This is the first lesson in a series in the historic faith on the nature of the Holy Spirit and the mission of the Holy Spirit and the desire is to have a course that's going to really help us to understand the Holy Spirit. I find a lot of Christians don't know much about the Holy Spirit. My own background, I came out of a church of Christ background where there was very minimal interest in the Holy Spirit, very minimal emphasis on the Holy Spirit.
Actually, most of what they told us about the Holy Spirit in the beginning was all the things that the Holy Spirit doesn't do. It was like an inoculation against the influences of Pentecostalism and subjective emotional-based religion. So that's the background that I came out of. And actually how I started getting deeply into studying this is in our church, we were going through an expository series in the Gospel of John. We get to John 14, 15, and 16, Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit.
And this prompted lots of questions and discussion from people, many of whom had had very little teaching on the Holy Spirit. So based on the request, we really looked at it in much more detail. And I found people from other backgrounds also have found this very helpful as well. So I really look forward to sharing what I've learned with you. And I want to start in John chapter 14 where Jesus in his farewell discourse in John 14, 15, and 16, Jesus speaks about the Holy Spirit.
So the first question is, why is the Holy Spirit important to us? And I think Jesus answers that question. Let's turn to John chapter 14, starting in verse 15, and I'm reading from the New King James Bible here. Jesus says," If you love me, keep my commandments, and I will pray the Father, and He will give you another helper that he may abide with you forever. The Spirit of Truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees Him nor knows Him.
But you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you." Let's continue in John chapter 16, he speaks about the Holy Spirit again, starting in verse 5." But now I go away to Him who sent me, and none of you asks me," Where are you going?" But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It's to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I depart, I will send him to you.
And when he has come, he will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and judgment. Of sin because they do not believe me, of righteousness because I go to my father and you see me no more of judgment because the ruler of this world is judged.
So I think about another passage that Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verses 21 and 22 says," Now he who establishes us with you and Christ has anointed us in God, who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee." So Jesus is saying," I have to go so that the Holy Spirit can come." So obviously, the Holy Spirit is tremendously important according to Jesus. And it speaks of the Spirit which is in our hearts as a guarantee.
So now in my own background, having the Holy Spirit are really not very much taught about the Holy Spirit that raised a lot of questions in my heart is what is the Holy Spirit? Who is the Holy Spirit? Why is the Holy Spirit important? What does the Holy Spirit do? And so I was curious about my own background. I come from background in Churches of Christ.
And the Churches of Christ, ironically, one of the big influences in the Church of Christ was in the early 1800s, Barton Stone and the Cane Ridge revival movement, which kind of a Pentecostal sort of movement with the Holy Spirit coming down in some extraordinary manifestations. That's one side of the restoration movement. The other side of the restoration movement was Alexander Campbell, who was much more of a heady person, very logical. And he was very much against subjective personal experience.
And so the early Church of Christ was a combination of the two influences of the two groups. And out of that came the churches of Christ, Christian Church, and the disciples of Christ. The more conservative group, perhaps the churches of Christ, which is I was exposed to, came out of that background. Around the year 1915, there was a big argument taking place in that church fellowship background. And the two most prominent champions of the two different views about the Holy Spirit.
One was James Harding, the other was Dr. JC Hallowell. And I find it interesting, even if I really disagree with someone and they're wrong, at least to understand the thinking that their logical train of thinking, even if I think they're wrong, I first want to understand how did they get to where they got.
And in the churches of Christ, they really de-emphasized the Holy Spirit to the point where, for a long time, they didn't even teach the Holy Spirit dwells inside of you, despite what we just read in the Scriptures. So I want to understand the reasoning of those who really de-emphasize the importance of the Holy Spirit. And this is Hallowell was expressing that. So let's understand his perspective. So here's the logic that he used. He said in the parable of the sower, the seed is the Word of God, okay?
And he said the Holy Spirit inspires the Word of God. The Holy Spirit has already said everything He's going to say and done everything He's going to do. And so God's revelation, it's kind of like you're reading a math book. My background is in engineering. So I can relate to this. It's a formula. You study. You do what it says. You follow the formula and you really don't need much in the way of divine assistance. Just kind of read the book and do what it says. Follow the formula.
And he also said in 2 Timothy chapter in 2 Timothy chapter 3 verses 16 and 17, a verse that many of us are familiar with that says that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is useful to help us to be thoroughly equipped for every good work in the old King James Version says throughly equipped. And so Hallowell said," Look, the Scriptures will make us completely thoroughly or throughly equipped. So therefore, we don't need anything else.
We don't need the Holy Spirit in us." So that was the attitude is that all we need is the Bible. We really don't need the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gives us everything that we need. And in even Ephesians chapter 6, it talks about the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. This is the offensive weapon against Satan is the Scriptures.
So basically, this view of the world, and some of you may be influenced by this type of thinking, is that God created the world, sent Jesus, and established spiritual laws, and He basically leaves us on our own to figure those things out and either accept or reject those laws. So with this viewpoint, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit really aren't directly intervening in human affairs. They've done all their work and they just want to see what we do. So consequently, prayer is not very important either.
So this was the perspective which led to a rather wooden mechanical faith. So now the argument on the other side to me is very persuasive. And this is James Harding, a famous preacher, a real hero to me in the Churches of Christ about 100 years ago. His life is an inspiration to me personally. One of the things that really impressed me about Harding is that when he died, the man who gave the eulogy said," This man probably got more people into reading the Bible every single day than any other man that he had met.
He read the Bible himself dozens of times wherever he went. He encouraged people to read through all of the Scriptures. In 1914, he said he'd read through the Old Testament 60 times and the New Testament 130 times. So it's very, very inspiring example of personal devotion to the Word of God. And Harding's attitude about the Holy Spirit has really stuck with me. So he was combating this mechanical view of God that God just kind of set things up and then left us to figure everything out.
And Harding said the spirit is like electricity to a trolley car. Now remember this is written a hundred years ago. He said," You can't see it and it's mysterious but without it. The car is just a hulk of rusting iron." He said," The Scripture doesn't teach that the Bible alone thoroughly furnishes men of God for every good work." But he said the Bible in addition to what had already been given does that.
He says the Bible will help us to be thoroughly equipped based on all the other things God has given us, which would include the Holy Spirit. And it's a very famous quote to me that Harding gave in 1906. He said," I feel sorry for those who were afflicted by this dreadful blighting, semi-infidel materialistic notions that leave God, Christ, the Holy Spirit wholly out of a Christian's life.
For those who think all spiritual beings left us when the Bible was finished, and you think we now have to fight the battle alone. Some of these people pray, but what they pray for is more than I can tell unless it's a reflex reaction. Harding's favorite passage on the Holy Spirit was from John chapter 7 verses 37 to 39. It says," In the last day that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried saying," If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.
He who believes in me as the Scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. By this, he spoke of the Spirit, which those who believe on Him would receive. For the Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified. That's John 7:37 to 39. So that was how he viewed the Holy Spirit.
And so after citing this passage, he asked the rhetorical question," Who is to receive the Holy Spirit?" And the answer is, Jesus says," Any man who believes on me." So unfortunately, this battle that took place between Hallowell and Harding, the predominating view in the Church of Christ after that was Hallowell's view, and the legacy that created came out of that.
In my opinion, and I'm speaking from coming out of that background, it's a rather mechanical view of God, a lack of spiritual power, a lack of focus on prayer and the inner life and the workings of the Holy Spirit. And even for many people teaching for decades, that the Spirit doesn't actually dwell inside of Christians. And so there's a very strong emphasis on studying the Bible and doing what it says, but there was something missing.
And so this is the background that I came out of, and it's been a process of discovery for me. Now, in teaching these lessons to a group from our own back, my own background down in Pennsylvania, there were so many people from Conservative Anabaptist backgrounds who were present also.
And listen, and they were very interested, and they said to me," You know, even though we have a different history than you do, your particular spiritual heritage, they said there's a lot of parallels where in even the conservative Anabaptist world, there are many churches who in reaction against Pentecostalism swung to the other extreme and focused on doing things the right way and having a doctrinally flawless church, but a brittle church that tends to focus on rules and as lacking the Spirit of God.
So they were interested in this as well because they felt that they hadn't really been taught much about this either. So I want to talk about some people may be concerned, you know this is probably going to be a really dry class, talking about the nature of the Holy Spirit. I want something that's going to be practical, that's going to be useful for me, that's going to impact how I live my life.
And for those who may be wrestling with that, I want to give you an example from my own life of why I think this is important. I live in a house that's over 100 years old. It's a two-family house in New England, part of New England, where I live, an urban area. There are lots of two-family homes. And so I own the house, but my wife and I live in half of the house. And the other half is a rental unit that's about the same size.
And several years ago, my wife pointed out to me that there was a cracked window on the porch in our part of the house. And so I went you know I'm an engineer. I should be able to fix things like this. I went up and I looked at the window that was cracked and I took the measurements of the window to put a new pane of glass in. And when I took the measurements, I realized the window was not a rectangle. It had turned into a bit of a parallelogram, okay?
So you get the picture here is that it wasn't a rectangle anymore. So I took the measurements, wrote it all down as a good engineer, and went to the hardware store and said, I need a pane of glass for my window that is basically crooked. It's not a rectangle. And so instead of 90-degree angles, it's going to be like 84 degrees over here and 96 degrees over there. And they looked at me like I was crazy and they said," You've got to be kidding me.
Our machine only cuts right angles." And so, you know, I had to go ahead and figure out how to custom cut glass on my own to create this crazy window here. And it was only a few years later where the porch where we lived was over an exterior porch on the first floor, and that was over a crawl space. And a few years later, I was down in the crawlspace for I don't even remember why I went down there and I looked and I realized what caused the problem with the cracking window.
And some of you may guess what it was is the foundation underneath the building, which I couldn't even see, had rotted out. It was basically a log, and it rotted out. And so what the person did rather than fix the problem is they rammed another log next to it, and that rotted out as well because it's damp and sitting on the ground. So what happened is it rotted out the whole building sagged in a corner.
And what I was seeing with the window that's the reason why the window broke and that's the reason why the frame got racked out was because of the foundation problem in the building. And I think it's the same thing with how we see God. A lot of times spiritual problems that we see are the result of a misunderstanding, a distortion in our spiritual foundation of understanding who God is, understanding the nature and the character of God. And we're just seeing the results of that where things don't fit together.
Another example, if you're not relate on that level of construction, maybe in the area of health. Some people will focus on diseases and drugs. Other people will focus on health. They'll say," No, no, if you have a healthy, focus on having a healthy immune system, having a good diet. Focus on a healthy life. If you do that, your body's going to be able to fight off a lot of other diseases.
So I look at this as understanding who God is, understanding the nature and the character of God is making sure we've got a good solid foundation. We're not building on a rotten foundation and everything is going to naturally fit in place. It's going to eliminate a lot of problems. Looking through the Scriptures, I see so many examples of this where someone's misunderstanding of who God is messed up their spiritual life. I think of Eve and the first sin. What does Satan do in the beginning?
He goes after Eve and he tries to tempt her with the fruit and she says," No, we're not supposed to do that." And so Satan attacks her understanding of God and the nature and the character of God. And that's how he gets her to sin. He deceives her about God's nature. He says, first of all, God's lying to you. He's a liar. He says, you're certainly not going to die if you eat this. So he casts God as a liar. And then he also casts God saying, you know, God's really not out for your best interests.
He's trying to keep you down here. That if you eat this fruit, you're gonna become like he is knowing good and evil. So that's how Satan got the woman to sin and introduced sin into the world in the first place, is by attacking the nature of God and twisting and distorting it. I also think on the other hand, people who were great examples of faith, the kind of heroes of faith that talked about in Hebrews 11, Noah, it said in faith, he obeyed and built the ark out of fear of God.
He understood the nature of God that the God who created the world could also destroy it and call people to account. That God was powerful enough to do that and that God kept His promises and does what He says. Why was Abraham willing to sacrifice his son in Genesis 22, the son that he loved? Because he believed that God was faithful. God told him he was going to have many descendants through his son. So he reasoned God's going to do what he said. He's never going to lie to me.
He reasoned that after I kill my son, God's going to have to raise him up somehow, as it explains in Hebrews chapter 11. So it was his understanding of God. Job's three friends had a misunderstanding of God. They said if something bad is happening in your life, obviously you must have done something wrong. You're being punished because every bad thing that happens is a result of God punishing you. Moses, this is a passage I love in Hebrews 11:27.
It says," Moses by faith forsook Egypt not fearing the wrath of the king. For he endured as seeing him who is invisible." How was Moses able to endure all the way to the end of 120 years through all the trials he went through? He endured because he saw him who is invisible. It's because he had a handle and understanding on who God was. And that's what motivated him to persevere.
Joshua and Caleb, when the 12 spies were sent out in Numbers 13, Joshua and Caleb's added, everybody else said," Well, let's just pack up and go home." These enemies are too great. Joshua and Caleb's advice was," Look, the Lord can do this. He can deliver us." He's powerful enough to do that. Daniel's three friends in the fiery furnace. Their attitude was," Look, King, we're not going to bow down to your idol. The God we serve can deliver us if he decides to. He can do that.
They showed great faith even to risking their lives because they understood who God was. They saw the nature of God. And you see tragic examples too. First Samuel chapter eight, when the Israelites asked to have Saul made as their king. Samuel, God tells them through Samuel says," Look, I'm the only king you need. You don't need another king. If you're obedient to me, I will take care of you." You're rejecting me by trying to find a humanistic solution to the problem.
David, in going up against Goliath, he said," The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine in 1 Samuel 17." That's why he alone in his whole generation had the courage that he could do it because he saw the nature of God. And there's so many examples of this. And Mary in the New Testament, that why does she believe, whereas someone like Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, initially doubted.
She said with God, nothing is impossible. She believed that God could do anything. And that's why she believed what the angel told her, even though it's a miracle for a virgin to have a child. So how you view God, it's like the foundation, okay? If you have a good, healthy foundation, everything else is gonna fit. So this is, I see our study of the Holy Spirit is helping us to understand the nature and character of God. You know, some people I run into here in Boston see God as the great enabler.
It's like permissive parents. You see them and you see them when you're going in the store and their kids are completely out of control and they teach that God covers it all regardless of how we live. On the other hand, we have people who look at God as the great doctrine inspector who's out with this magnifying glass to make sure we have every T dotted cross and every I dotted and he's just waiting for us to mess up so that he can nail us on something.
Some people see God as someone who's out to ruin everyone's fun. If anything is enjoyable, God must be against it. And others, and this is a real problem that I've seen in other churches, imagine that God's main focus in life is to make everyone happy in this life, situated in a nice, warm family, happy family, spiritual community. And you know we see the prosperity gospel coming out of that, but also people who struggle with things like teachings on the permanence of marriage. The attitude is well, I'm divorced.
God certainly wants me to be happy. Well, the underlying problem, the reason they can't fit Jesus' teachings in is because they don't understand who God is. They don't understand the nature of God. So it's really important and this will have tremendous benefits in our lives throughout.
So I believe in this study, as we take a look at the Old Testament and the New Testament, as we see the character and the nature of the Holy Spirit, this will help us to have a great spiritual foundation of understanding more about the nature of God and producing righteousness and holiness and a real love for God that's based on who he is.