Alastair's Adversaria - Pentecost and the Gift of the Spirit (with Rev Benjamin Miller)

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

My friend Benjamin Miller joins me for a seasonal discussion of Pentecost and the gift of the Spirit. Follow my Substack, the Anchored Argosy, at https://argosy.substack.com/. See my latest podcasts at https://adversariapodcast.com/. If you have enjoyed my videos and podcasts, please tell your friends. If you are interested in supporting my videos and podcasts and my research more generally, please consider supporting my work on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/zugzwanged), using my PayPal account (https://bit.ly/2RLaUcB), or by buying books for my research on Amazon (https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/36WVSWCK4X33O?ref_=wl_share). You can also listen to the audio of these episodes on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/alastairs-adversaria/id1416351035?mt=2.

Hello and welcome. I'm joined today by my good friend, Pastor Benjamin Miller, who's joining me from elsewhere in New York State. We're going to be discussing a very timely issue at the moment, which is this Pentecost weekend, the season and the meaning of Pentecost and the importance of the Holy Spirit and the life of the church. It's a topic that maybe does not receive as much attention as it merits. And we're going to think about, among other things, why that is the case. Thank you very much for joining me, Ben. I'm really delighted to be here, Alistair, and this topic is one that I absolutely love. So, looking forward to it. One thing that we've been talking about just between ourselves is the importance of the Christ event as an integrity,

not just a series of episodic occurrences, but a through line taking us, from the incarnation through events like the death and the burial and resurrection, ascension and Pentecost and forward into the future. Could you set up some of the thoughts that you've had on that subject and maybe we can start our conversation from there? Yes, I grew up in a charismatic church. So there was a lot of talk about the Holy Spirit and things that the Holy Spirit was either doing or we expected him to do. And it took me some years, having come from that perspective on the Holy Spirit, to begin to understand more of how the Holy Spirit's coming at Pentecost and his work related really to Christ.

and in fact was an expression of the really an expression of the coming and the mission and the work of Christ himself I mean in a way that should be obvious but I think I had always thought of Jesus and his messianic work as largely confined to

which you know was a big deal but it was largely confined to the cross and the resurrection that Jesus, his work was about our sins being forgiven and then of course the whole business of resurrection from the dead. And so in a way, I looked back to the work of Christ as foundational and would look forward to the work of Christ in my own resurrection and the general resurrection of the dead. But when I began to understand more of what the Christ event, as you just said, was really about more comprehensively, it was not only about Christ's life and his death and his resurrection, but it was about

massively about his ascending to reign, his kingdom, his rule, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as related to that. And then even the early events in which Christ showed his authority and his power and his victory over the powers that tried to destroy him and that made war against his church in those early days. And so I really began to see the Holy Spirit in relation to Christ in a new way. And I think that has just opened up for me, as we'll perhaps discuss in another episode, why Pentecost is of such enduring. and profound significance throughout all of history under Christ's rule.

So Pentecost was not just an episode. It was unique, but the coming of the spirit is something that just pervades Christ's reign as a whole. And so I began to recognize that the Holy Spirit is about something much more than just an individual experience of spiritual power. you know, kind of this individualized encounter with the Holy Spirit that was so prominent in my charismatic upbringing, but rather that the Spirit is part of redemptive history and especially the central complex of events in that history, which is, of course, Christ's coming and those events in the New Testament. So, yeah, that for me was just a much broader and richer understanding of the Spirit, which I'm continuing to work on even now.

And then, you know, as you and I've been discussing, how that relates. to the Gospels and to the Jewish scriptures more generally, what were Jewish Christians expecting when they thought about the coming of the Holy Spirit, which was certainly something promised in their scriptures. And those two things, the way in which the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost is part of this complete event of Christ's ministry. It's not just something tagged on and penneded at the end, nor is it something that's just episodic.

there is something about that event that completes and works through some of the earlier events. So incarnation and death and resurrection and ascension, we're always working towards the gift of the spirit, among other things. That is something that is really brought through. But besides that, the way that the gift of the spirit at Pentecost is not merely a great revival. It is epoch defining. This changes things in redemptive history. It's a redemptive historical event, not just a historical event that is a note of great significance in the sense of it being a remarkable work of God.

There is something about this that gives a sense of the shape of history. This is something that defines everything that happens before and afterwards. It's a watershed moment. And we might think also of the way that the events of Pentecost have a shadow within the gothast. We don't necessarily read of the event of Pentecost within the Gospels. We don't have the account of the gift of the spirit in John or in Matthew or Mark. In Luke's account, we find it in Acts. And it's something that's anticipated in some ways, but for the most part, it doesn't really

directly appear within the scope of the Gospels. And so when we think about the ministry of Christ, we tend to think about the Gospels and not much beyond that. And as a result, maybe we lose the significance of what happens at Pentecost as part of that single Christ event. One thing I've been thinking about quite a lot lately is the Gospel of John and the way in which events that aren't directly recorded within it, nonetheless pervade the whole book. So obvious examples would be things like the baptism of Christ, which although it is alluded to in, indirectly we have John's witness to Jesus that is born at the context of his baptism. We don't actually have an explicit reference to Jesus being baptized by John.

Then we have things like the Transfiguration. There's a reference to the Transfiguration in each of the synoptic gospels and great attention given to that event. For Luke, for instance, it's very much a scene within the narrative. It's a place where we find a parallel to the events of Jesus' baptism earlier on in the book in Chapter 3, and it begins a new stage of his ministry as he works towards Jerusalem. But then we also don't have the ascension. The ascension is something that is mentioned in some of the other gospels. It's the longer ending of Mark, and it's mentioned in Luke,

and of course it's mentioned in Acts chapter 1, but we don't have a reference to it as a specific episode in John. And we don't have a reference to Pentecost as a specific episode. Nonetheless, these things are everywhere within the book. Jesus is always talking about his being lifted up. The whole story of Jesus is told as an ascension. And then they're being lifted up into heaven is the continuation of that upward movement of the sort of entire book of coronation. Likewise, the book is a book that's pervaded with the manifestation of the glory of Christ. Christ. And so it need not be focused upon a specific episode of transfiguration. The very cross itself is told as an almost transfigural event. We can think also of Pentecost. Pentecost is within the

book in various ways. Jesus talks about the gift of the spirit on the last great day of the feast in John chapter 7, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water, talking about the spirit that the church would later receive or the wind that's going to come. He breathes upon his disciples, the water and the blood that flows out from his side. And these things all provide anticipations of what's going to happen at Pentecost. So the book is pervaded by the spirit and the promise of the gift of the spirit, but it doesn't specifically record that event. And so it helps us to recognize that this is integral to what Christ is doing. It follows. follows on from incarnation, etc.

Even the incarnation can be told in certain places in ways that make us think of Pentecost. So when we're reading Acts, we're not just reading Acts chapter 2. We're not just reading some great episode of revival. We're reading something that belongs to the story of Christ and is at the very heart of what's taking place in his ministry. I really love that because it just teaches. out how really from the moment in Christ's life when he is conceived, the spirit is just there. Acting, sometimes acting behind the scene, sometimes acting in quite visible ways, for example,

in the synoptic gospels in his baptism as a spirit descends in the form of a dove. but you're pointing out even in John's Gospel which doesn't record the birth narrative, it doesn't record Jesus baptism, it doesn't record the transfiguration where the spirit might be more visible, but still there's this pervasive presence of the Holy Spirit. And that I think invites us to reflect on what the Spirit actually is. Why so much emphasis on the Spirit's presence and activity in the life of Christ far beyond the day of Pentecost and in the life of the early church? It's very interesting to me how after the great event of Pentecost, there are these kind of reverberations of the Spirit's presence and

power working in the early church. And I'm struck often in Paul's letters later in in early church history as he's praying for people. In his prayers, how frequently he is praying for the spirit of wisdom and revelation or for the spirit to dwell in your hearts by faith so that you'd be able to comprehend the breadth and length and depth and height of the love of God and as he expresses it in Ephesians 3 so that you'd be filled up with all the fullness of God. Pentecost, again, this sort of atomized view of Pentecost, it's just this one event on that particular day. I mean, it was a unique day and a unique event, but it's so woven into everything else going on in the life of Christ and the early church. And of course,

we'll talk in a bit, I'm sure, about how it's tied into the whole of redemptive history. I mean, the spirit is there from the opening pages of Genesis. And I wonder if one way of just understanding why this matters so much is just to reflect a bit on who the spirit is. You know, Fred Sanders' recent work on the Holy Spirit helped me with this, and I hopefully will not misquote him in any way. but he talked about the imagery of the spirit in scripture as God's breath, the Hebrew word ruach spirit breath. And he gives this imagery, as it were, of God in himself, before there even is a creation. It's as if God is breathing.

You know, you and I, as living creatures, to breathe means you're alive. But we draw our breath from outside of us. I have to breathe in life from outside of me. God is not like that. God has all life and blessedness in himself. And as it were, from all eternity, if we can express it this way, I mean, God does not have any change or development within himself.

But it's as if God in his, as only God can, God is from all eternity breathing forth himself within himself. The spirit is God's life and breath. You know, we could almost imagine it like sort of pulsating and just breathing within himself. God is infinitely alive. And yet in the opening pages of Scripture, this life of God,

which needs nothing and draws from nothing outside of himself, is something he generously, powerfully, breathes forth. And it's moving over the emptiness and darkness and formlessness of the water in Genesis. And then there's all of life, all of creation, all the living creatures. And God is speaking to them. So his breath is tied to his Logos, his word.

And I'm just, I'm struck very much by how the spirit then represents, as it were, everything about God that is utterly unlike his creation, his transcendent power and self-subsistence that he needs nothing and just everything quite literally has been. being because he breathes it into existence. And yet at the same time, there's such nearness to and even tenderness toward his creation. I often think about that early imagery of God breathing. So there's his ruach, the breath of life into Adam, dirt, you know, something formative of the dust of the earth, and man lives. So God is, there's almost an intimacy about the way that God breathes into his creation. There's a great tenderness there. And so it seems to me that when we

much later in scripture, of course, come to Christ and the life of the early church, as you said, this is new creation. This is God through his son, making his creation whole again, putting all things back together through his son, ultimately, in heaven and earth. And so the spirit, of course the spirit is there, because this is just God's life and his life-giving prayer. presence. And that's what Jesus is here to bring. And Jesus is described as the man of the spirit. He's the one who receives the spirit without measure. The spirit descends upon him in the form of the dove. There is this relationship between Christ and the spirit that's seen in the way that the spirit blows where it wishes. And you hear like the wind, you hear the sound of it, but you do

not know where it comes from or where it goes. And Jesus describes himself. the same way. You do not know where I come from or where I go. He's the man of the spirit. He's the one who breathes out the spirit. He breathed the spirit onto his disciples. He's the one from whom the spirit will flow like living water. In all of these respects, he is identified with the spirit. Even the name Christ suggests that the spirit is integral to his identity. He is the anointed one, anointed by whom by the father, anointed with whom, with the spirit. And so there's a trinitarian reality,

even implied within the title, Christ. And so when we're thinking about the description of Christ in the Gospels and elsewhere, he comes with the spirit. And the spirit, on the other hand, is described as the spirit of Christ at various points. Jesus gives the spirit and the spirit gives Jesus, Jesus, think about the way that Jesus talks about the spirit in the upper room discourse, that he will come to his disciples and he will come to them in the gift of the spirit, that he has to go away in order that his presence might be known in the new way. This is, again, looking forward to Pentecost, but it's looking forward to Pentecost in a way that helps us to see it as a coming of Christ in some ways.

Christ is going to be with his people in a way that he hasn't been to that point. And it's interesting to reflect on how that's important in itself. And it seems to me that what you just articulated about the freedom of the spirit and yet the nearness of the spirit. So Christ and all that God gives us in Christ, as it comes to us through the power of the Holy Spirit, it is for us, right? I mean, the whole point of Christ's coming and the coming of the spirit is to give life to us, but it is never subject to us. It's nothing you can contain. It's nothing you can control or manipulate or direct. And I think in a way, I've wondered about Jesus discourse when he talks about how it's better for us that he goes away and the spirit comes. Because the Spirit is not containable is absolutely free and infinite and boundless, this is why as Christ comes through the Spirit, Christ can come everywhere in all places, doing this cosmic work of bringing God's kingdom.

It's not localized. It's not confined to a place. It reveals it in the Spirit comes in places to particular. bodies and particular communities of saints and works in places, but he's never contained in a place. I mean, do you think that's part of what Jesus means when he says it's better for you that I go away? Because it's now, as it were, that Christ and all the life that God gives us through Christ by the spirit, it's almost as if it has burst the bounds of earth so that it can fill the earth. Yes, and besides that, Christ's physical presence at the Father's right hand, and the way that he gives forth his spirit as an authorizing spirit and an empowering spirit, that his charism is shared with, is given to the church.

He has received the spirit without measure so that the church might be sent forth in that power. we might think about the way that the spirit is described in various imagery in scripture. You've taught in very central imagery of breath or wind. There is other imagery of water, the inexhaustible spring that springs up to eternal life, the water that flows out from the heart, as in Jesus' description of the spirit on the final day of the feast in John chapter 7, or the way that the spirit is described like fire. that consumes or purifies fire that is also something that empowers. And in all of these ways, we can think about aspects of what the spirit,

aspects of who the spirit is and what the spirit does. The spirit is holy, purifying. The spirit is that which empowers and anoints. The spirit is like oil in some senses, like the oil that anoints the king and authorizes him for his role. The spirit is like water. that flows forth and gives life and irrigates and ensures that things can grow and live. The spirit is like breath.

There's an absolute dependence, but also that intimacy that you've described. And the spirit is in all of these respects, the spirit is not something that can be mastered or contained. Fire is something that can be distributed, but yet be one. And when we're thinking about the spirit's descriptions, each of these capture something of what the spirit does and who the spirit is. And as we go through scripture, I think we can see those being fleshed out in visionary accounts in revelation, the seven spirits before the throne,

the fiery river that flows from the throne in Daniel chapter seven. And we can think also the river of the water of life. in Revelation chapter 22, or we might think about the awakened wind and the way in which a gospel like John can use Old Testament imagery from the poetry of Song of Songs, where the fountain of living water that's opened up or the awakening of the north wind that blows forth

the spiced air of the garden is used as a way for us to think about what happens when Christ's tomb is opened up by his resurrection. The garden chamber has opened up. The bridegroom comes forth and with him the awakened north wind, the spices that it bears, and the living water that flows forth. And so the allusions of the very end of the book of John to Ezekiel chapter 47 and the flowing out of the water from the temple and the way that leads to a mighty catch of fish, that is the same as the end of Revelation. Again, the water flowing out from the temple city now, the way in which there are these trees of the tree of life growing on either side and giving healing to the nations.

All of these images are images in their deeper sense of the gift of the spirit. They present us with ways of understanding what it means for God to give his spirit to his people and his world. So the spirit is, it reminds me as you're talking of that oft-quoted line from the line of the witch in the wardrobe, that the spirit is infinitely good, but not safe, not tamed, not within human control. because everything you're describing, wind, fire, water, these things, God's presence with us and his power for us, it gives life. It destroys nothing but sin. It renews and glorifies creation. But it's just, you can see why Paul and the prophets pray for the spirit. You can't harness it.

You can't make it do your bidding. God is for us, but the way that he's going to work and the measure with which he's going to work is just simply not containable or controllable by humans. At the same time, I wonder if you might reflect on how the spirit, for all of that transcendence and power and quite literally cosmos transforming dynamism.

Also, the spirit seems to often be at work in very ordinary things. The work of the spirit has all the infinitude of God's power, but it's often not what we would consider spectacular. I think of the spirit hovering over Mary's womb, or breathing into mud, as it were, the breath of life. There's a kind of almost domesticity to the spirit as he comes and makes the father and son by the spirit abide in us frail little creatures. He makes us a temple. He's very pleased to dwell with and fill and inhabit.

mortals. So I wonder if we could also just reflect for a moment on how the spirit bridges, as it were, the gap between the immaterial and the transcendent and the material things of creation. But at the same time, the spirit stands in contrast to what the Bible calls flesh. So on one hand, the spirit is not matter, but the spirit moves upon and dwells with, within and animates and beautifies God's material creation. I mean, even our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, Paul tells us. So God, by the spirit, loves his material creation, our bodies in particular. But at the same time, there's this real contrast between the spirit and flesh. And sometimes I think those two have kind of bled into each other in Christian thinking that

somehow the spirit is antithetical to matter. How is that different from the spirit, obviously, biblically, being antithetical to flesh? Yes, people often think of the spirit as thin and ethereal and lacking in power. It's the sort of thinning out of the solidity and the strength of flesh.

But it's actually quite otherwise in Scripture. The spirit is seen as powerful in contrast to the weakness and frailty and mortality of flesh, the spirit is life and power and dynamism. And the way that the spirit is described in relationship to flesh is not merely about flesh in its connection to sinful or edamic flesh, but also flesh as it is frail. It's distanced from life in certain respects. And so the original soullish man, the man of Adam, is contrasted with the spiritual man of heaven, who is empowered by the spirit and has a strength and a dynamism that flesh lacks.

Think about the images in the Old Testament of the spirit descending upon the great heroes, people like Samson or Gideon or Jephther, and these people who go out to perform their heroics in the power of the spirit. And this is great acts of physical daring do, but it's also something that is not within the capacity of mere flesh to perform. It needs to be animated by the spirit. We can think also of that contrast between flesh and spirit that's explored in places like 2nd Corinthians when Paul talks about bearing the treasure in these jars of the jars of clay and that there is this receipt of this spirit as a guarantee of the life that will one day be swallowing up our mortality. and we're bearing around the life of Christ, but also the death of Christ,

and our bodies bound towards death are nonetheless the treasure chests within which this life that will one day burst forth is contained. And we can think also about the way that this contrast between flesh and spirit is explored in the intimacy of the work of the spirit. You've talked about the way that the spirit is so close. we live and move and have our being in God. And I think that's an image of our relationship with the spirit. The spirit is closer to us than we are to ourselves.

Think about the way that Paul talks about the spirit bearing witness with our spirits, that we are the children of God. There is something of that inner word of God's assurance to his children that is granted by the spirit. The spirit is not just acting outside of us. but deep within us and deeper within us than we can fathom. And that image also of the spirit overshadowing Mary, I think is a Pentecostal image. Many have seen the sort of Marian Pentecost, the spirit overshadows Mary. And she brings, she conceives Christ within her and Christ is formed within her.

And that's what's supposed to happen with the church. The church is supposed to overshadowed by the same. spirit have Christ formed within her. And so the beginning of the book of Luke, as it describes these events, is filled with these Pentecostal images. There's a lot of references to the spirit at the very beginning of the gospel, the spirit overshadowing Mary, the way in which the spirit causes Elizabeth to cry out, lest are you among women, or the way in which Mary, is empowered by the spirits to in her song of praise

or Zachariah, he's filled with the spirit given utterance and then he prophesies or the way in which the description of Jesus' presentation in the temple emphasizes the spirit. The spirit comes upon

Simeon who is a man filled with the spirit. The spirit has spoken to Simeon that he will not die before he sees the Christ, he comes in the Spirit and the temple, and he takes up and prophesies concerning the child. Now, as we go through a text like this, we're thinking all these references to the Spirit, the temple and the gift of Christ, it reminds us of the beginning of the book of Acts. Likewise, this constant prayer in the temple is the setting what takes place at Pentecost.

And even the timing is significant. Jesus is presented in the temple 40 days after his birth, 40 days after Jesus' rebirth is being born from the grave. There is his ascension. He ascends into the heavenly temple. And then you have these people who are constantly praying in the temple like Anna and Simeon. And then there's a new Simeon, Simon Peter, who preaches concerning Christ in the temple. And so we have a sort of symmetry. between the beginning of the story in the end, that I think gets into some of the things that you were discussing

with the intimacy of the spirit, the way that the spirit relates to flesh, and this bigger picture, I think, emerges from the details of the text. But it is not a contrast, again, between everything, everything the spirit does is kind of extraordinary in a way that's detached from the ordinary things of, because I think about those early characters in Luke, they're sort of simple folk, right?

They're living their lives and there's this extraordinary presence and power of God that moves in and around their lives. But they're not, I think I'm sensitive to this because, again, of my growing up in a charismatic context where there was this very strong sense of kind of chasing, chasing extraordinary experiences of the spirit. That the work of the spirit was often something kind of set apart from ordinary human life. And there's something, there's something too that as you read the Old Testament, I mean, as you pointed out, say in judges or other places where the spirit will come upon someone,

and they're suddenly able to do things that are supernatural. They are extraordinary. They're not ordinary human things. But it seems to me that there's also this emphasis, and perhaps it comes out more in the New Testament, that we are walking in the spirit, not when we are having some kind of emotionally ecstatic experience or suddenly able to do signs and wonders,

engaged in a kind of pursuit of holiness that just kind of floats above and almost detached from everything merely human. But it is this absolutely supernatural presence and power of God. It is the father and the son actually dwelling in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. God is with us. we are his we are living temples and we are caught up in his purposes in Christ that by the power of the holy spirit have in view nothing less than making all the salt marshes fresh right the the renewal of all that sin has defiled and distorted and destroyed and yet that that extraordinary presence and power of god plays out in just the everyday tasks of life.

To walk in the spirit and not in the flesh doesn't mean walking away from the human things. It means that more and more by the spirit, you are doing those human things, putting off the old ways of sin, of everything that characterize your life before you were reconciled to God and learning to do all. things, even the most ordinary things, in the spirit as a, as a, present your bodies as living sacrifices and everything you do with your body as a living sacrifice to God. And by the Holy Spirit, it is sanctified and it is a pleasing aroma to the Lord. I guess I'm just trying to, and maybe this is a sort of pastoral concern, just trying to make sure that we don't get the

misimpression that by flesh, as, excuse me, the Bible speaks of flesh. in two ways. One is just something weak. Also is something sinful. I mean, flesh in a way is just life in the old atom, whereas the spirit is life in the last atom. And so flesh is not, flesh is not contrasted with humanness. It's contrasted with sin and death. Does my concern makes sense? Because I'm trying to figure out how for these sort of average, you know, everyday Christian living, we learn to walk in the spirit without this sense that somehow, if I'm just kind of doing the ordinary things that God gave me to do in a day, that I'm not really connected to the spirit or not really walking in the spirit. I'm not kind of almost floating above the ground in this

kind of spiritual experience. I don't think that's what does, I don't think that's what Paul means at all when he talks about walking in the spirit. I think even when we're thinking about some of the great works of the spirit in a book like Acts, they take remarkably quotidian forms. There is a way in which the spirit is orchestrating people as part of something much larger that they don't fully understand. And so I love the passages from chapter 8 to 10 in the book of Acts where the spirit just functions as a matchmaker, bringing the right people across other people's path. So the spirit just says to Philip, go over and speak to that guy in the chariot over there. And then the spirit has been dealing with the Ethiopian eunuch, getting him to read that particular passage and to think

about what Isaiah means in chapter 53. And maybe he's thinking also about chapter 56 and how he fits into the picture, the eunuch who should not say I'm a dry tree. Or you might think about the way that chapter nine, the Lord deals with Saul. but he also deals with Ananias and says, go and talk to this guy, Saul. And in chapter 10, the Lord dealing with Peter and saying, do not count these things common and sending him to speak to Cornelius, and the Lord has been dealing with Cornelius independently. There's a sense in all of these that people have some part to play, but it's not ultimately them who are the agents.

The agent is Christ, who by his spirit is forming his church. And we present ourselves as as those who are instruments of a larger purpose. And that will often just be in the regular everyday things. And even when it's something more remarkable, it can feel quite. We may not fully understand what we're doing and our part that we have to play. And whether Ananias or Philip or Peter fully understood the meaning of what God was doing through them, later on it seems maybe they did but in the initial events maybe they did not fully appreciate the bigger picture and what god was doing through them and often i think that's the

case for us yeah if we are faithfully walking in the spirit there is a sort of divine serendipity that will often pull us we'll find the spirit using us to do things that we did not plan we couldn't have foreseen we couldn't have engineered and yet clearly we are caught up by the wind. And the wind is doing with us things that we could not have orchestrated ourselves. I've always found that one of the most remarkable things to experience is very encouraging, but also humbling because we realize we are not ultimately the ones who are building the kingdom of God, no matter how much we're committed to this work, no matter how much we have built our institutions or pioneered our ministries, whatever it is, however well we are presenting the gospel

to someone. There is a work of the spirit going on. And ultimately, we are instruments of that work. And we do not, we are not the ones who are going to be building the kingdom by ourselves. Rather, we have been privileged and honored to be used by God as those who are in his service and who are hopefully empowered by his spirit to do a work that is ultimately his work. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm pondering. And obviously as a pastor, spend quite a lot of time trying to encourage the Lord's people in that regard, that the Holy Spirit is not, to put it in theological terms,

the Holy Spirit is not simply present in what we could consider extraordinary providences. He's present in all providences. the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. He's given it to his son. Jesus kingdom extends to every square inch as it were. And so wherever you are and whatever you are doing, as we are living out of the love of God, shut abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. So we're just living as children of God,

resting in Christ for the forgiveness of our sins, resting in His righteousness, seeking to grow in the virtues of the Spirit. Because it seems to me the first, the first fruits of the spirit's power and the life of a new creature, a human being made new. It's not that suddenly you can do signs and wonders. It's that those vices of the old life of sin and death are being replaced by these new habits of virtue and Christ-like character from the inmost heart. And as you are, like that is walking in the spirit. And as you are

living as a child of God and taking on the characteristics of his family, then whatever you do, you can know the spirit is at work in that. However, invisibly, and again, it might not be the kind of thing where there's just kind of these fireworks of spiritual power, but it is all caught up, to your point, caught up in what the spirit is doing cosmically. So this little micro story that is, that is, that is a little, my day by the spirit is part of this macro story of the Lord from heaven by the Spirit, making all things new. And I think it not only sanctifies, but it should mobilize and energize just really, really everyday stuff, because we know it is serving this greater

purpose by the power of the Holy Spirit. And so it's not that we don't look for great things, I mean, there are moments in history where probably we see it more in retrospect. I mean, I think to your point, like, I wonder in the scriptures, like, did Gideon really like suddenly feel some physical difference when the spirit rushed upon him? And I think the same in history. Like, you know, did people who, you think of the Reformation or some other moment in church history when we look back now and realize the world changed? and you know, God just took his people in a whole new direction. I don't know if they felt it at the time, but there are clearly these dramatic moments where something huge has just happened, kind of epoch shaping.

But so much it seems to me of our life in the spirit, to your point, it's just, it is quotidian. It's just this righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit on the ground in whatever the Lord has put before me to do. And I'm not saying that to somehow reduce our zeal to pray for and even to to some extent, work for the grander things. But I think it is, again, maybe I'm a little bit sensitive to this from my own background, but I think it's very easy to diminish and underappreciate how much the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth whose spirit rushed upon the void in the beginning and brought forth creation, that same spirit is at work in the tiniest work of my hands that I do

as one whose heart is filled with the love of God by the Spirit. I often think about the beginning of something like the book of 1st Samuel and the story of Hannah praying in the temple. Later on, of course, in Luke, we see allusions back to that in the context of the birth of John the Baptist and of Jesus and the appearance or the presentation of Christ in the temple, the praying of Anna, for instance, whose name calls back to Hannah. And yet, what would Hannah have thought?

She had this experience of God's answer to her prayer, and she burst forth in praise. But she saw something more in that answer to prayer than just some vindication of her against her rival or some way in which the Lord had provided for her desire. There was a sense that that event itself was pregnant with significant, for the nation. And as we read through the book, the key events happen many, many years in the future. It's not until Samuel is towards the end of his life that he anoints, or later on in his

life that he anoints Saul and then later anoints David. There is this long gestation period for the works of God. And I think that's the case with the spirit more generally. The spirit groans within us. the spirit is very much part of the gestation process of the new creation. The spirit bears with us, witness with our spirits that we are children of God. And the whole creation is waiting for the revelation of the children of God. And it's groaning with us. There's this sense of a world that's waiting to give birth. And that the spirit is very much at the heart of that.

The spirit is bearing witness with our spirit. the spirit is also speaking with joining its voice with that of the bride. And so the spirit and the bride are saying, come. And there is this more general sense of the intimacy of the spirit there, but also the hiddenness of the spirit. Yes. The spirit's works are like leaven in loaves,

or it's like the mustard seed that becomes this great tree. It's not something that is, working with the great pyrotechnics that we might expect. Even on the day of Pentecost, there are pyrotechnics, but it's an event that for the most part is witnessed by about 120 people. Right. It's not something that is a huge parting of the Red Sea or something along those lines. It's a far more intimate and private event that is of epoch-defining significance, but it's not the pyrotechnics that it's about.

Rather, it's about the way that the spirit works more generally. And the spirit's work is, for the most part, private and quiet. And there's this sense also that I often find reading the scripture, it's easy to lose sight of the passage of time. So we're reading a story like the story of Abraham. And we don't pay attention to the fact that there's about 14 years between the birth of Ishmael and the birth of Issa. And there's times when the story really condenses.

So from chapter 17 to chapter 21, all of that's taking place within the, or chapter, the beginning of chapter 21, all of this is taking place within the span of just over a year. Whereas there have been long passage of time before that. And so the story has really. slow down and the pace. And when we're reading many of the stories of scripture, we forget, for instance, that the beginning of the book of Exodus is over 80 years before the end of the book of Exodus or the events of the Exodus that occur in the middle of the book.

Yeah, exactly. And I think you, you know, just to point this out briefly, I think you can also see something of that in the spatial realm. There are moments where there's this almost compression of space where Philip has just caught up in the spirit and kind of disappears. But on the other hand, there's this sense of just the immensity of the spirit filling all things. And again, it's just, it's this reality that God in his godness,

as he works by the spirit, is just not contained. so there are moments when God will do something that just obviously breaks the bounds of our creaturely existence. But it seems to me that throughout the biblical narratives and through our own life experience, so much of what God is doing, that God, that infinite, eternal, unchangeable God, who is just beyond the bounds of time and space and change, is acting quietly, invisibly, peacefully,

within the bounds of creatureliness. And I wonder even if you're pointing out, for example, in Ezekiel, I forget if the spirit is explicitly mentioned there, but you have this picture of water running out of God's new temple, eventually making all the salt marshes fresh, a cosmos healing, transforming. thing. And yet, you know, Jesus seems like he's alluding to that in John 7 when he talks about

that the one who believes in him out of his inmost being will flow those very rivers of living water. And it's just not dramatic. It's the inward virtue the spirit brings in a soul that has been healed by the love of God, has been brought to peace with God, and therefore a, the fruit of the spirit towards neighbor and out of your inmost being, is flowing the life of Christ. Like, that's not something that, there's not a lot of flash and glamour to it. It's,

it's a very slow process. And yet it seems to me that our Lord refers to that as kind of the same thing as just that water flooding out of God's temple to, to make the waters of the world fresh. And that maybe is worth thinking of in the context. Why are we talking about what happened in, one room in Jerusalem over almost 2,000 years ago,

why are we talking about that in the present day? What does it matter? I mean, there are physical phenomena that accompanied the day of Pentecost. There's the rushing mighty wind that's filling the house. There's the descent of fire upon their heads. But this is one upper room in the near east, many, many centuries ago,

Why do we care about this today? And it's recognizing that it wasn't just something that happened in that upper room. What happened in that upper room contains a reality that has implications for the whole world from that point onwards. There's no sense that it can be contained to that room. It is the first opening of the temple from which the waters will flow and renew the earth. Yes. And that recognition that, for instance, in the reference that you made to Ezekiel chapter, 47 is given to us by the rest of the scripture that positions this event,

not just as a remarkable revival or some great miracle, but as an epoch defining shift in God's redemption and a change in redemptive history. That, I think, is again working with the remarkable character of what's taking place as something that can't be contained or understood. in terms of the spatial categories, which would seem to delimit it and contain it back in the first century AD, but it's not contained because reality doesn't work that way. Which I think that must be part of what Jesus was envisioning in Acts 1 when he speaks about kind of those ripple effects of, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, but it's not contained.

It also spills out into Judea and Samaria and eventually to the ends of the earth. And it's again, it's an acknowledgement that wherever you are in that little place, your little self, in the time space limitations of your life, the Holy Spirit will take that up into what he's doing. And it won't look like some big thing. It will just look like you bearing witness to whoever the person is in front of you. but that is absolutely caught up by God, by the Spirit, into this kind of, it's as if God has dropped this depth charge in Jerusalem and it's just kind of exploding out with spiritual power that will reach to the ends of the earth and through all time and will eventually result in the consummated kingdom of God. it's it's a

it's such a strange thing but I think so so central to walking by faith as a spirit-filled Christian to just really learn to kind of narrate our lives and view our lives as the small and in themselves insignificant things they are but that God loves these little lives and has and and is building them together by the spirit into this worldwide spiritual house. And so we are able to speak of our lives with the greatest humility. We are nothing. We are dust and ashes. But on the other hand, we can speak of our lives as having this just extraordinary dignity in God's purposes by the Holy Spirit. I mean, we are the salt of the earth by the spirit. We are the light of the world by the spirit. It's extraordinary to think about it. Like the

of that just for your everyday life. I've been thinking about, you mentioned, the way that we narrate our lives. People, I think, struggle to narrate their lives, partly because they're fragmented in many ways. We change jobs, many points. There's not the through line of a particular vocation. We move houses and locations. So there's not a rootedness in space. There is a breaking up of relationships in many cases, divorce or alienation that leads to people lacking the ability to connect their former selves with their current selves by keeping vows through time. You can think also of the ways that we lose track of the connections across time. There's a sense that we raise a next generation to succeed, but not necessarily to succeed us,

to be those that carry on something that we have started and bear something. of a legacy that they can continue that we have received in our turn. And in all of these ways, we can become fragmented within our lives. We can reach the end of our lives, for instance, and struggle to find dignity in the return to a state of dependency in old age and illness. And we struggle to integrate that with a narration of our lives that's so narrowly compacted and focused upon the ages of adulthood where we have. have that agency and no longer connected back to the state of the womb or childhood, which

presents dependency as an integral part of our existence. And all of this is a struggle of narration. We struggle to see ourselves as part of a time that exceeds the immediate windows of time in which we find ourselves. And so one of the things that the spirit does is give us a part that's meaningful within this wider narrative and help us to recognize that we can be truly active and have agency within that and meaning within that without controlling the narrative. Yes. Without being those who are the ones who have self-authored. And this is something that I think comes out in an image like that of the spirit as the one

who's orchestrating a great or conducting a great orchestra. Yes. The spirit is the one who's not just conducting, but empowering each part of the orchestra to play its part. And if you play those parts by themselves, they wouldn't amount to much in many cases. There's not, most of the instruments aren't playing some great solo at any point. There's no sense in which they shine forth from the rest as distinct agents. But as part of the whole, they're producing something. beautiful and good that has integrity beyond anything that they could produce independently.

And that experience of being part of the body of Christ in the church where we are members of Christ and members of each other and participants in the Holy Spirit. And I've always found the image of the gift of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit. Very important. Where there is this one gift of the Spirit, the singular gift received. Pentecost, the gift that unites us to Christ, that we've received the spirit of Christ and we bear Christ within ourselves as we bear his spirit. But we have gifts of the spirit. Each one of us represents the one gift that the church has received. And we receive that more fully as we give

it. There is a sense in which we have received the gift. And in receiving the gifts, we minister the gift to others and as we minister our particular gifts, we receive them in a fuller sense because we, I mean, the hand is a member of the body, not as it asserts its handness over against the rest of the body, but as it ministers to the body and is integrated with the body. And in all of these ways, it seems to me that the agency of the spirit enables us to overcome the fragmentation, the loss of meaning,

the inability to narrate a through line in our lives, in our communities. And when everything else is fracturing, the spirit is the one who gives life. The spirit is the one that holds things together. And for people who feel really that they are just blown around by the winds of events, the spirit blows where it wishes. The spirit is the providential power of God. And if we commit ourselves to the spirit, if we may not know what the spirit is doing with our lives, we may never be able to tell that story ourselves. We may never feel that we are in control of that story.

But the time will come when we will see that story as a whole and our place within it. And it will be through the spirit's orchestration. Yeah. No, that is precisely right. And I think that is part of what the scripture means when it speaks about the transcendent God being our rock. I mean, if you think about the basic features of creatureliness in themselves could be very fragmenting. Time separates us. Space separates us.

Change separates us. But it is knowing being related to being ultimately, you know, by God, the Holy Spirit in particular, that enables us to have this common narrative and this common life, this common story, this common love through all times. You and I are speaking today as real fellow members of the same body as the Apostle Paul and ultimately Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, because of God and His Spirit. And so times ultimately do not separate us, and places ultimately do not separate us.

We have spiritual union with Christians in far, faraway places we will never even meet, and through all changes. Like that is what it is to know and worship and walk in the presence and purposes of the transcendent God. And I really do think that is the, that is the work of the spirit. and you see it in the opening pages of Scripture

where the spirit moves and what emerges from the spirit coming and moving upon creation is a cosmos. It is a three-story house that has different stories to it. The heavens, the earth, the waters under the earth. It has different creatures in it. But it's a cohesive thing. It is all loved by God and part of his purpose and filled with his presence.

and his blessing. And that, I must say, brings us to something I'm quite surprised we've not explicitly talked about yet, which is how Pentecost relates to Babel. So I'll be very interested to hear your thoughts on this, because I do think there has to be a connection. If for no other reason than that at Babel, you have this human attempt to unite. but not the right way. And so God divides the tongues, the languages of humankind, and then that changes in a way at Pentecost,

not so much that we no longer have a variety of languages, but those languages are united now by the good news of Jesus. And so I wonder if we could just reflect for a moment on some of the curious features of the Babel narrative in relation to everything we've been talking about with Pentecost and the Spirit, one of the things that I find interesting about Genesis 10 right before the Tower of Babel is that it describes the division of the earth into various people groups and the kind of spreading out of humankind into different places and establishing different cities. But what's kind of strange is that that must have occurred after Babel.

Most of that going out and multiplying and filling the earth that we see in Genesis 10 would have actually happened chronologically after the Tower of Babel incident in Genesis 11. And I wonder if the reason why Genesis 10 describes the proliferating and spreading out of the various peoples of the world, before we get to Babel is to show that this was always God's purpose. He did not, from creation onward, he didn't want humankind to try to unite in the wrong way, that unity was not ever intended to be through a prideful human project of building a tower that can reach to heaven, making a great name for ourselves, getting us all together in one kind of monolithic thing that shows our mastery of the, well, ultimately our ability to kind of

reach up and bring heaven down and create this central powerful city that just kind of rules the world. That was never God's plan. He always wanted actual diversity. I think you could make, this is perhaps a clumsy way of putting it, you could make the case that God always wanted multiculturalism, multilingualism, but he wanted the earth to be united, not by a city that man built, not by a human project of power and control and self-identifying, but rather he wanted what united the peoples of the earth to be the Word of God and ultimately the power, the spirit, the life of God, moving in and among and with them, so that what happens at Pentecost is not a reversal of the division of languages, because God always intended that the peoples of earth would be diversified,

but rather now all of those various tribes, tongues, and cultures, what you know, unites them is that they have heard the word of the gospel of the kingdom of God in Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. And they have been given the Spirit so that God's word and spirit are with them. So that to the ends of the earth, all of creation, filled with humankind, having been fruitful and multiplied and filled the earth, they are united. But they're not united in this human project of power. they are united by the fact that they are all under the word by the spirit living in the love of God in the uniqueness of their time space circumstances. So the whole earth is filled with his glory. I mean, does that seem like a fair, I think it relates to everything we've been describing about

kind of the universal spirit, but also the particularity of situations. Yes, I think so. And again, one of the things behind all of this is the way that when we think about time, we can tend to think about time as just one event after another to the extent that when we think about something that's very distant from it or a long time ago, we can think about it as being distanced from us by intervening time. And yet when we think about the spirit, the spirit is probably best thought about as bringing music to time. If you're listening to a piece of music, something that's happened a long time ago in the piece of music, can nonetheless be resolved or recalled or brought back at a later point in the music.

And this is one of the things that we see within redemptive history, that there is this integrity to the story. And that even those off notes, those things that went wrong are brought back in this new way and resolved. And so the story of Babel takes place against the backdrop of chapter 10, as you've noted. And within the midst of that chapter, there's this description of this God king type figure, Nimrod who's building this great empire. He's a mighty hunt before the Lord. He seems to be developing a sort of predatory empire.

He's a warlike figure, would seem, who's hunting people and trapping people and bringing them under his control and forming this great big power nation. And you can think about Babel as an extension of that. It's an attempt to, on the one hand, have this horizontal unity. It's a city that brings all these people together in a vast empire, and it's also a tower, something that reaches up to the heavens. And it's also an attempt to respond to the threat of dissolution. We can think about the end of chapter 11, the ages of the descendants of Shem, which overlap with the names of the nations that are described in chapter 10 arising from Shem.

But the lifespans are decreasing and quite, rapidly. Death is hot on the heels and they know that they're going to be cut off. They're going to flesh is weak and it's feeling its weakness and it's feeling its mortality and it's feeling the way that death can wipe it out and destroy its memory. They want to make a name for themselves so that they will not be scattered. They will not be forgotten. And it's against that backdrop that the Lord calls Abraham or Abraham. And Abraham is promised that the Lord will make his name great. And Abraham's calling is something that is going to somehow set right what went wrong at Babel. He's going to bless all nations. The nations have been judged at Babel. They're going to

be blessed. He's also going to make a name great when the names are. of those who sought to make themselves great, have actually been only made great in infamate. And as we go through the story of Abraham's descendants, we can see the allusions back again to Babel. Think about the story of Bethel, where Jacob fleeing from Esau, his brother, lies down, gathers together, stones, lies down,

and he sees this ladder leading from heaven to earth, and angels ascending and descending. It's a conduit between heaven and earth, just as Babel hoped to be. But now it's a successful one. And the gathering together of stones contrast with the gathering of the bricks that they fired in order to build Babel.

And as we go through scripture, it's alluded to in other places. In the book of Daniel, they returned to the land of Shinar. And in the land of Shinar, they have a series of events that are almost variation. upon the theme of Babel.

So in chapter two, this great towering image in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, where it's a number of different metals, the gold, the silver, the bronze, and then this amalgam of iron and clay. And it's a brittle image that will ultimately be destroyed by the rock or the stone cut without hands that will crush it. And it's an image of a people, a succession of empires. an attempt to bring people together in this great image of man. It's the city of man.

And then the city of God is going to be established in its place. In chapter three, having had that dream, Nebuchadnezzar, maybe responding to that dream, makes an image all of gold. If this brittle image is going to fail, then I'm going to make an image all of gold. It's going to be the head all the way down. And it's going to be all me. And then bringing the people together in this act of worship with this performance of music and everyone bows. of all the peoples, tribes, tongues and nations, all the different orders of the land,

the officials and governors and prefects, etc. All of them involved. And there's a sort of comedic, parodic character to the way that the story is told there. The Lord, it's doomed to failure. And the fiery furnace that had been used to melt the gold that had been used to make the statue is the means by which the Hebrews are supposed to be burnt off

like dross or melted down to become part of this great. imperial project and yet it fails. They do not get melted down. Chapter four, similar sort of thing, the towering tree that gathers together all these different animals under its branches and birds within it as well. And then the watcher descends from heaven, cuts it down like the Tower of Babel was frustrated. And then in the chapters that follow, there are struggles of interpretation, the writing on the wall or the way in which the king declares his work. word, the word of the law in chapter six, and that word comes back to bite him. He cannot control the winds of providence. He cannot control his word. And yet the Lord's breath is never departed

from him. He doesn't receive from elsewhere. The wind goes forth and it accomplishes whatever he wishes for him to do. Likewise, his word is never alienated from him. His word never comes back to bite him. Rather, his word is always with him. And that contrast with humanity is very clear. And then when we go into the New Testament, we see Pentecost as the true answer to Babel. And the backdrop of it is that there now is a conduit between heaven and earth, which is established by Christ's ascension. You're just making me think as you're narrating this. I've always puzzled over why in Galatians, Paul says that the promise to Abraham was the spirit. I would have thought Christ because again my sort of

back to our original points about the Christ event my sort of truncated understanding of the Christ event as you know the cross forgiveness resurrection you know we will we all will be raised from the dead but actually to your point about the transition from Genesis 11 to 12

the culmination in a way of everything that God promised to Abraham that is parodied in Daniel is the coming of the spirit that really reaches far beyond the bounds of Abraham's family to all nations of the earth.

And now God is building something. It's not the tower of Babel built by man. He's building his spiritual house in which there really is a union of heaven and earth by the spirit made of living stones. And of all nations. And that really is,

all families of the earth, finally being blessed in the seat of Abraham, but without Pentecost, in a sense, it's cut short. Yes, and the imagery of Jacob's ladder is also brought out in John. Yes. Chapter 1, verse 51, Jesus is the ladder. He will see heaven opened and angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. Christ is the one who is the way, the truth in the life. He's the way to the Father.

And as such, heaven can descend to earth and earth can ascend to heaven upon him. And of course, within the book of Revelation, that's what we see. There's this conduit opened between heaven and earth, the door that's opened up as a result of Christ's ascension. And now the angels can ascend and descend. Satan and his angels can be cast down. And then there can also be this lifting up of the saints from beneath the altar. And there can be the descent later on, like the spirit descended upon Christ at the beginning of his ministry, the descent of the spirit-filled body, the descent of the church, like the bride from heaven.

Yes. So let me ask you a question then of a somewhat practical nature. I'm fascinated by the question that's received so much attention in our time of how cultural change happens, how not just individual lives, but people's change. and larger dynamics within and the kind of structures of human life socially can be transformed. I wonder to your point that you've been opening up here, what does it look like to build institutions in the spirit? Because it seems to me that there is a real mood difference, to put it mildly, between

Babel and what we see in the New Testament. We understand that one very good thing about human life is that we try to build things that outlast us. We try to build things that aren't completely subject to time and space. We don't want every work of our hands to last only so long as we are alive. or to be so localized that they don't have any broader influence. There is something, I think, really human about wanting to get on the rivers of Eden and go out to the ends of the earth and see the goodness of God's kingdom spread to other places and to see it last and be built through time. So I think I think institution building building things that have staying power and and have ballast and are well-resourced that can reach beyond the limitations of our creaturely time and space. I think all that in a way is good, but it can very quickly become, these can very quickly become Babel projects.

We're somehow trying to kind of do by the power of man what God is intended to do by the power of the spirit. So there is neither a kind of quietist, you know, sort of sit back and passively wait for the spirit to do remarkable things completely apart from ordinary means. But I think there's also a really deep Christian suspicion of trying to muscle it. And if you try to muscle it, you very quickly end up in some of those vices of the old self where, you know, the wrath of man is trying to produce the righteousness of God and so on. Like what does, I know this isn't quite a question to spring on you, but like what does instance? institution building in the spirit look like? That is a very powerful question, I think, and it's one that really is at the heart of so much of Paul's practice, for instance, in the way that he thinks about his ministry, that

there is a weakness in the flesh. There is a constant experience of seeming failure, beatings and imprisonments and shipwrecks and all the resistance that he faces. and these sleepless nights praying for the churches where he feels he lacks human power to actually change things. And yet the recognition that the power of the spirit is at work mysteriously in this. And he may not know exactly how or he may never see the fruit within his lifetime. But he is confident that as he keeps in step with the spirit, the spirit will use him.

And that is, I think, just such an important part of it. It's not passivity. Paul's doing all these sorts of things. He's very active. But one of the most important things that he's active in is keeping in step with the spirit, praying for the spirit. That sense of prayer is one of the most spiritual activities because we're coming to Christ. and we're coming in the power of the spirit who is given by whom we have access in Christ. And there's this context of confidence that God is good in giving us the spirit.

He wants us to know the goodness of the spirit, to know that as assurance that we have the first fruits, that we are children of God, that we will experience the full harvest. and also to know that there is something beyond our muscling it, as you put it, that's going to be building the kingdom of God. We can think about the ways that as Christians, we are part of a building project that is not our own. And there is this description, for instance, of a temple that many hands are involved in the construction of it. but the spirit is ultimately the one who's orchestrating the whole.

And when we're engaging in the work of the kingdom, having a sense of both the agency that God has given us, because he has anointed us, he has commissioned us, and that is very much by the spirit. And yet at the same time, since it is the spirit's work, that we may not know exactly,

we cannot shepherd our actions to their intended ends. There is something of casting bread on the waters character. There's a serendipitous character, which we're entrusting our work. In a world of death and futility and failure, we're entrusting our work to the one who shepherds the wind. Indeed, the one who is the wind. Yes, yes.

That's interesting. think is something that answers, for instance, the deep forces of death that are explored in a book like Ecclesiastes, which can express themselves in a form of tragedy, but there is also a way of reading them more as dependency and a shrugging off of the sort of messianic projects that would otherwise place upon our shoulders. We do not have to achieve the change by ourselves. Sometimes it would be a matter of saying there is no way that we can achieve change here. We just need to be faithful where we are and be a witness in that regard. The most important thing is that we put ourselves at the spirit's disposal, that we bring forth the fruit

of the spirit. And will that yield human results, political victories, whatever? It may never do. But ultimately we are committing ourselves to Christ. I'd never thought of Ecclesiastes as a book about the Holy Spirit, but as you're speaking there, that makes so much sense, because on one hand, you're told over and over again throughout that book, you just cannot shepherd the wind. But on the other hand, that's expressed a different way. Man cannot find out the work of God. So what appears to you to be grasping at vapor, just the seeming futility. of, you know, I've described it as the lifelong feeling of just building sandcastle after sandcastle and it's a matter of time before the waves wash it away. But that's actually not true. Like,

that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that would be the case if there were no God. But the fact that everything that we are doing is caught up in the work of God who makes everything beautiful in its time and who in the end will bring everything into judgment. and that climactic work of the spirit will be to truly make all things new, raising even the dead. You know, that's why we can go eat your bread and drink your wine and put oil on your head. These things are the gift of God. And so I think there can be building projects. I mean, I'd speak as a pastor.

I've been working to build a church. but to your point, it is absolutely, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, in the hands of the Lord, and that is the best news, because the Spirit, because the Spirit, because in the very beginning, it has been true that there is a cosmos

because the breath of the Lord moves upon the waters. I didn't think I could like Pentecost any more than I already did, but I think this conversation is enormously, encourage me, And just like, it is, it is amazing to think about the implications of the fact that the spirit now of Christ. So it isn't just the spirit of God working in a general way. It's the spirit of the sun, the spirit of the Messiah, the spirit of the one who laid down his life on the cross and rose from the dead. That spirit that raised Christ from the dead is in us and with us and working through us and around us to,

so our works are not in vain. Our works are not vapor in the Lord. The one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good. For in due season, we will reap if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are of the household of faith. This has been a fantastic discussion. And we're going to have to continue some of these discussions of themes of Pentecost at some other point, I think, because there's so much that we haven't gotten into. Beyond Babel, we haven't really explored a wealth of Old Testament background and even background in the Gospels.

But this has been very edifying for me. Thank you so much for joining me. So enjoyed it, Alcher. And also to everyone who listened. God bless. Amen. Thank you.