The Holy Spirit

Now, this particular scripture, I found it interesting. I didn't write down the Hebrew words, but there's two different Hebrew words here, translated as Spirit and Breath, to make sure we know that it's two different things. The Breath of the Almighty, but there's a Spirit in man. It seems to leave no room for confusion, such as we might have had in Ecclesiastes chapter 3. So it becomes clear. There's a Spirit in man. Nowhere in the Bible is there any indication that there's a Spirit in animals. So I don't think that's what Solomon meant when he said, is there about the Spirit in man that goes up or Spirit in animals that goes down? Apparently, the Breath of animals, I don't know if it... does it go up or down? Well, they don't have a Spirit. And that's not to say that animals can't be intelligent, but they're intelligent in a different way. Animals have remarkable capacity. And some of you have heard me talk about my dogs. Sue and I are dog people. We like dogs. And I tend to think God made dogs to be companions. That just happens naturally. And some people feel that way about horses. Horses can be very intelligent and love their masters, but there's a limitation. Even animals with the larger brains, chimpanzees have a brain that's what is it, 90% of the capacity of ours. And dolphins are even larger. They can be taught to do amazing things, but the comparisons start breaking down. A man, mankind, can do things like write poetry and read and appreciate it. We can build cities. We can invent calculus and learn how to use it. Well, some of us can learn how to use it. I never learned calculus. We can invent iPods. No chimp or dolphin can ever do that or ever have. And I suspect that dolphins don't look off at the horizon and wonder what's out there. A chimpanzee doesn't sit in his cage and say, why was I born? I need that booklet. So let's look to where all this started. I'm addressing this difference because, as I said, the Bible says there's a spirit in man. It doesn't say there's a spirit in animals. Let's go to the beginning, Genesis 1. And we'll see that this fundamental difference was there from the very beginning. Genesis 1 and verse 25. This one's usually easy to find, except you keep going back and forth between where it talks about how great King James was and when you finally get into Genesis. Here it says, This shows us man is on a higher level than the animals. We can go on here to see more about that. And verse 27.

So the differences between man and animals, we can see, obviously, man's put in a higher position. And we're made in God's image. We're made after the God-kind. But we can put this together with the other scriptures we read. The most important thing that's different is God put eternity in our hearts. He put eternity in our hearts, not in the animals. And you might say, well, yeah, but what do you mean? He put eternity in our hearts. We learned from Mr. Byer. Our hearts are limited. They don't last forever. Let's go to 1 Corinthians 2.

1 Corinthians 2 and verse 11. I'm sure several of you were thinking of this verse, even if you weren't thinking of the exact number where it's located. 1 Corinthians 2, 11 says, What man knows the things of a man except the spirit of man which is in him? And that's what we just read in Job. There is a spirit in man. That spirit is how God puts eternity in our hearts.

The spirit is a non-physical something. It doesn't decay. It doesn't grow old. It doesn't change. It's eternal. And that begins to let us answer Solomon's question. Now we know there is a difference between men and animals. When an animal dies, it returns to dust. The body will decay. But man has something else happen besides just that our bodies decay. And it turns out that actually Solomon knew this. And I could have cut out and made the sermon a little shorter, but I didn't want to make it shorter. Let's go back to Ecclesiastes.

It's not going to be that long, by the way. Ecclesiastes 12. Towards the end of the book, Solomon will come back, we could say, to that question. And I think it's appropriate. The book of Ecclesiastes is one of my favorites, because it deals with some of the important issues of life in a very philosophical way. And I believe it talks about what it is that makes us happy. Solomon had a chance to try everything, and he came down at the end to some simple things.

And here at the end of the book, he's addressing some of that. So in Ecclesiastes 12 verse 7, after talking about life and what you should do before it ends, and then he talks about death, and he says, Then the dust will return to the earth as it was. Our bodies are just made up of various elements that will go back to being various elements. It says, And the Spirit will return to God who gave it. The Spirit returns to God. That Spirit in man, it came from God.

He put it there, and he's going to take it back. And that's how a man can be resurrected. As I said, Job asked the question, If a man dies, will he live again? And we could ask the question, well, how does that happen? It's not that the Spirit is the immortal soul that is taught in some other churches. It's not a Spirit that really is you, and the body is just housing it. And you see that depiction in movies where someone dies, and then something that looks like them, but you can sort of see through it as looking down.

It's not that at all. The Spirit isn't that. In the past, I know Mr. Armstrong likened that Spirit to perhaps like a tape recorder, because it could record your thoughts, and it could be put into a different machine and play back exactly. But since technology has advanced, the metaphor could be even a little better. Think of that Spirit as being like a software program, and it can be running on your computer, and you can save the program, take it out, you can put it in another piece of hardware, and run that program, and it can be the exact same.

And any changes or work you did can be reproduced. Now, that's really exciting, but keep in mind, the software of its own can't do anything. The best software in the world could be these electronic impulses and code it has to have the computer to run on. And the best microprocessor in the world likewise has to have the correct software. So our brains act as the hardware. You've read some of Mr. Armstrong's works. I think he put it well when he said, Yeah, the Spirit imparts intellect, it makes it so our brain can think, but the brain thinks.

Our brain gets information from our eyes, and the brain sees. The Spirit doesn't. But the Spirit makes it so we can think, and it records our thoughts and our images, our character. And when God wants to resurrect us, He doesn't have to get all the molecules and the atoms that made up the physical body we have now. He can make a different body, even a body made out of Spirit, and put the Spirit that was in us in that, and it's us again.

Okay, sorry, I wasn't looking at my notes. I wanted to see where I was going. And you might think, well, this is terrific! And it's not brand new news to you, but, you know, we have this great life. We're able to think and enjoy things, and we can look at the future. When God made life good, it can be really good. And as much as, you know, you say it's a dog's life, dogs have it pretty good because they can lay around all day and eat and scratch fleas. The scratching fleas isn't so good. But we've got it so much better, we can really enjoy life. But it still leads us to that thinking, is there something more out there? And I say not us. Everyone out there has that tendency to look and say, what is there more?

And that's why they develop ideas like the immortality of the soul or of reincarnation. It's built into mankind to think, there's got to be more. There's got to be something more. Because the spirit that's in them is eternal. It leads them to think that. Now, I want to go next and tell you a story about a man who... I'm going to use him as an analogy. His experience wasn't spiritual, but he had a good experience... or if you want to call it a good experience, I want to use him to demonstrate how someone can have a glimpse of something ahead and know they want more.

It gives them the feeling that there is more, and when they get there, then they know there's even more than that. The person I'm talking about is Frederick Douglass from the 1800s in American history. Frederick Douglass is one of the more famous former slaves in our history. He's right up there probably with Harriet Tubman. Now, he had been born in slavery and was there until he was a young man and was able to escape.

He moved up north and took a job in the shipyard just as a common laborer. But as the abolitionist movement began to increase, someone asked him to tell the story of what it was like to be a slave. They learned he was a very eloquent speaker.

He actually gained some education and he became active in the abolitionist movement, traveling around giving speeches. He started writing. He became a newspaper editor. He was so successful that some people said, he's not really a slave. Nobody that smart could have ever been a slave.

They thought he was just making it up. So to prove that he wasn't making it up, he wrote his autobiography. Now, it didn't look like this when he published it, but it was a brief book and he named names, he gave locations and dates.

So there's proof. People could go back and say, yes, this guy really was a slave. But in telling his story, he shows that at one point he became one of those dreamers. He caught a glimpse of what was possible and awakened a yearning in him to which I think there's a parallel in our lives. When he was seven or eight years old, he was sold to a new owner in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, where he was going to be a house slave, which the house slaves had much better than the field workers.

He was still very young and the mistress of the house, as she was teaching her children to read, began to teach him. It was natural to her. And I'm going to begin quoting from his autobiography here on page 57. I will make a note here. He wrote in the vernacular of the time, so I'm going to substitute, I'm going to say the word negro, where he uses another word that's become fairly offensive in our modern day.

So forgive me if I take a couple liberties there, but let me pick up in Douglas's words. He says, very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A.B.C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs.

Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful as well as unsafe to teach a slave to read. To use his own words further, he said, if you give a negro an inch, he'll take an L. A negro should know nothing but to obey his master, to do as he is told to do. Learning will spoil the best negro in the world. Now, said he, if you do teach this negro, speaking of myself, how to read, there'll be no keeping him.

It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable and of no value to his master. And as to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy. Douglas writes, These words sank deep into my heart. They stirred up sentiments from within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought.

It was new in a special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was just what I wanted, and I got it at the time when I least expected it. He says, Through conscious, though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with a high hope and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.

The very decided manner in which he spoke, that is Mr. Auld, and strove to impress his wife with the evil consequences of giving the instruction, served to convince me that he was deeply sensible of the truth he was uttering. It gave me the best assurance that I might rely with the utmost confidence on the results which he said, the utmost confidence the results which he said would flow from me learning to read. What he most dreaded, I most desired.

So, Douglas thus began to learn to read. I'm going to skip ahead to show how he did it. It was actually very clever. As I said, he was an intelligent person. He says, The plan which I adopted, and the only one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the streets. As many of these as I could, I converted into my teachers. With their kindly aid, obtained at different times and at different places, I finally succeeded in learning to read. When I was sent on errands, I always took my book with me, and I got going by one part of my errand very quickly and found time to get a lesson before my return.

So I used to carry bread with me, enough of which was always in the house and to which I was always welcome. For I was much better off in this regard than many of the poor white children in our neighborhood. This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who in return would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge.

So Douglas, as I said, began learning to read in a clever way. But as he did, he started becoming aware that there was much more to the world than he had understood. His vision of the world had been very small. So he longed now, once he began to understand what more was out there, he began longing to trade as lowly condition for one that was much better. And I want you to think of that next time you read Ecclesiastes, when Solomon writes about how you can have everything, which he did, and yet you're going to turn to dust and leave it to someone else.

Solomon started having a glimpse of something else and longed to escape that. Let's move ahead in page...well, I'm reading from page 74. You don't have the book, but I'll read it to you. To explain how, as I said, Douglass began to have this understanding. Actually, right now I want to read from page 61. The reading enabled me to utter my thoughts and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery. But while they relieved me of one difficulty, they brought on another one even more painful than the one of which I was relieved.

The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold, that very discontentment which Master Hughes had predicted would follow my learning to read, had already come to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. I writhed under it. I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing.

It had given me a view of my wretched condition without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no latter with which to get out. In moments of agony I envied my fellow slaves their stupidity. He said, the silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared to disappear no more forever. As I said, he knew there was something better and he wanted to get to it. But he didn't see how at first. I want to read just one more section where I think it's somewhat poetically he describes the contrast between being bound and enslaved in freedom.

This is on page 74. He says, our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake Bay, whose broad bosom was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable globe. These beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts to testify and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition.

I have often, in the deep stillness of a summer Sabbath, stood all alone on the lofty banks of that noble bay, and traced with saddened heart and tearful eye the countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean. The sight of these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel utterance, and there with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour out my soul's complaint in my rude way with an apostrophe to the moving multitude of ships.

And he said, you are loosed from your moorings and are free. I am fast in my chains and am a slave. You move merrily before the gentle gale and I sadly before the bloody whip. You are freedom's swift-winged angels that fly around the world, and I am confined in bands of iron.

Oh, that I were free! I want to draw a parallel between the emotion that Douglas emphasized, and I'm not trying to say that learning to read is something, a spiritual thing, but I would say that the intellect that makes it possible to read and write is something that does come from that spirit in man.

The spirit in man gives us an understanding of greater things, and it makes us want those greater things. It makes us look at the fact that we're flesh and blood and that we would live so long and then just die and decay and say, I'm not happy with that.

Any more than a slave who knew there was a better life could be happy with it. But of course, there's more to it than that. I want to talk about how even in this physical life, when the Holy Spirit of God starts working with us and making us realize that there's something more than just his physical life, there is a spirit, there's a destiny. It begins opening our minds to a life beyond this physical world.

Let's go back to 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 2.11. And you might have noticed when we were there earlier, I didn't finish reading the verse, but I want to now.

1 Corinthians 2, verse 11. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.

The Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, it allows those who are called by God and having that spirit working with their mind to begin comprehending spiritual matters.

Things that are unintelligible to most people. It just doesn't make sense to them. Let's continue in verse 12. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit that is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things to spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, they are foolishness to him. Nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? We have the mind of Christ.

The natural man doesn't understand some of these things, but a person that has the Holy Spirit can perceive the mind of Christ. They see things. It's like a person who can't read or write has so much of knowledge and understanding of abstract concepts close to them. But reading opens your mind, the Spirit opens your mind so much more. As I said, most of us are at that stage now. We weren't always.

And we have young people who are not yet baptized, who have some understanding of spiritual things, and they know or should know that there's more that they can attain. And I wonder, do you remember what it was like? Thinking back, if you've been in the church a long time and you've had that understanding, we can almost take it for granted. But at some point, you had a longing to know more. You got that glimpse. You might have read a magazine or a booklet, or had someone explaining to you in a way you never do. Or I shouldn't overlook reading the Bible, and suddenly you see things that you didn't understand before. Just as Frederick Douglass began reading and seeing there was more to life. One of my favorite stories about this is my grandmother's. And I think I've shared that here, but I ask you to be patient if I share it again, because she explained how it happened to her in 1968. She was up at midnight. My grandfather worked at the Timkins Roller Bearing Plant, I believe it was third shift. So he was there, she was home alone, and they had bought a new radio console. Back then, an AM radio was like this. Those big old tubes. She didn't want the workmen marmaging around her house, so she'd let them bring it in and put it in the middle of the room, and she could decide later where to put it. So she said she was going through the dials, checking this new thing out. And partway through, she heard this voice saying, Bring the plain truth about today's world news and the prophecies of the world tomorrow. And after the announcer, a voice came on and said, Greetings, friends! And went on from there. Now, I'm saying that because I didn't hear the program. I don't know what he said after that, but the program always started with those words. And she said she listened in the middle of the night, and she said she... When he heard what he was saying, and she looked at her Bible, she said, That's it! That's the truth! Suddenly, something was awakened her, that understanding. She seemed to know things she hadn't known before. And I'll say, it wasn't because Herbert Armstrong was a better explainer. He was a good explainer, but it was because of the Spirit of God working with the listener. John 6, 44, and we don't have to turn there, most of you know it, Jesus said, No one can come to me except the Father draw him. I think in my grandmother's life, at that point, the Father started drawing her. And as I said, most of you have experienced something similar. You were called. You were invited to come out of the world and become part of a small body of people who could know more of what was out there. Or you grew up in the church. And at some point, you started realizing that you really believed in this stuff, not because your parents told you to do it, but because you understood it and it made sense. Let's turn to John 14, seeing more of an explanation of why that's so.

Now, John 14, of course, is part of the section of Scripture we usually read during the Passover. Jesus Christ last night, on earth, is part of his physical ministry. And at one point, it's interesting, he said, I have many things I want to tell you, but you can't bear them yet. He knew they couldn't understand everything he wanted to tell them. But he said, you will understand later. He knew that about 50 days later, they were going to receive a power they had not had before. Let's read in verse 15. This explains part of why the difference. He says, If you love me, keep my commandments, and I'll pray the Father, and He'll 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. That's interesting. We talk about the Spirit being with you or in you. And believe it or not, there was one time I thought, ah, some minister just made that up to make us kids feel better. And then I looked, oh, he didn't make it up. We used that terminology because Jesus Christ used it. He's the one that said, before baptism and the laying on of hands, the Spirit is with you, but then it will be in you. And I can make the note, of course, I just read it as translated with the he. We understand that this is because it's translated from Greek, which is one of those languages that gives every noun a gender.

I learned this study in French. In French, the desk might be masculine and the table is feminine. So you use he or she, and they don't have a word for it. So in the Greek, there's no it. Everything is a he or she. But in English, we have an it, and the Holy Spirit is not a person. It's that power of God. It's more appropriate to use the neuter pronoun, it. And that it, that power of God, can give us a taste, a preview of spiritual things and understanding.

And you get even more of that when God's Spirit is in you. And I make the point it's similar to when Frederick Douglass gained a glimpse of what his learning to read and write would bring in.

Let's look at another example, a hard example of someone's understanding changing through their life. If you'll go to Luke chapter 5.

Frederick Douglass is a nice example, but as I said, he wasn't understanding spiritual things.

If we look at the Apostle Peter, we can see from enough of his writings how he went from just having this glimpse, hey, this is something important, to a deeper understanding and a knowing what was ahead in his life. Luke chapter 5, and this is a story, of course, early in Christ's ministry as he was teaching.

And he said, so it was, as the multitude pressed about him, that is Jesus, to hear the word of God, that he stood by the lake of Gennesaret, and he saw two boats standing by the lake. The fishermen had gone from them, they were washing their nets. So he got into one of the boats, which was Simon's. Simon had been just an ordinary fisherman. Now, long before he was Peter, the Apostle. So, Simon's, he asked him to put out a little from the land, and he sat down and taught the multitudes from the boat. Of course, he was taking advantage of the natural acoustics that a flat body of water can give, so he could address more people at once. And when he was done, when he stopped speaking, he said to Simon, launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. Well, Simon answered, he said, Master, we toiled all night and caught nothing. Nevertheless, at your word, I'll let down the net. Now, that sounds kind of dry. In modern English, we say, Nick, we worked all night and we didn't catch anything, but because you say so, I'll do it. You know, I'll do it because you say. And of course, he was surprised when they had done this. They caught a great number of fish, so much that their net was breaking. They signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled the boat so much that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus. He fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me, for I'm a sinful man. And for all who are with him were astonished at the catch of fish. So also were James and John, the son of Zebedee, who are partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, Don't be afraid. From now on, you'll catch men. So Peter, because he had this realization, there's something special about this guy. And he said, I'm just a fisherman. I'm a sinner. So he said, Stay away from me. You're holy. You're special. And I'm a sinner. He had just that glimpse, spirit working with him enough to see that this was different. But Jesus, knowing that he could be much more, said, Come with me. And the other version says, I'll make you a fisher of men.

Now, as Peter did go with him and God's spirit began to open his mind, he started understanding more. Let's go to John 6.

John 6, and we'll begin in verse 66. Now, this is a long chapter. And I'm not going to go through all the teaching, but Jesus Christ had a large number of people that had came. He fed the multitudes and then said some difficult things.

So much so, and put in ways that could be taken more than one way with the symbolism. A lot of people were offended and said, I'm getting out of here. And then he would turn to the disciples and ask if they were going to leave too. And let's pick up there. And in verse 66, from that time, many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more. Then Jesus said to the twelve, Do you want to go away also? Simon Peter answered him and said, Lord, to whom shall we go?

Also, we've come to believe and to know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Notice Peter had come that far from saying, Get away from me. I'm a sinner. To now saying, I'm not going to leave you because you have the words of eternal life. There's nowhere else to go. This is just like, as I said, my grandmother, when she heard that program on the radio and began reading, she said she knew that was the truth. She thought she was hearing words that would lead to eternal life. Just as many of you knew that you read in your Bible, this was something special. You were learning the way to eternal life. Later, Peter would be one of those we read about in Acts 2. And it's very appropriate we read Acts 2 today. You probably read it earlier this morning, didn't you? That's okay. I read it earlier this morning, too. Let's read Acts 2, starting with the first verse. But Peter's there, and we're going to see the jump in his understanding.

And the Spirit gave them utterance, and so they began to speak, and people heard them in different languages. I'm going to skip ahead, but it's so amazing people said, oh, you know, they were speaking things that either people from another language understood and didn't think they should, or some people didn't understand, and said it's gibberish, and said, these guys must be drunk. Let's read verse 14. Peter has the explanation, of course, with the Spirit of God in him. He knows exactly what was happening.

Peter, standing up with the 11, raised his voice, and said to them, Men of Judea, and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and heed my words. These are not drunk, as you suppose, since it's only the third hour of the day. That's about 9 o'clock in the morning. But this is what was spoken of by the prophet Joel. And then he quotes, And it shall come to pass, in the last days, says God, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.

Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams, And on my men servants and maidservants, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, And they'll prophesy, and I'll show wonders in heaven. I'm not going to go through the rest of that. I wanted to emphasize pouring out the Spirit, which is another way, of course, we realize that the Spirit is not a person, or a different being, they aren't poured out. The Spirit is God's power that can open our understanding and our intellect. The Spirit made it possible to understand things that previously were only glimpsed or hinted at.

Peter's writings show that he came to ever more understanding as time went on. If we go to 1 Peter chapter 1 in verse 10. If you have a 1 Peter chapter 10, I'm going to be curious about your Bible. But 1 Peter chapter 1 in verse 10, Peter begins to explain how the Spirit makes it possible to understand things that others don't.

He says, Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ, who was in them. This says that some had the Holy Spirit even before that Pentecost, but we know it was very few.

But when he was testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories it would follow, to them it was revealed that not to themselves, but to us they were ministering, the things which have now been reported to you by those through whom they have preached the gospel to you, by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things which angels desire to look into.

That's interesting. Peter was one of those who had the Holy Spirit in him and could now explain things to other people that in some cases even angels had been wanting to understand and learn. Now Peter, like Frederick Douglass wanting to learn, Peter wanted to learn and God gave him the capability to start having this understanding of all those things that were in the Old Testament that without his God's Spirit could not be comprehended.

Now they could be, and they could be shared. Peter not only had the understanding he wanted to share, he became a teacher. So his understanding grew to a full comprehension as it is for most of us. That full comprehension, those here who have been baptized and had the hands laid on them and have received the Holy Spirit, you now have that understanding. You've gone from a feeling that maybe you could get an understanding to having it.

And even with more desire to learn and having that vision and that knowledge of spiritual things, you keep wanting more. And that's an important thing because the story doesn't end just with Peter having the Spirit or the Apostles. It doesn't end with us being filled with the Holy Spirit.

That's nice, but we should realize now that we have God's Holy Spirit in us and we understand His Word, it's opened up to us another horizon that we can look at and say, what's out there? There is something. There's something out there that's for all of us. There is still something more. We're in 1 Peter. Let's look at verse 13. Therefore, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. That talks about the resting of your hope fully on the grace that is to be brought to you.

Not that it already has been. The hope is that understanding that there is something better. When you have a hope, it doesn't mean just a wish, it's a confidence. Our hope is what's going to happen when Jesus Christ does return. By the power of the Spirit in us, we see that we have a destiny. Let's turn to 1 Corinthians 13 to see how Paul explains that. 1 Corinthians 13 is famously called the love chapter. I want to read some of his conclusion beginning in verse 9.

Here he says, For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, and this we is those of us that have the Holy Spirit in us, but we're still knowing and prophesying in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part will be done away. Paul says, When I was a child, I spoke as a child, and I understood as a child, and I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Now, he's making an analogy to the past, showing that in some ways we can say we're still as children, but there will be a time when we put away these childish things, and we're going to be more mature. In verse 12, Now we see in a mirror dimly. This is the one where I like the old King James. The old King James, I believe, says, We see through a glass darkly, like glazed or smoked glass.

But then, in the future, we'll see face to face. He says, Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I am known. When perfection comes, when we become spirit, we'll know much more than just in part. It'll be like moving from childhood to adulthood. Now we see through the glass darkly. But when the time comes, we'll see face to face, and know God because we'll be like Him. That's the destiny that we're able to glimpse now that we couldn't even understand before God's Spirit was working in us. It's something that seems ridiculous to people that aren't called. And some of them think we're teaching a rank heresy to think that we could be born as spirit beings.

But we get it from the Bible. Let's turn to Romans 8. That's not very far away from here. Romans 8, verse 16.

No wonder it wasn't far. I only turned to 1 Corinthians chapter 8. We'll see another understanding of how it is that we begin to understand spiritual things. This explains, I think, very clearly in Romans 8, 16. The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit. That is, God's Holy Spirit begins to work with the spirit and man that all people have. And the Spirit, yeah, bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us. And that's something we suffer in this life. Our bodies start to break down and decay. I think God made it that way on purpose. Otherwise, if we stayed teenagers forever, we wouldn't want the world tomorrow. We think we're invincible and we're already immortal. And of course, as we get older, we start feeling the aches and pains and we start wanting what's ahead that's much better. Yeah, that's all I wanted to read there. But that God, that Holy Spirit lets us see what's ahead and we begin to want it. We want to be born into God's family. And we have that hope. We're like Luke Skywalker looking at the horizon of a much better life, dreaming of that adventure. We're not dreaming of adventure. We're dreaming of eternal life. Like Frederick Douglass watching those ships sail across the bay. But we're watching spiritual things and thinking, we're going to go out there. We're going to have a much better life. One that doesn't end after 70 or 80 years in hurting and suffering. It says the suffering that we now know can't compare to the excitement of the glorious spirit life that God's going to give us. And it's God's spirit that gives us that understanding, the preview of what's ahead. Otherwise, we couldn't understand it. Let's turn to the book of Ephesians, chapter 1. Ephesians 1 and verse 13.

Another good comment on the Holy Spirit coming into us.

It says, Now that can sound like unusual language. I like to say where it says you are sealed, you could say, and then you were given the Holy Spirit. It says, which is the Holy Spirit of promise, the guarantee. The old King James says the earnest, which I like that, because in old terms, an earnest was like a deposit. A little bit of money put down to show that the rest is coming. God gives us a little bit of Himself, gives us some of His spirit, as the guarantee or the earnest promise that much more is coming.

We're going to have not only a little piece of God in us, we're going to have bodies made of spirit that will live forever. We only have the initial down payment now. That's why we look to the future. Jesus explained this process to someone who came to Him with questions about what life would be. In John 3, I'm speaking of Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a prominent teacher who, like others, had begun to see that there's something special about this Jesus, and He came to Him secretly, lest He be persecuted and arrested.

And Jesus put it pretty simply. He made it clear what's ahead, what could be better, but what it takes to be part of that kingdom. John 3 will begin in verse 1. There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said, Rabbi, that's to say, teacher, we know you're a teacher, come from God. No one can do these signs that you do unless God is with Him. Jesus didn't even acknowledge that.

He went on to the most important thing. Jesus answered and said to him, Most assuredly I say to you, unless one is born again, he can't see the kingdom of God. Unless one is born again. Now, that didn't make sense to Nicodemus. He drew the conclusion that you would get just from flesh and blood. He said, well, how can a man be born when he's old? And if he enters a second time into his mother's womb and be born, Jesus said, No, no, and most assuredly I say to you, unless one is born of the water and the Spirit, he can't enter the kingdom of God.

So to enter the kingdom of God, you have to be born again. You have to become something different. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. We're all still flesh. We haven't been born again yet. But we have the guarantee of what's to come. That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.

And the arrival that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but can't tell where it comes. So is everyone is born of the Spirit, because we'll be imperceptible to the physical unless we want to be. Having God's Holy Spirit in us now is that preview of what's to come. Let's go back to 1 Peter one more time. I should have asked you to keep your finger in there.

I apologize. The beginning is I said that same thing this morning and I didn't think. I should put something in my notes. 1 Peter chapter one and we'll start in verse three. Because that whole being born again thing, and like I said, if you just thought of it in plain language, it could sound almost creepy, but it's not creepy. It's a perfect analogy of what God is doing in us. 1 Peter one and verse three.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again. Begotten is an Old English term. It could be compared to conceiving. He has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you. As it's saying, when the Holy Spirit comes into our mind, it's like when the egg within a female is impregnated by the male and a new life is begun. That's what happens when God's Spirit comes in us.

And we symbolize that by being baptized, symbolizing, burying the old man and starting a new life coming out. And then we grow. Just as an embryo grows within the uterus, we have to grow, maturing spiritually, until we're at the point of being ready to be born, starting a new life in the Spirit.

And I could ask, do you see that in your future? The only way you can see it is because of God's Spirit. It's because God has given you a small part of Himself to be in you and in me.

The Holy Spirit that's dwelling in you has given you a preview of your destiny. And that's why it's so important to talk about that on the day of Pentecost, marking when the Holy Spirit became freely available. That's when God started working with His Church, giving us that view. This knowledge, this understanding, and this way of life might make you seem like a romantic, like a dreamer to some people who don't understand it. And as I said, though, we're not gazing off just at a horizon thinking of adventure.

We're looking to eternity. We don't wonder what lies over the rainbow because we know what lies over the rainbow. We have a small taste in this life. We have a preview of life as a Spirit being, because God has given us His Spirit to be in us. Have a wonderful rest of this, Abbot.