Jesus and the Holy Spirit — Don McClure

Jesus and the Holy Spirit

Turn to Luke chapter 1. My subject that I'm going to be looking at is the Holy Spirit and Jesus, and it's kind of difficult because basically this conference has been given over to who has the most flesh, and trying to compete in that, and I've tried, you know, I mean, I was sitting there, Raul was talking about how his wife, you know, when he gets home, you know, tells him it's lousy, and I was thinking, boy, I wish my wife had that much tact.

And, because she doesn't wait until we get home. One Sunday, I'm standing, people are coming out, it's one of those nice Sundays, you know, where it all came down the way that you were hoping it would come down, and the people are coming out and just telling me how they appreciate the message and stuff, and my wife is standing there next to me, and this woman comes up to her and says to her, you know, it just must be wonderful to have him for a husband, and, you know, and I'm listening to this while I'm, you know, this little conversation, and think, oh, she needs to hear this, you know, and how she says to this lady, I mean, coming out of church, in line, right after church, you ought to wash his underwear for a week.

Man, I'd take going home and saying it's lousy any day. I'm sitting there, wait a minute. And, of course, I got to enter in by saying, well, if you'd let me, if I didn't have to wear them a whole week, it wouldn't be so bad.

But, that's, anyway, another time she's getting ready for a conference, and is really concerned about what she was going to share. So, I just kind of said, well, which one of my sermons would you like to borrow?

She says, neither. You know, Raul, you don't know how good you've got it. Father, we thank you for this few days together. It's been fun, it's been refreshing. And, Lord, we thank you for your love for us, the joy we have in you, serving you, loving you, worshiping you.

Father, we thank you for your love for us, how you love your servants, how you care for them. You watch out. And, Lord, we ask that as we just continue this morning, you would minister to us and speak to us.

Father, we ask it in Jesus' name. What I want to do, as it's kind of in the thing, is look at the relationship between Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The reason that I want to do this is, in Corinthians, Paul tells us about Jesus in a couple of places.

One, that he is the second man. Another, that he's the last Adam. And that there, as Jesus came into the world, he came in, really, to reflect to us the quality of life that was forfeited in Adam and to reveal, once again, humanity to us as it was really designed and meant to be lived.

Peter tells us that he was our example. Paul tells us we are to be imitators of Christ. And when you look at his life and his relationship with the Holy Spirit, I'm going to give you a number of scriptures as we're kind of running through.

And I hope that in it we'll realize the phenomenal relationship that there was between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit through the life of Jesus on a continuous basis. In Luke chapter 1, you can write them down and try to run along with me, but I want to...

Jesus Was Born and Offered Through the Holy Spirit

At the very beginning, obviously, of Jesus' life, when Gabriel is speaking to Mary, in verse 31 of Luke 1, it says, And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.

And he shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest. And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be seen? I know not a man. The angel answered, he said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also the holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.

But the first thing that we see about Jesus, even in his coming into the world, is that, first of all, Jesus was born of the Holy Spirit. When there in his life, not only physically, but in every sense of the word, it was absolutely imperative that the Holy Spirit give him the life, and that he was born of the Spirit of God.

And the very first thing that we see about him is that, number one, he was born of the Spirit. And not only, of course, was Jesus someone that was born of the Spirit, but we find in Hebrews chapter 9 and verse 14, a beautiful verse that just simply says about Jesus that he offered himself to God through the eternal Spirit without spot, without blemish.

That there was something that not only was Jesus born of the Spirit, but he also, through the Holy Spirit, he offered his humanity to God's deity through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was the one through whom not only Jesus was born, but he was also the one through whom Jesus offered himself to God.

He was the one through whom the relationship, while Jesus was here on earth, it was through the ministry and the work of the Holy Spirit that that relationship was not only born of, but also was being sustained by.

At the time that that happened, it tells us in Hebrews chapter 10 that in verse 5 it says, Wherefore, when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offerings thou wouldest not, but a body thou hast prepared me, and burn offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure.

Then said I, I come in the volume of the book it is written of me to do thy will, O God. And here we have, it says about Jesus, this is from back in Psalm 40, but it says, When he came into the world, he said, Sacrifice and offerings and burn offerings for sin thou hast had no desire, but a body thou hast prepared me.

Then said I, I come in the volume of the book it is written of me to do thy will. And so there, at the very birth of Jesus, when he was born to the Spirit, when he came into this world, not when he was 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 or 30, but at the very initiation of his life here on this planet.

And here as a person, as a human being, he turned and when he came into the world, he looked at God and said, God, sacrifice and offerings and burn offerings for sin thou hast had no pleasure or desire.

He is saying, God, you don't want my time or my energy or my effort. You don't want my little money, my little involvement. What do you want? You have prepared a body for me and it is written in the book for me to do your will.

And Jesus was somebody that his life was offered to God through the eternal Spirit from the day he came. He was somebody born to the Spirit. He was somebody that he was offered to God through the Holy Spirit.

And there as he grew, it's interesting, there's a verse about Jesus, very always interested me, but it says that he learned obedience. And to me, of course, the way that I interpret that is, oh, that means sometime he must have been disobedient.

If you've got to teach somebody obedience, the subtle thing about that is that maybe they must be disobedient somewhere. But the amazing thing about Jesus, that when he became a man and he humbled himself and he took upon himself the form of a servant, and he took on this human flesh and he stepped from his glory and for his 33 years of humiliation, in effect, there he had to do something now as a man that he had never, ever done before as God.

And he had to learn something that every man everywhere has to learn if they're going to truly be a man. And that is that not only are they born to the Spirit, not only are they offered to God through the Spirit, but they obey the Spirit.

Something he'd never done as God before was obeyed. Now, though, if he was truly going to be an example to us, and if he was truly going to reveal to us what men are like, what men think about themselves, what they think about God, what they think about others, what they think about anything, it is going to be typified through a life of obedience to God.

And through the Spirit, specifically, and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. In Matthew chapter 3, at Jesus' baptism, it says in Matthew 3, 17 there, that, in fact, you know, one of the interesting things to me is how that when John, you know, there is, as Jesus comes out to John, and John, knowing who he is, realizing that he is standing there in the presence of the second person, the triune Godhead, now standing before him and he's out there to be baptized, he says, I shouldn't baptize you.

He said, it's up to be so for now. He says, because I am here to fulfill all righteousness. I am here in my humiliation, not to play man at times, but to be one at all times. And one thing that all men do is they completely identify with God in any and every way that they can.

He said, John, be about your business, baptize me. And there is, you know, it's something that as John is standing there realizing who he is in glory, but now Jesus is there standing in his humanity and says, no, this is the way it will be.

And as Jesus comes up out of the water, the heavens are open. The spirit of God descends upon him as a dove. And the father says, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. And, you know, one of the most interesting things about that is so far, we don't have anything recorded about Jesus of what he did.

He hadn't preached a sermon, healed the sick, raised the dead, cast out a demon. He had done nothing whatsoever ministry wise at all. And yet God says what he is, pleases me. And what was it? He was born of the spirit.

He was offered to God through the spirit. He was obedient to the spirit. He was fulfilling everything. It wasn't the size of his ministry or the greatness of it. It wasn't anything that he had done that the father says, that's what pleases me.

It's the fact that God had somebody that was entirely his, that he could do whatever he wanted to, anywhere, anytime, anyhow, through him. He'd never had anybody like that since Adam walked away and said, no, thank you.

But now he had somebody that once again through the spirit, he was born of the spirit, walked in the spirit, submitted to the spirit, and he loved it. And he enjoyed it. And God says, this is so pleasing to me to have a vessel like this, to have a tool like this, to have a relationship like this with somebody here on earth.

And, you know, there is, as we realize, it isn't what we do that pleases God. It's what we are. So often we think that if we do a lot of things that please God, then somehow or another there is a merit of all that.

We will become pleasing to God in what we are. It's never that way. It's what we are. Later on, Jesus in John 8, 29, he says, I do only always those things that please the Father. So what he did please is God.

But what he did please God was because what he was pleasing. He was God's tool. He knew what it was to walk in the life and in the power of the spirit. And, you know, one of the most interesting things is the very first thing that happens there is the spirit of God is there, of course, already he was born of the spirit.

He'd walked in the spirit. He'd submitted to the spirit for 30 years so far. But now at the initiation of what he was going to do after what he had already been for 30 years, now it's like, let's go do something.

Jesus’ Wilderness Temptation and Spirit-Led Ministry

And the interesting thing, the very first thing that happens is Jesus finds himself in the wilderness where he was tempted to the devil for 40 days. But the interesting thing about that, we oftentimes think that the devil came along to try to thwart the ministry of Jesus before it got going.

That wasn't what happened at all. Because Luke 4, 1 begins by saying Jesus, being filled with the spirit, was led by the spirit in the wilderness where he was tempted to the devil for 40 days. Here we have Jesus not only born of the spirit, offered to God through the spirit, pleasing to God because of the spirit.

Now we have him filled with the spirit and led or more literally driven by the spirit. That here under the office and the authority of the Holy Spirit, there is we have the second person that God had now humbled himself down, becoming lower than the angels.

As a man, he did what any and all men ought to always do, and that is submit to the Holy Spirit because he runs his life. And therefore being filled with the spirit, he was driven by the spirit. And this to me is one of the most beautiful and wonderful things that happens in the ministry of Jesus.

It was like as far as the Holy Spirit was concerned, before we go out and we do anything with humanity. It was like the Holy Spirit had a piece of business that he wanted to settle with the devil that had laid dormant ever since the garden.

Because he drove now there that he had another body that was his. He had a second Adam. He had another man. The only other one that he really had like this since they'd made the first one. And now here's the second one.

The first piece of business, unlike though being there in a paradise, in the comforts and the beauty of the garden, he sends him out and he drives him into the wilderness and he lets him deplete in energy and everything for 40 days.

Let's him come to exhaustion, not where he's even high enough and on the pinnacle and enjoying all the blessings of God. He takes him out in barrenness and in emptiness and hunger and stars him as God sits him out there.

Letting the devil sit there and watch the whole thing as he gets emaciated and he physically begins to deteriorate and his body begins to send all of its impulses towards something. And then there is the devil is setting up.

This is his piece of business. I mean, this is the Holy Spirit's piece of business with the devil. And then the devil comes. If ever he's got a shot at him, now's it. If ever there's a contest that if there's ever anything to do, now he shows up on the scene after God lets him sit and rot for 40 days.

And at the end of that, he was tempted all the way through, it says. But he comes to him. Now at the end of this, and he says to him in his tragedy, because in the King James it says, if you're God, as if there's a question, as if there's anything going on between the devil and Jesus.

Like, gee, I've heard rumors. I wonder if you might be the one who created all of us and everything else. He knew exactly who he was talking to, literally because you're God. He knew exactly who he was talking to when he was talking to Jesus there out in the wilderness.

And he turned to him and said, because you're God. He says, turn this stone to bread. Do it. And there is the Holy Spirit. I mean, the devil was trying to get Jesus to behave as God. To use his deity to get through this trial and through this struggle.

And you know, one of the most beautiful responses that I don't think we've ever sometimes really stopped to realize, but the response that Jesus had when he came right back at the devil and he looked at him and he says, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

As if to look at him and say, listen, there's a couple things I want to make quite clear. Yes, I am God. But at the same time, I also want you to realize I don't need to be God to meet you. All I need to do is be a man filled with the Spirit of God.

All I need to do is be somebody that's born of the Spirit, filled with the Spirit, led, guided, offered. And then God, the Holy Spirit, resident within me. He'll be sufficient in every issue. And all I need to do is be a man filled with the Spirit.

He'll take care of me through all of the trials, all of the struggles. And you know, I think that one of the first things that the Holy Spirit wants to do when he calls anybody into ministry isn't anything unique that he did with Jesus.

It's a pattern. And whether it's 40 days or it's 10 years or it's 50 years or whatever it is, while he takes somebody out there and he wants to settle a piece of business, say, are you mine? Are you somebody that under the pressure or under the trials, it'll hit you later on, you're going to succumb to it.

Or when the devil offers you this or that later on. As heavy as all of those things are, whose are you going to be? And some of us early on in the ministry, we go through a lot of things. And there's a lot of barren valleys and there's a lot of wildernesses.

But so often, it's nothing other than the Holy Spirit wanting to bring us through something to really find out, whose are we anyway? What are we in it for anyway? Who's called us? Who's empowered us? Under who is it that we serve?

And there is Jesus in the midst of the whole thing. It's his life. He could turn back to the devil and look at him there and say, I don't need to be there. And there was something that the Holy Spirit, he wanted this settled before anything else.

He knew what it was at the drop of a hat back in the garden, in all of the pleasures, all the comforts, in paradise, nothing less than that. At the drop of a hat, the devil would come in and say, hey, follow me.

And just off they went. And now it's something where now the Holy Spirit's got another body and he sends him out there into the wilderness. And he says, we've got one thing to say. And you know the beautiful thing there is Jesus settled it.

It was now, there was never again. As the devil came to want to tempt him, that business was over. That was settled. I think a lot of times because we avoid those wilderness experiences, we have great trials later on in the ministry because we've never truly settled that business.

The devil had nothing more to say to Jesus in terms of trying to afford him because he'd already lined up at his best. And I think one of the greatest hours of blessing in our life so often is in the wilderness because there we can settle some things that later on won't necessarily come back to haunt us if we truly settle them.

But if we avoid them and we maneuver our way around the trials, then later on they'll come back because the enemy's still got something he can entice us with or draw us away with or bring us down. But here, as Jesus then comes out of the wilderness in Luke chapter 4, it goes on to tell us in verse 14, it says,.

And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit unto Galilee, where there went out a fame of him through all the region round about. Here we have somebody born of the Spirit, offered to God through the Spirit, submissive or obedient to the Spirit.

Now we have somebody who lives in the power of the Holy Spirit. And there as he comes out from this wilderness experience, he comes out in power. He comes out there with the dominance, the reign, the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit.

They're being executed within his life. And fame begins to go out from him round about the countryside. Verse 16,. And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up. And as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and he stood up for to read.

And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found a place wherein it is written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance of the captives and recovering the sight of the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

And he closed the book and he gave it again unto the minister and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened upon him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your eyes.

Here we have born, fed, or filled and led and guided and empowered by the Holy Spirit. And now as he initiates his public ministry, he walks into the synagogue, he opens up to Isaiah and he says, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because he has anointed me.

And then he proceeded to say what the Spirit of God had anointed him and was going to be doing through him for the next three years. He says, This is what you're going to expect to see the Holy Spirit doing in and through and round about my ministry for the next three years.

He said, I'll lay it out. Here's the program. Here's the outline of what he will be doing through this body submitted to him. Born of him, filled, guided, empowered by him. He says, Now you can watch him do these things for me for the next three years.

He is going to be preaching the gospel to the poor. He will be sending me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, recovering the sight of the blind, to set at liberty them of the bruised, to preach the exaltation of the Lord.

He'll do this. You know, the thing that is so important, I think, sometimes to realize is how entirely Jesus lived as a man. And one of the things that is typical as a man is a man is somebody that is in the image of God.

And an image of God is simply a reflection of who God is. That they allow God to completely rule and reign within their whole life. In every situation by the power and the life and the dynamic of the Holy Spirit.

In John 17, as Jesus came down towards the last hours of his ministry, as he came before the Father, he says, Father, glorify thou me with the glory that I had with thee before the world began. And he says, I have done the works that you have given me to do.

I have said the works that thou has given me. I have said the words that you have given me to say. I have done the works that thou has given me to do. And he says, I have fulfilled all of the things that you have laid out for me to do.

And he says, as you have given those unto me whom you will, thine they were you gave to me. And he goes on, he says, of those that thou has given me, I have not lost any, except the son of perdition, that this Christian might be fulfilled, because that was already laid out for us.

I've done everything you've always wanted me to do. Every moment of every day, it has always been your words, your work. My key has been to live in submission to you, and to your life, and to your power.

You have been leading me and guiding me, just like you wanted to do any and every man around that would ever trust you and let you empower their life the way that life was designed to be. I've been a good example, Father.

Jesus’ Submission to the Father and the Holy Spirit

And there is eternity. It was one of the amazing things to me about Jesus. In John 5 .30, when the Pharisees are coming to Him and they're asking Him, Who do you think you are? And what right do you have to do this and say all this stuff?

And where do you get your credentials? And where is your authority? He then turned in one of the most amazing verses. Jesus said, I can on my own self do nothing. But as I hear, I respond. And my response is always right, because I seek not mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me.

He said, as you look, you imagine here. Here we have the second person. The triune God had never lied. But in His humiliation as He came to show man what it is like to live as a man, that if you're going to truly be a man, you're born of the Spirit, you're filled with the Spirit, you're led by the Spirit, you're guided by the Spirit, you're empowered by the Spirit, you're anointed by the Spirit, your whole life is typified by the Holy Spirit giving you that relationship with God day in and day out as you're living under His office, because that's what a man is.

But there as He looked at Himself and He had taken on that humanity. It just wasn't kind of a little earth suit. We're behind it. He lived in His own power. That's what the devil tried to get Him to do, because if Jesus had to use His own power to get out of the trial that He was in in the wilderness, what would we have when we're in a trial?

Because we're not God. And so He could sit there and in effect divest Himself of His own authority or of His own deity, live in His humility and His humanity, and find that the sufficiency of the Holy Spirit was as sufficient as His own deity was if He relied on Him.

That He could sit there and live in complete submission in every trial and to find the sufficiency of God in all of life. And He did that for us. One of the great tragedies, interestingly, that I just was told a little while back, I think it's from the Positive Confession Theology group, how Jesus wasn't God when He died.

Is that right? Is that what they're... That His deity wasn't there or something when He died? You know, the interesting thing to me, in John 17, when Jesus is there praying to the Father, He says, Father, I have glorified Thee on earth.

And He says, Now glorify Thou Me with the glory that I had with Thee before the world began. The whole 33 years of the life of Jesus Christ, He lived there glorifying His Father, honoring His Father. And the one clear picture that we have of Jesus, all by Himself, in effect, in His deity, in His glory, in His awesomeness, was on the cross.

When there the Father stepped back and He says, Here He is. Here's God, the second person, the triune Godhead. Here's the Creator of heaven and earth. Not only proving that He can create the world, but He can recreate it through His own blood and His forgiveness of sins.

His deity hadn't left Him. It was the ultimate reflection of all that it was. It's now the Father said, Alright, He's been glorifying Me for the last 33 years. Now, I'm going to glorify Him and let you see something of what He is really like.

But there is Jesus lived His life in the power and in the ministry of the Holy Spirit every moment of every day. It's interesting in Acts chapter 1. It's all the way from Bethlehem to the Mount of Olives.

It never changes. Acts chapter 1 in the form of treatise, Have I made O Theophilus? Of all that Jesus both began to do and to teach until the day at which He was taken up after that He, through the Holy Ghost, had given commandments unto the apostles whom He had chosen.

Here we have not only born of the Spirit, but the very last thing that He's doing before He's taken up is through the power of the Holy Spirit giving them commandments on how to live. But the whole explanation of His life was not His own deity of which He would never rob God whatsoever to live in His power.

No, as Paul makes it quite clear, who being in the form of God and thought it not robbery to be equal with God. He could have commanded and demanded and expressed His equality any moment as the one who in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God and by Him were all things made and without Him was not anything made that was made. He didn't come, though, in that. It's like He divested Himself by act of His own will.

That's what blew John's mind when he's looking at Him and realizing who He is. I know who You are. You should be baptizing me. And he says, because I'm here not only to show you who God is, but I'm also here to show you who man is and what men are like if they really want to experience true humanity.

And there as he lived his life, it was totally in the ministry and in the power of the Holy Spirit. He goes on in John chapter 14 with his disciples and he is sharing them, of course, one of the most beautiful chapters in the Bible.

Jesus Reveals the Father and Promises the Comforter

Here is the disciples all confused and frustrated. All they know is tomorrow there's leaders leaving them and one of them is going to deny them. One is going to betray them. All of them, like sheep, are going to scatter each into their own and they can't understand what in the world is going on and there's more commotion in their life they've ever known.

And with that, Jesus turns and He says, Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God. Now believe also in Me. In my Father's house where many mansions were not saw, I said, I would have told you.

I go to prepare a place for you and I go to prepare a place for you. I will come again and receive you unto Myself that where I am you may be also. And whether I go you know and the way you know. Thomas said to him, Lord, we don't know where you're going.

How can we know the way? And Jesus turns and He says, I'm the way and I'm the truth. And there He said, you know, that I'm the way back to God and I'm the truth. You know, there's only been one person never in the history of the world who can say that.

We can say I know truth, I believe truth, I teach truth, I subscribe to it. But Jesus can say I am truth. I'm the absolute exposition and declaration of the truth about God, the truth about man, the truth about life, the truth about anything.

He says, just trust Me. Just center your life around Me. Let Me be the one through whom it revolves around. Study Me, know Me, evaluate Me.

Look at Me from cover to core. You'll find more and more life all the way through it. If you had known Me, you should also know My Father. And should henceforth have known Him, you have known Him, have known Him, and try it again.

He says, henceforth, you know Him, you've seen Him. And then Philip speaks up and he says,.

Show us the Father. That will be sufficient. Jesus says, we don't know what's going on. We don't understand You at all. And He says, just show us the Father. That will be sufficient. And Jesus looks and He says, have I been so long time with you?

And yet the eyes don't know Me. You don't understand Me at all, do you? You don't know what makes Me tick. You don't really know how I was born, how I've been, how all of this ministry that's happening in and through and around about Me, you're trying to attribute it to Me.

And He says, but you've seen Me. You've seen the Father. And He says, now you know Him. And He says, you've seen Him. And, you know, that's one of the most amazing things about Jesus Christ is that in one sense, He's somebody that we don't know anything about.

In another sense, He's one that we know everything about. But He was somebody that always only revealed the Father. It was His whole life. In John 12, 44, one of the most amazing verses, it says that Jesus cried and He says, He that believeth on Me, believeth not on Me, but on Him that sent Me.

Imagine that. You spend years trying to lead somebody to Jesus Christ, and now they finally come to Jesus Christ. By the way, you really don't believe in Him. You believe in the Father. You see, because you don't know Me, you know Him through Me.

And it's something, you know, He says that when you come into a living relationship with Me, it is My ministry and My joy to introduce you to Him. And that's who you've been seeing every moment of every day.

He that has seen Me has seen the Father. It's always been Him. Through the life and the dynamic and the power of the Holy Spirit. Preaching, teaching, healing, walking, loving, ministering. You know, everything that's happened, every moment of every day, the Father expressed Himself by the person, the power of the Holy Spirit through the Son.

Believe us now, not that I'm in the Father and the Father in Me. The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself, but the Father that dwelleth in Me. He does the works. He says, what's always been has just been the Father.

In Me, through Me. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the very works sake. Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than he do, because I go into My Father.

And now Jesus says one of the most amazing things. He says, to the life that you've seen Me live. He said, you can live it too. As He is looking there, He says, if you adopt an attitude towards Me, like I have towards Him.