What Was The Holy Spirit Doing Before Pentacost?

Bethlehem Bible Church

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March 23, 2014

00:01: Father in Heaven, we thank you for this day. We thank you for the time we have to rest in you here,
00:08: Father, as we're with the saints, as we're together as a body to worship you, to give and sing and learn from your
00:16: Word and learn all that Christ has done for us in redeeming us and saving us. We thank you for that.
00:21: We pray that you would bless this study here this morning. We pray that it would be edifying and helpful and that we learn more about the work of your
00:30: Holy Spirit throughout history. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. So we often hear about being known for what you are for rather than what you're against.
00:43: Obviously we talk about that a lot here and we know that you should be known for what you're for and what you're against.
00:49: And with the Strange Fire Conference and things like that, there was a lot of what we're against when it comes to the
00:56: Holy Spirit. So we also want to talk about what we're for and they did that and I want to do that here this morning and talk about the work of the
01:05: Holy Spirit throughout history. In particular, I titled this,
01:10: What Was the Holy Spirit Doing Before Pentecost? Was the Holy Spirit active? Was he doing anything? Because you hear things, and I'll get into that, where it kind of makes you stop and wonder what people's understanding of the text is and what people's understanding of the
01:27: Spirit's work throughout biblical history, redemptive history. So again, what was the
01:34: Holy Spirit doing before Pentecost? We all know that during Jesus's earthly ministry he promised to send his
01:40: Holy Spirit in some form, way, shape, or form. He was going to send the
01:46: Spirit. The verses are pretty familiar and I'm just going to read them quickly. We're not going to look them all up. We'll do plenty of looking up as we go through the study.
01:54: John 15, 26, Jesus said, But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the
02:00: Father, he will bear witness about me. Luke 24, 49, And behold,
02:05: I am sending the promise of my Father upon you, but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.
02:11: And again in Acts 1, 8, it says, But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all
02:18: Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And so just from these three verses, Jesus calls the
02:25: Holy Spirit the Helper. He says he's going to come from the Father. He calls him the Spirit of truth, that he'll lead you into truth.
02:34: He will undo the disciples with power from on high. Christ's followers will receive power. And after receiving the
02:40: Spirit, the disciples will take the good news of Christ to the ends of the earth. And so just from these three verses, you can build a pretty good theology of who the
02:48: Spirit is, what his work is, and eventually down the road, I'd like to explore that and talk about that.
02:55: But today we're going to talk about what he was doing before Pentecost, before Jesus sent the
03:00: Spirit. What was the Spirit doing? So was he doing anything?
03:08: Was he just the silent partner? And I think that's the silent partner of the Trinity. He was just kind of hanging out.
03:14: He was waiting for Pentecost, waiting to see what would happen. But no, he was actively at work.
03:20: And my highlights are hard to read here. But one thing that prompted me to study this is recently, and this has come both from people within BBC and people outside of BBC, recently
03:31: I've heard many comments. And tell me if you've heard any of these. You can raise your hand or not, or just kind of nod, and I'll see that.
03:40: They didn't have the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. Has everybody ever heard that? The Old Testament saints didn't have the
03:47: Holy Spirit. They didn't, okay. This is how I was taught growing up.
03:52: I grew up in a Pentecostal church, and so that's what we learned. The Holy Spirit, he would, they didn't have the
04:00: Holy Spirit. And so we can excuse behavior X, Y, Z in that certain Old Testament saint.
04:06: Jacob did that. Abraham did that. That's because they didn't have the Holy Spirit, you see. And is that correct?
04:13: Is that a correct understanding of, and we're going to talk about that. I don't know if it's today. I've got enough material probably for 10
04:19: Sunday schools, but we'll hopefully get there. Tell me also this one.
04:26: The Holy Spirit, he would come upon people. He would come upon them, but he wouldn't indwell them. He would come upon them for certain tasks, certain things to do.
04:33: He would swoop in. He would give some power so that a person could do some task, like designing the tabernacle, the two people.
04:41: God gave him his spirit to do this certain work, giftings to work with metal and gold and silver and things like that.
04:51: And also the judges. You'd see Samson and even Saul. The Spirit would come upon them and he would prophesy and do these great works.
05:00: So people have heard that as well, where the Holy Spirit was just upon people. He would come upon them for a certain task and then he would depart and he would be gone.
05:09: And so you have these two misunderstandings that I've heard quite a bit lately. And so that's kind of what prompted me to look more into it.
05:19: I think the Bible, the Old Testament as a whole, gives a much more full picture of who the Holy Spirit was, what he was doing, what he was up to, even from creation.
05:30: And I'm going to quote probably a controversial figure as we talk about the Holy Spirit. But he was very helpful as I prepared.
05:39: He did some helpful stuff. And if someone's the only one writing about a certain topic, then you got to use some of his material.
05:46: So John Piper said, prior to Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was not trapped in heaven. He wasn't just trapped there, not doing anything powerless to act to.
05:55: I mean, that's almost like a word faith thing. If you speak the words and give God entrance and entree into our realm here, then he can work.
06:04: Well, that's not the case. The Holy Spirit was always God. He was always sovereign. He was always working. He was always involved in humanity.
06:12: And so today we want to talk about what the Old Testament saints understood about the working of the
06:17: Spirit. How did the Old Testament saints experience him and understand him from revelation to that point?
06:25: And hopefully, again, down the road, I'd like to talk about what we see in the
06:30: Old Testament. But eventually I want to get into what's exclusive to the New Testament, to the new covenant of the
06:37: Holy Spirit's working, because we're going to see a lot of similarities and there's also differences. And so hopefully we'll get there eventually.
06:44: So what was the Holy Spirit doing before Pentecost? I'm going to give out verses. We're going to do a lot of verses.
06:49: So I want to have these prepared. So here's how we're going to work it. I have three verses in this first section. I want volunteers to read them.
06:55: Genesis 1, 1 and 2. Genesis 1, 1 and 2. The second one is
07:01: Deuteronomy 32, 11 and 12. Bruce? Isaiah 45, 18.
07:08: All right, Tom. And when I call on you, when I call on the verse, just if you could stand up and just read it nice and loud and so everybody can hear you and we're all on the same page.
07:18: All right. So first, before Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was upholding, ordering and filling creation.
07:25: He was upholding, ordering and filling creation. Number one, upholding creation.
07:32: Where do we first see the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament? First place we see him. Genesis 1, 2.
07:41: Right. So we're going to read that quickly. Okay.
07:57: Another book that was a source that was helpful. I read, actually read this yesterday. It was good.
08:02: The Mystery of the Holy Spirit. Very good book by R .C. Sproul. Definitely worth the read and talking about the
08:09: Spirit's work in all of redemptive history and creation included. So R .C.
08:15: Sproul, in this book, he remarks that some scholars, the main verb here is hover.
08:20: The Spirit was hovering over the face of the waters.
08:26: So what does hover is also means brood. Some people I guess have called this the brooding, the divine brooding of the
08:36: Spirit is how some commentators have put it. And R .C. Sproul quotes that. What does brood mean?
08:41: I had to look it up because I know what I think of brood. Is Vincent here? He would know what brood means. Who has an idea what brood means?
08:53: Cover like a chicken. The cover like a chicken. It's a chicken sitting on his eggs.
08:59: They're brooding. Right. And so that's what they mean, the divine brooding that the Holy Spirit was sitting there. He was covering.
09:05: God says, creates the heavens and the earth. And he is brooding like a chicken waiting for its egg to incubate and hatch.
09:15: But that's not the exact sense. Good answer. So is that what the
09:23: Holy Spirit was doing? Was he brooding? God creates the heavens and the earth.
09:29: And is he just kind of sitting and waiting for something to happen? Sproul doesn't agree with that sense of the word brood.
09:37: And he quotes two other instances in the Old Testament. I'll read the first one where it talks about, it uses the word hover.
09:46: It's only used two other times in the Old Testament. The first one is in Jeremiah 23 .9. And Jeremiah says concerning, or God says through Jeremiah, concerning the lying prophets, my heart is broken within me, all my bones shake.
10:00: The word shake is actually the same word for brood. And so you don't see kind of this inactive, passive, waiting for something to happen.
10:08: It would seem weird to say that my bones brood, especially in this context.
10:14: And so it's translated shake or tremble. They're shaking. The other time we hear this is in the next verse that I threw out there,
10:24: Deuteronomy 32 .11 -12. Deuteronomy 32 .11 -12. Can someone explain what's being described in this verse?
10:48: What is God saying in this verse? Well, Moses, what's being described here?
10:56: Well, protection. What's a key word we see in this? You do have the spreading out of its wings, bearing up, holding up, bearing them on its pinions.
11:09: All right. So as a mother bird teaching the eagle, teaching the baby eagle to fly.
11:17: I mean, if he saw the eagle faltering, whatever, he'd bear them up, hold them up as they would falter.
11:25: And so that's what we're seeing here in the song of Moses here in Deuteronomy 32. It's talking about what
11:31: God did for Israel in the wilderness, bearing them along and actively guided. The Lord alone guided him.
11:37: No foreign God was with him. God led them through the wilderness. God bore them up and took them.
11:43: And so that's what's being described here. It doesn't sound like a passive brooding. I'm waiting for something to happen.
11:49: So in the two other instances used here in the Old Testament, it's an active working of something, someone, you know, bone shaking, you know, the word here is flutters.
12:02: So again, the idea is bearing up the mother eagle, bearing up its young, something like that.
12:11: Sproul quotes somebody, a theologian, a scholar who had a lengthy quote on this, and I'll read it just because I think it's helpful in describing what's going on.
12:20: It says, what then is the purpose of this hovering of the Spirit of God over the waters? It is obvious that it does not indicate a mere presence of the
12:27: Holy Spirit. The purpose, apparently, is that an active power goes forth from the Spirit of God to the earth substance that has already been created.
12:35: This activity has a direct relationship to God's creative work. Perhaps we can say that the
12:41: Spirit preserves this created material and prepares it for the further creative activity of God, by which then disordered world would become a well -ordered whole as the further creative acts unfold.
12:54: So he gives that. And then I think Sproul gives one of the best illustrations I've ever heard. And here's another chance for you guys to help me because I am not a musician.
13:03: And this one is for the musicians or maybe the gun enthusiasts. What does staccato mean?
13:11: Sharp. So like my daughter did a staccato for me. Is this staccato? Something like that.
13:20: Quick sharp. Okay. All right. Staccato. So a quick firing.
13:27: And then he gives another word. Sproul uses sustenuto. I guess that's
13:33: Italian. Is that sustained? So what would that sound like?
13:42: Kind of like holding the note. So the picture he's giving, he says, the creation, the
13:51: Holy Spirit is not just waiting for God to act. He's not just waiting for day one, let there be light.
13:58: Separate the waters above from the waters below. You know, vegetation, fish, birds.
14:05: It's not just duk, duk, duk, duk, duk. And the Holy Spirit is just waiting for it to happen. Instead, the picture he gives, if I may, you have the spirit and God creating in the whole time, the spirit bearing up, holding up creation as God does his creative work is as things are brought into existence.
14:26: He speaks the light into creation. I don't know that maybe that was more helpful for me than you, but that's the idea that it's giving the whole time the spirit sustaining, sustaining creation, holding it up, bearing it up as the eagle would bear up its young with its pinions, with its wings.
14:46: And the whole time God creating again, let there be light, waters above, waters beneath, and just goes through the creation order and the whole time the spirit working and holding things together.
15:02: So now one thing, and I'm not the only one, I think
15:07: Sproul kind of agreed and some different scholars that agreed. When you think of creation, when
15:13: God creates the earth and the heavens, the earth stuff and the heaven stuff that we see in Genesis 1 .1,
15:21: was it just absolute chaos? I'm not a Hebrew scholar, but I also don't think
15:29: God just created a mess necessarily. I don't think that's the idea we get.
15:35: And so in the spirit, we know as a spirit of order and harmony and not in the spirit of confusion or anything like that.
15:44: And so what again, Sproul and some other commentators said is that Genesis 1 .2,
15:52: it says the earth, it was formless and empty and dark. And those words are scary to us.
15:59: When I think dark, I was scared of the dark as a child. I was terrified.
16:05: I would cover my head. I was afraid of the dark. Somebody else in my house does that now.
16:12: I would cover my head. I was scared of the dark. And when we think empty, we think lonely, like nothing was happening.
16:19: You're by yourself, you're to your thoughts, you're introspective. And so we see these words and we think formless, empty, dark, this was awful.
16:29: Well, that's not the case. I mean, God was there. God was always self -sustaining.
16:34: He didn't need anyone. He didn't need anything. He was completely content and completely happy before any of us were here, before any creation was made.
16:43: God was content. He didn't need to create anything, but he did for his glory and for his purposes.
16:51: So we shouldn't think chaos and we shouldn't think, does anyone know what gap theory is? I never heard of this.
16:57: I actually used to think about this and somewhat believe this, but what's gap theory?
17:03: Pastor Steve? One way that I heard it was that there was a gap between Genesis 1 .1,
17:12: in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. So he creates all the earth's stuff, all the heaven's stuff, and it just sits there.
17:19: And then we see a gap between verse 1 and verse 2. And in that time, maybe
17:26: Satan fell, Satan sinned against God in heaven. He fell to the earth and confusion reigned, chaos reigned.
17:36: But the dinosaurs, death, all that stuff happened in the gap.
17:41: That's the way I heard it presented once. And so from Genesis 1 .1 to Genesis 1 .2, you have this period.
17:48: Well, it's a silly theory, I think, and it doesn't really fit with the redemptive story of the Bible. We read in Romans 5, sin came into the world through one man and death through sin.
17:59: So sin and its effect, death and everything, it came because of Adam's fall, man's fall into sin, not
18:07: Satan's fall from heaven. That's the way it was presented to me. And so that's why
18:14: I look at it as, no, this stuff, death and that sort of thing didn't come because Satan fell out of heaven.
18:20: It came because man fell into sin. And so again, it doesn't really fit into the creative order we read and just redemptive history of the
18:29: Bible. We don't see any of that. So anyway, that's another. Yes.
18:48: Yeah, maybe God. Again, the way I heard it explained years ago was that, just the gap between 1 .1
18:54: and 1 .2. And then you also have the ideas of gaps between the days. Maybe between day one and day two was eons and eons and you had the primordial stew there and things were being formed and the waters were there and then
19:08: God decided to jump in and let there be light. Let's divide the waters from the waters, the waters above and the waters beneath.
19:15: So there's that idea too, that these incalculable eons of time were happening between each day of creation as things evolved and things, again, we don't go for that and we don't think that is biblical.
19:29: That is, I guess that's one way to hit the reset button.
19:53: You blew in the Nintendo game. And I mean, this is a controversial thing right now.
20:00: And Pastor Steve just had an IPS class discussing one particular well -known pastor scholar today who supports a different reading of Genesis as well as poetry, that this is just a poetic account of what happened.
20:15: And you know, there's no evidence for that. And you can just put scholars on, if you put them on a scale, it would just poof, that no, if you believe scripture, if you believe what it says, then there was morning, there was evening, the second day.
20:29: There was morning, evening, the third day. This is a narrative. This is God telling what happened.
20:36: But anyway, that's a little detour off of what we're talking about, about the Spirit upholding creation and also ordering creation.
20:45: And so you see God in verse 1, God creates the heavens, he creates the earth, he creates out of nothing.
20:52: From nothing there's something. All the stuff there, heavens and earth, is there waiting to leap into its fullness,
21:02: I guess, of what God was going to do with it. I don't think it was chaos necessarily. I don't think it was out of something, out of control.
21:10: It was God bringing to existence the heavens, the earth, all of creation. And then he would move and make...
21:17: Let's read Isaiah 45, 18. How about that one? 45, 18. So God created the world and he formed it to be inhabited by man.
21:25: And when he created the heavens and the earth, he put all the earth and heaven stuff out there. He was going to move that into the direction it was going to be inhabited by men and by animals and plants.
21:34: And it's just going to be this flowering creation, beautiful in everything he did.
21:39: It was all good. He pronounced it all good as each day passed. And so God created the world.
21:45: He formed it into a habitable place, a place suitable for man to live. And the Spirit the whole time, as we're talking, he's bearing it up.
21:53: He's holding it up by his power and sustaining all that was being created. And the final point here in point 1 is he was filling creation.
22:04: And this is a quick one. Again, we see in Genesis 1, 2, it's a formless and empty and dark universe that started out, but it certainly didn't finish that way.
22:15: And God was still working and bringing something to existence. He says... I'll turn to Sproul and just read the quote that I have here.
22:23: It says, the Holy Spirit fills what is empty. He conquers the void. When his work is finished, the once lonely universe is teeming with a plethora of flora and fauna.
22:31: The barren wasteland becomes a pulsating arena of life. So God populates his entire creation with just beautiful things, wonderful things as he creates.
22:41: And the heavens declare the glory of God. And all that he created was good. And so we see the
22:47: Spirit again in creation. He is ordering it, he's filling it, and he's upholding it.
22:55: Does anyone have any questions about 1A, 1B, 1C? All right.
23:06: Number two, before Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was giving and sustaining life. So we've got a bunch of more verses again, same thing.
23:14: If you volunteer for the verse, when it's time, I'll call on you, stand up and read it loud. Genesis 2, 7. Anyone want to read
23:21: Genesis? Mark. Okay. Job 33, 4. Matt. Genesis 6, 3.
23:28: Brad. Psalm 104, 27 through 30. Joel.
23:36: And the last one, Isaiah 32, 14, and 15. All right. This makes you guys listen.
23:44: Now you got to... 32, 14, and 15. Isaiah. Now you got to listen, you got to wait for your turn. So at least
23:49: I have five captive people. All right. Genesis 2, 7.
23:55: Stand up and read Genesis 2, 7. All right.
24:08: So God forms man out of the dirt. He brings forth some sort of life form here, but then it doesn't become a living creature until God breathes into it the breath of life.
24:21: And Sproul, again, we're going to go to him. He says, we see in this passage that man receives life as a result of God breathing life into him.
24:28: He says there's a play on the Hebrew word ruach. This word can be translated as breath or spirit.
24:35: The breath of life is inseparably bound to the Holy Spirit. It is by the Holy Spirit that men become living beings.
24:41: So he's saying there's kind of a double meaning here where, yes, it means breath, but it also means a living spirit.
24:48: God's giving him life. And so he takes this formation that he made out of dirt, breathes into it life, and he becomes a living being.
24:57: So we see a similar idea elsewhere in Scripture. Job's friends generally had a decent grasp on theology, but they had a lot of trouble with application.
25:08: In Job 33, 4, Elihu speaks. Who has Job 33, 4? All right.
25:21: And so that's true about God, right? He gives us all life. And it says here the
25:26: Spirit of God. Here we see clearly the Spirit is creative and life -giving power at work.
25:33: He's the Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life. He not only creates, but he gives life and sustains.
25:41: And finally, Genesis 6, 3. Genesis 6, 3.
25:57: All right. Thanks, Rick. Does anyone have the King James Version of that? Gary, why don't you?
26:22: Okay. So my understanding when I was growing up, I'd read that. We used the King James Version in my house, in my church.
26:29: And so it sounds a little more broken apart.
26:35: It says, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh, colon.
26:42: Yet his days shall be 120 years. Whereas the ESV, as we read, it said, The Lord said,
26:47: My spirit shall not abide with man forever, for he is flesh. His days shall be 120 years. It flows a little better.
26:53: And so you don't get this idea that it's several ideas going in there. It's one thought.
26:59: And so I always took this to mean, from reading the King James, that God's patience would run out.
27:05: And I think there is an element of that where he's about to send the flood on the earth.
27:11: He's going to flood the entire earth and destroy all humankind. So yeah, there's an element that his patience is running out.
27:16: But as I read this, as I studied it, there's also a connection to the last chapter.
27:23: What happens in Genesis 5? What do we read in Genesis 5? What do we have there? Right. So we have the descendants of Adam and God in the garden.
27:39: He told Adam and Eve, what would happen if they ate the fruit? They would surely die.
27:46: And so it took a while for that to come to fruition. And maybe they thought they kind of skirted past that.
27:51: But we read in chapter 5, the refrain is, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died.
27:59: So God promised that they would bring death, and they did indeed bring death. But what else do we see?
28:04: As we read through that genealogy, what else do we see about those people? What's something that's noteworthy?
28:13: Hundreds of years. They're living for a long, long time. I mean, what did Methuselah live to? 969 years.
28:23: He's the oldest recorded person in the Bible. And so we have these two things.
28:30: People did die. God's promise fulfilled. It took longer than maybe
28:35: Adam and Eve. Maybe they were thinking certain death, and they thought, again, maybe they skirted through that. But God would bring about his promise, and they died.
28:43: All his descendants died. We don't have anybody living that Adam fathered or grandfathered or anything else.
28:49: They're all dead. And so God kept his promise. And so one commentator
28:55: I read wrote this. He says, the inference of such an arrangement of the narrative is that it was God's spirit dwelling with these men that gave them their long lives and not their own flesh.
29:05: He says, my spirit won't dwell with you forever. Their years are going to be 120 years. You saw they were living to be 900, 800, 700.
29:13: But my spirit's not going to dwell forever. Your days will be 120 years. And even that took a while to come to fruition.
29:19: We see saints still living for a couple hundred years thereafter. And certainly we don't know anyone that old today.
29:27: But God at that point, the Holy Spirit was sustaining those people.
29:35: He was giving them life. And then God in Genesis 6, he kind of reins it back, and he says, no,
29:41: I'm going to withdraw these long lives. I'm withdrawing my spirit. The days will be 120 years.
29:49: And again, I'll read a quote here from John Piper. Again, he wrote a lot about this. So I hope you share this worldview with the
29:59: Old Testament saints, namely that you're... So let me back up. Got ahead of myself.
30:04: So you see God's Holy Spirit sustaining life, sustaining people, sustaining them for hundreds of years.
30:10: And then when he decides that he's going to withdraw his spirit and they're going to live only 120 years, it's the spirit that would be withdrew, the spirit in the man that would be taken back.
30:21: And then John Piper, he gives a great application. So I know it's almost devotional here.
30:26: He says, I hope you share this worldview with the Old Testament saints, namely that your conception as a person in your mother's womb was a sovereign act of creation by God's spirit.
30:37: And that every breath you take now and every chemical transaction in the cells of your body is sustained every moment by the work of the
30:43: Holy Spirit. Excuse me. The world sees a mechanical process of evolution and natural selection, but the
30:52: Christian ought to see the creative imaginative work of God's spirit. And every breath you take ought to be a prayer of thanks that you live and move and have your being in the spirit of God.
31:02: And so he says, we see clearly here in Genesis that God gives his spirit. And when he rains it back, that men's lives are shorter, um, as a result.
31:11: And so that should lead us to worship and to think that everything that happens, every chemical process, every, uh, firing, uh, neuron here in our brain, everything that happens, every movement we make, um, should remind us that we're
31:26: God's creation. He's he's actively upholding us. He's caring for us and taking care of for taking care of us.
31:33: So I think that's a good, good application. Good thing to think about as we think about the spirit's work in our lives that, uh, you know, apart from the spirit, there is no life apart from the spirit.
31:42: We're not sustained. Um, let's read two more quick verses. Uh, Psalm 104, 27 through 30,
31:48: Psalm 104, 27 through 30. All right. Who's the day here in some, who's he talking about?
31:56: Not only humans, but all of creation, all plants and animals. He specifically mentioned creatures and, and plants in the previous verses in Psalm 104.
32:06: So we see that the Holy spirit, not only upholding men and giving them life, but all upholding all of creation.
32:14: It says in verse 30, when you send forth your spirit, they are created and you renew the face of the ground. So the spirit creating and renewing, uh, creation seasons and times pass.
32:24: And, and we always have God's creation with here, you know, in, in all its beauty and certainly fallen and whatnot, but the
32:32: Holy spirit still sustaining it and given life. And finally, Isaiah 32, 14 and 15.
32:38: All right. This is a prophecy about, uh, complacent women in the Isaiah warning, uh,
32:47: God warning the, the complacent women through Isaiah, what would the doom that would befall them for their complacency. But here, even in this prophecy, we see the spirit being poured out, renewing, uh, creation, the wilderness becomes a fruit field and the fruit field is deemed a forest.
33:02: And so, uh, the spirit given life to all animals, plants, humans, everything that exists, the spirit upholds and sustains its life.
33:11: It's the end of point two, any questions, comments, thoughts, things
33:16: I missed, probably missed a lot. Anyone. All right.
33:25: Number three. So number one, we have the Holy spirit active in creation to, uh, giving life, sustaining life.
33:32: Number three, before Pentecost, the Holy spirit was abiding with his people before Pentecost.
33:39: The Holy spirit was abiding with his people. And going back to what we said in the beginning where we've probably all heard it.
33:46: They didn't have the Holy spirit in the old Testament. They did. He came upon him, but he wasn't with them. He didn't abide with them.
33:51: Well, we see clearly on the old Testament. That's not the case. Psalm 139, seven through 10, Psalm 139, seven through 10,
33:58: Gary, and then Psalm 51, 11, Psalm 51, 11, Matt, Gary, why don't you find that?
34:07: And you can stand up and read it. So what do we read here? What I know
34:13: I get comfort from this verse, these verses and Psalm 139 is very well known. Um, we see even an old
34:20: Testament saint like David or David wrote this, an old Testament saying, writing this, he says, where shall
34:26: I go from your spirit? Your spirit is everywhere. We can be not everywhere you want to be, but everywhere you can be is the spirit.
34:34: Even if I make my bed and shield, you are there. If I take the winds of the morning, the uttermost parts of the sea see at that time, you think fearful, dark depths, you know, they didn't see the sea as we see it as maybe
34:45: Columbus saw it as an opportunity. They saw it as, as maybe a frightful thing, but even there,
34:51: God's spirit was with them. It was abiding with them, giving them hope, giving them comfort. And just like it would comfort him, it should comfort us because the spirit abides with us.
35:03: We can rest secure that no matter what harm may come to us, uh, whatever happens is it's, it's only permitted by his sovereign hand.
35:11: He brings anything to pass in our lives, but we know that the spirit is there with us. He's abiding with us.
35:17: That's the comfort we have. And that's the comfort they had that the spirit was with them.
35:23: And they were having questions about, okay.
35:29: Psalm 51, 11, Psalm 51, 11. Okay.
35:39: So Psalm 51, we know happened when he was written, when David sinned with Bathsheba and killed
35:51: Uriah. So David is, this is a prayer of confession that David writes and very heartfelt.
36:00: I mean, you know, he, he truly repented. I mean, what does it say in the story when we read the account of David and Bathsheba, David did what after Nathan confronted him with his sin, finally bringing down conviction.
36:12: What did, what did David do? Right. But where, where did he go?
36:18: What did he do? He found out Bathsheba was what she's pregnant and she was going to have a baby.
36:24: What happened to the baby? It died, but it didn't die for how many days?
36:30: It was three days, right? David prayed and fasted and, and, and repented before God.
36:36: And just hoping that maybe God would relent and spare the child and truly penitent, truly confessing his sin before God.
36:46: And some people take this to mean, you know, we know that God gave an anointing. He gave a kingly anointing to certain men in the
36:54: Old Testament to Saul had a kingly anointing and God withdrew that anointing when Saul sinned. And some people take this to mean that David was praying, don't, don't withdraw your spirit like you did to Saul.
37:05: Don't do that to me. And I, I don't see that.
37:10: I see a very heartfelt prayer, a very personal prayer, not, but to you, you only before you and you only have,
37:17: I sinned. He's not worried about what's happening over here. What's happening over there. Yeah. He knew he sinned against Bathsheba.
37:22: Yes. He knew he sinned against Uriah, but ultimately his sin was against God and he was praying to God for forgiveness.
37:30: He wasn't worried about even his kingship. I don't think at that point, I think what he was worried about, he was, he had sinned so grievously.
37:38: I mean, think, think about the premeditation. He decides, you know, who, who knows how long this sin was birthing in David's heart as he's on the top of his palace.
37:49: I don't think that was the first time he noticed a Bathsheba. I heard a sermon about this the other day that women, pretty women, they, they bathed all the time.
37:59: Pretty women smell nice. You know, that's, that's what this pastor was saying. And so she probably bathed all the time and I'm sure
38:05: David noticed her before and maybe he dismissed it. Maybe he thought a little bit about it, but eventually that gave birth to sin where he, he desired her so much that he did what he did.
38:15: And just think of the premeditation, the suppressing the Holy Spirit as he tries to convict you of the sin.
38:22: I mean, we've all been there where, you know, something is wrong. You know, you should run, you know, you should walk away.
38:28: You should forget about it, but you let that sin take hold and still do what you know you shouldn't do.
38:35: And just think, not sure I would. Yeah.
38:41: I don't know. Does anyone have a sense of that was Psalm 51 versus Psalm 139, which was written first?
38:50: Yeah. So Peggy's saying that if a man who had written that, where, where can I go from your presence?
38:58: And did David write? Yeah. Psalm of David, Psalm 139. So a man that says, where can I go from your presence yet still willfully and grievously sins like this.
39:08: And so you, you wondered what, which was written first, and that's a good question and something certainly to look into, but the
39:16: Psalm seems so personal. And it just seems that after Nathan's rebuke, you see this sorrow and contrition and the child being born to Bathsheba and dying.
39:25: And you just have to wonder, it's more than just God taking this kingly anointing away from David.
39:31: You see more David just wanting to be right with God against you. And you only have, I sin. He's pleading for God's forgiveness and a restoration of relationship.
39:39: He, he has a, a sense that the Holy spirit he's grieved him. He, it might, it might even still save Shirley's struggling with assurance at this point, the cold calculated nature of his sin, ignoring all the spirits warnings.
39:54: And now here's David pleading for the spirits. Don't take your spirit.
40:00: Don't, don't even make me feel that way. I want the spirit's presence in my life. So in the old
40:06: Testament, as with the new type believers, you, once God saved you, he sealed you. He, you won't lose your salvation, but sometimes it may feel like we, we have, we've lost our salvation.
40:17: Maybe we send it away. Maybe we so grieve the Holy spirit with our sin. And each time we come to repentance, we should feel that grief.
40:24: And David felt it here. And there was a tangible sense of the Holy spirit's presence and indwelling and conviction in the old
40:33: Testament saints. And we shouldn't really think otherwise. So I'm going to stop there.
40:40: I got more. I want to talk about next time I get the opportunity. We'll talk about regeneration in the old
40:47: Testament. How does God save people in the old Testament? Is it the same as in the new Testament? But today we learned about creation.
40:54: We learned about the spirit's abiding presence in the believer's life. Does anyone have any questions, anything to add observations?
41:04: Talks, I believe that that's Thessalonians, correct? Where God talks about where Paul talks about the restrainer, the one restraining evil was that correct
41:13: Thessalonians? So yeah, I mean, he's in, in relation to upholding, he's also restraining evil.
41:21: He's in control. You know, even, even the most evil person you can think of Hitler and Stalins and Pharaohs and all these wicked men through the ages, they weren't sinning beyond what the restrainer allowed them.
41:34: You know, even, even at that time, God was restraining evil. They weren't as evil as they could have been.
41:40: Any other comments before we pray? And I hope that was helpful.
41:46: And I don't know, maybe I was more excited about it than, than you, but I, you know, especially reading about God upholding creation by his spirit, that was, it's great to think about that God is always present, always upholding us, always giving us life.