Before I start on that, I want
to kind of take a few minutes and review where we've been,
what we've dealt with up to this point. The first thing we did,
we looked at God's book, God's blessed Bible, God's Word. You know, we have to have an
authority in this world. And this book is God's revelation
of Himself. And we've seen that it's infallible,
that it's God-breathed, and it's the final authority. Either it
has to be the final authority, or we have to be the final authority.
It sets in judgment on us, or we set in judgment on it. And
that's why we believe, I believe, and we believe, that the Bible,
the Word of God, ever jot and tell, belongs to God. It's what God says to us that's
in this book. And we asked, why did he give
his word? Well, he gave his word to make
man know that there's no hope, to show him that he has no hope
in man. What is man that they're mindful
of him? A science, a philosophy. He gave us his blessed book to
reveal his way of salvation, his way of redemption, of how
he saved sinners through the Lord Jesus Christ. And us, as
God's blessed children, we bow down to this Word. We bow to
this Word, and we receive it as it is indeed the Word of God.
Paul said it, you receive it as it is indeed the Word of God.
And that's what we do. We come confessing our ignorance.
Our ignorance of God, our ignorance of ourself, our ignorance of
the Book, our inability that we don't have the ability to
even understand it if God don't give us understanding. We don't
have the ability to To know ourselves, if God don't make us know ourselves.
And we come to this blessed book, confessing our ignorance and
our inability, and we come to learn of God, of Christ and ourselves,
and the salvation. Then secondly, what we've done,
as we took a while to do that, we looked at God's nature. We
looked at God's nature. What's His nature? Everything
has a nature. Well, God's nature, It's not
like our nature. His nature is holy. That's His
very nature. His nature is love, and His nature
is self-existent, and we're not. And if we looked at His character,
what His character is, He's holy, high, lifted up, cannot lie,
He's immutable. We looked at all of His attributes.
His works in creation. You know, He created the world.
Not only created the world, He created angels, elect angels,
even Satan. I mean, everything that exists,
God created it. And you know, they fell from
their first estate, but He did it. And we looked especially
at His creation of man. Dealt with that pretty good.
Why? And, oh, beloved, then we see the being of God. The being
of God. Where did God come from? What's
his being like? What is he himself like? What's
his existence like? Does he exist before? Where did
he come from? How did he come into existence?
What is his being? How does he exist right now?
When you can't see him, when you can't touch him, when he
dwells in a life that no man can approach unto, And we see
about His being that there's three Persons in the Godhead.
God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the Blessed
Trinity. And all three of them, all three of them, are responsible
for our salvation. All three of them. And then we
came to what God teaches about man. What God teaches about man. We have to come after Him with
God, we come to man. Why is man like he is? Why is man, why is our children
like they are? Why are we like we are? Why do
we pray for our children? Why do we pray for these little
boys and little girls? What is wrong with the human
race? Why is it you don't never teach
anybody to lie? You don't teach your children
to lie. You don't teach them to steal. You don't teach them to
show disrespect. You don't teach them to take
drugs. You don't teach them to hate God. And yet, beloved, every
man born into this world by nature, that's what he is. So why is
he like he is? Why is the world like it is?
We ask those questions. And the Bible gives us the answer. And the only answer it gives
us is S-I-N. And where did S-I-N come from? Where did sin come from? Well,
God made man upright, and He made him in His own image. So
what in the world happened to him from going and being in the
image of God until he went so far down that he became an enemy
of God, enmity in his heart toward God, became one who would hide
from God and lie to God and lie on his wife and lie on everybody.
Oh, he failed. He lost it all. He believed the devil's lie instead
of the truth of God. And then we come to the doctrine
of salvation. Oh, thank God for salvation.
And how salvation was is by and through a person, the Lord Jesus
Christ. And what that person did, the
work that the Lord Jesus did. First of all, we look at His
person. Two nations and one person. This
is one of the most mysterious, glorious truths that any human
mind has ever thought of, is how did God Eternal God can come
down here and become a man, and when he becomes a man, he does
not cease to be God. All that God is, with all the
attributes of God, the power of God, the glory of God, the
will of God, and yet at the same time inhabit a human body and
come into this world as a baby, could be held in one hand by
its mother. and grew up. And once he became
a man, he never ceased to be a man. And now we have a God
in glory and a man in glory, and one person, Jesus Christ.
Two distinct persons, you know, two distinct natures, and yet
one person. What a mystery. What a mystery. And then His work as our Redeemer,
as our mediator. And then we looked at him as
prophet, the one who would teach us, because we're so ignorant.
He has to teach us of God, teach us of his word, teach us from
his word. And then his priesthood. And as a priest, he had to offer
something. And the offering that he made
was himself. He offered his sacrifice of himself.
He poured out himself. And then that atoning death,
he did it once, for I put away sin once. He entered into the
holy place once. He obtained eternal redemption
once. He sanctified us once. And He did it once for all. And
it was as a substitute for His people. And then we looked at
Him as a King. The King of kings and Lord of
lords, and then His kingdom. And now let's look at the person
of the Holy Spirit. Here our Lord Jesus said here
in John 14, 16, He said, I will pray the Father. And He shall
give you another comforter, because He's going to go away. And you
notice how that's capitalized. That's a name that He may abide
with you forever. Even the Spirit. The Spirit's
capitalized. Talking about the Holy Spirit.
Whom the world cannot receive, because it can't see Him. It
doesn't see Him. Neither knows Him. But you know
Him. For He dwelleth with you and
shall be in you. Now, I was talking to a dear
preacher friend today, and I was telling him about this, and he
said, Oh my, you know, there is so little known about him,
so little talked about him, and there is very little known about
the person of the Holy Spirit, about his work. And some reasons
why, and one of the main reasons why is because men and those
of us that are preachers and don't deal with it very much
is because of the way he is represented in such a false way and in such
a false manner. You know, he's presented as a
way of Pentecostals preaching and the way others preaching,
you know, he's it's all based in emotions. When the spirit
comes, he's always stirring up emotions. And so whenever people
think there isn't any emotions, you've got the Pentecostals,
they speak in tongues, you ain't got the polygons unless you're
speaking in tongues. And you know, wherever he comes,
he gets your emotions all stirred up. He'll bring tears to your
eyes and all that. And he brings signs and he brings
miracles. And so they're looking for all
this hoopla and all this great manifest power. And oftentimes,
that's just the wrong way. It's a wildfire. It's a wildfire.
And that's why a lot of people don't deal with the Holy Spirit.
And there's some people who do not even believe that the Holy
Spirit is no more than just an influence. But we need to know
what the Scriptures teach about the Spirit of God. You see, the
Holy Spirit is the one who takes the salvation that Christ accomplished,
and he applies that to us. We would know nothing about the
gospel. We'd know nothing about Christ. We'd know nothing about
calling. We'd know nothing about faith.
We'd know nothing about repentance. We'd know nothing about the Bible.
Nothing about Christ if the Holy Ghost didn't apply it to us.
Didn't apply to us. And you know, and let me show
you this too. Look over to Luke 11 through
13 with me just a moment. And here's a gift to us. You
know, our Lord Jesus said, I'll pray the father and he'll send
the Holy Spirit. And when Peter was on the day
of Pentecost, he says, this is the promise that Christ gave
the spirit that Christ promised when he said on high that he
would send from the father. And then Luke 11, 13, look what
it says here. If you then, being evil, know
how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall
your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask
him? We need the Holy Spirit. We need
Him desperately. We need Him to keep us We need
Him to guide us. We need Him to teach us. We need
Him to preserve us. We need Him to comfort us. And
I'll deal with all those things, but we'll start this study of
the person of the Holy Spirit. And He is a person. And His work
by looking at some of the names and the descriptive titles that's
given to him. He has given certain names, and
there's descriptive titles that's given, like Comforter. That's
a descriptive term. That's a title, and it describes
a work that he does. He said, I'll send another Comforter. I'll bring you comfort. John
leaned on the breast of the Lord Jesus Christ. Mary set at his
feet. He sat at the table and ate with
a lot of his disciples. He don't go away. You won't be
able to lean on my breast anymore." But he said, I'll send another
comforter. And that's one of the descriptive
titles of the Holy Spirit. But many names, many names relate
him, first and foremost, to the Father. In Genesis 1-2, you remember
where God says that He said, you know, God created the heavens
and the earth, and the earth was without form, and the earth
was without void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep,
and the Spirit of God moved upon the water. And that's what the
darkness upon the face of our souls and void, and that the
Holy Spirit moves on that darkness, moves on that voidness. And our
Lord Jesus Christ, when He started His public ministry, He says
that out of Isaiah 61, the Spirit of the Lord hath anointed me. He said, I'm standing here today,
and I'm standing here, the Spirit of the Lord, God, Jehovah, hath
anointed me. And our Lord Jesus says, and
when you're brought before councils, and you're brought before men,
He said, don't even think about what you're going to say. He
said, the Spirit of my Father will give you what to say. Paul, he talked about the Corinthians
being letters written, not with ink on tables, but he said, with
the Spirit of God on the hearts, your letters written by the Spirit
of the Living God. How do you know that your manifest,
your letter, and listen, he didn't write you, you wasn't written
on stone tablets, but the Holy Ghost came, and by the Spirit
of the Living God, He made you letters, wrote on you, made you
legible, and made you seen to be children of God. And then Galatians 4, 6 says
this, that God has set forth the spirit of his son into your
hearts, into your hearts. And then, you know, when he sent
Ananias and Sapphire, they went and sold a bunch of stuff and
they thought, well, we're going to keep back this part and we'll
take so much and give it to the church. They'll think, boy, we're
really doing something. Well, they got up there and Simon
Peter knew that they lied. How did he know that they lied?
The Spirit of God told him. And Ananias says, why did you
lie to the Holy Ghost? And then here he comes to his
wife in a little while and said, did you sell that for so much?
And they said, oh yeah, we did. He said, why did you conspire
with your husband to lie to the Holy Spirit of the Lord? The
Holy Spirit of God. So that means many names relating
to the Father. But some personal titles that
are his. He's called the Holy Spirit. He's called the Holy
Ghost. He's called the Spirit of Holiness.
You know, the Scripture says that He raised Jesus Christ from
the dead by the Spirit of Holiness. He's called the Holy One. And
you need to look at this sometime, and you do it on your own time.
But over in 1 John 2.20 it says, we have an unction. And that
unction means a blessing, the joining, the connection with
the Holy One. And you know all things. Now,
that's talking about the Holy Spirit comes and you need no
man to teach you, except He's taught you. You know all things.
And what does He mean, you know all things? You know all things
necessary to know at any one given time at your particular
place and time. And then He's called the Eternal
Spirit. That's one of the names that's
given to Him, personal titles that's given to Him. And then
He's called the Spirit. of life in Christ Jesus. And
oh my, He's the one that brings the life of Christ to us. Me
and Todd was talking today. And the Holy Spirit in us is
Christ in us. Christ in you is the Holy Spirit
in you. That's what He says, we'll come make our dwelling
with you. Christ in you is the Holy Spirit in you. And the Holy
Spirit in you is Christ in you. And that's why he says, the law
of the Spirit of life, and it's kept alive. The Spirit of life. Where's that life at? It's in
Christ. Who gives it to you? The Spirit brings it to you.
And then he's called, and I read it there to you tonight, he's
called the Spirit of truth. I mean, the only thing he can
bear witness to is the truth. The only thing he can teach is
the truth. The only thing he can bring is the truth. And he's called the Comforter.
to comfort us. And why is He called the Holy
Spirit? Why is He called the Holy Spirit? Why is He called
the Holy Spirit? Is it because He's holy? The Father's holy. The Son is
holy. Why is He called the Holy Spirit?
Well, let me give you two reasons. First of all, because of the
special work he does in God's people. He works in them to produce
holiness. He works in them applying the
work of the salvation of the Lord, purifying our hearts, cleansing
our minds, changing us from unwilling men and women to willing men
and women. He changes us. He produces in us. In this work
that he does, it's a special work, and I tell you, beloved,
if he does it, you know it, but yet, you know what he's doing
for one person, the other person has not a clue whether he's doing
it or not. But he produces in all of God's elect a hunger and
a thirst after righteousness. He produces in them a desire,
a will, a will to need God, seek God, live to God, and have a
desire to, as Paul said, he said, with my mind I serve the law
of God. With my flesh I serve the law
of sin. He says, I've got the will with
me. I've got the will with me to do everything that's right. I mean the law is holy, just,
and good, and I've got the will to live to it, live to the glory
of God. I've got the will to not sin. I've got the will. But
how to perform, I don't know how, but the Holy Ghost puts
that will in us, that desire in us, that nature in us. And the second reason he's described
as the Holy Spirit, and I want you to look at this over in 1
John chapter 4. Another reason why he's called
the Holy Spirit or described as the Holy Spirit is to reveal
the difference of him from other spirits. Look what John said here in 1
John 4. He said, Beloved, believe not
every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God. You know, we received Sunday
night, there's many lords, many gods, gods, many lords, many. There's many in heaven, many
in earth. And that's what he says, but beloved, believe not
every spirit, every spirit that comes, every spirit that takes
the name of the Lord, every spirit. Don't try, try them spirits,
whether they are of God. Because, listen, because many
false prophets are going out into the world. Now, here's how
we're going to know. Hereby know ye the Spirit. See
how that's capitalized? The Spirit of God. Every spirit
that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.
Now, what does that mean, confessing that Jesus Christ is come in
the flesh? It means, first and foremost, that He was before
you ever come. That means He was before you
ever come. He's preexistent. That means that He come in the
flesh had to be God who came in the flesh. And that when He
came in the flesh, He came in the flesh and He had a sinless
flesh. There are people, and what they've
done is they've taught that sin is in the material body. That
sin is in this material body. It's not in your thoughts. It's
not in your attitude. It's not in your nature. It's
not in your actions. It's in the body. And they said
if Christ had had a body, well then He would have had to have
sin in that body. And that's what they say. And
I'll tell you another thing. I'll tell you another way that
men don't confess that Jesus Christ is God. Anytime they set
Jesus Christ forth as somebody that has to have their help or
their cooperation, they're denying that Jesus Christ has come in
the flesh. I mean, they've got Him too weak.
They've got him helpless, and that's what he goes on to say
here. And every spirit, verse 3, that confesses not that Jesus
Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. You know, every Jehovah's Witness
that stands up and tells you that Jesus Christ, if you worship
Him, you're worshiping an idolater. You're an idolater. Well, I'll
be an idolater then. They say that there is not to
be worshipped, only God, Jehovah, is to be worshipped. That He
is just nothing but a creation of God. One of the many sons
of God. But oh, beloved, if you confess
not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, you're not of God.
If you bring Christ down from being God Almighty, and bring
Him down from being sinless, holy, harmless, undefiled, Made
in the likeness of sinful flesh, but having no sin. And that man
who come here was God manifest in the flesh, that he came here
to do a work that only God could do. Only God can save a sinner.
Only God can put away sin. Only God can satisfy God. Only
God can bring a sinner to make him know himself. Only God can
make himself known to a sinner's heart. And that way God did by
Jesus Christ coming in the flesh. And that's what he goes on to
say here. And this is that spirit of Antichrist. And listen, they
say he's coming. Well, listen to what John said
here. You've heard it, it should come. And even now, it's in the
world right now. Antichrist everywhere you look. Every Muslim's an Antichrist. Every Jew who doesn't confess
Jesus Christ is an Antichrist. Every Armenian who says you'd
be lost again is an Antichrist. I mean, everybody below that,
I'm telling you, you think you're looking around here, people who
think you can be converted without the gospel. It takes the gospel. God ain't out here snatching
people up by the hair of the head without the gospel, without
the truth as it is in Christ. Our Lord Jesus Christ went preaching
the gospel. He sent his disciples to preach
the gospel. He sent Paul to preach the gospel. And that's the gospel,
that's the power of God on salvation. And anybody goes out here and
listens, and asks people to do this, they say, God just, you
know, if you shed a tear over here, and, you know, you may
not even know you're one of God's elect until you get to glory.
That's antichrist. And that's what John's saying
here. And the Holy Spirit, he differentiates himself called
the Holy Spirit to show the difference between him and other evil spirits,
unclean spirits, antichrist spirits. Well, let me say another thing
here, and I'll move on. The Holy Spirit has a personality.
He has a personality. Now, I tell you, and why I say
this is because most people refer to Him and His work as it. They say it. The Holy Spirit,
they call Him an it. They call Him an influence. They
refer to Him as an influence. They think that's all He is,
is He comes and influences us. People think of Him as a kind
of a force and an influence to kind of direct us and guide us
a little bit of that. But He is God. And we need a heapside
more than just influence. I need more than just to be influenced.
I'm influenced by a lot of things. Politics influence me. You influence
me. You know, a lot of things can
influence me. You know, some better come along.
But the Holy Spirit heaps out more than just an influence,
just to come and influence you to move in this direction, that
direction, do better and help you do better and all that. And
beloved, His work seems to be impersonal. It seems to be impersonal. It seems like, you know, you
don't see Him doing anything for anyone in particular. His
work is a secret work. And He produces graces in our
hearts. If we have any grace in our heart,
He put it there. If we have any gracious, if we
have any humility, any meekness, if we have any humbleness, if
we have any love, if we have any kindness, if we have any
patience, if we have any, you know, any of the graces that
God has, if we have them, He gives them to us. And listen,
you know, And these things happen so imperceptibly that you don't
know they're happening to you while it's happening to you.
Ain't that right? You know little babies when they
start growing, they don't perceive that they're growing at all. Do you perceive that you've grown
very much in the last year or two? Huh? That's what you know. And He
produces fruit. If we have any fruit, He's the
one that produces it. It's called the fruit of the
Spirit, ain't that what it's called? Not fruits of the Spirit,
the fruit of the Spirit. And He produces fruit in us.
And He does this in such an imperceptible way that you actually don't even
know that it's happening. Other people can perceive what's
going on, but you can't perceive it. That's
the truth. You can't perceive it. And I
can't even perceive it. Right now, if God's doing anything
to you, I can't perceive it. If the Lord's doing anything
to you right now, working in your mind, working in your heart,
instructing you or teaching you, I don't know Him. But He knows
it. And He has to do the work. All
you hear is my voice tonight. And I've got a little more outline
up here, and I'm trying to go through it. And I try my best
to keep your attention, but I sometimes can't do that very well at all.
So if it's left up to me then, nobody's going to learn nothing.
Nobody's going to have any grace. Nobody's going to have any fruit.
There's not going to be nothing done for anybody. If all I do
is just outline my voice. Isn't that right? And what does spirit mean? He
has a personality. What does spirit mean? One word means the same. Breath, wind, and power. That's what
spirit means. It's all the same word. Breath,
wind, and power. All the same word. Spirit. And as the breath, God breathed
the Holy Scriptures into life. He breathed in the man's nostrils
the breath of life, and He breathed upon us, and beloved, and as
the wind, our Lord Jesus Christ said in the New Birth, the wind
blows where it listed, and you can't see it, you can't hear
the sound, you don't know where it comes from and that, so as
a wind, He comes as a force, sometimes He comes as a great
force, sometimes He comes as a small force. of this imperceptible
wind. And then it means power. It means
power. And oh my, he has all the power
of God. And so that's what spirit means.
And it means he's invisible, he's immaterial, and he's powerful.
He's the one, if you're quickened, if you're regenerated, it's the
Holy Spirit that quickens you and regenerates you. If you're
in a service, you're in a service sometimes, and you've been converted,
you've been regenerated, you've been a believer for a long time.
If you are quickened to rejoice in anything that's said or done,
and your mind is really moved by something, it's the Holy Spirit
that does that. He's invisible, He's immaterial,
but He's powerful. And that's why we say, Oh, God
come among us. And He comes among us by the
Holy Ghost. Let me give you a couple of things
here and wind this up. I mean, I'm talking just kind
of an introduction here. I mean, the
symbols. We find out he has a personality. Find out that he gives us the
graces and works in us. And he does works. And yet, beloved,
there were symbols. He had his name and his title,
Comforter, Holy Spirit, Spirit of Truth. What does spirit mean? Why is he called the Holy Spirit?
But here's some symbols used to describe him. There's symbols
also used to describe him. When our Lord Jesus Christ was
baptized, the Holy Spirit, John said, God told him, upon whom
you see the Spirit of God descend as a dove, that's him. Now here,
a natural dove came down. They saw a dove come down. And
the Holy Spirit was a symbol of a dove, and it come down upon
Christ. At Christ's baptism. You know, another symbol of the
Holy Ghost is oil. Anointing. Oil that anoints you. Oil poured out on you. Another
symbol that's used, a dove, is water. Water to cleanse you. Water to wash you. water to purify
you. And then He's called fire, the
Holy Ghost in fire. And as the Holy Ghost, He comes
with fire to judge, to purify, to set things in order. And you
know, that's why in the day of Pentecost, in Joel, it's always
prophesied that the Spirit shall be poured out upon all flesh. And that means all kinds of flesh.
And the Holy Spirit is identified with the Father and the Son,
and all three of them as distinct persons. The Holy Spirit is a
person, the Father's a person, and the Son's a person. In Matthew
28, 19, he says, Go ye into all the world, teaching all nations,
and baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and
the Holy Ghost. Now, he didn't say baptizing
them in the names, like there's three different persons. He said
that in the name. It shows the unity, the power,
the oneness of Him, the unity of Him. And look over here in
2 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 14. Look what it says here in
the last verse. 2 Corinthians 13, verse 14. Here's where all three are identified,
and they're all given the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and
the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you
all. Amen. There's our Lord Jesus,
there's the Father, and there's the Holy Ghost. All of them. Identify all of them together.
And you know, He said to have knowledge over the first Just
as God does. And over in 1 Corinthians 2.11,
it says there, it says, No man knows what is in a man, save
the Spirit of man which is in him. Neither knoweth any man
the Spirit of God, save the Spirit of God which revealed him. So he has knowledge of the Spirit
of God. He's the only one who can reveal God and know God.
And he has a sovereign will, too. His will is sovereign. He, you know, all the gifts is
given unto the church. And there's lots of gifts. People
have different gifts, different things. And everybody here has
a gift. Some of you sing. You know anything I call on you
to do, you do. You've got gifts. All of you
all have got gifts to do. You know you've got gifts of
hospitality. You've got gifts to pray. You've
got gifts to sing. You've got gifts to wait on other
people. And all these gifts, the Scripture says the Holy Spirit
gives them to whom He will and divides severally To whom he
will. Any reason you have any gift
at all is because he willed you to have it. And everybody don't
have the same thing. And then he has the mind of God.
He says what? The Holy Spirit searches the
mind of God. And we know not what we ought
to pray for as we ought to, but the Holy Spirit knows the mind
of God that we might pray according to his will. And then He is love. He is love. He says in Galatians 5.22 there,
He says this, He says, You know, and the fruit of the Spirit perfects
love. Love. He's got to have love in
Himself to give it to us. And then the Holy Ghost sheds
abroad in our hearts the love of Christ, the love of God. And
I'll tell you something else to show you that He's a person. is he can be grieved. He can
be grieved. He can be grieved. We worry about,
you know, we think about pleasing God, we think about wanting to
honor God and glorify God and don't want to dishonor Him, don't
want to displease Him, don't want to get out of His will.
Well, the Scriptures tells us, Grieve not the Holy Spirit of
God, whereby you're sealed unto the day of redemption. Don't
grieve Him. Don't grieve Him. And I tell you, here's the crowning
pain. He said, Our body, our body, right now, is the temple
of the Holy Spirit. That's what Paul said in 1 Corinthians
6. He says, Know ye not that your
body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? And would you join the
body of Christ, the body of God, where the Spirit of God dwells,
to a harlot? And that's what he said. This
body right here is the temple. You know what they've done in
the temple? That's where God met man. That's where the Shekinah
glory came. That's where worship was done. That's where God come and dwell. We're a temple. God comes in the person of the
Holy Ghost and dwells in us. I certainly hope