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Newington Three Angels Church

Eric Walsh

Lying on the Spirit

Good to have everybody back with us again.

As many have been getting over the coronavirus, we are going to just continue to pray for those affected.

Our talk for this, I'll call it an installment, but our talk this time has to do with the Holy Spirit on a contentious issue.

So, I ask for your prayers even as you listen to this that God would really move in this.

Our scripture reading is taken from Matthew chapter 28, Matthew chapter 28, we'll be starting at verse 19.

It says, go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

Our message this episode is entitled, Lying on the Spirit.

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to just study a word and this challenging topic.

Lord, I pray that you make me just a nail upon the wall, a rusty, sorry nail, Lord.

But upon that nail, Lord, I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

Let our walls not be seen or heard, but instead, Father, let us hear a word from your throne room of grace.

As our prayer in Jesus' precious and holy name, amen.

I'm gonna start in the book of John and then I'll give you a little rationale as to why we're doing this, covering this topic tonight.

John 20 in verse 19 says, "'Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week when the doors were shut, where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews came Jesus and stood in the midst.

And when he had said, and he had so said, he showed unto them his hands and his side.

Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord.

We jump in today just where Jesus appears post-resurrection.

He appears miraculously in the midst of the disciples.

Won't get too much into the story, but it is a profound experience as the disciples had at 1 point thought they'd lost their master.

And I like what the Bible says he in order for them to understand who he is He he shows them his hands where the nails pierced him and his side Where the spear pierced him to let them know it was him and the Bible says the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.

Verse 21, then said Jesus to them again, peace be unto you as my father has sent me, even so send I you.

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.

So the reason for this talk, this brief talk is I'm hearing from more and more people The question as to whether or not the Holy Spirit is 1, divine, 2, a person, or 3, people have said, the Holy Spirit is simply a force.

And they use this verse to say, in fact, the Holy Spirit isn't really a third person in the Godhood.

In this, they deny the Trinity, which by default means you have to deny the divinity of Christ, which we've talked about before.

But I don't know how you deny the divinity of Christ when the disciples worshipped him.

And he, as we will see as we go through this, will be worshipped throughout eternity.

You can't worship that which is not divine.

Christ never rejected the worship that he received.

Those who say that, you know, they don't like the Trinity.

And a lot of them, it's because they're saying, no, the Trinity is a Catholic institution.

Well, the problem with that kind of logic is, if you're saying it came out of Catholicism, which it doesn't, it comes out of the scripture, and they put a name on it, the Trinity, which does not appear in the scripture, but the principle of a triune God is in the scripture and in the spirit of prophecy.

So if you're afraid that because the Catholic church believes in a Trinity, then you're in trouble because the Catholic Church also believes in a crucifixion.

So do you now say, okay, we can't believe those things because Catholics believe them?

And so some go to this verse and say, look, the Holy Spirit isn't really a person.

He breathed it out and the disciples received the Holy Ghost.

I don't know if that's really what the text is saying.

To me, he breathed and they received the Holy Ghost.

As you're gonna see, the Holy Ghost existed before Jesus breathed here.

So the question is, is the Holy Spirit just a force?

Like in Star Wars, and everybody's familiar with the great epic films that came out of, I believe, originally or even afterwards, also books and even comic books.

The Star Wars saga has made probably billions of dollars at this point, if you go all the way back to the 1970s.

At the root of this series is the idea, There's no God, there's no devil, there's just a force.

And you're either on the good side of the force or the dark side of the force, the light side of the force or the dark side of the force.

And you all know, if you've ever seen these movies, and I'm not telling you to go and watch them, but the premise is that there's no intelligent God, that there's just some force inherent to all life.

And I even believe they believe in every atom that connects everyone.

And if the force is strong with you, you can do all kinds of miraculous things.

But If the force is strong with you, you can do all kinds of miraculous things.

But if the force is strong with you on the side of light or on the side of dark, but let me submit to you, that is literally the way people view witchcraft.

That there's white witchcraft and black witchcraft, good magic and bad magic.

It's all the same thing, just a matter of how you use it to try and reduce the Holy Spirit to simply being a force is blasphemy.

And I'll jump ahead, I'll say it right here.

It's interesting when you speak of an evil spirit, no 1 says an evil spirit is just a force.

No 1 says an evil spirit is just some movement of a thing.

People understand that if it's an evil spirit, there's a person, a demonic personage behind that spirit.

Yet when it comes to the Holy Spirit, folk want to say in fact that this spirit is not a person, not divine.

And the reason this thing has caught on so well is because the devil knows that there is a specific work for the Holy Spirit to do for this for the time on earth to end.

And by denying the divinity of Christ, which is the spirit of antichrist, and by denying the Holy Spirit, its personage and its divinity, in fact, what they are doing is playing into the enemy's hands of deception in the last days.

Genesis 1 in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness.

The noun Elohim is a plural but is always used with a singular verb when it speaks of the true God.

This indicates a unity and diversity within the nature of God.

This unity and diversity is revealed in Scripture as the doctrine of the Trinity.

Which, you know, if you don't like the term Trinity, you can pick Godhead.

Now notice that Elohim does not end in A-I-M, which in the Hebrew means dual.

And I don't have time to get into it but if it was Elohim which is the A-I-M it would mean that there are 2 in the plurality but Elohim I-M means there's 3 or more and I get this from an excellent book I'm reading right now that you get at the ABC bookstore called of everything I needed to know I learned in Genesis.

And the author breaks down, and I wish I remembered his name, he breaks down in that, in the first, very first pages, that in fact the doctrine of a Triune God is there embedded.

And so some people say, well, but the verbs are singular.

The plurality, they say, has to do with the richness of God, the depth of his royalty, the depth of his Godness and his majesty, as if to say the God of gods.

But if you say that, how does it make sense that those passages must still be translated, let us make man in our image?

And what the Bible is doing because it is not normal hemo grammar to disconnect the the verb and the and the content and and the and the subject in that way but what the Bible is saying is there is a oneness to God and a plurality And this is the mystery of godliness.

Without the Holy Spirit, you'll never be at peace with the truths that the Bible is teaching, as we will see.

Acts 28 is the Holy Spirit, is it a person?

Acts 28 and verse 25 says, and when they agreed not among themselves, they departed after that.

Paul had spoken 1 word, well spake the Holy Ghost by Isaiah, the prophet unto our fathers.

If the Holy Spirit is just a force, how is it speaking to people and through people?

Acts 13, verse 2, as they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.

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Lying on the Spirit

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