Sunday Night, July 1, 2018 PM

The Spirit of God and Man-Shaped Language

God is spirit, and the catechism says, God is spirit does not have a body like man. And yet, throughout the scriptures, we read about things such as God sits on a throne, and these kinds of language, these kinds of language is man-shaped words about God, that God's eyes see everything that happens, right?

But Jesus is God's spirit. God does not have a body like we do. He is not mortal, he is not changing. We know from the scriptures that he is all-powerful, everywhere present, all-knowing. He is not confined, limited as we are, because he is spirit.

So, when we say this, God is spirit, we have all this man-shaped language, and sitting on a throne, our heads, that he does have a body in that way. That man-shaped language, that human-shaped language is God's gender, right?

Gender is specific to physicality, but God doesn't have a body. So we know it doesn't refer to that, which kind of eliminates. Now, we have the question, why does God reveal himself in man-shaped words?

The $10 term is anthropomorphic, but I'm just gonna say man-shaped, okay? Man-shaped terms, why would God speak to us in that way? Talk about a throne upon which he sits. Why would he use terms like that?

He's trying to be confusing. Yeah, so Jerry has identified the fact that if God spoke to us, fellowship and counsel of a triune God, we wouldn't understand what he's saying, because we are as intelligent, we're nowhere near as intelligent or wise, nor can we fathom the full wisdom of who God is.

So it's important that he speak to us in a way that we can understand, okay? Calvin would put it this way, it's kind of baby language, okay? When you talk to a three-year-old about something important, you don't use terms like anthropomorphic, right?

You're not gonna help that little, and especially if it's very important, you might get down on one knee, look at him, I gotta hold his attention, and talk to this child in a way that he's going to understand you.

And what you say is true, it's true, and you say it in a way he can understand it. Now, someone else may sit back and analyze and say, hmm, and take the analogy too far. So what we're saying is, when God speaks to us, he's gonna speak in a way that we understand, and in a way that will be helpful for us to understand who he is.

So he chooses to talk about a throne because he wants us to know he's in charge and he's a king, he has all the power. He speaks to us about a right hand to let us know that he is strong and always ready to come to the defense of his people and always ready to judge wrong.

He speaks to us about his eyes so that we would know that he sees everything. Not the way that we see, and we have photoreceptive nerves in our head, but that he truly knows everything that's going on and sees everything that's going on.

And so he uses his language to tell us who he is. Now, why the male gender? God made us in his image. He made them male and female. In his own image, he made them. He brought them together in a family from the very beginning, and then has a lot to say in the scriptures about how husbands and wives are to love one another and how parents are to love their children and so on.

And when fathers are addressed throughout the scriptures, fathers are called to be what? Head, okay? Which is just something much the same. So when God talks about who a father is, talks about who a son ought to be, talking to us about who we are in our humanity, he will then also use analogous language drawn from those ideas to talk about himself, not to say that he's a physical father, but that he does have this role as a father in our lives, that he provides for us.

God causes his brain to follow the just and the unjust. As a creator, he provides. As God's creator, he owns everything, and he's in charge of everything. He has all authority, all power, like a father is to exercise authority.

And when we think about being a protector, God wants his children whom he loves, whom he has saved, to know that he protects them, that he shields them. So the language of father is very helpful. Now, you can't be a father unless you're a male.

Someone debated that today. You can't be a father unless you're a male, hence the male gender language. Also, a son, a faithful son, is important. So he is male. The Holy Spirit has the male gender because we have one God and three persons, the same essence, yet in three persons.

So we're gonna carry that male gender identification language all the way through. Perhaps most importantly, God refers to himself in the male gender because of the narrative of salvation. God made Adam and Eve in his own image.

Eve was deceived by the serpent and ate the fruit and gave some to her husband who was with her. Adam had been called to tend the garden and to keep it. He failed in his duties. He did not interrupt the snake, rip its head off and end the conversation, but he was responsible.

We know he was responsible, as we read in the scriptures, that there is Adam who was a type of him who was to come. And there's this new humanity that is promised in Christ as the second Adam. And again, you can't have a second Adam unless he's male.

Now, someone debated that today and I have no idea why. Now, you have Jesus Christ, God the Son, taking on human flesh and he came as a male. God was going to do that from the very beginning before he ever created.

He had just determined this in eternal counsel and before he created everything and before the incarnation, this was going to be the case, before any of the scripture was written for our benefit. So the male gender has to be there in order for there to be clarity in the gospel story.

So if we start getting rid of the male gender because of protests about its oppressive discourse and whatever else folks would like to say, then we're going to lose the storyline of the gospel. We lose the understanding of the special relationship between the Father and the Son, the headship of Christ versus the headship of Adam and we just start losing all sorts of things.

So I think that's why it's important, the gender language is ultimately man-shaped terms to help us better understand the gospel. Probably left some things out, so is there any other questions that popped up additionally?

Question James. Okay, anything else, anything else for discussion? Yes. Yes. What about the Trinity, the person of the Son? It's important to, we have the following understanding from the scriptures. The Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Father.

I was trying to select a hymn and there was a good oldie in here, but it says that the Father went away to prepare a place for us. The Son is not the Spirit and the Spirit is not the Son. And also the Spirit is not the Father and the Father is not the Spirit.

Three distinct persons. God, the Spirit is God, the Son is God. So when we think about the Trinity, we have to think the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God, God is one, but the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father.

That's a mystery, but it's not a contradiction, yet this is revealed to us, the truth about who God is revealed to us in the scriptures even though we have fathomed the depths of that. Now, let's think about Christ.

It was the Son who became incarnate. It was the Son. And the Son took upon human flesh. He did not cease to be a member of the Trinity. He did not end eternal fellowship with the Father and the Spirit when he took upon human flesh.

He is two natures in one person. So, fully God, fully man, two natures in one person, this is the hypostatic union, another mystery that we cannot help but think of when we think of the Trinity, we also must deal with the incarnation.

Now, in Revelation, we have language of Jesus Christ on the throne, the Lamb of God who is on the throne, but also doubled up with that language is the language of not just the Lamb, but the idea of God the Father.

We never see God the Father. For all the imagery in Revelation, we never see the Father, for he dwells in approachable light. God is spirit, God is light. You can't see him. And he expressly condemns any effort to make any kind of image representing him, the second commandment.

And so, this holds in special place the only one who has ever revealed God by way of an image, and that is Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time, but the only forgotten God who was with the Father, he has explained him.

And if we wanna know who God is, we look at Jesus Christ. Only see, we only see his human, his humanity. When John wrote 1 John, he said that we have seen him, we have touched him, we were there with him.

And even in the transfiguration, he is only seeing something that is still translated in a way that John can somehow grab hold of some kind of comprehension of who God is. And so, ultimately, because God is the spirit, God is sitting on the throne, and yet this is speaking of God, the Father, who doesn't have a body, and yet the Son is also sitting on the throne, as there is this unity together as the authority is being expressed from heaven.

The scriptures of God on his throne, or God with eyes, or God with a right arm, it's helpful to remember that this language, this human-shaped language, expresses better for us, helping us to understand who God is, but ultimately, the fulfillment of all the man-shaped language in all the scriptures, all the anthropomorphic language in the scriptures, is fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ, for he did take on human flesh, and he came down to our level as the full, perfect word of God to convey who God is to us.

And so, in the incarnation, we have the fulfillment of all that anthropomorphic language. Yes, 1 Samuel 2 .25, 1 Samuel chapter two, and verse 25. As we look at this portion of history in Israel, we're dealing with a time in which there is before the kings of Israel.

The Corrupt Priesthood of Eli and His Sons

It's a time when things are pretty bad because of the degradation of Israel throughout the history of the judges. Just how bad have things gotten? Well, the priesthood is in big trouble. The high priest, Eli, is fat.

This is a big problem. Priests didn't get fat because the fat was to be burned off and given to the Lord. Priests ate fairly lean, but Eli's sons are following their father's example, and they're not doing the sacrifices right.

He has no moral authority to tell them to stop because even though they are more corrupt than he is, he's still corrupt. So Eli and his sons are the corrupt priesthood, and it seems that there is no valuable leadership left in all of Israel.

Yes, because in chapter two, we find that Eli needs to rebuke his sons. In fact, his sons are guilty of stoning. They should be stoned to death because of their crimes. Eli was very old. Verse 22, he heard all that his sons were doing to old Israel, how they lay with the women who served at the doorway at the tent of meeting, and he said to them, why do you do such things, the evil things that I hear from all these people?

No, my sons, the report is not good, which I hear the Lord's people circulating. If one man sins against another, God will mediate for him, but if a man sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him?

But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for the Lord desired to put them to death, which is a light way of saying the same thing that the Bible says about God's approach to Pharaoh. Now in chapter three, Samuel, the little boy, receives a word from God.

He thinks it's Eli at first, we know the story, but finally God speaks to him, and what is sometimes left out of the Sunday school story is what exactly God said to Samuel. Sunday school story concludes with Samuel realizing that God was speaking to him, and how wonderful it is that you can hear God speaking to you if you just read your Bible, which is true, but what did God say to Samuel?

And this is what Samuel told Eli. Verse, well, verse 11, the Lord said to Samuel, behold, I'm about to do a thing in Israel at which both ears of everyone who hears it will tingle, and that they all will carry out against Eli, all that I have spoken concerning his house from beginning to end, for I have told him that I'm about to judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knew because his sons brought a curse on themselves and he did not rebuke them.

Therefore, I have sworn to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house should not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever. Well, that's what it says. Yeah, it's pretty harsh. So we want something else, don't we, when we see it?

We instinctively, surely there's a, where's, but then we hear, you know, Jesus himself said there is a kind of sin from which there is no coming back. And we have something like that here, don't we? The destruction of Eli's house, of course, happened when Eli, when Hopi and Phineas took the Ark of the Covenant out into battle like a superstitious good luck charm and then lost it to the Philistines.

And then Eli heard the news and he fell over and broke his neck and died. So Hopi and Phineas' wife, who gave birth to a son and died in naming him Ichabod, the glory of God is departed. There were still remnants of Eli's house that continued for some time, but soon they were all killed.

All priests of God were killed in Saul's day. He traced the line of Eli all the way to there where they were destroyed. So that's, what does it look like? Does it, I mean, it just, I mean, that's what it says.

And so we want something different. But it says, even back in, even back in chapter two, verse 25, they would not listen to the voice of their father for the Lord desired to put them to death. If the Lord desired that they repent, he would have given them the grace to repent.

Oh, with Judas. So it seems pretty clear that if God wanted it otherwise, it would have been otherwise, like Saul of Tarsus, right? Saul of Tarsus could finally be more opposed to Jesus Christ in the way of Christianity.

And there was no one more zealously against Jesus than Saul of Tarsus. And God interrupted his path ending. No, no, no, no, you're gonna stop doing that. And instead, you're gonna be an apostle for me.

So it doesn't look like there's any redemption for Eli in this case. And it didn't look like that way either for the Pharisees to whom Jesus was speaking. And they blasphemed the Holy Spirit. And it's a very, very sad passage when you find that, but you find that again and again.

Well, Gapodge Tavern, how about that? We were up in the hills of Arkansas. Beck and I were traveling, and we came around one of those hairpin curves and Astounding Grace Baptist Church. Yes, Ms. Wylene.

The Warning of Hebrews 6 and the Reality of Apostasy

Let's turn over to Hebrews six. This is another passage that talks about an irredeemable kind of person. And again, these are more frequent in the Bible than we would care to see. And yet God knows what we need.

These are severe mercies that we would read about them and be thoroughly warned. So in Hebrews six, and let's take a look at verse four. It says, for in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance since they again crucified themselves, son of God, and put him to an open shame.

For the ground that drinks the rain, which often falls on it, and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled receives a blessing from God. But if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed and it ends up being burned.

But beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you and things that accompany salvation though we are speaking in this way. So when you look at the litany of terms in verse four, and we talk about these terms of enlightened and tasted and partakers and again tasted, these are terms, again, used throughout Hebrews and throughout the New Testament in a way that is not exclusively of Christians.

Can also be used of non-Christians who are somehow blessed by the ministry of the church. But you can, this is the warning, you can be enlightened, you can have the light of the gospel shined on you.

You can be brought to an understanding of the gospel, the central information of who Christ is and what he did. In fact, he's the only mediator between God and man. You can taste of the heavenly gift of the Holy Spirit.

You can even be partakers of the Holy Spirit, not participants in his life, but partakers of the blessing of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church. In other words, you're in the splash zone of the Holy Spirit and you're getting some effects because of the goodness of the Holy Spirit, but you yourself are not born again.

This is all possible. You can taste the good word of God. You can have the word of God preached to you again and again and again. And that the powers of the age to come, you can taste of the power of the age to come, being blessed by all these people who are new creatures in Christ.

Old things have passed away, the old new things have come and you're a beneficiary of that because you're around them. And all these things being so, and then abandon all of it. Now fallen away. Yeah, that would include people who do that because they have an understanding of who he is and perhaps they have that facility with this spiritual language.

But it says if they've fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance. This is going to fall in line with what Christ said about the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit and what we find in terms of under the heading of apostasy.

Apostasy. Jesus assures us that of all the father gives him, he will not lose one and that no one can snatch us out of his hand. And 1 John says that in reference to this age in which we live and the spirit of antichrist growing, that those that many left, they went out from us, but they were not really of us.

For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us. But they all went out so that it would be shown that they were not of us. And so again and again, the scripture is clear. There is no idea of being born again, being saved, truly being a Christian and then not being a Christian anymore.

There's nothing in the Bible that says that, but there is a lot in the Bible that challenges us to consider whether or not, test yourself, examine yourself to see whether or not you're in the faith. We were told that.

Because it is dangerous. It can be very dangerous for people to be associated with Christians, participating in the life of the church and considering that to be good enough, right? Without, remember how many times did Jesus say something to these people who have been following him so passionately from place to place, risking themselves and even going hungry sometimes just so they could be around Jesus.

I mean, what devoted followers. And all of a sudden he says something and they go away, John 6, 66. And many of them, and many of his disciples departed and followed him no more. Because it's because the parable of the seeds is actually the parable of the soils.

But we call it the seeds, right? We do, the parable of the seeds. We instinctively call it that. That's kind of what we kind of think about, but it's actually the parable of the soils. And the difference is seen, the difference in the heart that is prepared by God versus the hearts that are of the flesh is very clear.

In chapter 10, verse 26. So in chapter 10 of Hebrews, in verse 26, it says, for if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins. Is that what you're talking about?

So the idea is the knowledge of the truth, obviously speaking about what the author of Hebrews has just talked about, the confession of our hope, talking about the blood of Jesus, this new and living way, which he inaugurated for us through the veil, that is his flesh.

We have this great high priest over the house of God. We have a mediator, he is our savior. And if this way, this knowledge of the truth is given to someone and they say, I'm gonna keep on doing what I'm doing because I wanna do that instead of trust in Christ.

Can this person, as they keep on sinning willfully and going their own way, are they gonna find some way to be saved down that path? Is there any salvation down that path of willful sin? No, Jesus Christ is still savior, but if they go on sinning willfully and never repent, are they ever gonna find some sort of salvation?

No, right, ultimately they rejected the message. It's misplacing. Blaspheming of the Holy Spirit has to do with what the Pharisees were doing was they were seeing the work of Christ who had been given the spirit without measure.

And he was casting out demons, he was healing people and so on and so forth. And the Pharisees said, this is the work of Satan himself. Okay, and so Jesus says that this, that there's no hope for them if that's the way, that if that's what they're gonna hold, that's what they confess.

There's no hope for them. Their heart is so far gone, right? Romans 1 talks about God turning folks over at a certain point, turning them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting.

And even though they know the judgment of God is upon those who do these things, they do them and celebrate others who do them as well. Once you're so far gone and you've rejected everything there is about, that's true, that's right.

Without repentance and faith, there is no salvation from sin. Unless someone turns away from themselves and turns to Christ, there is no salvation from sin. So you can turn to our church, you can turn to a new identity, you can turn over a new leaf and you can do all of that, but there is no salvation down a road of sin.

And that sin can be self-righteousness and that sin can be licentiousness. But if you go down the path of sin, instead of turning to Christ, there's no salvation down that path. And I think that that's a message that very often is difficult for us because after all here in the South, we believe in justification by death.

If my neighbor's name is Gary and he's an avid golfer and I go over and call him Fred and talk about fishing, am I talking to, is my neighbor Fred? Hey Fred, my name's Gary. How was fishing? I'm a golfer.

And people do that with Jesus all the time, right? Jesus is my ultimate permission to do whatever I want. Jesus is, you know, Jesus is my get out of hell free card or Jesus loves me and nothing ever bad will ever happen to me.

And they're not really dealing with who he is. Who is Jesus Christ, right? Okay, we are out of time. So let's close by singing the doxology.