The Identity of the Holy Spirit – Part 2

Here's a Graham lots have there been times in your life and you didn't know how to pray you to know what to pray. But in your heart. There was just a groaning just a yearning once at those times I'm here, the Holy Spirit was carrying me in prayer. The Holy Spirit is praying for you and thank you for joining us today on living in the light, who is the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is Jesus in me. On the last program and told us four of seven points about the third person of the Trinity. We discovered he is a person will empower you to make those choices you choose to learn he changes hearts and then lastly and told us of his precepts.

Now let's continue with the identity of the Holy Spirit. Jesus in me hears and you think about these uneducated man, except for Paul there 12 disciples not to students plus false Apollo going to set aside for a moment, because it was so brilliant, so well educated the rest of them were not necessarily so just fishermen uneducated and tax collectors and and in their generation. They change the known world turn the world upside down. How is that possible. How could they tell a pluralistic multicultural Roman Jewish society that this man that you just crucified as a common criminal is the enemy of Rome as a blasphemer of God you just present this man is the Lord and Christ. They convinced them. How can you not convince people today that somebody who lived 2000 years ago is relevant for their lives today.

How do we convince them of the gospel of God and sin ends Jesus and our response this thing about that but that in John 316 for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever would believe in him all of us sinners place our faith in him we would not perish and go to hell but we would have everlasting I was really John 316 is not so how do we convince people that John 316 is not just a sign that a football came but John 316 is the Northstar of the Bible will direct your home. How do we convince somebody with our logic with our wit with our charm of their education. How do we convince somebody who's smarter than we are. This poor than we are. Who's older than we are younger than we are wealthier than we are. How do we convince another person. How can they hear the inaudible and C the invisible and understand the incomprehensible. How can we convince you know something we can't absolutely we can't Peter and John couldn't either. It's the Holy Spirit who convinces them is the Holy Spirit who convinces them of sin and the need to get right with God and judgment to come. If they don't is the Holy Spirit who works in the heart. So before you go next-door to share the gospel with your neighbor.

Pray in the Holy Spirit member in Genesis chapter 1 the spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep, and that planet Earth that was without form and void and in darkness, and the Holy Spirit hovered and prepared to receive God's word that went forth every day and day by day by day. There was transformation onto the planet Earth was pleasing to God and reflected his glory and man that was there – the same Holy Spirit. So pray that the Holy Spirit will hover over the mind and the heart of that person that you're concerned about the unsaved member of your family somebody in your church somebody in your neighborhood, whoever your praying for you and I just pray that the Holy Spirit would have been you give them the word.

Bring them to church and invite them to your Bible study share what God is taught you this weekend and don't sell your witness shorts. Remember that the lights of truth in the light of your testimony is more penetrating than the darkness so turn on the light. So the Holy Spirit is his responsibility to change hearts. So when we share the gospel were not commanded to be successful. Do know that were not commanded to lead people to Christ were just commanded to be faithful the share the gospel and pray for that person and let the Holy Spirit doing the changing units are wonderful for anything because I now know as a mother, grandmother, we want to be the Holy Spirit only, and we want to convict our children and want to tell them where they need to correct themselves and where they need to be right and good in and instead in the same thing goes true, whether it's a family member or neighbor somebody at work we just pray for them share the word with them and then trust the Holy Spirit to change their hearts, and that frees us up just to love the person in that wonderful we don't have to judge them will have to criticize and we want to make them good will have to get them a lot.

We just pray for them share God's word with them and love is no room for judgment on this and self-righteousness in a critical spirit. Anyway, he is there because the ground is level at the foot of the cross so Holy Spirit has the power to change me and you and other people and then fourthly, I want to point out his precepts in verse 13 is referred to as the spirit of truth in second Timothy 316 says all Scripture is God breathed useful for teaching, correcting, rebuking, training in righteousness, so all Scripture that is beginning to end Genesis to Revelation. All Scripture is God breathed, if you say this book has arrows if you say this book contains myths and legends that it's not all true then you're slurring the integrity of the Holy Spirit and think that's one reason the world wants to take the Bible out of everything because they can't take the truth and even within the church. There is a critical spirit about this book, but this book is God's word and God doesn't lie. He's a gentleman you can take him at his word, member story my daddy told in one night.

I had Morrison on his bed with me and I asked Eddie to tell her the story because I want her to hear it from him and it was when he was a young preacher and he was out in California with a bunch of other young preachers. They were having this discussion and the discussion turned to God's word and the other preacher started to criticize and pick it apart and say what they couldn't believe this mechanics at Batten and daddy city became very uncomfortable with the conversation and so he got his Bible. He left a group of guys and went out to the woods and he put his Bible on a stump and he said God I don't understand everything, but I believe this is your words. I'm going to believe it is true and he just drove his stake down into God's word. The other preachers one by one self-destructed daddy's ministry speaks for itself and again and again his sermons.

He has that little phrase.

The Bible says. The Bible says. The Bible says and we may not understand everything the Bible says but we know that whatever it says is true is true in history is true and doctrine is true in prophecy. God's word is true because it's God's word and it remains settled forever in heaven. Jesus said, not one jot or tittle will pass away until all is fulfilled. You can bank on it. So what your opinion of God's word. How do you view it in our own when I get to heaven and I found out in the battle that it wasn't 200,000 people killed. It was 20,000 people, and somewhere along the line at zero was at it I really don't care but I don't want to get the heaven and say you know I didn't believe in a talking snake who's ever heard a talking snake and I don't believe all those animals could fit on a boat you could never get that many on a boat and I don't believe that's a big fish could swallow man and I certainly can't believe that a man would rise from the dead, and I find out that picked and chose my way through Scripture.

According to I could understand. In my mind, and a discarded the truth of what God had said in all the stories I just referred to Jesus referred to those stories and of Jesus believed in those stories and if he quoted the Old Testament like he did the stand in judgment over God's word you in on don't stand in judgment over God's word.

God's word stands in judgment over us.

You read Revelation 19 he comes back with the sword that's in his mouth, which is the word of God, and he speaks a word in all of his enemies drop dead.

He stands in judgment over us through the word, not us over the word so make your decision that you're going to believe God's word from beginning to and because it's God's word all it bring such confidence as you study it you not picking and choosing your way through Scripture you believe it's God's wardens. You can trust the promises of a the commands depend on the spirit with absolute confidence. His precepts physically is purity.

Chapter 14 verse 26 is referred to as the Holy Spirit.

I was speaking to a seminary dinner. All the professors who'd written lot of the textbooks that are used in seminaries very prestigious group in afterwards.

One of the professors came up to me and I gave a message on the Holy Spirit. The spirit of truth that we could take him at his word and anyway one of the professors came up to me afterwards and he said and he said I learned something tonight. He said it never occurred to me that the Holy Spirit is holy, and I hope I kept a straight face and maybe I misunderstood him, but I don't think so. So just to point out the obvious.

The Holy Spirit is holy and good definition of holiness just to be like Jesus, which means there is no sinfulness at all. No meanness, no unkindness, no unforgiveness, no rudeness, no bitterness, no sinfulness at all in the Holy Spirit is holy in him there is no meanness, no unkindness, no selfishness, no rudeness, no pridefulness, no bitterness, and when he comes into you and me will come into us just as we are.

Praise God, you invite him to come in your heel will come in and then he looks around, and then he'll just start to clean you up just one by one by one, and if something tells you oh my goodness. And you're a mess.

I don't know what I can do with you.

You're just so filled with senior this year that that's not the Holy Spirit that's the devil who comes in the try to counterfeit that conviction, making you so discouraged and so defeated that you don't even want to try to live for Jesus, the Holy Spirit convicts you really of one thing at a time, maybe more if it's related to something.

But he'll come in and just and it always gives me encouragement with it, but convicting me and you're not to respond that weight. This is how you should respond and you develop a sensitivity to it, so he will start to clean you up because he knows that you and are commanded to be holy as he is holy and we don't compare ourselves with each other because you do that you will feel pretty good about yourself. You're better than the next person. Maybe not as bad as her. But you know ends. God doesn't compares with each other.

He compares this with the perfection of the Holy Spirit and we want the Holy Spirit have his way in our lives to clean this cleanse this fillets with himself. So what sin needs to be put out of your life that people might see the holiness of Jesus reflected in you and it may be an attitude may be a habit may be a relationship to be a thought pattern may be the way you speak a place you're going, whatever it is cutting out put out in the Holy Spirit will give you the power to do that. So I pray that you will bring it to your mind so I can come up here and sort of guess but you know and he will convict you and bring it to your conscious mind and he does that because he wants that gone it doesn't have to be something we consider sinful to something were clinging to that we insist on that. We want to hold onto and he's wanting everything so he may finger that I want that. Sometimes he's just had to pry my fingers off. You know, one at a time that I would release everything to him. So Holy Spirit is holy and then successfully want to remind you of his prayers not to go outside the passage for this book.

Romans 826 says that the Holy Spirit prays for us without our have there ever been times in your life when you didn't know how to pray you to know what to pray. But in your heart. There was just a groaning just a yearning felt this way when the husband went to heaven. The pain was deeper than tears deeper than words deeper than a prayer and once at those times, I knew the Holy Spirit was carrying me in prayer the Holy Spirit who lives inside of me who understands how I feel what I'm afraid of what I hope for what I think and ever lives before the throne of God because he is God he can convey our prayers of the father and he knows how to present the prayers to clean them up to make them arrive in get answers to our prayers and the Holy Spirit is praying for you as you go home and you're making choices to live in that new nature, and you're going to know when you're going to plan you're going to obey and he's going to empower you and he spray for you with a heart of love.

All this was a new thought for me when I studied the Holy Spirit because in Ephesians. It says in chapter 4 verse 30 it says do not grieve the Holy Spirit and understood that more fully. After several people that I love went to heaven.

I grieve for my mother because I loved her and agree for my husband because I loved him and agree for my daddy because I loved him and grief is a love word is needed. So if I can grieve the Holy Spirit.

That must mean the Holy Spirit loves me and I thought when I confessed my sin and asked Jesus to come into my heart that he came into me in the person of the Holy Spirit that the Holy Spirit was sort of assigned to me in the father's right now there is and she's open up your heart you going to her see what you can do with her make a good Monday you present to the fathers about did the best I could with what I had in sort of a professional relationship.

You know and then I discover that the Holy Spirit loves me.

He's emotionally caught up in my life and when I do the right thing. He rejoices and I do the wrong thing and agree because he wants the best for me. Once you have the fullness of God's blessing and he knows now do the wrong thing I say and I'm just hindering that and blocking that the Holy Spirit loves you and he's praying for you as you go home praying for you with a heart of love wrapped up in how your thinking, feeling, choosing what you're going to be doing and he will be there every moment of every step of the way he is your constant companion. Praise God, and lastly were going to and were we began with the priority of the Holy Spirit because the priority of the Holy Spirit is the written word of God in order that you might know the living word of God. I want to reread to you. Verse 13 and 14 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, 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. So the Holy Spirit draws us into the written word that we might know the living word and it gives us an understanding as we read the written word's understanding of Scripture, insight, understanding, enlightenment does not come through education, seminary, background, family heritage, how smart you are and your intellect, understanding, insight into the Scripture. Those things can enrich our understanding. But the Holy Spirit who opens up our minds to understand the things of God.

Somebody can know this, but backwards and forwards in Greek and Hebrew have also disseminated degrees and still not get it is the Holy Spirit that opens up our minds to the living word was revealed in the written word. So when I was a little girl, my grandparents lived right across the street from us, and when I was sick. Mother had so many of us use them across the street to my grandmother and my grandmother always had a jigsaw puzzle going and jigsaw puzzles. If you remember the mind online so long as who has a template number. The picture based on piece of cardboard and cut up in all these funny little shapes and then the pieces are turned over so you see a little piece of the picture on that puzzle piece and then when you put the puzzle pieces together and replicate the picture that's on the front of the box.

You've solved the puzzle okay people think of the Bible as a jigsaw puzzle and it's got all these funny little pieces and shapes. We don't quite know how they fit together and so the Holy Spirit comes along, turns over the puzzle pieces that we see the bit of the picture on the other side when he puts all the pieces together. It's a picture of it may and is the living word.

Even Jesus so me see if I can take you through this. Genesis chapter 1 verse one in the beginning God create the heavens and the earth. The spirit of God hovered over the face of it, the verse three and God said, and we would think that's nouns and pronouns going out of the mouth of God to come to the gospel of John chapter 1 verse one in the beginning was the word the word was with God the Word was God. In verse 14 and the Word became flesh, and I've seen in his name is Jesus and the Holy Spirit turned that puzzle piece over in Genesis chapter 1 verse three that the pre-incarnate living word of God. Even Jesus in chapter 2, when the Lord God prepares the garden cannot just say that the Lord God that's Jehovah that's Jesus before Bethlehem pre-incarnate the first homemaker preparing a place for his children to love that in verse seven when he created Adam and he breathed his own life and to him, the Holy Spirit turns over that puzzle piece and we see that the creator has breached his life into us and is Jesus imparting his life to send chapter 3 when Adam and Eve sinned and they were cowering in the bushes and it was the Lord God, the pre-incarnate son of God who comes and finds him in the bushes because he doesn't want to leave them forever in their guilt and conviction then passes the judgment, but before he separates me close in the skin of a wild animal. And you wonder if there tears coming down his face because he knows that although he's killed an animal blood had to be shared so they could be close, but he knew that one day he would be the Lamb who was slain to cover us cleanses with his blood covers in his own righteousness. The Holy Spirit turns at puzzle piece over and we see the Lord God of the garden, the pre-incarnate son, and you can find them almost in each chapter. Hannah would take you all through that next time he shows it clearly is in Genesis chapter 18 Abraham sitting in the middle of the day and is tense in the heat of the day, and he sees three men coming up and one of the men says this time next you're going to come back and you and Sarah are going to have a son, and Abraham was 99 and Sarah was 89 and had never had a son together and a year later they had a son named Isaac because that mainland was the pre-incarnate son of God, keeping his promise to his friend Abraham and Abraham's grandson Jacob in exile for however many years. 20 some years coming back to claim his inheritance and dozed across the Japanese River and he bumps into a man wrestles with him all night and I don't know when he realized he was in God's grip. The Holy Spirit turns over that puzzle piece and we see that Jacob's wrestling with the pre-incarnate son of God Jesus before Bethlehem will not let him enter into the promised land until he is fully yielded his life to God broken that from then on he walked with a limp and dependence upon God. Joshua going around Jericho to see how he could take the enemy stronghold and he bumps into the captain of the Lord's hostesses take off your sandals are on holy ground and the Holy Spirit turns over that puzzle piece and we see that the captain of the Lord's house is the pre-incarnate son of God telling Joshua how to take that military stronghold had nothing to do with military strategy everything to do with the wrapping it in prayer depending on God and the walls came down and we just keep on going through the Old Testament. Can't we just again and again and again and again when Isaiah the year that King Uzziah died, he looked up he saw the Lord Jesus that he saw my glory. He saw the pre-incarnate son of God saved on that front Ezekiel living in a refugee camp in Babylon when storm comes into his life. Things suddenly get worse and he sees rotting on the winds of that storm is thrown in on the throne is some like the son of God, the holy spirit turns at puzzle piece over and receive it. Jesus, the pre-incarnate son coming the changes little refugee intra-powerful prophets of God may shut she had written a good Bendigo thrown into the fiery furnace and Nebuchadnezzar wiping his eyes off through three in their heart, C4, and the Holy Spirit turns of the puzzle piece and we see the pre-incarnate son of God, showing up in the fire with his children and Isaiah who said there's going to come one who is a baby born in Bethlehem, virgin born and he is the wonderful counselor, Almighty God, Prince of peace, everlasting father and and then we go with the shepherds and we run into that little town of Bethlehem on that cold winter night and come into the stable and we look into the manger and we see a little baby in the Holy Spirit turns a puzzle piece over and we find ourselves looking into the face of God the Word of God has become flesh and he grows in wisdom and stature in favor with God and man until he smashed on a Roman cross in the Holy Spirit turns a puzzle piece over we see not just the crucified man. We see the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world to make atonement for us in.

Then we go to the empty tone, and Holy Spirit turns a puzzle piece over him we discover that the crucified Savior is now the risen Lord and he's ascended to heaven and the Holy Spirit will turn over the ultimate puzzle piece when the sky unfolds in a white horse appears with a riders name is faithful and true, followed by the armies of heaven and we see Jesus at the end of everything at the beginning of everything around everything, through its Jesus, the Holy Spirit's priority is Jesus from beginning to end. And so he is offered. This book that you and I might read the word not just for facts and information not just obey the that we might know the living word whose name is Jesus.

Praise God is right, hello. You can hear living in the light with n-gram lots weekly and for ways to experience the God filled life as you pursue your personal Bible study go to n-gram lot Stockport to help you get started with free resources you can use and share with others join us here each week for living a life