to start. I don't think we'll be super, super long this morning. Kind of a slow start. Genesis chapter number one. And let's pray. Our Lord God, we thank you for your kindness and for your word. Thank you for salvation and our Savior. We certainly do, Lord, pray your mercy upon our nation. And in conjunction with that, we pray for your strength, for your people, that we would be faithful to you always, in season and out of season. We ask your blessing on our time together in Sunday school. We ask us to ask you to help us to understand your word. And we ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Genesis chapter one. So last week I'd mentioned, and I certainly didn't exhaust everything that could be said, but I kind of wound down the study that we had done on movements in history and some of the doctrines attached. I had been thinking about this for some time now, what to do when I had finished with that, And as I thought about that series, I thought that so much of what we had discussed in the way of religious movements, our conversations about human ability when it comes to something like salvation, can we, can we not? When it comes to something like our sanctification, what part do I play and what part of me is playing it and those kinds of things. I realized that in a very real way, those things had also a reflection upon the role and the activity of God's Holy Spirit, because he has instrumental role in those things. The Spirit has an instrumental role in human salvation, as well as in our sanctification. And so this morning, we're gonna just turn our attention for however long it is to thinking about and looking at the Holy Spirit, and so admittedly, this is kind of a slow start this morning to what is a really, really large topic. And we're gonna begin in Genesis chapter one and verse number two, because this is our very introduction to the Spirit of God. Of Genesis 1.1, we know, in the beginning, God created heaven 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 moved, or you may have a note, or you may be using a translation, the Spirit of God hovered upon the face of the waters. Now, I do just want to mention this, because there's so much of, right, we don't want to just read Genesis 1, 1, and 2 through the lens of kind of science, right? God's explanation for how the world got here. That's true, but there's also much more that is true here. What we are seeing is God's methodology that he is going to employ all throughout the Bible, which is first there is chaos, and then there is order. First there is darkness, and then there is light. And it will not be well until well into the New Testament that Paul will take us back to creation and point out to us that as God commanded the light to shine in darkness, so God commands salvation, the light of Christ to be seen through the proclamation of the gospel. And so we have all that here, right? It's all here. It's not just simply science fact about matter. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. But God created the heaven and the earth in this condition for his own spiritual purposes, the earth was without form and void, kind of, I don't want to say shapeless, but without clear lines of distinction. It was without form, it was empty, and then there was God's spirit, God's spirit. So this morning, I just want to make two points, right? Nothing radical, nothing controversial, nothing that you could not tell me. But within the broader world of believing people or professing people or those who call themselves Christians, there is far from universal understanding of these two positions. So we will get into them. So point number one for our Sunday school lesson this morning is this. The Holy Spirit is a person. The Holy Spirit is a person. Now, and you may want to do this, right? You could go to the internet, you could go to Wikipedia and just get right to it, and you could search personhood in the search line, or go to the internet and search personhood, and you would discover very quickly that personhood is a huge issue. It is an issue in philosophy, and religion is by nature somewhat philosophical. It deals with a way of thinking and understanding about our world. Quite simply, when we talk about person, we're talking about the fact that God's spirit possesses those things that a person would have, that he has intellect, that he has emotions, that he has a will, that he has power, and that he has standing. Standing. And that's more of a legal philosophical construct than a theological one. But persons have their own existence and their own identity. They are aware of themselves. And they have what is known as agency, which is the ability to function in certain ways under certain scenarios, that they have some decision-making capacity. And this is not, folks, just an obscure theological point. I mean, if you get virtually anybody's systematic theology and start reading through the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, they will almost always, unless you're looking at a, I don't even know if one exists, a Jehovah's Witness systematic theology, right? Virtually everybody at the very beginning talks about the fact that the Holy Spirit is a person. But this is not just an abstract theological issue, okay? So please don't think, you know, I come to Sunday school and he's trying to kill me with theology. Let me just give you three examples of the way that we have used personhood in our world to commit terrible atrocities. One has been through slave, or through race-based slavery. The history of the United States from the beginning of the United States up until really the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was that people who were enslaved were not legally people. They are legally property. And since they are not legally people, they have no legal standing. So they have no voice in court. They have no voice in their destiny. They have no control over voting rights. They are property, and they may be treated as property. And virtually every state, that was the legal position that they took. And this all is a consequence of looking at very real human beings and go, but they're not people. They don't have personhood. This is how Adolf Hitler defended the extermination of the Jews in World War II. They were the undermensch, the subhuman. They're not people. They're not people. And since they're not people, they don't have any rights, they don't have any standing, they don't have any voice. They're just to be disposed of by those who are people. And the third way that is probably the most used in the world that you and I inhabit is abortion. There is a reason, folks, that the pro-abortion crowd is adamant that a fetus is not a person. Because you can murder people, and people can have legal standing, and people can take legal action. So when they say, but it's just a fetus, that's not an abstract philosophical position that they're taking. That's not even a medical position that they're taking. That is their ability to justify the atrocities that they are committing. They're not people. They're not people. They don't have personhood. So you can't really commit a crime against them. So it's, again, to point out that God's Holy Spirit is a person is to recognize not only his intellect and his will and his emotions, but it is to validate his existence as a living being in his own right, with his own standing. Now, of course, I've said all that, right? Turn, if you would, to Isaiah chapter 11, because our authority is not me, our authority is, of course, the scriptures. Jehovah's Witnesses are one of the largest of the so-called Christian denominations, we of course would not give them that label, but they would take that label, that denies the personhood of God's Holy Spirit. They just say that the Holy Spirit is just a power or a force. Christian science, which is of course another we would argue not real Christian religion, but it puts Christian in its name. They make the Holy Spirit equal with the Father, that the Father and the Spirit are basically the same. Now, I am not going to spend a lot of time, although we will come to this, that will be our second point, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to defend the existence of the Trinity. I'm going to stipulate that We are Trinitarians, we are a Trinitarian church. We make no claims to understand the Trinity, but we make every attempt to honor it and to recognize it and to believe in it. So to go back to this, Isaiah chapter 11 and verse number two. Or verse number, let's go to verse number one. There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. What evidence is there in the Bible that God's spirit has personhood? Well, he certainly bears intellect, right? This is a prediction, of course, about the Messiah, and it's actually a kingdom prediction about the Messiah. There will come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse. This is the physical genealogy of Christ. A branch shall grow out of his roots, Christ in his humanity. So we have Jesus the man, according to the genealogy of David, and Christ God and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. And it is a spirit of wisdom and understanding and counsel and might and knowledge and fear of God. Those are not entirely, but many of them are intellectual attributes. Someone has to have a mind to have those things said about them. Or Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8 and verse number 27. Romans 8.26 is one of the ministries of the Spirit to us, and we will eventually get to that. Verse number 27, and he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. The Spirit has a mind. God's Spirit has a mind. He is a person. Not just the power, but the person. And then look at Ephesians chapter 4. And I really am, folks, just kind of giving you a sampling Ephesians chapter 4 and verse number 30. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God. Whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption. And there's another one of his ministries to us. But our focus this morning is on this, right? He is a person. He has intellect. He can think. He can advise, and he has emotion. He can be grieved. Do not grieve God's Holy Spirit. So he has some capacity at some kind of emotional level. Now again, we'll look at this. He is fully deity. He is fully God. So it's not a defective emotional state like we possess, tainted by sin. but it is a divine emotional state. He can be grieved. He has a will. Look back at Acts chapter 7. Acts chapter 7 and verse number 51. Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost. As your fathers did, so do ye. And perhaps this is a good opportunity to point out to you that in our King James Bible, the word ghost and spirit are really used interchangeably and synonymously. There are not, and what I mean is there are not two distinct Greek words that are being used. There's one Greek word being used. It is a word we're all pretty familiar with. It is the word pneuma, which refers to air or breath. We know about things like pneumatic tires that have air in them. So for whatever reason, and I'm not trying to get into a controversy with our King James Bible, sometimes our translation uses the word ghost and sometimes it uses the word spirit. But it's the same person. And here he has a will. He can be resisted. He wants something. And of course, we know, folks, again, kind of off on a little bit back into our recent study, that human beings have wills. The presence of real human wills is as biblically true as is the presence of the will of God's Spirit. Just as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit have the same will in all matters, The ambition, by the way, the ambition for the church is that everybody in the church has the same will, and the ultimate conclusion is that everybody will have the same will. This is where we're going. This is the one man, one mind, not brainless, mindless mush, but everybody wants what God wants. That's the way it has always existed. That's the way it functions in the Trinity. Father, Son, Spirit all want the same thing, perfect unity, perfect harmony, no controversy, never has been. So he can't be resisted. Acts chapter 16. Acts chapter 16 and verse number 6. Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia and were forbidden of or by the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia. So the Holy Spirit has a will. The Holy Spirit has a will. And here by the way is another one of the ministries that the Spirit has to us that is probably the most controversial of his ministries to us, which would be the ministry of his personal leading. These were men on a good mission. And the Spirit said, no, not that mission. No, not that mission. They were forbidden to preach the word in Asia. And so they were sent instead, right, because this is a good mission, this is not the spirit keeping them from sin, this is the spirit directing them into another location for their ministry, which again, right, is one of the ministries of the spirit to us and is one of the ones that the most difficult for us to put our fingers on clearly. We'll eventually get to that. But he has a will, right? The spirit has a will. and that will can be resisted. In this case, that will can be honored. The Spirit said, don't I want you to go to Asia? We should know enough about Paul, folks, to know that when men told him not to go places, Paul, don't go to Jerusalem, it's going to be bad. Paul said, don't play that game with me. I don't care how bad it goes. I'm going to Jerusalem. So the Spirit has a will and we have a will. In this case, these men wanted to do the will of the Lord, and they were sent, and it would, to extend the ministry, right? Would it not all be wonderful if every time we thought the Spirit was leading us, we had something like the Macedonian vision to validate that leading? But we don't. That's, again, we'll eventually get, 1 Corinthians chapter 12. And let's just begin back in verse number four. There are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. All right, so there's all these different kinds of gifts, but there's only one spirit. There are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. 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, which means everybody else. For to one, verse number eight, 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 and the self-same spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will. Which again, the operative concern for our Sunday School lesson is that the Holy Spirit has a will. I hope that I'm not in any way being disrespectful, but when I read that passage, I think of the Holy Spirit as being kind of the general contractor in a project. Not everybody is a carpenter. Not everybody is a brick mason. Not everybody is an electrician. Not everybody is a plumber. You probably wouldn't want to live in a house if the plumber built the whole thing. or if the carpenter built the whole thing. This was over 30 years ago when we were putting the addition on in what is now the Ford. We had hired a small electrical contracting firm. They were great guys, did a great job. And I went down the hallway one day and there was an electrician on a ladder with a large, I mean, it's the biggest pail of spackling that I have seen in my life. And he had been up in the attic working on the wiring, and he stepped through the drywall and put a big hole in the drywall. So he was out there with spackling trying to duplicate the texture on the drywall. It was ridiculous. I mean, there's just no other way. It was just ridiculous. And I just looked at it, and I just said, we're going to have to get that fixed. You have to get it fixed by somebody that understands drywall. So the contractor's responsibility is to orchestrate all the trades so that the house is well-built, fully functional, and everybody benefits from the work of everybody else. That's kind of, again, that's an illustration of what is being explained in this passage. Not everybody has the same gift. Not everybody has the same capacity. And the decision making for that resides in the Spirit of the Lord, because it comes out of His will. And so He is, right, He is looking, I would argue, always looking at the far larger picture of the worldwide global state of Christianity, and he is looking at the smaller picture of every individual local church, and he is working his people as he will, placing them where he wills. Finally, go back to a very familiar passage in Matthew chapter 28. He is a person, and again, these are just a sampling of many places that we could find in the scripture. He is spoken of as a person. Matthew 28, verse number 18. And Jesus came and spake unto them saying, all power, all authority, is of course what the word means. All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you all the way, even unto the end of the world. Amen. And name there, right? Going back to the very beginnings of the Old Testament, right? A name is kind of the representation of the whole. It is one's reputation. A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches. The reputation, the name of the Lord. We're dealing with the reputation of the Lord, our understanding of the Lord, kind of the whole picture of God. And so for our purposes, to whatever extent the Father and the Son are persons, the Spirit is a person because people are to be baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. He is not relegated in the Bible to some secondary type of existence. And that brings me then to our second point. Not only is the Holy Spirit a person, he is a divine person. He is all by himself in all of his identity to the ability that he can stand alone as the father might stand alone or the son might stand alone. He is fully deity. He is all God. Now having said that, I'm gonna ask you to turn to Romans chapter eight, because this is, as far as I know, the only place that the New Testament does it, but nevertheless it does it. And so let's talk about it. Romans 8, verse number 16. The spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. and then 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. So what has happened here, right, is that our translators are not trying to treat God's spirit as some kind of impersonal being or force. They are trying to be grammatically correct. Okay? Personal pronouns follow gender. So that boys are he and girls are she. And in the Greek language, the word spirit doesn't have a gender. And so grammatically correct usage would be itself. No disrespect intended. no diminishing of personhood or divinity intended, just grammatical correctness intended. You would not call something that as a noun has no gender by a gender label. So just remember folks, if when you read the spirit itself, if that kind of causes you to cringe a little bit, imagine how much more you would cringe if you read the spirit herself. That would be grammatically incorrect as well. But again, as far as I know, those are the only two places that it happens where the word spirit is modified that way. Go back, if you would, to Psalm 139. I'm gonna try and deal with this in three big theological divisions. The Holy Spirit is God. third person of the Trinity. And he has the same attributes and the same characteristics and the same desires. There is, right, when we're thinking about this, we wanna try and remember always, right, when we talk about the Trinity, folks, we're up against something that absolutely exceeds the boundaries of human understanding. God himself is a spirit. The Holy Spirit is a spirit. Jesus Christ, or the second member of the Godhead, the Word, was a spirit. God was all spirit and only spirit, and yet existed as Father, Son, and Spirit. Then the Word became flesh. And Jesus Christ is Jehovah in a human body, the second member of the Godhead. But the Father remains a spirit, and the Holy Spirit remains a spirit. So the fact that the Holy Spirit is always a spirit, and therefore always invisible to the natural human eye, does not mean he is the same as the Father, who is also a spirit. So again, we believe the Trinity, we accept the Trinity, and the Trinity is one of those things that the farther you get into it and the more depth in which you study it, the more you realize you are in very deep water. So that's fine, right? It's an old cliche, but a good one. If it was a God we could understand, he wouldn't be a God worth bothering with. All right, so Psalm 139. Psalm 139 and verse number 7, Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, the grave is the idea. Behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. The Holy Spirit, where shall I go from thy presence? He possesses what we call omnipresence. He is everywhere. Like God, he is everywhere. There is no place where God is not. in this world. That's not animism, right? We're not talking about his spirit, right? His spirit doesn't live inside your dog or your goldfish or the trees in your backyard. But God is in every place that there is to be. He is omnipresent. Or Luke chapter one. Luke chapter one and verse number 35. This is, of course, upon Mary's learning what her role is. And the angel answered and said unto her, the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, the power of the highest shall overshadow thee, therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. He is omnipotent. all-powerful. And one of the ministries that he has, folks, his major function, perhaps, within this Trinitarian relationship, at least as pertains to earth, is that he is the power of God. That when God does something through his divinity, his spirit is frequently the actor in that accomplishment. And that will be true, we will look at this, because that is said to be true even of Jesus Christ, the second member of the Godhead. Jesus was filled with the Holy Ghost, filled with the Holy Spirit. And so the Spirit is the agent or the actor in the miracles of Christ. And again, we will get to that. So all the power that God has resides in God's Spirit. All the places that God can be, the Spirit can be. He is omnipresent. And all the power that God has, He has. He is omnipotent. And then 1 Corinthians chapter 2 1 Corinthians 2, beginning in verse 10. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. 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. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. The spirit possesses what we call omniscience. He knows everything that God knows. So he is fully and completely God. omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient. These are words that we use to describe in simple terms the complex abilities and capacities of God. As we saw in Genesis 1-2, His existence precedes the creation. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth and the Spirit hovered. We will, because I think I haven't 100% decided yet, but I think we're going to turn our attention back to the Gospel of John in our Sunday services, that this is the kind of expression that is used about Jesus Christ. In the beginning was the Word. Whatever the beginning was, the Word was already there is the idea that is being communicated. The Word precedes the beginning. and the Spirit of God preceded the creation of the heavens and the earth. And then sometimes, one last pass, or a couple last passages. Look at Isaiah chapter six and verse number eight, right? He is God, and sometimes, folks, because the Bible just kind of toggles back and forth between In the Old Testament, Father and Spirit. In the New Testament, Father, Spirit, and Son. As complicated as the Trinity might be to us, it is not complicated at all to God. He doesn't spend any time scratching his head over the distinction between the members. He spends no time at all wondering if one is as much divine as he is. So you have, for instance, Isaiah 6, 8. I babble. Also, I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go forth? Then said I, Here am I, send me. And he said, Go. And tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not, and see indeed, but perceive not. Now that's Isaiah 6, 8, and 9. I heard the voice of the Lord. I heard the voice of God. But if you look at Acts chapter 28 and verse number 25, you have Paul's inspired quotation of Isaiah 6, 8, and 9. Acts 28, 25, and when they agreed not among themselves, they departed after that Paul had spoken one word. One departing statement is the idea. Well spake the Holy Ghost by Isaiah. The prophet unto our father saying, go into this people and say, hearing ye shall hear and shall not understand, seeing ye shall see and shall not perceive. So when Paul quotes Isaiah 6, 8, and 9, he ascribes that to the spirit, but the word spirit is not used in Isaiah 6, 8, and 9. The word Lord is. Again, my point is just something like this. They're used interchangeably. It's not a contradiction. It's not a problem to be solved. It's just a reality to be recognized. There is one God, three persons. And this is the way that they're treated in Acts chapter 5 verses 3 and 4. Well, you're in Acts 28, so I guess it's not hard to go back to Acts chapter 5. Acts chapter 5 verse number 3, Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost and to keep back part of the price of the land? Whilst it remained, was it not thine own? After it was sold, was it not in thine own power? Why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. So very clearly the Holy Spirit is called God because the Holy Spirit is God. 2 Corinthians 3, 17, 18. Let me ask you one last passage. And then I will wind this down this morning. Ephesians, I should tell you what that passage is, shouldn't I? Or you wanna just guess? Ephesians chapter one. Ephesians chapter one. Our conclusion, my conclusion this morning is this, right? Who is the Holy Spirit? He is a person. He has his own distinct identity with all the things, including rights, that a person has, standing, and he is a divine person. He is not an ordinary person. He is divine. And the work then that he does is the work that God is doing. Ephesians chapter one, let's start in verse number three. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated us under the adoption of children, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, having predestinated us under the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of His grace wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved. So there is praise to the Father for His role in salvation. Ephesians 1 3-6. 7 In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace, wherein He hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence. having made known unto us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself, then in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in him, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will, that we should be to the empress of his glory who first trusted in Christ, and now the emphasis is upon the role of Christ in our salvation. The role of the Father, to the praise of the Father, and now to the praise of Christ. Verse 13, in whom also ye trusted after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also after that ye believed, you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession under the praise of his glory, glory to the spirit. So there is a kind of this Trinitarian benediction in Ephesians 1, 3 through 14, praising the father, the son, and the spirit who are all equally God. He is a person and he is a divine person. All right, so again, that's our introduction to the study. We'll turn our attention to his work in the Old Testament.