Well, let's try this and see if I can remember how to do it. I like what Vince Lombardi said. Pastor Patrick reminded me of it a few weeks ago, and often at the beginning of training camp each year, Vince Lombardi would stand up in front of grizzled NFL veterans and begin training camp by saying, gentlemen, this is a football. Lombardi was big on the fundamentals. And I don't know that Vince Lombardi ever knew Abraham Kuyper. I have no reason to believe that he did. Abraham Kuyper was a pastor, a theologian, and the prime minister of the Netherlands all at the same time. That's a lot of jobs. And Abraham Kuyper said substantially the same thing as it has to do with basics. And I wrote it down and put it in your bullet because I thought it was just interesting and It ran right next to my sermon and what we're going to talk about today. Abraham Kuyper said, and since this is the result of an inexcusable lack of knowledge and appreciation of the Holy Spirit's glorious work in the entire creation, holy enthusiasm constrained me in the power of God to offer my fellow champions for the faith, once delivered by the fathers, some assistance in this respect. I guess I'm feeling kind of the same way about that. Now, what Kuyper did was, after he said that, he wrote a 500 page book on the Holy Spirit. And I'm not going to do that. And I'm not going to go in that kind of detail. Dan Nelson taught a Sunday school class on the Holy Spirit, maybe eight weeks worth. So what I'm going to be able to accomplish this morning is very, very little. And it may seem very simple to you. For many of you, this will be, well, it'll be old hat, but think of this as me saying, this is a football. Tom Rogers taught a Bible study several years ago in which he quoted Dr. R.C. Sproul as saying, the Holy Spirit is the forgotten God. And I think there's several reasons for that, but one among them is the idea that as we think about the Trinity, now I'm going off script here, this is always dangerous, that as we think of the Trinity, we think of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Now, I know what a father is, and I know what a father's supposed to do. I can relate to that. I have role models, and I see lots of fathers out there. So, I have a pretty good idea of what a father is and what a father does. I know what a son is. I am one. And I've had some experience of being a son, so I understand the idea of a son. But when it comes to a spirit, how do we relate to that? And so we have a difficult time identifying with that, and so oftentimes the Holy Spirit is just kind of left off to the side. Today we're going to be talking about the Holy Spirit. This is a football speech, and we want to ask the question to start out with is, who is the Holy Spirit? And the first thing we want to say about the Holy Spirit is that he is God. Much has been written about the sermon text that I picked out this morning. For the sake of time, we're not going to read the whole thing. I will, in the course of the sermon, be referring to it. And I put a sheet of scripture passages in your bulletin that I'll be referring to over the course of the sermon here today. And you can pull those out. There's an outline in there. You can kind of follow along if you care to. But much has been written about the particular text that we have this morning, because it is it is a little unusual and sometimes considered confusing. Some good things have been written about it. Some bad things have been written about it. But one thing certain, the Holy Spirit is certainly given high standard in Christ's mind and in his teaching. So in Luke chapter twelve and verse ten. Jesus says, everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven. He's talking about himself in that passage, but then he goes on to say, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. So, Jesus is saying, if you say something bad about me, you can find forgiveness for that. But if you blaspheme the Holy Spirit, that's another story altogether. What does it mean to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit. Well, we get a pretty good idea from the other narrative that Luke provided for us. The Book of Acts. Acts, Chapter 7, verses 51 and 52. Stephen was was preaching and he said, You stiff-necked people. He was talking to the Jewish authorities. You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears. You always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered." Stephen was direct. But he said that you always resist the Holy Spirit. That was from Stephen's speech and the outcome of that speech. was that they stoned him to death, which was the current punishment for blasphemy. So, from these two verses, we can conclude that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is to resist the Holy Spirit, in Stephen's words, which makes good sense in that it's consistent with the rest of biblical teaching on the matter. It is the Holy Spirit who is the one who wakes up our hard hearts. Maybe a better way to say that is that It's the Holy Spirit who replaces our hard hearts and enables us to respond to the gospel message. So we can say that the father plans. The son executes the plan and the Holy Spirit applies the plan, and when someone repeatedly resists the Holy Spirit, as Stephen says, they're blaspheming the Holy Spirit, and that is some high position that the Holy Spirit occupies. In the mind and heart of Jesus. It is to say that he is God. And in the Luke passage, Jesus said, a word spoken against him will be forgiven like Peter. Peter spoke against Jesus, but an extraordinarily high penalty will be applied to the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. No forgiveness. So by the scriptures, the Holy Spirit is God and the third of the Trinity. Tertullian was a second century philosopher. and theologian, influential in the church, he further coined the word Trinity to explain the otherwise unexplainable but thoroughly biblical concept of one God and three persons. It was that church father, Tertullian, who gave us the word Trinity. So, we say the Holy Spirit is God. The second thing we say is that he proceeds from the Father and the Son. In your him knows somewhere in there. There is a copy of the Nicene Creed. We have used it before we refer to it before, but the Nicene Creed says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the father and the son. I just want to take a moment to unpack that a little bit and and to maybe explain a common misconception of the Trinity. I think it's common to think of the father. that the father is in charge, that God the Son is next in the pecking order, and the Holy Spirit is somehow less important and at the bottom of the pecking order. And I suppose that it's true in the manner of speaking. But I want to ask you a question. Who is more important? You or your spouse? You or your parents? I'm not going to ask for a show of hands. I'd only start several fights. But, of course, the answer is neither. Neither is more important. They're both the same. They both have equal value, equal worth, equal dignity. And, of course, we're talking about intrinsic value. In their being, or the Greek word for being is Antos, O-N-T-O-S. So it is in the Trinity. In terms of their essence, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they're equal. In their essence, they're the same. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. However, as it relates to their work, there's some apparent pecking order given the diverse work assignments. We call the essential equality of the three persons, the ontological or the being trinity, the essential trinity, We call the diverse Trinity, the economic Trinity, because economy has to do with work. And this is how the Trinity works. I'm not saying that there's two trinities. I'll come back and say that again, but there's one Trinity, but there's different ways of conceiving or understanding it. The father plans. In Acts chapter one, verse seven, it says, is not good for you to know the times or dates the father has set by his own authority. The son, Jesus, executes the plan in obedience to the father. You recall Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane saying, Father, take this cup from my hand. Nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done. And in Hebrews 5, 8, commenting on that, the author of Hebrews says, Although Jesus was a son, he learned obedience from the things that he suffered. And the Spirit, then, applies the work of Jesus in purchasing our redemption. So, in John 3, verses 6 through 8, this is the famous passage of Jesus and Nicodemus. Jesus tells Nicodemus, flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, you must be born again. The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear it sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it's going. So it is with everyone born of the spirit. That whole born-again experience that every believer in Jesus has had is the application of the father's plan, the son's execution of the plan, and then the spirit applies that. So now we have the Holy Spirit, who is God and is of the same essence as the Father and Son, proceeding from the Father and Son, the same in substance. He's equal in power and glory. He's also a working part of the Trinity. And again, they're not two trinities. There's one trinity, but it's a different way of conceiving it. Applying what the Son has done in obedience to the Father, the Holy Spirit works. By the way, the Holy Spirit is not an it. The Holy Spirit is a he. In John chapter 14, 16 and 17, it says, And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate. That word for advocate is the word paraclete, which is what I entitled the sermon today. He'll give you another advocate, a paraclete. will unpack that in a second to help you and to be with you forever. The spirit of truth, the word cannot, the world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him, but you know him. He lives with you and he will be in you. Okay. The Holy Spirit is God and proceeds is of the same essence of the father and the son. we want to say about the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is God with us. Most other religions have at its centerpiece a transcendent God. That is to say, a God who is big and powerful, and we do too, as believers in Jesus Christ, but is exceedingly rare to find a major world religion that holds also to a God of imminence or closeness, a God who is personal someone to go with us, someone to suffer alongside of us. The idea of God with us is ubiquitous on the pages of scripture. I was going to fit that word in here. Not a watchmaker God who created the universe and then stands back to watch it wind down, nor a God who is a prison guard wielding power over us simply because he can, nor a capricious God who acts impulsively and for his own benefit. his or her own benefit in the, for instance, in the Greek Pantheon or in the Norse Pantheon, Pentagon. So, God is a God who is close to us, who is beside us, and who suffers right along with us. Now, in the Old Testament, in the book of Exodus, Moses was resisting God's call on his life. God had told Moses to do the impossible. to go to the most powerful person on the face of the Earth and demand the release of some two million of Pharaoh's slaves. Moses said, Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? And God's response to that was, I will be with you. God will make the impossible possible. And I could stand here for the rest of my time, which is fleeting. and tell you about Old Testament passage after Old Testament passage, where God gives an unconditional promise to believers that he would be with us. But for time's sake, I'm not going to do that. As we turn over the page to the Gospels, we find that Jesus' birth was preceded by a visit of an angel who went and spoke to Joseph, telling him that this one to be born was the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy, that Jesus, his name would be called Emmanuel, which means what? God with us at the end of his life in a farewell address to his disciples. Jesus said, I will be with you always, even to the end of the age. The night before his crucifixion, Jesus would say, All this I have spoken while I was still with you. God with us. And once Jesus left the planet, were we bereft of God? An emphatic no. By his amazing grace, this transcendent God on his throne in heaven, in moral perfection, beauty and glory over his creation, condescends to be near to his people. So Jesus, on the night of his last supper and arrest, said this. John 14, six, I will ask the father. We were the economic trinity. Jesus is asking of the father, and he will give you another advocate, the Paraclete. to help you and be with you forever. So, now it is the Holy Spirit who is with us. The word advocate in the original language, as I said, is paraclete. It means to be quite literally called alongside. The Holy Spirit is God's presence with us. The extension of the covenant he made with Abraham and extends to all of God's people. God will be our God and God will be with us. So, the Holy Spirit is God. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. The Holy Spirit is God with us. Fourth, the Holy Spirit is God in us. In Ephesians, Paul writes, In him, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. You know, the king used to make his seal, make his mark. He put the mark on a on a document of some sort with a wax in the ring. He'd make his mark. That's how you knew it was the king. In him. In Christ, we were sealed with a promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possessions of of it to the praise of his glory to get to heaven, the Holy Spirit is who we have. to testify that we belong to him. We're sealed with a promise of the Holy Spirit. How do we know that we belong to Christ? I ask this question a lot and sometimes people say they're not sure at all. The principal way, I think the first way is just simply through our faith. God, here I am. I'm at your mercy and we belong to him. But I think another way and a principle way of understanding that we belong to Christ is a transformed life. A story is told of a farmer who was a particularly mean-spirited fellow and he was perpetually angry and the anger often manifested itself in the beating he gave to his mule while he was plowing. The visiting evangelist came to town and his wife begged him to go with her to the tent meeting so she wouldn't have to sit alone. And he reluctantly agreed and he sat stoically through the meeting. But something began happening on the inside of him and the words of the evangelist began to elicit emotion. His eyes filled with tears and his wife heard muffled sobs coming from him. And at the end, he walked to the front and asked how he could become a Christian, a true believer in Jesus Christ. And after several minutes of counsel and a prayer, the man walked back to where his overjoyed wife was seated and they drove home in silence. The next day he was out plowing and the mule stumbled and the man again beat his mule in anger and immediately left the field and slumped down in the kitchen chair across from his wife. and through sorrowful tears told his wife, it must not be true. I beat the mule again. And she said to him, you never cared before. Sometimes transformation takes a while to develop and sometimes it's simply a change in attitude. It doesn't justify mule beating by any stretch. The story is just meant to say that on our, one of our best evidences of our belief in Jesus Christ is transformation. Later in the book of Ephesians, Paul would write this, do not get drunk with wine, for that's debauchery, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. When people get drunk, there's a transformation that takes place. I'm going to tell you a dangerous story that I hope won't get me fired. But back in 1989, my dad retired. Lots of friends and colleagues were at the retirement party that they held for him. And while at the party, there was an open bar. And I had a rum and Coke. And then I had another rum and Coke. And then I had another rum and Coke. And the next thing I knew, I was telling the Chief Corporate Counsel and Executive Vice President of Greyhound Corp how to run his company. And in the middle of the conversation, I realized I was saying some really stupid things. I mean, every time I opened my mouth, I realized what was happening. So I went and I found an unoccupied corner of the room and went there and sat down for the duration. And I really felt foolish. I didn't have much experience with that beverage. And I really made a fool of myself, and I was definitely transformed, but not in a good way. When folks get drunk or even buzzed like I was, there's transformation that takes place. So, Paul offers an alternative. It's more than a suggestion. He says, be filled with the Holy Spirit, be directed, be transformed by the Holy Spirit, but in such a way that it becomes clear that we belong to Christ. You know, after Paul wrote that one statement, that one statement about don't be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit, he finishes that thought by, and he says, by addressing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing, make melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God, the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence to Christ. Being filled with the Holy Spirit is transformational. Enabling you to do things that we never thought that we could do. I told you this is the 18th anniversary of this particular building. We actually purchased it in the first part of April. Now you have to trust my memory and that's really scary. When we moved, we started meeting here when we first started the church, and we were renting it. We rented it for about three years. And then when we first occupied it, boy, seems like only 100 years ago. When we first occupied it, we had to clean it up. It was really a mess. There were air handlers around here because this was the, the staging area for the shopping mall that the person who owned this owned that as well. And so, oh yeah, I'd like to tell this story too. Maybe you've heard it, but we were just starting the church and we moved into this building that there was a sign, a neon sign for a business called Hoolahands that was next door that went out of business. You remember Hoolahands? Okay, well their sign was in here. And I thought to myself, you know, if we change the name of our church to Houlihan's Presbyterian Church, we'd have our sign. But it needed a lot of cleaning. Someone had put a bidet in the back. I mean, we had all sorts of stuff just around here. So it took us a long time to clean up. So even though we had use of it from about the beginning of April, we didn't really move in for another six weeks or so. And one day I was in here cleaning. I was wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt. I looked very messy and I was cleaned up over here and this lady comes in through the doors over here. And she looked at me and she said, what is this place? And of course, we didn't have a sign up. We didn't have any way to know that this was a church. And I certainly didn't look very ministerial. And she said, what is this place? I said, it's a church. She said, well, who are you? And I said, I'm the minister. It wasn't really her conception of what a minister ought to look like, but she said, honestly, I don't know why I'm here. I was driving down the street, and I just had this compulsion to turn into the driveway. I don't know what this building is. I don't know what you guys do, but I knew I had to come in here, and so here I am. I don't know what this is all about, and I said, I know why you're here. You're here because God wanted you here, and then we began reading the Bible together that day, and then for about A couple weeks, two or three weeks, somewhere around the third week, she became a believer in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of her sins. She had a reputation on the tennis circuit as being a good player, but very aggressive and maybe an angry player. And during a match shortly after her receiving Christ, she made a shot that her opponent called out. It was a McEnroe moment then. She approached the net menacingly and argued the call. But then something imperceptible happened. She called her opponent to the net. The opponent approached the net cautiously, not knowing if she was going to get brained with a racket. And our lady stuck out her hand to shake her opponent's hand and said, I'm sorry, you were right. It was your call. And then all the way back to the service line, she was saying, who are you? What just happened here? She didn't even recognize herself, but transformation was taking place. That is the Holy Spirit in us, the seal of the Holy Spirit that brings about transformation. And it's strong evidence of our belonging to Christ. Now, there is so much more that needs to be said, and I'm out of time. I do want to give you a couple of brief takeaways. And maybe I'll get a chance to do this again, and we'll finish the thought. In that very brief scratching-the-surface exposition of the Holy Spirit, we want to ask the question, what's the takeaway? So, what does that mean for us? Well, first of all, it means for us regeneration. Theologians use that word. What is that? What is regeneration? Re is our prefix that means again and generation means to produce and once applied to humanity's simple means to be born. So regeneration would be to be born again. The Holy Spirit applies the salvation as we said. It's the salvation that Christ bought on the cross that caused us to be born again in John chapter three verses three and eight. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. So today, if you have put your faith and trust in Jesus, be assured that God the Father planned it. God the Son executed the plan by going to the cross and absorbing the punishment that your sins deserve, and the Holy Spirit now is in you doing his work. Having regenerated you now, he is completing the task and is in the process of transforming your life. C.S. Lewis wrote about this in his book, Mere Christianity. He wrote this. Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild the house. At first, perhaps you can understand what he's doing. He's getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on. You knew that. You knew that those jobs needed doing. And so you're not surprised. But presently he starts knocking down the wall, knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is he up to? The explanation is that he is building quite a different house from the one you thought of. throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you're being made into a decent little cottage, but he's building a palace and he intends to come and live in it himself. So the Holy Spirit brings about regeneration and transformation. The second thing is that the Holy Spirit does is he gives us understanding into the Bible. And this is an interesting and interesting application of this. The Bible is the most remarkable book. It's the very Word of God. It's the source of special knowledge about God. But it is not a book that you can read. Well, I'm going to say it needs explanation, but I say it's not a book you could read on your own. Now, let me explain that. I want you to read the Bible on your own, but you can't. You can't really understand it unless the Holy Spirit was helping you to understand it. As a freshman in college, before my conversion, I was struggling to find a way. A little depressed, very confused, and rudderless. I thought maybe the answer might be in the Bible, and I opened it and tried to read it, and then I closed it back. It might as well have been written in Mandarin or hieroglyphics. I didn't understand a thing. And the Bible says that's to be expected. In 1 Corinthians chapter 2, as it is written, What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him. These things God has revealed to us through his spirit. Now, we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God that we might understand the things freely given to us by God. That's the scriptures talking right there. The reason why we understand the Bible is because of the Holy Spirit in us. I'm going off script again. I watched a movie which I don't recommend to you. Having said that, it was a movie called Back to School. Rodney Dangerfield is in that. So now you know why I don't recommend it. But in that movie, Rodney Dangerfield is a middle-aged, late middle-aged man who's made a lot of money in a retail business called the Big and Fat Stores, where he sells clothes, of course, to good-looking gentlemen. And he goes back to school. He wants to go back to school. So he goes back to school, and of course, he buys just about a whole dormitory, and he creates a nice dormitory for himself. But one of his assignments was in English. and his English professor asked him to write an essay on Kurt Vonnegut. So, Rodney Dangerfield hired Kurt Vonnegut to write the essay on Kurt Vonnegut. He got a C- on the paper, and the teacher said, you don't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut. But he had Kurt Vonnegut right there to tell him about himself. See, when we when we become believers in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit comes inside of us. And we have the author of the Bible living inside of us to help us understand. You could read the Bible on your own. I would encourage that, but you're not going to understand it unless the Holy Spirit is revealing himself to you. So if you read your Bible and you're having a hard time understanding it, pray to the Holy Spirit. Yes, you can pray to the Holy Spirit. Say, Spirit, please open my eyes so that I can see. Omar Hasseth was from Curacao, which is an island next door to Aruba, one of the Netherland Antilles. And he ran a resort there. I met him at Cornell University. Kerry and I were there at an Institute of Biblical Studies put on by Campus Crusade for Christ, now known as CRU. And Omar was very He's very bright. He spoke five languages. And I bumped into him at Cornell as I was there. He was there at Cornell's renowned School of Hotel and Motel Management. And we met outside the little green area, green space there, and a conversation began about Christ. And he was what I would call a respectful agnostic. But after our discussion, he was not convinced, so I gave him a Bible and I told him, to read Romans, and he came back the very next day with a Bible in his hand and said, take it back. It was no good. It's wasted on me. I didn't understand a word. And I said, well, of course, you need to be born again. Well, after a long ensuing discussion, Omar bowed his head and asked for his sins to be forgiven, for Christ to become number one in his life. And we met the next day and he was very excited to tell me that the words of the Bible were leaping off the page. with him. He understood the book, and Omer went back to Curacao, began working with a missionary there while maintaining his resort. It was the Holy Spirit who was transforming Omer's life and giving him the capacity to not just read the words on the page, but to understand what they meant. So, the second takeaway, the Holy Spirit gives us understanding. into the Bible. Time is fleeting. I'm just going to say these things quickly and and then we'll be done. But the Holy Spirit is also transforming Galatians 5 verses 20 and 20 through 22. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and against such there is no law. And so, the Holy Spirit transforms our life and gives us these gifts that we can exercise because he is transforming our lives. And things that were once alien to us now become possibilities for us. The Holy Spirit is power supplying. Acts 1.8, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. I think that has mainly to do with evangelism, reaching out for the kingdom, and the Holy Spirit gives us power to do it in any number of ways. But the Holy Spirit is not just transforming, but power supplying. The Holy Spirit is also prayer making. In Romans chapter 8, verse 26 says, we don't know how to pray as we ought, but the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings too deep for words. So when you have trouble praying, you don't even know how to pray for something. You just ask the Holy Spirit to convey the right thing, and he makes prayers for us. And the Holy Spirit is Christ satisfying. Also, you have the outline from Romans chapter eight. It helps us to be made into the image of Christ. The Holy Spirit is not to be forgotten. He is not the forgotten God. He is our God. And we praise him. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, how we thank you. for sending your Holy Spirit, and Holy Spirit, how we thank you for coming and dwelling in us, for transforming our lives, even in just the smallest of ways, changing our hearts and our attitude so that the things that once were foreign to us now we embrace, and the things that were once impossibilities for us now become possibilities. Thank you, God, for that. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for living in us, for being God with us, And God, we pray that we might manifest those fruits and so folks would see that you really are a believer in Jesus Christ. Help us to that end, God. We make our prayer in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Our last hymn, There's a Sweet, Sweet Spirit in This Place. Stand with me. We are the people, we are the people, we are the people. There are many forces that can destroy us. We will always be there to keep you safe and secure. Jesus, we love you. Jesus, we love you. And now receive God's benediction, and now unto the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, To the only wise God, our Savior, be power, honor, glory, and majesty, both now and forevermore. Amen. Go in peace.