Three Facts About The Holy Spirit Series

THREE FACTS ABOUT THE HOLY SPIRIT

Our text for today is found in John chapter fourteen. Please follow along with me as I read:

"I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.” John 14:16-17 (NASB)

You may be surprised to hear me say that I do not intend, this morning, to say anything about the Holy Spirit as the Helper – but I don’t. The reason is that I have an entire sermon devoted to that subject – so that will not be our topic today. (See my sermon: The Helper – The Holy Spirit) What I do want to speak on is: “Three Facts About The Holy Spirit.

Someone has said that the Bible is like a treasure room. Sometimes you enter and you find silver. Other times you enter and you find gold. But there are other times that you enter when you find precious jewels such as rubies and diamonds. Today in our text – I believe we have found a diamond. There is great wealth in the two verses which we have just read.

I invite your attention to this passage this morning. We will examine this diamond – and it is my hope that we all come away with an appreciation of its great value.

The first thing I want us to realize from this verse is that:

I. The Holy Spirit is a PERSON

Examine our text again. Go ahead and circle every reference to the Holy Spirit. Notice that the first “He” in our text refers to God the Father. Every “He” or “Him” thereafter refers to the Holy Spirit. “He” is used twice and “Him” is used three times. In other words – in today’s text the Holy Spirit is referred to five times as a person.

Folks we often speak of the Holy Spirit as an “It” rather than a “He”. This is a mistake – God is a person – and the Holy Spirit being part of the trinity is a person.

Perhaps it is because of the mysterious workings and influence of the Holy Spirit – His sacred operations – that we are apt to forget that the Holy Spirit is truly and actually a Person. It is easy for us to speak of the Father as a person just as it is easy for us to speak of Jesus as a person – but when we speak of the Holy Spirit – that is a different matter. Yet our text today makes it plain that He is a person.

I can think of the Father as a Person because I can picture Him speaking the world into existence. I can picture Him forming drops of rain. I can conceive of Him creating all the stars in the heavens and calling each one by name. He is above all things. He watches over us. He is Holy. He is mighty. He is powerful – and there is no problem in my mind that He is a person.

I can realize Jesus – the Son of Man is a real Person because He became bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. It takes no great stretch of my imagination to picture the Babe in Bethlehem, or to behold the, “Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief.” I can easily realize that He was persecuted in Pilate’s hall and was nailed to a tree for my sins. I can picture Him sitting on His Throne in Heaven. But when I come to deal with the Holy Spirit – His operations are so mysterious, His doings are so secret, His acts are so removed from everything that is of sense and of the body — that I cannot so easily grasp the idea of Him being a Person – yet He is.

God the Holy Spirit is not just some influence, an emanation or some stream flowing from the Father. He is as much an actual Person as either God the Father or God the Son. God the Holy Spirit is actually a Person.

Travel to the pool of baptism with me for a moment. Do you recall how people are baptized? When they are buried in the water – what words are said? In whose name are we instructed to baptize? Jesus told us:

"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” Matthew 28:19 (NASB)

Go ahead and circle the words “in the name”. Note the Bible does not say “in the names” of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. No – it is in the name of the Three-In-One. God the Father – God the Son – God the Holy Spirit are all to be proclaimed at the time of baptism for all of them are the Persons of the Trinity and the three together are one God. All of them are separate yet equal – all are one. It is in the name God that we are baptized for all – Father, Son, Spirit have their workings in our salvation.