All right, so today, because we're going into Shavuot tomorrow and we're basically doing a back-to-back thing, I'm going to have a series that's going to continue tomorrow, and it's going to start today, and we're going to deal with understanding about the Ruach, the Spirit, okay? You know, we started, I should say we just finished a series on the baptism of fire based on Matthew chapter 3, where Yochanan Hamadbil, Yochanan the Immerser, had said that The one who was coming was going to immerse them in the set-apart spirit and fire. And so we focused on the fire part for a couple of weeks, and now we're going to focus on the ruach, the spirit, and the understanding about the spirit. So as we approach this, first of all, I want to make clear that the idea of spirit and the things about the spirit encompass a huge amount of verses in your scriptures, and so we are absolutely not going to cover every single one of them. But what we are going to do is we're going to do a quick review about what Shavuot is all about, just very quick.
We're going to talk about and discuss a comparison of Exodus 19 and Acts chapter 2. We're going to allow the scriptures to define several terms, especially Ruach or spirit. We're going to hopefully come to a more accurate and true understanding of what the Ruach HaKodesh is, the Holy Spirit. And then, hopefully, we'll be along the way, not just at the end, but all along the way, we'll be connecting all of the dots to explain what it means to be immersed in the Ruach HaKodesh.
Now, realize, in going through this whole teaching that we're going to go through, that, as we've done with other teachings like the one on grace and other things like that and salvation, we may smack up against some pillars you may have. And so, I need you to be open. to allowing your pillars to get smacked.
Because it just may be that you may see things from a whole different perspective and everything may change. And so it's not my intention just to mess with your theology and your beliefs. It's my intention to help us set things correctly in terms of the lexicon.
We have phrases and concepts and ideas that we use on a very regular basis that, quite frankly, we've all seen it up to this point. Many of them have been wrong. And so...
I'm not saying everything that you believe about the Ruach is wrong, but I think you may come to see that some of it may not be exactly right, and some of it you never would have understood or thought of. And so let's go into this with an open mind to understand that we are seeking the truth of what the Scriptures defines, and not what we were taught by some pastor, or by all of our friends, or some messianic guy on YouTube, or whatever it is, but let's really seek the Word and its understanding. Amen?
All right, so... Let's begin with a quick review of Shavuot. Shavuot, okay, historically, now this is part of what I said in the teaching called the Appointed Times of Yahweh. The historical fulfillment was the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.
So historically they counted 50 days, not that they were counting waiting for the 50th day, but that's the way it worked out. And so 50 days into their journey they end up at Sinai to receive the Torah. Alright, they end up at Sinai to receive the Torah. Now I was almost going to put in here A quick semi-proof text to show that it could actually be on Sivan 6, because there's a lot of people out there that don't like using Sivan 6 as Shavuot.
They want to make it be on a Sunday every time, and they want to make sure you're counting Saturdays to end up on a Sunday, and we have other teachings that discuss that. But if you find out in the beginning of Exodus 19 that it was in the third month, and it says, and on this day they came, and this is in verse 1, and they came to the wilderness of Sinai, As they're coming here, that could actually be the beginning of the month. That could be the first of Sivan, of the third month. And when you add in the fact that he tells them to separate themselves, and on the third day he'd come and speak with them, and then there's a telling of Moses and Aaron to go up the mountain and go back down the mountain and everything else, next thing you know, it very easily could be day six of that month.
And so, coincidence, maybe. Am I stretching things? Absolutely. That's why I'm not going to push that issue here. I'm just letting you know that's something you may consider because what we are told is that it is in the month of Sivan, in the third month that these things are happening in Exodus 19. The key here is that there is a historical fulfillment.
In other words, this is an actual event that happened that Shavuot commemorates. Okay, it's a memorial to the giving of the Torah. Now, there's a... messianic fulfillment.
In other words, we know that the spring feasts have all been fulfilled on a messianic level, and this is the last of the spring feasts, Shavuot. And messianically, we know this was fulfilled in Acts chapter 2 with the pouring out of the Ruach HaKodesh. Okay, so we know that that's when they were gathered together in Acts chapter 2, it was Shavuot.
Okay, and so that is the messianic fulfillment. We'll get into that a lot more at some point here in the teaching. And then, of course, the spiritual application in our lives is our receiving of the Ruach HaKodesh personally and having the Torah written on our hearts. Okay? And so that's, we're going to kind of hopefully tie all of that in in this teaching and study and search that we're doing to really truly understand what the Spirit is and especially what the Holy Spirit is, or the Ruach HaKodesh.
Now. As we get into this study, I want us to also understand, and I've said this many times, but it should be said here, there does not appear, not once, in the Tanakh, in the Old Testament, the phrase Ruach HaKodesh. Okay? There's the Ruach Elohim, the Spirit of Elohim, there's other things that are said about the Ruach, but the actual phrase in Hebrew, Ruach HaKodesh, does not appear anywhere. Okay?
That doesn't mean there's no Holy Spirit in the Tanakh. Okay, right in the beginning of Genesis, we're going to read later, you know, the Ruach of Elohim hovered over the world, the universe, right? We had right there in verse 3 or so, I mean, boom, and it said the Spirit of Elohim hovered over the earth, right? The Spirit. Okay, that is the Ruach of Elohim, but it's not ever referred to in the way we love to refer to it, which, by the way, comes out of Christianese.
The Jews would never have had a phrase, Ruach HaKodesh, but it's a reaction to the... Christians using this idea of Holy Spirit, because that you see in the Brech HaRashah, the idea of the Holy Spirit. And so I'm not saying they're one, that somehow they're not the same thing or anything else. Just realize, phraseology-wise, just because it may be surprising to you, that that phrase doesn't exist in the Tanakh. That doesn't mean, again, that the Ruach did not exist in the Tanakh as in terms of being the Ruach of Elohim.
It absolutely is all over the place, everywhere. Just so they chose not to use that phrase. And by the way, even in modern times, I choose not to use certain phrases because it doesn't give clarity of understanding to use phrases that people have misused for so many years. And there's lots of, and I call those things Christianese. Okay?
Not because there's something wrong with it, but because the Christian usage of them has put such context and connotation on them that they no longer mean what they originally meant. They now mean only what people have filtered. through this Christian point of view.
I know you're going to be shocked to hear this. The Ruach, the Spirit, has been through the same thing. Okay? It's been through the same thing. That should be no surprise to any of us.
Okay? So that being said, what we're going to look to do now, remember, I'm just going to bring us back to Matthew 3. He talked about the one, you know, that John himself, what did he do? He immersed everyone in water.
Water was for cleansing and changing of status. Immersion in the fire was for testing and whether or not the status changed and the walking out has actually worked. And in between that, we had this Ruach HaKodesh immersion, which is what we were instructed.
So we went in the water, we buried the old man, theoretically, right? We should have, because a lot of us came out and we were still kind of almost as old as we were when we went in. Because we never left the old man behind.
Okay? Come out clean, status changed, newness of life. Then we have the infilling. or the overflowing, or the immersion of the Ruach HaKodesh, the Torah instruction.
And we're going to read where that all comes from at some point in this teaching. And then the baptism of fire, the immersion in fire, tests to see how that all went, to get an idea of how well you did that process. And we come to find out often that we didn't do it that well at all. And so then we need to kind of go back to the beginning and start all over, because we realize...
We're still a lot the way we were before we started, okay? And that's not something to be ashamed of or to be frustrated with. I mean, that's just a normal human condition. We know, Scripture tells us, how we fall short on a very regular basis. The problem is, a lot of us just take it in stride and don't feel like we should fix that.
We're supposed to see that we're falling short, so we'll want to fix the falling short part. Amen? Okay, so let's begin as we compare Exodus 19 and Acts chapter 2. Let's start in Exodus 19. Okay, in Exodus 19 verse 16, well we're gonna, and I'm trying to see, I want you to see the parallels between what was happening in Exodus 19 and that which was happening in Acts chapter 2. Because most of you were taught just Acts chapter 2 and nobody ever told you there was any linkage between that and what happened in Exodus. Okay, this is some brand new thing that had never happened before type of thing. This is an incredible thing happening in the upper room, etc.
I'm not diminishing that it wasn't amazing and awesome, but it's connected. That's why it's on Shavuot to what happened at the first Shavuot. What happened in Exodus 19?
So in verse 16, we see this, it came to be on the third day in the morning that there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain. Now, by the way, Yahweh said that he would meet with them on the third day. Okay, that he would meet with them. In verse 11, it says, for on the third day, Yahweh shall come down upon Mount Sinai before the eyes of all the people. So Yahweh said he's going to meet with them.
So this is the momentous occasion is that the... The people are going to meet with Yahweh. And so connected to that, we see that on the third day in the morning, there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain.
And the sound of a ram's horns was very loud. And all the people who were in the camp trembled. Okay, so what do we see going on here?
We see first thing we see is we see thunders. And no, I didn't say that incorrectly by saying we see thunders because later in chapter 20, we find out that they saw the thunders. How did they see thunders?
I don't know. They saw it. Okay? This is a full sensory overload.
They heard, they felt, they saw, they smelled it, they tasted it. I mean, that's what at least the Hebraic legends are. I mean, they were fully immersed in this event.
It had a scent to it, a smell. It had a taste in their mouth. They could feel it.
They could hear it. They could see it. Every sense was involved. So this word thunders is from the Hebrew word kolot. The word there can mean, now this is another thing we have to really embrace as we go through this.
Definitions of words, and you've all seen this, especially remember as kids, this was kind of a bizarre experience as a kid, right? You're told to look up a word in the dictionary, and you're looking for the definition that you kind of thought would be there. And it wasn't there initially.
It was like the third choice or the second choice. And you didn't realize that one word can mean so many different things. So many things that actually don't seem connected.
So it's like a very high range of diversity and the meanings of what a word could actually be used as and mean. But we're going to find that it also works with Hebrew. In Hebrew, though, they tend to be a lot closer together than sometimes we see in English. So kolot for thunders means the calling aloud.
It means of voices or sounds or like thundering voices. And so we can see why that would also be the word for actual thunder, like when you have a storm and you actually have a thunderstorm, you hear that booming sound. But it also could have to do with calling aloud voices or sounds, or sounds, right, voices or sounds, in a thundering type manner, in a booming type manner.
Kolod appears over 500 times in the Tanakh. About 85% of the time it's translated as voice. So think about it. 85% of the time it's translated as voice or some form of voice.
The rest of the time it's translated as noise, sound, or thunder. So it could be translated as noise or some sort of loud sound. Examples of voice.
Let's go to examples of voice. I'm just going to pull a few out real quick. In Genesis chapter 3, you can hold your place here in Exodus 19. In Genesis chapter 3, and I'm just going to read some single verses real quickly so you can see these things. It says here, And they heard the sound of Yahweh Elohim walking about in the garden. In the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh Elohim among the trees of the garden.
So in 3.8, they heard the sound, that word sound there. In some translations it says they heard the voice, right? The voice of Yahweh.
Depends on your translation. That's the word. That's from the root, from the word kolot.
In the same chapter in verse 10, look what Adam says. He says, I heard your voice in the garden. Same word translated sound in verse 8 is translated voice in verse 10. And I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself. In verse 17, he said, and he said to the man, he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I command you not to.
So that word voice again is the same word. It comes from the same root word. It's the same idea. Okay, so there's an example of where it's translated as voice.
Look in 1 Kings 1. We're going to see noise or sound. Okay, I'm not going to give too many examples of this for everybody, but at least we'll get some. But in 1 Kings 1, 1 Malakim, 1 Kings 1, and in verse 40. And all the people came up after him, and the people played the flutes and rejoiced with great joy, so that the earth was split by their noise.
Okay? And Adonai, Yehu, and all the guests who were with him heard it, and as they had finished eating, and Yoab heard the sound of the horn and said, Why is this sitting in such a noisy uproar? He said, The word kolod appears in there multiple times. So noisy, loud, sound, voices.
This is part of the understanding of thunder or thunderings. Now let's go back to verse 16 of Exodus 19. Okay, Exodus 19 and in verse 16. Okay? Now, in there, we also had that there were not only thunders, but there were lightnings.
There were lightnings in verse 16. That's from the word varekim, okay, which is from the root word barak. And it appears 21 times in the Tanakh, 14 times as lightning, and 7 times as glittering or flashing. Okay, glittering or flashing.
Okay, so in Exodus 20, 18, let's go to the next chapter and read verse 18. It says, and all the people saw the thunders, and I went and looked at the Hebrew. There's no doubt that it's talking about them seeing it. They saw the thunders and the lightning flashes and the sound of the ram's horn and the mountain smoking.
The people saw it and they trembled and stood at a distance. Verse 19, and Moses said, you speak, and they spoke to Moshe and said to him, Moses said, you speak with us and we hear. but let not Elohim speak with us lest we die.
And Moses said to the people, do not fear, for Elohim has come to prove you in order that his fear be before you so that you do not sin. Now, I read those extra verses because you need to understand why Acts chapter 2 happened. Because if you don't understand why Exodus 19 happened, you don't understand why Acts chapter 2 happened. So Exodus 19 happened so that, what?
So Elohim has come to prove you in order that his fear be before you so that you do not sin. That is why there were thunderings and lightnings and they felt all of this overwhelming amount of things. Now it's very interesting to note as well that, and by the way the word for saw, the lightnings and the thunderings, is the, and here the word lightnings is not just...
The same word as varechim, but here it's lapadim, which means lamp or flame. Anybody thinking about flames? Acts chapter 2. So here the word is not varechim like it is in Exodus 19. In Exodus 20, it says where they said that they saw the lightning flashes, it's actually lapadim, which means a lamp or flame.
So now we're getting, when Abba uses the same idea, but changes it just slightly, it's to give you... Not confusion, but a more full understanding. He wants you to think of it as a lamp. He wants you to think of it as a flame and not just a flash or something that's glittery. Keep that in mind.
Do you think that Abba knew? I don't know. Let's see. He knows the end from the beginning. Yeah, I think he knew Acts chapter 2 was going to happen when this was happening.
Okay? I'm pretty sure. As a matter of fact, I guarantee it. So we have this idea of a lamp going on here. And we see that there was a purpose was so that he would test them and prove them in order to have his fear be in them so that they would not sin.
Okay, so that they would not sin. And so there's also a Hebraic legend. Okay, and again, there's no way to prove this, but the Jews have always understood that everybody at Mount Sinai, remember there was a mixed multitude there, right? Do we all agree?
And so the legend is that everybody at Sinai heard Yahweh in their own language. The Jews have always had that understanding. So we have another miracle that's not actually mentioned here, but is connected to Acts chapter 2, is that each one heard Yahweh speak the Ten Commandments and the commandments in their own language. And that was very powerful.
So you have that going on as well, possibly, although, again, I can't prove that one. But isn't it interesting that the Jewish community, who has no Christian background whatsoever, doesn't know anything about Acts chapter 2, they believe that all the languages were spoken at Sinai, that everyone heard it in their own language. I remember hearing that as a child, okay, when I was raised in Hebrew school. I was told that all the languages were represented, all 70, and they were spoken and heard, everyone in their own language, at Sinai.
Okay? Why would that be, by the way? What was the curse that happened at Baval? The curse at Baval, at the tower that was built, was to scatter them by language, to split and shatter people's understanding by language.
And so here is a part of that healing process that was supposed to begin here at Sinai, where the languages were going to be brought back together and unified and to be able to exist. back under the authority of Yahweh instead of under self-sovereignty as they were building a tower to the heavens. And we see that again is going to be part of the miracle that you see in Acts chapter 2. Okay, in Acts chapter 2. So now with this foundation, let's read Acts chapter 2 and the first couple of verses there. Okay, and we're going to look at the Greek words underlying a lot of the language here in Acts chapter 2. Acts chapter 2, we're going to read in verse 1. So when the day of the festival of weeks had come.
Interesting the way they word that because, see, if you're counting it, you're waiting for it to come, you're anticipating it coming. And actually, it could be translated better, had fully come, because the Jewish community that this would have been at the time has an understanding of counting the days. And as they count the days, they would say, today is, for example, they would say today. Today is day 49. one more day till Pentecost or Shavuot has fully come. As they count, so on day one of the count, they would say in 49 days till Shavuot has fully come.
And then 48 days till Shavuot has fully come. That's part of their liturgy that they count during the Omer count. And so here it says when the day of Shavuot had fully come and they were all one mind and in one place, that was a rarity, wasn't it? They were all of one mind and in one place. Wouldn't it be nice if we were all of one mind in one place?
And suddenly there came a sound from the heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. Okay? Now, first of all, who was in this room?
Well, go back to chapter 1. And they cast their lots, and Lot fell on Mattiah, and he was numbered with the eleven, and there were twelve. And then it says when the day had come, and they were all of one mind in one place, how many people do you think are in this room? We've been told 120. We're told the whole mass crowd.
No, this is an upper room up in a building. Okay? You probably handled 12 very nicely. And so there was this sound, and then there was rushing wind, and it filled the house where they were sitting, and there appeared to them divided tongues.
Okay, so let's stop and break this down. Verse 2, okay, we see the word sound. Okay, and suddenly there came a sound. In the Hebrew, excuse me, in the Greek, it's the word eikos. That's where we get the word echo from, right?
An eikos means a loud or confused noise. In other words, a roar. Okay, it sounds like a roar.
That's one of the ideas of an eikos. It's a roar or a loud type of noise. By confused meaning, it's not really clear what the noise is. It's not like when we speak, there's clarity and there's understanding.
But when a lot of people are speaking at the same time, it sounds like a roar or just a lot of confused noise. So this was very easily... Do you agree? Can we agree that it's like the Hebrew word? that we had for thunder.
Voices, loud voices, all just thundering or making a loud noise or sound. See the comparison. Okay, now the word for wind, okay, because it says that it was as a rushing of a mighty wind. So the word there is noe. And noe in the Greek means a respiration, a breeze, breath, or wind.
So it can be translated in all those kind of ways. So when I go, whoo. That's the idea also.
It's a breath, an exhalation, respiration, our breathing in and out, or wind. Keep that in mind when we start talking about what spirit actually is and all the different forms that it can take. Okay?
Also in verse 2, it talked about the wind being mighty. This is the Greek word, biaios. I'm better with Hebrew than with Greek. Biaios. Okay?
Which has the idea of being violent or mighty. Now you can just know that when you have thunderings and lightnings, what normally do you have with that as well? Strong winds. Because it's like a storm is going.
You can imagine that even on Sinai, there was strong winds, there was thunderings, there was lightnings. Now in verse 3, the word tongues is the Greek word glosé or glosá, which means either the tongue literally, you know, that thing inside your mouth that flaps plenty. So it's either the tongue literally or it means a language.
Okay? A language. And by language, it has an understanding that it's a known language. Okay?
A language. So that's what the word actually means in the Greek. So it's really badly translated in most books as speaking in tongues, because that makes you think a confusion between the actual physical thing in your mouth and the word language. Because we know what languages are, and if it said language, we would know.
But why does it say the word tongues? Because that's the way they wrote things when they translated Greek into English. Back in King James's day, and we've been stuck with it ever since, but it's not a word we use today. We would use language.
If I came to you and I spoke to you in Spanish and I spoke French and I spoke Hebrew, you would say, wow, he knows a lot of languages. You would never say, oh, he knows a lot of tongues. We don't use that phrase. So that phrase can be confusing because it's not a word or phrase we use. So he says here that they were Go back to the verse, it says, and they appear to them as divided tongues as a fire.
So verse 3, we see divided tongues as a fire. Now that's interesting because are you seeing the physical thing that's in the mouth on them? Or it could be fire that kind of looked like it was the shape of a tongue. Okay, just kind of looking at the shape of the flame.
Or it could be, again, divided languages as in Babel, right? The dividing of the languages in Babel now being brought to a place where they're going to come together like the urban legend is of Sinai, and everyone's going to hear in their own language, which is a healing or a fixing or restoring of what was scattered and damaged and broken at the Tower of Babel. Ooh, isn't that beautiful?
And you can see the attempt at that was Sinai. The Israelites blew it after that, and it didn't manifest its fullness that it would have been intended to do. Because the intention is to bring everybody back under the covering.
The scattering was the punishment for deciding not to be under the covering. And so Abba scattered them, because they decided to be under their own covering. So continuing here, and then we see the word fire is in there, like this is like tongues of fire in verse 3. Okay, now bear in mind in verse 3 it says, it appeared to them divided tongues.
It'd be very rough to have that be anything to have to do with languages at all. So we don't know what to do with that unless we think of it as the division of tongues from Babel. Like somehow this divided languages are all being gathered into the room. Otherwise you have to go with the physical, wouldn't you think? That it physically looked like a tongue.
Because otherwise it doesn't make any sense. And these are as of fire. So in the Greek, the word fire there is pur.
And pur means fire literally or figuratively. Figuratively, it's often translated as lightning. Okay, so if you see the way that Greek word is used, you can understand it not just literally as a flame or fire, but is often understood as lightning. That's interesting because what did we have in Exodus 19?
Lightning. We got loud noise going on here and rushing winds and this loud noise that came as loud sound, which is like the thunderings. Do you see how Exodus 19 is matching up very nicely here with Acts chapter 2?
And then in verse 4, We have the words set apart spirit and those are the Greek words pneumatos and hagios. Okay and pneumatos is the idea of a current of air, breath, blast, or breeze. It also has an understanding of a spirit meaning the rational soul which they which by the translators or the definition means a also a mental disposition. The rational soul.
We're not talking about something ethereal here. we're talking about our intrinsic nature or the mental disposition. So we're talking about that's what pneumatos means.
And then hagios means sacred, pure, morally blameless, and consecrated. So we have this breath or this breeze or this intrinsic nature or mental disposition that is sacred, pure, morally blameless, and consecrated. Take that all in for a second.
So, because when we start to understand what the Ruach is, we're going to need to understand these aspects together. Now, before I get deeper into that, can we first at least agree, because I'm finished here with this part of comparing Exodus 19 and Acts chapter 2. Do you see the comparison? You see the parallels?
And can you wonder? I mean, do you suppose that the Jews who were gathered in Acts chapter 2 made those linkages? Do you wonder and suppose if they could, because they're there for Shavuot observance.
The Jewish community today, and I assure you back 2,000 years ago, understood that to have to do with the Sinai event. All Jews celebrating tomorrow will be celebrating knowing that it's a commemoration of the Mount Sinai event. And they would know intimately what happened at Sinai. And so this was also like Sinai.
Now, can we see, when we see what happens afterwards, that this was to do what? The same things as Sinai. To test them, to put the fear of Yah in them, to impress upon them so that they would not sin.
See, the purposes are the same. This was a very important event to get everyone's attention so that they would all understand that this was something that should give them an increase of the fear of Elohim. And then what we see happening later, and we've talked about this many times, that each one then hears what is being said in their own language. Why would you need that?
Well, I don't know about you, but we know we have lots of people in here that maybe English is not their first language. Okay? So if English is not your first language, would it generally be, would I be right in saying that if I spoke to you in whatever your first language was, the odds of you misunderstanding me are a lot less than if I spoke to you in English.
In other words, if English is not your first language, there's a better chance I'm going to say something that you're not going to understand me correctly if I do English. But let's say Spanish is your first language. If I said it in Spanish, it's less likely that we'll get it confused. My father-in-law is Romanian and he speaks Romanian fluently. When my wife wants to make sure that he understands clearly, she speaks to him in Romanian.
If she speaks to him in English, he's got a fairly good shot, because his English isn't that good, that he's not going to understand it correctly. Is that fair? And so here, in this incredibly important moment, everybody got to hear it in their own language, so there would be no confusion. Because this is, again, an event commemorating the ending of confusion, which was started at Babel.
The ending of confusion because the confusion of the languages is what was the curse that was given to them at Babel. Here, the confusion is being wiped out by the bringing together of understandings. Is that making any sense? Okay?
So now, we have to wonder, and this teaching is not on tongues, but we have to wonder then, why is it that we have so many out there thinking that a speaking in something that nobody understands has anything to do with this incredible... opposite, which is the starting to bring understanding and not confusion. It doesn't make any sense. So just keep that in mind, you know, when you think about the tongues thing.
But that's not what we're here to talk about today. But because it's in this section, just understand that. Since this is the beginning of the bringing of clarity, not confusion. Ending of confusion, because what Yahweh did in Babel is what? He confused, and that's the word he used, right?
He confused their languages so that they had Less understanding and ability to communicate, not more understanding. So this miracle was so that these men who, quote, unquote, could speak in tongues could communicate to you better, not worse, which meant this. If I had that gift, I could show up in your country and speak your language.
Even though I may be speaking English out of my own mouth, you're hearing it in your language. That would be a powerful miracle, wouldn't it? And a powerful, useful tool, wouldn't it? If I could show up in Russia. or in China, or in Africa, or whatever, India, and I could just be talking and they would hear it in their language?
Wouldn't that be awesome? Because, by the way, when you're going through this whole thing, none of these guys speaking think they're speaking anything in their own language. That's why the guy goes, aren't those guys all Galileans?
Yeah, and they're all thinking they're speaking in a Galilean dialect. But everybody's hearing in their own language. The confusion was ending. Isn't that beautiful? Something to think about.
So now let's talk about the Ruach. What is Ruach? What is spirit? Now I want you to keep in mind what we read earlier in the Hebrew from Exodus 19 and the Greek about the idea of breath, breeze, wind, all those kind of things.
The word Ruach, the translation of it, it does mean wind, it means breeze, breath or an exhalation. It has another meaning, level of meanings that have to do with the soul or the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal regarded as immortal. Now, this is different than the nephesh.
Okay? This is different than the word nephesh. Nephesh means living creature.
And we have verses that say the nephesh that sins shall die. That's translated in most of your Bibles as soul. The soul that sins shall die.
Because it says that these things became a living soul back in Genesis. Well, that word is nephesh. But by the way, nephesh simply means a creature that breathes or a living creature.
And by the way, the birds, the word is nephesh. For the fish, the word is nephesh. For the bugs, the word is nephesh. So we don't have immortal bugs or immortal fish or immortal birds.
Okay? So that thing called nephesh is not immortal. We have other verses that say the nephesh that sins shall die.
All right, so a whole other teaching will cover that. But just realize that we're talking about a part of you that is not that part, okay? It's separate from this thing called nefesh.
What it really is, it's the essence. This is, again, a part of what the Hebrew word for ruach means. It's the essence, the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, especially something abstract that determines its character.
I'll say it again. It's the essence of who or what you are. Maybe not always, but at that moment. The intrinsic nature, the indispensable quality of something, especially abstract, that determines its character.
In other words, when we tell somebody they have a rebellious spirit, that means that their intrinsic nature at that moment, their disposition internally, the essence of where they are internally is rebellion. Same thing with anger. jealousy, all these different things.
And we're going to see verses that say improve all this. But realize that what we're talking about with the spirit is very much talking about the intrinsic nature of something, the essence of something, as well as this idea of wind, breath, breeze, etc. Now, pneuma, in the New Testament, when you see the word spirit, pneuma, again, is a current of air, breath, or a breeze. By analogy or figuratively, it is the spirit, i.e. human or the rational soul. It also means mental disposition.
Okay, that's your mental disposition, your intrinsic essence of where you're at. Okay, so this is the essence of who you are, either always or at that moment. So let's go look at some verses to see what I'm talking about. The Ruach is wind, okay?
That word Ruach is translated as wind. It means wind, absolutely, as one of its possible meanings. Genesis 8 and verse 1. Genesis, Bereshit, 8 and in verse 1. And don't panic.
I'm not diminishing the Ruach HaKodesh in any way. You need to understand what these words mean and how they're used in your Bible, in your scriptures. So in Genesis 8 and verse 1 it says, And Elohim remembered Noah, okay, he remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark, and Elohim made a wind to pass over the earth and the water subsided. That word wind there is ruach. So Elohim made the ruach pass over the earth, whatever that is.
It was understood to mean wind, that the wind was blowing, the ruach. Exodus chapter 10 and verse 13. I'm going to give you three witnesses, at least for each of these ideas, from three different places. Okay, so we started in Genesis, now we're going to go to Exodus chapter 10 and in verse 13. Okay, Exodus 10 and in verse 13. And Moses stretched out his rod over the land of Mitzrayim, and Yahweh brought an east wind on the land all that day and all that night. Morning came, and the east wind brought the locusts. That's the word Ruach.
You see what happens when you have translations and you don't know? Because you don't know Hebrew, and you're not reading it in Hebrew. That's the word Ruach.
1 Kings, chapter 19. 1 Malakim, 1 Kings, chapter 19. And in verse 9, And there he went into a cave, this is Eliyahu, Elijah, and spent the night there. And see, the word of Yahweh came to him, and he said to him, What are you doing here, Eliyahu? And he said, I have been very jealous for Yahweh, Elohim of hosts, for the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant. And they have thrown down your altars, and they have slain your prophets with the sword, and I am left, I alone, and they seek my life to take it. And he said, go out and stand on the mountain before Yahweh and see.
Yahweh passed by and a great and strong wind tearing the mountains and breaking the rocks in pieces before Yahweh. Yahweh was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake.
And Yahweh was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, fire. And Yahweh was not in the fire.
And after the fire, still a small voice. And so this wind is tearing the mountain apart. That's the Ruach, or at least that's the word Ruach. That's an aspect of Ruach.
It was tearing the mountain apart. And by the way, he was not in the Ruach. He was not in the fire.
He was not in these things because they were emanating from him. He was not in them. These things were emanating from him. That's a whole other depth of teaching, but we can get into it another time.
Now, so Ruach is wind. Hopefully, can we all agree that the verses that we read, and I could have picked hundreds of them, that say that Ruach is wind. Now let's look at Ruach as breath.
Ruach as breath. 2 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 2 Samuel chapter 22, and in verse 16, 2 Samuel 22 and in verse 16. And the channels of the sea were seen, the foundations of the world were uncovered, at the rebuke of Yahweh, at the blast of His ruach, of His nostrils. At the blast of the breath of His nostrils. Okay, that's again ruach. Okay?
Isaiah chapter 30, Yeshayahu, Isaiah chapter 30 and in verse 27. Isaiah chapter 30 and in verse 27. See, the name of Yahweh is coming from afar, burning with his wrath and heavy smoke. His lips shall be filled with rage and his tongue be a devouring fire. Verse 28, and his breath, his ruach, shall be as an overflowing stream.
Now it's a breath that's going to be like water, like one that overflows you, which reaches up to the neck to sift the nations with a sieve of falsehood and misleading bridal, etc. The ruach, again, in that verse, as breath, his breath, his ruach shall be as an overflowing stream. Job chapter 9, Job or Job chapter 9. Okay, Job chapter 9 and in verse 16 through 18 here.
Sometimes I'm giving an extra verse or two just so you get the context of what's going on. In verse 16. Though I had called and he answered me, I would not believe that he was listening to my voice, for he crushes me with a storm and has multiplied my wounds for no cause. He does not allow me to recover my breath, but fills me with bitterness. He doesn't allow me to recover my ruach, but fills me with bitterness. Okay, so he's getting pounded on and he can't even catch his breath.
Again, there's the word ruach. So hopefully we can all agree that a definitely inaccurate potential understanding of ruach is breath. Wind and breath.
Now, let's look at ruach as our essence, our intrinsic nature, or mental disposition. Let's begin in chapter 41 of Genesis. Pray sheet 41. Okay, we're just laying a foundation here to really get to where we're trying to go, because we have to have clarity of understanding.
In Genesis 41 and in verse 8, in verse 8 it says, And it came to be in the morning, now bear in mind that Pharaoh is having those bad dreams. Okay, he's having those bad dreams. And it came to be in the morning that his ruach was moved.
Pharaoh has a ruach! Ah! Okay, it says his spirit was moved and he sent and called for all the magicians of Maitreya and all those wise men, all its wise men and Pharaoh related to them his dreams, okay, and no one could interpret them.
So here Pharaoh has an essence, an intrinsic nature. In other words, his intrinsic nature was moved. He was upset, he was panicky, he was frustrated, he was afraid, and so he called out for people to come and help him with that condition he was in. So his internal nature was moved to try and find answers. Is that making sense?
You get that? His nature at that moment, the intrinsic who he was at that moment. Now he was lots of things, but the dominating thing, the intrinsic thing that he was at that moment, he was moved to find answers to what had just happened to him.
Let's go to verse 38. Same chapter. Verse 38. So we're still in Genesis 41. He says, and Pharaoh said to his servants, could we find another like him, like Joseph, a man in whom is the intrinsic nature or essence of Elohim? Can we see that that might be a better translation than just saying, in whom is the spirit of Elohim? Because I promise you, Pharaoh did not know anything about the Ruach HaKodesh.
So how can Pharaoh be saying of Joseph, look, is there anybody else you've ever seen who has the Ruach HaKodesh? that has this thing that we call the spirit, this power, this essence? No, he's saying, look, can we find another man like this man in whom is the intrinsic nature and disposition, the essence of Elohim as he understood it?
As Pharaoh understood it, he's looking at a man who embodied the intrinsic nature of Elohim. That's awesome. That Pharaoh could recognize that. That he could recognize, and that man was embodied more than anyone he could point to. He said, can we find another man like this man in whom is the intrinsic nature of Elohim?
Wow, that's powerful stuff. Exodus 28 and verse 2. I hope you're open to this. I hope you're open to seeing where this is, you know, it's just laying it all out bit by bit.
And I promise you, we will not in any way diminish for you, hopefully we'll actually raise up a bigger and greater understanding of the Ruach. We're not going to diminish the Ruach at any point or in any disrespectful way. We're just building stepping stones to the point. Does that make sense? We're slowly building to where we're going.
This is the biggest step, though, to understand that the Ruach has to do with Abba's intrinsic nature, the essence of who and what he is and how he thinks and how he feels. What and who you are at that moment is your intrinsic nature at that moment. You may be angry right now, that's your intrinsic nature. You may be filled with joy, that's your intrinsic nature. And this Pharaoh saw in Joseph the intrinsic nature of Elohim.
As he understood, I mean, he understood gods. He understood what gods were supposed to be. He understood what they were purported to be. And he said, in this man is more than any I've ever seen is the essence of what we always believed God to be. Elohim to be.
Does that make sense? Exodus chapter 2, 28, excuse me, in verse 2. Exodus 28 and in verse 2. And you shall make set apart garments for Aaron, your brother. This is Yahweh speaking to Moses. for esteem and for comeliness.
And you speak to all the wise of heart, whom I have filled with a spirit of wisdom, and they shall make the garments of Aaron and set him apart for him to serve as priest to me. These are people that were filled. Are they filled with a thing that's like an entity, a being called the spirit of wisdom?
Hey, you want to blow your whistle and say, hey, spirit of wisdom, come here, I need you. No, their intrinsic nature, the essence of them is that they were filled in their nature with wisdom. And Abba filled them with these things.
So their intrinsic nature of who they were, the essence of who they were, these are those who had a spirit of wisdom about making garments. They were overflowing with that. That was a defining factor to who they are. Interesting, very interesting.
Go to chapter 35, Exodus 35, and in verse 21, Exodus 35, 21. And everyone whose heart lifted up, and everyone whose spirit moved him, came, and they brought the contribution of Yahweh for the work of the tent of meeting, and for all its service, and for the set-apart garments. And as we know, they brought stuff almost to the point where, I mean, it's literally to the point where he says, we got too much. We don't need any more. But who is it? Whose spirit moved him.
What do you mean his spirit moved him? In other words, his intrinsic nature, the essence of who he was, was totally in a giving generosity mode of appreciation for the Almighty and just couldn't give enough to that project. Does that make any sense? Whose spirit, whose disposition and intrinsic nature moved them to take an action to come and give a contribution. It's not some entity that took them over.
It's not some parasite attached to them. It's who they are, the intrinsic nature of who they are. They were moved based on who they were to be generous. I'm going to tell you a quick story. My son, yesterday, we were driving to the store, and as we drove, there was a homeless man on the side of the road, looking very homeless.
Okay, sometimes they don't look so homeless. He did, and had a sign, and my son quickly pulled out a dollar out of his... Wherever he had his dollar, you know, he had this money on him. And he gave it to me and said to me, Daddy, go give this to him. My son has a heart for people who are less fortunate like you don't know.
As a matter of fact, he then started to cry. And I gave the man the money. Now, we have become callous. Because you know what? We know some of these people are lazy.
Some of them are scamming. Some of them are doing whatever because they just don't want to go out and get a job. Some of them are legitimate. But we have been burned. We've seen them take the money and walk into the liquor store.
We've seen them do other things, right? So we ignore them, okay? My son started crying.
After we drove by, he was still crying. Why? Because his intrinsic nature, his ruach was moved for this person. His internal essence was moved with compassion. with sadness for someone's situation being compared to where his being was.
Is that not part of what we need to be? But you see the same thing here is that people whose hearts were moved did what? Took action.
See, the problem is a lot of us have spirits that aren't moving. We have spirits of intractability, laziness, stay still, do nothing. That is an intrinsic nature that you have latched onto and held onto and has become the essence of who you are.
And we're going to talk more about how that plays in with the actual spirit realm as well. But understand that this is what you've allowed to happen is that you are no longer moved by things that should move you because you become planted and rooted and you cannot move forward. Let's continue. Let's go to Numbers chapter 5, Bimid Bar, Numbers chapter 5, verse 29. Numbers chapter 5, verse 29. This is the Torah of jealousy. When a wife turns aside under her husband's authority and defiles herself, or when a spirit of jealousy comes upon the man.
The what? The spirit of jealousy. Okay, so everybody's afraid that the spirit of jealousy is going to come like a ghost into your house and possess you. It's not talking about that. That's Christian nonsense.
That's Hollywood nonsense. Okay? No. The spirit of jealousy means that this man, if you read earlier in the chapter, for whatever reason, started to feel that his wife was doing something she shouldn't do behind his back.
And then that feeling became his intrinsic nature. In other words, it became the essence and focus of everything of where he was, and he could not get past that jealousy or that nature. So therefore, there was a plan now in the Torah to bring the woman before the priest and have something go through a process to either find her guilty or find her innocent.
Because there was not going to be any kind of relationship while he's still walking around in this spirit of jealousy. So what is the spiritual jealousy? It's when a man has an intrinsic nature or mental disposition of jealousy. And we can all end up in that place.
And so what does the scripture want us to do? The scripture is asking us to change our intrinsic nature or mental disposition. Let this mind be in you that was in Messiah Yeshua, Philippians 2.5. To transform into the image of the sun. What is he talking about?
To change our intrinsic nature to his nature. This is making a little bit of sense. Are we starting to, remember I said we're going to connect up dots. We're starting to connect dots here.
Just a little bit. We're starting to connect dots. Let's go to, let's see, Deuteronomy chapter 2. Devarim, Deuteronomy chapter 2. Now I gave more verses to essence, intrinsic nature than I did for wind or breath because I think that it was easier to make my point on those in just two or three verses. You're welcome to do an interlinear, you know, word study and see just how many places the ruach is, or the word ruach is translated as wind and breath.
There's dozens and dozens and dozens, okay? Many more for wind than even for breath, but plenty of them. Okay, Deuteronomy chapter 2 and in verse 30. But Sihon, sovereign of Heshbon, would not let us pass over, for Yahweh your Elohim hardened his spirit and strengthened his heart to give him into your hand as it is this day. So what exactly did Yahweh do?
He says, Yahweh your Elohim hardened his, what? Intrinsic nature and mental disposition and strengthened his heart, which is the emotional strength behind your intrinsic nature and your disposition. Because if your intrinsic nature and disposition is A, but your heart's not really in it, it's not going to be that strong. Many of us have seen people that way where they've been upset, but you know they're not really that upset.
But they're still walking around like they're upset. And you go over and say, yeah, but I can see your heart's really not in it. You're really not that upset. You kind of want to be upset. You think you want to be upset, but you're really not that upset.
And you can snap them out of it pretty quickly. But here it's saying that Elohim hardened their spirit or their intrinsic nature and strengthened their heart at the same time so that there would be this giving of them into their hands. In other words, it would finish.
You see this with Pharaoh, right? It says that Yahweh hardened his heart. Well, no, he strengthened his spirit in the direction it wanted to go and gave the emotional strength behind it because Pharaoh had no interest in letting them go. And so we have this terrible translation again into English, this idea of, well, he hardened his heart, so it's Yahweh's fault. I mean, that's really what we should be thinking if that's true the way that is.
Yahweh's fault. I mean, Pharaoh wanted to let him go. Yahweh wouldn't let him. Really? No.
Pharaoh had no interest in letting him go. Pharaoh was having a weak, panicky moment. Yahweh helped strengthen that because he wasn't done making his point to Egypt and to Pharaoh. Now, does that make more sense?
Can we see that? Pharaoh, in that weak moment, his intrinsic nature at that moment was what? Panic.
When normally his intrinsic nature is dominance and power. And so Yahweh helped him to remember his nature of dominance and power and not be so focused on his panic. Because the only reason Pharaoh was letting him go was he had a moment of panic.
And he didn't really want to make that decision. Is that making sense? Are we good with that? All right, good.
So now, having said all of this, now we want to focus on this idea of intrinsic nature and take it into its more full understanding. Although I'm not sure we're going to get to do that. We're 56 minutes into this.
Hmm. Okay, I'm going to finish with this. And so we won't go much longer than this.
I'll just finish with this. I want to talk about the three next week, not next week, tomorrow. Wow, isn't it great?
You don't have to wait like a whole week. Tomorrow, all right, tomorrow, and for those of you who are watching, those of you who are watching this like years from now, you can just put the next one in and watch the next one back to back to back, right? You don't have to wait for the next week. But anyway, we're going to talk about the three, I almost put two up, the three most influential spirits. In other words, the three most influential intrinsic natures and mental dispositions, and they are the spirit in man, that's your own spirit, the spirit of Hasatan, and the Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit of Elohim.
That's what we're going to start getting into tomorrow. The spirit in man, the spirit of Hasatan, and the spirit of Elohim, the Ruach HaKodesh. So with that, let's pray.
Avinu Malkeinu, our Father, our King Father, we are trying so hard to overcome language issues, translation issues, cultural issues, our parents inheriting lies issues, and strong delusion. We just don't, it's so hard to understand. sometimes what you're actually just straightforward saying. And so, Father, we ask that you would help us and change our intrinsic nature to be more in line and congruent with you so that we would see things how you see them, understand them how you understand them, and to walk in them as you would walk in them. So, Father, we come before you trying to understand the Ruach, the Spirit, trying to understand what that means to us and how that affects us and what we can choose to do.
in terms of coming in line with it and utilizing the information that you're sharing with us. Father, we have so many years and generations and even centuries of wrong understanding about you and your spirit, about everything about you. Father, we need you to help to peel away the layers of filters, the layers of confusion, to give us clarity, to give us clear sight and clear hearing and clear hearts for clear understanding of what...
you actually mean when you say what you say. So we can actually understand what you want us to do so that we can be pleasing in your sight. So Father, we come before you now just pleading with you and just excited about the surface that we scratched today to see where this can go and so that we can then start applying this in our lives.
So Father, we thank you and we praise you and we're just sitting with anticipation to hear more, to learn more, and to understand more about you and the Ruach HaKodesh. So Father, we thank you and we praise you and we just submit ourselves to you in the authority of the King of Kings who is coming, Yeshua our Messiah, our Advocate and Older Brother. In his name we pray. Amen and Amen.