The Forgotten Part of God

Rough Morning

A few years ago, I was having a rough morning. We had to be in church at my Broken Bow church, which meant a 2-hour drive from home. We got in late the day before, coming back from Missouri, and with unpacking, taking care of the dogs, appeasing our angry cat, and getting the household in order for Sabbath, we were beat. On top of that, before we had left, we had an issue begin where our car would start…shaking. Well, by the time we had gotten to the Wichita the shaking turned into full-blown violent shuddering. Imagine, for a moment, that as you drive, it is like you are on rumble-strips, you know, those big ones, anytime you are driving between 40 and 65 miles per hour. Imagine what your hands and backside would feel like. In any case, the dealership fixed the problem and we were well on our way…several hours later, and got home rather late…after midnight, and I had a visitation appointment the next day. It was shaping up to be a long Sabbath. Then I got a text message. It wasn’t long or elaborate. It just said, “Praying for you this morning. So glad you are with us.” It was from Pastor Virgil Covel, our Ministerial Director for the conference. That text message was such an encouragement, such a comfort, and it was right when I needed it most. Almost as if God had been working through Pastor Covel. And it got me to thinking: you know, this is how the Holy Spirit works.

We often don’t talk about or think about the Holy Spirit much. Sure, I mean we invoke Him at the beginning of our church services, and invite His presence when we ask for God to be with us, but if you think about it, do we pray to the Holy Spirit, and if not, why is that? Well, we often go to the Father, or to Jesus when we are in need, but why not the Spirit? So, I began to read and study, and I found some interesting things. Firstly, The Spirit has almost as many titles as Jesus does, one popular one found in our Scripture reading for today. We know Jesus as: The Christ, the Messiah, the Prince of Peace, the King of Kings, the Perfect Lamb, the Lion of Judah, the One Who Was, Is, and Is to Come, etc…but what about the Spirit? Then I got to thinking, what does the Holy Spirit do? I mean, what is His role in the Godhead, and even more so, why does it matter to us? Well, today I want to look at Him and talk about His Rule, His Responsibilities, and His Role.

Let’s take a look at the Rulership of the Holy Spirit. Turn with me to Genesis 1:1-3: “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. 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. And God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.” We see here, that the entire Godhead was present at creation. The Father created, the Son spoke, and the Spirit…hovered over the face of the waters…the Hebrew words here are מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם (muh-rah-CHEF-ets, AL-peh-NAY, hah-MY-eem), which while translating “and was hovering” actually indicates a nuance of motion, showing that the movement of God’s “Spirit” indicates that the creative forces for change commence with God’s presence.[1] This was just one example among many in the Old Testament about God’s Spirit. I mean, in Exodus, the Holy Spirit is ALL over the place, and a very busy guy! In the New Testament, though, He appears much more profoundly, and then seems to work a bit more subtly. Over in the Gospels, during the baptism of Christ, we see a really interesting view of the Holy Spirit, and indeed the Trinity, all together seen for the first time since the incarnation. Turn with me to Luke 3:21-22 where it reads: “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” The Father spoke that time, with the Spirit descending upon Christ in the form of a dove, indicating that God’s presence was with the Son who was beginning His ministry on Earth. We always look at this passage and focus on Jesus, as we should as it points directly to God identifying Christ personally as His Son, as well as to the unmistakable voice of the Father, but we tend to just waive off the presence of the Spirit, as ‘just being there.’ We’ll talk about this more when we get to His role and responsibilities. That said, it is then clear to us, that the Holy Spirit is truly an active part of the Godhead, being as much in charge as the Father and Son, and so His rulership can be categorized then, as the very Presence of God, as was manifested throughout Scripture, whenever God’s presence and Holiness was felt.

So…this got me thinking. We know He is part of the Godhead, and that He is the Presence of God, but what exactly are His roles and responsibilities? Let me start by asking a question: who here has actually had a chance to look at their own Job Description, whether in your current job or a previous one? Have you ever been surprised by something in it? I know I have been. It’s always funny to look at the whole of it, even more so, after you’ve been doing it for so long. My dad used to be in the Air Force, and retired back in 2003 as a Master Sergeant. His actual job, however, was as the Superintendent of the Command Post on McConnell AFB, in Kansas. Cool title, huh? I thought so. This meant that he was in charge of all enlisted personnel in the Command Post on that base, and reported directly to the Wing Commander and Vice Wing Commander on the status of the base and its various missions, both at home and abroad. He often had to work upwards of 70-80 hours a week (which for those of you like me who cannot do math in public, is over 12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week), fulfilling his various duties and assignments. In fact, when they realized that he was scheduled to retire, they took a look at who to bring in to replace him, and realized that with his particular job description, they would actually need three people. My mom and siblings and I had always said he was overworked, but I don’t think he actually believed us until then. I believe that, although I don’t think the Holy Spirit can be overworked, being an infinite God, I do think that His job description is longer than we think.

Firstly, as we spoke earlier about His rulership, one part of His job is being the Presence of God. Whenever you see God’s power manifest, there the Spirit is. In our passage today, though, we see Jesus talking about the Spirit, in verse 16, He refers to the Spirit as, the παράκλητον, which, depending on your translation, is an advocate, helper, or intercessor, who Christ says is the spirit of Truth, and later tells us that the Spirit “will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” That helps tell us a little, but let’s be a bit more specific, and although it touches on the whole, I propose that the Holy Spirit has 4 responsibilities outside of being God’s Presence: 1) Indwelling, 2) Regeneration, 3) Restraint/Conviction, and 4) Empowerment for service. All of these point to a purpose, which is found in His role, but we’ll get to that later.

The first responsibility is Indwelling, that is, having the Spirit of God within us. Don’t misunderstand me with this: it isn’t something weird or mystical. In the Old Testament, we often see instances of something like “The Spirit of God came upon” [insert name here], or “So-and-so was filled with the Holy Spirit”. We see it with Saul, David, several of the Judges, some of the prophets, and others, and then VERY specifically in the New Testament, but they are VERY different. In the Old Testament, this indwelling or filling seemed to be a temporary thing, God’s Presence in the Holy Spirit coming to perform a specific task or purpose, i.e. – anoint a new king or prophet, or maybe a judge, and most certainly irrespective of their spiritual condition. One need only look at Saul and Samson to see this, although in the latter case, he ended up coming to repentance. In any case, when a person no longer found favor in God’s eyes, His Spirit departed that person. In most of these cases, it states that God’s Spirit comes upon these people as almost a matter-of-fact thing. The New Testament, as Christ promises throughout the end of the Gospels, says that the Holy Spirit shows up with a bang at Pentecost, where He appears like “tongues of fire” and descends on each of those present. We’ll get to what the effects of this happening are a bit later, but suffice it to say for now that the New Testament, seems to make this idea of the filling or indwelling a permanent thing. Turn with me to 1 Corinthians 3:16-17: “16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.” So, we, ourselves as believers who put our faith in Christ, are God’s temple, and therefore, the dwelling place of His divine presence, which as we talked about, is the Holy Spirit. Paul writes again about the Holy Spirit in Ephesians 1:13-14, where he states that the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance: “13 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” And if God dwells within us, what does that have to say about how we should treat our bodies, guard what we read, play, and watch, let alone how we act? Well, that leads me to the next responsibility.

The second responsibility is regeneration, sometimes called rebirth or renewal. In John’s gospel, in chapter 3, we see a conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus, in which Jesus says in v3 that a person must be born again in order to see the kingdom of God. After Nicodemus’ initial confusion, Jesus breaks it down for him, stating that a person has to be born of water and the Spirit. Jesus is talking about “rebirth,” which is a fancy way of saying “regeneration.” He was trying to show Nicodemus that one must allow themselves to be renewed by the power of and through the Holy Spirit from being of the world to being of the Spirit. God was trying to get the Israelites to realize this throughout all of the Old Testament in a variety of ways. When they were being conquered by foreigners due to their own apostasy in Judges, they cried for a savior. When their kings descended into idolatry, leading them astray, sending the entire nation into captivity, they cried for a savior. Throughout every single Old Testament Covenant God made with the people of Israel, the entire idea that God was trying to get them to accept is summed up in “…and they will be My people, and I will be their God.” The Lord says this in Exodus, Leviticus, Jeremiah, Hosea, and Chronicles. But what did they ask for, and what do we take for ourselves? A king on earth. They demanded a king in 1 Samuel. God gave them one like they wanted: Saul. Look how that turned out. Then God gave them David, a man God said was after His own heart, and that didn’t turn out too great either. Today, we don’t like kings, do we? Especially out here in the U.S., where the entirety of how our nation was formed was built on the basis of overthrowing a king’s rule over us. No, when I talk about us today, I talk about this thing we have called individualism. In today’s society, we praise the individual over everything else. The world tells us that what we want, what we think, what we do is important. Oh, dear Lord, we even have a name now for when we take our own picture: a “selfie.” We, as a society, have made ourselves Lords and Kings over our own lives! We don’t want someone telling us what we can and cannot do, or where we can or cannot go, or whether to marry, who to marry, whether to stay or go, or any other directive! When we get into trouble, we pray to God for saving. Everyone wants a savior when they are in a bind. But do we want rebirth, and regeneration? Do we want to “die to self” in order that we may be the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit? We have to have that need of, not just a Savior, but also a Lord, THE LORD, which is what the regeneration and rebirth of the Holy Spirit gives us, which was referred to in the Old Testament as a “circumcision of the heart.” This leads us to our third responsibility, but before I get to that, I do have to discuss the fruit of the Spirit’s regenerating work, which is faith according to Ephesians 2:8, where it reads: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” Now we know that there were men of faith in the Old Testament because Hebrews 11 names many of them: Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, and Samuel, just naming those listed in the book of Hebrews! If faith is produced by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, then this must be the case for Old Testament saints who looked ahead to the cross, believing that what God had promised in regard to their redemption would actually come to be. They saw the promises and according to Hebrews 11:13 “welcomed them from a distance,” accepting by faith that what God had promised, He would deliver.

The third responsibility is that of restraint or conviction. The Holy Spirit actually restrains sin in the world. In Genesis 6:3, we see something interesting: “Then the LORD said, ‘My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.’” God’s Spirit had actually restrained man’s sinfulness until things got so bad that God couldn’t stand the way things were going any longer, where He removes His Spirit. We see this as a warning again when we see Satan and his cronies taking control of the world before the Second Coming in the book of Revelation. Ellen White even says as much in Testimonies to the church, where she says: “We are living in the time of the end. The fast-fulfilling signs of the times declare that the coming of Christ is near at hand. The days in which we live are solemn and important. The Spirit of God is gradually but surely being withdrawn from the earth. Plagues and judgments are already falling upon the despisers of the grace of God. The calamities by land and sea, the unsettled state of society, the alarms of war, are portentous. They forecast approaching events of the greatest magnitude. The agencies of evil are combining their forces and consolidating. They are strengthening for the last great crisis. Great changes are soon to take place in our world, and the final movements will be rapid ones.” Make no mistake: she is not referring to the withdraw of the Holy Spirit from those who have put their faith in Christ, but those who have not. In the last days, hearts will harden, and there will most definitively be a separation of those who put their faith in Christ as the way to salvation, and those that trust in reason, science, and in man. That said, however, the only way we know of our sinful ways, is because the Spirit of God convicts us of it. An online journalist, Kathy DeGraw put it this way: “The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin or when we are heading in the wrong direction. When the Holy Spirit convicts us, we might feel slightly grieved or disappointed. When He is convicting you, pay attention! Be aware of what the Spirit of the Lord is trying to teach you. Be open to receiving His correction and what He is showing you that you need to repent of and change in your life. The word repent means to turn around. When the Holy Spirit convicts us, we need to turn around, change the way we did something or the direction we are thinking of proceeding.” When we fall short of God’s glory, as the apostle Paul puts it, the Spirit shows us the error of our ways and points us back to redemption through the saving power of Christ. Let me be clear, this is not the same as guilt for something we have already repented of, and have gone to God for forgiveness. No, that’s a whole different sermon. What I am talking about is that “Aha!” moment where the Spirit is going back to the Father, to say “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” (Luke 15).

This leads me to the fourth, and last responsibility of the Holy Spirit. This one follows the other three, in that this is where the gifts of the Holy Spirit come in. The fourth, as I stated before is empowerment for service. What I mean is that God’s Spirit gives us gifts to serve one another and serve Him. Much like the indwelling or filling of the Holy Spirit I spoke of before, in the Old Testament, this seemed to be somewhat temporary. Consider Bezalel of the book of Exodus, who was given gifts of craftsmanship to do the work he did on the Tabernacle. Of course later, in the New Testament, the gifts of the Holy Spirit gave fishermen, tax collectors, and a zealot, amongst others as we don’t know the occupation of all 12 apostles, the gifts to become some of the most effective evangelists known to mankind, and the likes of which many pastors, myself included, want to emulate. They had gifts of preaching, teaching, writing, speaking, apologetics, and faith, just to name a few. To others, the Holy Spirit gave similar gifts, like that of charity, in the case of people of means, like the female disciple named in Acts as Dorcas. The Holy Spirit empowered and emboldened these men and women for service. A pastor friend of mine, once told me: “Mankind was put on this planet for service. Anyone who is not about that business is a waste of time and space, and, I would argue, resources as well.” How have you used your gifts for service to one another and to the rest of mankind? Do you use your gifts, or do you keep part of it behind for yourself, like Ananias and Sapphira? The gifts of the Holy Spirit are meant to be shared with the world, not kept bottled up.

This leads me to my last point: the role of the Holy Spirit. And this is why we often discount Him or forget about Him. This goes back directly to John 16:13-14 which relates and points back to our passage: “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.” The role of the Holy Spirit is to bear witness concerning Jesus Christ to the glory of God the Father. Do you see it yet? When you are down, you are in need of help, the Spirit points to Christ. When you are filled with the Spirit, you draw closer to Christ. When you are given gifts, they point back to Christ, and for us to point others to Christ. When you are in need of rebirth, it’s rebirth in CHRIST!

The Holy Spirit does a lot more than we think He does. He’s there to comfort us, to encourage us, to guide us. He dwells in us, renews us, convicts us of sin, and gives us gifts. But in all of this, He points us back to Jesus Christ, in whom our redemption is found. If you are feeling His redemptive power today, and want to come to Christ to be your Savior AND Lord, I want you to pray to yourself with me: Jesus, thank you for sending the Spirit to us. I am a sinful and broken human being, so sorry for all that I’ve done wrong in my life, and that I am in need of You. I trust and have faith that You died on the cross for my sins and rose from the dead, so that I may be with you on the last day.

If you have already put your faith in Christ, but have not been using the Spirit’s gifts, or have been ignoring his calling in your life, then make the change that He is pointing you towards. Let the Holy Spirit do His job, and bring you back to Jesus, and let His love for you shine forth in your love for one another.

Let us pray.

[1] Mathews, K. A. (1996). Genesis 1-11:26 (Vol. 1A, p. 131). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.