[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast. Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: All right, so we, we've got a lot of ground we're going to try to cover, so we're going to jump, jump right in.
Just a reminder, if you have questions, feel free to send them to that email address and we'll try to get to them at some point towards the end of the quarter.
So I wanted to pick up kind of where we ended up ended last week. We were talking about basically looking through the Old Testament and seeing what the Spirit does, and then looking through the New Testament and seeing what the Spirit does and what are the differences or what are the new ways that the Spirit is working in the New Covenant. So the first one of those is that in the New Covenant the Spirit is poured out on, on everybody.
In the Old covenant, the Spirit came from time to time on certain individuals for a specific purpose, for a specific reason, for a specific time.
But he wasn't generally poured out on everybody.
But in the New Covenant we see that he's poured out on everybody.
And just to kind of caveat that it's everybody that will receive him. So we have the ability to not receive him, but he's offered and he's poured out on everybody. So I think of it kind of like I was trying to think of an analogy like a pop up thunderstorm. That's kind of the way he operated in the Old Testament.
These kind of isolated thunderstorms and often operated in some dramatic way.
You know, there was miracles involved, there was prophecies, those kinds of things. Typically some sort of dramatic way that he worked when he did that. But in the New Covenant it's more like rain that covers the whole land. So it's a widespread nourishing rain that is available to everybody and provides life.
All right, so then the second way that he operates differently in the New Testament is really the work that he's doing, the primary work that he's doing, and that is he's transforming hearts, he's changing hearts, he's transforming us into glory.
And it's a process of transformation.
And he does that. It's an internal work within Christians.
And so we could say this is opposed. Opposed to other things that we might see. There are other things in the New Testament that we see.
We see miracles and we see God giving new revelations, but those aren't the primary thing of his work within the New Covenant. This is his primary work within the New Covenant.
The miracles were a temporary thing really, to authenticate what was going on.
And the giving of new revelation through the apostles was an important work.
But again, it's something that's been completed.
So it's not an ongoing, continuing thing. The ongoing continuing work of the Spirit in the New Covenant is God dwelling in us and working on and changing our hearts. So as I was trying to kind of think about analogies and trying to think of ways to present this, so I was thinking of, like, if life is like a path, and we'll just make this our path. So if life is like a path and we're walking down the path of sin, that it leads to death.
So there's two ways to go. We can walk down a path that leads to death, or we can walk down a path of righteousness that leads to life.
So there's two different directions we go. When we repent, when we change, when we decide we want to walk down the path of righteousness that leads to life, it changes our direction. We don't. We're not immediately in a new place. I'm not immediately there, but I'm moving in that direction. So that process is a transformation as I move in that direction.
It's a sanctification, it's a process. It's something that happens over the course of my life as I begin to walk in that direction. So the trajectory of my life changes when I repent, when I put on Christ, when I come up out of the waters, I'm not sinless, but I begin to change.
And again, that happens over the course of my life. So I begin to move into a new direction.
So walking the path of righteousness.
So there's two ways that we can walk that path or try to walk that path of righteousness.
The way in the Old Covenant, it's called the way of the law.
So Paul talks about this in the New Testament in multiple places. He talks about the way of the Law or the way of the letter, he sometimes says, or there's the way of the Spirit.
So the way of the law is the way they tried to walk in righteousness under the old covenant.
So what that meant to them is that they were trying to follow the law that God had given. And this law, it served multiple purposes. For one, it revealed to men what his will was. It revealed to men how they should be living.
What is that way of righteousness?
And it was a blessing to Israel that they had, that the other nations did not have that. So this was a blessing to them that they had this revelation from God of His will, of his law.
But there's also another thing that the law did is it pointed out their failure. It pointed out that ultimately they're not going to be successful walking in that path.
They would stumble and they would fall. They would fall into the ditch, or they would turn around and go the other direction.
So that law really highlighted the fact that ultimately they would be unsuccessful in walking that path.
And then a third thing that it did is the law pointed to Christ.
It pointed to the one who would come, who would fulfill that law. And by fulfilling that law, it means one that he kept it fully.
But it also means that the law itself was pointing to him.
So Christ became the fulfillment of that law. So that's walking in the way of the law that Paul talks about, or the way of the letter, but he talks about in the New Covenant. We don't do that anymore. We walk in the way of the Spirit.
So what is that talking about?
So in the New Covenant, we have a huge advantage. For one, we still have the law. We still have God's laws and commands that teach us.
And we should read and study those things to try to understand God's will for how we should be living.
Even the old law, we should be studying those things. There's much in that to help us understand the way that God wants us to live.
So we have that benefit.
But the second benefit that we have is we now have an example of the way to do that.
They didn't have that. So we have Christ's example.
So Christ has really become our standard for how we should be living. We should be following Christ, following in his steps, following his path. So if we're trying to walk this path, Christ has walked this path already. He's already done it.
And we can see how he did it and learn from him, learn how we should be living.
So he's become our new standard in the new covenant is following Him.
And to me, this is A better way.
I think of it kind of intuitively. So if you're trying to teach your children right and wrong, and if your method for teaching your children right and wrong is only to give them rules and then make sure they keep them, that's not going to turn out real great. Okay, There's a place for rules, and we certainly use that when we're raising our children.
We certainly had rules for our children. But if that is the only thing that you're doing in order to teach your children the way they should live, it's just rules, and I'm going to make sure they keep them. That's not going to turn out great.
But what they're really going to learn from is from watching how you live your life. That's going to have a much bigger impact on them than anything else.
So we have this blessing now that we get to see Christ.
We get to see how he walked that path of righteousness, and we get to model ourselves after him and follow his example. So he's already ahead of us, and we can follow him now.
But the third big advantage that we have in the new covenant is that we have the Holy Spirit with us, walking with us along that path.
And he is strengthening us. He's encouraging us as we go. So as we trip or as we stumble or as we fall, he is there to help us.
He is there to encourage us. As we start trying to go in the wrong direction, he is there to lead us back into the right direction.
This was not under the old covenant. They did not have that.
They were trying to keep God's will through their own effort.
And like I said, they failed.
And that was part of the point, was that they couldn't and that they would fail.
But ultimately, that way of trying to follow God, if that's it, if that's all you're doing, you're going to fail at that.
But there's a better way.
Paul calls it walking in the Spirit or the way of the Spirit. And that is the Spirit strengthening us, encouraging us, helping us when we stumble, helping us when we fall, and making sure that we stay on that path.
So that said, Every time we try to go in the wrong direction, that doesn't mean we're lost.
But the Spirit is there to try to get us back on track.
But there can come a point where we say, I don't even want to go in the right direction. I want to go my own way.
And when we do that, we've left the Spirit.
And that would be a time when we're lost.
All right, so a lot of stuff there. Comments, thoughts on any of that
[00:12:15] Speaker A: ending.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: I've always thought back to the blaspheming of the Holy Spirit, that that's what blaspheming is.
[00:12:22] Speaker C: You just.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: You don't care anymore and you turn your back on him. So he's the only. He's your last chance to stay on the road, straight and narrow. So if you dismiss him, you blasphemed him, and there ain't nothing else for you to get you back on the road.
I tend to think so, too.
And we'll probably hit this in the Q and A part a little more, but I tend to think so, too. So it's ultimately rejecting the work of the Spirit.
And the work of the Spirit is to try to bring you to righteousness and to ultimately reject that or mock that work or blaspheme that work is ultimately to reject God and say, I'm just going to go my own way.
So, yeah, I would tend to agree with you
[00:13:12] Speaker D: the statement, though,
[00:13:17] Speaker B: and if
[00:13:17] Speaker D: this is not something you want to address or it's something outside, just go on. But I came from a group that said basically that in. That the Holy Spirit is what brings you to God.
And that didn't make sense to me.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm not saying. I'm not trying to say the Holy Spirit initially brings you to God. I'm trying to say when we decide we want to walk in the path of righteousness, we want to follow Christ and we want to repent of sin and we want to put Christ on in baptism, that at that point the Holy Spirit comes along beside us. I'm not trying to say that he works in us or with us before that.
So maybe a little distinction. So I think there's groups that will say, and this is definitely one of the things we're going to get to later in the quarter as far as kind of a Q and A. But there are groups that say that emphasize the Spirit working on you before you're converted.
I don't believe that.
I believe that we have the gospel and we have the opportunity to read and respond to the Gospel.
And that when we do that and do the things that the gospel requires of us, then the Holy Spirit comes upon us and helps us.
So maybe a little difference, I think, from what other people teach,
[00:14:50] Speaker D: but that almost sounds like that all God's children, once you're one of his children, the Holy Spirit is going to keep you on. And I know you're going to Say, and I agree.
Well, you're going to say that he helps keep you on the path to heaven, path to Christian living.
And I understand that Ephesians says he's our seal.
And just what you said doesn't mean that I don't think.
First John 1, I believe, implies that you really do have to turn your back on God for him to disown you. And Romans 8, I believe it is, says that the Holy Spirit prays when you don't know how to pray or what to pray for.
But I'm really questioning.
I think it is man.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: And
[00:15:56] Speaker D: I am in an ongoing Bible study with somebody that I.
Here's my positively that I think will be fruitless.
But they are saying that once saved, always saved. And that's kind of that.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: But
[00:16:16] Speaker D: say that man has anything to do with his My salvation. Well, you're taking it out of God's hand and I'm thinking, no, you're not.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm definitely not saying once saved, always saved. We have the ability, we have the ability to reject the Spirit.
We can grieve him, we can quench him. And I take quench to mean put out to leave.
We can depart.
We cannot follow his leading. We have that choice.
And the fact that he's there with us doesn't take that choice away. We can absolutely leave his work and thereby lose our salvation. Absolutely.
But I do believe he is beside us, working and helping and strengthening us.
And I think that's a huge part of.
Of the New Testament gospel that is the work of the Spirit in the Christian. It's the blessing that we have that they did not have in the old covenant.
And we'll get into more of that later. But to me, this is powerful. We'll talk just about how powerful that is, but it's a very important concept.
This is not just a little thing. It's not just like he's given us a little help. I mean, it's a powerful thing that he is helping us.
[00:17:38] Speaker D: Are you implying or saying that maybe our conscience, a Christian's conscience is part of the Holy Spirit?
[00:17:50] Speaker B: I mean, possibly you could think of it that way. I mean, I think he's working internally in our heart to convict us when we fall, when we stumble. He's working to strengthen us, to give us the moral power to serve Him. Yeah. So conscious, I think, is part of that. Yeah.
[00:18:09] Speaker C: I look at it this way.
We live in a spiritual realm, not just a physical realm.
And there's communications, there's influences, there's persuasions, there's spurring you to remember things that you've been taught and even to think that the Spirit isn't involved in somebody before they're a Christian, they're involved around them because the spirit world is. Ethiopian eunuch Philip said, go here. This is where you need to be, because you're going to influence that person. And missionaries, you know, the Spirit leads them. And so we're living in a spiritual realm. That's not just a. It's not just your conscience. It's so much more than that that is embraced all together. And we have to see that something of it and embrace it back.
It's not just cut and dry.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, good comment.
All right. So kind of. So to kind of sum this up, then, another way we could say that we talk about he's changing us, he's transforming us.
Another way we could say that is that he is recreating us.
And I say it that way because it kind of leads into the next topic that I want to talk about, and that is the idea of the Spirit as the Creator.
So when I say that the Spirit is the Creator and we'll talk about all that, but he's also the recreator.
So I'm talking about that in a bigger sense than we may have normally think about it. Okay, but so first. So first to kind of get into this, I want to look at some verses that speak of the Spirit's role in the creation.
And we'll hit these kind of quickly, but the first one, job 2613, and the ESV says, wind, but by his wind the heavens were made fair.
That word is ruach that we talked about earlier. That should probably be spirit. That's the way I would have translated it. By his Spirit, the heavens were made fair.
And then Job 33:4, the spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
We talked about that quite a bit already.
And then Psalm 33, 6, 7, by the word of the Lord, the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their hosts. He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap.
He puts the deeps in storehouses, so he controls the waters. The depths of the waters are nothing to him. He can bottle them up and put them on the shelf. It's really emphasizing his power.
But the idea here is, by the breath of his mouth he's done that. That's referring to the Spirit.
Psalm 104:30.
When you send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground. And that kind of gets into that creation recreation kind of idea. It's the same spirit at work in both of those things.
And then one we hit earlier as well, Genesis 2:7. Then the Lord God formed the man of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living creature.
So this idea of breath, that's the word for God's spirit.
So it's through his Spirit that we have life.
And our breath is a reminder of our ultimate dependence on God.
And then Genesis 1:1, 2, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
Alright, so I want to dive into that one, into that verse a little more.
I want to talk about some of these words here.
How the earth was without form and void, darkness being over the deep, and then Spirit is hovering. We'll kind of hit on some of that a little bit. First, kind of the idea of.
Well, first, before we even do that, I wanted to mention. So throughout the Bible, the Bible speaks of the Father as the Creator. It also speaks of the Son as the Creator. It also speaks of the Spirit as the Creator.
They all have a role in the creation.
And theologians have tried to explain how that works itself out. And they've come up with some ideas and maybe they're helpful and I'll just kind of throw out some of those ideas that may be helpful in kind of explaining that. But they say basically that they work in.
It's an inseparable operation and they're working in unity. So they're all, basically all three at work in the creation and they're working unified in that work.
They also say you can kind of view the Father as the architect, you can view the Son as the agent, and you can view the Spirit as the active presence in the creation.
He's the one that brings order and beauty into the creation and also brings life into the creation.
And then some have said that creation is from the Father through the Son and by the Spirit. And to me, that one may be the most helpful. I think it kind of helps me a little bit. But really the point is all three are involved in the creation.
They're all active, all active in the creation. But we want to look specifically, as we do this kind of specifically at the Spirit and his role in that.
So we see the Spirit mentioned, mentioned here in verse two. And the Spirit is described as hovering over the face of the waters. And I think somebody asked last week about that word hovering.
It's a word that's not used very often in scripture.
This Hebrew word is actually only used three times in the scripture.
But the idea here, the other times it's used, it's kind of talking about a bird hovering over its young or brooding.
Brooding over its eggs or its young taking care of them, preparing them. So the idea is the spirit is preparing for a work, preparing to bring life, preparing to bring forth something.
That's kind of the idea that's trying to be. That's being conveyed here, is that the spirit, as the spirit, is moving over this primordial world, whatever that is, I don't know.
I can't give the details of what that exactly is. But as the spirit is moving over that world, he's preparing to do something. He's preparing to work and to bring forth order in life from that.
So a couple more words that I want to look at is this, without form and void.
Okay, I had a question here. So before we get to that, so just kind of a thought question, and there's no necessarily answer, but why did God choose to create over six days?
I mean, he could have just said, be created, and it's all there, right? He could have done it, just spoken a word, and it would have been there. But he chose to do it over the course of six days. You ever thought about why he would do that?
Okay, so kind of keep that question in the back of your mind as we kind of look through some of these ideas. So got a couple of words up here. These are Hebrew words.
So this, the word formless and void in Hebrew, that's tohu wabohu.
Besides being kind of fun to say, it's actually an important concept in scripture.
This idea of formless and void.
Tohu is used several times in scripture. Bohu is actually only used three times, and it's always used together in this phrase, tohu and bohu.
But tohu is the idea of wilderness or desert or wasteland. And the idea is it's uninhabitable.
It's an uninhabitable space. Like, again, a wilderness or a desert. Okay? And then bohu is translated void. But the idea is it's lifeless and empty. Okay?
So the idea behind this is that this world, before the six days, it's this world of, call it chaos.
It's a lack of order. So the Greek word for disorder is actually chaos. That's where we get that word.
So the world at this time was this chaos world. There was no order, there was no form to it, there was nothingness, no life within it.
A couple other places that we see this word used is one, I said it's an important concept and we'll kind of come to why. But we see this word used in Deuteronomy 32.
Deuteronomy 32, 10. So this is, this is part of the Song of Moses, a fairly well known song poem of Moses written near the end of his life.
We sing parts of it today as known as the Song of Moses. But it's a warning from Moses that he's given to Israel again towards the end of his life. So in verse 10 it says, he found him in a desert land and in the howling waste of the wilderness. He encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.
Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions.
Alright, so the howling waste of the wilderness, that's tohu, okay?
That's the word there.
So God is basically saying, I called Israel out of this wasteland, out of this wilderness.
And he also says that he was like an eagle that flutters over its young. That's that same word of the Spirit hovering over the pre creation. That's one of the other two times that it's used. Was, was here.
So it's definitely a reference back to creation. So God is referencing creation and saying basically, what happened at creation I did for you, Israel, when I pulled you out of nothingness, I pulled you out of the wilderness and I made you a blessed people. Okay? And then there's a warning, There's a warning in the song not to return to that, to return to what they came from.
We also see it in Jeremiah 4:23.
Go back a verse, I'll start in 22.
This is again a warning. This is a warning from Jeremiah the prophet to the people not to return to this place of waste.
It says, for my people are foolish, they know me not. They are stupid children, they have no understanding.
They are wise in doing evil, but how to do good they know not.
I looked on the earth and behold, it was without form and void into the heavens and they had no light. I looked to the mountains and behold, they were quaking and all the hills moved to and fro.
I'll stop there. But the idea is, it's a warning that Israel is returning back to what they came from. Returning back to Tohu wabohu, to waste wilderness, returning to where they Came from.
If they continue in their sin, that's what's going to happen. They're returning back to that.
We also see this idea in many wilderness stories. So the wilderness is kind of a theme, you see, that pops up throughout Scripture as well. And these wilderness references are references back to the creation.
So we see Israel being called out of the wilderness. We've already mentioned.
We see John the Baptist going into the wilderness and calling people to repentance.
We see Jesus going in the wilderness for testing and then coming out of the wilderness after his testing. But those are all kind of references, references back to that idea.
All right, so the other word is tehom, and that is the word that's translated the deep.
And the idea of this word is it's an abyss, it's a sea, but it's a chaotic, dark, watery sea. So the ancients had a fear of the sea, of the open sea, and rightfully so. It was often a place of death, but it was dark waters. You didn't know what was there, didn't know what was under it. And it was a dangerous place to them. And so this is how they often viewed the sea, as this dark, watery chaos. So especially when this word tehom is used, it's referring to the seas in that sense. And this is another word that you see pop up several times. It's a theme throughout scripture.
So you see it in Noah's flood, the flood that destroyed the world. Those waters came from the deep. They came from the tehom. This was a destruction. This was a judgment. This was a world returning back to its lifeless, chaotic origins.
But then you also notice that Noah and his family came through on the other end. So life. Life came through on the other end of that, though, right? So you also see it with the Red Sea.
This is when Moses led Israel through the Red Sea.
He led them through the T hom, he led them through the deep, but the deep swallowed up Pharaoh and his army. So the same idea there. And again, you see judgment there, but you also see people coming through in life on the other side after coming through that. You also see it with Jonah.
And there are other examples as well. But I also think this is what baptism is referring back to this idea as well. So in our baptism, we're going through the waters, and there's a death of our old person, but a new life emerges from the water.
And so I think that, again, is.
Is a play off this very same theme that we see throughout Scripture.
Another song where this is specifically mentioned is another song of Moses it's called the Song of the Sea. This one's in Exodus 15 and we'll just read a couple of verses from that.
So Exodus 15, verses 4 and 5.
So this is the song that Moses wrote after Israel came through the Red Sea.
It says, pharaoh's chariots and his host he cast into the sea. And his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea.
The floods covered them.
They went down into the depths like a stone. So into the depths is this word tahom.
Alright, so what's the point of all this? So in the Creation, we see the work of the Spirit. And in the creation, over the course of these six days, days we see the Spirit transforming this chaotic world into an ordered, beautiful world.
The Greek word for order is actually cosmos, and that's where we get that word. So the Spirit is translating this chaos into the cosmos through these six days of creation. It's a process, and it's a process that kind of sets a pattern for how the Spirit works, how the Spirit operates by transforming. So he took the waters and he separated out the waters and land emerged, and then plants emerged, and then sun, moon and stars emerged.
And then he brought forth fish and the birds, and then he brought forth other animals and he brought forth man. So it was the taking of this chaotic, watery, formless world. And then through a process of transformation, bringing forth life.
So that's the idea of the Spirit's work in creation. It's an important theme.
And it's a theme that repeats. Like I said, it repeats itself throughout Scripture.
And it sets a pattern for how the Spirit is working.
So we see in our world today that we're kind of in this tension.
So are we in chaos?
Are we in order or disorder? And we're kind of in this tension. We're in this in between place and there's this constant tension. Our sin, if we walk down that path of sin, it's taking us back to that place of chaos and disorder. As we walk that path of righteousness, we're walking toward order, disorder. So the Spirit is at work bringing us to, to that place of order, to that place of glory.
All right, I wanted to talk about water a little bit.
I don't know. We won't get through all this, but we'll get as far as we can.
So water in scripture, it's a common theme, it's a common symbol throughout scripture, kind of can have two meanings in Scripture.
For one, it can mean the sea.
And this is like we already mentioned, it's a place of chaos. It's a place of death and place of judgment.
It was a fearful place.
But then you also have this idea of the river of life, the idea of the waters being the river of life. And that's a place of blessing. It's also a place of purification and cleansing.
It represents the presence of God.
Sometimes it's oftentimes described as a river. Sometimes it's described as a rain.
God pouring out his blessing on the earth, on his people, through water, through the rain.
So there's these two ideas of water.
It can be bad or good judgment or a blessing.
So what we see in the work of the Spirit is God. We see the Spirit basically transforming this chaotic place into this river of life.
And we see that specifically in the creation.
So this idea is presented there in the creation. It starts out as this chaotic sea, but in the end you have this life giving river that's flowing through the middle of the garden.
That river represents life and blessing.
So it's the life and blessing that flows from God.
And then we also see that same thing in Revelation that's speaking of the new creation and it mentions there's no more sea. People always wonder, what does that mean, there's no more sea? Well, it's symbolic, but it's saying this place of chaos and death, there's no place for that. It's gone. There's no place for that in new creation.
It's a symbol. We don't need to take that literally, but that's the meaning behind that.
So instead what do you have? You have this river of life that flows through the new creation, providing blessing and providing life, this nourishing water.
All right, I'll pause again and see if there's thoughts.
David, I don't know if it's my translation or whatever, but when God separated the land and the water, he called them seas.
[00:38:51] Speaker A: Is that a different Hebrew word?
[00:38:54] Speaker B: I think it is, yes. Yes. There are other words for seas.
I don't think it's the same word there.
Yeah, it's normally translated the deep when it's used, when tehom is used, it's normally translated the deep.
But yeah, I think it's a different word there.
Yeah.
So the point here is the spirit is the one that does this transformation. But I also think that. And we'll get into why probably next week. Kind of running out of time.
But I also think that these rivers are actually representing the spirit. They're symbols of the spirit.
Not that the spirit is the river in Eden, but it represents, it represents him.
He's the one that flows from the Father and gives life the same in Revelation. I think that that river that flows through revelation in Revelation 21:22 is a symbol of the Spirit flowing from God giving life to all.
I may end there because I'm about to get into another section and we got about maybe less than a minute, so I may just end it there and instead of jumping into kind of this next section. But we're going to pick up next week with this idea of the Spirit as water. So the Spirit is described in water terms very often and I want to hit on that.
So homework, I encourage you to read John 7:37, 39 and think about that idea and as well as read John's recording of Jesus conversation with the woman at the well in John 4.
So John 4 and John 7, if you look at that, we'll pick up with that next week.
All right. Thank you very much.
