The Holy Spirit: From Adam to Moses

Why should we study the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit?

Give opportunities for people to respond

The Holy Spirit is God, teaching on the Holy Spirit is often abused and unbiblical, ignored...

“Wherever Christianity has become a living power, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit has uniformly been regarded, equally with the atonement and justification by faith, as the article of a standing or falling church.”

Trinitarian Foundations

5 Propositions Concerning the Trinity

There is one God or divine essence

The one divine essence is common to three truly divine persons, who are designated Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

Between the three persons there obtains a natural order of subsistence and operation; the first Person hat life in himself; the second and third Persons subsist and act from the first.

This order of the divine Persons belongs to the divine essence prior to, and irrespective of, the covenant of grace.

This natural order of subsistence and action is the ground and reason of the several names, Father, Son, and Spirit; the Son being begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeding from both.

The Divine Works of the Trinity

The Father is the source from which every operation emanates.

The Son is the medium through which it is performed.

The Holy Spirit is the executive by which it is carried into effect

Example - Creation: The Father Decrees it, the Son speaks, the Spirit applies

Summary Caution Regarding the Trinity

Every doctrine eventually makes it way back to the Trinity. Almost every heresy comes into collision with the doctrine of the Trinity at some point.

We must know and believe what the Bible reveals about the Trinity, but we must not try to take away the incomprehensible mystery.

The Holy Spirit From Adam to Moses

The Spirit’s Work in Creation

English Standard Version Chapter 1

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

The word translated spirit means a breath, a wind; and also an intelligent thinking being.

The designation - Spirit of God - denotes two persons, God and the Spirit of God - it implies distinct personality and indicates that he is from God, or of God.

English Standard Version Chapter 33

The Spirit of God has made me,

and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.

The Spirit is presented as a personal agent standing in a unique relation to God, that is from God, but personally distinct.

English Standard Version Psalm 104

These all look to you,

to give them their food in due season.

28  When you give it to them, they gather it up;

when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.

29  When you hide your face, they are dismayed;

when you take away their breath, they die

and return to their dust.

30  When you send forth your Spirit, they are created,

and you renew the face of the ground.

God’s works are presented according to their order.

God gives the animals their food, he hides his face and they are troubled, he takes away their breath and they die. that he sends forth his Spirit, and a fresh succession of animated beings is created.

“your Spirit” distinguishes between the uncreated Holy Spirit, and the finite created spirit and proves that the Spirit of God is the source of all life.

Man Made to Be the Temple of the Holy Spirit

English Standard Version Chapter 2

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.

When God breathed into man the breath of life, it was life in the Holy Spirit as well as physical life.

The principle proof of this is that spiritual and physical death are both threatened for breaking covenant with God.

One aspect of being made in God’s image is that Adam not only bore a likeness to God’s perfections in his mental, moral and religious make-up, but that he was placed in a conscious and close relation to all the persons of the Trinity.

Man was not only a creature, but also, in his original state, the temple of the Holy Spirit.

One idea that has crept in due to evolution is that God made man in a primitive and crude state. Not True, Adam was perfect, complete, lacking in nothing, and only needed nothing more than to keep the required probationary command.

The Spirit was by necessity withdrawn at the moment of the fall. Gen 6:3, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” - Man is now naturally flesh, rather than indwelt with the Holy Spirit.

The restoration of the Holy Spirit by the 2nd Adam (Christ) implies the possession of the Spirit by the 1st Adam.

English Standard Version Chapter 20

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit Lost By the Fall

The withdrawal of the Holy Spirit from the human heart is one of the penal consequences of sin.

The fall involved our captivity to Satan. This evil continues to lead men captive, working in the children of disobedience.

The Image of God was replaced by the entire corruption of man’s nature.

The fallen nature is incapable of any saving good. It is prone to evil and dead in sin. Without the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, men are neither willing or able to return to God, or to reform their natural corruption.

The Restoration of the Holy Spirit by a Remedial Economy

In view of the fall, God established a method of restoration or covenant that the Father would send the Son, as the one mediator between God and men; that the incarnate Son, as the 2nd Adam, should fulfill the law, and bear our sins in his own body; and that the Holy Spirit should then return with a plenitude of grace and power to be forfeited no more.

As soon as sin entered the world, God announced the gospel, and by his Spirit regenerates a redeemed line of humanity. By the time before the flood, a majority of men had rejected the testimony of the Spirit, addressed to them by spirit-filled men.

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, 20 because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water

The Spirit inspired the prophets in these days.

English Standard Version Chapter 1

inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. 12 It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

The Covenant God Made with Abraham

The first articulation of the gospel is in Gen 3, the second is found in the promise that through Abraham’s seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed.

The blessing of Abraham, according to Gal 3:14, “so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith."

When Abraham believed, and it was credited to him a righteousness, he recieved the Holy Spirit.

Joseph and all the patriarchs had the Holy Spirit - Gen 41:38 “And Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find a man like this, in whom is the Spirit of God?”

The Law of Moses

The Spirit is at work in the inspiration of Scripture.

The Spirit is at work in all the theophanies, audible voices, and miraculous signs.

The Spirit is at work in the hearts of a multitude of believers - Neh 9:20 “You gave your good Spirit to instruct them and did not withhold your manna from their mouth and gave them water for their thirst. 21 Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness, and they lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell.”