Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Alistair Begg - The Role of the Holy Spirit

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Jonny Ardavanis is the Lead Pastor at Stonebridge Bible Church in Franklin, TN and the President of Dial In Ministries. He formerly served as the Dean of Campus Life at The Master’s University and as a Camp Director at Hume Lake Christian Camps. Jonny’s heart is to see people understand and love the Word of God and more so, to love the God of the Word. Jonny is married to Caity Jean and they have two precious daughters.Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis: Big Questions, Biblical Answers, is a series that seeks to provide biblical answers to some of the most prominent and fundamental questions regarding God, the Gospel, and the BibleIn this episode, Jonny Ardavanis sits down with Alistair Begg, the founder of the Truth For Life and discuses the roles of the Holy Spirit.Watch VideosVisit the Website Follow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hey guys, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. In this episode, I sit down with Pastor Alistair Begg and ask him about the role and function of the Holy Spirit. Let's dial in. Well, Pastor Begg, thank you once again for sitting down. I wanted to ask you about the role, function of the Holy Spirit, the person of the Holy Spirit. Just, I guess, off the bat, what are some misconceptions that people have, even in the church, about the Holy Spirit? Well, one would be that they don't refer to Him as a person, but refer to it as it, the Holy Spirit, so that somehow or another it's just completely misunderstood that the Holy Spirit is the third person, co-equal, co-eternal, but is a person. Not like an abstract force.

Right, not like the force, may the force go with you. Yeah. Right, not like the force, may the force go with you. No, when we begin the Bible, the Holy Spirit is breathing over the waters, right, in the midst of creation. Some people, another misconception is that the Holy Spirit never showed up until Pentecost. And at that point, now we've made a discovery. But of course, we know that the Spirit alighted upon Jesus at His baptism in the form of a dove. I think that the Holy Spirit is probably largely ignored by many and then has become the preoccupation of those who don't ignore Him. And so the Holy Spirit takes on a role that... That they're too large or too diminished.

Yeah, if we could put it ourselves, you know, he's given a role that he never took for himself. So that in very simplistic terms, somehow or another, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit enter into a covenant of redemptive purpose, the Father sending the Son, the Son being willing to go, the Holy Spirit then coming in that position to set forward the work and the ministry of the Son in a role that is not subservient, but it is humble in that there's a loss of recognition in that person. The irony of it is that many of my friends who are mostly preoccupied with the Holy Spirit have actually elevated the Holy Spirit to a place that the Holy Spirit doesn't actually have in the Scriptures, in that His work is always, like a John the Baptist ministry. This is presenting Jesus. Another would be that

either that the Holy Spirit is only known in a particular way, depending on the background out of which a person has come, so that there's a very mechanistic way into an understanding of the Holy Spirit. But there is no life in our lives apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. So if someone doesn't have the Holy Spirit, then they're not even in Christ. So the idea that it is a sort of top-up added extra, if you would like it, is another misconception. Yeah, like a boost. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's helpful. I think many people, yeah, can spectrum swing, like where the Holy Spirit becomes, what you said, a preoccupation, or then other times we can kind of swing to the other side and forget that we can't live a single

moment of faithfulness outside of the Spirit's power. So then if I'm asking the question, well, how does the Holy Spirit work? And if we pray, God, fill me with your Spirit, how does that even happen in our lives? What would you say? Well, it's fascinating, isn't it? When you go through the Acts of the Apostles, that post had a peculiar sense of a need of, if you like, a sort of evidential, internal, reassuring sense that God's hand was upon them for good. You know, the idea that the hand of God was upon them for good. And so when they, and they deliver the word of God

and the spirit was there in his fullness. I think that for ourselves, you know, I remember John Stott when he used to do that little booklet, he used to say in the Christian life, there is one baptism and many fillings. That the baptism of the Holy Spirit is when we're baptized into Christ, that it is not a post-conversion experience. But the need for

and the experience of the enabling of the Holy Spirit is an ongoing need. You know, we pray, God, help me, quicken me, fill me, whatever else it is. How would we quantify that? Probably we are not the right people to try and figure it out. A bit like, you know, and Moses faced Sean and he didn't know. The Holy Spirit is given to us not as a toy to be played with, or the gifts that he gives us are not toys to be played with, but they're tools to be used. And so the work of the Spirit is to, you know, if a man loves me,

he will keep my commandments and I will love him and I will come and make my home with him. I will live with him. So how does, Jesus doesn't live here. He's not in Camarillo. He's not in Cleveland physically. If I go away, it will be really helpful because then the spirit will come. Well, then we've got a genuine right to expect that some sense of animated intimacy with God is ours by experience, not on a sustained and daily basis.

But so for example, I've got three kids, I've got eight grandchildren. I can arbitrarily go over and pick them up and give them a hug and set them back down again. They're no more my grandchildren because I picked them up with a hug or no less if I didn't give them a hug. But the hug was really nice. And I think there's a sense in which the work of the Spirit,

this sounds kind of weird, maybe, but the work of the Spirit, every so often, that God comes to us to hug us, either in our need or in our anxiety that we were talking about the other time or in our failure. He comes to assure us and to reassure us. And he does so through the scriptures, never in isolation from. So there was a big long time here, whether people were wearing those bracelets, what would Jesus do? And I said, well, we don't know what Jesus would do. Why would you wear a bracelet?

I mean, we have a bracelet that says, what does God's word say? Because then we can determine that. I mean, you don't want to buy a Toyota or you want to buy a Volvo. Well, what would Jesus do? We don't know what Jesus would do. He wouldn't be doing that. So there's a lot of nonsense spoken about that kind of thing. But in the circles in which many of us move, I'm not sure that we have quite the sense of expectation for the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives that we ought to have, that He is more willing to bless us than we are to take the time to ask Him. I thought what you're saying was interesting regarding the Holy Spirit and what you're mentioning about the hug of a grandfather. And part of that is his role in Romans 5, right?

It says that he pours out the love of God into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. And then he assures us in Titus 3, right, that we are actually God's children. I think one of the things that you're saying is true that maybe culture's emphasis on experience at the expense of truth, we've potentially swung this way and go truth, devoid and divorced of the experience and the assurance and the intimacy that the Holy Spirit provides. So if you're going to just, if you're talking to someone and they say, I want the more of the Spirit in my life. And you mentioned that it was never separated from the Word of God, but what else would you say? I want more of the Spirit of God in my life, working in my life. What would you say? Well, all that God gives to us, he gives to us actually in Jesus.

That in him, the fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form and we are complete in him. So that the work of the Holy Spirit is not to take us into like chapter three, but is to take us always to Jesus. And so it depends why we're asking, I want more of the Holy Spirit, you know? Because are we saying, I want more of the Holy Spirit because I don't believe that I have sufficient in what is mine in Jesus? Then that's a different subject to be addressed. But if they're saying is, I want to be more useful to God,

I want to love Jesus more, I want to have... Or even that nearness to his addressed. But if their sin is, I want to be more useful to God, I want to love Jesus more, I want to have... Or even that nearness to his presence. Yeah, that sense of engagement with him. I want the fruit of the Spirit to be manifest in my life. And since it is the work of the Spirit of God to produce that fruit, then that's what I long for. Some people are asking because, I don't know why they're asking, but the Spirit's work is always to send us to Jesus.

Therefore, we want always to point people back to Jesus. Yeah, no, that's so helpful. And I think when we often pray, Lord, fill me with your Spirit, we know even when we read scripture that we're asking the spirit of god to open our eyes the psalmist says that we may behold the wonderful things in his word and yet it's a subject that has a lot of ambiguity culturally because as you said he's either elevated beyond the role he actually plays in Scripture, or diminished inappropriately. Well, the only thing I would add is that between Colossians and Ephesians,

as I think about it, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, and then sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. In Ephesians 5, be filled with the Holy Spirit and engage in all those things so that the Word of God does the work of God by the Spirit of God in the lives of the people of God. And so that combined reality, I think, is what we long for. No, that's true. And then conformity into the image of the Son of God. Because if you say, what is God actually doing with us?

He's doing the exact same thing with all of us. And that is conforming us to the image of His Son. Romans 8, yeah. No, that's so helpful. And that's, I think, my prayer in our collective prayers, to be transformed. So that's very helpful. Thank you, Pastor Begg.