- So the title of this series
is The Spirit And The Cross. And the subtitle is the
work of the Holy Spirit in the process of salvation. And that subtitle will come in handy to explain lessons that we're
going to do in the future. So lesson one is our concept of God. We're going to do this, a couple of lessons on our concept of God. So by its very nature, this
course is not meant to be easy, with me kind of repeating
things that you already know and already agree with. A lot of times classes are like that. You go to a Bible class and the teacher is just saying things that you know, and it's good, it's
edifying, it's encouraging, but this is not one of those. Okay. These lessons will be a complex, at times. Not all premises will be straightforward and it will require an
effort to stay focused. However, those who take
the course will be rewarded if you stay with it For example, you'll have a greater and more accurate understanding
of who the Holy Spirit is, what he does, and the
nature of his relationship with the father and the son. No discussion of God can be complete if you don't talk about
the father, the son and the Holy Spirit and the
relationship that they have with one another and the
relationship they have with us. So we'll be pursuing
that thread of thought. Also we'll have an overview of the Bible from a fresh perspective,
a different perspective in looking at the scriptures. These lessons will provide
a greater understanding of Pentecostal and charismatic believers and why they think the way
they do about the Holy Spirit and why they think and what they do about the miraculous
gifts of the Holy Spirit. Why do they think that? Why do they believe that? Why do they do what they do? How did they get there? I'm always interested in that. How do people get to where they are? What thought process, what scripture brought
them to that conclusion? So we'll be talking about that. And then hopefully you'll appreciate the divine work of
redemption more perfectly. It's about redemption. Our life is about redemption. And so knowing more about
that blesses our life, makes it more rewarding. You can watch a lot of movies and you can read a lot of books about stuff that's interesting, but when you're reading or
learning about redemption, you're reading and
learning about something that has taken place in your
own life, our own lives. So some of the ground rules, one of the main reasons we
have problems talking about and communicating
effectively about our faith, New Testament Christianity with
another believer in Christ, say someone who's a Catholic,
is that we use the same words, you're talking to your
uncle and he's Catholic, or you're talking to your buddy at work and he's Catholic or Orthodox
or somebody who's a Baptist or whatever, the problem is a lot of times we're using the same
words in the discussion, we're using the words priests
and church and baptism. But the problem is that these
words mean different things to the member of the church
of Christ for example, who's a New Testament Christian. Then they do to, for example, a member of the Roman Catholic church. I mentioned that example because it's the one that
is most familiar to me because I grew up Catholic
and all of our relatives on both sides on Liza side, my side, everybody is Catholic. And recently there've been some, you know, her sister passed away
a couple of months ago and then her other sister now
has been found to have cancer. And she has tried to open up
the discussion about religion, this important topic and it's been futile. And one of the reasons for
that is that the vocabulary, just getting over the vocabulary
is like a high mountain. I'll give you an example. So if you're a New Testament
Christian, that's us, New Testament Christian, the word priests. Well, first of all, it's a Jewish priest who offer the sacrifices and
the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, that's a priest, or it's the spiritual role of
each Christian man or woman who offer their service
and themselves to God in purity and in service, right? Romans 12:1, 1st Peter 2:9. It's the spiritual goal
of each Christians, I want to become a priest
in the household of God. When I'm talking to my
sister-in-law for example, or brother-in-law and
I say the word priest, well, they may have the same concept of the biblical priesthood
in the Old Testament, they don't study that very much, but for them, the priest
is the local minister in the neighborhood
parish who conducts mass and administers the sacraments
to the Catholic faithful. They would never associate
themselves with the word priest. And it's also the title of the lowest level of Catholic clergymen. Well, you've got the nuns and the brothers further down, I guess. But the local parish priest
he's the lowest person, but I can say he's the lowest guy and be politically correct, because there are no women priests. So because then you have, the Bishop, then you have the Archbishop
and you have a Cardinal, then all kinds of, the
Pope, all kinds of things. So we don't speak the same language. If you're a New Testament
Christian only pick two, if you're a New Testament
Christian baptism, okay. Imagine baptism, imagine your baptism. What was it? An immersion in water
of a repented believer as an expression of faith at which time this person
receives forgiveness of sin and the indwelling
presence of the Holy Spirit and is added to the church by God. That's kind of our concept of baptism. We read in Acts 2:38, it says "And Peter said to them repent
and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins." Here's the reason. "And you'll receive the
gift of the Holy Spirit." There's the result. Another result. "For the promises for
you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord, our
God will call to himself, and with many other words, he solemnly testified and
kept exhorting them saying, be saved from this perverse generation. So then those who had received
his word were baptized and that day there were
added about 3,000 souls." Of all passages, I think as Christians, this passage is pretty familiar to us. So when you mentioned
baptism, oh yeah, I remember, November, 1977, I was
there with Jim Madder and another guy named Bill, Bob anyways, just the three of us. And Jim Madder, we went into the baptistry and he immersed me and it was cold 'cause we didn't have a
heated baptistry in Montreal. So the water was cold in
November, I remember that. But that's what I'm thinking
when I'm thinking baptism and that's what we're
all thinking, isn't it? But again, when I talked to my
brother-in-law about baptism, what he thinks is, well, it's
sprinkling of water on a baby based on the faith of the
baby's parents or godparents in order to remove original sin and join the Catholic church. That's what he thinks when
we use the word baptism. This same person, according to Catholic, according to my brother-in-law, according to Catholic doctrine, this very same baby
receives the Holy Spirit several years later. In other words, you're
baptized when you're a baby and then when you're
a, maybe 12 years old, the age of reason, then there's a ceremony
called confirmation, right? I see some of you moving
your lips, you ex Catholics. And confirmation is the Bishop comes and there's a special mass
and you get all dressed up. And I remember mine, and we
all line up and we go forward and the Bishop is standing
or sitting at the front. And when you come to the Bishop, he puts his hand on your
forehead, laying on of hands, and he says, "Receive
you the Holy Spirit." And so the Holy Spirit part
is given by the Bishop, by the laying on of hands. Did you see the mixture of things? Did you see how it's like they've taken the deck of cards here, it's like the New
Testament's the deck of cards and they've reshuffled it. Now, all of a sudden the baby is baptized, 12 years later receives the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands of the Bishop. And my argument, well, where did he find that in the Bible? Oh no, no. We don't have to find it in the Bible, it's church law, church tradition, which counts just as much as the Bible. So I'm trying to express
the idea of communication when it comes to religion, not just with Catholic people, but with Baptist to individuals, believers who are Baptist, believers who are Methodist, believers who are Jehovah witnesses, whatever they're believers, but they use biblical
language in different ways. And if you want to have a conversation where you actually are making
progress and exchanging ideas, you have to kind of peel the onion, have to kind of get to
a point where you agree what words mean so at least
then you can have a discussion. Otherwise, you're talking like this, you're talking like this. So we could continue
demonstrating the differences and the meanings of religious words that sound and look the same, but are given different
meanings and applications by different groups and all
of them claim to be Christian and all of them claim
to believe the Bible. Every individual, every
believer of any church group that I've ever met has always
claimed we believe the Bible. Absolutely, we believe in the Bible. So this phenomenon, same words, different meanings is to a certain extent, the reason for so much
division within Christianity, and why it is so difficult to have the kind of dialogue necessary to create unity in the church. Therefore, when I mentioned ground rules, I'm referring to a basic rule
that will guide our study so that we can all agree on
the conclusions we arrive at in the study of the Holy Spirit. And there's really only one. And here it is, the one ground rule is the Bible
is the only reliable source of information concerning the Holy Spirit. That's the basic ground rule. You think that would be,
everybody would go, yeah, but you'd be surprised at how many people would debate this idea. The only reliable source of information about the Holy Spirit
is the Bible, period. Now some may ask why this is so. Two reasons. One, the Bible was
authored by the Holy Spirit who enabled different writers
to write and preserve it. 2nd Peter says 1:21, "For no prophecy," no utterance,
no spoken word about God like prophets or teachers
or anything like that. "No prophecy was ever made
by an act of human will." It's not prophecy if someone says, "I think I'm going to talk
about this tonight at church." That's not prophecy, that's you talking, you might be talking accurately
about what the Bible says, but it's not prophecy. "So for no prophecy was ever
made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy
Spirit spoke from God." The Holy Spirit is the
author of the Bible. Interesting that word there, men moved, the Greek word there, gives the image of the
wind pushing a sailboat. So the man is the boat but the Holy Spirit's the
wind that directs the man. Where to go, what to write, what to say. And secondly, no new information, not already contained in
the Bible has been revealed. I've been part of a Pentecostal movement before I became a Christian, just a simple New Testament Christian. I was searching, I had exhausted my search
in the Catholic church. I asked enough questions and they just didn't have the answers. And I went when you're searching, I tried different things,
went to different people, joined a religious group who
were charismatic, Pentecostals. Spoke in tongues, cast
out spirits, prophecy, the whole nine yards. And when we were at meetings or something, sister so-and-so says, "I
have a word from the Lord." That's prophecy. Or they would say, "I don't suspect it, but the spirit tells me
that you are possessed with a spirit of jealousy and we're going to pray
for you to cast out that spirit of jealousy." And everybody's speaking tongues, cast that spirit out of me. I felt like a Kleenex box. Every week, I had something new that can, could be removed In Jude three, the writer says, "Beloved while I was making
every effort to write you about our common salvation." That was Jude's intention,
he wanted to write about, reinforced the idea that perhaps
we're saved by God's grace through the process of faith. "While I was thinking about
those things," he says, "I felt the necessity to write to you." In other words, he changed his mind because of things that
happening in the church. And if we were doing a study of Jude, we go all through, what false doctrines were
happening and so on and so forth. But he says, "I felt the
necessity to write to you, appealing to you that you
contend earnestly fight for, fight for earnestly," for what? "For the faith." I think you've heard this
in many Bible classes. If you say I have faith,
that means I believe, I believe it's true, or I trust. But when there's an article, the faith, then they're talking about
the body of teaching. So the faith is the
teaching, the doctrines. So he says, "Fight for
the faith, the teachings, which was once for all
handed down to the saints." So what's he saying? The teachings have been
given to the saints once and for all. There is no more revelation. We have revelation, it's here, but we don't have any extra revelation. That's why we're not Mormons. That's why we're not Jehovah
Witnesses or other groups who rely on the extra
revelation of their founders and their teachers. That's the second ground rule. There's revelation all right. About the Holy Spirit, about
the Godhead, about the Trinity. We're going to talk about that. There is revelation about
that, but it's in here, I myself I'm not bringing
any revelation from me, I'm bringing to you what
I've studied from here. That's why everything is proof text to make sure that we're
speaking from the spirit of God, from God's word and not from self. So those are the ground rules. Now I'm not saying that there's no longer any experience of God,
that's not the same thing, but all experience and
knowledge of him that is genuine is always confirmed by the Bible. So this study of the Holy Spirit is based solely on what
the Bible teaches about him and how he interfaced with different individuals in the Bible and not any experience
that I or someone I knew or heard about felt or experienced the power or presence of the spirit. In many teachings from other groups, you'll hear the person say, I, they'll talk about their
witness of the spirit and how the spirit revealed to them what was supposed to happen. This class is not that. Yeah, once in a while I get a revelation, but the revelation I get is
I'm reading the word and I go, "Oh, I never saw that before. Oh, no, I get it. Oh, I'm reading this passage. This passage explains that passage. I've just added another
piece to the puzzle." Yeah, I've gotten that
revelation but so have you. But a lot of times in
churches, on TV, online, especially, oh boy, you know, you get people who are speaking
of their own authority, their own spiritual authority, based on their private
revelation from God. And what I'm saying to you
is, that does not happen. That is not legitimate. It might be sincere,
but it's not legitimate. So this study of the Holy
Spirit is based solely on what the Bible teaches
about him and nothing else. The main rule that we can agree on, and that will maintain objective and not subjective conclusions is that all the information
we're going to examine about the Holy Spirit
will come from the Bible. No other source materials will be used. All right. So the basis for
understanding the Holy Spirit comes from his position
and role, watch me now, within the Trinity, there, I've said it. Within the Trinity. Some of you may be thinking
that I've already violated our basic ground rule for this study. That all teachings must
come from the Bible and your thinking, because the word Trinity
doesn't even appear in the Old Testament. And you're correct, the term
Trinity does not appear, but the dynamic nature
of God requires a word to capture his essence and words
like the Godhead or Trinity have been coined in order to express his likeness in a single word. So we can, if you're
curious, when did this start, we can trace back the use
of this term, Trinity, to the third century AD and the early church father or leader by the name of Tertullian. He had already, excuse me, there had already been many theories and doctrinal pronouncements, trying to explain more precisely
the nature of God's being however, offered the first defense of the doctrine of the Trinity,
and explicitly defined it as the father, son and Holy Spirit. This as was the case for the compilation of the official texts of
the New Testament Canon, was done in order to respond and to refute a major heresy which was being circulated and gaining popularity in
the church at the time. In other words, at the beginning, people thought Jesus was
returning in their own lifetime, the early saints, the
first century saints, they thought, well, you
know, Jesus is coming back, he's coming back in our lifetime. Then all of a sudden, some
of them started to die off or be killed as martyrs. And they began to realize
maybe he's not coming back in our lifetime. And at the same time, there
were individuals circulating what they were proposing
as inspired literature. And so the leaders of the
church got together and say, we've got all these letters
from Paul and Peter, we need to make up our mind, which letters are authentic
and which ones are not. Long story short, they
tried to form a cannon, a cannon meanings, a measure,
a Canon, the official Canon, the official books, the
official inspired books. And there were all kinds of rules, it had to have been circulating
for many, many years. A book had to be accepted by
the church as inspired already to qualify for consideration
and after a couple of centuries of discussion and so on and so forth, we came up with the Canon 27
books of the New Testament and they've stayed the same. Well, it's the same thing
for the idea of the Trinity. A lot of ideas about God and
God's nature were circulating. And one particular idea
by a man called a Praxeas, hang on a second there, really
took hold, which was a false. And so, Tertullian came up with a response to defend against the false idea. So the false idea by
this man called Praxeas, he taught that God was one and
that all references to deity like the son of God or the Holy Spirit, we're simply different ways
of referring to the one God. He was attempting to merge Old
Testament teaching about God with the revelations
contained in the New Testament about God's dynamic nature. And he came up with this theory. So this heresy was met with a
tract written by Tertullian. And as I said, he was a
Christian apologist writer who lived in Carthage. The tract clarifying the triune
nature of God in the Bible was called of all things against Praxeas. So you kind of knew his position. You knew Tertullian's position 'cause his tract was
called against Praxeas. And it was successful in
eliminating Praxeas' idea about God singular nature and
promoting the triune concept as well as the term Trinity, by which it was explained in short form. So Tertullian then was the first one to use the term Trinity
in the third century. And we have people today who consider, who continually reject this idea of the triune nature of God. He wrote, Tertullian, "The
father, son, and Holy Spirit are one in essence, not one in person." In other words, it's not just God, who's got a bunch of different names. Sometimes we call them this,
sometimes we call them that, no, he's not one person. His ideas were not immediately
accepted by all Christians, but with time, his idea that
the Bible actually taught that God's nature was triune and an accurate way to refer
to it was the term Trinity became acceptable to most believers. Of course, even today,
there are still many who reject this term and
idea of God's triune nature. So we're going to review
both Old Testament and New Testament texts that teach us about the composition and
nature of God's being. So let's start with the
Old Testament, shall we? The Old Testament teaches implicitly the idea of the triune God. It's there, but it's
not explicitly stated. However, the oneness of God is stressed. So we read in Deuteronomy
chapter six, verse four of the Shema, "Hear O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one." The Shema. Now this early focus on
there being only one God and no other was a natural emphasis for the religion of a people who had traditionally followed after and included many different gods in their personal and corporate worship. If you're trying to teach
people about the true God and the people you're trying
to teach about the true God have a history of having lots of gods, they have a God for every day, they have a God for every thing, the nature god, and the harvest
god, and the fertility god and whatever, they got
gods for everything. But what's one of the first things you're going to teach those people. Well, you're going to teach those people, there's only one God get
rid of all those other gods 'cause there's only one God,
that's why you have this here. "Hear O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one." There's just one God, that was the emphasis
of the Old Testament. And so the first step in worship
of the true and living God was to acknowledge that
there was only one of him, no others like him. And he tolerated no
other gods in his place. I am the Lord, thy God, right? First commandment. This is not to say however
that there was no mention of his dynamic nature
in the Old Testament. It was just that mention of his
dynamic nature was implicit, not explicit. So the idea of a triune, God, Trinity is implicitly suggested in the opening account of Genesis. For example, in Genesis 1:1 it says, "In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the Earth." Note that God is initially
presented as a distinct person, apart from his creation. This is not pantheism
where there are many gods or God is an impersonal force or multiple forces in the universe. This is the idea behind "Star Wars" and other scifi books and movies. The force, the force be with you, people think, oh, a new idea
they came up with how clever. I mean it's 5,000 years old that idea. God is not an impersonal force. Also the concept behind
the idea of mother nature, which is a personification
of the forced idea. Women being the bearer of children, it's natural to say, well,
nature produces new trees and fruit and harvest and
that, would be female. So that's just a
personification of the idea that God is a force. Well, let's call that force mother nature Note also that this first
mention of God in Genesis is not monism where everything is God and God is in all of his creation. God is the tree and the tree is God and God is in the river and the
river is God, that's monism. Most native religions, when
you have native American and all native peoples of other countries, most native religions are
monism where God or the force is the same as the Earth. It's also the basis for Eastern religions. But the Bible clearly states
that God created the world, but he is a part from it. A tree is just a tree. It is part of God's creation,
but it's not part of God. Many, not all, not all, but many extreme environmental groups that treat environmentalism
almost as a religion is because they believe that
there's something spiritual about the creation. The creation is beautiful,
it's wondrous to behold, but it isn't God. Let's read another passage. Genesis 1:2, it says, "The Earth was formless
and void and darkness was over the surface of the
deep and the spirit of God was moving over the
surface of the waters." So the spirit now is mentioned as a separate being distinct
yet, not personified so early in the development of revelation. They don't call them the Holy
Spirit just the spirit of God. We have to talk about progressive
revelation at this point, progressive revelation is
a term used to describe the way God revealed himself
and his plan of salvation. There could have been no revelation. You live, you die and from Adam
to the last person on Earth, you don't know about God and his purposes from one generation to another, what would that do? Well, that would produce despair. No answer to the question, who is God? Why am I here? What's going to happen? Or you're born with
all the godly knowledge already uploaded to your brain. The problem here is that this
would violate man's free will and transform us into
soulless auto humanitix. The third option is progressive
revelation of God himself. His will for mankind as well
as his plan of salvation. But that all of that information is revealed progressively in stages, this maintains man's free will status, and it provides hope in the
face of insurmountable sin and inevitable destruction. And it makes possible
the experience of joy as we have the possibility
in every generation to continually discover and grow in the ongoing and never
ending knowledge of God himself and God's plan for man salvation, the knowledge and proclamation of which never grows old or tiring. I'm never tired of hearing the gospel. I'm never tired of hearing about it. And so through this
progressive revelation, which God uses to reveal
himself and his plans, we begin, and we continue to
learn about the Holy Spirit as well as the father and the son from Genesis all the way to Revelation. For example, we learn
from both David and Job that the Holy Spirit
sustains the created world. In Job 34 it says, "If he
should determine to do so, if he should gather to himself
his spirit and his breath, all flesh would perish together and man would return to dust." What does that say? The spirit of God sustains the creation. Without the spirit of God,
willfully, consciously sustaining the creation it
would perish and turn to dust. Another writer talks about
this far in the past. David says, "You send forth
your spirit, they are created And you renew the face of the ground." Again, saying it in a different way. The Holy Spirit continually
renews the creation so that man can survive and exist in it. So that God's plan can be
worked out over the centuries. These writers are writing
some sixth centuries after Moses's preliminary inspired remarks about the Holy Spirit in Genesis. Each of them adding new and
more precise information about the role of the
Holy Spirit in creation. So in these passages written by different inspired believers, we see the progress of the
information given by God about the Holy Spirit. We learn about his power and his work. So this is an example of
progressive revelation. One more, Genesis, 1:3, let's read that. It says, "Then God
said, let there be light and there was light." In this passage, we see
that the word of God is given as a distinct power. God speaks the world into existence. This idea is confirmed
in the New Testament in Hebrews 11:3, it says, "By faith, we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word
of God so that what is seen was not made out of
things which are visible." Why do I believe God created the universe and everything works the way it works because I can understand it? No. Because I have scientific proof that I can figure it
all out mathematically? No. I'm told by God to accept
that he created the world. That's the only way that I can understand the existence of the world. I don't have to knock myself
out to quote, "Understand it". He says, here's what
you have to understand, the worlds were prepared
by the word of God so that what is seen was
not made out of things which are visible. Bingo. I don't have to understand
any further than that. John expands this idea by
explaining the dynamic presence in the Godhead where God
refashioned the very essence of his being according to
his will and his purpose. John chapter 1:1, it says, "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God
and the word was God." Now watch the change. "And then the word became
flesh and dwelt among us and we saw his glory, glory as of the only
begotten from the father, full of grace and truth." In these two verses John refers to three distinct entities of God. God, the word and the son,
and then the word made flesh. And so at this point, someone
could reasonably argue that all three God word and
son are the same person, which is God. And John is only describing,
transitions taking place in God's nature from
God to word to the son. However, through progressive revelation, just in John's gospel, we soon realized that there
are three distinct beings united within a single Godhead, existing functioning and
expressing their deity without repeating or compromising the unity within the Jewish Shema that declared the Lord is
our God, the Lord is one. Now I said that the Trinity is suggested by the
opening verses of Genesis. Here's one last example. It says, "Then God said, let
us make man in our image, according to our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the
sky and over the cattle and over the Earth and
over every creeping thing that creeps into the Earth." Note that the Bible says, let us make man. The Hebrew pluralizes for emphasis sake. It not only states that God
is the one who makes man, and that man is created and
not an evolved to being, the passage also reveals something about the creator as well. The term Elohim is the
plural forum for God, why it says, "Let us make man." And so in our study of the Trinity and the Holy Spirit in particular, we see that from the very beginning, scripture suggests the dynamic
and diverse nature of God. It doesn't provide all of the information to give us a complete
picture and understanding right at the outset, but through a process of
progressive revelation, God will steadily reveal
greater clarity and knowledge about many key truths, including man's condition and
God's plan to save him as well as a clearer picture of his
true nature and his true being, this is God's promise. And so two last scriptures very quickly, "For now we see in a mirror
dimly, but then face-to-face. Now I know in part, but
then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known." That's progressive revelation. I know some of it now,
I kind of see it now, but then I'll see it clearly. And then one last passage, 1st John 3:2 says, "Beloved,
now we are children of God and it has not appeared
as yet what we will be. We know that when he
appears, we will be like him because we will see him just as he is." Progressive revelation. Progressive development of ourselves, along with that progressive revelation. All right, next week, we're going
to talk about the Holy Spirit a little more directly, and make the point that
the Holy Spirit is God. Make some comparisons. All right, thank you for your
attention and your patience. See you next time.
