This week, we've looked at what Mars Hill believes about God, complementarianism, and mission. Today, Pastor Tim exposits the scriptural bases for our belief in the Holy Spirit. Tomorrow, he'll take us through what it looks like practically to live lives filled by Him. Each of us, whether we know it or not, desperately needs the Holy Spirit. We have God’s infallible, inspired, authoritative word in the 66 books of the Bible, but without the Holy Spirit, it doesn't make any sense. We may have incredible preachers and churches, but without the Holy Spirit, there is no real change of heart. We have a tremendous gift of prayer, talking directly to God, but without the Holy Spirit, we don't know what to say. The Holy Spirit is the only means we have at our disposal to do and to be what God has called us to be. At Mars Hill we love the Holy Spirit, and yet he continues to widely misunderstood, even a point of sharp division between Christians at times. Let's open our Bibles and investigate what God’s word has to say about the Spirit.

Who is the Holy Spirit?

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

Genesis 1:2

From the very first verses of Scripture we see that the Holy Spirit is God.  There is one and only one God, eternally existing but fully expressed in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit shows up in the second verse of the Bible before the foundation of the world, hovering over the waters, along with the Father, as Creator, and the Son, the divine word by which the Father created (John 1:1-3).  The Holy Spirit is an eternal distinct person (Heb. 9:14) in the same way as the Father and the Son are.  He is not one-third God or some kind of nebulous force or power. The Spirit is fully God (Acts 5:3-4) and with us forever (John 14:16).

What does the Holy Spirit do?

"For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." 2 Peter 1:21

Without the Holy Spirit, we would not know anything about God. One of the Spirit’s primary purposes is to reveal God through the Bible, each word of which was breathed out by God (2 Tim. 3:16).  The Spirit worked through the words of men carrying them along to record the words of God: from Moses and Genesis to John and Revelation, the Spirit is the Author behind the authors.  However, the Spirit does much more than just inspire words. From creation onward, the Holy Spirit has been active in the lives of God’s people. The Holy Spirit is the empowering presence of God, filling all believers for his mission to make himself known. In Old Testament times, the Spirit empowered specific people for service to God.  The first "Spirit-filled" man was Bezalel who was supernaturally empowered as an artist and craftsmen to lead the construction of the Tabernacle (Ex. 35:30).  The Spirit-filled King Saul arousing his anger towards the enemies of Israel (1 Sam. 11:6) and later departed from him as he grew prideful (1 Sam. 16:14).  The Spirit of God empowered many men for leadership of His people including Joshua (Num. 27:18), Gideon (Judg. 6:34), Samson (Judg. 14:19) and many more.  The Spirit did not just work externally in peoples’ lives but internally, filling them with the power of God to serve him and bless his people. However, this special and occasional filling was just a shadow of the work of the Spirit to come. The Old Testament clearly points to a time when the Spirit will fill all God’s people. The prophet Ezekiel looked to a time when God would take our hearts of stone and give us a new heart and a new Spirit (Ez. 11:19). All this would come together in the Messiah on whom the Spirit of God would perfectly dwell (Is. 11:2-3).

Jesus, the perfect Spirit-filled man

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

Isaiah 11:1-2

When posed the question, "How did Jesus live his miraculous, sinless life and die on the  cross for our sin?" most Christians would answer simply, "because He was God." There is a sense where this is true. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, is eternally God: past, present and future. However, in the greatest act of humility the world has ever known, Jesus joined his divinity to humanity, taking the form of a servant and temporarily set aside the use of his divine attributes (Phil 2:7). The life Jesus lived doing miracles, healing the sick, raising the dead and resisting sinful temptation he lived by the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit (Acts 10:38).  The Spirit of the Lord gave Jesus wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord (Is. 11:1-2).  In the Gospel of Luke, we see Jesus was conceived by the Spirit (1:35), that the Spirit taught and matured him as a boy (2:26-27, 40, 52), that he was filled by the Holy Spirit at his baptism (3:22), that he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted (4:1), and that Jesus was sent to preach by the power of the Spirit (4:14). All of this was building toward the cross, where Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice for our sin through the eternal Spirit (Heb. 9:14). Jesus lived all of life to the ceaseless glory of the Father and he calls us to the same. If he lived this life simply as God, we would be left with precious little hope in following his example. But the good news is that the same Spirit through which Jesus lived, healed, loved, worshipped, and gave himself for us is the same Spirit that now works in all believers. Tim Smith is the worship pastor at the Bellevue campus, and as of next year, will be campus pastor of the to-be-opened Portland one.