Heresies 4: God the Holy Spirit

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: John 16:5-15

N:

Opening

Good morning, everyone! Thanks for joining us in person and online for Family Worship here at Eastern Hills. This morning, we are setting aside a few moments to recognize the Sanctity of Human Life.

The video we just watched was from a wonderful ministry that we have partnered with for years: CareNet Pregnancy Centers. CareNet has four locations in Albuquerque and surrounding communities, and they are an excellent organization to support and volunteer for. This past week marked the 48th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal on demand throughout the United States. CareNet exists to protect the sanctity of human life in the womb by providing free and confidential information, medical care, and counseling for those facing an unexpected pregnancy, by helping struggling young families with supplies like diapers and formula, an and by even providing post-abortion counseling services for those who have made that decision in the past. You can get involved with our local CareNet organization in New Mexico by visiting carenetabq.org, or if you’re not in New Mexico, you can visit care-net.org to find out how you can get involved where you are. There are over 1,100 CareNet locations nationwide. And if you are facing an unexpected pregnancy and need help, please reach out to CareNet.

And now, let’s continue our sermon series Heresies with our fourth message in the series. We’ve considered the importance of sound doctrine and standing against false teaching, the identity and work of Jesus, the doctrines of sin and justification, and this morning, we will consider the doctrine of God the Holy Spirit. Let’s stand in honor of the Word of God as we read our focal passage this morning from John 16:

John 16:5–15 CSB

5 But now I am going away to him who sent me, and not one of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ 6 Yet, because I have spoken these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. 7 Nevertheless, I am telling you the truth. It is for your benefit that I go away, because if I don’t go away the Counselor will not come to you. If I go, I will send him to you. 8 When he comes, he will convict the world about sin, righteousness, and judgment: 9 About sin, because they do not believe in me; 10 about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will no longer see me; 11 and about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. 12 “I still have many things to tell you, but you can’t bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own, but he will speak whatever he hears. He will also declare to you what is to come. 14 He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. 15 Everything the Father has is mine. This is why I told you that he takes from what is mine and will declare it to you.

PRAY, and lead in prayer for Sanctity of Life Sunday, for CareNet, for an end to elective abortion, and for those who carry the weight of having chosen abortion, whether men or women.

When I was six years old, the movie Star Wars was released. I saw Star Wars in the theater at Northridge Mall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I don’t know how many times. It won 7 Academy Awards, including production design, costumes, and editing, but the three most obvious ones were original score, sound mixing, and visual effects. One of the sound designers on Star Wars, Ben Burtt, actually got a Special Achievement Academy Award for creating many of the iconic sounds that come out of the Star Wars franchise: R2-D2’s robotic “voice”, the hum and crackle of a lightsaber, the sound of blasters and TIE Fighters, and the mechanical breathing of Darth Vader. At the age of 6, Star Wars completely blew my mind. Anyone else?

Anyway, throughout that movie, and throughout the entire phenomenon that flowed from it, there’s the concept of The Force. Old Obi-Wan Kenobi explained it this way: “The Force is an energy field created by all living things. I surrounds us, penetrates us, and it binds the galaxy together.” In the Star Wars universe, The Force enabled people who were tuned into it do extraordinary things, provided they “use” it. “Use the Force, Luke.” Many of you can picture Luke in his X-Wing, zipping down the equatorial trench of the Death Star, and hear the ghostly voice of Obi-Wan telling Luke to forget the technology and draw on The Force to enable him to destroy the planet-killing space station.

But The Force in the Star Wars saga is this impersonal, irrational, mystical thing without discernment that both the good and the evil can tap into. It’s not conscious. It’s not active. It’s sort of like in Star Wars, everything is god, and god is everything, but nothing is really “god”... that’s The Force.

We can enjoy and be entertained by Star Wars and the legacy it has created. But we cannot make the mistake of thinking that our God is anything like The Force. In The State of Theology, by Ligonier and Lifeway Research, which we have been referring to in this series, Statement 8 was this: “The Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being.” 59% of respondents agreed with this statement, and 17% just weren’t sure. That’s 76% of respondents seeing the third Person of the Trinity as an impersonal force, like Star Wars.

Evangelicals don’t think like this, do they? Sadly, they do. 56% of those who identified themselves as evangelicals were in the same three categories: agreeing or just not sure about the Holy Spirit.

This morning, we’re going to consider the concept of the Trinity, and then more specifically, the Person of the Holy Spirit. So, just some light thinking this morning.

Before we get into thinking about the Trinity, there is one confession that I need to make: The concept of the Trinity is easy to affirm, but impossible to fully grasp. This is because God is greater than we can think and fully comprehend. We are made by Him, not Him by us, and He is infinitely greater and more amazing than our feeble brains can get a hold of. I know that for me, I can think on the Trinity (a good thing to do, loving God with our minds), but after a while, my brain starts to hurt. He is above all that I will ever fully understand.

And whole gigantic volumes have been written about the Trinity, as well as just about the Holy Spirit in particular. Admittedly, during our time this morning we will barely scratch the surface of either topic. But given that our series is on doctrinal heresies, we will strive to address heretical thinking and teaching about our triune God and about the Person of the Holy Spirit. To do this, we’re going to need to look at a lot of Scripture, and we need to start at the right place:

0) Our God is One God, eternally existing in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This is where we have to start. Only God is God. There is only One God. There has only ever been one God, and there will only ever be one God. Scripture makes this clear:

Deuteronomy 6:4 CSB

4 “Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Isaiah 45:18 CSB

18 For this is what the Lord says— the Creator of the heavens, the God who formed the earth and made it, the one who established it (he did not create it to be a wasteland, but formed it to be inhabited)— he says, “I am the Lord, and there is no other.

Joel 2:27 CSB

27 You will know that I am present in Israel and that I am the Lord your God, and there is no other. My people will never again be put to shame.

Revelation 1:8 CSB

8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “the one who is, who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”

There is only one God, and He does not share His glory. While there are many other things that people worship as “gods,” there is only one true and living God, who created all things. Only one God worthy of our worship and our praise. Only one God who gave life, only one God who saves, only one God who loves, only one God over everyone and everything everywhere at every time.

But Scripture also reveals that there is something even deeper to God’s nature: that He is triune, or three in one. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, coequal in power, coequal in authority, coequal in majesty. We see this throughout Scripture as well:

Genesis 1:26 CSB

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.”

Speaking of Himself in the singular, He said “let us make man in our image...”

Isaiah 63:10–11 CSB

10 But they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit. So he became their enemy and fought against them. 11 Then he remembered the days of the past, the days of Moses and his people. Where is he who brought them out of the sea with the shepherds of his flock? Where is he who put his Holy Spirit among the flock?

We see the Holy Spirit sent by God...

John 1:1–3 CSB

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.

We see the eternal Word, the eternal Son of God, who is with God and who is God.

Mark 1:9–11 CSB

9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John. 10 As soon as he came up out of the water, he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well-pleased.”

At Jesus’ baptism, we hear the Father, speak about the Son, while the Spirit descends like a dove.

And in our focal passage today, we see the Trinity as Jesus promises that the Spirit will come and take from what is the Son’s, which is all that the Father has.

John 16:14–15 CSB

14 He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. 15 Everything the Father has is mine. This is why I told you that he takes from what is mine and will declare it to you.

I get it. This is tough to grasp. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

I think that Aaron Armstrong summarized the mystery of the Trinity about as well as one can:

“God is One, but He is also three—the Father, Son, and Spirit. Each is fully and equally God, yet each Person is distinct from one another. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God. But the Father is not the Son nor the Spirit, the Son is not the Father nor the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father nor the Son.” (Devotional Doctrine, p. 33)

The Trinity is a critical doctrine for us to trust in. We need to make sure that we read our Bibles with Trinitarian glasses on, watching for the clarity of the Trinity throughout: The Bible is the revelation of the Father through the Son by the power of the Spirit. When we pray, the Spirit takes our prayers to the Son, who constantly intercedes for us before the Father. When we baptize, it is in the SINGULAR name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The Gospel is a triune Gospel: that the Father sends the Son, who gives glory to the Father by living perfectly and dying unjustly and then rising triumphantly, and who sends the Spirit to live in us, giving us new life, to the glory of the Son and the Father.

But since the doctrine of the Trinity requires us to affirm that in one sense God is one and that in another sense God is three, it is not too surprising that most Trinitarian heresies tend to emphasize either God’s oneness or His threeness at the expense of the other.

Briefly, three trinitarian heresies:

Modalism focuses on the one at the expense of the three: that God isn’t really three at all… just one, and He plays different “parts” depending on the time and the need of the moment. This means that the Father is the Son is the Spirit. But as we have seen, Scripture doesn’t hold this view.

Tritheism focuses on the three at the expense of the one: that we worship three gods, each fully independent of each other. But we do not worship three gods. We worship one God.

Partialism kind of loses both. This heresy says that that each Person is a part of God, so none is actually fully God. The Bible affirms that the Father is fully God, and the Son is fully God, and the Spirit is fully God. Each is coequal in all power, all majesty, and all authority.

Transition

So, the Holy Spirit is God. Unfortunately, as we saw from the survey at the beginning, the Holy Spirit is the most misunderstood member of the Trinity. Oddly enough, most of the population agrees with the concept of the Trinity, which just shows I guess how confused we can all be about the identity of the Holy Spirit: 72% agreed with the statement: “There is one true God in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.” (96% of evangelicals surveyed agreed)

We get the idea of God the Father. We even kind of get the idea of Jesus being fully human and fully God. But what the State of Theology showed is that most people, and most evangelicals even, don’t see the Holy Spirit properly. We get that He’s there, but we’re just not sure what to make of Him. Is He a Person? Is He a thing? Is He like The Force? Let’s look at three aspects of the Holy Spirit that are absolutely vital for us to get:

1) The Holy Spirit is personal.

When I say “personal”, I mean that He, the Holy Spirit, is a Person. He is not “The Force.” He is not an “it” or a “thing” or a “power.” I understand that in our English language, since we don’t refer to Him by just a proper name, like “I was talking with Holy Spirit this morning,” and we use “the” before “Holy Spirit,” we can easily fall into a language mistake of referring to Him as “it” without meaning to. But to view the Holy Spirit as just an impersonal force lessens His deity and His place in the Trinity.

But how do we know He’s a Person? Well, the simplest reason is that Jesus refers to Him as a Person. Throughout our focal passage this morning, Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit with the personal pronouns “him” and “he.” Also, the Holy Spirit does things that only Persons can do. Persons can speak. Persons can be grieved. Persons can be lied to. An impersonal force can’t do those things:

First, we see that Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will teach, remind, and testify about Him:

John 14:25–26 CSB

25 “I have spoken these things to you while I remain with you. 26 But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you.

John 15:26 CSB

26 “When the Counselor comes, the one I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father—he will testify about me.

We see in Ephesians that the Holy Spirit can be grieved:

Ephesians 4:30 CSB

30 And don’t grieve God’s Holy Spirit. You were sealed by him for the day of redemption.

And we see in the book of Acts that the Holy Spirit can be lied to:

Acts 5:3 CSB

3 “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?

So it is clear that the Holy Spirit is personal: He is a Person, just as the Father and the Son are.

In the 4th century, there was a heresy called Macedonianism, which denied the personhood and divinity of the Holy Spirit. Condemned at the Council of Constantinople in 381. But apparently, this heresy is alive and well today, given the responses to the State of Theology question I referred to in my opening. Most people, even in the church, see the Holy Spirit as a someTHING instead of a someONE. A thing isn’t personal. A thing isn’t divine. The Holy Spirit is both.

2) The Holy Spirit is present.

Not only is the Holy Spirit personal, but He is also personally present. By this, I mean that He indwells those who belong to Jesus Christ. When Jesus told His disciples that He was going to go to the cross, He promised them that He would send them “another Counselor,” one just like Him, to be with them forever. Then He went on to explain who that Counselor would be:

John 14:16–17 CSB

16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever. 17 He is the Spirit of truth. 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.

For the Christian, the Holy Spirit is our constant Counselor, our faithful Companion, our capable Helper in times of need. And the indwelling of the Spirit in the life of the believer is a permanent state. He doesn’t come and go. When we trust in Christ for our salvation, He gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit within us as what Scripture calls a down payment toward our inheritance in Christ.

2 Corinthians 1:22 CSB

22 He has also put his seal on us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a down payment.

In order for Him to take away His down payment, He would have to break His promise, and God doesn’t break promises. But what is He our down payment toward? I mean, think about it: if the DOWN PAYMENT is the presence of God Himself in the Person of the Holy Spirit, what could be the fullness we will receive?

It is our inheritance as coheirs with Christ, the full redemption and eternal life with our Lord for all eternity.

Ephesians 1:13–14 CSB

13 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. 14 The Holy Spirit is the down payment of our inheritance, until the redemption of the possession, to the praise of his glory.

Yes, Jesus died in our place so that we could be made right with God, and He rose again, defeating death in our place so that we could have eternal life in Him. And He ascended to the Father, but promised first that He would come back to set the world right and retrieve those who are His—those who have surrendered to Him in faith, giving up their rights to themselves and trusting in Jesus alone to save them. While in this life, we are guaranteed to have pain and hardship and struggles because this world is broken, but the promise is clear, and the indwelling of the Spirit is the evidence of that promise’s guaranteed fulfillment:

2 Corinthians 5:4–5 CSB

4 Indeed, we groan while we are in this tent, burdened as we are, because we do not want to be unclothed but clothed, so that mortality may be swallowed up by life. 5 Now the one who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave us the Spirit as a down payment.

And as the Holy Spirit indwells those who are in Christ as our Counselor and Helper, He also is active in the life of the believer in another way:

3) The Holy Spirit empowers.

I can only address this from like 40,000 feet this morning. The Holy Spirit works in the life of the believer to empower him or her to do the will and the work of God, sometimes in truly miraculous ways. This was predicted in the life of the first disciples by Jesus just before He ascended to the Father:

Acts 1:8 CSB

8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

And then it came to fulfillment when the Holy Spirit did come upon them, and God worked miraculously in their lives.

Acts 2:1–4 CSB

1 When the day of Pentecost had arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like that of a violent rushing wind came from heaven, and it filled the whole house where they were staying. 3 They saw tongues like flames of fire that separated and rested on each one of them. 4 Then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them.

And the Holy Spirit still is actively at work in the lives of believers today, enabling us to witness to the truth of the Gospel of Christ in confidence, to know and follow His will and to do His work His way. He illuminates the Word of God as we sit down and read it, because we sit down with the Author according to 2 Tim. 3:16-17. He manifests Himself in the church through how He brings the body of Christ together, and He empowers different people in the church body with different gifts for the good of the whole church and for the proclamation and evidence of the Gospel, sometimes in miraculous fashion as He sees fit.

1 Corinthians 12:4–7 CSB

4 Now there are different gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 There are different ministries, but the same Lord. 6 And there are different activities, but the same God works all of them in each person. 7 A manifestation of the Spirit is given to each person for the common good:

But one last warning of heresy here. It’s so simple to just claim that, through the Spirit, God is leading you to do something that you really just “want” to do. We must always check what we believe the Holy Spirit may be leading us to do against what the Scripture says. The prompting of the Spirit and the Word of God will always complement one another, not contradict. But this is not a new problem by any means. This was a problem in the early church as well.

One group developed a focus on spiritual revelation above everything else. The Montanists were a prophetic movement in the second century that gave a new emphasis on the Holy Spirit and claimed special revelation from Him on righteous living. They got a lot right at first, but they started to go beyond what the Scriptures taught in the name of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. They pronounced prophecies that did not come true, banned marriage, and changed biblical teaching on church leadership. They relied more on their personal revelations, in contrast to the teachings of Scripture.

The Holy Spirit will never lead you do to something that the Bible condemns, even if you really want to. We should be extremely cautious in claiming to be led by the Spirit of God, and we can never claim that it is what God is leading us to if it is in clear violation of a command of Scripture.

Closing

I know that this message was like drinking out of a fire hydrant this morning, and we barely got into the top layer of the doctrines of the Trinity and specifically the Holy Spirit. I do hope that it has challenged you to love God with your mind by thinking through such a deep and important topic somewhat. Many of these heresies about the triune nature of God and about the Holy Spirit are still being taught and believed today, hundreds and hundreds of years after they were condemned as false according to Scripture. We must not fall into these same traps of bad doctrine.

This morning, brothers and sisters, those who belong to Jesus and who live in or around Albuquerque: is Eastern Hills the church family that God would have you be a part of through formal membership? If so, please let me know that by email: [e-mail]. If you are here in the building this morning, you can just stay in your seat as we dismiss, and as most of the folks filter out, I or one of the other pastors will come and find you to set up a time to sit down and talk, get to know one another, go over our Statement of Faith together, and answer any questions you might still have about Eastern Hills.

In closing, I want to make certain that I have been clear about the Gospel: the triune God who made you and me and everything else loves you, and He gave His Son to die to pay the penalty for your sins and mine. And as I said earlier, He rose again so that we could have eternal life in Him if we surrender our lives to His lordship, giving up going our own way, and trusting in Him alone to save us. When we trust Him, He saves us and His Holy Spirit comes to live within us as a down payment, a guarantee of our inheritance, Almighty God closer than our own skin. The Spirit and the Bride of Christ, the church, declare together the invitation to come, according to Revelation 22:17:

Revelation 22:17 CSB

17 Both the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” Let anyone who hears, say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come. Let the one who desires take the water of life freely.

Have you surrendered your life to Jesus this morning? If so, or if you have questions about trusting in Christ, please reach out by email to [e-mail]. Or if you’re in the building, just like those interested in joining this church family, stay in your seat and we will come and find you once most of the people have exited this morning.

Donna is going to come now for our time of reflection. Reflect on what God has said to you this morning from His Scriptures, or feel free to use this time to give online. If you want to give in person, you can do so at the plates by the doors as you leave when we dismiss.

PRAY

Closing Remarks

If you were at the business meeting last week, you know that the church voted to ordain Dan Hill to the deaconate. We mentioned that we might do that ordination on the 7th of February, but we have decided to bump that a few weeks, and the plan is to ordain Dan on the 28th of February. We will have an ordaining council time of examining Dan at 4:30 that day, and all ordained men are invited to attend. The ordination service will be held at 5:30, and it will be streamed to our website, Facebook, and YouTube channel.

If you’re following along with our Bible reading as a church, we are in 1 Corinthians, and today is 1 Corinthians chapter 9. You can get a calendar to follow from our website under What’s Happening, and I’ll be putting the February calendar up later this week.

Instructions on leaving.

Thank you for being here this morning to worship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit together.

Benediction:

2 Corinthians 13:14 CSB

13 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.