The Spirit in Types & Symbols

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A few weeks ago we began our study of pneumatology, the study of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
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We are looking at the nature of the Holy Spirit.
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We're going to finish this portion up tonight.
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Next week we're going to begin looking at the work of the Holy Spirit and then move on to the distinctives of the Holy Spirit.
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So tonight we're going to look at the last portion of this handout that I've just given to you where it says the representations of the Holy Spirit.
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Now some of you haven't been here, I think most of you have, but just to do a very, very quick summary of what we have talked about so far, we have made note that the Holy Spirit of God is often compared to or considered by many people to be an impersonal force.
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The energy or the power of God, the emanating force of God.
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If you've ever seen the movie Star Wars or any of the Star Wars sequels or prequels or any of those movies, you've probably heard of the force.
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Use the force, Luke.
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And the force is not something that in the film that you can talk to or speak to, it's just an energy field that's out there.
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And the man who created those films, George Lucas, based the idea of the force on Taoism, what's called, it's actually dualism, balancing dualism.
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There's a good and there's an evil, and there's always this sort of competing between the good and the evil.
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And the goal is not for evil to overcome good, but it's to find the balance, right? And you've seen the yin and yang symbol with the balancing white and black symbols.
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That symbolizes balance in the Taoistic view of the universe.
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That there's good energy and there's bad energy.
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There's yin and yang, positive and negative, and everything works on these energy powers and that's where you get things like acupuncture, acupressure, and all these things are based on the fact that your body is supposed to run on an energy that comes up out of the ground and it follows channels in your body.
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Those channels are called meridians and every meridian has this particular type of energy force and that energy force is either a positive flow or a negative flow and it finds its outlets in these things called pressure points, acupuncture points.
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You'll go to an acupuncturist and they'll take a needle and they'll put it in a spot on your arm or they'll put it in a spot in your head or your neck or your back and they'll say that what they're doing is they're channeling that energy to that particular thing in your body and causing healing.
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And that's based on a Taoistic philosophy of the understanding of the universe and of the understanding of the human body.
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And I'm not here tonight to argue the merits of acupressure or acupuncture or anything like that.
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We can have that conversation another time.
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The point is I think that type of philosophy and thinking makes its way into Christianity in regard to the person of the Holy Spirit.
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Rather than seeing him as a person, a personal spirit, we see him as some kind of an energy flow, an energy force.
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I remember, I think it was Robert Shuler, who I'm not advocating in any way, shape or form just in case there's a confusion on that, but he was talking about his healing ministry and he said he knew he could heal because he felt energy in his shoulder and it began to make its way down his arm and he felt it coming down his arm and he knew that if he touched somebody, the energy would flow out of him and into the person and then they'd get knocked down and the energy would heal them.
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And so, again, it's this Holy Spirit as a force.
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And so if you haven't picked up on this yet, out of two lessons and this being our third, that's not good.
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Seeing the Holy Spirit as less than personal is bad because you end up with, rather than a trinity, you end up with sort of a, and I remember I couldn't figure it out, dinity, dynity, binity, however you would say two as a trinity, you end up with the Father and the Son are divine persons and the Spirit is a divine force.
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The Bible does not allow that.
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We've shown this from the personality of the Spirit if you look at your notes under the first one.
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We've shown that His identity, His attributes, His works, His position, and His designations all prove that He's personal.
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What's the one thing that we said was the Scripture's most simple proof is that the Holy Spirit is always called He.
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Never it, but always He.
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I showed you last week in the Gospel of John how when Jesus was talking about the Helper or the Comforter, He said He, He, He, He seven times.
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He is used in just two verses.
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We see over and over and over again the designation of He.
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Never it.
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In fact, hagios, panouma is the Greek for Holy Spirit, panouma is neuter.
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And what that simply means is it's not ascribed a masculine or a feminine gender in the Greek language.
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And so generally, if you have a neuter, your pronoun will also be in the neuter.
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But with the Holy Spirit, the pronoun is always in the masculine.
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When it refers to the Spirit, it's always He.
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It's never it.
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That would be the neuter.
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It's always He.
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And that was also made the other point because, Pat, you mentioned this a few weeks ago.
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One of the hymn books that you saw years ago where the Spirit was called Her or She, the Mother Spirit or whatever.
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It's not She either.
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The Holy Spirit is not the feminine side of God.
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He's not the softer, lighter side of the Trinity.
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You know, the feminine Trinity person, the feminized Trinitarian person.
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No, that's not right either.
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God is always given to the masculine pronoun.
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Even the Holy Spirit is given over to the masculine pronoun.
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And so identifying Him and He always.
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And He's identified as God.
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We talked about this.
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Richard mentioned this last week, Acts chapter 5 and Ananias and Sapphira.
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How dare you lie to God? You've lied to the Holy Spirit.
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So he describes the Holy Spirit as God.
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What has come upon you that you would lie to the Holy Spirit? You've not lied to men, but to God.
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And so the personality of the Holy Spirit and the deity of the Holy Spirit are both proven in the New Testament, foreshadowed in the Old Testament, proven in the New Testament.
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Well, tonight we're going to we're going to step into an area that's a little different, but it's still on the same quality of subject in the sense that we're still talking about the nature of the spirit.
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We've looked at his personhood.
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We've looked at his deity.
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Now we're going to look at his representations.
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You say, what is that? Well, if you want to know about someone, oftentimes a good way to find out about them is to use a representative model.
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Like if I say Jack Bunning is hard as a rock.
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He's not in the sense that what I mean is, but if I said that, if I said Jack Bunning is hard as a rock, that might mean he's unmovable.
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He's the type of person you can't negotiate with.
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He's the type of person you can't talk to.
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He's the type of person that you don't want to have a conversation with.
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Because he's going to slam you like a rock.
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You know, like I said, I'm saying that because it's not true.
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But that you understand what I mean, though, is when I when I use a representation or if I said he's soft as a lamb, that might not be good either, as he's a man.
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You don't want to be soft as a lamb.
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You don't want to be hard as a rock.
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He wants to be a man and not be bound to either of those qualities.
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But that's how we describe.
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So for a minute before we even begin the lesson, I want to ask you a question.
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What are some of the representation? And this is just building us into thinking this way.
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What are some of the representations that we have of Jesus? So let's just before we even talk about the Holy Spirit, what are some things that are that Jesus or the Bible uses to represent Christ? Anybody want to go? OK, we want to start with that one.
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Jesus is called the door of the sheep.
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He's called the shepherd.
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He's called the court.
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Now, you guys are getting ahead of me.
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I wanted to stop and talk about these.
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So stop for a second.
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Let me talk about him and then we'll ask for some more.
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You guys are all right, though.
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He's called the door.
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What does that tell us about Jesus? Well, opens and shuts, that's true.
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But a door represents a way.
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Think about like everybody's talking about the wall right now, don't get political, but everybody's talking about this wall.
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And when I heard somebody say something the other day that was really profound, they said it ain't like we're not going to put any doors in it, you know, because the idea was if you put up a wall, you don't want anybody in.
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No, you just need a wall with a door.
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We need a way where people come in a certain way.
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They don't get to just come anyway.
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They come through the door.
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All right.
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And I thought that was profound.
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You know, it's not like we're not going to put any doors in the wall.
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And the same thing is, is Christ is the door.
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Right.
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He's as broad as the way.
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And wide is the path that leads to destruction, but narrow is the way and straight is the gate that leads to life.
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And few there are who find it.
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And Jesus said, I am the door.
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Right.
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He's the gate that he's the way.
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So what does that tell us about him? It tells us the fact that he is, in fact, the way when he says, I am the way, the truth and the life.
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He is the way.
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He's the door.
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There is no way over, around or through the wall.
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You got to go through the door.
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And Jesus is the door.
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Right.
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So there is there's a there's something we learn about Christ from a representation of Christ.
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See, that's how it's what we're doing tonight.
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We're learning about the spirit by the representation of the spirit.
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But very quickly, we mentioned the shepherd.
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What we learn about that.
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He guides us.
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He directs us.
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He comforts us.
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He bears us up.
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The Lord is my shepherd.
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I shall not want him making me to lie down in green pastures.
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He leadeth me beside the still waters.
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He restores my soul.
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Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me.
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Thy rod and thy staff.
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They comfort me.
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All of those things are representing our shepherd.
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And Jesus is our shepherd.
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Right.
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And and he's the cornerstone.
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He is, in fact, that upon which the church is built.
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Foundation of the prophet and apostles.
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But Christ being the cornerstone, right upon him.
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And what does first Corinthians three say? If any man builds on the foundation of Christ, he will be saved.
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Even if his works are of wood, hay and stubble, even if his works are completely burned up, he will be saved yet as though by fire.
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Why? Because he has a foundation in Jesus Christ.
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Right.
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Jesus is the foundation.
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And so we could go on and I'm sure we could.
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We could.
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Jesus is the vine.
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You're the branches.
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Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
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Every one of those representations tells us something about our savior.
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Well, here's the beauty.
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We have the same things for the spirit.
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Now, some of these I'm going to erase this.
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Some of these we call types.
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Now, I'm a I'm a big fan of types.
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I do think people can get carried away, but I like teaching typology where you show in the Old Testament types of Christ in the Old Testament.
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But you know, there's also types of the spirit.
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I want to talk about that a little bit tonight.
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So types is something that's used to represent the work of one of the members of the Godhead, whether it be the father, the son of the spirit.
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Usually it references Christ.
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But tonight we're going to see how some types actually point to the spirit.
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Other things we see are symbols.
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You say, well, what's the difference? Well, it's a nuanced difference.
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Maybe you might not even see any difference at all.
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But we're going to try to distinguish tonight what might be a type and what might be more symbolic.
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I think this I think the dove is more of a symbol rather than a type.
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But we could address how, why and what that means.
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So we're going to look at types and symbols tonight.
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And we are doing this again.
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We're in our handbook.
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This is the Moody Handbook of Theology.
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Ordinarily when teaching pneumatology, I don't do this portion, but I liked it.
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And so I said, you know, I'm going to do this because, again, I did it with Christ.
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You were my Sunday school class.
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We went through all the types of Christ in the Old Testament.
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Remember what we did through that? I'm going to do them all, but we did so many of them, so many of the types of Christ.
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Christ is represented in the tabernacle.
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He's represented in all of the elements of Israel's worship.
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He's represented and pointed to.
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He's pointed to in all those things.
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Well, the Spirit's pointed to as well.
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So the first we're going to look at is Luke 24, Luke Chapter 24.
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Find your place at verse 49.
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You see it on your list.
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You won't have to guess what any of these are.
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We're just going to work our way down the list here.
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The first one is clothing.
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So Luke 24, 49.
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This is Jesus speaking, it says, and behold, I am sending the promise of my father upon you.
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What's the promise of the Father? I'm just I'm asking, what's the promise of the Father? Holy Spirit.
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That's right.
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Right.
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So we know what Jesus is talking about.
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He says, I am I am sending the promise of my father upon you.
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But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.
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So right there, the what's that? Different translation.
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What is your say? Endued.
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Endued with power.
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OK, well, the word there, let me just I'll read here.
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It says clothed in duo is the Greek, so it could be translated into is the normal word for dress, dressed.
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It is passive, indicating the individual does not dress himself, but it's a dressing that comes from someone else.
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Think of like your child when like, like, like, like, like when I'm home and Jennifer's not home.
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Well, sometimes Jennifer's home, but when Jennifer's not home, it's all, you know, I have the baby and I got three of them.
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Hope can pretty much dress herself.
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JJ is kind of there, but that baby ain't got no clue.
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She don't know.
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And so, you know, she can't do nothing.
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So I got to do it all.
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I can't, you know, JJ, at least I can say, put your arms up and pull the shirt off, whatever.
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But the baby, I say, put your arms up.
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It's talking to a wall.
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You know, you got to grab the arm, pick it up, grab the other arm, pick it up.
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But clothing, again, the idea of the passive action here, you will be clothed.
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With power or endued with power, but the picture here is the picture of God doing it for you.
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And the picture here is what's going to happen at Pentecost, it's going to be the spirit clothing you with power.
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And I was thinking about because this was the first one I was sort of thinking in my mind, the picture here of armor.
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And I don't want to stretch the analogy too far, but we all know what the armor of God is.
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The armor of God is those those attributes that God tells us give us the ability to fight the spiritual battles in our in our daily life.
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You know, it talks about the breastplate of righteousness and the helmet of salvation and the belt of truth.
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Right.
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Talks about the shield of faith and the sword of the spirit.
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All of those things are the power of God that he gives us to to live.
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And we can walk through each one of those and how each one of those what how it represents our lives and how it represents different aspects of our lives, keeping our mind on salvation, keeping our heart pure.
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All those things are built into that analogy.
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But the picture is it's the spirit here is being compared to clothing.
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Now, you ask me, is that a type or a symbol? I think that's a symbol.
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And again, I'm this is you can argue with me if you want, but I'm just going to put up here what I think.
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Right.
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And again, that this this matters, not what matters is what the text says.
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And the text says we're going to be clothed with the spirit, with power from on high.
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The next one on your list is the dove.
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Now, I kind of tip my hand already.
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I said I think the dove is a symbol.
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So I guess we can go and write him down.
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So on the subject of the dove, I'd like for you to turn to Matthew chapter three.
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And you probably don't really need to go there, but you I like sometimes for you to see these things.
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Matthew chapter three, verse 16.
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This is at the baptism of Jesus.
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And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water and behold, the heavens were open to him.
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And he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him.
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And behold, a voice from heaven said, this is my beloved son.
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With whom I am well pleased.
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What you find interesting, what I find interesting about that passage is the fact that the Trinity is all visible.
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When you say visible, maybe maybe I shouldn't say that the Trinity is all individually present because you have the son, Jesus, in the water, you have the spirit descending upon him as the form of the dove.
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Taking that as a symbolic picture, and then you hear the voice of the father saying, this is my beloved son.
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In the very fact that he says, this is my beloved son, tells us who's speaking.
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No doubt there who is is the author of that language.
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And so the dove is a symbol.
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Why, though, choose a dove for the spirit? I think I think this is a place where we often get a little confused because people, they think of doves as very weak, you know? And it really is a bird, not not really powerful.
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Right.
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It's not like it was an eagle, wasn't the holy eagle spirit, you know, coming down from heaven.
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What a big, you know, claw.
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It was a little dove, you know, I didn't mean to do the caca.
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I'm sorry.
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Eagle sound.
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But you understand I'm saying, you know, God could have symbolized his spirit in any way.
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He chose could have been the lion, could have mounted a rock and roared and said, that's the spirit of God and would have been appropriate because God is a lion.
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Jesus is called the Lion of Judah.
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Right.
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And so why the dove? And there's I don't think there's necessarily a perfect answer.
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I think any answer we give is is having to interpret based on what we understand.
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But we know we know two things about a dove from scripture.
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They symbolize purity and they typically symbolize peace.
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And that's why even to today, doves are our peace.
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You know, if you see the dove as a symbol of peace.
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And so this this symbolizes the spirit's work and the fact of purity and peace.
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And Christ is called the Prince of what? Peace.
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Here's the thing, though, about that.
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Christ does not bring peace in the world.
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Neither does the spirit bring peace in the world that most people try to attribute to him.
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For instance, people try to talk about, like, national peace or peace between men.
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What does the Bible say about that? Jesus said, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
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Sword.
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And I will divide even fathers from their children, mother against daughter and father against son.
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And and I'm going to bring my sword is going to divide families.
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Is that true? Does the spirit of God in regenerating a soul sometimes separate that soul from the rest of the family because of that regeneration? So why is he called the Prince of Peace? Why is the spirit representing peace? You.
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That's right.
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Thank you, brother.
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I knew he was going to say it.
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Yeah, it's Romans 5, 1.
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If you want to put a little note there, Romans 5, 1, my favorite.
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Well, one of my favorite.
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I love the whole Bible.
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It's hard to say.
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And he's the favorite.
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But one of my favorite verses, if I had to just preach, if somebody said, hey, pastor, stand up and preach for 30 minutes, I'd say only 30.
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No, I would say I'd say Romans 5, 1.
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I may open up Romans 5, 1, which says what? Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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That's the gospel in a nutshell.
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That would be easy to preach, but it also reminds us that we were at war with God.
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The Bible says we were at enmity with God and the spirit of God came into our dead heart, gave us regeneration.
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And through regeneration, we are now at peace where once we were at war.
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And so what better animal to represent the work of the spirit at the moment of baptism, the picture of union with Christ than a dove representing peace with God? And so we see in these representations a picture of what's happening.
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And so God uses that to remind us something about the nature of the spirit.
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All right.
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So we see the dove.
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All right.
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We only got about like six more.
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I go slow.
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Let me get a little go, maybe a little faster.
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The next one is a pledge, a pledge.
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Now, I would say a pledge maybe could fall under tight.
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We'll still put under symbol.
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So pledge.
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You say, well, what's a pledge? Open your Bibles.
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Turn with me to 2 Corinthians 1.21, 2 Corinthians 1.21.
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Now, I don't want to spend all night on this because in a couple of weeks when I'm talking about the work and the distinctives of the spirit, I'm actually going to address this a little bit more in depth.
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Tonight is just showing the picture.
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2 Corinthians 1, verse 22.
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All right.
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Well, let's start at verse 21, because 22 in the ESV is a half sentence.
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So we'll start at verse 21.
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It says in verse 21.
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And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us.
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By the way, in a minute, we're going to talk about what anointing means and how oil is a type of the spirit.
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But we'll get there in a minute.
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But he has anointed us and who has put his seal on us and given us his spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
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A guarantee.
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The word there is pledge.
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And that's why I use the word pledge.
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You could write beside it in the ESV.
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It's guarantees.
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Anybody have a different translation than the word pledge or guarantee? Under the last word in that sentence, he's given the spirit in our hearts as a.
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Anybody else? He says guarantee.
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OK, thank you.
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The word there in the Greek is Erebon.
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Erebon means a deposit.
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A down payment.
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The pledge.
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I'm going to like I said, I'm going to get into this further in the weeks to come.
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But let me just very quickly just give it to you now, because it ain't going to hurt to hear it twice.
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When you go and you make a promise to buy something, you often have to put a down payment down.
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Right.
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You say, OK, I'm going to buy a car.
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A car costs five thousand dollars.
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I'll give you twenty five hundred down and then I'll pay the other twenty five hundred over time.
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What does the twenty five hundred dollars that you gave him at the beginning do? It promises you're going to keep paying because he makes you a promise that if you miss your payments, I'm going to come take the car and I'm going to keep the twenty five hundred dollars.
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You understand how down payments work, how a pledge works, I make a pledge to do something, and if I don't fulfill it, then I lose.
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This is the picture here.
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The Spirit of God is God's pledge to save us.
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He makes his home within us and he becomes the promise of God that he's going to see it through to the end.
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Because guess what? God don't miss any payments.
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You say the payments already made.
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I know this is don't push the analogy too far.
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The point is, when God makes a promise and gives a pledge, he never reneges on that pledge.
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This, again, is another reminder of the of the the the doctrine of of of eternal security that God makes when he saves you are saved.
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You don't get saved, get lost, get saved, get lost, get saved, get lost.
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You get saved as God gives you his Holy Spirit.
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That's his promise.
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If you were to ever lose your salvation for whatever reason and God took that pledge back, that'd be on him because he made the promise, not you.
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Is it different than a covenant? Yeah, well, I don't want to drive.
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I'm sorry for listening.
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I mean, exercising my pastoral prerogative, my pastoral prerogative and eavesdropping.
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Now, the covenant is similar.
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We talk about conditional covenants and unconditional covenants.
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When God made a covenant with with Abraham was unconditional.
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He didn't need Abraham to participate.
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Remember, he split the animals in half.
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He went through as a smoking fire pot.
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He demonstrated that Abraham was the recipient of the promise, not the participant in the promise.
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When God makes a promise and he makes the promise, he's not asking for our participation.
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He's making the promise.
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That's why that covenant, that whole picture, you know, I'm talking about.
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Right.
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In Genesis, that whole picture was what would happen is they take an animal split in half.
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Two people would walk through the middle.
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So as to say, if either one of us renege on our promises, so be done to us that what was done to this animal.
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Right.
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That was the picture.
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If we walk through the center and we both walk through together, well, God went through as the smoking fire pot.
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He was the one making the promise.
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It was an unconditional promise to Abraham.
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And God makes an unconditional promise with us when he puts the spirit in our heart.
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I don't have to keep up with monthly payments.
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I heard I heard a pastor say that one time.
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God makes a down payment.
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You keep up with a monthly.
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What kind of crazy nonsense is that? You want to say something, brother? I'm sorry.
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I keep that.
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I just could you ask.
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OK, well, they said who has sealed us and given the earnest of the spirit in our hearts.
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Earnest.
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Yeah, same.
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It's the pledge, down payment, guarantee, all of those things.
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Like I said, I went a little further than this is all going to be in a couple of weeks.
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We're here again because these things, this is an important part of understanding what the spirit does.
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He seals us and becomes the promise of God.
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He is the promise of God to us.
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So he's the pledge.
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All right.
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Next one down is fire.
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I say fire is a type.
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So when I come over here now, fire is a type.
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And like I said, there's there's you know, we could argue back and forth, but why? Why? Why is fire a type? Because I think about what fire, the picture of what fire does and the purifying aspect of it.
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And I think about other types of Christ, like the lamb and those things.
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And I see fire very much as typological.
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When John was preaching, he says, I baptize you with water.
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But one is coming after me who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
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The picture, the symbol, the the type of the baptism that we would receive in the Holy Spirit is not wet, but hot.
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They say we still get wet baptized.
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Yeah, but we get hot baptized to the fire, the spirit.
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So let's look at that.
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Let's look at it.
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When it happened, the fire is Acts two.
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We know this.
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In fact, we see it.
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We see fire in Acts chapter two, in much the same way as we saw the dove in Matthew three.
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And of course, the dove is seen in other places, too, by the way.
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When I when I reference one narrative in the gospel, it may be found in other places, too.
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So just I'm just not going to mention them all.
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But the story of Jesus's baptism is throughout the gospel.
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So so this you'll see that in other places.
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But the fire Acts chapter two, verse three.
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Well, let's just look at verse one, it says, when the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place.
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And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind.
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And it filled the entire house where they were sitting and divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.
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And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance.
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You know, it's funny as I've heard a lot of people claim to have a gift of tongues.
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I ain't never seen one that had a tongue of fire on his head.
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Now, I'm just saying that don't mean, you know, that that proves anything.
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What's that? Yeah, I didn't necessarily prove anything.
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But this is a moment in history where God, the Holy Spirit, makes himself manifest to the people of God.
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And the picture he chooses to use, the type he chooses to use, is that of fire.
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And again, I think back to when Jesus was baptized and he came as a dove.
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What's the difference? Well, when Jesus was there in the water and he was receiving the, if you will, the instigation of ministry, the beginning of ministry, maybe not instigation is the right word, but he was beginning his public ministry.
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And it was the ministry that was going to bring peace with God.
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And now we have this beginning of a new ministry.
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This is a ministry that's going to set the world on fire.
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And so the people that are going to take this message out, many of them are going to die.
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Some of them are going to die by fire.
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Some of them are going to die by crucifixion.
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Some of them are going to die by beheading.
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Some of them are going to be stoned.
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To death, the very first Christian martyr, Stephen, stoned to death for his faith.
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And so they are given a fire.
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Fire represents power and heat and strength.
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Represents all those things that are necessary to take the gospel into a world that's going to hate it.
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It makes me think of Jeremiah.
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I think I mentioned this on Sunday.
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Maybe I didn't.
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Maybe I mentioned it at the men's conference.
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I get my messages mixed up.
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But Jeremiah talked about the fact that the spirit of God had called him to preach.
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He said, if I don't preach, it'd be like a fire in my bones.
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And if I don't speak, it would consume me.
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So this picture of the spirit coming as a fire has given them the tongues to speak to all men of all languages at that very moment, dropping the veil of Babel, opening the door of all men to hear the truth.
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And the fire of the Holy Spirit ignited the church.
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And so the picture changes from that of a dove, which also descended to that of a fire, which descended.
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So now we see the spirit as oil.
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Oil.
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Now, this one is more of a type, as I said, because throughout the Bible.
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And I don't necessarily I guess I do have we can look at it.
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We can look at Exodus 40, go to Exodus 40 and look at this one passage.
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But it would it would take us all night to look at all the passages that reference oil in the scriptures.
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Oil is such a ubiquitous tool that's used.
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But what does this oil always represent? It represents God's spirit being placed upon someone.
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We call it anointing.
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Right.
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What does anointing mean? Means to pour oil on something.
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That's literally what it is.
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No, no big fancy meaning.
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There was used to be a lady here at the church, an older lady.
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And every time I would preach, she was very sweet and she would always say, I love it when you preach.
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You preach with the anointing.
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And I know she was being very kind and being encouraging.
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And what she meant, what I hope she meant was that that that it was apparent that the spirit of the Lord was upon me when I was preaching.
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That's what we talk about anointing to cover, to pour out.
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In fact, by the way, we and I have anointing oil in my office that if anyone ever asked for me to put oil on their head because the Bible does say call to the elders, have them anoint your head with oil and pray for them.
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And I'm willing to do that for when people request it and desire it.
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A very nice one that was gifted to me.
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And I use it.
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It's sitting in my office.
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But in the in the way that it was done in the Old Testament and in those times, it was not pour a little oil on your finger and wipe it across the head.
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It was literally pour out upon and it would drip down.
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And it was a it was a real picture of covering.
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It was a picture of the spirit being just covering the person.
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And that's what it meant to be anointed.
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Not not just a little, a little dabble, do you? No, it was more it was it was a full pouring out of the spirit and that comfort of knowing the spirit of God is upon you.
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Remember, remember what Jesus preached in the sermon at his hometown.
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The spirit of the Lord is upon me.
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As anointed me to preach to the poor, you know, that that being on you.
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And so so looking at this text, it's verses nine to 15, Exodus forty nine.
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It says, then you shall take the anointing oil and anoint the tabernacle and all that is in it and consecrated and all its furniture so that it may become holy.
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You shall also anoint the altar burning offering and all its utensils and consecrate the altar so that the altar may become most holy.
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You shall also anoint the basin in the stand and consecrated.
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Then you shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting and you shall wash them with water and you shall put on Aaron the holy garments and you shall anoint him and consecrate him that he may serve me as priest.
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You shall bring his sons also and put coats on them and anoint them.
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And you also, as you anoint their father, that they may serve as serve me as priests and their anointing shall admit them to a perpetual priesthood throughout their generations.
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This was a picture of the Holy Spirit of God being on a person for a ministry.
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The New Testament, we see less of this.
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We see more of what they say, the laying on of hands.
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We don't see as much anointing with oil as much as we see.
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We do see it, but more so you see, and they laid hands upon them and the Spirit filled them or they laid hands upon them and sent them out for ministry.
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I'm thinking about Acts and with Paul and when the church laid hands upon him and sent him out in the Spirit.
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You know, why the difference? Well, think about how the Spirit, the manifestation, the ministry of the Spirit in the New Testament is in the person.
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So the idea of laying your hands on the person rather than having to pour oil, a symbol, the Spirit is within this person.
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They lay hands, now the Spirit's in that person.
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It's not a magic trick.
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It's just the way that it operated was the operation of the Spirit.
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The Spirit was pictured of coming from the person who is being indwelled, right? And so there's this picture in the New Testament, but it's still the same idea being covered with or filled with the Spirit.
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And so oil represents that covering.
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And whether we're doing it with oil or whether we're doing it, we lay hands on our deacons, we lay hands on our elders when we commission them or ordain them to service.
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Because we believe that's what God has commanded us to do is to lay hands on them as a type of what's happening, not that we're giving them the Spirit.
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God gives them the Spirit.
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We're recognizing what God is doing in that situation.
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And that's why it's dangerous to lay hands on someone who you don't feel should be in that position.
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We actually see that in church history times where it was who laid hands upon you, you know, and the question of why and whether or not people should do that.
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All right, so we moved on.
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We've seen the pledge, we've seen the fire, we've seen the oil.
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Now we see the seal.
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The seal, again, I think it falls under that of a symbol, seal.
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No, this is not the animal, the seal.
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This is the seal of the Spirit.
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Ephesians 1.13, Ephesians 1.13.
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Let me ask you this question, and I've got to finish.
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When Jesus was put in the tomb, what did they do to the stone? Put a seal on it.
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For what reason? To keep anybody from going in? Right? But it showed the authority.
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The seal showed the authority of the person making the seal.
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Right? It's a picture of authority.
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That's the seal.
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So now, with that in mind, with just that in your head, think of Ephesians 1.13.
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It says this, In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.
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There, by the way, that word guarantee there, it's the same idea as what's the Erebon.
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It's the same idea as the down payment.
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This is the same language that we see in 2 Corinthians as here in Ephesians.
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It's kind of just doubling up on the idea, but the seal is God's seal.
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There was a way in which wax could be melted and then an impression made, and that made the seal of the authority, the one who was the governor or the one in authority.
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And that represented, you didn't break that seal.
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The book of Revelation, there are seven what? Seals.
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You know, who can break the seal, right? And so there's this idea of the seal, it's representing authority and it's representing God having sealed you.
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Who can break that seal? No one.
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God having sealed you, that's picturing the spirits having been given in perfect measure.
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You do not have to worry about that being broken or taken away.
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Yes? Back in September, they reclassed on the Ephesians.
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Yep.
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And they were studying.
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Okay.
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Yeah, you cannot break the seal without being subject to punishment.
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Without being subject to, you know, the punishment of the emperor or whoever it is, you're breaking the seal.
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And who could break the seal of God? No one.
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Yep.
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Absolutely.
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I want to just, just for your notes, if you want to add Ephesians 4.30 also mentions the seal.
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Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
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So we see that word, Paul uses that word twice in Ephesians to refer to the work of the Spirit sealing us.
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And here I like the fact that he says you were sealed for the day of redemption.
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This is one of the ones I point to people who say you can lose your salvation.
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I say one, who's going to break the seal? And two, how's it going to be broken before the day of redemption if that's what I'm sealed for? Alright.
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Whatta, whatta, whatta.
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John 7, huh? You got something right there? Okay.
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John chapter 7, verse 37 to 39.
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And we are going to finish tonight.
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We only got a minute or two left.
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We need to finish John 7, 37 to 39.
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I was really worried.
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I came in tonight.
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I said, I don't think I can spend a whole lesson on this.
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Look at there.
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I'm going over time.
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Matthew, or John 7, 37.
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On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried, If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.
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Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.
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Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive.
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For as yet the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus was not yet glorified.
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He said, the Spirit will be like water flowing out of you.
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It will be like living water.
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Yeah, yeah, I would say.
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So the water in this picture, he says, when he says this, it's about the Spirit.
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It is about the Spirit.
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I think about the woman at the well.
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If you knew who it was who asked you, you would ask of him and he would give you living water.
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That's right.
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The Spirit is pictured as water.
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Last but not least, the wind.
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The wind.
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And again, I think all these symbolic.
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You could say maybe the wind is a type.
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We'll just put wind over here just for good measure.
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The wind could be a type.
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All of them could go back and forth.
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I said maybe I made a little too much about that.
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Wind is the most natural representation of the Holy Spirit since the word wind actually is the word pneuma.
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The word air, breath, wind, it's all pneuma in Greek.
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Just how it's contextualized.
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English words like pneumatic derive their meaning from the word pneuma.
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In explaining the new birth of Nicodemus, Jesus compared the birth of the Holy Spirit to the wind.
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Let's finish with this.
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Go to John 3 and we'll finish here.
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John 3.
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Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
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This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.
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Jesus answered him, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
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Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and of the Spirit, and by the way, that can also be translated, unless one is born of water, even the Spirit, their water and spirit could be a parallelism because we've already seen water is a type or picture of the Spirit.
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But that's another argument.
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Some people try to use this to prove baptism is salvific using John 3, 5.
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Again, we could go on a whole other topic on that.
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But I think there the water and the Spirit are both being used synonymously.
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As we see back in Ezekiel, it talks about sprinkling us with clean water and washing us.
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Water is not seen in this picture as being the physical baptism, but the water of the Spirit washing us, cleansing us.
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And he says he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
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Now, going on, verse 6.
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For that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
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Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again.
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The wind blows where it wishes.
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What's that? Oh, okay, I'm sorry.
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The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.
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So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
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What's interesting about the Greek there is it basically says the Spirit blows where it wishes because the word wind and Spirit are pretty much the same word.
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So the idea is this.
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You say, how is wind like the Spirit? He wills.
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He decides.
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The Spirit of God chooses to give gifts.
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Remember we studied that? That He actually is the one who wills to give gifts.
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And He wills to regenerate the soul.
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Now, we could say He's proceeding from the Father, and the Father is the one who elects, and He is proceeding from the Son, and it is the Son who redeems.
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But the Spirit is active in that participation of will, and He wills to regenerate.
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God's Spirit.
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You can't control the Spirit.
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This is where I...
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And I understand.
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I want to say something.
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I don't want to be ugly.
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People in churches, they're like...
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They're commanding the Spirit.
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Or demanding the Spirit.
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Or directing the Spirit.
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You can't command or demand the Spirit of God any more than you can command or demand the Son of God.
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Or you can command or demand the Father.
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The Holy Spirit of God is like wind.
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If you think you can grab a hold of Him and stop Him, you ain't got a clue.
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The Holy Spirit of God moves as He wills.
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By the way, this is why I don't believe...
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And this is why I was kind of afraid to say this, but I'm just going to say it.
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I do not believe in what's typically called revival services.
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That's why I've never seen this happen.
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Because you cannot schedule a movement of the Spirit.
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I'll finish with a story.
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Billy Graham was preaching at an event.
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And he decided to go outside one day because there was a street preacher who was preaching before the event.
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And he wanted to hear what the street preacher had to say.
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And the street preacher was preaching a good gospel message.
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And people were standing around.
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Billy Graham was sort of covered up.
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You know, he had glasses on.
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He didn't want anybody to know who he was.
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And he walked up and he started talking to one of the guys in the audience.
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And the guy, he said, Well, what do you think about what he's saying? Well, he said, It sounds pretty good, but I'm waiting for the big guns.
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And Billy Graham said, You're going to wait until the other guy preaches? He said, Yeah.
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See, that's the kind of mindset that makes you think your salvation is up to you.
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You're just going to come when you want to come.
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Beloved, a movement of the Spirit ain't up to you.
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A movement of the Spirit is up to the Spirit of God.
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Let's pray.
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Father, we thank you for the Spirit of God.
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We thank you that he is the one who wills.
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He is, Lord, the third person of the Trinity.
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But that does not make him any less.
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So, Lord, we pray through him tonight.
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We pray by the power of his indwelling.
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And we pray through the ministry of Jesus Christ, the Son, by whom we find our mediation and intercessor with you.
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And, Lord, we know all these things are difficult for us to wrap our finite minds around, but we do know this.
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The Father, the Son, and the Spirit of God, one God in three persons, hallowed be your name.
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Amen.