Who Is the Holy Spirit
Notes
Transcript
Praise the name of Jesus in this place. I hope you are enjoying the presence of God in this place.
Today we are going to be starting a 4 week series on the Holy Spirit that I am calling The Holy Spirit and You.
I was talking to someone one time and discussing the Holy Spirit and they asked if they need the Holy Spirit to go to heaven, I said you need the Holy Spirit to go to Wal-Mart. Anywhere we go we need the Holy Spirit. But there are a lot of opinions out there and in some cases some mis-information as it relates to the Holy Spirit, so we want to understand the truth of the Holy Spirit
But before we can dig into the deep things of the Holy Spirit in our lives, it’s important for us to set some foundation
So this morning We are going to be asking the question......
Who Is the Holy Spirit
Who Is the Holy Spirit
Before we can truly understand the work of the Holy Spirit, or the gifts of the Spirit, or the Baptism of the Holy Spirit we have to know some things about the Holy Spirit. So today I have 4 things that I want to you to know about the Holy Spirit that will help till the ground if you will, and will prepare us for the revelation that is coming in the next few weeks
The Holy Spirit is the 3rd Person of the Trinity
The Holy Spirit is the 3rd Person of the Trinity
this statement seems a little elementary, in the Great commission, the Holy Spirit was mentioned along with Father and Son
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
certainly we know that the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity Father, Son, Holy Spirit.......why are we taking the time to point out the obvious....
I want someone to turn in your bible and find me a scripture that deals with the Trinity....I’ll wait
The problem is that no where in scripture, no where in the Word of God is the word Trinity, used.......the concept of the Trinity as we know it didn’t exist until the 2nd century. I point this out because I want us to remember how simple things are when we get down to basics.
The Holy Spirit is God! Co-equal in divinity.....just as much present in the beginning as the Father and the Son. But where the Father is now and has always been on the throne, and where Jesus was on the earth, but ascended to sit at the right hand of the Father....the Holy Spirit is here with us now!
I want to take us back for a a moment and understand something…let’s go back to Matt 28:19
Matthew 28:19 (ESV)
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
Now this verse is a familiar one for us, it is the great commission, and this was the instruction of Christ to His disciples....they had work to do. Body of Christ how many of us know that there is still work to do in the Church today?
See as we seek to understand the Holy Spirit, we have to understand the plan and purpose of God. The disciples had work to do, but they were insufficient to the task, they were not capable of doing what they were called to do.Praise God that we serve a Lord that recognizes that our strength is insufficient.
The Holy Spirit is the Power of God in our Lives
The Holy Spirit is the Power of God in our Lives
The disciples needed power, but not the power of authority, nor the power of position- or office, nor the power of numbers or of human machinery, plans, and methods. They needed power not to change men but to be, first of all, changed men. They needed power not to convert the world but to be converted. So they were told to tarry to wait until the Holy Spirit had come upon them.
And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”
The disciples had to learn to wait for the power of God to be with them before they could do that which they had been called to do. Before everything that we read about in Acts…before all the church planting that we see in the NT....before all the miracles, signs, and wonders, they had to wait.
God knew that they were insufficient to the task, knew that they would not have what they need to carry out the work so He told them to wait to do it, until He had given them the Power. The Holy Spirit is the power of God in us, but it is also the Breath of God in us.
The Holy Spirit is the Breath of God
The Holy Spirit is the Breath of God
When we talk about the Holy Spirit, there are several different words used in the OT and NT to describe the Spirit of God....we see pneuma (panevma), the parakletos, and we will build more on these in the weeks to come, but I want to focus on another word this morning and that is רוּחַ (ooo-ah) and this means the Breath of God. One of the prevailing description used for the Holy Spirit is wind or breath
“And it shall come to pass afterward,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.
Pour out my Spirit. this translates to my breath, so what God said in Joel was that He would pour His breath upon you and the result is that you see prophecy and visions and dreams taking place, but all of that happens as a result of the Breath or the Spirit of God coming upon people.
Now I want you to watch something, turn with me to Genesis
then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
Note that at creation the breath of God is what gave us life......since the time of the fall we have been seeking to recover the fullness of the breath of God that we were created to enjoy and that we lost due to sin. We became an incomplete whole, we were created with the divine breath of life within us and created to walk in the fullness of the presence of God with His Spirit within us, but the presence of Sin in our lives caused some issues. The presence of Jesus to save us leads to the presence of the Holy Spirit to sanctify us and give us the power to do His work. It completes the work if restoration!