Session 2: Order From Chaos

[0:00] Y'all. I hope everybody made time during the week to spend 25 minutes watching this video. I'm not gonna ask because I know how how students are. They'll be like, oh, I got distracted. I was watching in the UGA game.

[0:17] I was like, okay, well, what about Thursday? Well, it was Taco night. Okay, I know how it goes. I've been there. But I hope everybody watched it at least once.

[0:40] That's good.

[0:44] Yeah. We're going to till the ground in your mind, David. We're going to churn it up. That's all right.

[0:53] See, your brain is formless and void, and the Spirit is going to form it and fullness. Yes. And purpose. All right. Well, it's deep.

[1:07] Okay, that's good. That's what we're aiming for here. This is going to be a deeper study than what we have been. I always like to start off with what stood out at you as you were watching this video. Like, is there a point or something that you picked up?

[1:26] Just like, I never really thought of it that way before. I don't know who he's talking to, that little group, what they are, what backgrounds they're from, but I think you gave out a good truth with the fact that the Holy Spirit seems to be downplayed. May not be the right word. Whatever. In Baptist church, we don't really focus in on the Spirit and how the Spirit helps.

[1:52] Yeah. So Sinclair Ferguson's background is a reformed background.

[1:59] There's a lot of similarity. They're Protestant, like us. They just come at it from a different angle than we do. But I think he's right. In most denominations, the Holy Spirit is kind of downplayed.

[2:13] Now, there are some, like, pentecostals. In fact, I didn't have time I meant to bring it up. But if you look at even their denominational logo, they emphasize the Holy Spirit. If you ever see a logo, a church or something with a flame or something, that flame represents the Holy Spirit, and it comes from Acts. They're also very much into the gifts or talents of the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, those kinds of things.

[2:41] And it's almost the reverse. It's almost overemphasized in those denominations. But yeah. We don't really talk about it, which is unfortunate.

[3:28] Yes. That's not really the way I took that, Marie. Yeah, I remember what you said. The way I took it was and I think from Scripture, jesus had to leave so the Holy Spirit would come down. Yeah.

[3:42] Because if he didn't leave, then the Holy Spirit would not come down.

[3:50] Yeah. We don't really know the Holy Spirit.

[3:57] I think that was Sinclair Ferguson saying that. Yeah.

[4:09] Who is the Holy Spirit? And I think his question up at the front is, what would you rather have? Would you rather have Jesus as he was, or would you rather have the Holy Spirit? And I think intuitively we would say Jesus. Because I can see Jesus.

[4:28] I can touch Jesus. I can talk to Jesus. And I think what we're going to learn from this study is the Spirit is a personality. Just like Jesus. You can talk to the Spirit, you can interact with the Spirit, but there's a difference.

[4:46] You can't see it's not physical and that's what trips people up. But then again, you haven't seen the Father, right? And yet we're all fine with, oh, well, there's a God, right? But you haven't seen the Father. You've only seen the son?

[5:07] And for us, you haven't seen the Son eat it. It's all on faith.

[5:14] Well, we have evidences, but you haven't seen it, right? And that's fate, that's faith, right at the end of the day. But we have evidences for it and we also have evidences for the Holy Spirit.

[5:33] And I was thinking about that as he brought that question up. Would we rather have Jesus for the source of the Spirit? And the human part of it says, yes, we would rather have Jesus. But with Jesus departing and the Holy Spirit coming to us, then if Jesus had not departed, we would not be able to fulfill what we are to do because we would be standing by depending on Jesus to do it all. Whereas once he's gone and the Spirit comes to us and dwells in us and speaks to us and pushes us in the right directions to do the things that he wants us to do, it's just like when he left Go, spread the gospel around the world.

[6:27] If Jesus had stayed here, that would have never happened. Yeah, you're right.

[6:38] It is one of the defining characteristic of a Christian, or the mark of a Christian that the Bible says is the seal of the Holy Spirit or that Spirit inside of you. That's what makes it. Now people can try to fake it or whatever. I don't know how. I think we see denominations that exaggerate certain things.

[7:09] If you ever watch like Benny Hen on television where the Spirit slays people and they fall down, I don't think the Holy Spirit operates like that. But at the same time, there is an energy there and we read and acts the miraculous events they were able to do through the power of the Holy Spirit. In fact, if you look at Jesus, there's a doctrine there that his energy and power is his communion with the Spirit. He was able to do those things through the power of the Spirit, the whole world or universe. If we look in Genesis, if you're looking at that Spirit hovering over the waters in this formless and voidance, right, that same Spirit that created the heavens and the earth is the same Spirit that is inside us.

[8:05] And so there's miraculous power there.

[8:10] All good points. There's a lot there. So anything else that really stood out at anybody in this lesson?

[8:21] All right, well, I've got a couple of things. I did want to highlight the fact that if you look at I guess it's Genesis one, verse two. Bring it up here. These are some of the questions that we'll go over. He makes a comment that the Bible is a story not only of God and the Father and the Son, but also the Holy Spirit, even in the beginning of the Bible and the end of the Bible.

[8:52] So if you look at, like Genesis one, I'll just read the first couple of verses. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the Earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Right?

[9:10] The Spirit of God was there from the beginning. And we'll see that as God. In this instance, the Spirit is waiting for a command. And then verse three, God said, Let there be life. And then you start to see the Spirit go to work in creation.

[9:35] So the Spirit is there at the beginning. And then if we skip to the end, Revelation, I think it's 22. If you scroll down to the end, verse 17, this is after all the events of Revelation armageddon, new heaven, new Earth. And it says verse 17 the Spirit and the bride say come and let the one who hears say come. Let the one who is thirsty say Come.

[10:10] So the Spirit is there at the end too. And that makes sense because the Spirit and God the Father and God the Son, they're all God. They're all co eternal. But they also have different seem to be different positions, if you will, personally different responsibilities. Okay?

[10:35] And I think at the end, I think Sinclair Ferguson kind of summarizes it. He said, the Father who plans the Son who brings salvation to the world and the Spirit who expresses the inner drive and communicates or empowers or creates the will of the Father. That's kind of we talked about it kind of that general contractor, subcontractor architect kind of philosophy, right? For those of us who are a little more salt of the earth people, we kind of understand that general philosophy. And it seems to be all throughout Scripture.

[11:27] And we see the Spirit in other places, too. But for us, as New Testament Christians, the Spirit is inside of us. And that's really incredible when you think about the power that is there a lot going on with the power of the Holy Spirit. So I also like what he said. Before we get into some of these questions, sinclair Ferguson makes this interesting statement that I think we need to reflect on a little bit.

[12:09] God is himself who he reveals himself to be. God is Himself what he reveals Himself to be.

[12:25] Now, that's a deep theological term, like a deep theological thought. Who is God? That's the question, right? We come here every Sunday, Wednesday, trying to learn more about this God that we worship and who's created us but who is he?

[12:47] He is who he has revealed himself to be. Now, that is a little bit opposite of us, because as humans, we can reveal ourselves to be something we're not, right? We can hide math. We hide behind masks, right? Oh, I'm the good person, but when I leave these walls, I'm going to be this person.

[13:17] I hope none of that happens here. David Trucker so God's not like that, right? We define God as the ultimate good God. It may be. Surprisingly, God cannot do a lot of things.

[13:36] One of the things he cannot do is lie. If God is the ultimate source of truth, god cannot lie. It's against his nature. And so when he reveals himself, that is who he is. And with all power, there's no need for him to hide, right?

[13:57] So it's just against his nature to somehow hide himself or mask himself with something that he isn't. So one of the core tenets of Christianity is God is who he reveals himself to be. And I think internally, if we break it down, we kind of all agree with that statement, but it's not something that we really put out into the world. And I don't really think Baptists really have kind of that level of theology or not that we have that level that we regularly talk about. Now, I'm sure if we dive deep into some of the Baptist faith and message, maybe we'll find something like that, but I don't remember seeing it, honestly.

[15:00] Yeah. So God gives the commands, but the Spirit is the one acting on those commands.

[15:13] There has been one instance in my life where I think I heard his word, but I cannot be sure. And unfortunately, it wasn't anything like deep. It was just my name. And there was nobody else. Yeah, there's nobody else there.

[15:32] So it's kind of weird. I was in prayer, but I think the spirit inside of us, you could say is God's voice to us because there are certain times that we do feel led to do things that are outside of maybe our nature. You're around somebody and you feel led to maybe talk about a subject that you wouldn't normally talk about salvation, personal issues, whatever it may be. You may be led to give or do something outside of the norm of that area. Where is that coming from?

[16:11] That spirit inside of you? That's God's expressing himself through you. And that's what we talk about, right? Where we say we are Christ's hands and feet on this earth. Yes.

[16:27] But really what we're saying, we're also God's hands and feet on this earth, right? Christ, the Son and the Father are one, but now we have the spirit of them, their spirit inside of us. And that's what we mean when we say they are leading us because human beings, it's a business transaction. Why am I giving you something if I'm not getting something back in return? A favor.

[16:55] That's how politics work, right, but that's not how Christianity works. We give selflessly a lot of the time. It's not like I'm getting paid up here to do this.

[17:09] And when we have Wednesday night meetings, when we deal with youth, when we deal with the community, right? We don't expect anything in return. Our desire is to selflessly share the good news of Jesus so they can have this same relationship. That's the power of the Holy Spirit because human beings won't normally do that. So I really like that theology.

[17:35] God is himself who he reveals himself to be. And he reveals Himself throughout Scripture. Scripture is a story of revelation and it's a story of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit communion we was talking about, me and TIFF were talking last night about this. And when we talk about the trinitarian view of God, god is three persons and one.

[18:04] You could see the person, but you can't separate them.

[18:09] Where does that come from? Because we really don't see that in the Old Testament. Not clearly defined, I'll say, as opposed to the New Testament, when we see the baptism of Jesus, right, you have the Father's voice coming from heaven. You have the Son rising up and then you have the Spirit coming on him like a dove. That's a revelation, right?

[18:34] We see the three pieces of God in one place. We also see that Paul was baptizing people in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament you can see those pieces, but they're just not put together like that in a nice all in one spot. Like that the only person.

[19:24] There's a lot going on. I mean, heaven has an order and that's great. I mean, heaven is an orderly place. Like there's roles and responsibilities assigned. Angels are messenger.

[19:39] The spirit has this role. Jesus had a role to die for the sons of the world. And that Spirit we see that forming in the womb, right? That Spirit is what empowered him to do that. Right?

[19:54] And if you think about it, and this is going to be a little deep, only God's power could have allowed God to go through the humiliation for God's people, god's power through the Spirit, right. Forming. Jesus. Jesus. God on Earth.

[20:19] Essentially. Or God with us to be humiliated for our sins. He was completely innocent to die for the sins of the world. Right. People don't do that.

[20:33] That's not normal because people are sin cursed, right? We were broken down by sin. So it's interesting. I thought that that was really a fascinating piece of theology. And I think it is true when we really think about it, god is a revealed God to us.

[20:57] Now, there is a whole branch of theology called natural theology, if you want to look into this. And that's the study of what can we figure out about God without anything revealed to us outside of nature. So imagine you didn't have a Bible, you didn't have any revelation outside of what you can see and look at. And what can we figure out about God? That's a branch of natural theology.

[21:24] And that comes if you look at, like, the Psalms, there's a Psalm 19, I think it is. I think he mentioned in the video where the heavens declare God's glory, his creation declares his works. That's kind of the same idea as natural theology. You can at least go so far as to say, well, there's a universe. How did it get here?

[21:51] And you start following that back. You can determine that there is a God. Now, you may not know the specifics of that God through natural theology that would have to be revealed to us, and through the Bible, he is all right. Yes.

[22:29] On Facebook, I posted a podcast where this was outside of this, but I was listening to a podcast this week, and it was actually talking about the Holy Spirit. And how do we know that it's the Holy Spirit talking to us? Can we use that as evidence for us as opposed to are we crazy, or did we have, like, pepperoni pizza too late at night? And it's a really interesting thought there. I encourage you to listen to that.

[23:04] But it kind of goes along with that. That Spirit inside of us is giving us knowledge of what God inner desires is. What does God want from us right now? In some way, God wants the same thing from all of us. He wants us to love Him, to commune with Him, to worship with Him, and to do his work.

[23:34] But at the same time, it's different because the way that you're going to worship and I'm going to worship are going to be different. The way that you can work for the Lord and the way that I can work for the Lord are different. And so the sphere is going to guide us in different paths, so to speak, and those will look different for everybody.

[24:02] When we look in the New Testament, when it talks about, like, the gifts of the Spirit, it's not necessarily like everybody's going to have every single one of these gifts. Some people are gifted in different ways. Gifted with computers, gifted with farming, gifted with administration, gifted with trucking, whatever it may be. But the Spirit will guide you through that, and that's also your development process. Like, you as a human being, want to be fulfilled.

[24:39] I think we can all think of times when we felt maybe aimless in life or we all come to a point, what is my purpose here? The big questions.

[24:55] And you can try to define that without God, and it doesn't usually end up well, because if you're going to define it with the world I was talking with my brother about this yesterday.

[25:09] Okay, I made my goal. I made six figures. Now, like, say that's your life goal. You graduated college, you're making six figures financially, you don't have to worry about money anymore. Then what?

[25:27] What do you do? You've got your basics covered. You can eat, you've got a house, you might be going on a vacation. You're not like, uber wealthy, but you're not, like, destitute, right? You've got your bases covered, you got a solid life ahead of you.

[25:42] Now, what?

[25:47] Well, how do you define your life? Some people will want to well, I'll go for seven figures, make millions a year. But we know that you'll never be satisfied, right? We can always make more money. We can always make less money.

[26:03] At some point, you have to learn to be content with what you have. But if money is not the defining, then what is?

[26:17] The spirit will lead you into finding your fulfillment. Now, that could be a nonprofit organization that does things like I could think about we've got charity organizations that help pass out food to the needy, clothes to the needy, right? That could be very fulfilling. There are charitable, medical maybe you have a medical talent. I know the Samaritans Clinic in Kawida County offers discounted or free medical services to those who can't afford it.

[26:54] That could be a very fulfilling role. Maybe it's just as simple as spending time with your kids or grandkids to help raise them because your children or you had trouble early on, I don't know, but it could be as simple as that. What is your ultimate purpose? And it could just be being better at your job, because if you have that talent, I think of the computer industry because that's what I'm in. But there are plenty of talented people.

[27:33] I mean, how many computers are there in the world? A bunch, right? And all of them computers require electricity, right? Now, think about this. If I work on computers and I'm developing software and I can make it go .1% faster, multiplied by the billions of computers all over the planet, that's a real saving.

[28:02] I mean, you're saving electricity doing that.

[28:09] You don't think of it, but those small improvements add up.

[28:15] I mean, that could be all that I do in life, right? But that energy savings could be enough to stretch out something like, we can't see the full picture of all the world, but God has put us in a position to do it. I'll use David as a trucking example. He may be taking a load, and for him, it's just a normal taking a tractor somewhere. But that tractor could break ground on, like, a children's hospital.

[28:49] That could save a child's life. That will have an impact well beyond David's lifetime. I don't know. I've worked on software at Tech where it just sells meal plans. That's all it does.

[29:08] We just make sure kids can eat. But those kids could design the next rocket ship to Mars for all I know. But they're going to have to eat in the meantime, right? So who knows where the Spirit will lead you in your talents. But what I'm saying is God is giving you those talents and the Spirit is leading you in that way for a reason.

[29:32] All right, well, let's go on here. If you look at the study notes, there's introduction. I will highly recommend you look at the scripture readings. It does give a nice overview of the learning objectives and a nice outline. I encourage you look over that.

[29:53] We're not going to cover that in class. What we're going to skip to is right down here to the study questions. I do want to cover this. That way everybody's on the same page if you're looking at the study questions and I'm going to zoom in here. I want to make sure if you're going through this, I give you the answers.

[30:10] The Hebrew ruler word for rua, the Greek word for numa, apart from spirit, also mean what when if you're mechanically inclined, think of pneumatics. It works on air pressure. That's where that word comes from. Number two, god expresses Himself, his character and his power to us through His Holy Spirit. True.

[30:38] That's how he expresses Himself to us personally. That key word right here is personally expresses himself to us unpersonally. He expresses Himself to us through the word the Bible. Right. Number three, god created everything simultaneously and the days of creation are pictures to help us understand the different elements of creation.

[31:03] He explained that there were people who believed that, but we basically look at the six days of creation and fabulous so in the video, Sinclair Ferguson would say this is false because what this question is trying to say is the days of creation that we read in Genesis, the six days, they're really symbolic. God created everything all at once. But because we can't fully understand his power, it's written down in Scripture as these days of creation. Now, as Baptist, I don't think there's a Baptist viewpoint on this. I don't think if you thought that you can't be Baptist or anything, but typically Baptists would say that those days of creation are more literal.

[32:08] There really were days of creation in Genesis and it's not just like a picture, although you will find varying viewpoints of that. One of the common debates in our circles is were those literal 24 hours days or were they like days as in an age? Right? Like maybe each day it was 1000 years or something like that. But either way, those are literal time periods, not just illustrations for us to understand.

[32:49] Ferguson would say that that's false.

[32:53] Some people would say differently. Number four, the Holy Spirit, by forming and filling the shapeless, empty mass, is creating a temple, a meeting place for God to have fellowship with his creation. True. Yeah. I think Marie touched this.

[33:10] Right? True. Right.

[33:23] I understand that well, you're not getting a grade on this, Marie, so it's okay. So, yeah, the creation is kind of this temple, this meeting place, this fellowship between God and his creation. That was kind of the original purpose that didn't work out. And we'll see in Revelation that plan didn't change, and it will become again a meeting place. And then last question number five.

[33:50] The Spirit has brought order and fullness into the creation so that we might adore Him, worship Him, know Him, or all of the above. All of them. All of the above. Very good. So we're all on the same page as that.

[34:05] Now the fun stuff. Okay, let's break this out. First question. What does Dr. Ferguson mean when he describes the Spirit as God's inner drive and desire?

[34:25] Remember, he said, the Spirit is how God expresses his desires and drive for what he wants in the world? It could be.

[34:42] Christianity is one expression of that. What deeper, though? Like, what does it mean to have a you have a drive, you have a desire. But the Spirit is what helps us on our path to accomplishing what he has in store for us. As you were talking about our colleague earlier.

[35:25] So the Spirit guides us towards our ultimate purpose.

[35:35] Yes. Well, God is always an answer in Sunday is cool. So this is where the trinitarian view really like, we're saying the Holy Spirit and the Spirit shows what God's drive for us is and his power. But it's not like we can't we want to separate it in our minds. We like to compartmentalize things, but you can't take that away from Jesus or God the Father.

[36:06] At the same time, they seem to have separate persons. They're all tied together. Like, you cannot break them apart like that. We have to realize when we're talking about this, we can't draw a circle and divide it into a pie chart. And like the Father's over here and the Son's over here, and the spirits right here, and everything's nice and organized.

[36:33] It's not like that. God the Father is every bit God the Son and God the spirit. And the Spirit is everything god the Father and God the Son is. And you cannot tease them apart any more than I can tease you apart into your Marie the mother versus Marie the wife. They're tied together, they interact, and the wife's role influences Marie's the mother role and vice versa.

[37:04] Like they're intertwined together.

[37:11] Yeah, they're tied together.

[37:41] It's a good point, Brian, and I think we're going to get to that later on. I was kind of holding off on that. But the Spirit is also acting as a mediator for us. He's almost like a translator right now in between us and the Father. And it says, even the Spirit is making our groans known to God.

[38:05] So I'm glad you brought that out because the Spirit is there, like communicating us, even our subconscious, if we want to call it, it is all the same because certain people kind of will try to make a big deal about that. But you cannot differentiate one or the other, right? God's name, Jesus name, they're tied together. Yeah, we're fine with that. I'm not going to fault anybody for that.

[38:50] So that drive we were talking about this last night, me and Tiffany were talking about the spirit, and she's like, what's the difference between a soul and a spirit?

[39:03] Now, that's an interesting question. We actually delved into this a little bit because in Hebrews, I think it was twelve two or something. I forget the verse, but it says that no, it was Hebrews eight, I think I will find ever. But it says that the spirit can divide is so sharp, it can divide even the spirit from the soul. So the Bible indicates that there's a difference there.

[39:46] That's what we were talking about. Like what is that difference? What is that difference? Because when we think of we're talking about a Holy Spirit, think about what most people think about when you say spirit or Holy Ghost, we're thinking of like Scooby Doo type ghosts floating around. And that's not what we're talking about at all.

[40:06] We're not? No, we're not. Brian, please do not get your theology from Scoobydoos. That's all I'm saying.

[40:18] Your spirit or your soul or both.

[40:24] So what does the Bible say? Because everything in our Sunday school is going to be grounded by the Bible. We do have a soul, right? It talks about the soul. It also says that the Bible says we're spiritually dead without Christ.

[40:39] Okay? So that would indicate that there's two pieces there. And when we're born, we have this soul. And like unsaved people are walking around, they're doing things. So what is that spirit inside of them?

[40:56] We have the spirit, right? As we were saved, that spirit came inside of us to live inside of us and dwell us forever.

[41:13] Soul. Everybody has a soul. Everybody has a soul. And that soul is what makes you you, right? It's your preferences.

[41:23] It's who you are, right? Your favorite colors, your favorite foods, your reactions, how you act like that's your soul. But your spirit is that piece of God inside of you that allows you to communicate with God. And unsafe people don't have that, right? That's what the Bible says.

[41:48] They're spiritually dead. It's that communication with God. I explained this to Tiffany and it's totally nerdy, but hear me out. It's like a satellite that doesn't have all of its antenna working. So it's orbiting space.

[42:07] It's doing its thing, but it can't communicate with anything, right? And that Holy Spirit inside of us is like fixing that antenna or turning it on. Analogies break down. Give me some slack on that. That's the best I could come up with.

[43:00] If you can't communicate, it'd be like me and Bobby sitting here and I say, I'm. All alone and you walk in, you'll be like, Bobby's right there beside you. You'd be like, what's going on? Am I blind? I can't communicate with my outside world.

[43:20] Right? And that's what the spirit it gives us that ability to communicate with God, that ability to sense spiritual things. I almost think of it like a 6th sense. There's a movie by their name, right? But that's that idea, right?

[43:35] You can sense spiritual things. That's why when you're around somebody and you start feeling like a premonition, if you will, like you feel led to speak to them about something, that's a spiritual sense that you've got going on. Just as real as touch and taste and smell and everything else. But if you don't have that spirit, that is kind of cut off.

[44:37] And we never prayed again after that.

[44:45] And Lord works like that. You communicate it with God. There's all kinds of different examples of this. But that's like that spirit, that God. And that same spirit is here with us now, right?

[45:09] And that same spirit is guiding us. And we really need to make sure that we're not what we call quenching the Holy Spirit or putting the Holy Spirit down. Because that's what he's leading us to, where he wants us to be, not only individually, but also collectively as a church.

[45:57] I can tell you why the answer is clear.

[46:17] Well, that's unfortunate to hear.

[46:26] Yeah, that's why we come here. I drive by a Methodist church on the way here and the sign out front says, celebrate community, experience worship. And if you live around here, you've probably seen this sign. Now, there's a problem, I think, with that.

[46:48] I'm all about experiencing worship, but really it's not for us to experience, it's for us to give worship. And we don't really celebrate community. It's not the purpose of the church. I enjoy community and it's a byproduct. But just the fact that it's listed first on this sign really just my spirit is rubbed the wrong way.

[47:18] And I have serious concerns about this church on top of other things. We come here to worship God and we worship this study group that we have going on. Right here is a form of worship. We're learning about God. We're taking time out of our busy day to watch videos and to think about and to bust our brain, right?

[47:40] Trying to understand the infinite God as best we can. That's a form of worship. Just as valid as any song worship that we have, I think. Just as valid as sitting and listening to the message that Kenny brings a form of worship. Sinclair brings it out.

[47:58] I think clearly when he talks about what does this creation sound like to you? And he says, A church service. Right. It's the acknowledgment of his graces and his gifts and his creation and also just the enjoyment of knowledge or bringing that knowledge to us. It's a lot like a church service.

[48:19] Really a lot of good things here. So this revelation to us isn't perfect, and I think we need to understand that. That's coming into question two. Why must God accommodate his revelation to human beings? And then how does this fact demonstrate the mercy of grace of God?

[48:45] So what does it mean that God accommodates his revelation to us? I think that he reveals Himself to us as we become able to understand and see the revelation. Like baby Christians who are still being dead milk and should be getting whole food that we were talking about earlier. Exactly. Yeah.

[49:07] So just like we teach the young ones out here, they're getting a different lesson than we are. Right. Because in theory, we're more mature. Although I wonder about Davidson.

[49:24] But they get a different lesson, right. Because they can't fully comprehend this. Well, God is doing the same thing for us. That's like a God ordained principle. Right.

[49:33] If you go into a class that you can't understand, it's doing nobody any good. You're just wasting your time. You got to start at the basics, work your way up. Yeah. And if this is too much for you, it's okay.

[49:50] That's true. I know all about it.

[50:02] Yeah. Like the children, they're learning about the love and the mercy of God and like his miraculous works. Right. And that leads them into learning deeper and deeper things here. I'm assuming you know that God loves you.

[50:18] Right. And you know that you're a sinner and you know that you're saved by grace. Those are like the essentials of Christianity. Now we're learning things that we can't really even if we were to study this by ourselves, we're still going to get something out of it as a group because these are more complicated issues that multiple viewpoints really help you get a fuller picture because these are hard things.

[50:59] Yeah. This is the thinking stuff.

[51:13] People learn in different ways. I am fine with reading. I love reading and I read faster. But David said he likes the videos. And if you don't like the videos, you can also do audio only if you're busy driving around or if you got to get hit by a two x four, like Brian over here.

[51:31] God will provide that to you. You got hit by what?

[51:39] I've been zapped about that a couple of times. You're supposed to turn the power off before you do it.

[51:48] Typically there's breaker boxes, but you can remove the fuse, too. Oh, it's just hot wired in.

[51:59] Yeah.

[52:02] Well, I'm glad you're okay, man. 220 is no joke.

[52:08] I've felt it a couple of times. Yeah, I cut that power. I cut the power off to the whole house when I do that again.

[52:25] Have you heard about a ground wire? Yeah. I'm glad you're okay.

[52:34] Yeah. And there are experiences, and the Holy Spirit will guide you in these experiences. And we're old enough, like in this class, we're all mature enough to have had some kind of experiences that we can think back and be like, oh, I see that now, right? I didn't know what to call it then, but now I can look back and be like, oh, well, that was God using his power to lead me in this way. And that's amazing.

[52:59] And the whole point of this is ferguson calls it becoming a true trinitarian Christian, because I've been in churches where the song service literally was three lines. The song was three lines, and each line was Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. I counted this out and I'm sitting there and I'm like, I can't do it, Lord. I can't do it. Right?

[53:34] There's an over emphasis on the sun part, and what he does is and that's all important. I'm not saying that Jesus is not important, but what I'm saying is, if it's all Jesus and worship and no Spirit, you missed the point. Or if you're all intellectual and you're all worshipping the Father but not actually going doing the work, you've missed the point. Or if you're all spirit and speaking in tongues and doing all this stuff and none of the other stuff, you're unbalanced, right? And that's wrong.

[54:13] That's not what God wants. For us to be a balanced Christian is all of this stuff. And so I think I'm speaking in generalities now, right? Baptists tend to be unbalanced on the Son part or the Father part. We can look at Pentecostals.

[54:32] They're unbalanced on the Spirit part. In general, orthodox unbalanced on the Father part. We want to be balanced, right? We want to worship God. We want to experience his grace through his son.

[54:48] We also want to do the work, the power through the Holy Spirit, and that will give us complete fulfillment, the fullness of life, as they say. Does that make sense? That's why we said earlier that the studies we've done it before, but it's okay because it's so important now, we're not going to have time to finish the other three. So let's see, which one do I want to cover?

[55:25] Okay, let's do number three, because this goes on to what we're saying. Do you struggle to maintain a proper understanding of God in the fullness of his trinitarian character? Do you focus instead on one person of the Godhead at a time? Now, this is your personal life. Do you find yourself struggling to keep this balance?

[55:50] Or do you find yourself really focusing on God? The son really saved me. And don't find yourself really branching out of that bucket, if you will.

[56:07] Okay, that's good. And in this class, I would figure it would be less of an issue. If I was teaching a younger class, I would figure that this would be more of an issue. But I want to ask because we're coming into a holiday season, Christmas, right? And it's all the sun, the sun, the sun, the sun, and that's wonderful.

[56:32] And we celebrate Christmas, but then we come to Easter, which I think is the most important Christian holiday. And what is that about? Or sorry, I think it's the second most Christian holiday. Most important Christian holiday. And again, it's the sun.

[56:48] The sun. The sun. The sun. And then 50 days later, there's a holiday that we never talk about. Pentecost and the Holy Spirit came down on the first group of believers in Acts.

[57:04] Well, you just ignore that.

[57:08] It's true.

[57:13] Yeah. And so, unconsciously, even though you think I don't struggle, but realistically, we're just almost ignorant of the fact that there are these other, let's say, priorities or other influences on us. Right. Because we come here and we worship the Father, right. And I think we do that with a full heart.

[57:40] But the Spirit, we just kind of like, let me challenge you with this before we go. And I appreciate that, Bobby, I do. Let me challenge you with this. Pray for the Holy Spirit to fully indwell your life and pray for you to get out of the way and allow that to happen and just see what happens. I think you'll find some fascinating things happen in your own life.

[58:24] That would be my challenge to you. Pray for the Spirit to fully induce your life, not just hold it as a candle.

[58:58] That's true, but let's not focus on just the transmitting part. There's a receiving part to that as well. God is communicating back, and sometimes we feel like, well, I'm always praying. I'm always praying and I don't get anything. Well, yeah.

[59:20] And what I'm saying is, God could be answering and you're just not listening. Not listening. It's like the walkietalkie. If you're always holding it down, the button down, you're never going to get a response because you're always talking.

[59:44] That'd be my challenge to you.

[59:50] So next week, we're going to cover session two, and if you haven't joined our Facebook group, you can see me. I'll give you the link. I'm posting other things there. That's also a great way to ask questions. That way we can discuss in a public format so everybody can see what we're discussing about.

[60:08] If you're not comfortable with that, you can always text me, email me, whatever, call me. We can talk about questions that you're not so comfortable about, if you have any of those, but we'll just continue on. So we got lesson two next week. There's a lot to it, and as you can see, we only had five questions and we didn't get through them, so there's a lot to talk about. And if you want to continue the conversation, I'm always available.

[60:36] There's only so much we can do and an hour. All right. Anything else before we close? All right, brian, will you close in?

[61:20] Amen. Thank you all for coming.