Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Costi Hinn - Knowing the Spirit - Pt. 01 - Who He Is

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

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 Costi Hinn from For the Gospel and Shepherd's House church discusses Knowing the Spirit - Pt. 01 - Who He Is.Watch VideosVisit the Website Pre-order Consider the LiliesFollow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hey folks, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. I'm really excited to begin this new series with my friend Kosti Hinn. Kosti recently wrote a book entitled Knowing the Spirit, Who He Is, What He Does, and How He Can Transform Your Life. And over the next five weeks, that's what I want to break down with my friend Kosti, talking about the role of the Holy Spirit, what He does. Many of you have sent in questions to me before in regards to the Holy Spirit's work and function and how He still works today. And we're going to talk about that and much more over the next month or so. These episodes are longer than my typical format because there's

a lot to talk about as it relates to the person, function, and role of the Holy Spirit. Each of these episodes will come out on Tuesday, and I'm sure that you're going to be blessed just by the conversation with Kosti. And even at the end, what I'd like to do is maybe if you have more questions after the next five weeks or so, submit those and send those in to us over Instagram or whatever it may be. And maybe Kosti and I will do a follow-up episode as we kind of try to drive home some of the follow-up questions that you may have pertaining to the work and function of the Holy Spirit. Well, without further ado, let's dial in. Kosti, I've got in my hands your book, Knowing the Spirit. You've written a really helpful and clear resource for

the church today because we all need to know who the Holy Spirit is. The subtitle is who he is, what he does, and how he can transform your Christian life. I want to ask you just, maybe just from a fundamental level, why did you call the book Knowing the Spirit? Yeah. First of all, just the basic title of it, You Should Know the Spirit. I don't want people to know him, but the ongoing maybe verb, knowing the spirit, knowing him again and again. I think here's where I started thinking about why to write it. I grew up in extreme kind of charismatic circles, and now I exist. I preach and minister and believe more kind of reformed, like Bible church type doctrinal positions, similar to you, of course. And those two

worlds are quite far apart. And both, I think both have extremes. And I've been thinking a lot about the Holy Spirit's work, people, extremes, the ditches on all sides. That's something I 100% think about, pray about pastorally. I pastor a young church plant, similar to you, younger church with lots of different people, and I want them to have strong doctrine. I don't want them to just take labels and doctrinal positions for no reason. I want them to know things deeply and keep on reforming and thinking and allowing the word to shape their view. So that was heavy on my heart for a long time, but I never did anything about it until I

saw this research study come out from Arizona Christian, which is in my area. God loves the stats. I'm a stats guy. If I see numbers, I'm like, all right, now there's theory and there's practice. There's hypotheticals and then there's the data points. Well, this study is eye-opening. They did this research study, surveyed a ton of people, and in the study, 58% of people didn't even believe the Holy Spirit was real. 58% of professing Christians? Yes, professing Christians are who they focused on. They don't even believe the Holy Spirit's real. I'm going, are you like, okay, that's frustrating. That's

loathsome. That's not okay. We need to help people. So that pastoral kind of drive for people to know the truth sort of just lit up in me. So yeah, I have the extremes on all sides. I've been in kind of two different worlds. I think deeply about these things. But the trigger to really put the book into print and start, you know, fingers to the keyboard was seeing the stats. And that's alarming, I think, because one, that means we have a bad understanding

of the Holy Spirit in the extremes. But then you add this group of people that aren't really sure if he's even real or they're like, I don't really know what to do with him. Maybe he's just sort of another version of Jesus. Maybe he's sort of a lesser thing. Not really sure what to do with that. You know what?

I don't know. That for me means time for a resource that I hope can help people. You mentioned you grew up in a charismatic environment. I did not. Like my dad is not charismatic. When you say charismatic, though, I think there's like a variety of interpretations for what that means. So when you say charismatic, what does that mean from your context? Totally. Yeah, that's there's a reason I said extreme charismatic.

Maybe even say, what do you mean by the extremes of both my, you know, my upbringing and your upbringing? Yes. So let's do mine first. Extreme over here is very heavy emotionalism. If I don't feel some deep emotion, I don't cry. If no one maybe knocks me over, like people get slayed in the spirit. If there's no massive altar call at the end of a service, we didn't really hit the peak of what the Spirit's work is, and I didn't feel the feels. Therefore, it was an okay Sunday. There was some Bible taught, but we didn't really have sort of a laid-out crowd where we got deep into the emotion. There's that, but there's also—

Is being slain in the Spirit something that happens over and over again for a charismatic church? In the extreme kind of circles, yes. I have Pentecostal friends, though, that would tell you and have told me, and of course, I know that they love the Lord and they love the gospel, the true gospel. They're not going into service every week, and at the end of the service, it's like, all right, everyone come up here to get the anointing of the power of God, and the guy's laying hands on everyone, and they're getting... Dominoes. Yeah. That, I would say, there's so many Pentecostals that they preach the word. We have different views on some of the gifts, but they

preach the word. They love the Lord. And there's a lot of good things to say about their passion, their zeal, their approach to missions and the common unity. The extreme is, man, if we don't hit these things, if we don't have these experiences, also an extreme would be the presentation from a man or a woman teaching in these circles who appears to have a better in with God than everyone else. Like they hear from the Holy Spirit like you don't, therefore you need their word, you need their impartation, all those things. I would add in that extreme view would be things like the word of faith movement, which is the name it and claim it sort of phrase,

if someone hasn't heard that before. It's the idea of manifesting, which is totally normal in the world now. You look at these successful entrepreneurs on Instagram, and they're going, yeah, you've got to manifest your reality. And they're not even Christians. Well, the Prosperity Gospel, the Word of Faith movement, has that same idea. In the vein that they could say, like, this is going to be my greatest year of sales in the name of the spirit like yes in the name of jesus or the holy spirit is going to this and he then becomes i would say like a magic genie if you rub them right

do the right thing say the right things the holy spirit is more of a force and that is classic word of faith theology let's swing to the other extreme and there is what I would call a Reformed Stoicism, where we're so fearful of expression and emotion and feelings and anything going to this extreme that it becomes what I would call the Frozen Chosen, like we are God's people, and everyone's very stiff and stoic. We stare at the screen, we sing the lyrics, and it's good theology, and then we sit down, someone preaches, and we go home. Now, I'm not against any of those things. If you want to look at the screen and sing the lyrics, great. I'm just against somebody saying, yeah, but if

you're over there raising your hands and doing this, you're just a big charismatic crazy. Both sides need to relax. The extremes are where the ditches are. And God moves in people's lives at different times in different ways. Somebody may be in the throngs of sin, and they've just been set free, and all they can do— they've never thought about what even charismatic means or what reformed means. All they're thinking is, as they sing about Christ and his goodness, they just throw their hands up and they're just loving God and thankful for his mercy. What is that? The influence of charismatic extremism? No. Maybe just talk about that because even when you talk

about raising your hands and they've been freed, you know, I, uh, like in a reformed environment, like I've grown up around people that raise their hands when they sing. But I think because you mentioned the extreme, then often those different, um, interpretations of how the Holy spirit is to be employed in worship are just reactions against the other side. So I've had people come up and say, man, I had no idea it was a sin to raise your hands when you sing. And you're like, no, it's not. You can do that. But like, I think there are also people that say, no, it's, you've been influenced by charismaticism. If you do raise your hands. So maybe talk about that for a moment. Like, does someone have the ability to raise their hands and not be a charismatic or be,

you know, I don't, I think this, this reform person would be like, I just don't want to be accused of being charismatic. Yeah. And then the charismatic might say, I don't want to be accused of being a frozen chosen. Totally. So maybe just expound on that for a second. Let's look at both extremes because both have it. And we're being very fair here from the reform perspective. You have the, the the if you're doing those things i'm a little you're a little sus you know i'm not really sure what to do with

you however you're not sincere yeah yeah you're not sincere you're being a distraction i don't want to be a distraction all that well let me just tell you if you're getting distracted or you're so worried about people raising their hands and what they're doing you've lost focus in the music portion of worship because worship isn't just the singing. It's the preaching, the giving, the fellowshipping, all that. But then on the other side, I was in services many times growing up where if you did just sing to the Lord, and if your hands weren't raised to a certain height, or you weren't moving or speaking in tongues out loud or really fervent, then they would accuse you of being dead this morning. Like we would see the preacher get up sometimes and go, you people, you are dead this morning. You're not in the spirit.

We're going to pray. I want everyone praying in the spirit. Lift up the keys. Let's, and you're like, you know, what just happened? My, my singing, the keys, my hand. Yeah. Get the volume up, go up a key. We're going to say literally, Oh, literally all of it, bro. We hand. Yeah. Get the volume up, go up a key. We're going to sing. Oh, literally. Oh,

literally. All of it, bro. We love to sing. And there's some probably good things we can learn from that of just like, come on, people play, play good music. In that though, like if you weren't expressing enough, you were in the flesh, you were dead and you weren't walking in the spirit. I would be so careful. Like bless, I'll just use my own wife as an example, and I. Bless her heart. My wife is an introvert. She is a mellow woman who is so passionate about the Lord. She will sing her heart out. But my wife is not, she doesn't move a lot, like in a service. She's not like doing this and all this. And, you know And I'm like two feet over from her. And if I read a lyric or I know a song, like how great thou art and thinking about the Lord, I mean, I might point to the sky, I'm doing this. And look, we get to some of these conferences together. When you get a bunch of men

together, you'll have guys doing this and this. There is a passion and a joy. I would call it a vibrant orthodoxy. I love the truth and I love the Lord. Therefore, this is what's coming out of me. And my wife could be having the same spiritual experience, the same passion. And she's standing there singing. And she's singing, in Christ alone, my hope is found. And she thinks just as much.

Perfect pitch. Thank you. You should have harmonized. She thinks just as much about the Lord, the gospel, all of it. And she's moved with who we were and now who we are in him. So what am I saying? Be careful of labeling each expression as wrong because it's different than yours. There are ditches to watch out for. Those extremes of force. Like if you don't raise your hands, you didn't feel it. If there wasn't a big slaying in the spirit fest, we didn't really get there. But over here, if you are doing any of this, you have been influenced now, sucked into wild charismaticism, and it's subtle, but watch out. Those extremes aren't helpful pastorally because people end up sort of abused in this sense. Like the person you spoke to, you mentioned, said, yeah, I didn't know it was a sin to raise my hands. I'm so glad I've come

to that reality. And you just want to pastorally go, oh, friend, no, no. Same with someone else. Man, now that I went to this service and I felt the goosebumps, I finally felt or I finally know the Holy Spirit, I'd go, hold on. On a day where you lose someone you love, on a day where the doctor gives you a diagnosis that doesn't give you any good feelings, did you know the Holy Spirit is near and he's there and he's active and you can depend? It's not a feelings-based member of the Trinity we're talking about, person of the Trinity in that sense. No. So we want to be careful. And so writing the book, the goal was, how can I walk kind of everyone down Main Street of genuine pneumatology, from the Greek word pneuma, spirit, that's the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and how can we all look in the mirror at the extremes and be really,

really honest with ourselves and think, you know, I need to relax a little or, hey, I need to tighten up theologically a little because truth matters. So all of those things are important for us to think about. You mentioned kind of like the Holy Spirit's work in a hospital room just now, but maybe what's the level of urgency? Obviously that you have these two extremes, you know, the two ditches you could fall into, but we also live in the most medicated, depressed, anxious, sin kind of infiltrated world, you know, in history. And you could say, well, it was just as bad as Thessalonica or what maybe, but why the urgency on the Holy Spirit, even as we look at the sin in our world and even the problems that we're facing that you see in the church and what's at stake?

You bring up one of the most important reasons for healthy pneumatology. The extremes and expression, we can talk music, we could talk all of it, but when it comes down to it, we miss out on our greatest need, in my theological opinion. After salvation, certainly we want to be saved. That's our greatest need. But the process of sanctification, of growing to become more like Christ, happens by walking daily with the Holy Spirit, who is, by the way, theologically speaking, the agent of salvation, applying Christ's work to us,

but he's also the agent in sanctification, which is the idea of being set apart and growing more and more like Christ. Why is that so important for what you've brought up? Well, the fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness and faithfulness and self-control, and there's no limit on these. When Paul says against these, there is no law. I mean, do them as much as you want, live there's no limit on these. When Paul says against these, there is no law. I mean, do them as much as you want, live it as much as you want. What's the antidote to anxiety?

Walking by the Spirit, being filled with the Spirit. What's the antidote to hopelessness? And now you have hope, walking by the Spirit. What's the antidote to hate and to a lack of peace and to looking around the world and thinking, no one's in control and I don't know what today holds. You can have a lot that you're facing. And if you're walking by the Spirit and in the Spirit and filled with the Spirit, you're going to go into those situations. It doesn't change the pain. It doesn't

change the reality of what you're facing. However, it changes the way you walk through that, and the Spirit's work is essential to our daily life. I cannot sit here with you and have peace, joy, a love, a truth that we walk in. I can't experience life in the Spirit becoming more like Christ if I don't have a personal and vibrant relationship with the Holy Spirit. Isn't that the greatest need for people, that you walk with the Lord each day? We can't leave out the third person of the Trinity, or we're going to have a very deficient Christian life. I'm not blaming every person's depression or anxiety on a deficient pneumatology,

but I would say if we looked under the hood of our lives in those areas, a vibrant pneumatology would help us in so many ways. You just mentioned that the Holy Spirit is the third member of the Trinity, and I kind of want to use that to segue to kind of my next series of questions in that regard. So what is the Spirit's role in the Trinity? And maybe just for someone that maybe doesn't understand how God operates as three in one, give an explanation there. You got the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.

Maybe give a bullet points of their distinction and yet their unity. Yeah, totally. If you were to take kind of a holistic view of the Trinity, look at the whole Bible, you'll see the Father operate as the one who calls, who chooses. He is authority in that sense, even that Jesus came when he came to earth and submitted to the Father. In that sense, I would say the Father has loved us and called us and chosen us, and then you go to the Son, and the Son has died for us and taught us and commissioned us. In that sense. We follow after Jesus. He's the one we follow. And then the Holy Spirit is sent to be our helper, our comforter. And one of the great

realities from Romans 8, he's our intercessor. By the way, sort of playing off of what we've talked about before with anxiety and people and what their greatest need, the Holy Spirit is the one who's praying for you. Imagine that. Literally, God, the third person of the Trinity, is praying for us. He's the sanctifier, all of that. So when you look at the work of the Trinity in our lives, it's not that you ever graduate from one person in the Trinity to the next. It's that each person in the Trinity, our God, who's three in one, is active in distinct ways, and yet all in unity, all in unison, all in every aspect, in essence, fully God. That's something that is a paradox. It was R.C. Sproul who said it is a divine paradox. You're never going to fully understand it. People try

to use the water and ice kind of analogy. The core of the apple. They try to use the core of the apple, the egg yolk. I mean, you have so many ways in which people try to explain the Trinity. I think the best way to do it is just to look at Scripture and then live in the divine tension of our God is the only God, and He is also the only God who exists equally as one in three persons. And well, what do I do with that in my mind? Just submit to it and realize that if you could fully comprehend God, he wouldn't be God. What a comfort that I can't fully figure him out with my spreadsheets and my formulas and make all

the data points match. No, he's outside of me and he exists eternally and above all things. So first, the Trinity, equal, active. Each person in the Trinity, we want to see their role. I would add, if we're praying or thinking about the Trinity or we're studying the Trinity, I wouldn't necessarily recommend someone say, well, they're all equal and they're all fully God. And so, you know, Holy Spirit, thank you for dying for me. Jesus, thank you for, you know, and, you know, say some aspect. Applying a function of one member of the Trinity to another. We want to pray accurately, teach accurately, and express our gratitude to God accurately.

Yeah. express our gratitude to God accurately. That's important because why? There's biblical distinctions about their role and focus. Yeah. So you mentioned, obviously, the Trinity, which is a theological term, but not a biblical word. So theologians use the word Trinity to define what's obvious in scripture. And you said that the Holy Spirit is God. Now that kind of brings us into maybe a series of misconceptions. He is God. And because he's God, he is personal. He's a person, which would be contradictory to this idea that sometimes we refer to the Holy Spirit as an it, or even as a, like you mentioned the idea of the Holy Spirit being like a force and he's ethereal. It's an ethereal idea, but talk more about those misconceptions about how the Holy Spirit is often not viewed as God.

And then after addressing those misconceptions about the identity of the Spirit, maybe talk about just the practical implications of because the Holy Spirit is in fact a personal God, what does that have? Why does this matter? Why are we talking about this? How does that affect the way we worship, pray, so forth? So good. We all do this, by the way. I was talking to someone two days ago at a conference in sound theological circles, and she called the Holy Spirit in it. She is from Bible church world. So why do I bring that up?

This isn't like pick on the people who don't know. It's convicting me. It's convicting her. She was like, it's just, I just said, think about the Holy Spirit. And I've never really thought about it, and just said, think about the Holy Spirit. And like, I've never really, you know, thought about it. And she wasn't talking about the topic. And she's like, yeah, like it's the third person of the Trinity. And she didn't mean anything by it. She just said that.

And I didn't like jump down, you know, like, oh, hold on now a minute. According to my, yeah, I didn't hammer her. I just kept listening and we kept talking. But that for me is good pastorally as I think, you know what? according to my, yeah, I didn't hammer her. I just kept listening and we kept talking, but that for me is good pastorally as I think, you know what? Everyone has said that or done that or thought that perhaps in some way, shape or form, we don't always get it right or say things exactly how they're supposed to be perfectly. But let's talk about that. The it thing is the result of a deficient pneumatology and viewing him as the JV guy on the team. He's like the junior version of God.

He's sort of the guy picked last at dodgeball. He's just over there on the end, and we're not really sure what to do with him. But like, okay. It's like, you know. But also, here's something that I want to be very understanding about. We understand the Father, that term. Yeah. A Father, okay?

Person. Real, tangible. You're there. Jesus. Yeah. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, John 1, 14. Real man, yeah. He came as a man.

Yeah. among us john 1 14. real man yeah he came as a man yeah then the holy spirit we're kind of going are you like a a steam a mist a vapor are you i mean the go to the book of genesis the spirit was hovering over the waters are you like this floaty thing are you from the like from the shack even in an expression like that book you the father is presented as this warm jovialvial, African-American woman, and it's like welcoming. Remember that? And Jesus is this carpenter, and he's doing, and then the spirits, the kind of thing floating around. Why are things expressed that way? And that's not a theological recommendation on the shack. It's just saying we do that as human beings. Why? Because it's perfectly natural and normal in our human nature

to go, I relate to that. I relate to that. This, I don't know what to do with. So I'm going to kind of create something in my mind. And so we end up calling them a net. We view them as a force. We think, well, sanctification, regeneration, I don't really see you. You're never presented as a person. Oops, wait, you are. Yeah, but not in the way I define and kind of see a person. Actually, yeah, no, you have emotions, feelings, and thoughts, and a will, and a volition. Okay, well, I just don't see you like I see the other two, and I'm not really sure what to do. So now let's just sort of keep moving on to the next topic. This is how we treat the Holy Spirit. There are books written on him. There are sermons written on him that emphasize the forgottenness of the Holy Spirit. There are books written on him. There are sermons written on him that emphasize the

forgottenness of the Holy Spirit. Why? Well, because he's the one we're not really sure completely what to do with. We don't focus on him. Am I saying my book's the only book out there, and thankfully, Costi wrote something? No. Sinclair Ferguson, George Smeaton, there's so many others that, you know, Robert Grimacki, W.A. Criswell. I looked at many different things. R.C. Sproul wrote a book on the Holy Spirit. I'm thankful, but there is perhaps a lot of zeal to preach about other things, write about other things. The Holy Spirit doesn't get just bad press, like we would say Jesus has some of the worst PR on planet Earth, false religions

and things. The Holy Spirit doesn't have merely bad press. He gets like no press. And that's an important thing. So in all of that, I hope that someone would come to understand him as a person. He's not an it. And let me talk about why for a moment. When we think about the ways he's described, and I make a big list in the book, I'll just

give you a few, but he has feelings. He has thoughts. He acts as a person. He can be grieved. He can be blasphemed. He is bearing fruit in us. We walk with him and by him. He, by the way, is interceding for us in Romans.

You keep on using the pronoun he. In scripture, where are you know, the pronoun he. Yes. In Scripture, you know, where are you deriving, you know, that pronoun? Let's go to his job description in John chapter 16. When Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit, he says, he will glorify. I think there's 13 times that we read in the English translation the word he. He will, he will, he will. And there are all these active things.

One of the things that he does is he will disclose to you what I have taught. So the Holy Spirit is giving the apostles perfect memory recall as they write scripture in their own unique personality, not removed from that. Also, he says in John 16, 14, he will glorify me. And if you have a Bible that capitalizes deity pronouns, it's a capital M. Jesus is saying the Holy Spirit's job description is to glorify me. He's going to disclose to you. He tells the disciples, don't worry. I'm going to go. It's to your advantage. I'm sending you the paraclete in the Greek, the comforter and the helper. So why is he described as all these things if he's some mere

mystical force that you sort of call on to give you what you want, and then he floats away? No, he has emotions. He can be grieved. You look at the book of Ephesians where Paul says, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit. We have what we can see then is the Holy Spirit feeling things, which I think automatically makes us start thinking, oh, so like Jesus, he cares about how I live. He cares about how I talk. That's attached to what Paul said in Ephesians 4.30. He's a person. And so I should treat him that way and relate to him that way.

Yeah. So in addressing kind of the misconceptions, you know, even this idea that the Holy Spirit, you mentioned him being like the JV, you know, kind of third member of the Trinity. I guess, I think another one would be that the Holy Spirit comes along in Acts chapter two, you know, so to even address that misconception, because the Holy Spirit you mentioned in Acts chapter two. So to even address that misconception, because the Holy Spirit you mentioned in Genesis is hovering over the surface of the waters. He's eternally a member of the Trinity, of the Godhead. So then talk about the Holy Spirit's role

in the Old Testament, segueing that into the New Testament, because if we're talking about who he is, we have to understand that he has been eternally at work. It's not like he was riding the pine and then Jesus ascended and they're like, all right, you know, your, your turn, get on in there. Dude, tag team, you're in. Yeah. You're in, you're in. Yeah. Okay. A few things. My brain's going all over with excitement. The, in the book, I make two lists. I say Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, Holy Spirit in the New Testament. By the way, the same God, and this

could be another topic for another time. I think you've taught on this so well, but the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New. He didn't change and become more loving, more gracious. In the same way, we want to see the Holy Spirit all the way through Scripture, working and active. He is there hovering over the waters in creation he comes upon and works through ezekiel joshua samson there's a point in moses life as well you think of david and so gideon by the way is another one time and time again specific references not not god not lord or yahweh It is specifically referring to the Holy Spirit working actively in or upon. Now, one distinction may be that we can emphasize but not overdo,

because there are instances where he does come into people or work through people internally, is in the Old Testament, generally speaking, we're seeing him come upon people, although there are instances where he is in. He's said to be in, and he's working through the prophets in that way many times. In the New Testament, where there's this beautiful distinction, and it's related to Old Covenant, New Covenant, after the cross, what does he do? He comes inside. So you have this whole new view of the Holy Spirit, not in a way that makes him a lesser God here and more God here, but in the same way that we know Christ is throughout in the Old Testament described as the one to come, and then after the cross, there's this difference, if you will, in that

he's now ascended, he's given the Holy Spirit. There's also a difference after the cross because what? Because the cross has happened. In the old, it hasn't. And so there's distinctions in timelines and unique aspects of the Lord's work, post-cross, pre-cross. There's unique aspects of the Spirit's work pre-Pentecost, post-Pentecost, which are mostly upon, but they're an active, mostly or only in believers and incredibly active. So seeing those distinctions are so clear. People sometimes think Pentecost is the experience, like we need to redo Pentecost and re-experience Pentecost. I would appreciate the Spirit's work all throughout the Bible and view it in the way that Scripture does,

working actively in the lives of God's people, and here's how he does it. Yeah, not so good. Even in thinking through, in Hebrews, he's the eternal God, the Holy Spirit. So in thinking through kind of the implications of who he is, he's the third member of the Trinity, points to Jesus Christ, but he seals believers. He's the agent of salvation. He's the agent of sanctification. We want to elevate our view of the Holy Spirit.

And then if you're going to ask the question, like I do when I'm, you know, preparing for my sermons, I just write, so what in the margins, you know, because it's like, so what, so what, what's the, so what here? Like, what are the implications of, because the Holy Spirit is in fact God, and we want to come to grips with that, and we want to be grabbed by that truth. how does that change or affect even our worship our prayer life um and so forth yes there are implications and i love this so what now what i think it's an old uh football coach quote is one of those post game interviews i don't know if it was andy reed or someone like that but there was a a big win and they asked the coach like hey how do you feel he's like so what now what thursday's coming, and they asked the coach, like, hey, how do you feel? He's like, so what? Now what?

Thursday's coming. I think they had the Thursday night game after the Sunday. And there is a so what, now what? So let's say all we said is true. He's God. He's a person. He's active throughout Scripture. There's extremes.

Stay away from them. All that. Let's have a healthy pneumatology. Okay, so what? Now what? What are the implications of all that we've talked about? Number one, if he is God, and he is, that should impact our worship. It should impact the way we love him, the way we think about him.

And right away, I know some people who have that hyper kind of reformed extreme are like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Listen, we don't want to put too much emphasis on him because you said, Kosti and Johnny, John 16, he will glorify me. He only exists to put the spotlight and focus on Christ, so we don't want to make too much of him. I would say be careful making too much of that kind of man-made idea, that we don't talk about the Spirit much, we don't deal with him at great lengths in our sermons, in our preaching, in our prayers, and in our singing. The crazy charismatics do, we'll say, but we don't do too much of that because we really only want to put the focus on Christ

because that's what he does. Be so careful of overlooking him. Is he a lesser one in the Trinity? Is he less deserving of worship because his role is to put the focus on Christ. In fact, worshiping is, the word proskuneo is the bowing down. So let's say that worship is bowing down my life before God. Well, I want to also be bowed down and submitted to the Spirit of God to have him accomplish the work he has been sent to do through me, which is to glorify Christ. Worship is a bowing down. When I worship him and I acknowledge him as God, all I'm saying is, thank you. All glory, majesty, and praise be to you, my God. Thank you, Father, for calling me, choosing me, loving me, and sending your Son to redeem

me. Lord Jesus, thank you for being my advocate, my substitute, and the atonement for my sin. Thank you for being my master and Lord. I want to follow you as your disciple. Holy Spirit, thank you for filling me, indwelling me, sealing me, keeping me, bearing your fruit in me. Today, help me to walk in your ways that I might glorify Christ. Like, why don't we talk about that and do that? And so, if He's God, come on, treat Him that way. Worship Him that way. Pray that way. Express that way. Some people say, well, I don't really see in Scripture where I should then talk to the Holy Spirit in my prayer life. Look, if that's too much for you, can you not talk about Him in your prayer life then? But

you look throughout church history. Augustine wrote prayers to the Holy Spirit. Spurgeon wrote and talked to and about the Holy Spirit. But here's one for you, if we're picking on our own, kind of the hymn singing, hyper-reformed world that can be a little weird with this stuff. When you sing hymns like, Holy Spirit, living breath of God, better not sing to him, because nowhere in the Bible do you sing to the Holy Spirit. No, we can talk to him or about him. Now, you don't need to overdo it and make everything about just him. Link it all to the roles of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. But our worship, let me go a little further on that. We should include him in our songs. We should include his work in our songs. We should include him,

his work in our prayers. We should include his work and things about him in our preaching. Can I talk briefly just to us as pastors, and maybe someone's watching who wants to be a pastor, do not neglect him in your preaching preparation. You can do nothing apart from Christ. You can do nothing apart from the work of the Spirit. If He doesn't move in power through our preaching, we are just talkers. We're articulate showmen who can bring an illustration, make some key points, make people go, hmm, that's good. And we're quotable and tweetable, and that is all. But lives only change if the Holy Spirit works in power.

And He works in power through the word of truth and through humble, bowed-down, proskuneo prayers and dependency. He loves to work through vessels like Paul the Apostle, who, while he knew a lot and was a gunslinger preacher, he viewed himself as the least of the apostles, fully dependent, who is adequate for these things, wretched man that I am. He was this humble vessel who was totally dependent on the Holy Spirit to accomplish his mission, which was to declare the gospel to both Jew and Gentile. All of that, what I've just described to you, I believe is a lifestyle of worship that includes and glories in the amazing work of the Spirit linked to glorifying Christ, grateful for the loving provision of the Father.

So I know that's a full point, almost just on one, but I think I covered most of them. He is, therefore, he is God, so worship him. He's a person, so relate to him and talk to him. Approach him. Approach him personally. One more point on that. I want to go back to the Romans 8 kind of overview.

I think it's Romans 8, 13, if I'm not mistaken. We've thrown a lot of verses, and so I'm just trying to remember. But Romans 8, 13, Romans 8, 16, that he is interceding for us when we don't know what to pray. Why wouldn't we take advantage of that? We might even say, I don't really know what to pray right now, Lord. Holy Spirit, help me. But Holy Spirit, would you help me? Also, Holy Spirit, thank you for praying for me right now. I don't know what to pray. I'm at a loss for words. Think of that when we're going through times of depression, anxiety,

loss. I was talking to Tim Challies recently. His son Nick died in 2020. He said, something strange occurs in times like that. You lose all track of time, your faculties. He said, I was a danger to myself in decision-making. You don't really know. He said, life is a blur because you're in such a deep hole of grief. In those moments, wow, the Holy Spirit is praying for you. He's interceding. He's holding on. You can truly just trust because the Spirit of the living God, equally and fully God, a person of the Trinity, is paying very close attention to you. If you ask me, a deficient pneumatology is a deficient Christian life. There's so much that he brings. Yeah, it cripples our ability to know God. And I remember, you know, if you just think about the Christian life, it's a life of total reliance. And I think even growing up, you know, you can know truth, the Holy Spirit's role is

to point to Jesus Christ and then take that to an extreme. I remember I watched a video of J.I. Packer maybe five, seven years ago, and he's right. He said in Scripture, there is an element where the Holy Spirit, he uses the term, is shy. And because he's deflecting, you know, look to the sun, look to the sun, look to the sun. And you can almost take that to the point where you believe that the Holy Spirit, well, if he's shy, you should almost keep the person of the Holy Spirit a secret, you know, because it's all about Jesus anyway. So why would we ever focus on the Spirit?

Well, your view of Jesus Christ is only as elevated to the degree as your reliance upon the Holy Spirit. And so I think in putting down the Spirit on a quest of elevating Jesus, we actually put a ceiling on our relationship with the person of Jesus Christ because we never have an appropriate view and relationship with the Holy Spirit and a reliance there that we're to walk by the spirit. So we don't, you know, gratify the desires of the flesh, but we're to walk by the spirit so that we can know Jesus. And I think that gets missed. Yes. And we can miss Jesus. And I think that gets missed. Yes. And we can miss the forest for the trees. And so just to recap here,

the Holy Spirit is God. And because he's God, he's worthy to be worshiped. And he's also necessary. You know, he's necessary, not just because of our doctrinal understanding, but we, you've heard me say this, my friend, Eric, I remember said this when he was preaching one time and

I say it all the time. We can't live a single moment of faithfulness to Jesus Christ outside of the spirit's power. And we can't have the necessary hope and comfort and peace and joy we need in a life of turbulence and trouble. Yes. Apart from an alien power, we need someone else to come and help us live the Christian life. And you've heard it before and I've heard it,

but the Christian life isn't hard. It's impossible. We cannot live it in our own strength. So we need the spirit. And I think just this foundational understanding who he is, he's God is, it sounds basic, but to your point, 58% of people in the study

don't even believe the Holy Spirit is real. So we got a problem that needs to be addressed. So what I want to talk to you about kind of moving forward in our next episode is just you have the next kind of line on your subtitle, who he is and then what he does. I want to talk about the Holy Spirit's role, not necessarily even in changing us, but what he does. I want to talk about the Holy Spirit's role, not necessarily even in changing us,

but what he does in, you mentioned, our salvation and our sanctification and our assurance. How does the Holy Spirit function in regards to knowing I'm a Christian and heaven is my home? And so I want to talk to you about that more in the episode to follow, but I just want to thank you at this point. And thanks for doing this. Thank you for the work that you've done on this book.

Grateful, grateful.