The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit continue lesson 42
Mike Doyle · Apr 2, 2023
Holy Spirit (2021-23), No. 104
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926193047751

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Alright, we finished question one and two. We were talking about anointing, Jesus anointing. We said, by what power did Jesus do everything He did when He was here, and discussed that. And then we talked about, might one think that our lives are to be lived the same way, and had some really, really good discussion around that, really enjoyed that. And I left off sort of with a question I wanted to repeat here at the beginning. I said, if we also are anointed, and I think we kind of came to that conclusion when we've been baptized into Christ, we've received this same anointing of the Spirit, are we being led or impelled, was the word I enjoyed last week, are we being impelled by the Spirit?

And I wanted to come back to that question because I think the answer to that question really comes down to humble dependence. That is the characteristic in the life of Christ that by which he carried out everything that he did was in humble dependence on the Father. I've been reading through the Gospel of John and it's just chock full of Jesus describing how he did nothing of his own will. Everything was in total dependence on the Father. And so if we ask ourselves that question, I left us hanging on that question a little bit last week, are we being impelled by the Spirit?

And I think we can hear that question as a, like, almost a, it could be used as almost a guilt trip, like, I don't know, I'm not that, I don't know I'm really that spirit led and we can maybe use that as a way to get out the bootstraps and try harder to be led or something like that. But the whole idea is that it's all about humble dependence. And the only thing I think that can foster humility in us is the principle of grace. Grace is what develops humility. And so if we're going to grow in this area of being led by the Spirit in dependence, we've got to grow in our knowledge of what grace means. So, just a couple of thoughts there, but let's get into question three.

Was Jesus capable of sinning? So, we talked about the fact that Jesus was anointed, he was led by the Spirit, he walked into his dependence on the Father. Was he capable of sinning? This is one of those questions that gets thrown around in the seminary crowd. Was Jesus able not to sin, or was he not able to sin?

And they've got Latin phrases for that. And I wrote down here, I said, man's wisdom will always get him wrapped around the axle of foolishness. and debate these things around and around and around until we're totally mixed up and confused and as Rydos says, uttering blasphemy. You know, that was, that's what he says about you. But what are your thoughts on that question? Well, he's perfect humanity, undiminished deity. He didn't have us in nature. He's a God man. They're impossible. Impossible. Why? Why would it be impossible? Because his only source of power was the Holy Spirit.

Yeah. I mean, he's The fact that he didn't have a sin nature is... I mean, that's... Well, Adam didn't have a sin nature either. No, but he... He didn't have the Holy Spirit, though. Yeah. Yet God had a direct relationship in the garden, one to one, but he did not have the dwelling Holy Spirit of power.

Do you think that's right? Yeah, that's right. I think so. I think that really... The only way we can have the Holy Spirit indwelling is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah. Yeah, it's... In Rideout's... writings on this. He said, could the Holy Spirit commit sin or yield to temptation? And he says, God forgive those who would make the suggestion. It's pretty strong words on this subject here. Would you say, Miles, that if you had to define sin, how would you define it?

That's great. That's the Youth Sunday School lesson that's coming up right after this here in Wimborne, Alberta. We're talking about that. And question number two for our youth is, the sin nature always and only drives us to carry out sin. And then the question is, what is sin? This I think I first got from William Newell. Sin is fundamentally self-will. Sin is fundamentally self-will. And so we're going to discuss that a bit with the youth. understanding in my mind has clarified so much in terms of understanding an issue like this. Because when we say, you know, could Jesus sin?

That's the whole point. You know, he lived, when we talk about his humble dependence, rather than living in self-will, if he had for a moment exerted his own will to live he would have been in sin. That's what this is all about. So though he was 100% deity and humanity, a perfect sinless humanity, perfect deity, the whole nature and character of Christ's life is that it was one of total dependence rather than self-will.

In Sunday School, teaching the kids what sin is, we focus on the definition of hamartia, which means to miss the mark. Remember J.D., we'd line them up with darts, small little darts, and at the other end of the room was the target, and they couldn't even get halfway there. So the idea is, What's the mark? Well, the Lord Jesus is the mark. Yes. So because it's interesting that in Romans 1 it talks about that God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness. So anything that's not of God is sin. So it isn't something that you can put a Well, I'm 80% of the way there or 90%. You either are or you're not. You either have gone there or you're not.

Yeah. Yeah, I wrote down here from John829. He said, I always do the things that are pleasing to him, to the Father. Right. I think a lot of times we want to, you talked about able to or not able to, and kind of that big discussion that so many people get hung up on. I think we as natural men want to know that we want to believe that Christ could have sinned. He's just like us. You ever felt that way? Like, yeah, I think there's this, I want, I want to be able to relate to him in a way that is the same as where I'm coming from in my own. Yeah.

You know, that's that song. What if, what if God were one of us, just a slob, like one of us. And there's this idea that we want God to be on that. kind of level almost, you know, that he can't sympathize with us unless he's, you know, able to, you know, but yeah, I think I know what you're saying. Yeah, I think that we want to try to, we want the Lord Jesus to be at a similar level as us in many ways. He was just the perfect version of us.

Right. I know, I know, yeah. I'm giggling, Mike, but what's behind the giggle? Well, I'm thinking about the people that produce that program called The Chosen. That's exactly what they're trying to do, you know. Yes, yeah. When the study we're doing through Romans, it's interesting how the Jews and how mankind thinks the same way, and they say to God, how can you judge me? when you created me.

And so I'm a sinner. Well, you haven't sinned. How can you judge me? You know? The hallmark of the sin nature is that it's always somebody else's fault. To the point where Adam blamed God for sinning because he gave him a woman that caused him to sin.

Okay. Yeah. You know that verse that says Jesus was tempted in every way but without sin? Right. Yes, sir. Yeah. So then that brings up an interesting question. So I guess what we've said is that we don't look at the Lord Jesus as a perfect version of what we could have been or what we could be. That's right.

So how is he tempted then? Well, I think if you look at the word, the word tempted, it's really the word tested. It didn't have the possibility of succumbing to the temptation, so it was really tested is what that word I think means. Yeah, and I think when we think about testing, you know, and we have in there the idea of proving out, and we often think of the idea of you know, a saying, a medal or so forth, and it's got to be subjected to heat. It's got to be, you know, burning. We sometimes think of it as, you know, burning off the impurities. Well, in Jesus Christ, there were no impurities. It's not purgatory. It's not burning off the, you know, the chaff or something. But it had to test the quality of the medal, so to speak. And he did. He faced temptation in that sense, like I don't think any of us have ever really faced. He faced it to the highest degree, this pressure.

I think that's awfully encouraging to us because when we realize that what God intends to do is to raise us up out of the holodomic creation, into a creation that is Christ himself, that, you know, if you've ever entertained the thought, am I ever going to be able to not sin?

And the answer is yes. And it's yes because, initially, because of our identification with Christ and his death, prayer, and resurrection, the resurrected life that each one of us shares doesn't sin. Yeah, we'll come back around to that question at number six here. So, let's look at question four and five, and then we can come back to that thought and how it applies to us as those who are in Christ.

So, number four, why is the dove used as a symbol of the Spirit? Now, we talked last week about Jesus' baptism and His anointing, and in all four Gospels, it's very, you know, it describes this, that the Spirit descended as a dove and came to rest on Him. And John, I can't remember which Gospel, John the Baptist says, and remained on Him. The one, you know, when you see the Spirit descend and remain, He's the one. You know, it is interesting, this. I actually, it's a point, I wrestled with one of the guys who's taught me a lot.

I don't know, he said that the Greek here means that he came as a dove, not in the form of a dove, but he came down like a bird descending. regardless, you know, so I was like, Wow, did they see the form of a dove? Or did they see something else coming down as a dove? And frankly, I don't I don't know. It doesn't it just says that he came down as a dove. I'm not a enough of an expert in the languages to be able to get into that fine detail. But um, but Regardless, in all four Gospels, the Holy Spirit recorded that He came down as a dove on Christ. So, why the dove? Why that symbol? Why are we thinking about a dove when the Holy Spirit comes upon Christ?

I didn't necessarily always make that big a deal about this in my own thinking. Rideout gets pretty excited about it. And what he points out, I think, is really cool. It really is. Because what the dove, especially in the Jewish mind, would have reminded them was sacrifice. The dove was used in sacrifice. Mary and Joseph, of course, brought two turtle doves to the temple. We all know that. think of that. But it was a sacrificial bird. And then Rideout also points out it was a bird of love, and he quotes the Song of Solomon, where it refers to my love, my dove.

And then he refers to the fact that it was a bird of sorrow. And quotes the scripture, we mourned as doves. I don't know if you guys have mourning, do you have mourning doves down there? The doves that sit up the trees and sound like they're crying? Yeah.

What was really interesting is that, I'll just read right out here, he says, the spirit has ever presented Christ, not himself, He would show us who the One is, marked out in this wondrous way. He, Christ, is the sacrifice whose love brought him down from heaven and whose sorrow over man's sin made him a mourner. In looking at the dove, we do not think so much of the Spirit as we do of Christ. And then he quotes, He shall glorify me. The Spirit never glorifies Himself. He always directs our attention to the Son, and He always glorifies the Son.

And so even in His coming as a dove to the Son, He pointed us, He turned our eyes towards Christ and who He is, and His nature as a sacrifice. So pretty neat. And of course here, just, you know, we're talking about the Spirit as related to Jesus Christ in His incarnation and earthly life. And so, that's why this is such an important topic, because the fact that the Spirit came and remained on Jesus Christ, and so that's why we're just paying attention to the way in which the Spirit came on Him.

Now this one, question number five, is, for me, it was a stretch in my ability to take an Old Testament law, code, and apply it to Christ. I don't see this clearly. And I read, I went back to Leviticus and read, I was like, how did he ever make this connection? That's just my immaturity. Did everyone read that? Does everyone know what I'm talking about with Leviticus 14 is what's in the notes. I did go back and read that text.

It's the cleansing of a leper. Which, interestingly, I think this was something Vern taught in a lesson I listened to, had never happened. It never happened until Jesus, or no record of it anyway, until Jesus cleansed lepers. And he tells them to go and carry out this ritual. And so they had to dust off the law code. What exactly is a leper supposed to do when he's cleansed?

But there's this whole ritual where there's two doves, and one is, there's an earthen vessel, and it's overrunning water, and one is to be killed in an earthen vessel, overrunning water, and, you know, these complex you know, law codes and rituals that the Lord gave to Israel, they do have deep and rich meaning, and they do point us to Christ.

That's something that we've talked about in the past in this class, that, you know, all of Scripture is to point us to Him, and that, I think, is what what Rideout was able to do here in a way that I have very little ability to do. But did anyone have any thoughts on that question? In thinking on it, I can read what Rideout said here about it, but I want to see if anyone else has any. About halfway through what Rideout says, he says, the bird of heaven speaks of Christ, who came down from heaven.

The earthen vessel speaks of a prepared body. His incarnation. The running or living water reminds us, as we have frequently seen, of the word of God as used by the Holy Spirit. The washing of water with the word. Yeah. How important it was that you will remember that we spoke of our Lord's determination to fulfill the least scriptural prediction concerning his death and how thus he spoke of his thirst. So right after that, I'm not sure, the passage we're looking at embodies this thought.

In his death, the Holy Spirit was united with himself in carrying out every particular that had been foretold. So the Holy Spirit is involved with the Lord Jesus in carrying out every prophecy regarding him, regarding the Messiah. Thus it was with him up to that awful moment when forsaken of God. Yeah. So is the death of the dove a type of the spirit being with Christ up to the point that he died? Yeah, I think I think what, uh, what Rideout is wanting to make really clear there, there in that sentence, thus the spirit was with him up to that awful moment when he was seeking of God.

It was, uh, it was all the way through his, his earthly ministry. Um, and, uh, and at that, at that point, At that moment, the father turned his back on the son. Doesn't it seem that with this kind of discussion that all three persons of the Godhead must be in unison of life in order for them to carry out their purposes? When the Lord Jesus, the Father turns away from the Lord Jesus, the Spirit is not involved in that, in that sense.

Or maybe He is, I don't know. But He does that by Himself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think what this question and these thoughts along these lines have really just revealed to me afresh is the magnitude, the depth of what was going on in the cross and just made me aware of the fact that it is an infinitely deep thing that was going on in the cross beyond beyond what we can fully comprehend, beyond what we can fully grasp. And I really think we will spend eternity focused on that, what Christ did in that event on the cross, in His death and His resurrection. It seems like, from God's perspective, the only way to deal with sin was to make the Lord Jesus sinned and then heaven died. That was the only way he could solve that issue. Because sin is a lot more than just running around doing bad things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We could camp there for a while, but let's look at number six, because this really does wrap this whole lesson together really nicely.

And the question is, how much power did it take to raise Jesus from the dead? So this brings us now through, we've talked from his anointing all the way up now, we've kind of really fast-tracked through his life. We've talked about his anointing at the beginning of his ministry. Now we talked about the cross, and now we're talking about the resurrection, and how much power did it take to raise Jesus from the dead. More than we can even fathom. Sorry, come again, I didn't quite catch that. Is the microphone on there? More power than we can even fathom. Amen. Yeah, more power than we can even fathom.

Alyssa and I were talking about this on the way to church here, and, you know, I've often, again, going back to this thought that we will wrestle with the magnitude of the cross forever, I've often wondered how is it possible that one person in a finite period of time pays an eternal penalty, you know?

The penalty of sin is eternal separation from God. And yet, by nature of who he was as an infinite person, a person that has eternality as a characteristic, he was able to take this entire penalty. But then if we ask the question, how much power is required to raise to life someone from this position of eternal death, it could only be infinite power. Only infinite power could possibly raise someone from that kind of death.

And that's just enough to make your head spin, really. You know, but it was the We talk about, you know, the combined power of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, you know, all the power of the Godhead. And we see His power in creation. Romans 1 tells us that we see the power of God through the things which He's created. But that's just a finite creation. That's just a, you know, it's limited. It's amazing. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to diminish it. It is amazing what God has created. But it's finite.

What God did in the cross was an act of infinite power. An act of infinite power. And in a sense, there's nothing else that could have displayed his power like raising his son from the dead. And that, yeah, that's a lot to chew on. It almost seems like when the Lord entered into, I don't know if you can say a place of sin or wherever it was, whatever it was, there was no escape out of there, outside of the infinite power of the Godhead. You couldn't get out. And so, in order for him to redeem his creation, that's what it took. He couldn't have done it any other way.

Yeah, yeah. The only way, yeah. I want to read some of what Raido said here, because what's really going to impact us here, I think, is this thought that he turns to here. So, he makes the point, I'm going to kind of try to quickly summarize it here a little bit, but he makes the point that Jesus Christ was quickened in his resurrection by the Spirit, and of course because we're talking about the Holy Spirit here, we realize that, or he says, so also it was through the Holy Ghost that he gives special instructions and commands to his disciples after his resurrection.

And he says, this is most interesting and remarkable, the spirit was with the risen Lord as well, as before his death, which seems to suggest that unhindered and unreserved divine fellowship which shall exist for all eternity. And now this is where it really comes home for us.

He says, not this fellowship which shall exist for all eternity, not only between the persons of the Godhead, but blessed be His name with all the redeemed as well. Thus we can trace the link of the Spirit with our Lord. all through his earthly life, his conception, baptism, anointing, sacrificial death, and his resurrection. What perfect and holy intimacy and what privileges it suggests for those who have in infinite grace been born again, baptized, indwelt, and anointed by the same Spirit. By the same Spirit. And it goes back to what I was kind of saying at the beginning about grace. we need to come to a deeper recognition of the magnitude of that grace.

And we see it here, in that we, when we get to this point of recognizing that the infinite resurrection power which raised Christ from the dead, and then recognized that we have been made participants in that very thing. We've been made to participate in that death, in that resurrection, and in that same Spirit-led life of Christ.

So you can't start whining to God when you don't walk the walk. It's why dependence is the key to the walk, because that was the key to the Lord Jesus walking that way. I think that that dependence thing is something that God has always intended for creatures to be. And in this case, as for believers, It's a double down, you know.

The life now is so above whatever we ask or think. But as dependent on the Lord Jesus and the work of the Spirit in us, that life can be manifested through us. The key is trust in Him. I don't know, it's probably not a great word, or believe in it. Yeah, and isn't that always the key?

Just believe the fact that we have been made participants in this same resurrected life. This resurrected life that could only be brought about by the infinite power of God, is the life and the power that is at work in you and I. So, just marvelous thoughts there. Let's close in prayer a few minutes after. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are so infinitely gracious towards us, that you have seen fit to make us participants in this most most powerful work of yours in all history, in all of eternity, the fact that you would raise your son out of this position of eternal death. And Lord, we thank you that we've been made to participate in that and to enjoy fellowship in that life. And we pray that we would learn to walk more and more independence on that reality. In Jesus' name, Amen.