what's up seminary welcome back now we are going to be stepping into a lecture designed to illuminate the ways in which the holy spirit worked in creation the creation of the world and the cosmos the creation of the first human the creation of the perfect human and the creation of the church now over the next few lectures i'm going to be outlining something that i'm developing myself academically that i'm rough titling a christotelic pneumatology now what do i mean by that um christo christ telic has to do with completion or end or goal so that the the work of the holy spirit my main idea is that the work of the holy spirit in the world is to is to bring it to consummation in christ the glory of the father okay so i want to show you how the holy spirit has worked in the creation of the world how the holy spirit has worked in the prophetic priestly and kingly ministries of the first human and of christ in the church and then how the holy spirit is bringing all that into completion in uh in our final lecture on the eschatological work on the spirit so today in this one we're going to focus on the creational work of the holy spirit the big goal is for you to learn and for you to see the ways the holy spirit has worked to create a world that is to be consummated in christ so the creational work of the spirit um we i want to outline this to you across four biblical theological themes the creation of the cosmos the creation of adam what the spirit was doing in the in the embodiment or the incarnation of christ and how the holy spirit works to create both believers in the church as well and the idea again is to illuminate to you what the spirit does and how he works now this is a different angle than say a systematic approach or some of the other approaches that i've outlined now last time uh i showed you a few different kinds of pneumatologies and you know all sort of all built around answering the question well what does this pneumatology think about the the supernatural ministry of the holy spirit and i'm not interested in that question here because i actually think that question causes a lot of fighting around around different christians and stuff like that i think however taking a fresh look at the work of the holy spirit will add a different kind of illumination to those questions so the holy spirit creates a world that is to be consummated in christ to the glory of the father what do i mean well first we have to see the holy spirit creates a world genesis 1 verses 1 and 2 and we've been over this before talk about how god creates the world and this through the word and then the spirit is hovering or fluttering or brooding over the void over the chaos the way a a mother bird if you like broods over her eggs and so it is a a trinitarian act creation that we see the the intention of god the father the presence of god the word or god the son and then the activity or the fruit defying ministry of god the holy spirit all consummating of course in the creation of the first human and i want to take some time to talk about that so genesis 2 talks about the creation of adam and we have god uh putting his hands in the dirt and there's actually some debate is it is this god the father or is this the pre-incarnate christ we won't get into that now but god puts his hands in the dirt makes this adam which is just a hebrew for dirt or dirt man and then breathes into his nostrils the breath of life now the word breath here isn't the word ruach which is the word from genesis 1 which can mean brethren it's a different word nephesh nephesh is a can also mean breath but it means like it has to do with like the neck and it refers like the soul we might think about the soulishness of a person so in speaking creation into being the spirit would bring about the setting for these human offices that we'll talk about prophetic priestly and kingly um michael horton makes a theological connection now you've had to read some horton and i hope you like him i find him to be a very compelling author um he says this the spirit of god who hovered over the watery depths to create dry land for the creature whom he with the father and the son would animate as a living soul is none other than the holy spirit who regenerates those later who are dead in their trespasses and sins and so already he's making a connection to where we'll end up that the spirit of god is creating is doing a creational work in in the first humanity it is first the holy spirit who brings him to life the same spirit uh who having been breathed into adam's nostrils is now bringing him to life now why is this important well one way to think about creation particularly eden is that is as a garden temple right so if you can imagine a mountain and eden being this garden on the top of the mountain as sort of the the place where both heaven and earth are are combined the place where god lives and humans live the one who brings to life the pro the prophet who would speak god's words the priest who would tend the uh the temple garden and the king who would rule creation the one who brings that being into life is none other than god the holy spirit creation therefore was a pneumatic or spiritual activity in the creation of the image bearer who would eventually embody all of those offices of prophet priest and king now you can also find traces of the holy spirit's work enabling and empowering the first human to function as this prophet priest king particularly in his prophetic function what does a prophet do well prophetic ministry is at its very base it's a word ministry it's a message ministry to speak and to say and to represent the message of god so the language of breath in genesis is important because without breath you can't talk and so god is breathing into the first human's nostrils the ability to say what would need to be said later um one theologian who i like some of his stuff his name is jurgen multmann he writes this god creates all things through his defining and differentiating word in the primordial vibrancies of the spirit if the spirit of god is understood as the quickening breath of god then no word goes out from god other than in the vibrancies and the key note of his spirit in the unity of created things word and spirit complement one another so we see here just at its base why am i going into this i want you to see something that is perhaps often overlooked especially by us you know charismatic pentecostal whatever we tend to only think about the ministry of the holy spirit in terms of gifts sometimes we might go deeper and think of the ministry of the holy spirit in terms of presence but i want you to see that the holy spirit was present at creation to both bring creation into existence and to bring adam the first prophet priest king of all creation into existence and to empower those ministries as we shall later see now the second thing i want to show you is how the holy spirit brought christ into being now it would be improper to say that the spirit created jesus christ that's not quite right rather the spirit brought christ that is the second person of the trinity forth into the world through the incarnation of the son in the womb of mary so that's why that's why the creed says this he was conceived by the holy spirit born of the virgin mary this conception the preparation of his body wasn't done by the father and of course wasn't done by the son it was done by the holy spirit jonathan edwards says he was conceived by the holy ghost he received his first being in this world by the spirit of holiness so what do you see the very incarnation is something that the holy spirit brought about just as the holy spirit was brooding over the chaos waters bringing creation into existence and just as the holy spirit was filling up this dirt sculpture and making it come to life the holy spirit brooded over the empty womb of mary to bring forth the son of god into the world so um you can see a lot of this actually in in the gospels um particularly in the origin material so uh in the narratives relating to the birth and genealogies and other pre-public ministry uh we can see it um [Music] and a lot of this though it's absent from mark it's richly provided by the other three gospels um so john's prologue might be a good place to start john in the beginning when we talked about this in the gospels class john intended his readers in his prologue to see the incarnation of jesus as the beginning of a kind of new creation especially in that that first set of words the in the beginning was the word harkens back to the in the beginning god created of genesis 1 in the in the old testament and so here we've got a a biblical parallel that's important that the creational work of god at the beginning and the incarnational work of god in new creation was something that was brought about by the holy spirit according to the will of the father and enacted upon the son such that the son would be incarnate into the world so in john's prologue he he's asserting that the logos now the only way to think of logos as word is the very content of prophecy okay any any word that god would have to say to the world is incarnate in jesus christ he became flesh not metaphorically but like actually in history and that all of this was done by the holy spirit now john kind of alludes to this and we can see like hints at it in the language and the biblic biblical theological connections but luke makes it absolutely explicit luke tells us that the holy spirit overshadowed mary in luke 1 35 the holy spirit is doing like complex creational work that we haven't seen since the biblical story began um and that you know luke 135 is an echo as obviously of genesis 1 2. um the union of word and spirit brings forth the most significant creational event since the creation of adam just as the work of the spirit and the word of god bring forth creation and bring forth adam the work of the spirit bring forth the word of god into the world um the will of god combines with the work of the spirit in mary's womb to bring forth christ who will be called the firstborn over all creation colossians 1 15 says that in hebrews 1 6 as well now while the coming into the world of christ was an act willed by the father and voluntarily assumed in eternity passed by the son the divine efficacy in this thing was the peculiar and particular work of the holy spirit and so you're beginning to see these pneumatological connections again the holy spirit seems to always play a background role in the story of the bible and i think that's the point the holy spirit is not unto himself but the work of the holy spirit seems always only ever to be unto christ the glory of the father thus the name christotalic in the way i'm trying to describe this one author his name is john hawthorne and he teaches at wheaton he writes this in a very important book on the work of the holy spirit in the life of jesus he says jesus conception by the holy spirit was in effect the creation of a new humanity just as as the spirit of god hovered over the primal waters and brought order out of chaos cosmos out of waste and desolation so the holy spirit overshadowed the virgin mary and brought forth a fresh order of humanity his birth by the spirit was that which made him the last adam the new person and the head of a new race so what i want you to see is that the holy spirit is the efficient cause in the creation of adam and he is the efficient cause in the incarnation of christ so what does that mean as we think about the holy spirit's creational work in the church well what we'll see is that in a way similar to the way the holy spirit brought forth christ and brought adam uh into the into existence as a living and insoled being so too now the work of the holy spirit in the church is to bring her into existence and to bring individual christians into their new birth let me show you what i mean so while the father has willed and planned the creation of the church and the son has accomplished the work necessary to constitute the church it is the holy spirit who applies the work of christ according to the will of the father to bring the church forth in history um john owen one of my favorite theologians of of the um of the 1600 says this the application of the supreme design and actual accomplishment of god's plan for the church to make it effectual is assigned to the holy spirit in other words the constitution like the creation the bringing together the bringing forth of the church at pentecost was the direct result of the action of the spirit of christ so we can see that particularly as i mentioned at pentecost now pentecostals tend to think about pentecost as the birth of the church reformed christians tend to think about pentecost as a radical shift in the history of the church reformed christians will think about all of god's people across all of time being the church i think that's slightly anachronistic to read that back into all of time but i what they're trying to get at when they say that is that there's not like two three four five different peoples of god there's one people of god who approach him by faith in his promise um so the church therefore is new israel now that's an interesting theological question to pursue more in systematics so you guys can can hassle dr tom jackson on that one but for our purposes here in this class we're going to just focus on the fact that it is the holy spirit at pentecost who constitutes this thing jesus called the church and then we can sing the rest of the book of acts is the one who's actually like doing the uh efficient work to bring people to repentance and faith and give them gifts um luke narrates for example a clear spiritual filling of the new testament people of god when the holy spirit came with tongues of fire and all that good stuff now again full of biblical theological themes um just as israel was brought forth from slavery with the pillar of fire so now the church would emerge by spiritual fire and it's only after this moment that the community of christ followers has even called the church the ones gathered together through the tongues of fire to even after the nations and the languages were spread out at babel so the birth of the church at pentecost by the holy spirit was not an event that simply happened by virtue of the cross or even the resurrection i want you to hear that the church didn't just get birthed into the world by virtue of the cross and the resurrection the cross and the resurrection allowed or paved the way for something that the holy spirit was the efficient cause of this was an event wrought therefore by the holy spirit who applied the victory of christ according to the plan of the father when theologian writes it this way his outpouring on the day of pentecost gave birth to the church whose identity markers express the presence and work of the holy spirit so the spirit was bringing into creation this um this church and a whole new season with the establishment of the church in the earth so it's a it's a new season it's an eschatological moment it's the beginning of the end uh which we'll talk about more a little bit later but for now i want you to see that it is the spirit who brings the church into existence by the accomplishment of christ according to the will of the father wayne gruden notes this he says these believers at pentecost who had an old covenant less powerful experience of the holy spirit in their lives received on the day of pentecost a more powerful new covenant new covenant experience of the holy spirit working in their lives now see this in our purple book and in our discipleship we'll often talk about how the holy spirit was given in order for us to be have power to be a witness and that is true but the holy spirit is also the one who gives birth to the very thing the church that needs the power to be the witness at all do you see that it's a less obvious thing but it's it's an extremely important thing why because if you don't understand that it's the holy spirit who has to work in order to bring about the regeneration of the of the unsaved then you'll think it's you or you'll think it's all down to just the will of the father all down just to the accomplishment of the son salvation and the creation and regeneration of new believers is the concert work of god father son and spirit but the work of the spirit in the creation of the church and in the um in the new birth of individual christians is something that we have to see so let's let's switch that now to looking at how the holy spirit works in the regeneration or the new birth of individual believers now for that we can see much more clearly in the writings of paul how this is the case if pentecost therefore was the creational act of the spirit of the church corporate paul explains the creational acts of the spirit in the church's individual constituent members so for paul the spirit is the active agent in regeneration which as you may remember from studying in systematics that is the new birth of the individual from a dead in sin lost person to an alive in christ saved christian the holy spirit is the active agent therefore in that regeneration it is the spirit who awakens the individual's heart and mind to desire christ in what some theologians will call effectual calling or what others will call the general call of christ it you can't see christ you can't see the kingdom of god unless the holy spirit is working in you that's why jesus said that i find this statement to be stunning every time i remember it he told nicodemus you can't even see the kingdom of god unless you're born again well what's that mean i think part of what it means is that the holy spirit's got to be doing something that gives brings about new birth in your own life before you can even tell or see or desire the kingdom which i think is why in that same passage in john he goes immediately into a conversation about look the spirit blows where he wants you see his effects but you don't know once he comes or whether he goes this is i think what jesus is hinting at the holy spirit is the powerful one who works and unites himself with the presentation of the word by the preacher or teacher resulting in true faith and regeneration and john calvin attributed the effectual call of god to the shining of the light of the spirit gordon fee saw saving faith itself as a work of the spirit and he hints toward this kind of christotelic working out of the spirit in salvation he says this the object of faith as always is christ the spirit is the means whereby such faith is sustained in this sense one may legitimately argue that faith itself is also a prior work of the spirit in the life of the one who becomes a believer since quote we have the same spirit who inspires faith so we believe according to second corinthians 4 13 so individually it is the spirit who brings about the new birth corporately it is the spirit who brings about the beginning of the church just as the holy spirit was the active agent in the incarnation of christ and the one who is the effect efficient cause of the of the inspiration and um enlivening of this dirt claw that ends up becoming adam just as he is the efficient cause of the bringing together of order out of chaos according to the word to the will of the father so what are we saying i wanted to highlight to you in this lecture a few important things and we've only really scratched the surface that the holy spirit is the one at work in the world um to create a world that is to be consummated in christ to the glory of the father now i hope as we continue to think about this you're making connections about to how this matters in ministry how this matters in your discipleship how this matters even in the way you think about yourself and how you honor and worship god in response and that's some of the creation work of the holy spirit [Music] you