Speaker 1: 0:15

When you read in Acts, chapter 2, when the day of Pentecost comes, you read how the disciples were sitting there, and this big wind comes and the Holy Spirit shows up and it talks about how there was. Every nation under heaven was there, and when the message was given, they could hear it in their own tongue, their own language. And in this faith community we represent every nation under heaven, which I love about this place. And so each week we're having someone different read the scripture in their native tongue and their language. And so today, sunil is going to read in both English and in Urdu Good morning church, so Genesis 1, 2 says Good morning church.

Speaker 2: 0:55

So Genesis 1, 2 says 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. Urdu Ur zameen viraan aur sunsan thi aur gehrao ke upar andhera tha aur khuda ki roop paani ki sata par jumbish karti thi. Genesis 2, 7,. And the spirit of God was on the surface of the water Genesis 2, 7. Then the Lord, god, formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Urdu and God made man from the soil of the earth and in his veins the Holy Spirit. Urdu, this is the word of the Lord.

Speaker 1: 2:03

Thanks be to God. Thank you, sunil. Well, to continue our conversation about the Holy Spirit, today we're talking about what it looks like in the midst of breath, and so I have someone that's a pastor in my life, has actually been a professor in my life. We've had him here before. His name is Dr Joe Grana, and you're going to really get a lot out of, I think, what he has today. There's very few people that I have in my life that get to pastor me, and he's definitely one of those that does that, so will you please give a warm welcome to Dr Joe.

Speaker 3: 2:29

Grana. Thank you, pastor Lawrence. So good to be here and to be with you. Yeah, it's been a couple of years since I've been here, so it's nice to be able to come back and to be able to fellowship, to worship with you together and to meet a few new people. Two weeks ago, pastor Lawrence talked about the Holy Spirit is not a force, he is a person. Holy Spirit's not an it, he's a person. He is a person. Holy Spirit's not an it, he's a person. Today we want to talk about from the perspective of the breath of God and the images that are used there.

Speaker 3: 3:05

I read a book several years ago entitled God Was in this Place and I Did Not Know, by Lawrence Kushner, who's a rabbi Did Not Know by Lawrence Kushner, who is a rabbi, and this book is a number of rabbis who made their commentary on the event of Genesis 28, 16, when Jacob is sleeping and he sees this ladder going back and forth to heaven, angels ascending and descending, and each gave their views, and the rabbis are okay with differing views because they believe that there's a little bit of truth in each one of those perspectives and so when you put it all together, you grab a greater truth. But one of the rabbis in particular very much struck a note with me that has stuck with me for many years Concept. I had never thought about. Concept I had never thought about. He said the first word that a baby, a human being, says is not mama, is not dada, it's not some other word that might come up in a particular vocabulary of child, but that in actuality the very first word a child says is the name of God. And the reason the rabbi said that is because in the Hebrew the word for God and we're really not sure how to pronounce it it's either Yahweh or Yehovah. Maybe you've heard Jehovah, yahweh, those are our best guesses as to how to pronounce that. But the shortened form of it is the word yah and it's a breath. And so this rabbi's perspective was that when a baby is born they get a breath and then they let it out, and often the first let out is with a cry. But they can't cry out unless they breathe in and that's the name of God. I had the privilege of being with my father when he took his last breath, and when he took his last breath his chest went down in and went and it just kind of struck me, and it just kind of struck me. Maybe not only is the first word that a human being says, but the last word when they pass from this life is also the name of God. And so I'm not saying that's a gospel, I'm not saying that I can, that's for truth. I'm just saying it's a beautiful thought that a rabbi prays for me to think that the first thing that we say is the name of God, and then my experience is that the last thing, at least what my father said, was the name of God as well. The breath of God is the Holy Spirit, and so we want to look at that from this perspective.

Speaker 3: 5:56

There's different words that are used. In the Hebrew. The word is ruach. You even get a little bit of a ha there. It's kind of like the German, it's kind of in the back of your throat. Just try that with me, will you? Just ruach, try it, go ahead, ruach. So there's a little bit of the breathing there, and that word ruach can be translated as breath, wind or spirit. In the New Testament, which is written in Greek, we have the word panoima or panuma, or, if you just leave the P off in our language it's pneuma, from which we get pneumatics, compressed air, pneumonia, dealing with your lungs and your breathing. And this Greek word also can be translated as breath, wind and spirit.

Speaker 3: 6:45

And so I want to look at the Holy Spirit today from that perspective, those three different angles. They were able to see what God might be saying to us today. So let's begin at creation, that the breath of God at creation, and in Genesis 1, it says this 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. Tyler Staten in his book says it doesn't tell us here that the breath of God or the breathing of God was breathed onto creation, but he said maybe it's very possible that it was. It says simply that he hovered and if actually the word means a flutter, that the Spirit of God is fluttering over the original creation.

Speaker 3: 7:33

Where there was emptiness, formless and darkness, there was chaos and, regardless of whether he breathed or not, his presence brought order out of that chaos. And I'd like to suggest that the presence of the Holy Spirit brings order out of the chaos of our life. Do you have any chaos in your life today, Anything personal that you're dealing with that is chaotic. Do you have anything about our country in which might be concerned chaotic? Anything about the world, the world situation? There's a lot of chaos all over and I would like to suggest that the only real way that chaos can be dealt with is with the breath of God and with the breath of the Holy Spirit. God brings order out of chaos. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that the chaos is going to go away. What it does mean is that God gives us a process, a means by which we can handle and have a perspective of that chaos and find peace within ourselves.

Speaker 3: 8:39

We go on in creation and we find the creation of the human being, and it says in Genesis 2 that the Lord God formed a man and from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. God took some dust, he made clay. I don't know if he got a little water and sprinkled it in there, I don't know if he kind of spit on it a little bit and made a little bit of mud but he creates Adam and then he breathes into him and when he breathes into him, he gives him life. Breath is a gift of God, and it's not something we think about very often, is it Because we breathe automatically? The times we think about it is when it gets hindered for some reason. We get out of breath because we've exerted ourselves or trying to catch our breath. Maybe we get frightened and frantic and it takes our breath away. Maybe something happens and something goes over our face and it keeps us from doing it, from breathing properly.

Speaker 3: 9:44

I can think back of when I was a kid. I went over to Ronnie Foster's house and I climbed up in a tree in his front yard and I didn't realize that the limb that I was on was rotten and after a little while of playing up there and sitting on it it broke. After a little while of playing up there and sitting on it, it broke and I came done crashing down with that limb. Now, thankfully there was a bicycle underneath the limb, so it kind of broke my fall, but it also then threw me onto the ground and I went back on my back and it took my total breath. I couldn't breathe. I don't know if you ever had that experience where you fell and you just couldn't breathe and I got frantic. I thought I was going to ever had that experience where you fell and you just couldn't breathe and I got frantic. I thought I was going to die in that situation. But after a little period of time I got breathing again. It wasn't too much later that it happened to me again, falling out of a tree house and I fell on the ground, got my breath taken away and then I thought, okay, this is not fun, but you will breathe again. It gave me a little bit of comfort in that process.

Speaker 3: 10:46

So we don't think about our breath until something takes our breath away, in some sense of that word. God breathed into Adam and he became a living being. Whether it's physical or spiritual, breath is a gift of God. There's an old song and it's not like one of the old hymns, it's an old praise song. It says this is the air I breathe, your holy presence living in me, and that song is talking about that. The breath that we breathe, whether it's physical or spiritual, it's really a gift. It's a presence of God and at the end of our service we're going to have the worship team lead us in that song.

Speaker 3: 11:44

Then we find, as we go into the book of John, jesus got the disciples together. It's after the resurrection, in fact, two weeks ago, pastor Lawrence talked about this briefly and he gathered them together and, it says, and he breathed on them, received the Holy Spirit. Now I like to kind of put myself in those positions and wonder well, how did he do this? Did he come up to Nathaniel and say Nathaniel, be filled with the Holy Spirit, come over to Matthew, matthew, be filled with the Holy Spirit. Went over to John. Oh, I'm sorry, john, I breathe a little bit too hard on you. Let me wipe that off. He comes to Peter and he says be filled with the Holy Spirit. And then, after everybody has been breathed upon, he comes back to Peter and said you know, peter, I don't think it took I need to breathe again upon you. So I don't think it was exactly like that. I think it was a very sacred moment, but where he said he just be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 3: 12:59

Now, what's interesting is the word that's used here is not the pneuma word, it's actually the word emphasao, and emphasao that's the only time this word is found in the New Testament, and maybe you can see an English word, you know, there emphazema comes from this word, and so emphazema is when there's a problem with your breathing. Here Jesus breathes on them and he doesn't give them emphysema, he's trying to keep them from having spiritual emphysema. It's to be filled with the Holy Spirit that you might be full. Well, that's the concept of breath. Briefly, let's go into the second aspect of this and that is of wind.

Speaker 3: 13:48

Two passages I want us to look at. The first is in John 3. Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, teacher of the law, and Nicodemus doesn't understand what Jesus is saying. Jesus says you've got to be born again. He said how can I be born again? Am I going to go back to my mother's womb to do that? You see, people didn't understand Jesus all the time because he spoke in metaphors and they would take those metaphors literally and miss the idea. And here he is, a teacher of the law, and he still doesn't get that either. He's not understanding what Jesus says. And so Jesus gives another metaphor here and he says the wind blows where it pleases, you hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. Now there's a little play on words there. The word wind and the word Spirit are both the word pneuma and pneuma, and obviously they can't mean the same, or else he's just being redundant. And so that's why it's spirit here rather than wind, because it's talking about the Holy Spirit. He's making an image here.

Speaker 3: 14:57

The wind blows, we don't know where it comes from. Oh, it might come from the ocean. Maybe it comes down from Alaska. We might know that, but we don't know where it comes from. Or it might come from the ocean, maybe it comes down from Alaska. We might know that, but we don't know exactly where it came from and where it's going. Wind circulates around. Sometimes it might come back to us, sometimes maybe it is. We don't get any of the same air that we've had through all our life Because we don't know where it comes from or where it goes.

Speaker 3: 15:24

And he says that's the way the Holy Spirit is. Well, it's like a wind, and the wind comes and we're not even aware of it until we become a little bit more attuned. Where the Holy Spirit might be nudging us. He might be convicting us of our sin, he might be guiding us, and we didn't even realize that. Oh, that actually was God working in my life. In retrospect I see that, even though I didn't see it while it was actually happening, because the Spirit could surprise us in so many ways. It's a beautiful thought to see that the breath of God, the wind of God, blows.

Speaker 3: 16:02

Now I prefer gentle breezes. I don't think we get too many gentle breezes up here, it's a little bit stronger. My daughter loves that. She doesn't like hurricane nature but she likes it when the trees are going back and forth and the leaves are blowing, where I just kind of like the gentle breeze, it feels soft and relaxing on me.

Speaker 3: 16:27

But here we find in the book of Acts a different kind of wind here. So suddenly there was a sound like a blowing of a violent wind and it came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. And it came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. It was the Holy Spirit who came upon them and as a result of this the apostles started speaking in other languages. There's a debate here on the day of Pentecost Was the miracle in the hearing of the people that they heard in their language, or was was in the speaking of the apostles so that people would hear? My lean is to the speaking that they were filled with tongues, filled with languages that they didn't know, that the person speaking didn't know, but the people listening did know.

Speaker 3: 17:18

And all these different people from various countries hear about the message of God and they are in confusion. There is some chaos in that situation because it's like what's going on here? In fact some people are very skeptical and saying, oh, they're drunk. That's what's going on here, but they all got the same message and the same message is that just Jesus, who was crucified, is both Lord and Christ and the Spirit of God touched them in such a way that 3,000 people at one setting made commitments to Christ because the wind was blowing. You see, the Spirit was blowing and it touched people's lives and it changed them, was blowing and it touched people's lives and it changed them. So the Holy Spirit is the breath of God. The Holy Spirit is the wind of God who works in mysterious ways. But I want to talk a little bit about the Holy Spirit Himself.

Speaker 3: 18:18

We use the word Trinity. You've heard Trinity. It's not a Bible term. Trinity is a theological term to try to describe something in the Bible. The biblical term is Godhead or deity. That's how the New Testament talks about the nature of God, the Godhead, the deity. But in trying to understand Father, son and Spirit that we sang about. We use the word Trinity, tri-unity, three in one. It's a pretty difficult concept to understand and it's been debated through centuries because people are trying to wrap their heads around the fact that how can three be one?

Speaker 3: 19:01

But don't disparage too much if you don't understand that, because who understands the nature of God? I tell God regularly. I'm so sorry that I am so shallow in my understanding of you. I mean, just think about it for a second. There are 8 billion people in the world. God knows every one of them. He knows a number of hairs on every one of those people's heads. He knows what's in everybody's mind and what they think. Not only that, he is with 8 billion people and he's in heaven being worshiped by the angels, and he is creating in the universe, light years and thousands of light years away, and he is in all those places all the same time.

Speaker 3: 19:46

Can you understand a God like that? I can't comprehend that. But I do know something about God from creation. I do know something about how God works in people. I do know something about God from Scripture and I know a lot more about God through Jesus. Because if you want to know what God would say if he was here on earth, look at the words of Jesus. If you want to know what God would do if he were here on earth, look at the actions of Jesus. So there are some things that I can know and I know enough to have faith and I know enough to trust, but I don't comprehend what God is like. I think it's going to take us eternity to be able to fully comprehend that.

Speaker 3: 20:32

So we come to the Trinity, and so Judaism and Islam thinks that we're kind of pagan, we're polytheistic. In fact, it's kind of interesting that the Romans said that Christians were atheists and the reason they said Christians were atheists? Because Christians believed in one God and rejected all the other gods. And they were right. They're atheists about those other gods. I have a friend who is an atheist, who was a pastor, and it's a whole nother story. But he said you know, you're already an atheist, you already have millions of gods you don't believe in. I just want you not to believe in one more. That's what he's trying to do.

Speaker 3: 21:19

So they look at us as polytheistic and it makes sense from their perspective. You've got God, the Father, god the Son, god the Spirit. You have three, that's poly, that's more than one, and it's true mathematically that one plus one plus one equals three. But I'll have you think about it from this perspective one times, one times one is one. And so it gets me thinking. If, mathematically, you can have three integers, you can have three different numbers and you still end up with one, perhaps and I believe it is true, but perhaps it's also possible that God could be three but also be one, because it's true mathematically it could be true in regard to him as well. I don't totally understand that, but I believe it, and so I hope that's a helpful perspective. So he's part of the Godhead, he is a person, not an it, not just a force, but a reality of a person.

Speaker 3: 22:29

So how do we get connected to the Holy Spirit other than him blowing in and blowing out on us? And we find in the book of Acts verse 38, on the second chapter. On the day of Pentecost, peter says this. He says repent, be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. The Holy Spirit comes through the conversion experience. He comes to live within us. As Pastor Lawrence was talking about that. We have the Holy Spirit within us and therefore we're the temple of God. That's true individually, it's true collectively. And so he says you all know that we are the temple of God. And how did that happen? As the Holy Spirit comes into our life, when we accept Christ, we repent and we're baptized into Christ. Now let me get on a little tangent here for just a moment on this baptism, to try to explain something.

Speaker 3: 23:34

Some of you have come from a Catholic background, or some Episcopalian or Lutheran. All of us have heard the term sacrament, right, I mean, after all, sacramento is not too far away and sacramento comes from called sacramentos not too far away. And sacramento comes from its name, comes from the idea of sacrament. Now, sacrament also is not a biblical term, it is a theological term to try to describe holy things. But if you go back into the first century time, the Roman culture, here's what a sacrament was.

Speaker 3: 24:06

A sacramentum was an oath of allegiance and that oath of allegiance changed one's status. So someone is single, they take a sacramentum we use the word vow and then that sacramentum, that oath of allegiance, changes their status and then now they're married. Also, if somebody was a civilian, they take a sacramentum, an oath of allegiance to Caesar, they then become a military person, interestingly enough, at least for a nerd like me and that is that a civilian was known in the first century as a pagan. And so the Romans would say a person's a pagan, they take the sacramentum, the oath of allegiance, and they change their status and become a military person. Early Christians kind of adopted that flow and they said a non-believer is a pagan. They take the sacramentum of baptism in the Lord's Supper. It changes their status and they become a follower of Christ and a part of the family of God. And so that's kind of how that process took place and how that word is continued through all the years.

Speaker 3: 25:19

We receive the Holy Spirit through the conversion experience. He's working on us. He's always there, trying to do whatever he can, but he comes and resides when we make a commitment to follow Jesus. We also see that he's a comforter, a counselor. The Greek word is the word paraclete, which means to call to the side of, and sometimes it's translated as counsel. It doesn't mean counselor like a psychotherapist, it means a counselor like a lawyer, and a lawyer stands by your side to plead your case, and so the Holy Spirit stands by our side to plead our case to the Father. It is also translated as comforter, and that is somebody brings comfort when they stand by the side of someone, when they're with them and they help them. The Holy Spirit is our comforter to stand by our side, to help us in our time of need, and so His presence gives us comfort, his presence gives us confidence before God, not because of our goodness, but because of the goodness of Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Speaker 3: 26:45

So what's the takeaways that we could have here? The breath of God brings order out of chaos, and so my encouragement to you today that, in the midst of whatever chaos that you're in, whatever chaos you're concerned about that, you would open your lives and your hearts to the Holy Spirit so he can bring order out of that. Even if the chaos is not taken away, he can give you a way to find peace and comfort in the midst of that chaos. Secondly, some of us need a fresh wind. Our faith is stagnant, we're stuck and we need a blowing of the Spirit, like on the day of Pentecost, to give us a new perspective and give us a new excitement about our faith. And if that's you, I would encourage you to be open to the leading of the Spirit, to give you a fresh wind within your faith, and then I would also encourage you always to find comfort and counsel from the Holy Spirit. He's there to stand beside you, to take your case and to comfort you in your time of need. I'm going to pray and then the worship team is going to come out and lead us in the song.

Speaker 3: 28:05

This is the Air I Breathe. The song this is the Air I Breathe, and my prayer for you is that you might be filled with the Holy Spirit. Dear Jesus, thank you for what you've done for us and thank you, holy Spirit, that even though we don't totally understand how you function and work yet, we know some things about you and we're grateful and I pray that you would breathe upon each person, as here today, and for some of us, we need a rushing wind to become convinced and I pray that that would happen. And some of us are hurting today. There are sickness, there's relationship problems, there's finances, all kinds of things, there's concerns about our world conditions, and I just pray that we might find comfort in you, knowing that even out of this chaos, there can be order because you're in our life. I pray this in your name Amen.