Before Pentecost

It’s good to be with you again at the beginning of a new week, sharing with you Keys to Successful Living which God has placed in my hand through many years of personal experience and Christian ministry.

The theme for my talks this week is “The Holy Spirit in You.” It’s a theme of vital importance for every believer. But first, let me say “Thank you” to those of you who have been writing to me. Before I finish this talk we’ll be giving you a mailing address to which you may write. It means a great deal to me to hear how this radio ministry of mine has been helping you and blessing you. So please take time to write, even if it’s only a brief note. Now, back to our theme, “The Holy Spirit in You.”

The person and the work of the Holy Spirit is one of the most profound and distinctive revelations of the whole Bible. Through it we receive a kind of knowledge we could not receive in any other way. One of the supremely important revelations of the Bible is the nature of God. The Bible unfolds a mystery that we could never know through any other source. The mystery is that God is both one and yet more than one. That God is three persons yet but one God. The three persons revealed in Scripture are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In my talks I’m going to be dealing with the Holy Spirit.

The first thing we need to understand is that the Holy Spirit is Himself a person, just as much as the Father and the Son. Because of human parallels, it’s comparatively easy for us to realize that God the Father is a person and God the Son is a person. But it’s not so easy to realize immediately that the Holy Spirit is a person. And yet, this is clearly unfolded in Scripture.

Through the Holy Spirit, God is omniscient and omnipresent. Those are two theological terms. Omniscient means that God knows everything. Omnipresent means that God is present everywhere at the same time. So let me recapitulate that. Through the Holy Spirit, God knows everything; there is nothing hidden from God. And through the Holy Spirit, God is present everywhere at the same time.

This is unfolded in various passages of Scripture. For instance, in Jeremiah 23:23-24, this is what the Lord says:

“‘Am I only a God nearby,’ declares the Lord, ‘and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?’ declares the Lord. ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord.”

Notice that last statement. God fills heaven and earth. There is no place where God is not. There is no place that things happen that God does not know about. This is very beautifully and more fully unfolded in the opening verses of Psalm 139. I’m going to read all twelve verses, they’re so beautiful.

“O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. You hem me in, behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far sides of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”

What beautiful language! What a wonderful unfolding of the greatness of God, the wisdom of God. The fact that God’s presence permeates the entire universe, there is nowhere that you can go from God and be hidden from Him. No distance can separate you from Him. No darkness can hide you from Him. God is everywhere throughout the entire universe. He knows all that’s going on in every place. The key there that unfolds the secret is in the 7th verse, where the psalmist says, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” That’s a typical example of Hebrew poetry where the two halves of the verse say essentially the same thing. So God’s presence throughout the universe is His Holy Spirit. It’s through the Holy Spirit that God is present everywhere and through the Holy Spirit that God knows all that is going on in the universe at any time.

You see, the Holy Spirit has been active in the universe from creation onwards. This is what Psalm 33:6 tells us about the actual process of creation:

“By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host.”

Where the English translation says “breath,” the Hebrew says literally, “spirit.” So, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the ‘spirit’ of His mouth all their host.” In other words, the two great ancients of creation which brought the whole universe into being were the word of the Lord and the Spirit of the Lord, the Holy Spirit. And if we turn back to the verses at the beginning of the Bible that describe creation, we see this unfolded in greater detail. Genesis 1:2-3:

“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

What a beautiful picture that is. The presence of the Spirit of God there in the formless darkness, in the void, in the waste. The word “hovering” suggests, of course, a bird. And so many times later in Scripture the Holy Spirit is identified as being the heavenly dove. So there’s heaven’s dove, the Holy Spirit, hovering over the dark, formless void, waste of waters.

And then in the next verse it says:

“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

You see, there are the two agents of creation: the Spirit of God and the Word of God. And when they’re united, creation takes place. When the Spirit of God is there and the Word of God “light” comes, then the thing “light” is formed; it comes into being, formed by the Spirit and by the Word of God. So you see, the Holy Spirit has been at work in the universe from creation onwards, the Holy Spirit has always been present everywhere in the universe. In a sense, the active effective agent of the Godhead.

And then as we read on in the Old Testament, we see that the Holy Spirit inspired and empowered all the men of God in the Old Testament. The list is too long to give all the names but we’ll just give a few examples.

The first one, interestingly enough, is Bezalel, the man who designed and created all the furniture for the ark and for the tabernacle of Moses. And this is what is says in Exodus 31:2-3, the Lord is speaking, and He said:

“See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts...”

So, it was the Spirit of God filling Bezalel that gave him his ability to produce such outstanding creative workmanship. It always impresses me that he actually is the first man I found in Scripture of whom it was said that he was filled with the Spirit of God. And the result in his case was craftsmanship. That gives such a high value to craftsmanship, doesn’t it?

And then we read about Joshua in Deuteronomy 34:9:

“Now Joshua, son of Nun, was filled with the spirit of wisdom [that’s another way of speaking of the Spirit of God] because Moses had laid his hand on him. So the Israelites listened to [Joshua] and did what the Lord had commanded Moses.”

He was the great military leader who conquered the Promised Land, and he did it because he was filled with the Spirit of God.

Then we go on to Judges. We come to Gideon in Judges 6:34:

“Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet, summoning the Abiezrites to follow him.”

The Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon and made him the mighty leader that he was. Before that, he was a timid young man, cowering at the winepress, unable to do anything effective. But he was changed by the Spirit of God coming upon him.

And then we read about David, the great king, and also the great psalmist in 2 Samuel 23:1-2. This is what David says:

“Now these are the last words of David. David the son of Jesse declares, and the man who was raised on high declares, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel, ‘The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me, And His word was on my tongue.’”

That’s the way that David gave us those beautiful psalms. “The Spirit of Lord spoke by me... His word was on my tongue.” Notice again the Spirit of God and the word of God.

And then in 2 Peter 1:21, Peter sums up the whole ministry of all the Old Testament prophets and he says this:

“For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

So every prophet who brought a true message from God never spoke out of his own initiative, just out of his own thinking or reasoning or understanding; but he was inspired, he was prompted, he was carried along by the Holy Spirit and so his message was more than human, it was a message from God Himself.

As we look at the examples of these and many other men, we come to a conclusion that all the men in the Old Testament who served God acceptably and effectively did so solely through the power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit—and surely that’s a lesson for you and me. If they were unable to do it without the Holy Spirit, we are no better able than they were.

Well, our time is up for today. I’ll be back with you again tomorrow at this time. Tomorrow I’ll be speaking about the Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus.