Holy Spirit

Heydiho everyone! The discussion we had on Sunday unveiled lots and lots of layers to God's spirit / Holy Spirit so hopefully what follows will make crystal sense!

The reason we decided to have a look at the Holy Spirit was because of a digression in a previous GRG where we wondered if the disciples only got the Holy Spirit after Jesus died? Before we went into this though we needed to go back to the basic basics and look at what actually is the Holy Spirit?

Simply put the Holy Spirit is God's power. Holy means set apart / sanctified / special and Spirit signifies power so the Holy Spirit is God's power used for a special purpose. The Holy Spirit comes from God and is used in various ways throughout scripture. A selection follows:

• Perform miracles (Romans 15 v 19 - “by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit”)

• The Bible was written by inspiration through the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1 v 21 - “For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit”)

• Jesus healed people by the Holy Spirit (Acts 10 v 38 - “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him”)

The first mention of Spirit appears in Genesis 1 v 2 - “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

We then considered whether the Holy Spirit is a separate entity?

• The above passage in Gen 1 describes the spirit as hovering

• Matthew 3 v 16 - “As soon as Jesus was baptised, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him.” This shows that the Holy Spirit was given a bodily form for this vision.

• Another example is when Christ is described as being full of the Spirit

• Similarly Acts 2 v 17 - “I will pour out my spirit on all people”

The Spirit sometimes appears in a bodily form (eg like a dove), sometimes as flames of fire, and sometimes people are described as being full of the spirit! It is not directly referred to as a person, although it is personified in some places. But this does not necessarily mean it is a person. For example, wisdom is personified in Proverbs – referred to as she, and so on – but we do not propose that wisdom is a separate being. Likewise, from the evidence in the Bible, it takes a giant leap to conclude that the Holy Spirit is a separate entity. Rather, it is the power that comes from God.

We then looked at the difference between the Spirit and the Holy Spirit.

In both cases “spirit” is a translation of one original word. In the latter there is an additional word, translated “holy”. We discussed lots of passages:

2 Kings 2 v 9 - Elisha speaking to Elijah said “Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit” - Elisha knew God was with Elijah and wanted to have the same spiritual mind as Elijah so that he too could carry out God's purpose.

Ecclesiastes 12 v 7 - “the Spirit returns to God who sent it” - In this case Spirit is breath. God uses his power to keep us alive and takes breath away when we die. The same spirit is also in animals to keep them alive and when they die, breath is taken from them too – Ecclesiastes 3 v 20 “All go to the same place, all comes from dust and to dust all return.” So we can take from this that every living being has been given a portion of the Spirit of God – it is God's power that created us and sustains us.

Spirit means more than this as can be seen in Mark 2 v 8 - “...Jesus knew in his spirit...” - this is referring to Jesus' thoughts. The key to remember is that the root power of everything is God's power and so when “Jesus knew in his spirit” it was ultimately God that gave Jesus the ability to think and so here the spirit was given for Jesus to make up his mind.

Romans 8 is a great chapter for explaining more about the spirit. The first few verses describe two ways that we can choose – the way of sin (which is the fleshly way) or the way of the spirit (which is God's way). So we saw earlier that everyone has the spirit of God in them because God breathed into man's nostrils and keeps us alive. This chapter adds another aspect to the spirit in that, as verse 14 says “those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” Therefore we need to LIVE by the Spirit. Those who do not live by the Spirit are essentially just like the animals who have the spirit of God, in that they are alive and breathing, but they do not live by God's way or try to have the same mindset of God. And so they die, with absolutely no hope or future.

Another passage we looked at briefly was how to explain Rev 22 v 17 - “The Spirit and the bride say 'Come!'” Roy helpfully re-worded this to be God's power and God's people – God's purpose is that all people come to him to be his bride.

OK, so with all that, we tried to summarise the different layers of the Spirit

1. Spirit – is the power of God – everyone has this, from man down to mouses (as Rodge likes to say!) This is the spirit that gives us breath and keeps us alive.

2. We need to choose to live by the spirit to fulfil the purpose of God and that we might have

   life and peace (Rom 8 v 6)

3. The Holy Spirit which is used for a specific reason to advance God's purpose – it is special / separate.

We then had a look at specific examples of the Holy Spirit to find out what made these occasions separate.

The Holy Spirit occurs mainly in the New Testament but did exist in the Old Testament as Mark 12 v 36 says “David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared...”

A few examples of Holy Spirit

• Mary was with child by the Holy Spirit

• Jesus baptised with the Holy Spirit

• Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the unforgivable sin (that is denying God's power to save you, not acknowledging the need to repent – how can you be forgiven if you don't repent?)

• Apostles received Holy Spirit to be God's witnesses (Acts 1 v 8)

The Holy Spirit was given by God to the apostles in the New Testament so that they could preach effectively and spread God's word to all. The apostles also had the ability to pass on the Holy Spirit as can be seen in Acts 8 v 15-16 – Peter and John could pass on the Holy Spirit but Philip could not (Philip was one of the seven chosen to assist the widows in Acts 7 v 1-7 and not an “original” apostle, so to speak).

As a quick summary, the spirit is active today to keep us alive (James 2 v 26 says that the body without the spirit is dead). Everyone has the Spirit of God and can choose to live by it and seek to fulfil God's purpose. However not everyone has the Holy Spirit....

Next time we will be looking at the Holy Spirit gifts and also discussing the challenge which Graham set for us at the end of the evening:

Challenge

Harry Whittaker wrote a pamphlet entitled, “Why I am not a Pentecostal” and put forward an interesting suggestion in it. Pentecostals basically believe that they have the Holy Spirit, that they can cast out demons and they believe in faith healing. Here is the suggestion:

When Jonah went to Nineveh, God said that Nineveh would be destroyed in 40 days. However this did not happen. The people repented of their wickedness and so the destruction of Nineveh was deferred.

Using this pattern of thought, Harry's suggestion is that God's original plan was for Jesus to come back in AD70, using passages such as Matt 24 v 34 - “I tell you the truth, this generation shall not pass away until all these things have happened.” There was a sense of urgency about the return of Christ, so now 2000 years later, the question is asked was the return of Jesus deferred? Discuss...

Amanda (signed in as Rodge!)