NT Framework - A Distinct Person, yet fully God

The Holy Spirit never draws attention to Himself, instead always pointing to either the Father or the Son, which is why we know so little about Him. And yet He has been revealed since the very founding of this creation in Genesis.

More information about Beyond the Walls, including additional resources can be found at www.beyondthewalls-ministry.com 

This series included graphics to illustrate what is being taught, if you would like to watch the teachings you can do so on Rumble (https://rumble.com/user/SpokaneBibleChurch) or on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtV_KhFVZ_waBcnuywiRKIyEcDkiujRqP).

Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner. 

Transcript

Welcome And Lesson Preview

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Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and our series on the New Testament framework. Today, the full lesson from Jeremy Thomas. Here's a hint of what's to come.

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He is not like in a tree, you know, like knock on a tree. Oh, are you in there? You know, like a pantheist do. What we mean by this concept omnipresence is that he is an addition to space.

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He is in addition to space. That's what we mean. God is spirit and not flesh.

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And yet he also has a spirit and a body. The Lord Jesus is at the right hand of God in his resurrected body. And the Holy Spirit indwells every believer. These things seem contradictory, and they are definitely confusing. The key is in understanding the three persons of the Godhead, how each role and purpose of each one is different, and how we can relate to them. This confusion has sent many people down strange interpretive paths about who God is and what he is like. Because they are trying to use their own mind to understand and make sense of it all. The key instead is to pray to God that the Holy Spirit would illuminate and empower us. So let's do that now as we listen to the Holy Spirit as he opens up God's word to us.

Dispensations And Spirit’s Basic Ministries

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Okay, we need to finish up the distinct work of the Spirit and the different uh dispensations. Or they're technically not periods of history, but dispensations do unfold in periods of history. Um the word dispensation is kind of a dirty word now in the theological circles. But if you really understand what one is, it's not that difficult, and it's definitely not a dirty word. It's used 20 times in the Bible, so but the dirty word, you got 20 dirty dirty words in the Bible, right? Um but basically what it is is where God has, as manager of his world, which is a household, he has given stewardship to certain groups uh to manage his affairs. And um that's not really that difficult, the concept. Uh in the Old Testament, we read about those who were heads over households, such as Solomon's palace in 1 Kings 4, uh someone who managed his palace. That was his responsibility, and obviously Solomon was the master, and Solomon would evaluate how well this individual managed his household. So this world is a household, and God has given us stewardship to manage his affairs in this world during this present age, and so it's not really a dirty word. Uh there's nothing to it. Unless you don't like responsibility, I guess you want to shirk that. Maybe it's a dirty word then. Uh but he has a responsibility for us, and we want to make sure and fulfill that. In order to fulfill our stewardship, he has outfitted us with certain things, and these are all things that relate to the Spirit of God. So we went through four things that He has uh done for us, four ministries of the Spirit toward us. The first four are regeneration, indwelling, baptism, and sealing. And those are what I would just call the basics because we have that's an acronym that we can also use for ribs, right? Ribs is how we remember those first four major works of the Holy Spirit in our life. He regenerates us, he indwells us, he baptizes us into the body of Christ, and he seals us in Christ. Now, uh, we went through those four, but we didn't get any further. I did want to show uh further that there are some additional ministries of the Spirit, some of which are similar

Filling And What It Looks Like

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to what he did for Israel. For example, filling. Uh, he did fill in the Old Testament the artisans in the temple or tabernacle to create these unique designs of furniture that would reflect the designs in the true tabernacle in heaven. So Bezalel and you know the people in the book of Exodus 30s, you can read about these artisans who designed this furniture, and they were filled by the Spirit in order to do this specific work. Uh but in the church age, every believer has the opportunity to be filled by the Spirit. The famous passage is Ephesians 5.18, which probably most Christians have have memorized. Uh so Ephesians chapter 5, verse 18. Do we need to turn there?

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Or well, most of you act like you know it. That's good.

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Um Paul says, and do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with or by the spirit, and then he gives several participles to explain what it looks like when you're filled by the spirit. Speaking is your first participle, singing is the second one, making melody is the third one, always giving thanks is the fourth one. So, what does it look like to be filled by the spirit? Well, speaking to one another in a certain pattern, singing to one another in your heart, always giving thanks to God for everything, and uh and making melody in your heart to the Lord. So those are just real-world manifestations of what it looks like to be filled by the Spirit. Now, being filled by the Spirit is not a once-for all ministry of the Spirit for us. Some of the once-for-all ministries are things like indwelling. I mean, the moment you believe in Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to indwell you, you're indwelled. Romans 8.9. If you don't have the Spirit, you don't belong to Him. So He comes to dwell within us, and while He's in us, we can grieve the Spirit, Ephesians 4 30. So the indwelling concept is a once-for-all ministry. But the filling can happen multiple times in our life because whenever we commit personal sin in thought, word, or deed, then we are out of fellowship and we cease to be filled for his work in our lives.

Confession Restores Fellowship

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So, how do we restore the filling of the Holy Spirit? Once we have sinned, well, we confess. And the confession is uh means to say the same thing about our sin that God says about our sin. That is, that it is it has compromised his holiness, it has gone and violated his holiness. So we are agreeing with God, and uh some believers don't agree with God. They they, of course, want to hide their sin. This is the opposite of confessing. It's an antonym to hide and um to not come out in the open and confess. And so what we want to do, though, to be restored to fellowship and being filled by the Spirit is we want to confess our known sin. 1 John 1 9, we quoted every Sunday, right? If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And when we do that, it's a private confession. We don't have a confessional booth here at Spokane Bible Church. Um, that's a Roman Catholic thing, and uh we don't do the Roman Catholic thing. We we believe that we're all priests and we can go to God directly and confess. Uh we don't have to go through a human priest or some hierarchical system. Um that's just a gossip room, anyway. That's where you get power over other believers because you hear their confession and then you have power over them to wield it against them and control people. That's a control system. We don't believe in control systems other than the Holy Spirit controlled systems. Okay, so he's managing us. And um, Paul says in Acts 20, I commit you to the grace of God and to his spirit, who is able to work in our lives. So we don't need a human confessional system like you see in Roman Catholicism. Um we have this ministry of the filling of the Holy Spirit. We want to be filled by means of the Spirit so that he is actively at work in our life to produce his fruit. This is identical to what we find in Colossians 3. These books were written at the same time. I call these companions, Ephesians and Colossians. So flip over Colossians, a couple books, and you'll see. I I think I wrote down like 50-something parallels between these books. I've got a nice little chart that I put together one day. But in the parallel section of Colossians, Colossians 3 16, rather than saying be filled with the Spirit, he says, Let the word of Christ dwell richly within you with all wisdom teaching, admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts. Okay, parallel passage. And yet here he doesn't describe it as be filled by the spirit, but let the word of Christ richly dwell within you. Just like filling, you know, obviously that has a concept of being full. So here, dwelling richly. Same basic concept. And you'll notice two members of the Trinity are involved here, too. That's very interesting. In one passage, it's the filling by the Spirit, and the other passage it's the Word of Christ, which ties together the Word of Christ, the second person of the Trinity, with the work of the Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. And we're going to get into the Trinity today. So very interesting. When we are letting the Word of Christ dwell richly within us, when we are filled by the Spirit, then we are abiding. John 15, 1 through 6, the vine and the branches. I'm the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me bears much fruit. He who does not abide, you know, there's nothing. So you abide in me, I abide in you, and there will be much fruit. See, okay, and so this is the ministry of the Spirit in our lives, the filling, the abiding ministry where there is productivity, there is fruit, and it's his fruit. Uh we don't want to see our fruit. We know what that is. That's not good. But his fruit is all the good stuff, right? Those are the things that he'll evaluate and reward us for. Uh, this is not a ministry to be confused with spirit baptism or indwelling, which are never commanded, but we are commanded here in Colossians 3.16. We are also commanded in Ephesians 5.18. It's commands. Do not instead be filled by means of the Spirit. Let the word of Christ dwell richly within you. That means it can be resisted. Uh, if it's a command to follow, we can say no, I don't want to do that. But of course, we should say yes, and we should want, and it has to be a conscious thing. So it's a conscious decision you're making moment by moment in your Christian life as you consider am I going to be filled by the Spirit on this occasion or am I going to do what I want to do? And so some scholars have called this yielding, the importance of yielding. And so I like to think of, you know, getting on Highway 90 down here from Maple or whichever direction I'm coming. And when you get on that highway, they even put a stoplight there now. And what are they saying? Uh we're only going to let so many people on the highway at a time, you know, because we can't, yeah, otherwise yielding won't work. And even though I don't like the stoplight and all that kind of stuff, um, yeah, it's probably for the good, right? But we should control ourselves in the sense of saying, okay, I'm gonna yield to the Holy Spirit's work in my life. I'm not just gonna charge onto the highway and do things my way. Um, I'm gonna do things his way. And so that's very important that we learn to consciously yield in situations. We have to train our mind to not react to our situations and the people around us, but rather to stop and to think and say, okay, am I gonna yield to the Spirit of God right now? Because what I want to do is I want to do this. But um, he would not have me do that. Okay, so that's the ministry of the filling of the Holy Spirit. We're gonna talk more about these. This is just to point out that this is very different than what uh Jewish saints in the Old Testament had. They didn't have this. Only the guys who worked in the temple are ever described to have had this ministry. Uh, so this is a a distinction in his ministries. Okay.

The Spirit As Restraining Power

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Sixth, uh, restraint. And we know that the first time the Holy Spirit is described as a restrainer was in Genesis 6, in the world before the flood, when he said, My spirit will no longer strive with man, for he is but flesh, his years will be 120, right? So he was restraining man in that period, and yet the whole world became totally corrupt, and every man's thought was only evil continually. And so after 120 years, and Noah building the ark and so forth and so on, then he judged the world. So he has carried out this ministry before, um, and he is currently restraining the world right now. Acts chapter, uh, I'm sorry, uh 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 is one of the controversies, let's turn there, 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. One of the passages that talks about the Holy Spirit is restraining. We're gonna see again, this is this is the dominant uh person in the Trinity in this era is the Holy Spirit, right? In fact, you can kind of look at the whole Bible trinitarian Trinitarianly, if you think like who's the dominant figure in the Old Testament? You're you're basically gonna think the Father. And you're gonna think when you get to the Gospels, who's the main person who's in the spotlight? Well, that's the Son. And then you move to the day of Pentecost and following, and then who is it? It's the Spirit. Okay, isn't that interesting? But the Mormons and Jehovah's Wouldn't say, Well, we don't believe Jesus is God, we don't believe the Spirit is God, it's just okay, whatever. Um, I mean, some of the stuff is so outlandish, you know, when you look at these patterns that whatever. Okay, so um you can think of it like that, and the Holy Spirit is the main person. Now you look in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, and you'll see that the problem is that in verse 2, the Thessalonians were thinking that the day of the Lord had come. That's what we Christians usually just call the tribulation. They thought the day of the tribulation had come, and they thought they were in it. I mean, they had some of their members who had been martyred and so forth, so it was really bad for them. They thought that, well, we're in the tribulation. And Paul says, hey, verse 3, let no one in any way deceive you. It's not gonna come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed. So those two things have to happen first. There's a lot of discussion about what the apostasy is. We're not gonna go into that right now, but the point is that there's a period there's a man of lawlessness who's gonna come on the stage, right, and he predominates in the tribulation period. Um, but he's not here yet. Well, he could be in the world, right? He could be alive right now. We don't know. This is the man we know is the Antichrist, but he's called the man of lawlessness because he doesn't respect uh law and order, and he's gonna bring about his own system. But um there has to be a context for all that to set up. And the reason it's not set up yet in the world uh is because someone is restraining. Restraining this. And you can see this in verse six and seven. Uh he says, and you know what restrains him now. So then in his time he will be revealed. So his surfacing in the world, in the world stage, the political stage, is being restrained currently. And you'll notice it's a what there. What restrains him now? And then verse seven, for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, only he who now restrains. Now it's a he. So it's a what in verse six, it's a he in verse seven. In fact, this Holy Spirit is is described in in the Gospel of John, chapter 16, as a he, and in another place as an it. And the whole point is not that he's not a person, obviously, he's a he, he's a person, but is to talk about him in a way that he's kind of a behind-the-scenes player. And one of the things that he's doing behind the scenes is he's restraining the lawlessness in this world from exploding on the scene so that the man of lawlessness can come on and rule the world. So he's restraining that. So he's currently doing this, and you know, it it is remarkable. I think he's doing this primarily through the church, which he indwells, so that when the church is removed, his restraint through the church is removed, and lawlessness will explode. We think t it's bad today. You know, it's really bad. I mean, people are bad. You know, I can't believe these things are happening in the world. Well, we haven't seen anything yet. Um there's a passage in 2 Timothy that um or 1 Timothy where it it describes the world is basically um hiding behind a very thin veil. And whenever that veil is removed, the ugliness comes out and it's just complete nastiness. And sometimes we see that, you know, we saw some of that during COVID. I mean, you saw what people were quote unquote really made of, kind of what was underneath the surface. Uh but most of the time the world is trying to hide that because, well, they have to they realize that to function in this world you have to function a certain way. Um if you have bad uh business practices, what's going to happen to your business? You know, so they realize you have to function a certain way. By saying this, you know what they're actually saying? There is an absolute morality, there is an absolute God, and we are living in his world. And so they function that way. But of course, Psalm 2 is describing the fact that there's a time coming when they're gonna want to break the cords away from him and say, you know, let us do our own thing. Okay, we don't want to have any part with you. And well, then they're gonna find out that God in heaven is laughing. I mean, what a joke. This is my universe. I created it, I made it, I'm gonna do what I want to do with it. I'm gonna establish my king in Mount Zion. I don't care what you think, who you think, why you think, what you think, it's over. I'm coming. I've given you grace, grace, grace, grace, grace, and you've just said no, no, no, no, no. So now it's judgment, judgment, judgment. Deal with it. And uh that time is is coming. So, but right now there's a restraint, right? The Holy Spirit is doing this through the church. When we are raptured and taken away, then this lawlessness will prevail, and then the lawless one will come.

Spiritual Gifts And The Local Church

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Another thing that the Holy Spirit is doing, we'll talk about this, is spiritually gifted us. He has given us at least one gift or more than one gift. So, you as a believer have a spiritual gift or gifts. These are, of course, to be utilized within the church in our stewardship to go and make disciples of all nations. And uh, as I mentioned before, many of you are are serving in some capacities, some of you in unhid in hidden ways I don't know about. So that's obviously happening. That's between you and the Lord, of course. There were foundational gifts. Foundational gifts are described in Ephesians 2.20. They are apostles and prophets. When you're going to make a building, the first thing you do is you put down the foundation. And the apostles and prophets were integral to that because revelation was coming through them to give us the New Testament documents. And once they had fulfilled this task, then those foundational gifts, of course, were done away. Um we call this cessationism. So some of the gifts ceased. There were also sign gifts to authenticate the apostles and prophets, and also, of course, to uh uh be a sign that God was doing something new. I mean, every time you look through the book of Acts and you see the four times tongues took place, right? Um a new group was being led into the church. That was a sign. Hey, I'm accepting Jews, Gentiles, Samaritans, and disciples of John the Baptist. They're all being integrated into the same church, the body of Christ. So there were certain sign gifts. 1 Corinthians 13, 8, 9, and 10 say things like tongues will cease, cease of themselves. So uh people debate when that'll happen, but anyway, uh that's not what we're doing today. Um third, we have also the building gifts, and the building gifts are the gifts that you need to build on the foundation, right? And so the church began to be built on the day of Pentecost, um, and then you know we it's still being built today, and of course it's going to go to maturity. So you're a part of this process. I'm a part of this process. Every one of you has a spiritual gift or gifts. Uh 1 Corinthians 12 says, not every not no person has all the gifts. So you're not a lone ranger in the Christian life, because the thing is called a body. And unless your toe, if you cut your toe off the body and it's way over there, it's not going to do you any good. Um, so nobody's a lone ranger in the Christian life, okay, and just separate from the body. Everybody's a part of the body. This is one reason I think it's very important to have a local assembly. I mean, obviously it's the pattern in the New Testament. I mean, the letter was written to, for example, the church at Colossae, uh, the church at Philippi, the church at Ephesus. Well, uh so obviously local church is an important thing in the plan of God. He wanted believers to associate with one another face to face, and he gifted them particular ways throughout a various local body, and they're all part of the larger universal church, of course, but there's also a local manifestation of the universal church. And inside that, we all have spiritual gift or gifts that we're supposed to use to function. So this is something that he's doing, and you know, you really don't know what your life would be like if you didn't have your gift or gifts. So, in other words, there's a difference. Just because you have the spiritual gift, uh, when you function within your gift, your life is different than it could ever be if you were not a believer. So this is unique. One of my favorite ones, let's turn to Romans 8, because this year the theme

When You Cannot Pray

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is prayer, right? So let's look at Romans chapter 8. How many times have we read Romans 8, you know? It's so many times, and yet last time I was reading through this, I was seeing some things that I hadn't, some connections I hadn't quite made before. Um, but this this ministry of the Spirit is just interceding for us. He intercedes for us when we don't know how to pray. Have you ever been in that situation? You're so anxious, you're so worried, or you're so tired uh and and the situation's going in life, you you can't even gather your thoughts to really even know how to pray for the situation. And yet the good the good news is, you know, you have the Spirit of God dwelling in you, and he actually picks up the ball, so to speak.

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And he prays for you from within you. And uh do you think his prayers get answered?

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Um well, he always prays in terms of the will of God. I may not, but he always does, and that's comforting. So Romans 8, 26, he say in this, he says, in the same way the Spirit also helps our weaknesses or weakness. For we do not know how to pray as we should. I mean, that's coming from the Apostle Paul, folks. Paul says, I don't know how to pray. Be encouraged by that, right? Because sometimes we think, man, I don't know how to pray, and all these other believers seem to have it together. Hey, even the Apostle Paul didn't know how to pray. So you can relax, right? We don't know how to pray as we should, he says, but the good news is that the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. That's that means it's it's basically it's obviously something we don't hear. It's basically on a private line. Okay, he has a private line to God. And so he uh intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words, verse 27, and he who searches the heart knows what the mind of the Spirit is. It's talking about the Father and the Spirit having this close relationship because he intercedes for the saints according to God or according to the will of God. That's usually where we stop on that passage. In fact, my my Bible has a paragraph break there. So that's the end of that idea. Wrong. Because look at the next word. What is the next word in the English translation? And we know that God causes all things. This is one of our favorite verses. God causes all things to work together for good for those who love God.

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How is it that God causes all things to work together for good?

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Because when we don't know how to pray, the Spirit of God is interceding for us from within us according to the will of God. And therefore all things in our life work together for good. It's because of the Spirit's prayer ministry from within us. That's how he accomplishes it. This verse doesn't say, by the way, that everything that happens in your life is good. It says all things work together for good, for a good end, a good purpose. And uh sometimes we don't see that, right? It's like the story of Job. Who can see from chapters one and two how everything would work together for good? Ten of my kids were killed on a single day, and I lost all my health, and my wife was sitting there nagging me, like, what is wrong with you? Curse God and die. I mean, how can anything in this situation be good? And I lost all my wealth. So you lost all your wealth, you lost all your children, your wife is against you, and you don't even have your health. And from those two chapters, first two chapters of Job, you can't see how how anything would work together for good, and you can say none of these things are good.

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Your kid's dying isn't good. Okay? But what's Job 42? You know, what about Job 42?

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Could anyone have ever seen the end from the beginning? Well, the architect of it can see the end from the beginning. Right. But it's just an example of how God works all things together for good. And so we're to rely on these types of illustrations in the Bible to remind us that yes, my life has a lot of frustrations, but I've got the Holy Spirit working within me, praying from within me, and this is ultimately going to be the way that God causes everything to work together for good. It's such an encouragement. When you lose all hope, just turn to this passage and just dwell on that.

Illumination And Understanding Scripture

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Uh, ninth, and I think last, the illuminating ministry of the Holy Spirit. This is again something that the Old Testament Jewish saints did not have. Um Corinthians chapter 2. Turn there. So turn to the right, one book. 1 Corinthians chapter 2. By the way, my book was published today, so or last night. I think it's last night. So 1 Corinthians is out there. Uh I'll probably order some copies here today if I can remember. But I'm excited it finally got out. Uh 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 10, 11, 12, and 13. Um, we have the Spirit in us to illuminate us. Illuminate means to shed light on, right? To shine light on something. So as we study the Word of God, what does he do? He shines light on it so that we understand the things of God. 1 Corinthians 2, verse 10, for to us God revealed them through the Spirit. So, see, there's the Spirit is the instrument in revealing things about God to us. For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. Well, see, he has access, right? Um there are certain things that are kept top secret in our country. We're supposed to get some of that stuff released, right? We're supposed to be finally told, you know, what all these documents contain, get access to those. We don't have access now. We can't search those things, but hopefully soon we'll be able to. In terms of who God is and his word, the spirit is the one who searches these things out. But guess what? He's within us, and he's the one who teaches us these things. Verse 11 for who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? In other words, you cannot access my thoughts in my spirit. And I can't access your thoughts in your spirit. The only way that I can access them is you have to tell me. You have to tell me. Now, if I had a special tool that could go inside of you and mine your ideas out of your mind and bring them back and tell me, then I can know what's in your mind. Well, guess what? That's what the Spirit of God does. He has access into God. So he's able to search that out and come and give us the information. This is the illuminating ministry of the Holy Spirit. Verse 12. Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who's from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, meaning not secular terminology, but in those taught by the Spirit, using the scriptural words, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. So we we teach the things of the Word of God, which deal with the depths of who God is and what he's all about amongst ourselves so that we can know him. The Spirit of God does this. Okay, so that is another thing that Old Testament saints didn't have. So I point all these distinct works of the Spirit out because it's the distinctions that are important. Um, if there are continuities, we point those out too. You know, the same things that he's done before, he's doing now. But there are things that he's doing differently now than he's done before.

Israel’s Mission Versus The Church

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And that shows a change in dispensation, or what we mean is how God is managing his house, his world. So in Israel, in the Old Testament, for example, he was using them, placing them at the center of the world, and he gave them the law to separate them from all the other nations around, so that they would be a light to all nations. It was a come and see mission, come and look at what difference it makes when God is amongst the people, right? And for the church, it's different. Uh we don't, we're not placed at the center of the world. We're placed all over the world. And it's a go and tell mission. Go to all the nations. And so what he did for Israel is he outfitted them with what they needed to do their mission. What he's doing for us is he's outfitted us with what we need. And a lot of these ministries of the Spirit are the outfitting or equipping of us with what we need to carry out our stewardship because one day we're all going to be evaluated. And the question is going to be what is his evaluation? Well, that's why we need the Spirit of God in our lives to help us fulfill our stewardship and uh receive a good evaluation at the judgment seat of Christ. So all those things are relating to the differences of the Spirit.

Trinity Basics And Right Emphasis

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Now I want to turn briefly and just talk for a few minutes about Trinity and uh especially because what we are trying to do here is now put the Spirit of God in the picture and start to kind of cast the spotlight on him a little bit. We don't want to put too much emphasis on the Spirit, and we don't want to put too little. The Spirit of God, as I mentioned before, is the predominant individual beginning on Pentecost to our day, right?

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But he never draws attention to himself. He is always pointing to Christ.

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He is exalting Christ. Just as the Son, did the Son come to exalt himself or did he come to exalt the Father? Okay, so this is an interesting um relationship within the Trinity. As we talk about it, um, there's a certain approach to when we think about God in Trinity. We hold to Christian theism. We don't just hold to theism. Theism is just a word that means God. A lot of people in the world believe in God. Muslims believe in God, right? Jehovah's Witnesses believe in God. All these people believe in God. The only question becomes, what God, right? Because there are many different gods, and we're only interested in the one true God, right? And therefore, we are what we call Christian theists, meaning we hold to the triune God. Okay, God in three persons, blessed Trinity.

Creator Creature Distinction And Omnipresence

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Now, there's a proper approach to knowing who God is, and this is through the lens of what is called the creator-creature distinction. This is the first truth in the whole Bible. This is the first truth any child should ever learn. Okay, there is a God and you are not Him, as somebody has said. But He's the creator, right? And then there is the creation. Now, there was a time when there was only the Creator. There was no creation. And that means there was no space, and that means there was no time, there was no mass, no atoms, no energy, nothing. There was nothing except God. And not even space. Space is material, it's composed of stuff. That stuff was created. So there's a time when there was nothing except God. And so we think of him as the creator, right? And he's we always just put him in an open box. I don't have I can't draw this right now. An open box, right? To signify that he's infinite. He's not limited by by us. He's infinite. And then we have in Genesis 1 the creation, and always make a circle because it's finite. It's limited. It's not an open box.

SPEAKER_02 34:42

It's not true that anything can happen, is it? Not anything can happen. I mean, can you jump from here to the moon?

SPEAKER_03 34:50

Uh no. Um there there are limitations spiritually, mentally, physically. Um, so we are limited. We're the creation. And so this is the most fundamental thing to know about God is that he is the creator and we are the creature. And never shall the twain meet, the two meet, right? Um, he's not a mixture of his creation. It's not pantheism, this idea that God is in everything. When we talk about God being omnipresent, for example, you know, usually we say, well, omnipresent means God is in all places. Um He is not like in a tree, you know, like knock on a tree. Oh, are you in there? You know, like like pantheists do. Uh what we mean by this concept omnipresence is that he is in addition to space. He is in addition to space.

SPEAKER_02 35:41

That's what we mean. Um so is he with us? Yes. Is he in us? Yes.

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What does he reside in your in your appendix? Lord, let's hope not. You might lose that. Uh no, not that he's in addition to that, in a in in addition to what we call space, a created thing. Um so uh you say, well, that's hard to understand.

SPEAKER_02 36:08

Well, that's why this next word is up there. He's incomprehensible. That means that God cannot be fully understood. We can't fully contain him in our mind's eye. Now, that doesn't mean that he's completely unknowable. He is knowable. The scriptures say so. We can know him. In fact, Romans 1, it says everybody knows him.

SPEAKER_03 36:34

Because God made it evident to them through what he has created. So every man knows God, right? We don't even need to prove God's existence. God's already proven it. But man is a liar, so men say, well, it's not clear to me. Well, they're just liars. That's all there is to it. Um, that's really all there is to it. They're just lying. Um He has made Himself known, and He is knowable, but He is incomprehensible, meaning we can't totally exhaustively know Him. And so when we come to the Trinity, of course, this is an area where it's very important to remember that He's incomprehensible because people say, Well, Trinity, three and one, I don't get it. Okay, well, join the club. Um, nobody entirely gets it. Okay? Nobody in this side of eternity entirely gets it. Even on the other side of eternity, he's still incomprehensible and we'll never entirely understand him. So keep those things in mind. He's the creator, we're the creature, and he can't be entirely known, but he can be known in part. And we know him in part through what he has revealed.

One God Three Persons

SPEAKER_03 37:41

So there are five propositions that we'll quickly make and focus mainly on the spirit and go to Isaiah a little bit. God is one, right? God is three. I mean, how many gods are there? There's just one God. We're monotheists. Christianity is monotheistic. Uh but God is also three. There's a threeness to God, in his person, Father, Son, and Spirit. And yet they're not three separate gods. That's that's what Muslims accuse us of being tri-theists. That's not what we're saying. It's just a caricature. Uh third, God's threeness refers to his eternal distinctions, not just roles. In other words, he's always been three and one, right? That didn't just begin with his roles relative to creation. Um, fourth, there's subordination within the Trinity. You know, the Father is subordinate to the, I'm sorry, the Son is subordinate to the Father. The Spirit is subordinate to the Son and the Father. So there's subordination within the Trinity, by the way. This has a tremendous implication on the entire evangelical feminism that we've seen in the last 60 to 70 years in the Christian church. Uh, when all that got started, there was a book written by two women, and they went at this issue of men, male, and female, from the standpoint of subordination. And they concluded that subordination was not just in terms of role, but it was subordination of essence, is what Christianity taught, and therefore Christianity was wrong and needed to be modified. And so we need to have equality of male and female in every respect. And they brought this into the church, but guess what? They did not bring it into the church without realizing that in order to change the structure that God has set up, or has traditionally been understood, of male and female roles, is they had to go and look at the Trinity again. Because male and female, these categories are subordinate to or derived from the concepts in Trinity. And so they realized this, and so guess what they did? They went back to the traditional historic Orthodox understanding of the Trinity that was laid down at Chalcedon, and they said, This has to be changed. We have to change what the historic understanding of Trinity has been. And um that's a necessity. So what they've done is is changed who God is in order to change who women are. So and we have gender confusion. You know, are we surprised that we have gender confusion in our culture when you you've taken the Bible and you turned it and twisted it in such a way that now God is a woman? Um, but he never refers to himself as a woman, so I don't think we should do that either. There's something going on there uh in the nature of God. So there's subordination, but it doesn't refer to essence. Um the son is, in other words, subordinate to the father, but that does not mean that the son is less than the father. And women are said in the Bible to be subordinate to their husbands. A wife is subordinate to her husband, but that doesn't mean she's of different essence than her husband. It's a subordination of role, it's not a subordination of essence. Okay. And lastly, with respect to God's works, the triunity is perceived as both threeness and oneness. So let's look a little bit of some of these. God is one. We won't go through all this. Let's let's look at this diagram. This is historic, this is a great thing, a tool to have children learn. Um, an ancient diagram. God in the center, and then father, son, and holy spirit on the three corners. And you see, Father, follow the orange line, is God. Son is God, Holy Spirit is God. But then look at the gray lines. The Son is not the Father, the Father is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Son. Now that is a basic understanding, okay, of the Trinity. And I think it's an accurate, but it is a basic understanding of the Trinity. And every Christian should memorize this diagram, draw it hundreds of times if you have to to memorize it. Okay, so you don't get fooled into some kind of non-Trinitarian understanding of God. Um God is one. That's the first point. We are monotheists. Deuteronomy 6, 4, the great Shema.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

What did every Jew recite? What did he say? Hear, O Lord, the Lord our God is one. The Lord our God is 500. The Lord our God is one.

SPEAKER_03 42:52

So the unity of God. Uh repeated in Mark 12, 29, you know, you've got other passages that say there's only one God. Ephesians 4, 5, one Lord, one God. Um, so we don't worship multiple gods, we worship only one God. Now, inside this God, there are three persons and they are mutually exhaustive of one another. You say, I don't understand what that means. Okay, great. I told you you can't understand everything. I can state it, but it doesn't mean that we can understand

Why Trinity Analogies Fail

SPEAKER_03 43:21

it. Okay, but what I mean then essentially when I say each person is mutually exhaustive of one another, is that they can't, God can't be divided into parts. Um a lot of times what we want to do is we want to try to take something in creation and explain, well, God is like this. So we'll take an egg, and they'll say, Well, an egg has three basic parts. So an egg is like God. Uh no, you're an egghead. Uh that's not what God's like. Or we'll take light and we say, well, light has, you know, three different um characteristics, but they're all one thing called light. So that's God. No. Or we take a pie. And we cut it in three pieces. And we say, well, Father, Son, Spirit, put them all together, that's how you get God. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 44:11

If that were the case, let's just take the pie.

SPEAKER_03 44:13

It's the easiest to see. You've got you divide it into three pieces. And everybody says, Well, can I have a piece? That's a big piece. If you say one piece is Father, one piece is the Spirit, and one piece is the Son, here's what you've done. You've said, Well, the Father is part God. He's not fully God, he's partly God. The Son is part God, he's not fully God. And the Spirit is part God, he's not fully God. Isn't that what you said? Yes, of course, that's what you said. But you said, Well, but if I put all the parts together, I'll get God. Yes, but you're still saying the Father is not really God. But the Bible teaches the Father is God. It teaches that the Son is God. It teaches that the Spirit is God. And so therefore you can't view God as three different parts put together into one. That's not what God is like. But the reason that people think this way is because why? Because they say, well, I'm our tendency is to borrow something we're familiar with down here, whether it's an egg or light or a pie, and then project our idea onto God.

SPEAKER_02 45:13

But remember, we're the creation. He's the creator. We do not project what God is like. In fact, it's exactly the opposite. He projected us.

SPEAKER_03 45:26

We're projections of him. We're finite representations of him. Man is made in the image of God. We're the image, we're just the mirror, right? We're just the shadow of God. He's the real deal. Okay? So we don't understand him in terms of created categories. He's outside of the created categories. Okay, so that's one thing we can't do. Another thing about God being one is we can't say, well, if I get all the attributes of God and I add all those together, then I'll get God. It doesn't work that way either. That would be like saying, well, God is part love, part justice, part righteousness, part holiness, part you know, omniscience, part omnipresence, part immutability, part eternality. And if I put all these parts together, I get God. No, no, we we know that's not right, right? I mean that doesn't sound right when you put it that way.

SPEAKER_02 46:25

Is God love? Yes or no? Yes.

SPEAKER_03 46:30

Is he 100% loved? Yes. Is he fully loved? Yes. Is he just? Yes. Is he 100% just? Yes. Is he fully just? Yes. Is he 100% righteous? Yes. Is he fully just or a righteous? Yes. Okay, well then what is happening is his love and say his justice are fully permeating one another. In other words, he he is a loving, he is lovingly just. His justice is loving. His omnipresence is sovereign. Right? All the attributes are intermeshed with one another and permeate one another fully. We have to talk about them separately, but he is all these things together.

SPEAKER_02 47:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 47:16

So um and yet there's only, of course, one God.

SPEAKER_02 47:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 47:20

Now, not only is God one, one God, but God is also free. Right? Even the words of used of God, like in Genesis 1.1, the very first word used of God, opens the door for a multiplicity of persons being in him because it's Elohim. And Eim is the Hebrew for a plural word. So in the beginning, God created is a plural word for God. It doesn't mean there's more than one God, but it opens the door for there being more than one person in God. Later we see some pronouns in chapter one, right? Let us create man in our image. See? That doesn't tell us Trinity, okay, but it does tell us there's something more to God. There might be a diversity within the oneness. Do we even have concepts of diversity and oneness in our world? Um, if you go to the grocery store today, which a lot of people do that because they don't live in town, so they'll stop by yolks or roast hours or wherever. And they're they'll walk through the fruit section and they may grab a cluster of bananas. It's one cluster, but it has what? Diversity of bananas on it, right? Or grapes. Same thing. You had a cluster of grapes, but it's one cluster, but it's multiple grapes. So we have this concept actually in creation of multiplicity within a oneness. Um, maybe God did that on purpose so we'd get at least an inkling in the right direction. So there is a multiplicity of persons within them, and the spirit is the one we're really interested

Trinity Hints In Isaiah

SPEAKER_03 48:54

in. So I want us to turn over to Isaiah chapter 48. I want to finish with these two passages to introduce this third person of the Trinity. A lot of people say, well, the Trinity is not in the Old Testament. Um, you can't find any indication of the Trinity in the Old Testament. That's something only in the New Testament. Um, I was reading uh Griffith Thomas, who died sometime around, I don't know, early 1920s. He was supposed to be the first president of Dallas Theological Seminary, which was called originally Evangelical Theological College, but he died. And uh but he wrote a lot of great books, and one of them was on the works of the Holy Spirit, and he even said, hey, the the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament is not even viewed as a person. I didn't agree with him, but um, he said you you you could not really get that until later.

SPEAKER_02 49:45

But look at Isaiah chapter 48, and uh maybe I have the wrong verse here. I think I have the wrong verse. 4812, is that what I have? Oh, 12 and 16. That helps.

unknown 50:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 50:02

4812, listen to me, O Jacob, even Israel, whom I called. I am he, I am the first, I am also the last. Now, obviously, this is Yahweh, this is what we would say the Father. Notice verse 16, as Yahweh is speaking, he says, Come near to me, listen to this. From the first I have not spoken in secret secret, from the time it took place I was there, and now the Lord God has sent me and his spirit.

SPEAKER_02 50:32

Now, wait a minute. The speaker has been sent by the Lord God and by his spirit. How many are there? There's the speaker, that's me. He's the one who's been sent. Who sent him? The Lord God and his spirit. Look at there. There's three. There's the Trinity right in Isaiah 48, 16. Uh, very interesting. Uh flip over to Isaiah 61. Isaiah 61. We're just pointing out the distinctions of persons within, of course, the one God. Isaiah 61, verse 1. The spirit of the Lord God is upon me. Now, this is messianic. Okay, this is a messianic prophecy.

SPEAKER_03 51:35

In fact, the Messiah, Jesus, picks this up in Luke chapter 4, verse 18, and they give him the scroll, and he found the place where it said, Isaiah 61, 1, and he read, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me. Jesus said this, um, because the Lord has anointed me, see, because he's the Messiah, the anointed one, to bring good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. And he stopped right there, and he closed the scroll, and he didn't read anymore.

SPEAKER_02 52:18

Well, what was he saying? He was saying, Hey, I'm the guy that Isaiah 61 is talking about.

SPEAKER_03 52:27

And the spirit of the Lord God is upon me. And you see three people there, right?

SPEAKER_02 52:32

The Spirit, the Lord God, and me, the Messiah, the anointed one. See, the the Trinity is not developed here, is it?

SPEAKER_03 52:44

But it's it's there, you know, we can get an idea of it. I I I um it's kind of interesting when you read the Gospels, you know. You think of the Jews reading the Old Testament, you think, well, they're all monotheistic, they only believe in one God. And yet when Jesus did things that demonstrated he was God, when he claimed to be God, Peter, Thomas, Bartholomew, and others didn't seem to have a problem with this, did they?

SPEAKER_02 53:16

Somehow they were like, Well, yeah, you're God.

SPEAKER_03 53:20

Um, God in the flesh, incarnate. Somehow the Old Testament was broad enough to permit there to be a multiplicity within the Godhead. And now what we're going to see as we go into the church is the uniqueness really of the Spirit, the third person

Begotten Versus Proceeds

SPEAKER_03 53:41

of the Trinity. And there's going to be some important words that are used. For example, in the Gospels, the word that's used of the second person of the Trinity, Jesus, is that He's the only begotten. Remember that? He's the only begotten. There's another word that's used of the Holy Spirit. It says he proceeds. So you have these two words going on. They're different words. You know, only begotten, we have to figure out what that means. How is it that the second person of the Trinity is begotten, but the third person of the Trinity proceeds? There's a difference, right? Between then the Son and the Spirit. It's gotta be. And um it's interesting, the old testament has set us up for this. If we're if you're really careful, student of the Old Testament, the New Testament will fall right in place. I mean, it's a gorgeous document.

SPEAKER_02 54:36

It is it is beyond beauty. What is here? So the son being begotten, that's already set up for us in Genesis 22. Because there's this guy named Isaac. And Abraham takes him up to Mount Moriah to offer him, and he says, He is his only begotten. And you say, How could Isaac be the only begotten? He's got other brothers or half-brothers.

SPEAKER_03 55:08

How could he be the only begotten? It has nothing to do with physical birth. That's what that's what the church and Jehovah's Witnesses get this all confused. It has nothing to do with physical birth. It has everything to do with the one who is the heir and one who has a unique supernatural birth.

SPEAKER_02 55:28

Wasn't Isaac's birth supernatural? I mean, how old was Sarah? Ninety! Ninety! We got any 90-year-old ladies here want to come up and give birth?

SPEAKER_03 55:39

It's a supernatural event and the only begotten is the concept of a unique one, and a unique one is one who experienced some supernatural birth into the world. Isaac is the first only begotten. Jesus is the last only begotten, supernaturally born through the womb of a virgin, right? But the Holy Spirit isn't described that way, and he didn't come in the flesh, did he? But he does proceed from both the Father and the Son. So there's a difference here, and we have to talk about the proceeding of the Spirit, because remember, Jesus, before the day of Pentecost in his resurrection body, he's walking around in Acts 1. He's teaching them for 40 days about the things of the kingdom of God, right? And then as he's giving them some commands to remain in Jerusalem, he just lifts up. He says, it's good if I go for if I don't go, I can't send the Spirit from the Father to you. This gets into the idea of the procession and the order in the Trinity. Because we don't have a problem in the 21st century going around saying first person, second person, third person. We all say this. But a lot of times we don't think about what we're saying when we say that. What we're talking about when we have ordered things that way is we're reflecting what people in earlier church history developed as far as their understanding of the procession concept. And um, so while all three members are God, right, there is an order of procession. And that's what we want to get into as we get into the church and what we have that's so different and into the Christian way of life. So all this is going to be exactly the most important thing you want to know, and that's of course, highly application. Like, how do I live the Christian life? How do I be a good steward of what he has given us so that we can receive a well-done, good, and faithful servant? Okay, so um, just some basics for the background, and uh next week we'll get into a little church history of what happened with the procession. It's gonna be very interesting to see a lot of people that have gone before me and you. This book is the most studied book in the history of the entire world. No book has has captured men any more than this book. And um so we want to look at what they've seen and how they've developed it and brought us to where we are now in our understanding of what's in this text.

Where To Find Visuals And Closing

SPEAKER_01 58:11

Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas. If you would like to see the visuals that went along with today's sermon, you can find those on Rumble and on YouTube under Spokehand Bible Church. That is where Jeremy is the pastor and teacher. We hope you found today's lesson productive and useful in growing closer to God and walking more obediently with Him. If you found this podcast to be useful and helpful, then please consider rating us in your favorite podcast app. And until next time, we hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.