Holy Spirit in the Old Testament

00:02 If you would turn in your copies of the scriptures this morning to the first chapter, the first verse of the first book, the book of Genesis. And I have titled this message in a kind of a mini-series on who is the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. 00:22 Spurgeon said this: "If we do not have the Spirit of God, it were better to shut the churches, to nail up the doors, to put a black cross and say, 'God, have mercy on us.' If you ministers have not the Spirit of God, you had better not preach, 00:37 and you people had better stay at home." I think I speak not too strongly when I say that a church in the land without the Spirit of God is rather a curse than a blessing. If you do not have the Spirit of God, Christian worker, remember that you stand in somebody else's way. You are as a tree bearing no fruit, standing where a fruitful tree might grow. 00:59 I want to share with you several messages on the working, the person and work of the Holy Spirit to lead us in spiritual life and also to give us a grounding in the truth. There's much confusion today as there always is when the Holy Spirit is mentioned. It seems like there's much confusion. 01:19 There was remembering back in the late '60s and early '70s when the Charismatic movement began to go mainstream. There was a lot of confusion. There was a lot of misunderstanding. There was a lot of excesses. I remember that having extended family members in that movement. 01:38 I think things have for a number of years kind of gone more mainstream, but then in more recent years, again, there's been a lot of confusion about the Holy Spirit, who He is and what His work is. And I remember and would recommend to you a book. I'm not necessarily one to recommend books in messages, 01:58 but this is one book that I found greatly helpful by Charles Swindoll called Flying Closer to the Flame. 02:06 Because it seems like in the excesses of certain movements who overemphasize the Holy Spirit, there is an equal excess on those who underestimate and underemphasize the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And so if you can get a copy of this book, it may help answer many of your questions. 02:25 Flying Closer to the Flame, I don't know if it's in print anymore, but I want to just read to you something that Swindoll says in this book. Let's face it, most of us are intrigued by the Holy Spirit. "Like moths, we are attracted to the warmth and light of His flame. Our desire is to come closer, to draw nearer, to know Him more fully and intimately, 02:46 to enter into new and stimulating dimensions of His working without getting burned. I know that is true of me, and I suspect you often feel the same. During my growing up years, including my years in seminary, I kept a safe distance. 02:59 I was taught to be careful, to study Him from a doctrinal distance but not to enter into any of the realms of His supernatural workings or to tolerate the possibility of such. Explaining the Spirit was acceptable and encouraged. Experiencing Him was neither. Today, I regret that. 03:16 I have lived long enough and ministered broadly enough to realize that flying closer to the flame is not only possible, it is precisely what God wants." And yet he then goes on to explain how that experience of the Holy Spirit needs to be rooted and grounded in the truth of God's Word and not to be divorced from the authority of the scriptures. 03:37 There is much confusion today as I remember or as I mentioned. It sometimes is unbalanced and divorced from good biblical interpretations. And in some ways, not only was that true in the past, it's also true in the present. But as someone has said, this is an unknown quote, "The average church member's understanding of the Holy Spirit is so vague, 03:58 it is nearly nonexistent." And when we think about the three members of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is the hardest one, at least for me, to conceive of and to get my head around. Because we can understand a bit about the Father. All of us have had fathers, 04:19 maybe not good fathers, but we've had fathers. Even people with bad fathers can imagine a father. And even people that are bad fathers know they're bad fathers and know conceptually what it takes to be a good father. So we can kind of get our heads around the Father. 04:35 And then when it comes to the Son, He is the member of the Trinity that is most revealed in the scriptures because in the whole New Testament, the scriptures and the Christian life center around the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we understand how He was born of a we may not be able to fully understand, but we understand that He was born of a virgin. 04:54 We understand that He came and lived among us, that He walked among us, that He was a man. Yes, He was God, but He was also a man. And we can identify with that. And many pages of scripture are given to us to help us to understand the person and work of Christ. But when it comes to the Spirit, it seems like it's kind of hard to get a hold of that. 05:16 How do you understand a Spirit? Are we talking about a ghost? And especially the King James version using old King James language speaks of Him as the Holy Ghost. Well, that's kind of scary. At least it was to me as a young boy. A Holy Ghost, well, that's got to be something to be feared. 05:34 We've maybe gained a little bit on it when we begin in contemporary language to refer to Him as the Holy Spirit. And yet how can a Spirit be a person? And what does a Spirit do? And how does a Spirit interact with us in the physical realm? And so those are some things of confusion. 05:54 But I'd like to share with you this morning the first message in this mini-series on the working of the Spirit in the Old Testament. And we do know that there is a difference between His working in the Old Testament and His working in the New Testament, although His personality remains the same. In the New Testament, the Bible says that Jesus, the death and resurrection of Christ, 06:14 marked a decisive point where the Spirit began to interact with us in a different way, in a more personal and intimate way. 06:22 Because it says in the New Testament that this spoke He of the Spirit, speaking of Jesus when He said, "Out of your innermost being shall flow rivers of water, living water." This spoke He of the Spirit who was not yet given because Christ was not yet glorified on the cross. And so at the cross and the resurrection and the day of Pentecost, 06:43 something changed not about who the Holy Spirit was or is, but about how deeply He works in us and how close He has come to us, which was a change from the Old Testament. Did not change who He was, but changed how He interacts with us. 07:01 So I want to give you several things this morning to think about and to look at in the Old Testament. First of all, we'll look at the Spirit in creation. And then we'll look at the Spirit in qualification, the Spirit in revelation, and the Spirit in transformation. The Spirit in creation, the Spirit in qualification, 07:21 the Spirit in revelation, and the Spirit in transformation. And so we are here in Genesis chapter 1, first book, first verse, first chapter. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep, 07:41 and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." Now, when you begin to look at commentaries on the book of Genesis, immediately the commentaries kind of bypass God and go right into the rest of the chapter about the creation. 07:59 And yet I think we cannot bypass chapter or verse 1 and 2, that in the beginning, God. In the beginning, God was. God was in the beginning. God was before the beginning, but at the beginning, whenever that was, whether that be 6,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, several million years ago. 08:18 And of course, we're not teaching from the book of Genesis this morning on creation. We're teaching about God. Whenever the beginning was, God was in the beginning. God was at the beginning. God was the beginning. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep. So if you can imagine the emptiness of what was, 08:39 the emptiness of what was, this water, this was it swirling? Was it stagnant? What kind of water was it? We don't know. 08:47 But whatever it was, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of God was hovering over, brooding over, evaluating, interacting with this emptiness of creation and began in the rest of 09:06 chapter 1 the recreation or the creation out of this water and the transformation as the water subsides into put in its place and the light shines put in its place and the sun, moon, and stars are put in their place. And we begin to see that the Spirit of God and the person of Christ and the Father, 09:27 the whole Trinity is involved in the creation. Now, we get a little bit of a hint of a Trinity, just a little bit of a hint in creation in chapter 1, verse 1. "In the beginning was God. 09:43 In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." The term God there is the term Elohim, which is the masculine plural form of the Hebrew word for God. It is the masculine form, not feminine. It is the plural form, not singular. 10:05 And yet, however, when it says God created, the verb form of created is singular. Not to overemphasize or to give us any kind of idea that God is many gods or is multiple gods, but Elohim plural created, singular. 10:24 And so we have God. And Bible scholars, Hebrew scholars said that this emphasizes the unity of God, the oneness of God. But what I think you have here by using the term Elohim instead of the term El, which also can be translated God, is a hint, just a hint of the unity of God, 10:45 of the Trinity, and its diversity, the diversity and unity of the triune God. You look in verse 2, and you see this again. "The Spirit of God is hovering over the waters, over the face of the deep." It doesn't say the Father is hovering over. It doesn't say the Son is hovering over. 11:05 It says the Spirit is hovering over. And so automatically, just right out of the first two verses, we understand that God is and that God is a Spirit, not just that God has a Spirit, but that God is Spirit, Jesus told us in John chapter 4. God is Spirit. Now we know that they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth. 11:26 And so what we have here is a picture of the Spirit of God recreating or creating order and transformation out of emptiness. By the way, does that sound like what the Spirit of God does today in people's lives? 11:41 We get a little bit of a hint just in a primitive form here in verses 1 and 2 of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. And that is that the Holy Spirit brings order out of emptiness, order out of chaos, filling out of emptiness. 11:58 And so this shows us a bit of the Holy Spirit at work in the creation. And we know from comparing scripture with scripture that the Trinity, all three persons of the Godhead, were involved in the creation. First Corinthians chapter 8, verse 6 says, "But to us there is but one God, 12:18 the Father, of whom are all things, and we in Him." So He talks about the Father initiating creation. "And one Lord Jesus," it goes on to say, "one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by Him." So we know that the Father was involved in creation. 12:39 The Son was involved in creation. John says all things were created by Him. That is the Word, the living Word, the incarnate Word. All things were created by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. Or Colossians chapter 1 says, "For by Him were all things created that are in heaven, 12:59 that are in earth, visible and invisible. All things were created by Him and for Him." So we have the Holy Spirit or we have Jesus, the Son, the Word involved in creation. But then we also have the Spirit involved in creation. 13:16 So you have the Trinity involved in the creation of this world. Psalm 104, verse 29 and 30 says, "Thou hidest thy face," and speaking about life and about creatures having life, says, "Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled. Thou takest away their breath, they die and return to the dust. 13:38 Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created, and thou renewest the face of the earth." And so you have the Holy Spirit involved in giving life and breath to creation. God breathed into them the breath of life, and man became a living soul. 13:59 Where did we get our breath? Where did we get our life? We get it from God's Spirit, God's breath. The Hebrew word is pneuma, pneuma, pneumatic breath. And so we go down to verse 26, verse 26, and we see another picture of the Trinity in creation. 14:22 "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.'" So God created man in His own image. In the image of God, He created him male and female. 14:42 He created them. Here you have God saying to somebody, "Let us make man in our image." Who is He talking to? Who is He talking to? "Let us make man in our image." Is He talking to the animals? No, we're not made in the image of the animals. Is He talking to the angels? 15:04 I don't find any place in scripture where we are made in the image of angels or even closely hinted at. In fact, the Bible says that of speaking in Psalm 8, that He hath made him a little lower than the angels and hath crowned him with glory and honor. Who's He talking to? I believe He's talking to Himself, the Trinity in communication with itself, 15:27 Father, Son, Holy Spirit, communicating, saying, "Let us make man in our image." Nowhere is there any indication that He's speaking to the angels. He's speaking to Himself and the Godhead. So here you have God, unity in diversity, Father, 15:46 Son, Holy Spirit, united in purpose, in oneness, and one God creating man in His image. Now, I think there's a lot that could be said about man being in the image of God. Books have been written. People have debated this whole thing for many, many years. 16:06 But I think one of the pictures that you get of man being created in the image of God is that man is a three-dimensional being. He is body. He is soul. He is Spirit. God, three-dimensional being, Father, Son, 16:27 Holy Spirit, one but three, man, one but three. Now, that's just a hint of the Trinity in Genesis. But I think it's there. It's there in seed form. 16:44 The other thing that you notice here in creation is that you have God one in three, unity in diversity. You have man being created, man as male and female, mankind, male and female. 17:04 And three times He talks about God making them male and female, making man, mankind, humankind as male and female. 17:13 And so in humankind, you see unity of the human race, but you see diversity as male and female, again, reflecting the image of God, learning something about God by looking at creation. 17:26 And so this is just very primitive understanding and beginning in seed form to plant the idea that God is triune, but He is one. He is one God. Now, you go over to the next time when the Spirit is mentioned, and this is in chapter 6, verse 3. 17:47 Chapter 6, verse 3, "It came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful, and they took wives for themselves, all of all whom they chose. And the Lord said, 'My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for He is indeed flesh. 18:07 Yet His days shall be 120 years.'" Now, some people use that scripture, and I think it can be used that way, but it's a stretch. Some people use that scripture in evangelistic meetings to say that now is the day of salvation. If God's Spirit is calling you, 18:27 respond now because My Spirit will not always strive with men. Now, that is true. And what we see here is that God's patience is limited. We have no guarantee that we will be called and called and called and called and called. But that's not the point of that verse. 18:48 The point of that verse in chapter 6, verse 3 is that it has relationship to man's physical life. See, He says, "My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for indeed He is flesh, and His days shall be 120 years," as opposed to having the breath of life in Him for 600, 19:07 700, 800, 900 years as in the ancient world. And so what we have here is the Spirit is involved in giving life. The Spirit is involved in withholding life when life is done. The Spirit withdraws. Now, we don't understand all these things, 19:26 and this is not an detailed exposition of that verse. I just want you to see that it is the Spirit's responsibility and ministry to breathe life into something dead. Now, in Job, 19:46 Elihu swerved into something when he said, "The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty has given me life." And so where did our life come from? It came from God, the breath of God. Now, does that mean that everybody is filled with the Holy Spirit? 20:06 No. But it does mean that God and the Spirit of God is that which has created life in all of its form. Now, the second thing we see here this morning in the Old Testament is the Spirit in qualification. What do we mean by the Spirit in qualification? 20:23 Well, as we begin to see the Spirits working in the Old Testament as it moves forward, we move into Joseph and others. You move into the prophet or into the judges and then the kings and then the prophets. And you see that the Spirit of God came upon people to qualify them for ministry or for acts of their calling, 20:45 acts of service in relationship to a specific call of God on their lives. 20:51 And so in Joseph's case, Pharaoh recognized that God was working with Joseph. And Pharaoh didn't know how to articulate that. And so if you look at the Old Testament passage, it says, "Here's a man in whom is the Spirit of God." Well, I don't think that Pharaoh necessarily had in mind that he's filled with the Holy Spirit. 21:13 Joseph is filled with the Holy Spirit. He didn't know the one true God. But what he did say is, "This is one who's filled with the Spirit of the gods." In other words, there's something God-like happening in Joseph. He's a man whom God is resting on, who has remarkable abilities. 21:30 And it was God in Joseph and God upon Joseph that gave Joseph the abilities that he had. And you see that happening then over in Daniel as well. Daniel, the Bible says that in him was an excellent spirit. In him was the Spirit of God. 21:47 And that was Belteshazzar's way of referring to the fact that God was at work in Daniel to give Daniel supernatural ability as a prophet of God. And so what you see is the Spirit of God coming upon people and anointing them for roles of ministry and service that God called them to. 22:07 You remember in Exodus chapter 31? We could turn to all of these. We won't take the time to do so. Exodus 31, there was a man by the name of Beezaliel. You remember who Beezaliel was? You probably don't. I wouldn't have. He was the one who was gifted by God to build the tabernacle. 22:28 And God said, "I have filled him with the Spirit of God in wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship." And so here was Beezaliel who was given a job to do, and the Spirit of God came upon him in wisdom and understanding and knowledge and ability. 22:45 So you have the Holy Spirit empowering people to do what God calls them to do. Same with the 70 elders of Moses. You remember the people were frustrated with Moses. Moses, you need some assistance. And so Moses said, "Pick out 70 men." They picked out 70 men, and the Spirit of God came upon them. 23:06 Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him and took of the Spirit that was upon him, that is, upon Moses. So the Spirit was upon Moses. He took the Spirit that was upon him, placed the same upon the 70 elders. And it happened when the Spirit rested upon them that they prophesied, although they never did so again. 23:24 Then Moses said to him, because some other guys started prophesying, and Joshua thought that Moses might be jealous, "Should we tell these guys not to prophesy?" Moses said, "Are you jealous for my sake? Oh, that all the Lord's people were prophets and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them." What you have in the Old Testament, since it was different than in the New Testament, 23:43 you have the Holy Spirit coming upon people to anoint them for special acts of ministry and of service and of ability. There are times in the Old Testament where it is referred to that the Spirit was within them. But we know that that was not in the same way that the Spirit is within us since Pentecost. 24:05 And we'll get into that more in future messages. And so you have the 70 elders of Moses. You have the judges, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, Othniel. Says of Othniel, "One of the judges, the Spirit of the Lord, came upon him, and he judged Israel and went out to war." And Zechariah said it like this, 24:25 "That the workings of God in these men and in these experiences were not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." And so the Holy Spirit would come upon people to anoint them for specific callings, specific roles, 24:43 and specific tasks that they were being given. Now, He also qualified the kings. Saul, in our series on 1 Samuel, we ran across it that the Spirit of God came upon him, and he prophesied among them. 24:59 Then we know that the Spirit of God, which anointed him as king and gave him special abilities as king and as a prophet, left him. And interestingly enough, David, when David sinned, in Psalm 51 said, "Take not thy Holy Spirit from me." I think he had in mind what happened to Saul when Saul sinned. 25:21 Saul sinned. The Holy Spirit was taken from him because Saul refused to repent. In David's case, "Take not thy Holy Spirit from me," the Spirit of God that was upon him, anointing him for the kingly ministry. The Bible says then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him, that is, David, in the midst of his brother. 25:42 And then the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward. And so David was anointed with the Spirit for his role as king. 25:54 Many of the prophets also experienced this. It was the same with Christ Himself. "The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge, and of the fear of the Lord." The Spirit came upon Jesus. 26:15 And we'll look more at that in a later ministry or in a later message. Isaiah predicted and prophesied, "Behold my Spirit whom I uphold," speaking of Christ, "mine elect in whom my soul delighteth. I have put my Spirit upon him. He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles." So here we have the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament in creation and in qualification. 26:37 Then we have the Holy Spirit in revelation, in revelation, holy men of God speaking as they are moved by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God would come upon the prophets. By the way, there is a threefold anointing in the Old Testament: prophet, priest, king. 26:57 Jesus had all three of those anointings, prophet, priest, and king. But the Holy Spirit would come upon the prophets and give them words, the word of the Lord, to share the word of the Lord with those who needed to hear it. Listen to what it says about David. David was anointed as king, 27:15 but he was also anointed as a prophet because he spoke the words of God and wrote scripture. 2 Samuel 23:1 and 2 says this, "Now these are the last words of David. 27:27 Thus says David, the son of Jesse, thus says the man raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob and the sweet psalmist of Israel." Wow. How did David get to be the sweet psalmist of Israel? He got there because he was anointed by the Holy Spirit. And it says then in verse 2, 27:47 "The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me, and His word was on my tongue." And so the Spirit of God would come upon the prophets, give them messages from God, and write those messages down as scripture. 2 Chronicles 15 of Azariah, it said, 28:06 "Now the Spirit of God came upon Azariah." Jehaziel says in 2 Chronicles 20, "The Spirit of the Lord came upon Jehaziel, the son of Zechariah, a Levite of the sons of Asaph, in the midst of the assembly. 28:19 And he said, 'Listen all you of Judah and you inhabitants of Jerusalem and you king Jehoshaphat, thus says the Lord to you.'" The Spirit of God came upon them. They spoke the word of God clearly to the need of the hour. Zechariah, 2 Chronicles 24, "The Spirit of God came upon Zechariah, 28:38 the son of Jehoiada, the priest, who stood above the people and said, 'Thus says God.'" Nehemiah 9:30, "A testifies against them by thy Spirit in thy prophets. 28:51 Micah, it is said of Micah, but truly I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord and of judgment and of might to declare unto Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin." Zechariah 7:12, "And the words of the Lord of Hosts hath sent in His Spirit by the former prophets." And so the prophets, holy men of God, spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. 29:14 Now, let me hasten to add this. There were a lot of people in the Old Testament who claimed to speak for God. And God said very specifically, "I have not sent them. They are not mine. They are not speaking under my authority." And so that discomforted the people. 29:33 How do we know who's speaking for God, who isn't speaking for God? We'll get into that more when we talk about the Holy Spirit's role in writing and penning the scriptures. And the fact, brothers and sisters, that we have what's called a closed canon. In other words, 29:53 the Bible has a back cover on it. It has a back cover on it. No more words of scripture being written today. We'll get into that later. And so we have the Holy Spirit in creation, the Holy Spirit in qualification, the Holy Spirit in revelation. It says of Isaiah, "Now the Lord God and His Spirit hath sent me." Ezekiel 11, 30:13 "And the Spirit of the Lord fell upon me and said, 'Speak, thus saith the Lord.'" Over and over and over and over, the Holy Spirit came upon somebody to give them words, to give them strength, to give them an anointing for the work that God had called them to do. By the way, Jesus, the Son of God, 30:33 the second member of the Trinity, was also anointed by the Holy Spirit. And how the Trinity can anoint the Trinity, I'm not sure. It's a mystery. How one member of the Trinity can empower another member of the Trinity who has full power in and of himself, we don't know. But it's very clear in the New Testament that God anointed His holy Son, 30:54 Jesus, with the Spirit of God who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil. So finally, the Holy Spirit is involved in transformation. And this is where it becomes even more personal. What you see in the scriptures is you see God coming more and more and more and more personal to us, 31:15 closer and closer and closer, so close that in the New Testament, He finally comes to live within us, within us as His people. J.B. 31:28 Phillips said, "Every time we say, 'I believe in the Holy Spirit,' we mean that we believe that there is a living God able and willing to enter human personality and change it." I like that. 31:43 Every time we say, "We believe in the Holy Spirit," we mean that we believe that there is a living God able and willing to enter into human personality and change it. The Holy Spirit is a transforming spirit. He changes us. I want you to turn to the book of Isaiah 32. 32:03 And I want you to see some of the change that happens when the Holy Spirit arrives on the scene. The change that happened in Genesis 1 is the Spirit of God hovered over the waters, and the Father initiated the plan of creation, and the Son implemented the plan of creation, and the Spirit accomplished the plan of creation, 32:23 the transformation of that water into the created world of beauty around us. Even so, it is spiritually. In Isaiah 32:14-20, verse 14, "Because the palaces will be forsaken, the bustling city will be deserted. 32:43 The forts and towers will become lairs forever, a joy of wild donkeys, a pasture of flocks." Sounds like some people's lives, right? Deserted, empty, chaotic, having fallen from the place and plan that God had for their lives, forsaken. 33:05 Verse 15, "Until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high." So in other words, the Spirit is going to do something of transformation. And the wilderness becomes a fruitful field. And the fruitful field is counted as a forest. "Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field. 33:26 The work of righteousness will be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever. My people will dwell in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings and in quiet resting places. Though hail comes down on the forest and the city is brought low in humiliation, blessed are you who sow beside all waters, 33:48 who send out freely the feet of the ox and the donkey." Now, realize this is talking about the regathering of Israel and the time when Christ will rule and reign and so on. But the implication here is also a spiritual dynamic where Jesus, when the Spirit of God comes into a person's life, 34:07 there is transformation from emptiness to fullness, from drought to fruitfulness, from chaos to order as the Spirit is poured upon us from on high. So the Holy Spirit is a spirit of transformation. Isaiah 44:3, 34:27 "For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground. I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed and my blessing upon thine offspring." Isaiah 59:19-21, "So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west and His glory from the rising of the sun. 34:46 When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him. The Redeemer will come to Zion and to those who turn from transgressions in Jacob," says the Lord. "As for me," says the Lord, "this is my covenant with them. 35:00 My Spirit is upon you, and my words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart from your mouth nor from the mouth of your descendants nor from the mouth of your descendants' descendants," says the Lord, "from this time and forevermore." So there is a word. There is a fruitfulness. There is a warmth. 35:21 There is a joy. There is a dynamic that happens when the Spirit of God is given to an individual. It is a dynamic of transformation. It's a dynamic of having a new heart and a new spirit. Ezekiel 36, "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. 35:40 I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will keep my judgments and do them. And shall put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live," Ezekiel 37:14. 35:56 Life, spiritual vitality, the same kind of thing that happened when the Spirit was blown into Adam and Adam was given physical life and stood up and walked and served God. That same dynamic is true when the Spirit of God is given to the believer in Christ. 36:17 And spiritually, he rises up and walks and serves God in power, the power of God Himself. Joel 2:28 and 29, "It shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh," not just on a few people who were kings or prophets or priests, but on all the people of God. 36:38 "I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication." By the way, this was fulfilled in Acts 2 when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the church and people's lives were transformed and changed by the power of the Spirit of God. 36:59 And the people asked, "What is this?" And Peter said, "This is what was spoken of by the prophet Joel. I will pour out my Spirit upon your sons and daughters. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Your old men shall dream dreams. Your young men shall see visions. 37:14 And also on my maidservants, I will pour out my Spirit in those days." It's not just for the high and mighty and the popular and those up here. It's for everybody who names the name of Christ. So who is the Holy Spirit? 37:31 The Holy Spirit is the person of the Godhead in union with the Father and the Son who is at work in creation and redemption to bring transformation and life in, among, 37:47 and upon God's people by communicating and empowering them for spiritual roles of service in the kingdom of God. He was present in the Old Testament doing that. His greater fullness is found in the New Testament. A.W. Tozer said it like this, and I'll close, "Spell this out in capital letters. 38:08 The Holy Spirit is a person. He is not enthusiasm. He is not courage. He is not energy. He is not the personification of all good qualities like Jack Frost is the personification of cold weather. Actually, the Holy Spirit is not the personification of anything. 38:28 He is a person, the same as you are a person, but not material substance. He has individuality. He is one being and not another. He has will and intelligence. He has hearing. He has knowledge and sympathy and ability to love and see and think. He can hear, speak, 38:48 desire, grieve, and rejoice. He is a person. And He wants to transform our lives. May we allow Him to do so. Let's pray. 39:04 Lord Jesus, we thank You that You have made Yourself known to us at the cross. We thank You that You have paid for our sins, that You have shown Yourself to be Lord of all by the resurrection, and that You have shown Yourself and given to us of Yourself by Your Holy Spirit. 39:25 We thank You, dear God, that the Spirit has been given to us who believe. We thank You, Lord, that He has been placed within us as part of our personality to transform us and to give us life. 39:40 I pray, Father, that You will help us to come to know You as a triune God in a better way, as Father, to know who You are and what You really are like as a Father, as the Son, the Word, the incarnate Word, 39:58 that we would come to know You as who You really are and what You are really like as the Son of God and as the Holy Spirit, that we would come to know You as You really are, not as somebody else thinks You are, but as scripture says You are. 40:14 And that we might know You in a way that brings transformation and warmth and life and liberty to old, dead, dry bones, spiritually dead, enlivened by Your Spirit. Thank You, Lord, that we do not serve a distant God. 40:34 Thank You that we do not serve a God who's dead and dry and just kind of an idea that we give agreement to, but that we serve a risen Savior who has taken up residence in our frail human beings by Your Holy Spirit. 40:52 Give us power today to walk in the calling that God has called us to. In Jesus' name, Amen.