Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / May 24, 2026 | The Trinity - God the Spirit

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May 24, 2026 | The Trinity - God the Spirit · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: Hope you'll bear with me.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of losing my voice a little bit this morning, so if I just trail off into whispers halfway through, you can finish on your own.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: We are uh we're not wrapping up, we've got one week left, but we are uh concluding the three-part section here on the Trinity.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: This morning we're talking about the Holy Spirit.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: And the even more than the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit is responsible for your growth as a Christian.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: If you want to picture the energizer bunny uh living within you and enabling you to do all the things that God has called you to do, that is one way to think about the Spirit.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: He is responsible for connecting us relationally and emotionally with the Father and Son, strengthening us to walk the path of righteousness.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: The early church had a deep and abiding relationship with the Holy Spirit and talked about the Holy Spirit probably a little bit more than we do today.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: They had a lot of sayings that they would include in their creeds and confessions.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: I am one with the Spirit, they would say, and the Spirit is with me.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: Common greeting would be that the Spirit is strong with this person.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: In a frequent parting after church, they would say, May the Spirit be with you.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: Or one, I think it was Augustine, who said, My ally is the Spirit, and a powerful ally it is.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Those are actually just quotes from Star Wars, okay?
1:32
SPEAKER_00: And the last one was from Yoda.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: Because we often think of the Holy Spirit as a force, right?
1:39
SPEAKER_00: He is impersonal, powerful, mysterious, but moreover, the Holy Spirit is a thing.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: It's a feeling, it's energy, it's power, but it is not defined the way that actually the Bible defines it.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: The greatest mistake that we can make here is thinking that the Spirit is a thing, where the Bible tells us clearly that the Holy Spirit is God Himself.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: An holy, eternal, all-powerful being expressed as the third person of the Trinity.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: So the Holy Spirit is not a what but a who.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: And that might be just even a mind shift for some of you.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is not a what, but a who.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: And because uh the Holy Spirit is a who, God Himself, it means you can have a relationship with him, you can worship him, you can learn from him and grow with him.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: Having said that, uh the Holy Spirit does receive, I think, the least amount of attention within the Trinity.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: And going back to the early church, this time for real, um, they spent most of their time defining who was the Father and who was the Son.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: If you look at the one of the earliest and most important creeds of the church, the Nicene Creed in 325 AD, you'll notice that there's a little bit of disparity in how much attention they give to the Spirit.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things, visible and invisible, God the Father, taken care of.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: Next section on the Son.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: And then the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten from the Father, only begotten, that is, from the essence of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one essence with the Father, through whom all things came into being, things in heaven and things on earth, who, because of us men and because of our salvation, came down and became incarnate, becoming man, suffered and rose again on the third day, ascended to the heavens, and will come again to judge the living and the dead.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: You can tell that they were responding to certain questions by how much information they gave regarding the Son.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: Furthermore, I think my high school English teacher would have liked to have a con a question directed their way towards run-on sentences.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: But we say, Where is the spirit in the Nicene Creed?
3:55
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you might have missed it.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: And in the Holy Spirit.
3:59
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: That's their statement on the Spirit.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: We also believe in Him, just so you know.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: And about 60 years later, um the kind of the individuals responsible came back and uh bolstered some of their language regarding the Spirit, still not as much in the Father and the Son, but more than the Nicene Creed.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you grew up Catholic, um, this sentence right here, or this clause proceeding from the Father, uh, and maybe what it doesn't say, is what divided the Eastern and Western Church in 1054.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: But that's not what we're talking about this morning.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: We are learning about the Spirit.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: Who is he?
4:51
SPEAKER_00: And uh what does he do?
4:53
SPEAKER_00: And if you are a middle child, rejoice, because you have a member of the Trinity who can relate to your sometimes forgotten nature.
5:02
SPEAKER_00: Um, that many people today, even still, though the Spirit is, frankly, I mean, not that it's an art that's a race, but is more is affecting our daily life and the way that we relate to God and grow in Christ more than the Father and the Son, in particular in how we are being empowered to do those things.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: And so we should understand, first of all, that the Holy Spirit is not an impersonal force, but is God Himself.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: Um, this is what the creeds establish, but not just creeds, right?
5:38
SPEAKER_00: That's not where we draw our faith from.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: Where does the Bible say this?
5:41
SPEAKER_00: There's actually a number of places you could go where the Holy Spirit is directly referred to as God.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: But one of the easiest is in Acts chapter 5.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: There's a situation that comes about in the early church where um a guy named Ananias and his wife Sapphira, they sell a plot of land and want to give some of that money to the local church.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: And the problem is that they are deceiving the church in the way that they're doing it.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: And so Peter goes to talk with Ananias and is able, I think, by the power of the Spirit, to see through this deception.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: And Peter has a few questions for Ananias.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: Ananias, Peter asked, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the proceeds of the land?
6:24
SPEAKER_00: Wasn't it yours while you possessed it after it was sold?
6:27
SPEAKER_00: Wasn't it at your disposable disposal?
6:29
SPEAKER_00: Why is it that you planned this thing in your heart?
6:31
SPEAKER_00: You have not lied to people, but to God.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: And so Peter makes the very clear connection that the Spirit was not just present, was not just, you know, something that's in the ether, or even with us, but in an undefined way.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: He's like, when you lied, Peter, you lied to the Spirit, and therefore you lied to God, Peter says to Ananias.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: So Ananias lied to the apostles about money, and Peter made this connection to lie to the Holy Spirit is to lie to God.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: With that established, okay, this is kind of this is a bit of a watershed thing because all of the other points that I'm gonna make this morning are born out of the fact that just like the Father and the Son, when we speak of the Spirit, we're speaking about God Himself.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna return us to the phrase that we, or two phrases we've been sharing as a church each week, and I'd ask you to say them with me.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: Ready?
7:32
SPEAKER_00: God is one being who eternally exists as three distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: Each person is fully God, equal in glory, and eternal in nature.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: Yet there are not three gods, but one God.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit's presence runs through the entire Bible.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: You see him at the very beginning of Genesis, hovering over the waters of the created earth.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, you see him at the end of the Bible and Revelation, empowering John to witness the future acts of the Father and Son, and empowering him to write about these things, to recall them.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: And in the middle, the Spirit is doing the work of God, really representing his power, his presence, and his desire to see humanity come to know him more fully.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: When we get to the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit has a little bit of a different job description than he does in the New Testament, though.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: In this way it's not unlike the Son.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: Last week we sh talked about how the Son of God, right, at the incarnation, took on human flesh, which was something he did not have previously, and therefore was fully God and fully man.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: And that changed sort of the role and the function of the Son of God up from that point moving forward.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Holy Spirit is similar in that way, that in the Old Testament he was doing something that looks a little bit different than the New Testament.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: So in the Old, we would still see that the Spirit is coming upon prophets, priests, kings, uh, great individuals during seasons of time and for moments of great significance.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: One of the very first individuals who receives the Holy Spirit, Spirit resting upon him, is Bezalel.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: This is for all of you who need your Bible trivia for the day.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: Bezalel was actually the artisan who helped make the tabernacle.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: And he is one of the first people that God gives the spiritual gift of like woodworking and weaving and doing all of these things.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: There's a special way that he was going to make the tabernacle to the exacting instructions of the Lord so that it'd be a fitting place to worship.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, this past spring, as we went through the book of Judges, you might recall multiple judges, uh, Samson, Gideon, a few others, the Spirit of God coming upon them as they're about to go out into battle, and then the battle is successful, and then it usually doesn't say it, but we understand that the spirit leaves the individuals.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't stay on them forever.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: And so in the Old Testament, the Spirit is coming to empower, to enliven, to quicken, to energize, to do great things for God's kingdom, but it is for a period of time.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: In the New Testament, though, and in fact near his death, Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit's job would actually change a little bit.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: He says, I will ask the Father, and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: He is the Spirit of truth.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: The world is unable to receive him because it doesn't see him or know him, but you do know him because he remains with you and will be in you.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: So as you see circle there, there's two really important things here that are going to be changing and in fact affect you and I today.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: One is that the spirit will be in us.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: Language changes, describing how God's Spirit now meets us.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, it's more resting upon.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: And now today we would say that the Spirit is truly within.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: Romans is going to talk about how God's Spirit ministers to our Spirit, but that his presence dwells within us.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: This is part of the reason why in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul's like, you should care about your physical body because it's now a temple for the Holy Spirit.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: But not just that God's Spirit is going to dwell within us, within all believers specifically, but also that it will be forever.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: It's not going to come and go.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: He's going to stay with us for all time.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: And so we can begin to build not just confidence, but our lives around this idea that the Spirit of God is within all believers, doing, we'll talk about what he's doing, but that all of this activity is not something that we have to, you know, feel like is scarce or is going to run away, right?
12:11
SPEAKER_00: God hasn't just stopped by for a visit, he is with us now forever.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: And so this great moment when the Spirit's job, if you will, his role changed was at something we call Pentecost.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: Pentecost was the name of an event or a day when in the early church the promised Spirit that Jesus said was coming finally came and sort of made himself manifest upon believers.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: When the day of Pentecost had arrived, they were all together in one place.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: Suddenly a sound like that of a violent rushing wind came from heaven, and it filled the whole house where they were staying.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: They saw tongues like flames of fire that separated and rested on each one of them.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: Then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: Now I didn't plan for this to happen, which maybe should let you in on how poorly I can conceive things, but do you know what today is?
13:19
SPEAKER_00: Today is Pentecost.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: May 24th, when the Western Church celebrates it.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: Eastern Church is next week, but we're in the West, so we're in the safe here, safe zone.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: Today is Pentecost.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: And so as we're learning about it, 50 days after Easter is when you traditionally celebrate Pentecost.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: And so today is the day in the Western Church when we celebrate this moment of God's Spirit coming to dwell within believers.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: So to summarize, okay?
13:48
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is God, and as long as you have trusted in Christ your Savior, the Holy Spirit is within you forever.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: That is a truth that you can hold on to right now.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: But doing what?
14:02
SPEAKER_00: Right?
14:03
SPEAKER_00: Well, several things.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: The first is he is the convictor.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: When he comes, John 16 says, He will convict the world about sin, righteousness, and judgment.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: About sin because they do not believe in me, Jesus says.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: About righteousness, because I am going to the Father, and you will no longer see me, and about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: The way that Jesus describes the ministry of the Holy Spirit is kind of like a relay race, where he's handing off the baton.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: He says, the comforter, the helper, the paraclete, uh, this one is coming, my presence, he'll even refer to it as his spirit, right?
14:44
SPEAKER_00: God's spirit, that is going to come when I leave, Jesus says.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: And so he ascends to the heavens, uh, sits at the right hand of the Father, and then at Pentecost, the Spirit comes.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: And what Jesus is saying here, though, is that when the Spirit comes, that there is going to be, again, a bit of a difference about how he is going to minister to everybody here.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: And point number one is not actually about believers.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: It includes us.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: We're inclusive to the convicting nature of the Spirit, but actually, it's for everybody.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: That what the Spirit is doing using three different means, past sin, present righteousness, and future judgment, that he is drawing people towards God, that he is pulling them, that he is convicting them about the sin that they have committed, right?
15:34
SPEAKER_00: This this idea that you have probably felt when you have done things that are not good according to God's will, that have hurt others, that have shamed yourself, that have caused devastation, that you go, man, this is not fulfilling, this is not right, this is not good.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: And that that pain that we begin to feel, the searing nature, as we would sometimes think of our consciousness, rather, Scripture says, man, that is the Spirit working within you to draw you to account.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: Second, that the present righteousness is not enough, that you and I we cannot work, we cannot satisfy the requirements of salvation by our own efforts, that the Holy Spirit is actually bringing that to our understanding.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: Hey, you and I, we can't do this on our own.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: We need Jesus, that that is the work of the Spirit, but then also urging us to consider the future judgment of the world, urging us to think about what it will be like to stand before God and reckon with the creator of the universe according to our sins and all the things that we have done.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: And in his righteousness, the Spirit is drawing us to account.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: No matter how you approach the process of salvation, God's Spirit is in your life first, enabling you to make a decision to trust in Jesus, opening hearts to the truth of the gospel, creating this urgency for salvation, and bringing discomfort when we are living against God's will.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is for all people, but it is also true for the believer, right?
17:12
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we should have an even greater sense of this once we trust in Christ, understanding all of the myriad ways, right?
17:20
SPEAKER_00: We are not living according to God's plan.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit is the one who is going, yeah, that's not God's design for you.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: That's not what's best.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: That is not honoring to the king, come back.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: And he's also reminding us of that process of how we return.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: He is the convictor first.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: And then as people trust in Christ, as they place their faith in him as their Savior, then he becomes, which we'll get to in a moment, the indwelling presence.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: But first, whether or not you believe in Jesus, the pull you feel towards God is real.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit is calling you out of your former life and into a new one, but he will not convict you forever.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: You must respond to this call before it is too late.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: If you've responded to that call, though, the spirit begins to dwell within you.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: Romans 8, 9 through 11 says, You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the spirit.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: If indeed the spirit of God lives in you, if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: Now, if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit gives life because of righteousness.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: And if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will also bring your mortal bodies to life through the Spirit who lives in you.
18:41
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of if kind of statements there.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: If the Spirit of Christ dwells within you, if God's Spirit is present in your life.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 1 13 makes this extremely clear that in him you also were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: So if you have to ask the question, does the Spirit of God dwell within me?
19:10
SPEAKER_00: The only real thing you need to answer is whether you have trusted in Jesus as your Savior.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: You don't need to speak in tongues, you don't need a second baptism of the Spirit.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: God says multiple places that it is faith in the Son of God and God's plan for your life.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: That is the point at which the Spirit dwells within you.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: But we go back to the point we made previously, right, which was that this is different than sort of how the Old Testament worked.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: The judges, kings, artisans, and prophets who benefited from the Holy Spirit's presence in the Old Testament only had it for a season.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: And so you should care, perhaps more than we often do, that God's Spirit won't leave us, that it stays put no matter what we do.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: Right?
19:56
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing, there's no behavior, there's no, as long as we know Jesus, there's no activity that we can do to cast off the spirit from our lives.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: This is what makes some stories in the Old Testament so significant.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: One example would be when in 1 Samuel 16, when the Spirit of God departs from Saul, because Saul has not been faithful to God as his true king.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: God has rejected Saul as the king of Israel.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: He anoints David, and it says in 1 Samuel 16 that his spirit withdraws or withdrew from Saul.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: That's a wild concept for us to get, and also something that should make us praise God in thanksgiving, that that's not a situation you and I have to consider.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: Saul was was struggled mightily as a king, but he also followed God for much of his life.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: And yet you and I, who and fall short in so many ways, do not have to worry about the Spirit of God departing from us.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: We should be thankful for this, that God Himself is living inside of us, effecting remarkable change as we slowly transform into the image of the Son.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: And so God is not a visitor in your life, He is a permanent presence.
21:17
SPEAKER_00: The moment you trusted in Christ, the Spirit took up residence in you and has not left since.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: Now, that doesn't mean that you always feel the Spirit's presence.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: There might be many points in time because of the ways that we have and continue as believers to walk against the Father's will, that we might feel emotionally or relationally distant.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: We might ask ourselves that question, right?
21:39
SPEAKER_00: Like, where is God?
21:40
SPEAKER_00: Where is he?
21:41
SPEAKER_00: I haven't, don't know what language you'd use for this, sensed him, felt him, talked with him.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: However, you want to think about your communication with the Spirit that dwells within you, right?
21:53
SPEAKER_00: There can still be times where we feel distant from God, and yet the truth of Scripture tells us that He has not left us.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: And he will not.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: He's not a visitor.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: He has taken up residence and has not left since.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: Number three, we begin to get into what does this indwelling presence, God Himself, what does he do in our lives?
22:18
SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians 3, 17 through 18 says, Now the Lord is the Spirit.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: We all with unveiled faces are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image, the same image, from glory to glory.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: This is from the Lord who is the Spirit.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: So God created us in his image.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: And we have willingly stepped away from that plan.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: But as we draw closer to the Father's will for our life, we not only find our greatest satisfaction, but we find our deepest joy as well.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: We begin to, you know, like gears that finally find their teeth click together.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: That, man, this is the way that things were supposed to work.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: My life before this, I was just not in tune with the Father's will.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: But in the believer's life, this is a slow process, right?
23:15
SPEAKER_00: It's gradual.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: It is God from glory to glory, over time taking us from who we were to who he wants us to be.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: And who does he want us to be?
23:27
SPEAKER_00: But to image the Son of God.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: And so as we are doing this, as God transforms us, there are things we should be able to see.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: And Scripture is very clear that the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of the Christian life, is something that we should be able to witness.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: You can't go back on that if we don't see certain things.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: It's not a matter of salvation.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: But yet, for instance, in Galatians 5, we see, we get a list.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: Paul gives us some of the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: Those things are not boxes to check in the Christian life, right?
24:08
SPEAKER_00: Those things are not, you know, just behaviors that we need to work through regardless.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: Rather, it is what we should see in the life of somebody as fruit who has submitted to this process of transformation.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: So, to put it in different words, right?
24:25
SPEAKER_00: Like you trust in Christ, and ten years later, if the Lord gives it to you, you should be more joyful, more loving, more patient, more disciplined.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: All of these things, right, there's no limit to them because we're always ultimately going to fall short of the image of Christ, and yet the transformation is taking place nonetheless.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: And so we should find satisfaction in that.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: That God, by his Spirit, is transforming us into this same image.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians here, he's using language from the Old Testament about unveiled faces, right?
25:04
SPEAKER_00: Moses had to veil his face before the presence of God, but you don't, because of Jesus.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: Furthermore, this is not just seeking out the good.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: It says that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: Romans 8 says that by the power of the Spirit, we are to put to death the works of the flesh.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: And so it is not just seeking out the good, but it is putting to bed the bad.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: It is putting to death the sin in our life.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: There is no excuse that we have for the continual sin in our lives.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: We don't have an answer for it because God has spirit, has given us everything that we need to be able to live the life that He has called us to lead.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: There is not a single command, instruction, encouragement, trial in Scripture that God is calling you to, that He has not also empowered you to walk through.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: And so the hard truth there is you go, man, there is no excuse for me continuing to run after sin.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: But the beautiful grace of God is that he says, yes, but you can find freedom from it because of my power.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: Freedom to transform ourselves into the glorious image of Jesus.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: So we are all of us a work in progress.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: And the Spirit empowers us to follow the Father's will.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: By his power and guiding hand, we can put sin to death and find greater life in Christ.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: We're starting, though, to get into things that you have to recognize and see.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: It's present there with you.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: And it's not like some fantasy novel and the power of an untapped gem or some weird magical force.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: It's like that God Himself dwells within you.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: It's a relationship that you can have because he is a person.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: And as you develop that relationship, there are things that he's calling you to, things he's calling you out of, and you can respond or you can push it to the side.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: Number four, he is the advocate.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: This is where we get into some beautiful language.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: Jesus uses a number of different words to describe the spirit.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: The advocate, certainly, but the counselor, the helper, right?
27:21
SPEAKER_00: He is the intercessor, which we'll get to in a moment.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: God has given us his spirit to be with us, to strengthen us.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: And in this way, I don't just mean like to be powerful, but I mean to encourage us during the times of drought in our lives.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: Romans 8 says, in the same way, the Spirit also helps us in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: To intercede means to step in on behalf of somebody else, to get involved for the sake of another.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: And the Spirit intercedes for you on behalf of you when you and I don't know how to pray.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: Notice here, this is kind of a painful thing to recognize, but it says that it uses weakness to describe what happens when we struggle to pray.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: That if we were living fully within the Spirit, that there's some concept here where our prayers wouldn't be as difficult as they usually are.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: But I don't know about you.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: I can get down on my knees and pray, and sometimes my mind wanders.
28:47
SPEAKER_00: I don't have the right emotions or posture of the heart.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: I have things that I need or desire, but I don't know how to put them into words.
28:55
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I have questions like Job about why, or some of the psalms.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: There's anger or frustration.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of things that I can bring forth to God that might be appropriate in their own time, but can't rightly be said to be a beautiful prayer glorifying the Father through the Son by the power of the Spirit.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: And that is weakness on my part.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: It is weakness because I am a sinner, and even though I'm saved by grace, my sin still at times separates me from a full communion with the Father.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: And yet, what we understand here is that in that gap between the two, in my weakness, that the Spirit is interceding for me.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: That He is searching my heart, right?
29:44
SPEAKER_00: God is for you, not against you.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: He is searching my heart, understanding the depths of my soul, and lifting those prayers up to the Father where they need to be received.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that wild?
29:57
SPEAKER_00: That you and I, in our weakness, in our struggles, in fact, the greater weakness that we display in our struggling prayer life, yet have an advocate in the Spirit who fills the gap, connects us to the Father in the name of the Son, so that our prayer life is far stronger than we have ever given credit for previously.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: Though it is weakness on our part, God's power is made perfect in this weakness.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: Just another example here, where the Spirit advocates for us, represents us according to the Father's will, by taking our deepest requests and needs before God in a way that we struggle to do.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: And so this fits with how the Bible presents a model for prayer, right?
30:46
SPEAKER_00: The Father is the one being addressed, the Son is the mediator through whom access is granted, and we pray in his name.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: And the Spirit is the one who facilitates the prayer from within the believer.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: Now I say a model for prayer, right?
31:04
SPEAKER_00: Because there's no prayer police that show up at your door if you decide to go off script a little bit and start talking to the Spirit.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: You're welcome to do it.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: It's God Himself.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: Pray to the Son.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: You're welcome to do it.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: It's God Himself, right?
31:18
SPEAKER_00: Stephen, the first martyr in the Bible, once the church begins, right?
31:23
SPEAKER_00: Um, he is uh when he's being stoned, being killed by, and Paul is watching nearby, he cries out to Lord Jesus, I think is some kind of a prayer.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: And so the point here is not that you're right or wrong in the way that you pray, but there has been the question asked over this series, okay, well, how how does the Trinity affect my prayer life?
31:45
SPEAKER_00: And there's your answer.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: The models that we receive in Scripture are that we pray to the Father, in the name of the Son.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, Pray in my name.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't necessarily mean you verbally have to say, I pray in Jesus' name, but rather that we understand our access to the Father is given by the sacrifice of the Son.
32:03
SPEAKER_00: And then in the power of the Spirit, clearly here in Romans 8, the Spirit is empowering us in order to pray to the Father.
32:12
SPEAKER_00: So a single act of prayer actually involves all three persons of the Trinity simultaneously.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit lovingly comes alongside you during your heaviest moments, when you can do nothing but wander or cry, and delivers to the Father the words that we can't express ourselves.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: On the days when you do not know what to say to God, try anyway.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit will take what you bring, however broken or incomplete, and carry it the rest of the way.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: Fifth out of six, the Spirit is the great giver.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: Certainly the Father is the one who initiates, but the Spirit is the one we might say who delivers the package.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: And in Corinthians, make sure I have my um I'm a little correct here, but also says that the Spirit is the one who's determining to some degree which gifts are given to whom.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: First Corinthians 12 says, Now there are different gifts but the same Spirit, there are different ministries but the same Lord, and there are different activities, but the same God works all of them in each person.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: A manifestation of the Spirit is given to each person for the common good.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: You say, first of all, what gifts are we talking about?
33:21
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about spiritual gifts.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: Okay, there's no bicycle that we're onto the Christmas tree that we're talking about.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: This is a spiritual gift.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: And what is the common good?
33:28
SPEAKER_00: It is the local church in context.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: And so the Holy Spirit is delivering gifts to every single believer.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: Nobody is accepted from this.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: Everybody is empowered by the Spirit individually in a way that God Himself has uniquely determined.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: And when all of us come together and give these gifts back to the kingdom of God, then sort of this mosaic is painted.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: Because each one of us is gifted differently than the other.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: Sure, there might be some overlapping gifts, but not there's not a single one of us who is gifted with the entirety of the spiritual gifts.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: Spirit gives various lists of these gifts.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: None of them are exhaustive.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: There are things that don't surprise us, like wisdom, teaching, mercy, generosity, and so on.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: Then there are some gifts for the church that might surprise us today, maybe even make us a little uncomfortable, like healing, prophecy, and speaking in tongues.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: Yet all of these gifts are used for the common good.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: So no believer is ungifted.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: Some people haven't found their gifting yet, but no believer is ungifted.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: And no gift serves the benefit of the believer alone.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: Each one receives a gift so that collectively God's power is made manifest through a multitude of people, all using their special gifts.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: Having said this, the Spirit's empowerment of you, as long as you have trusted in Christ, does not exempt somebody else from carrying out the same activity, nor does it mean that your particular gifting is the only way that you contribute to the kingdom.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: So if you are gifted in wisdom, be careful before you say that you are.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: But if you are gifted in wisdom, everybody should seek out wisdom.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: If you are gifted in evangelism, everybody should still seek out to share the gospel with others.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: If you are gifted in mercy or generosity, everybody should still seek to be merciful and generous, right?
35:32
SPEAKER_00: But some have increased stability in certain areas, and this is something that they should steward, no matter the degree of skill or ability, so that the Spirit can be seen as the engine that strengthens the church and gives it the power to carry out the Father's will.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: You have been given something by the Spirit that the church needs.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: As a good steward of his gifting, grow it and share it with others.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: Sixth and finally is the guarantee.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: There are a number of things that the Spirit does, but here for this one, our final point, it's really a reminder, not just who the Spirit is, but how God wants us to be encouraged by His presence.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 1, 13 through 14 says, In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, we're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: And so part of the reason that we can be so confident that every believer has the Spirit of God is that he serves as a sign of the Father's guarantee of our salvation.
36:56
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit is given to those who have trusted in Christ as a down payment of a future heavenly inheritance.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: There is more glory to come, but that we might be satisfied in our present life by the working of the Spirit because it is a foretaste of what we will receive in eternity with God.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: In the life that we are living now, the Spirit is ministering to us, encouraging us as God Himself, and is enabling us, right, to live with hope because we understand that He is the first installment of all these wondrous things.
37:35
SPEAKER_00: Beyond that, He is like a certificate of authenticity for our faith, reminding us of the hope that we have in Jesus.
37:44
SPEAKER_00: Like the wax seal placed upon our heart that has been pressed into by the ring of the King, the Holy Spirit acts as a statement of God's complete work in your life through the cross.
38:01
SPEAKER_00: Having purchased us through the blood of the Son, the King has designated us as his own.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: We belong to God, and the Spirit is proof of that purchase.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: Romans 8, 16 through 17 says, the Spirit Himself testifies together with our Spirit that we are God's children, and if children also heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him.
38:25
SPEAKER_00: And so, just to wrap this point here, right?
38:28
SPEAKER_00: Any time you've been reading Scripture, during a sermon, you're just driving in a car, and the thought has come to your head and impressed upon you in a way that it hadn't before.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: Then I'm a son or a daughter of the king.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: I am dearly loved.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: I am forgiven.
38:45
SPEAKER_00: I have grace upon grace.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: God desires to have a relationship with me.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: All of these beautiful things that Scripture tells us, as they return to our head, understand that is the work of the Spirit in your life doing it.
38:58
SPEAKER_00: That He is the one that is bringing these things back up to your mind, teaching you and instructing you, helping you to understand what God is doing.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: It's all the work of the Spirit.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: And so the Spirit is not just one who empowers us, but he encourages us as we go forward.
39:18
SPEAKER_00: Your salvation does not depend on your effort.
39:22
SPEAKER_00: You have been sealed by God Himself, and the same Spirit living in you today is the guarantee that God will finish what he started.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: So, as we close out here on the Holy Spirit, I'm going to conclude the same way we've concluded the previous two messages.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: A reminder from the Athanasian Creed, yet there are not three eternal beings, there is but one eternal being, that even though we talk about the distinction of the Father and the Son and the Spirit, that we are still speaking about one being and three persons.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: Not three gods, one God and three persons.
39:59
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit convicts the lost, raises the spiritually dead to new life, takes up permanent residence in every believer as the very presence of God, transforms believers from the inside out while opening their eyes to the truth of Scripture, intercedes before the Father on behalf of those who do not know how to pray, equips the church with gifts to serve one another and bear witness to the world, and seals every believer as God's own possession until every promise is completely fulfilled.
40:29
SPEAKER_00: The least popular person in the Trinity needs a little bit more attention, right?
40:35
SPEAKER_00: Now, I know that you probably have questions, and if you weren't aware, next week, next evening, oops, don't know why that.
40:45
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
40:47
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why necessarily why there's markings on there, but take that aside.
40:52
SPEAKER_00: Um there's a QA session next week, next Sunday evening.
40:57
SPEAKER_00: And uh I would encourage you to come.
40:59
SPEAKER_00: I would encourage you to ask questions.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions, in each of the offering boxes in both auditoriums, there are strips of paper you can just put into the offering box.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: I've gotten questions over the last few weeks.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: They're great questions.
41:10
SPEAKER_00: Um putting them into a list, we'll ask them.
41:13
SPEAKER_00: Um you can do it online by using the QR code.
41:16
SPEAKER_00: But I would encourage you, let me press into one thing before we go.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: I have found over the last few weeks there's a bit of a hesitation to even ask the questions.
41:27
SPEAKER_00: Either because you feel like they're silly, um, or because you say, Well, I don't I don't want to get into the weeds.
41:35
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
41:36
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: It is a good and beautiful thing to try and understand who God is and what he has done.
41:42
SPEAKER_00: And I would encourage you to press into this more deeply.
41:46
SPEAKER_00: You have the capacity to understand who God is because of the Holy Spirit that dwells within you.
41:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying it's not difficult or confusing, but I am telling you that this is not beyond you.
41:59
SPEAKER_00: And so I would encourage you to dig deep, to stick with us, come next week for our final message in the series, come to the Q ⁇ A and to ask questions so that as we wrap up this whole thing, we can move forward understanding how God has instructed us to see Him more beautifully in Trinity.
42:20
SPEAKER_00: Will you pray with me?
42:23
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we come before you today.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for your goodness and your mercy.
42:29
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for sending the Son.
42:31
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we pray to you in His name.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: And God, we pray to you by the power of the Spirit, even in our weakness, Lord, even when we do not know what to say, your Spirit is interceding and speaking to you, Father, on our behalf.
42:48
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I ask that by the power of your spirit we might understand these things more fully, but not just understand, Lord, but to apply, to think rightly about who you are and what you are doing in our daily lives, to see you pulling us, encouraging us, convicting us, challenging us, transforming us in ways that we have never understood before in our daily life.
43:10
SPEAKER_00: Let us be more attuned, Father, to the work of your spirit in every part of our life.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: In work, in home, in our relationships, when we're by ourselves, when we're reading Scripture.
43:24
SPEAKER_00: Let us remember more frequently and feel it more deeply that your spirit dwells within us.
43:32
SPEAKER_00: Let us find confidence in that, Lord, and pleasure and joy, knowing that He is simply a down payment of what is coming in the future.
43:42
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, God, for all of these things.
43:44
SPEAKER_00: And it is in Christ's name we pray.
43:46
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
43:47
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
43:48
SPEAKER_00: Love you.
43:49
SPEAKER_00: See you next week.