JRS 63 SUMMER IN THE SYSTEMATICS, “THE DEITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT” 6/8/2025 SELECTED SCRIPTURES JESSE RANDOLPH Well, welcome to part two of Summer in the Systematics 2025 edition. We are continuing this evening in our study of the Holy Spirit and I’m going to get us started here by reminding everyone here that what we’re doing this evening is not purely academic exercise. At least, it ought not to be. Rather, this aspect, this type of our study of God and His Word should be treated for what it really is an act of worship. It doesn’t just have to be exposition to be worshipful. A systematic study like this because we’re going through attributes and character of God should should be equally worshipful. So, I want to make sure we all understand that we are standing on sacred ground as we interact with the truths we’ll be interacting with this evening. To that end, and to get us started, I’m going to give you a quote here from William Burr Pope who says “Every branch of this science is sacred. Therefore, all fit students are worshippers as well as students.” He’s not talking about systematic theology per say. He’s not talking about Pneumatology, our subject of study for this summer. He’s talking broadly about the study of theology as a whole, and he writes that every branch of this science is sacred. Indeed. Fred Sanders, a bit more modern-day theologian. He teaches at Talbot Seminary in Southern California. But he writes, “All theology should be done in the Spirit; what wakes us up to this is the recognition that the theology of the Holy Spirit should be done in the Holy Spirit. Theology itself is, as it were, haunted by the Holy Ghost.” Just some clever words there from Sanders. But you get the basic idea. Theology is not merely an intellectual exercise. It’s a spiritual exercise. We’re not mere students here this evening. We are worshipers. I pray we’ll keep our focus on that this evening and throughout the summer. Now, last week, as you’ll recall, we spent our time working through the truth that the Holy Spirit is a person. Now conceivably it is possible that the Holy Spirit could be a person without being God. By that, I mean it does not logically follow that just because a being is a person that they necessarily must be divine. Right? You and I are personal beings and we’re not divine. Angels are personal beings and they’re not divine. So, in other words, just because the Holy Spirit is a Person, does not necessarily quality Him to be God. Which means that His Godness, His divinity, His deity, must be proven some other way. Now, there are those like A.W. Pink, who heavily stress the inward prompting and conviction of the Holy Spirit as testifying to the Holy Spirit’s deity. For instance, Pink writes “Do you have a personal and inward proof that the Holy Spirit is none other than God? Has He wrought in you that which no finite power could? Has He brought you from death into life, made you a new creature in Christ, imparted to you living faith, filled you with holy longings after God? Does He breathe into you the spirit of prayer, take of the things of Christ and show them unto you, apply to your heart both the precepts and the promises of God? If so, then, these are so many witnesses in your own bosom of the deity of the Blessed Spirit.” Now in some ways, what Pink is saying here is helpful. I do, to a degree, appreciate his presuppositions. He’s saying in essence, that the Spirit’s internal testimony to you, as a believer, that He exists and that He is God, is proof that He exists. It’s presuppostionalism. His reasoning in some sense parallels what Paul says in Romans 8:16, where he says, “the Spirit testifies Himself with our spirit that we are children of God.” Pink here is saying in a sense, “the Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that the Spirit is God.” An even better witness, of course, a surer witness to the fact that the Holy Spirit exists and that the Holy Spirit is God, is what God has revealed to us in His Word. That is where God has most clearly and principally chosen to reveal Himself. Here’s Fred Sanders again. He says, “Although there is probably no place in the flow of Scripture where such a concise, down-to-business proposition like ‘the Holy Spirit is God’ is flatly stated, there are crucial passages that make the conclusion inescapable.” Walvoord is even more direct. He says, “In the sacred Scriptures, the evidence for the deity of the Holy Spirit is superabundant.” And these passages of Scripture fall into a number of different categories which we’ll be going through this evening. But first, a bit of history. We went over this a few summers ago, when we were studying the doctrine of the Trinity as we studied the doctrine of God. And the various heresies we studied you might remember a few summers ago, that developed in the fourth century especially. The fourth century was a battleground of Christian theology. You had men like Arius who were denying that Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity is truly God. And then against Arius you had men like Athanasius who were arguing for what we would call Biblical orthodoxy. Athanasius would argue that God is Triune, One in essence, three in Person; with all three Persons of the Godhead being equally God. So, Arius long ago was denying the fact that Jesus is God, but a lesser-known fact is that Arius also denied that the Holy Spirit is God. His views were eventually and rightly denounced as heretical. And since the Council of Constantinople, that was in 381 A.D, both the personality and the deity of the Holy Spirit what we are looking at tonight, have been affirmed by the Christian Church. Charles Hodge notes that “Since the fourth century His (meaning the Holy Spirit’s) true divinity has never been denied by those who admit His personality.” R.C. Sproul says, “As fierce as the debates have been regarding the deity of Christ, there has been comparatively little controversy with respect to the deity of the Holy Spirit. The Bible so clearly represents the Holy Spirit as possessing divine attributes and exercising divine authority that since the fourth century His deity has rarely been denied by those who agree that He is a person." Well, the deity of the Holy Spirit ultimately is not rooted in history. Though history backs up the truth. The deity of the Holy Spirit is rooted and grounded in Scripture. It’s the testimony of God and God’s Word that the Holy Spirit is God. Not a part of God, not an aspect of God, not the spiritual side of God, not a fractional subset of God, not a piece of God. No. He is God. Thomas Torrance says, “the Spirit is not just something divine or something akin to God emanating from Him, not some sort of action at a distance or some kind of gift detachable from Himself, for in the Holy Spirit God acts directly upon us Himself, and in giving us His Holy Spirit God gives us nothing less than Himself.” Think about that. If you are a follower of Christ here this evening, that means that God is indwelling you. God’s Spirit lives in you. That’s Romans 8:9-11. That means that God is in us. That should never just be kind of ho hum reality. That God is in us. Here’s some quotes here that might spark something in us as we think about that truth. R.A. Torrey writes, “If we once grasp the thought that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person of infinite majesty, glory and holiness and power, who in marvelous condescension has come into our hearts to make His abode there and take possession of our lives and make use of them, it will put us in the dust and keep us in the dust. I can think of no thought more humbling or more overwhelming than the thought that a person of Divine majesty and glory dwells in my heart and is ready to use even me.” J.B. Phillips along the same line says, “Every time we say, ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit,’ we mean that we believe that there is a living God able and willing to enter human personality and change it.” Robert Hall, Jr says “No words are adequate to express the excellence and dignity of the gift of the divine Spirit.” Amen. Well, as with any other area or aspect of systematic theology, we want to build our case for the Deity of the Holy Spirit, that is our theme or our title for this evening, from Scripture. That is our goal this evening to build a case for the Deity of the Holy Spirit from the Bible. We are going to do so by way of four points. You have four blanks on your worksheets there and we can go ahead and fill those in now. Point one is THE NAMES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. That will be one of the pieces of evidence we’ll look at for the Holy Spirit’s deity, the names of the Holy Spirit. Two we’ll look at THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. Three we’ll look at THE ASSOCIATIONS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. And last, THE WORKS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. Let’s start with THE NAMES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. The names that are attached to the Spirit of God in Scripture reveal that He is God. How we see this happen with the Holy Spirit specifically is the way that His name is used with reference to the other two persons of the Trinity who are also God. So, the argument in a sense is, just as God the Father is God. And just as God the Son is God. By being referred to as the Spirit of God, or as the Spirit of Christ or the Spirit of Jesus; that shows that the Holy Spirit Himself is God. Let me show you what I mean by a few and by few, I mean like 15, examples. First the Holy Spirit is referred to as we see here as “the Spirit of God.” “And the earth was formless and void, (Genesis 1:2) and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.” I’ll more to say about that one later. I Corinthians 3:16, “Do you not know that you are a sanctuary of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” Those are references to the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit’s also referred to as “the Spirit of our God.” I Corinthians 6:11. “And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” We also see “the Spirit of the Lord.” Luke 4:18. We quoted this this morning. Jesus here is quoting Isaiah 61:1, He says “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me.” The Holy Spirit’s also referred to as “the Spirit of the living God.” II Corinthians 3:3. “You are a letter of Christ, ministered to by us, having been written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of hearts of flesh.” The Spirit’s referred to as “the Spirit of Yahweh.” this is Judges 3:10. The reference here is He’s speaking of a judge named Othniel. “And the Spirit of Yahweh came upon him, and he judged Israel.” The Holy Spirit is referred to as Yahweh’s “Spirit.” Numbers 11:29. “Would that all the people of Yahweh were prophets, that Yahweh would put His Spirit upon them!” The Holy Spirit is referred to as “Your Spirit” in reference to God. Psalm 139:7. “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?” The Holy Spirit is referred to as “My Spirit” in reference to God. “My Spirit (this is God speaking directly) shall not strive with man forever because he indeed is flesh; nevertheless, his days shall be 120 years.” The Holy Spirit is referred to as “the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead.” Romans 8:11. “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead also will give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” Now the Holy Spirit is likewise also related to God the Son through titles like these. For instance, He’s referred to as “the Spirit of Jesus Christ.” Philippians 1:18,19. “Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that THIS WILL TURN OUT FOR MY SALVATION through your prayers and the provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.” He’s also referred to as “the Spirit of Christ.” I Peter 1:10, “Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, made careful searches and inquiries, inquiring to know what time or what kind of time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He was predicting the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow.” The Holy Spirit is referred to as “the Spirit of Jesus.” (Acts 16:7) “After they came to Mysia, they were trying to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them.” He’s referred to as “the Spirit of His Son.” Galatians 4:6. “And because you are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” Last one. (Acts 8:39) The Spirit’s referred to as “the Spirit of the Lord.” “When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away, and the eunuch no longer saw him, but went on his way rejoicing.” Now what each of those examples is showing us is that not only is there a close personal relationship between the three persons of the Godhead, God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit, but they each share equally in the singular divine essence. Just as God the Father is God, so God the Son is God, so God the Spirit is God. And it comes through these titles or these names. Well, next I want us to talk about a related category. We’ve just looked at these several different names that are ascribed to the Holy Spirit in Scripture and how each point to His deity. Now what I want to do is point us to a few different descriptions that are given to the Holy Spirit. These aren’t so much proper names for the Spirit, as they are adjectives to describe who the Spirit is, but which further identify Him as being God. The first one is this. He’s another “Advocate.” Or if you have NASV it will say another “Helper.” John 14:16 says “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate, (a paraclete) that He may be with you forever.” Now, that word “another” when it says “another Advocate” means another of the same kind. So, if Christ is God and He is. We established that last summer as we went deep into the Christology series, then the Spirit, another Advocate, or helper of the same kind, is also God. So that’s one description of this Spirit which certifies His Godness, His Deity. Or how about the fact that He is the “Holy” Spirit. That one is quite obvious, but that’s the title for Him. He’s the Holy Spirit. There’re references to the “Spirit” all over the Old and New Testaments. You go to the Old Testament; there are hundreds of references to a Spirit of some sort. The Hebrew word is “ruach.” Then you get to the New Testament, and it’s the Greek word “pneuma.” Those words are found all over and you have to be decerning and have to look at the context to figure out OK is this the Spirit of God or some other spirit. Is it an evil spirit, a human spirit? What’s the context? But we don’t need to do that level of discernment when we see the word Holy appended to that word Spirit. When we see the word holy in front of it, we know exactly who is being referred to, the Holy Spirit. There’s no room for interpretation there. Like in Matthew 1:20, one of many examples of course where we see the Holy Spirit referred to as such. “An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the One who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.’” Don’t worry, I’m not going to go through every instance where it’s being named this way. Just another one. Luke 11:13. “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” These are just clear examples of God, God the Holy Spirit. Only God Himself, of course, is truly “holy.” So, the fact that the third Person of the Trinity, goes by the title, the name “Holy Spirit.” and is known as the “Holy Spirit,” is simply further evidence that He is God. Or what about this one? This one I think, if anyone ever had a question about the Deity of the Holy Spirit, I would take them right here to this passage to Acts 5. Ananias and Sapphira and the account of being caught by Peter and the instance that’s laid out there in the first few verses of Acts 5:1-4. “But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, and kept back some of the price for himself, with his wife’s full knowledge. And bringing a portion of it, he laid it at the apostles’ feet. But Peter said, ‘why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own?” So far, we’re like OK, he lied to the Holy Spirit. But then look at the next part of it. “And after it was sold, (This is still Peter talking) was it not under your authority? Why is it that you laid this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.’” Peter is very clearly in the context of those four verses, equating the Spirit with God. If you lie to the Holy Spirit, you have lied to God. And that’s because the Holy Spirit is divine. He is not just a force, not just a being, He is God. So, we’ve worked through the first one. That’s our first heading the names of the Holy Spirit as being evidenced for the Deity of the Holy Spirit. One more quote here, its’s a helpful closing thought from John Walvoord. He says “The many titles of the Holy Spirit with their manifold meaning speak eloquently of the beauties of His Person and the wonders of His attributes. The many aspects revealed speak of His infinite Person, equal in power and glory with the Father and the Son.” He is in other words, divine. He is God. Next, we’re going to look at THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. That’s our second point this evening. THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. As we saw last week, the attributes of the Holy Spirit, the qualities of the Holy Spirit, the properties of the Holy Spirit, demonstrate in many ways that He is a Person, as opposed to a “force,” as opposed to a “thing.” But many of these same attributes or qualities demonstrate that He is not only a Person but God. For instance, His Omniscience. The Omniscience of the Holy Spirit. This means that He is all-knowing. Here's Rolland McCune. He says, “Omniscience is the knowledge of God that includes all things past, present, and future, immediately, simultaneously, and eternally.” Well, that’s certainly a true statement related to the Holy Spirit. Unlike false “gods” and idols, the Spirit of God, we know from Scripture, has inexhaustible knowledge. Isaiah 40:13. It says, “Who has encompassed the Spirit of Yahweh, or as His counselor has informed Him?” His knowledge is unsearchable. 1 Corinthians 2:10. “But to us God revealed them through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.” See the Spirit of God knows the person of God and the mind of God exhaustively because He is God. He doesn’t grow in knowledge, He doesn’t grow in awareness, He doesn’t learn things. He already is eternally all knowing. He knows what God knows, and He knows what God knows because He is God Himself. Here’s another one. The Omnipresence of the Holy Spirit. Augustus Strong defines that attribute this way. “God, in the totality of His essence, without diffusion or expansion, multiplication or division, penetrates and fills the universe in all its parts.” That’s a good definition of omnipresence. Mere creatures like you and like me, we can only be in one place at a one time. We are localized, finite beings. God, however, can be present everywhere and all at one time. He can be present in heaven at the same time He’s on earth. He can be present in Africa; at the same time, He’s on American continent. He can be here and there all at the same time. Thomas Watson said, “God’s center is everywhere, and his circumference is nowhere.” That’s a helpful way to think about God’s omnipresence. Well, the Bible teaches definitely that the Holy Spirit possesses this divine attribute of omnipresence. We get that from Psalm 139:7-10. “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.” See no human can escape the omnipresence of the Spirit. For the true child of God, that’s actually a blessing, not a dangerous thought. How wonderful to know that wherever we go, God is there. He is with us. The Holy Spirit is in us. Here’s another one. The Omnipotence of the Holy Spirit. Here’s John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue. They write that “God’s omnipotence describes His ability to do anything consistent with His nature.” I really appreciate the simplicity of that definition. It’s accurate, it’s Biblically supportable. To say that God in being omnipotent can do anything consistent with His nature. To Abraham God said, in Genesis 18:14, “Is anything too hard for Yahweh?” When Gabriel announced to Mary her forthcoming conception in virgin birth, He assured her nothing will be impossible with God. Well, the Bible affirms that the Holy Spirit is in possession of this very attribute. God, we know, is the source of all life. The Spirit of God, by His power, is involved in the giving of that life. Job 33:4. “The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.” Not only does the Holy Spirit demonstrate His power in giving life, though, He demonstrates His power in the preservation of all things including life. Psalm 104 in fact, the Scripture I read this evening, is a great testimony to the preservation of the universe by the power of God. What we see in that Psalm is what God has created by His omnipotence, He also preserves by that same power, a power which the Psalmist here attributes to the Holy Spirit. Psalm 104:30. “You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; (and then there’s this parallel statement) and You renew the face of the ground.” It’s all speaking to God the Spirit’s power. Or what about Luke 1:35? This is that scene where the angel Gabriel appears to the virgin Mary and announces her forthcoming miraculous pregnancy where she’ll be carrying the Messiah of Israel. This pregnancy we see here will be brought about by the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason, the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.” You can see it. It’s clear here that the Holy Spirit is placed in parallel to, to God Most High. This is another testimony to the fact that the Spirit Himself is omnipotent, and the Spirit Himself is God. Another one, The Eternality of the Holy Spirit. This is defined this way by J. Oliver Buswell. He says “The Bible writers explicitly teach and continuously assume that the being of God is eternal, both as to the past and as to the future. God has always existed and always will exist. He never began to be. He never will cease to be.” Well, the Holy Spirit has this attribute or possesses this attribute as well. The Holy Spirit is eternal. When Jesus promised His disciples that He would send His Spirit in John 14, there’s eternality built into the language. John 14 He says, “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate, that He may be with you forever; the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him.” This is Eternality language that’s linked to the Holy Spirit. Then there’s the author of Hebrews in speaking of what Jesus Christ accomplished through His atoning death. He ties, the author does, the efficacy of Christ’s payment for sin through His blood with the Spirit’s enabling. Look at how He phrases it. Hebrews 9:13,15, “For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” That language “eternal Spirit” is about a clear of evidence as one could ask for, in establishing the eternality of the Spirit. As humans, we do have souls that go onto live forever. But don’t mistake that for what’s being said here about the Spirit. We aren’t eternal, we were created. And we will live eternally in soul form, but the Holy Spirit is eternal in the true sense. Having no beginning and no end as the eternal Spirit, He is God. The next one is the Love of the Holy Spirit. Rolland McCune again says that “Divine love may be defined as that in God which moves Him to give of Himself and His gifts freely, spontaneously, and eternally to personal beings without regard to their merit or response.” Picture that in a Valentines Day card one year. You write that to your spouse. I love you by giving of myself freely, spontaneously, probably not eternally. Bad theology joke. Another divine attribute of the Spirit is His love. We find that, we mentioned this one last week in Romans 15:30. “Now I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God for me.” Of course, as humans we’re capable of love. But the Holy Spirit possesses and manifests the attribute of love continually and perfectly and in doing so reveals His deity. This one seems kind of redundant but the Holiness of the Holy Spirit. Henry Clarence Thiessen says in defining holiness, “God is absolutely separate from and exalted above all his creatures, and He is equally separate from all moral evil and sin.” That’s a definition of holiness. We’ve already covered this one briefly, but the fact that the Third Person of the Trinity goes by the name “Holy Spirit” is testimony to His deity. Here’s the great commission of course. What God does, manifests who He is. And because God is holy, so too is the Spirit. He is the Holy Spirit. And not only is He referred to as the Holy Spirit, He’s referred to in other places as the Holy One, I John 2:20, “you have an anointing from the Holy One.” He’s called the “the Spirit of holiness” in Romans 1:4. Here’s the whole context, “Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was designated as the Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.” That’s the opening greeting of the book of Romans of course. The point here is that the Holy Spirit possesses personal divine holiness, is further evidence that He is God. Here’s another one, The Truth of the Holy Spirit. God is not only a God of truth. God is truth Himself. He is truth. His knowledge, His declarations, His representations, they all conform perfectly to reality. Well, just as God is truth, and just as God the Son is “truth,” John 14:6, Jesus is the Way the Truth and the Life, the Holy Spirit is truth. Meaning, He is the source of truth, He acts in truth, and He knows and represents things as they truly are. Here's John 14:1, “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate, that He may be with you forever; the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him.” So, He’s the Spirit of Truth. Here’s another example. John 16:13, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak from Himself, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.” But interestingly the Spirit is not just referred to in Scripture as the Spirit of Truth, He is also called “truth” itself. This is in I John 5:6. “This is the One who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. It is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is the truth.” Both types of references, whether it’s the Spirit of truth or the Spirit being truth they point to the Spirit’s deity. Here’s another one, The Grace of the Holy Spirit. A definition of grace is given here by Wayne Grudem who says God’s grace is God’s “favor toward those who deserve no favor but only punishment.” Of course, God does bestow His grace on undeserving sinners. We think of Ephesians 2:5, that little interjection or parenthetical that Paul gives, “By grace you have been saved,” He says. So, God the Father is God of grace. We also know from Scripture, that God the Son is a God of grace. John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Well, so is the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Here’s Hebrews 10:28-29, clearly identifying the Spirit as having this attribute of grace. “Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy by the mouth of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has regarded as defiled the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?” Yet another divine attribute certifying that the Spirit possesses perfectly an attribute that proves that He is God, namely grace. Here’s another one, The Glory of the Holy Spirit. I would argue that glory is a mark of the Holy Spirit’s being God. I would do so because “glory,” in Biblical thought, signifies deity. “Kobed” is the Hebrew term. It means weightiness. It promotes weightiness like God is a weighty being, one that we can hardly understand in certain ways. He is other than us in every respect. Psalm 29:3 says, “The voice of Yahweh is upon the waters; the God of glory thunders.” In the New Testament, Jesus is referred to as the “Lord of glory.” I Corinthians 2:7,8, “But we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom which has been hidden, which God predestined before the ages to our glory, which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” Well linking this all together in I Peter 4:14, look which person of the Deity is also linked to glory. “If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.” This passage like the others we have looked at, is equating the Holy Spirit with God. Establishing that the Holy Spirit is God. We could go through so many more of these attributes, but what this exercise has shown us from the pages of Scripture, is that the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit possesses various attributes, divine attributes which establish that He is God. Allison and Köstenberger say “as the Father is a divine Person, so the Son is a divine Person and so is the Holy Spirit a divine Person.” That brings us to our third blank on your note sheets. You can go ahead and turn those over now to our third heading where we’re going to look at now THE ASSOCIATIONS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. See in addition to His names and titles and descriptions and attributes, the Holy Spirit’s associations, by that I mean His associations with other Persons of the Godhead demonstrate His deity. We of course as believers, as Christians, we believe in the Trinity. We believe and worship a triune God. In fact, over two of the past three summers from this pulpit on Sunday evenings, we have learned about the first two Persons of the Godhead. God the Father and God the Son. Well, God the Spirit, the third Person, is just as much “God” as the other two Persons are. They are coequally divine. Now, we might be tempted to think if you’ve been led astray from a lack of attention to the Holy Spirit in certain circles, or all the bad teaching that’s out there on the Holy Spirit. We might be tempted to think that that designation of the Holy Spirit as the “third person” of the Trinity in some way indicates that He is of lesser rank or importance or deity even, than the first and second Persons of the Trinity. But nothing could be further from the truth. The Spirit is the term is consubstantial with God the Father and God the Son. All that means is He is of one essence with God the Father and God the Son. They share the same singular divine essence. There is equality of being and unity within the Divine Godhead and the Scriptural witness backs this up. The Holy Spirit is repeatedly referred to in the Scriptures as being on equal terms with God the Father and with God the Son. For instance, I’ll give you a few of these slides here where you see all three mentioned and really on a level playing field. Here is, of course, the Great Commission. Matthew 28:19-20, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Then you go over to II Corinthians 13:14. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Spirit, be with you all.” This indicates that all three persons of the trinity are equal in terms of their deity and are worthy of the same honor and praise. Here are a few more noteworthy examples where all three Persons of the Triune Godhead are linked together as equals. II Corinthians 1:21,22. “Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God, who also sealed us and gave the pledge of the Spirit in our hearts.” I Peter 1:1,2. “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as exiles, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to the obedience of Jesus Christ and the sprinkling of His blood.” Or here’s Jude, who goes out of order, the typical order. Jude 20,21 “But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.” Then Jesus Himself links the three divine Persons. This is before He’s even sent the Spirit. John 14:16,17, He says, “I will ask the Father, (So I is Jesus) and He will give you another Advocate, that He may be with you forever; the Spirit of truth.” Or John 14:26, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” “When the Advocate comes, John 15:26, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness about Me.” So, these are all examples of the three Persons of the Trinitarian Godhead being given equal dignity and authority as each being God. Now here’s some interesting ones. Now we have some New Testament passages. I’m going to give you two of them, where their identifying God. Something God said. Something Yahweh said in the Old Testament but then this New Testament author will explain what was said in the Old Testament by attributing it to the Holy Spirit. Let me show you what I mean. Acts 28:25, “And when they disagreed with one another, they began leaving after Paul had spoken one word, ‘The Holy Spirit rightly spoke through Isaiah the prophet to your fathers, saying, “Go to this people and say, “you will keep on hearing, but will not understand; and you will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; for the heart of this people has become dull, and with their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes; lest they might see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and return, and I will heal them.” Now, note what’s happening here. Paul here in Acts is quoting from Isaiah 6:8-10. As he does so he says, “The Holy Spirit rightly spoke through Isaiah the prophet to your fathers, saying.” Well, in Isaiah, who was it who was speaking? If you go to Isaiah 6:8-10, you’ll see it is God. Yahweh is speaking to Isreal. So, what is happening here is this is further evidence that God the Father and God the Spirit are one. God was the One speaking to Isaiah during Isaiah’s time. Paul is linking that to the Holy Spirit, pointing to the fact that they are One God, of course, existing in two Persons. A similar phenomenon happens in Hebrews 10:15-17. It says, “And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying, ‘This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws upon their heart, and on their mind and I will write them. He then says, in their sins and lawless deeds I will remember no more”. This is the same thing happening as we just looked at. The author of Hebrews here is quoting from Jeremiah 31, where Yahweh was speaking. He is being quoted by the prophet Jeremiah. But the author of Hebrews here is attributing the words that were given by Yahweh to the people of Judah through Jeremiah, to the Holy Spirit. “And the Holy Spirit (he says) also testifies to us.” I don’t have time to go through these passages in detail but what they’re both giving us, is strong evidence that the New Testament writers considered this Spirit, the Holy Spirit, to be God. Another one worth noting is this comparison between the author of Hebrews and Peter in II Peter. Because both of these authors, the author of Hebrews and Peter in II Peter are both commenting on the process of the inspiration of the Scriptures. For the author of Hebrews, he says Hebrews 1:1-2, “God, having spoken long ago to the fathers in the prophets…” We can just kind of leave it there. He’s speaking of God having spoken through prophets. But then you get to Peter and He says, I Peter 1:21, “no prophecy was ever made by the will of man, but men being moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” So if you link those two passages together, this is not as direct evidence as the last two I gave you but it’s still evidence that when you put those two passages together, what Peter and the author of Hebrews are saying jointly is that the Holy Spirit who is God, moved men to take down what He wanted them to say at that time. But the big takeaway for us this evening is that the Holy Spirit is God. Just like the other two members of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit partakes equally of the essence of the Godhead. He does so wholly and indivisibly, and eternally. Now, I’m going to Geek out on you. So, we’ve seen that the Holy Spirit is God from Scripture. We’ve seen that He’s equal in essence to the other two members of the Godhead. God the Father and God the Son. But we also do know that He is referred to in various settings as the Third Person of the Trinity. Meaning, there is some sort of ordering within, at least our description, of the Trinity. That ordering goes by this word here. It’s “taxis.” It’s not taxis like hailing a cab in New York City. It’s “taxis.” Think of the word taxonomy. Classification. Ordering of species and genesis. Not taxidermy. This is more like taxonomy, which describes ordering and classification. So that word “taxis” refers to ordering or classifications of persons within the Trinity, recognizing that they share of one divine singular essence. So, the concept of “taxis” recognizes that there is some sort of ordering within the Trinity. Meaning there’s a reason why we can call them the first person, the second Person, and the third Person. But that taxis is linked only to really one thing which is the fact that they are distinct Persons. That they’re not one Person. We’re not Unitarians. There are three Persons. We are Trinitarians. We believe in “personal distinctions” between the three members of the Trinity. So just as the Father is not the Son or the Spirit, the Son is not the Father or the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father or the Son. That’s a legitimate logical Biblical conclusion. The way that theologians have, for somewhere around 1600 years now, tried to describe the relationship of the Holy Spirit, within the Trinity, to the other two Persons of the Trinity, the Father and the Son, is with this term, “Procession.” The idea of Procession affirms that the Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity. He is of the same substance and of the same essence as the other two members of the Trinity. He’s equal in power, equal in authority, equal in glory. What this word Procession means though is that the Spirit in some sense proceeds eternally from God the Father and God the Son. More on that in just a second. And that is just a way to explain how they are separate persons within this eternal singular being. Now hear me when I say this loud and clear that Procession does not in any sense mean or even come close to meaning that the Holy Spirit was created by the Father or created by the Son. Remember, the Holy Spirit is eternal, and the Holy Spirit is God eternal. The Holy Spirit wasn’t created just like God the Son wasn’t created. But He does proceed relationally from God the Father and from God the Son. Clear as mud? Good. Here’s how John Walvoord describes the concept. He says “While in its precise nature the character of the procession is inscrutable. (like we’re all scratching our heads over it) It provides a definition of the relationship of the persons of the Trinity.” That’s really what we are talking about. It’s just having a word to describe how the Holy Spirit is related to the other two persons. And Walvoord is great; but it’s important to know that Procession isn’t merely some abstract theological concept. It’s actually rooted in Scripture, John 15:26. “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness about Me, and you will bear witness also, because you have been with Me from the beginning.” You will see it there. The Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father. Now note how that language only seems to indicate that the Holy Spirit is proceeding from the Father. Now for hundreds of years of early, early, early, church history, there were fights and debates over whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father only. Or whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from both the Father and the Son. In the Western church at least, the matter was finally settled at this event called the Synod of Toledo, Spain, not Ohio, in 589 A.D. It was decided there that the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. That has been the conclusion of the western church since the sixth century, that the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. Even that language above the underlined language gives you a sense of Procession from both the Father and the Son. Whom I will send you. That’s Jesus speaking from the Father. The Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father. I think there is Biblical data that supports the idea of procession of the Spirit. But to sum up on this topic of ASSOCIATIONS OF THE SPIRIT, this third point that we’re handling now, what we’re really describing here and what we’re really going back to are some basic Trinitarian truths. Just as God the Father is God. Just as God the Son is God. God the Spirit God is God. John Walvoords says, “The Holy Spirit is presented in Scripture as having the same essential deity as the Father and the Son and is to be worshiped and adored, loved and obeyed in the same way as God. To regard the Holy Spirit in any other way is to make one guilty of blasphemy and unbelief.” Loraine Boettner (Loraine’s a man) says “The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can be distinguished, but they cannot be separated; for they each possess the same identical numerical substance or essence. They do not merely exist alongside each other, as did Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, but they permeate and interpenetrate each other, are in and through each other. What the one knows, the others know; what the one desires, the others desire; and what the one wills, the others will.” He is describing something that’s known as Inseparable Operations. Well with that I don’t have time to go through inseparable operations this evening. We’re going to get into THE WORKS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. Our fourth heading tonight. We’ve looked at some of the names and descriptions of the Holy Spirit. We’ve looked at some of the attributes of Holy Spirit. We just looked at some of the associations of the Spirit in the trinitarian sense. Now we want to look at what the Holy Spirit does. His actions, His works. These works, we’re going to see, point to the fact and they further confirm the truth that the Holy Spirit is God. We’ll start with creation. Genesis 1:2. “And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.” The Holy Spirit was active in the original creation of the heavens and the earth. Now some have questioned, you heard me say earlier, that the word “ruok” in Hebrew. There’s no capital R to indicate in the Hebrew that this is definitely God we’re speaking of. There’s not that capitalized form in the Hebrew language. It’s all based on context. I will not subject you to a 50-minute discourse on why I believe this is definitely referring to God the Spirit. Not just a spirit. We have Leupold here who says, “Absolutely none other than the Holy Spirit is here under consideration.” That’s a pretty bland statement. But I will say that wrote, I think it was a 25- or 30-page paper in seminary on this very topic of how Genesis 1:2 points to God the Spirit. Not just a spirit. If you want to read my paper, if you’re looking for a sleep aid, send me an email and I can get you that paper and we can put to rest any other idea but that this is referring to God the Spirit in creation. So, the Holy Spirit was active and involved in the creation of the world. The creation of the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:2. There are other Old Testament witnesses to the Holy Spirit’s creative powers. Job 33:4 is speaking of the Holy Spirit’s creative works in the ongoing creation of living beings. “The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.” Then Psalm 104 tells us that the Holy Spirit providentially cares for what has been created. Psalm 104:27, “They all wait for You to give them their food in due season. You give to them, they gather it up; You open Your hand, they are satisfied with good. You hide Your face, they are dismayed; You take away their spirit, they breathe their last and return to their dust. You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; and You renew the face of the ground.” There are various other works attributed to the Holy Spirit, which are evidence of His deity. The works He does or the works He has already done all point to being works that only God could do. For instance, the Holy Spirit was the cause of the Virgin Conception of Christ. This is Gabriel speaking to Mary here. Luke 1:35, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason, the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.” Really when you think about it the eternal Second Person of the Trinity, becoming the God-Man, taking on a human nature. That is a work that only an omnipotent all-powerful God could perform. To take a divine nature as God the Son has always had and have it joined up with a human nature, and to unite those perfectly in one indivisible person, it is so far beyond human comprehension, much less human ability or capability. But that is exactly what the Holy Spirit performed as we see here. While He was in Mary’s womb, the Holy Spirit united the eternal Son of God with the human nature that He had received from His mother in her womb, into the one single person that we know to ourselves as Jesus of Nazareth. Only God could bring about that incredible miraculous event. This text is telling us, that the Holy Spirit is the One who did it. This certifies that He is God. Or how about the fact of inspiration of the Scriptures. That the Holy Spirit, we’ve looked at this in some respect already, but that the Holy Spirit was the primary divine agent in giving us the Scriptures. It’s a testimony to His deity. II Peter 1:21, “For no prophecy was ever made by the will of man, but men being moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” So, the Holy Spirit is the One who prepared the human authors to write what they wrote. The Holy Spirit is the One who revealed to those human authors, what they were able to record. The Holy Spirit is the One who breathed out the words that each author took down. The Holy Spirit’s the One who preserved their messages that are now in those manuscripts. And the Holy Spirit’s the One who illuminates for us, as readers today, what has been revealed in the Scriptures, that we can understand and rightly apply them. Each of those works is of the Holy Spirit in part or in whole, and at the very least, what II Peter 1:21 is conveying to us, is that the Scriptures are not of pure human origin but rather the human authors were moved in a divine way to give us the divine message of the Bible. These were ordinary men. These were shepherds and farmers and kings and fishermen alike. But their message was totally from God. It was no ordinary event, and it was done by way of the Holy Spirit. Robert Gromacki picks that up. He says “The Holy Spirit (he’s speaking of inspiration here) superintended the lives of the Biblical writers much as He guided Mary at Jesus’ conception. Mary was able to pass on her human nature to Jesus, but she was not able to pass on her sinfulness. Similarly, the Biblical writers could pass on their human style of writing to the written text, but they were prevented from passing on errors at the critical moment their pens hit the paper and words appeared.” The Holy Spirit kept the human authors from error. Rolland McCune says, “The production of the Holy Scriptures by the Spirit of God using the instrumentality of human beings and human languages is a miracle befitting only the true and living God.” Now we get into the topic of salvation and sanctification and how the Holy Spirit’s role in each is further evidence of His Deity. Let’s start with regeneration. When we get to the New Testament, the Holy Spirit plays a part in regeneration. We come to John 3 here and this is Jesus stressing the life-giving work of the Spirit to Nicodemus. Nicodemus is that first century Jewish teacher. He’s having a hard time understanding this concept of the “new birth.” The Lord’s message to Nicodemus is very straight forward and simple. John 3:3, “I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus replies incredulously John 3:4, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus then replies in John 3:5, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Jesus here was speaking of regeneration of eternal life being imparted to someone and He’s saying it’s a work of the Spirit. Only God can impart eternal life. Only God can impart spiritual life and since it’s the Spirit who imparts such life, He is God. The same idea is picked up in Titus 3:4,5, describing the miracle of salvation. He calls it the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit. Only God can regenerate. Only God can renew in the ultimate sense of the fact that the Holy Spirit is the agent who carries this out, certifies and is evidence of the fact that He is God. Thomas Goodwin once said, “There is a general omission in the saints of God, in their not giving the Holy Ghost that glory that is due to His person, and for His great work of salvation in us, insomuch that we have in our hearts almost lost this third person.” He’s just saying we don’t give enough credence or credit to the fact that the Holy Spirit is God. He is the agent of our salvation. Why wouldn’t we praise Him as God for what He has done. Well, He works, the Spirit does, not only in our salvation but in our sanctification. He is the agent by which God produces Christian growth and maturity and holiness in us. II Thessalonians 2:13, “But we should always give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth.” He sanctifies; the Spirit does. John Stott writes, “Without the Spirit, Christian discipleship would be impossible. There can be no life without the life-giver, no understanding without the Spirit of truth, no fellowship without the unity of the Spirit, no Christlikeness apart from his fruit, and no witness without his power.” Charles Hodge says, “He is therefore presented in the Scriptures (speaking of the Spirit) as the proper object of worship, not only in the formula of baptism and in the apostolic benediction, which bring the doctrine of the Trinity into constant remembrance as the fundamental truth of our religion, but also in the constant requirement that we look to Him and depend on Him for all spiritual good and reverence and obey Him as our divine teacher and sanctifier.” Only God can make the unholy holy in any sense of the term. That is because what the Spirit does as our sanctifier, that proves that He is God. I’m out of time, there’s much more to say. But the main takeaway under this fourth subheading is that the Scriptures testify to the fact that the Holy Spirit performs works that only God can do. Walvoord again says “Anyone who accepts Scriptural testimony at its face value comes easily and quickly to the conclusion that the Holy Spirit is God as revealed in His works.” One more quote and we’ll be done. R.A. Torrey says, “To sum it all up, by the ascription of all the distinctively Divine attributes, and several distinctly Divine works, by referring statements which in the Old Testament clearly name Jehovah, the Lord, or God as their subject to the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, (this is all work we’ve done tonight) by coupling the name of the Holy Spirit with that of God in a way that would be impossible to couple that of any finite being with that of Deity, by plainly calling the Holy Spirit God, in all these unmistakable ways, God in His own Word distinctly proclaims that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person.” I can’t say it any better than that. Let’s pray. Father, we thank You for this evening of study of Your Word as we’ve been able to dive deeply into the topic of the deity of the Holy Spirit. God, I do pray all summer long that you would correct any wayward thoughts that we may be entertaining or have entertained about the Holy Spirit. About His Person, about His Deity, about His Power. I pray that we would take every thought that we have about the Spirit captive to what the Word reveals. That we would be committed to walking in the Spirit and manifesting the fruit of the Spirit as we seek to grow with your help in Christlikeness. Thank you for this evening. Thank you for this day of worship. May you be glorified in our lives all week long. In Christ Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.