“Anticipation” is a series that explores the Holy Spirit’s role at major points in the salvation of man. Part 1 begins with the Spirit in Creation, and we realize that He really is a Spirit of anticipation. He often takes the subservient role in momentous times of our salvation’s history, and this is no exception. In Genesis 1, working together with the Word, He actively anticipates Creation.

<p>“Anticipation” is a series that explores the Holy Spirit’s role at major points in the salvation of man. Part 1 begins with the Spirit in Creation, and we realize that He really is a Spirit of anticipation. He often takes the subservient role in momentous times of our salvation’s history, and this is no exception. In Genesis 1, working together with the Word, He actively anticipates Creation.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

R3 Inc/Hope Adventist Fellowship Church

Anticipation

Sebastien Braxton

Pt 1-The Holy Spirit and Creation

You know, my best friend tells this story that is fitting for a sermon series this week entitled Anticipation.

And he tells a story about a village that was out west that was basically starving from lack of rain.

Crops were dying, no irrigation, and this is, I guess, maybe before the time where people could just, you know, go get water and it was just fine.

And he said that the whole village had decided to come together to pray, to ask God to send rain because they would not survive if there was no rain.

So as a result, they all gathered in this huge field and they said, it doesn't matter what God you pray to, it doesn't matter what religion, just come to this field and pray that we receive rain so that we all will survive.

So as they were all out there, they noticed a very interesting sight.

And that sight was as they were kneeling and agonizing and tears were falling down their faces as they were pleading with God, they saw a young girl in the middle of the field.

And they said, what is wrong with that young girl?

And so 1, you know, older woman turned to another older woman, whose daughter is that?

So finally someone walked over to her and they said, excuse me young lady, why aren't you praying?

And she says, well, you guys are praying, but I came expecting rain.

And if it rains, you're going to want to have an umbrella.

So as a result, she was there because she was anticipating that rain would come.

She wasn't there hoping that rain would come.

She wasn't there believing possibly that rain would come.

She was there anticipating that rain was going to come.

And in her anticipation, she brought an umbrella, not kneeling pads to pray on.

And as we're going to be talking about the Holy Spirit, it is not enough for us to come Simply to say, you know, I'm going to come to these meetings, I'm going to come to listen to these messages, and I'm going to pray that God gives me the Holy Spirit.

You and I must be anticipating that because we come together to study this particular promise of the Father, that we are anticipating that the Holy Spirit will fall upon us and in falling upon us He will fill us and in filling us He will empower us to win souls.

As a result I begin this series with the theme, Anticipation as we shall end it, which is by the end, I pray and hope that you, like the Holy Spirit, will be in eager anticipation.

During this week we will be exploring 3 themes, 3 messages.

Tonight's message is anticipation part 1.

We'll be talking about the Spirit and creation.

On Wednesday, we'll deal with anticipation part 2, we'll talk about the Spirit and the cross.

And on Friday, we will deal with the Spirit and the coming of Christ.

And I want to show you that the Spirit of God is a spirit of anticipation, intense anticipation.

So in anticipation of this message, Let us pray and invite his presence to be with us and guide us through the word of God.

Spirit of the living God, you have inspired the word and now we pray that you would give the word life and power.

We pray, Lord, that you would give this man who is but dust in your sight, the tongue of the learned, that he may speak a word in season to 1 who is weary.

We pray, Father, that you would use him and that you would speak through Him, and that you'll speak to Him.

Father, we are all in need of this great gift.

And as a result, we ask, no, we anticipate that by the end of this week of prayer, we will be different people, we'll be different souls, our words will have a different power, our lives will have a different influence, and this community will have a different life because of our presence.

This is our prayer and we trust that you will help this to be our experience for we ask in Jesus name, amen.

If you have your Bibles we're going to begin in Genesis chapter 1.

I am a firm believer that there is enough preaching and there needs to be a lot more teaching in Bible study when it comes to sermons.

People can preach anything, preach the newspaper, preach a nice phrase, preach a book, preach philosophy, preach politics, but as we will look at a little bit later in this message, it is important that we teach people how we arrive at the conclusions we arrive at in the Bible.

Many people say, I believe that, I heard it, it was inspiring, but I don't know necessarily how you got there.

And maybe we don't disagree with the point, but I believe it's important that the Spirit of God guides us into truth.

Genesis chapter 1, beginning in verse 1, the Bible says, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.

And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

From the very beginning of the Bible we are introduced to a God who was there in the beginning and in order for God to be there in the beginning he had to pre-exist the beginning.

Not only did he have to pre-exist the beginning, in order for God to create the heavens and the earth, God must not be the heavens and the earth.

In other words, pantheism is not true, based on the Bible.

God is not the tree because God created those things.

And because God created those things, He is separate from them.

And not only has He pre-existed them, the Bible introduces us in verse 2 to another character, the Spirit of God.

And as a result, the Bible has already given us more than 1 person.

Besides the fact that the name God in the original language is the word, it comes from the word Elohim.

I want you to remember it because Elohim is plural.

It is assumed from the very beginning that God is many.

That sometimes there is more to 1 than what we can actually understand.

So when we say 1 God, maybe there's more to 1 than what we are actually able to perceive.

And as a result, the Bible clues us in even a little bit later in verse 26 when God says, let us.

If God is singular, he wouldn't say us, he would say let me.

But let's dive in more specifically to our situation.

The Bible says in verse 2 that the earth was without form and void.

In the original language, this is the phrase, Tohu wabohu.

Now, this is very interesting because, you know, I tell people that in order to remember this phrase, just think of tofu, right?

And as a result, when you think tohu wa bohu, you think tofu.

So in the original creation story, the Bible is talking about a situation where God has made the heavens and the earth, but he didn't do it all at once.

And not only is it formless, and what the phrase is suggesting and intimating is chaotic, it doesn't have any rhyme or reason, there is no order to the situation, it's just a big mess.

But not only is it just a big mess, the Bible says, and darkness was covering it.

And in this darkness that is covering it, we are introduced to what a young Hebrew boy would be introduced about his God.

And that is the fact that God doesn't mind starting with chaos.

God doesn't mind dealing with situations of darkness.

Not only is God not afraid of dealing with it, God is not afraid of the dark.

1 thing to teach our kids, Jesus is not afraid of the dark.

The Holy Spirit is not afraid of the dark.

And even though the world was without form and void, i.e.

It was in chaos, this means that situations that make no sense, situations that we cannot see ourselves out of may be described as what the world was before God touched it.

And if we want to know what our life will become, if we remove God from it, we just need to look at verse 2.

Pt 2-The Holy Spirit and the Cross

I am so excited to be back here again, part 2 of the series Anticipation.

We began our series on Monday evening reflecting on the Holy Spirit and creation.

And we looked at the very fact that this verse that we often times read over very casually in Genesis 1 and verse 2, that the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

But looking deeper into this as what a Hebrew man or woman or child would have understood what was actually taking place.

That the Holy Spirit wasn't just there just for moral support for creation.

He wasn't just there to give his endorsement.

He wasn't just there to say, you know, I think this is a great idea.

But he was hovering over the face, the surface of the waters, because he was shaking in eager anticipation.

He was excited to participate in creation.

And so today we continue in this same theme because I believe the Holy Spirit is a spirit of anticipation.

He is oftentimes in the Bible waiting, shaking in anticipation of some event so that he can partner with the Word of God to bring about this powerful momentous result.

We looked at the very first 1 which is the creation of the world.

The Holy Spirit was there every single day.

I wish I had time to develop that even further in Genesis.

But we must move forward, and today we're gonna look at a passage in the Gospel of John, chapter 1.

And we're gonna be looking at Anticipation, part 2, the spirit and the cross.

Many people unfortunately do not fully understand the purpose of Jesus's earthly ministry.

Many people believe that Jesus came down from heaven, was born of a baby, and he was conceived in Mary's womb.

And how was he conceived into Mary's womb?

Does anybody remember how he was conceived?

When Mary asked the question, how can this be?

The Holy Spirit will come upon you and he will take divinity and give it atomic feeling.

This is why the song says, Mary, did you know that when you kissed that baby's face, you were kissing the face of God?

Because The Holy Spirit had taken divinity and given it flesh.

To listen to him, you could sleep next to God.

It is unfathomable to think about the immensity of the incarnation.

I was about to say something, I would have gave away my message.

And so we build off of the fact that Jesus came down, conceived by the Holy Spirit, and we go to the Gospel of John in the first chapter, and in verse 29.

I don't want to run ahead of anyone, because as I said, A lot of this is more teaching than preaching.

The Bible says, The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

Now we're going to pause here for a moment because we must lay a foundation before we go to the rest of the passage and it will make more sense.

John looks at Jesus coming toward him, and this is not the only time he says it.

Now, it must be clear that John called Jesus a lamb before Revelation Chapter 5.

Before all creation, animate and inanimate, was saying worthy is the Lamb, John said Jesus was a Lamb.

Before Revelation 17 said that these 10 kings will fight against the Lamb, but the Lamb will overcome him.

And those who are with him are called, chosen, and faithful." That was before Revelation 17 verse 14.

That John looked at Jesus, the first person, the first individual to recognize in this man, the word having become flesh isn't just a word it is a lamb.

But we must understand as we looked at Genesis chapter 1 what did a Jewish man understand by these words?

He was not Adventist, he was not Christian, he was a Jew who would be listening to the words of John.

And in listening to the words of John, he was curious to understand certain assumptions that he wasn't telling that Jesus was dumb.

He wasn't saying that Jesus was a wandering soul because lambs like to wander.

He wasn't saying that Jesus was fragile by calling him a lamb or that Jesus was weak.

In a Jewish mind They understood something about lambs that perhaps many of us today are a little bit far removed from.

You see, from the very beginning of the Bible in Genesis 22 and verses 7 and 8, there was a father and a son climbing a mountain.

And as they were climbing that mountain, the son asked the father a question.

He said, Father, I see the wood, I see this is for the fire, and we have the stones for the altar, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?

And the father looked at his son and he said, son, God will provide himself a lamb.

But we're not sure if that's the right lamb.

Because you go a little bit forward to Exodus chapter 12 and I want you to turn there with me.

Because I want you to see it in the Bible for yourself.

In Exodus chapter 12, this is the night that the Jewish nation was soon to be liberated.

Broken free from Egyptian slavery, God gave Moses specific instructions to give to the people.

And in verse 3 of the 12th chapter of Exodus, the Bible says, speak to how many of the congregation?

There is no 1 to be excluded from these instructions.

On the tenth day of this month, every man, every man shall take for himself a what?

According to the house of his father, a lamb for what?

Everyone in this man's house, He was going to get a lamb and his family safety depended upon the man obeying this command.

You see, there's something from the very beginning of liberation of every family, of every home in the Moor community That depends upon the father going to get a lamb That if we really want our wives and our children to be free we have the obligation He didn't say every wife.

He didn't say every firstborn He says every man who has a household, he needs to go get a lamb.

His spiritual effort, his spiritual study, his spiritual prayers, his spiritual seeking is not for himself.

And as he goes to get this lamb the Bible goes on in verse 4 and says and if the household is too small for the lamb I don't even have time to preach on that.

If the household is too small for the lamb, because the lamb covers a huge amount, it says, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of the persons.

According to each man's need, you shall make your count for the lamb.

The next verse says, your lamb shall be what?

I want you to remember this because we're going to look at this several times.

That means it can't have any spots, it can't have any bruises, it can't have any diseases.

The Bible goes on in verse 5, a male of the first year.

You may take it from the sheep or from the goats.

And then he says, now you shall keep it until the 14th day of the same month Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall what?

Shall what kill it at what time twilight the darkest time So we can say or we can actually say this in the Hebrew, it could also be when the sun is setting.

What we may call dusk or dawn, depending on how you want to view that.

They take this lamb and they have to kill this lamb.

But notice, it is a male who can reproduce many times with many female lambs, sheep.

Number 2, he's without blemish, so you want him to reproduce.

He doesn't even have time to really produce anything for you.

Pt 3-The Holy Spirit and the Coming of Christ

I want to begin with a scientific study, but before we do that, let's go to 2 Corinthians 3.

2 Corinthians, in the third chapter, as we continue in our series on anticipation.

The spirit of God is a spirit of anticipation.

Now we have discussed hitherto that the Spirit of God was there in creation in Genesis 1 verse 2.

He was hovering over the face of the waters and we understood that word hovering.

We understood it to mean as that mother eagle in Deuteronomy chapter 32 and verse 11 was shaking in eager anticipation.

Waiting to participate with the Word in the creation of the world day by day.

Now it is something significant we will come back to later in the message, but suffice it to say that the Holy Spirit takes the Word of God and it makes that Word a reality.

And then we saw that this is Magnified in the fact that Jesus Described in John chapter 1 in verse 14 as the word and that the word was made flesh but the question was how was the word made flesh and the Bible told us the same question that Mary had we have and the Holy Spirit, not the Holy Spirit, the angel through the Holy Spirit told her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the highest will overshadow you and He will take divinity and give it atomic particles.

He will make it have a nose and eyes and a particular hair color.

This is what the Holy Spirit can do with divinity.

And we saw that in the same sense, if we wanted Christ to be formed in us, it would require the same surrender that Mary made to the angel.

As your word, so let it be according to me.

Yesterday on Wednesday night, we looked at the fact that we continue in our series on anticipation of the Spirit and the cross and we saw that the Lamb of God is also the individual that baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

But our question was, which 1 comes first?

And we saw in John 7, verses 37-40, the Bible writer, the Apostle John, reminded us that the Holy Spirit was not yet given because Jesus had not yet been glorified.

We saw in John chapter 12, in verses 20 to 27, on and on to verse 30 and 31 where Christ begins to say as if I be lifted up but this he wasn't talking about Just praising him He was talking about being lifted up by how he would die the crucifixion and this was the hour of his glorification according to Jesus.

And therefore the cross of Christ, the Holy Spirit was shaking in eager anticipation of the fact that he would be able to come down and enter into the believers at that time once Jesus' sacrifice was complete.

And we said in the same sense and more, if we believe that the Holy Spirit is hovering over this place in eager anticipation, waiting for the preaching of the Word, and yet the Holy Spirit is also waiting on us to allow the Lamb of God to take away our sins.

And so we wanted to come face to face with this ugly thing called sin that takes our joy.

And so as a result we wanted to make that surrender to Jesus.

No Lord, don't just come in and knock on the door of my heart.

I don't know about you, but I'm ready for sin to be done.

Does anybody know what I'm talking about?

How many times do I have to be at this place?

How many times do I have to come to church feeling dirty, unaccepted, not so joyful to be here on Sabbath?

And the Lamb of God can cure that problem.

So we build off of this in 2 Corinthians in the 3rd chapter to talk about the Holy Spirit as a spirit of anticipation.

The Bible says in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, 1 of our favorite verses I believe, we love to quote it.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

If the Spirit isn't here, there is no liberty.

But the Bible adds in verse 18, but we all with unveiled face, That means no blockage, nothing to keep us from beholding whatever he's about to say.

Beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord.

According to the Apostle Paul, what are we beholding?

I'm not asking you to insult your intelligence.

I'm asking you because this will make a very significant difference as the message goes on.

So in this mind, Paul says, we have no veil over our face and we are beholding as in a mirror The glory of the Lord.

And we love to say, by beholding, you become changed.

In fact, there was a scientific study in Italy with some monkeys And they were trying to study these things called motor neurons.

And they said, you know, when my hand goes like this, there's a neuron that fires in my brain.

Then I look this way, and another neuron fires in my brain.

So they were studying monkeys and their motor neurons.

So they had this monkey and he had a little bar with some peanuts.

And they would wait for the monkey to grab the peanut.

And when he would grab the peanut, the motor neuron would fire.

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Series

Anticipation

Pt 1-The Holy Spirit and Creation

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

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"Tell It Again"

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His Truth Is Marching On

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Raw

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The Disciples Who Gave Up Everything

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How To Receive the Latter Rain of the Holy Spirit, Part 2: Conquering the Obstacles

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Morning Devotional

Why Are We Here?

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Wise Rebuker - Obedient Ears

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The Force Unseen

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Unlocking the Mysteries of the Sanctuary

24 The Sanctuary and the Testimony of Jesus

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For My King

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Plenary Sessions

AMEN 2022 Mission Program

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Sound Doctrine