Exploring My Strange Bible - I am who I am Part 5: Spirit as a Life Giver

Episode Date: November 20, 2017

If someone didn’t really grow up in a tradition that emphasized the spirit of God, then these are kind of abstract and difficult things for people to incorporate into their thinking and life experience. This is going to explore different facets of the biblical portrayal of the person in work of the spirit. This first teaching is mostly hanging out on page one of the bible and then following the thread of the spirit as creator and giver of life throughout the Old and New Testaments.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. Well, in this episode, we're continuing this series called I Am Who I Am. These were a number of teachings I did back when I was a pastor at Door of Hope a number of years ago.

And this whole series was taking a long time to explore the biblical portrait of God in the Bible. So we started with the depiction of Yahweh in the Hebrew scriptures, and then to see how the gospel accounts in the New Testament portrayed Jesus as the physical embodiment of Yahweh, the God of Israel. And then in this last kind of leg of the series, this is actually going to be six episodes, we wanted to pause and take a longer time to explore the portrait of the Spirit throughout the Old and New Testaments, both in my own personal experience and I have found in the experience of many others,

if somebody didn't grow up in a Christian tradition that really emphasized the presence and work and power of the Spirit of God, most people, if you haven't grown up in that kind of environment, who the Spirit is, the way someone interacts with the Spirit, is aware of, keeps in step with, or is empowered by the Spirit, these are all actually really abstract and difficult things for people to incorporate into their thinking and life experience. And so we just wanted to camp out here. There's going to be a whole bunch of messages exploring different facets of the biblical portrayal of the person and work of the Spirit. So this first teaching is just mostly camping out on page one of the Bible

and then following the thread of the Spirit as creator and giver of life throughout the Old and New Testaments. So that's what we're going to do. So let's dive in and learn together. I don't know what comes into your mind when you hear just even the word apart from God or Christianity or anything, when you hear the word spirit, this is a very interesting concept, I think, or language, concept or word in our culture, the concept of spirit. I think probably what comes into most of our minds is like something invisible. You can't see it. It's a spirit. It's connected to someone or something. And then we just kind of lose interest or whatever and start thinking about your cup of coffee and how good it is, or something like that. I don't know. So, so spirit, it's, it's kind of an illusory term in our language. And, and when Christians come

to talk about God's spirit in the Bible, the, the spirit in the Bible is, is either just called the spirit, God's spirit. It's sometimes called the spirit of Jesus. And most often it's called, especially in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit. The four most common names the Spirit goes by. And, you know, I think, you know, we could do interesting word association. Actually, it'd be fascinating to sit down with everyone and say, what's the first three things that come to your mind when I say Holy Spirit? And that would just be fascinating, right, and to record everybody's answers. So I think all kinds of things would come into our minds, and this probably depends on your background and your story. So for some of us, maybe if you have no real framework for

Christianity or the church or whatever, you just speak, I don't, the Holy Spirit does not. I remember my grandpa used to say Holy Ghost. That was kind of weird. Ghost in the Bible? That's weird. Whatever. Maybe you don't have any associations. Maybe some of you, what you think of is maybe friends or family or maybe your own story that were a part of a Christian tradition that really, really emphasized the person and the reality of the Holy Spirit. And maybe even it was a part of a tradition, maybe like what I grew up in when I was a little kid, that there were a lot of what, at least to me as a child, were quite bizarre and extreme behaviors in Sunday gatherings connected with the Holy Spirit. I will say no more, but if you know what I'm talking about,

you know what I'm talking about. So there's that. And then there are other Christian traditions that maybe give lip service or talk about the Holy Spirit, but for the most part, there's nothing experiential, existential, or mystical about their experience of faith in Jesus. It's just kind of like read the Bible and grit your teeth and pray and, you know, that kind of thing. And so it doesn't seem like there's any vitality or living reality that people are in touch with. Those are kind of the two extremes. And so what we want to be, what we're striving to be, is a community that continues to ground ourselves

in the scriptural vision of who the Spirit is. And I think it kind of forces us to walk some kind of middle ground, which is why we want to take as long as we need to, to explore God's Spirit. And so what I wanted to do today is just kind of clear the ground and explore what I think, if you read through the Scriptures, what is one of the first things that should come into our minds when we think of God's Spirit?

In the Scriptures, what's one of the first, most primary things we think, Holy Spirit, God's Spirit? Oh, yes, this. And what is this? So, oh, wow. Thank you. You're just volunteering. Okay.

So I'd be interested to hear your responses, but first I want to tell you a story about slugs, and I think that will help us. That will help us. So one of the wonderful things about, this is another story about slugs, and I think that will help us. That will help us. So one of the wonderful things about, this is another story about my children. I'm so sorry, you guys. Actually, I'm not sorry to tell stories. My life is so boring, and raising little children is so all-consuming. I don't have anything else interesting in my life to talk about. So what my kids say and do is the most interesting thing in my life right now. So slugs.

So my wife loves to garden. And so, you know, it's really fun. We're out. We have a yard this spring for the first time in a long time. And so we're out there digging in the dirt. And so, you know, we're out there in the last few weeks. There's been a lot of rain. It's really muddy. And what creatures come out? Lots of creatures come out, but the slugs are out for sure. And so a few weeks ago, after one of the heavy rains, my son and I went out to go splash in puddles down at the corner and we were coming back and right outside the curb of our front, we saw a slug. And he's really, this is the first spring he's really paid attention to these fascinating creatures, right, these slugs. And so just, I had to capture the moment. Now, you might see what's actually

happening in this picture, but don't jump the gun yet. So can you see the little slug and his little trail? It's kind of a small one there, that little dark spot there, and he's got a little trail. So we were watching the slug, I mean, you know, for a solid 30 seconds or so, which is a long time for a two-year-old. And then he asked me this question that just stunned me. He asked me, why is it going, Dada? And I thought to myself, why is it going? Surely he doesn't mean that. And I said, oh, you mean, mean where is it going i think it's going

you know into the grass or something like that and he said no why is it going dada and i was like what are you really asking me that question right now are you asking me why is this thing here and what is energizing this little thing and what makes it go and what really is behind everything that makes all this world go and so on and wherever that's why I'm like is he asking me that question right now I think is he asking me that question and so by the time I really came to and like wanted to pursue it with him it was a good 10 seconds and the mind of a two-year-old is a jungle, of course. And so ten seconds is like he's already on to the next thing or whatever.

And so I'm like, you know, yeah, why is it going? And then what he probably started to do would be like, let me spit on it, Dadad. And so he's starting to, I don't know if you can see, he's starting to spit on it. Spit on it right there. And then it was over. The moment was gone. He was not, he didn't even remember that he had asked that question or whatever, and then he tried stepping on it or something like that. So I don't actually know what he meant when he asked that question. It could have been that he just meant, like, why is it going that way as opposed to that way? as opposed to that way. But what I would like to think, because you want to think your kid is probably smarter than they actually are, is that he really was asking. Something fired inside his little brain that was asking, what makes this thing go? It's such a strange little creature. It's the first year we've ever really paid attention to them. Data, what is this thing? Why is it going?

That is such a good question. And it's the same question that I think happens to most of us as we continue to grow up and you go to the zoo or you go hiking or whatever and you're like, what on earth is happening here? What's driving all of this? What makes all of this life and creatures and biodiversity, what makes it go? And I think that if you were to have asked that question of Jesus or one of, you know, Jewish contemporaries, somebody in Jesus' time who had grown up immersed in the Hebrew Scriptures, you would get a very clear answer to that question from within the scriptural worldview. And the answer would be, oh, it's the Spirit.

Why is that thing going? Oh, I'll tell you why. It's God's Spirit that makes that thing go. Grab your Bibles and turn with me to page one. I always love saying turn to page one of the Bible. Page one. And we'll explore the Holy Spirit and slugs in Genesis chapter one. What makes that thing go?

We're going to, just for a few minutes here, cover territory that we covered really briefly way back at the beginning of this series. In the first verses of the Bible and the concept of spirit, though we're going to turn over a few stones here that we didn't turn over a few months ago. So Genesis chapter 1. Let's just read the first three verses. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty and darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God was there hovering over the waters. And God said, let there be light and there was light. Okay, let's pause, just totally, just stopping right in the middle of a really interesting storyline here. So,

there's all kinds of debates and discussions and so on. We're just not even, let's just not even go there. It's just not even that interesting right now. And so, there's a lot of questions you probably want to ask or whatever. I just want to focus in on one question, and it's the same question we focused in on when we look at this a couple months ago, and that's the question of who. Which you might think is really simple, but once you actually start reading it, the who question is really, really interesting right here. And so this is about somehow the authoring or the origination of the heavens and the earth and of creation and so on. Who's the one at work here? Who's working to create? First sentence of the Bible, God. Who else? Spirit of God. Now that's really interesting.

And this text has caused Jewish readers and Christian readers to scratch their heads for thousands of years right now. What is going on right here? Why doesn't it just say God? So you have God, a very kind of bare statement with no details whatsoever. God created the heavens and the earth. But then you have this dark, watery chaos, formless and empty. Whatever formless and empty and dark means, does that sound good to you? Is that a place where you can go, as I say, build a park, build a neighborhood and play with your kids and have a barbecue with your friends? No, no. Whatever this dark, chaotic wasteland is, it's uninhabitable for life to flourish.

And that's what Genesis 1 is all about. Aside from all the debates and the discussions, it begins not with nothing. It begins with a dark, watery wasteland chaos, and God and Spirit of God are there to bring order and beauty and a garden out of the dark, chaotic wasteland. That's Genesis chapter 1. So who is there? God is there, and then you have Spirit of God there. And what is Spirit of God doing? Hovering. Hovering. This is such a strange concept. And this word is used in the Hebrew scriptures very rarely. The only other times that this word is used, it's used in poetry to describe

a bird hovering. And in a beautiful, one of the oldest poems in the Hebrew Bible, Deuteronomy chapter 32, it's Yahweh depicted as a bird hovering over its nest, hovering over its young, which is Israel, as he's going to rescue them out of Syria and Egypt. And so this is very, you have this, you have God creating, and what you have in the beginning is a dark, watery chaos, and then you have Spirit of God, like they're swooping in and hovering over this dark chaos, and then things start to get really good. So I taught you this word a couple months ago, but we're going to do it again. Do you remember the Hebrew word for Spirit? Yeah, good job, you guys. Look at you, rock stars. All right, so Hebrew word for spirit is ruach, and you have to, it's the KH letter, which is the,

you have to breathe through it, clear your throat. When you say it, let's all do it together. Ruach, ruach, right? You don't, unless there's spittle hitting the front of your lips, it's not quite, not quite good. So this is the Hebrew word in the Old Testament. Also the, in the New Testament, which is not written in Hebrew, it's written in Greek, it's a different word, but with the same kind of nuances of meaning that we're going to see right here. It's the word pneuma. Pneuma. And the silent P right there. Pneuma.

Why don't you say it with me? Very good. Class. So pneuma. So think, you know, whatever. We have this word in English, or at least this part of this word. Where do we use this? Yeah, like pneumatic drills or something, or hammered

nail guns. I don't know. Whatever. You can tell I'm not very handy. So, pneumatic. So, ruach and pneuma. Now, here's what's really interesting is that both of these words have been shaped by kind of the Jewish-Israelite mindset here for what these words mean and what they're about. So ruach. So ruach, one of the main ways it gets translated is spirit, but what does that mean exactly? What is spirit? Now this word also gets used in a lot of different ways.

I had you do this two months ago, but do it again because it'll help it sing. And put your hand in front of your mouth, and you'll get your morning breath reflected right back at you. That'll be pleasant. So let's say hello together. Hello. Okay, now did you feel that, that warm warmth on your hand? What is that? Warmth. On your hand? What is that? That's your ruach. That's your ruach right there. So how would you translate that in English? It's your breath. Yeah, breath. So this, both ruach and pneuma, when you see the word breath in your Bibles, it's almost always the same exact word. God's Spirit is God's breath. What does that even mean? So, let's say, for example, let's say, you know, service gets over and you decide to go take a walk. Let's say it's going to be sunny after our service gets over, right? Let's just pretend, right? And it will be by the end of the week, right? It's supposed

to be 80 degrees. Holy cow. Anyway, so let's say you go for a walk in Irving Park and you crest over the hill. I really recommend walking in Irving Park. It's a wonderful park. And let's say you crest over the hill right here and then it kind of flattens out and you get up near the dog park area and you see someone lying on the ground. And maybe from a distance, they're lying on the ground, they're not moving, it seems like they're unconscious and you start running towards them. What's one of the first one or two things you're going to do? You're going to check their pulse maybe.

Maybe that might be the second thing. What's the first thing that would be way easier to do? You'd check whether they're breathing. How would you do that? How's it depicted in the movies, at least? I don't know. Whatever. You might put your ear right next to their mouth, right?

Now, if it's a cold day, if it's a really cold day, and you happen to have a little pocket mirror with you, just saying, you might, you know, what would you do with the pocket mirror? What could you do? Also check their breathing. Yeah, you could hold it right there, and what would you see start blowing up on the mirror if they're alive? You would see their breath, their ruach. So in other words, ruach is life. How do you know whether someone's alive or not? Well, do they have ruach? If you have ruach, it means you're alive. If you do not have ruach, you're not alive, right? Does the slug have ruach in it? Yeah, yeah, it has ruach. Every living creature has ruach. Every human has ruach.

Every creature has ruach. It's the principle of life. So whatever you want to say, you know, and we might say, well, actually, it's, you know, the exhalation of moisture, a bit of H2O and carbon dioxide and so on and so on. No, stop it. Stop it, right? So that's, so you say, well, actually, it's the exhalation of moisture, a bit of H2O and carbon dioxide and so on. And so, no, stop it. Stop it. So you're, well, that's fine. Yes, actually do think like that. But when you're reading in the Bible, don't think like that. Because you're importing your modern worldview into these ancient texts.

So think through how this works from 3,000 years ago. Your Ruach, it's mysterious. It's invisible. But it is a number one indicator that this creature is living, has life. It's inner life and vitality. And so, when the Hebrews and the Jewish people, when they learned to speak Greek, when they wanted to speak of God's inner life, of God's sustaining inner vitality, they speak of God's ruach, by which they don't mean the old man in the sky who has morning breath.

What they mean is a being who's invisible, but who is behind all life as we know it. And when we speak of God's spirit, we're speaking of his personal presence here, right here in the midst, hovering in creation, and it's God's own inner life that energizes and gives life to all living things. Okay, now this should raise all kinds of questions for us, three at least that I want to address. First of all, so what is God's Ruach? It's God's inner life.

We're using this word of Ruach, His inner energizing life, and it's present right here in the creation. Now, look back down at Genesis 1 with me. How does, well, first of all, look at verse 2 again. What's the Ruach doing? What's God's inner life doing? It's hovering. So that's, I mean, that's amazing. That's cool. But like, what's it doing? Well, it's just hovering. It's like it's waiting. And what's it waiting for? How does God's ruach work in the world, and what does it do? And what is it that begins God and his ruach beginning to transform this dark chaos into a beautiful garden that's ordered and so on?

What's the first thing God does? He speaks. Look at verse 3. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. Genesis 1 is broken up into a seven-day structure, but also ten acts of God speaking. And I had you do this last time, but it's just good. Again, put your hand up to your mouth again. Say hello. Now, you can maybe kind of feel, I'll do this, sorry. You can maybe kind of feel your Ruach just like not talking. But when you talk, what definitely happens? Your Ruach, this Ruach comes out.

So this is all connected here. So you have God, but then you have God's Ruach hovering there. It's like it's waiting. And then all of a sudden, it's God's Word that releases the Ruach out to begin its creative, order-bringing, life-giving work. Are you with me here? This is all connected through the imagery here. It's all very intentional. There's a connection between God, His ruach, and His Word, all working together to bring order and beauty out of the chaos. And so this connection, how does God's ruach work in the world? And in the first sentences of the Bible, it's like it's released or given its marching orders by God's Word. And this concept has very ancient

roots in the Scriptures. I'm going to be just showing you a bunch of Scriptures on the screen here as we build out the scriptural portrait of the Spirit. So Psalm 33, for example, it's a beautiful psalm. I highly recommend it. There's this whole section about the word of Yahweh. It says, the word of Yahweh is right. It's true. He is faithful in all he does. The Lord loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of his covenant love. That is a line worth pondering. By the word of Yahweh, the heavens were made,

and their starry host by the ruach of his mouth. Now, you can just even maybe guess right there, in your English translations, how are they likely to translate ruach? Which one? Probably breath, because we're talking about Yahweh's mouth as a metaphor, right, for his word. But it's clearly looking back to Genesis 1 and 2, and it's looking at God's spirit as his breath. So there's this conception. You have Yahweh, and then you have Yahweh's word expressing his will and his purpose, acting, but it's Yahweh's ruach that's there, the agent doing the transforming work. You guys with me here? So here's what I'm inviting us to do. Whatever your understanding, again, of the Holy Spirit and what, you know, we have all kinds

of conceptions from our growing up, what I'm inviting us to do is to actually replace those experiences and so on with a biblical vision. And the biblical vision of the Spirit, first and foremost, literally from the first page of the Bible, is it's God's personal presence of his inner life that, as we're going to see, is everywhere present. And the primary thing that it does is bring life out of darkness and bring order and beauty out of chaos. That's what God's Ruach does. And that's how it works in the world. Which raises another question. Okay, so you were walking up to the park and all of a sudden you find, like, holy cow, the guy's breathing. It was

collapsed on the ground. He's breathing, and in fact, he didn't lose his ruach, which is really good news. It's a bummer to lose your ruach, right? And I suppose you wouldn't really even know when you did, because you would lose consciousness. And so it raises the question, like, okay, so all living beings, including humans, like, we have ruach. Where did you get that? Where'd you get your ruach? Where'd it come from? Did you make it for yourself? Like, where? Okay, so we have God has ruach, but where did I get my ruach? And how does a slug have ruach? Dada, why is it going? That's essentially what he's asking here. Where did that thing get its ruach? Turn the page, Genesis chapter 2. Genesis 2, actually starting in verse 4 of Genesis 2, there's a distinct world origin story that's

set right alongside Genesis chapter 1, and they're different, but they're also complementary, and so on. And so you had humans made in God's image in Genesis 1, and Genesis 2, it offers a different type of portrait about the origin of human beings. Look down at verse 5, chapter 2, verse 5. Now, no shrub had yet appeared on the earth, no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth because there was no one there to work, to till the ground. But rather, streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. I'm going to stop real quick here. So, this is the depiction of, this is Genesis 2's

depiction of the chaos, of the formless and void. It's just this kind of wasteland, and there's water, but there's no cultivated farms and fields and neighborhoods and so on, because who do you need to make that kind of stuff? You need humans. You need humans to make that kind of stuff. You need humans. You need humans to make that kind of stuff. And so where does the story go next? Verse 7, then the Lord God formed a human. Or some of yours might have Adam, or some of your translations might have man. This is another good one here. So the Hebrew word for humanity, it's the word Adam, Adam, from which we, of course, get our name, Adam, Adam. So Adam is just a Hebrew word that means humanity. Now, there's a really amazing wordplay that's going to go on here in verse 7. Keep reading. So then the Lord God formed Adam from the dust or the dirt of the ground. I have ground here in NIV. Any other translations there? Of the dust of the,

we all have ground? Anybody have earth? Dust of the earth? Nobody. All right then. So we all have ground. Dust of the ground. You with me? Okay. So here's the word play. Because the word for ground, which means soil or earth, it's the word adamah. So you're kind of supposed to be like, oh, that's very clever, right? So he makes Adam from the dirt of the Adama. And the word, so literally, Adam is human, means earthling, literally. And actually, so does our word human. Our word human comes from the Latin word homo, which is connected to the Latin word for dirt, which is human. We have our English word humus. Have you heard that

word for dirt before? Humus? Human. Humus. It's the same exact in English from Latin. It's this connection. In other words, it's this awareness that human, we are earthlings. We're dirt in the most positive, complimentary way possible. Because the earth is amazing. And so it's a compliment. So we come from the dirt, and we have an intimate connection with our origins, woven into creation and to the dirt itself. And actually, how do you know the human beings come from the dirt? What do we turn back into after you put grandpa in the family tomb and

eight months goes by? And what happens? Turns back into dirt, except for the bones, and then you put those in a box. We come from the dirt, we go back into the dirt. So the images all are so cool here. So the Lord God formed earthling from the dust of the earth. So we're dirt, but then there's also this awareness that human beings are something more than dirt. And what is that? What does God do into the dirt? He breathes. He breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, and earthling, dirt, becomes a living creature. A living creature. Now, there's a whole bunch of other interesting things going on here. I'll just point out a couple of them. So that word formed, then the Lord God formed a man. It's a poetic image. This word formed is used in the Bible only ever to describe an artisan and someone who works with clay and makes pots. So this is describing, so literally one who sits at, like gets at the wheel, gets a lump,

and starts spinning the wheel and forming and molding it, that is this word form. And so God's depicted here as forming humans out of dirt, like a potter spinning this lump, this shape that's human. And so this is somehow like there's a divine purpose at work in the origins of humanity. We come from the dirt, but we are not simply dirt. We are dirt and divine ruach. Ruach. Where did you get your ruach, according to Genesis 2 verse 7? according to Genesis 2 verse 7. You did not make it for yourself. It's a gift. Your ruach is a gift, and you get it on loan, essentially, from God's own ruach. Now, this doesn't mean necessarily that at this point in the story that God has taken up residence in the human or something like that. It's a very simple point. Why does it go da-da? What's happening here? What's with the birds and

the humans and the worms and the slugs? What's going on here? What's driving all of this? And Jesus, immersed in the Hebrew scriptures, his contemporaries, they would have said, Ruach, Ruach. What is it that animates you, and where did you get your Ruach? It's a gift. I didn't get it for myself. If you've had the chance to be present when a little human being emerges and takes its first breath of Ruach. It's like watching aliens or something like that. It's just the craziest. It's so crazy. It's the craziest thing in the world. Because these little creatures, as they're making this transition here, they actually, for the first like two seconds, they appear lifeless. But then they cough, scream, ah, you you know this whole thing and then they take their breath and you're

like holy cow ruach ruach this thing's full of ruach right and it's it's that it's that question right here so this is a very common conception where dirt and divine breath just some other biblical these are all poetry in the hebrew scriptures but other biblical passages that explore this for example uh the poet in the book of Job, in a couple different places, the line that says, the ruach of God has made me. And the breath of the Almighty, it's a different word, breath, there in the second line, but it's related. A breath of the Almighty gives me life. And he says later, he says, if it were God's intention, if he withdrew his ruach and his breath, humanity, Adam, would perish altogether. Mankind would return back to the dust. So it's

this idea that we're all living on borrowed ruach. My life does not originate with me. It's a gift. Every day I wake up and I breathe in, it's God's gift to me to exist in his world, because without ruach, you and I are goners. Now, it gets even more interesting, because are human beings the only creatures with ruach? No, they're not. are human beings the only creatures with ruach? No, they're not.

They're not the only creatures because my son could recognize that fact by looking at the slug. And so in one of the most beautiful poems in all of the Hebrew scriptures, Psalm 104, which I recommend you go hike, drive 30 minutes up the gorge, go hike up one of the dozens of trails at the top of waterfall, and read Psalm 104 aloud to yourself, and it will be a transcendent experience. So Psalm 104 is just exploring God's relationship to what we call the natural world, His creation, and the interplay, and the beauty, and the goodness, and so on. And so at the last end of the, latter end of the poem here, in verse 24, it begins and says, How many are your works, Yahweh? In wisdom you made them all. The earth is full of your creatures.

All creatures look to you to give them their food at the proper time. When you give it to them, they gather it up. When you open your hand, they're satisfied with good things. Now, let's go back here. Sorry, let's stop right here. So, in terms of the biblical conception here, this is, again, the vision of the reality that Jesus would have grown up with in the scriptures. Is there any concept here of God, like, kind of winding up the world to just work according to laws or something and then just takes off on a really long vacation? Is that the concept of God here? Can you see, if you're familiar with the teachings of Jesus, can you see Jesus's teachings emerge

right here? When Jesus talks about birds receiving their clothing and their food right from Yahweh, when Jesus talks about the flowers of the field being provided for, Jesus is teaching a vision of God's continual involvement in the world. He doesn't wind it up, create it, and then take off. He's actually intimately involved and infinitely generous. How do you know God is involved and generous? Dude, go take a walk in Irving Park on a sunny day, all right? And look at leaves and flowers and little dogs playing and children, and you're like, holy cow, ruach, ruach. This thing is amazing. It's amazing. Now, it gets interesting here as the poem goes on. So it says, when you hide your face, creatures are terrified. When you take away their ruach, they die and return to the dust.

It's this conception here without ruach, dirt. But when you send your ruach, they're created. And you renew the face of the ground. Now just stop. Just look at that last line of poetry right there. So we're describing death, aren't we? What is death? It's losing your ruach. It turns back to God. So what is this last line of poetry about God sending the ruach? What's it talking about? If the line above it's about death, what is this line about? Birth. Birth, right? So in other words, what we're asked to consider is that when like a little, when like, you know, great-grandpa deer passes away,

a little lion gets him or something, and he breathes out his ruach, he returns to the dirt. But when mama deer is out there squatting in the field and giving birth to a new little deer, and it takes its first inhale of ruach, according to the poem, what's happening right there? That's God sending his ruach. In other words, in this conception, God sending his ruach is not just something that happened a long time ago

and then we are autonomous and continue giving ruach to each other and so on. It's as if God is actually continually involved in providing ruach at the birth of every little creature. I've never come across a wild animal giving birth in a field, but wouldn't that be awesome if you did? And if you did, Psalm 104 would encourage you to say, that's ruach. That's God's ruach happening right there. And it's an act of creation and God's renewing the earth. and it's an act of creation, and God's renewing the earth. God is continually involved in bringing new life, and it's all connected to God's ruach. How you guys doing? It gets even better. So, Paul the Apostle, he was raised in the Scriptures. He was clearly aware of this. And so,

in the New Testament, Paul the Apostle, he goes to the city of Athens, Greece, and he wants to talk with philosophers. And he wants to find some common ground with them in their conceptions of the world and of God and so on. And so Paul begins to talk in ways that would make sense to them. And look at the way Paul talks to them. This is in Acts 17. He says, listen, the God who made the world and everything in it, he's the Lord of heaven and earth. God created the heavens and the earth. He doesn't actually literally live in temples, right, built by human hands. And in fact, he's not served by human hands as if he needed anything. Actually, it's the opposite, because he himself is the one who gives everyone life and breath and everything else. And here he uses the word

pneuma. What is the first thing? When you think of spirit, God's spirit, the spirit of Jesus, Holy Spirit, what's the first thing that should come into our minds? If I'm a Christian, follower of Jesus, I'm trying to discipline my mind to think truly about God. Here it is. It's on page one of the Bible, and it just spills out from there. Who is God's Ruach? God's Ruach, it's God's second self. God's Ruach. God's Ruach, it's God's second self. It's God's personal life-giving presence that shares his own autonomous inner life, and it's out there hovering in the midst of the creation,

bringing and giving life and existence and sustaining the existence of all living things. The Spirit of God is about life in the Bible. The Spirit of God is God's personal presence whose basic mission in the world is to mediate His life-giving love and energy to His creation. That's what the Spirit does in the Hebrew Scriptures. Isn't this amazing? I think it's amazing, right? And these were not connections that were ever really made for me by my own experiences or whatever in growing up, but you read the biblical passages, and it's just so beautiful and compelling. Okay, so now this raises a third and final question, which will kind of usher us into the Gospel of Luke for a couple minutes. The Ruach is God's personal presence, his inner life

communicated out into the world, at least in the Hebrew Scriptures. And it's what animates, where did you get your Ruach? We have it on loan and so on. But some of us might be hearing or thinking, this sounds a lot like the Force, doesn't it? Star Wars, anybody? Come on, was anybody raised on Star Wars? I try to bring it up as many chances as I can, right? So you might be like, well, this is very similar. You know, I have this co-worker, and she's really, really into kind of New Age, Gaia, Mother Earth, spirituality, and you're like, that kind of sounds very similar

to that. And there's a sense in which you're right. And there's a sense in which there's a big difference. But here's what's fascinating, I think, in terms of available worldviews in our culture right now. So you have like an atheistic worldview that says, you know, there's nothing that exists other than what can be discerned through the five senses or through math or something like that, and there's no purpose, there's no divine being or whatever. And then on the opposite end of the spectrum, you have a set of worldviews that fall under the umbrella called pantheism.

You guys familiar with this term? Pantheism, which is another, just a couple of Greek words, pan means everything, theism means God. Atheism is no God at all. Pantheism is everything is God. And so this is many, many, some Eastern religions, the Christianity is an Eastern religion too, and it is not pantheism,

but many Eastern religions, nature religions, New Age spirituality, religions, nature religions, New Age spirituality. And so the divine energy is infused into the rock and the tree and the worm. And where does it get its ruach and its energy? Well, it's from the divine. And all of us are emanations of the divine or something like that. You guys know this worldview. It's quite prominent in Portland, Oregon. And so, actually, Christianity is more similar to that than it is to atheism. But with a crucial, crucial difference. Crucial, crucial difference. What makes Christian theism different from pantheism.

So remember that scene in Star Wars. It's where Luke and Obi-Wan Kenobi, as they first meet out in the deserts of Tatooine, and Obi-Wan's trying to get Luke to learn about his history and so on, and he mentions the Force. And Luke says in a very juvenile voice, The Force? You're like, oh, what's the Force? And it's this little line Obi-Wan says, the Force.

Well, it's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, it penetrates us, says, the force. Well, it's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, it penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together. I'm the only one who knows these lines. Come on, you know these lines. All right, so it's an energy that is emanated by all living things, surrounds us, penetrates us, binds the galaxy together. In a pantheistic worldview, the divine is an energy. It's almost always in these worldviews an impersonal force. And it's either generated or emanated by all living things, which means you have the divine energy emanating out of you, and so does the worm

and the rock and the tree and so on. And so very often in these worldviews, you end up venerating or worshiping or giving allegiance to different things, rocks or trees, and it's a really big tree and it's amazing and we get our fruit and our food from it. It must be an emanation of the divine and so on. And so that's what's going on in these worldviews. In a Christian theist worldview, there's one crucial difference. And it's very similar. There is a divine energy that's energizing and vitalizing everything we see around us. And it is not an impersonal force, we see around us. And it is not an impersonal force, however, our conviction. Our conviction is that that is an energy that's the generous, loving gift of a person, of a being, a personal being. And that personal being is knowable and has a history and has a story and has been revealing to his creatures

why we're all here and why we're energized in the first place. Does that different make sense to you? What it ought to do is enable us to talk to our pantheist neighbors and co-workers and actually go on hikes together and just be amazed and then it gives you a chance to talk about the person that you think is behind all of this and they're like, that's cool for you, you know?

And whatever, then just keep hanging out and be their friends and talk about the person that you think is behind all of this, and they're like, that's cool for you, you know, and whatever, like, then keep hanging out and be their friends and talk about it, but that's, there's actually an enormous amount of overlap here, because who can, who can deny, even an atheist, who can deny sitting on Mount Tabor, looking over the West Hills, and you get the spring sunsets, you guys know what I'm talking about here, and there's the, you know, the evening birds, and the amazing clouds, and the orange, silver, purple lining, and so on. And you're just like, oh, it's so amazing, right? It's this transcendent, sacred moment. And you and your pantheist co-worker can both sit there and be like, there is something more going on here. There's something bigger than all of us, at which point as a Christian I would say,

and that something is someone. And that someone has made themselves known to us in the person of Jesus. Flip forward with me to the Gospel of Luke. We're going to spend a couple of minutes in the Gospel of Luke and then land the plane. How are you guys doing? Good. I'm doing good too. We're going to spend a couple of minutes in the Gospel of Luke and then land the plane. How are you guys doing? Good.

I'm doing good, too. Luke chapter 1. So in the story of the Bible, this is very briefly, human beings who exist as just a pure gift, the gift of God's ruach animates us and sustains us. And what we do with the gift of our existence through sin and selfishness is just think that somehow we exist for ourselves. We take our borrowed existence and borrowed breath and turn our lives into our own little kingdoms calling the shots ourselves.

And it creates a world that is the way that it is. A bunch of creatures living on borrowed breath, ruining God's good world and ruining each other. And so God's whole mission throughout the story of the Bible is to send Jesus, who is God's own second self, to come among us and to be the kind of human being that none of us are. Luke chapter 1, verse 26. It's a familiar story. Christmas. Reading a Christmas story right after Easter. Verse 26. In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary Mary. Angel went to her and said,

Greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you. Mary was troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this would be, but the angel said to her, Don't be afraid. Mary, you've found favor with God. You will conceive,

i.e., new life is about to be generated within you. You're going to conceive and give birth to a son. You are to call him Jesus. He'll be great, called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. He'll reign over Jacob's descendants forever. His kingdom will never end. Mary responds with a very, very good question. Right? Hmm. How can this be? Because, you know,

you do know, like I've never, right? So I am a virgin. How can new life be created out of an environment that is not yet ready to bring life out yet? This is a womb that isn't prepared to bring life out. How can life be created out of conditions where you would never think life could come into being here. The angel answered, who's going to come upon you? What does it say? The Spirit. Have you ever wondered why it just doesn't say God? And you know exactly why now, don't you?

Because the Spirit is in the business of personally entering into environments where life cannot flourish and bringing life. Just generating life. The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High, this is so great, will do what? It's like this. The Holy Spirit comes. Does this look, I'm sorry, I look like an idiot, I'm sorry. But does this, does this, does this ring any bells right here?

The Holy Spirit coming in. Yeah, it's all intentional, you guys. It's all intentional. The power of the Most High will overshadow you. The Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God. In other words, this is the moment where humanity, while it exists on borrowed ruach, has actually begun to die spiritually because of our rejection of our Creator. And so God enters the story in the person of Jesus. The

Father sends the Son to become a human being, and the Son enters the human race through the power and the hovering, life-giving presence of the Spirit. It's amazing. It's beautiful. Turn the page, chapter 3. Chapter 3. I dare you, get a pink highlighter, read through Luke's two-part work in the New Testament, which is the book of Luke and then the book of Acts,

and just highlight every time the Spirit is mentioned, and your pages will be bleeding with pink. The Holy Spirit is highlighted in Luke and Acts more than any other New Testament writing, and it's all always really cool, amazing stuff. Look at chapter 3, verse 21. When all the people were being baptized by John the Baptist down in the Jordan. Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, the heavens were opened, and who should come down? The Holy Spirit descended on him in physical form like what? Like a bird. Like a bird.

Like a dove. So again, you have the Holy Spirit now coming down, hovering over the waters. Who is this one that the Holy Spirit is hovering over? It's this one who is going to bring about new creation for all of humanity. And the voice, it says, the voice came from heaven saying, you are my son, whom I love.

With you, I am well pleased. You have the father communicating his love for the son, and the one who communicates and mediates that personal love and presence of the father to the son is God's pneuma. His own, his second self, his inner life is now this person. Father, Son, Spirit. You guys with me here? This is so cool. Now what follows afterwards? This little tour of Luke.

You guys doing okay? So verse 23 gets even better. So you have this new human generated by God's Spirit and then you find out this new human is in fact bound into God's own self in the community of love, Father, Son, and Spirit. Now Jesus himself is about 30 years old. When he began his ministry, he was the son of Joseph, at least it was thought. And then what follows?

Gripping, gripping story, right? So it's a long genealogy that has all kinds of interesting historical questions connected to it. But look at the last person in the genealogy all the way down to the very end. Who is it? Adam. Adam.

The son of God. Jesus comes as a new Adam. How was Adam created? Dirt and divine breath. How is Jesus, as God the Son, entered into the human race through God's ruach? Look at the next sentence, chapter 4. Jesus, now full of what? Who? Of spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the spirit into the wilderness where for 40 days he was tested by the devil. So this is a whole new thing. Jesus is this human,

but who is so full of God's ruach. It's as if this is a new conception, and we're going to explore this whole idea of being full of the spirit later on in the series. It's as if humanity was always intended to be so in tune with the Creator that you could say that we are filled up with God's own inner life and energizing presence, not just to exist physically, but to exist in loving covenant relationship. And so here's Jesus, this pioneer of a new humanity, and he is completely in tune with the Father

through the presence and the energizing work of the Spirit. Here, you guys with me? This is, it's all connected. It's all connected. Last one, go down to verse 14. Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of whom? The Spirit. News about him spreading through the whole countryside.

He was teaching in their synagogues. Everyone praised him. He went to his hometown, to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And on the Sabbath day, he went into the synagogue according to his custom. He stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. And unrolling it, he found the place where it was written, come on, verse 18, who is on Jesus? The Spirit. Notice all these metaphors,

so you can be filled up with the Spirit, or you can have it like the Spirit is on you. like the Spirit is on you. The Spirit of Yahweh is on me. He has come and anointed me to do what? To proclaim good news. Good news. And so that's the depiction of Jesus. He's God become human in the power and life-giving energy of the Spirit to be the kind of human being for us that we cannot be for ourselves. And his whole mission is to be here to announce good news that God wants to give us life. He wants to give us life. And that's going to require a whole lot of horrible things to happen to Jesus so that he can give us forgiveness in life. Whatever your conception of the Spirit is, I just encourage you to just kind of time warp back and create a blank slate in your mind and allow these passages to begin to rebuild this portrait of who the Spirit is.

It's God's own inner life. It's his presence. And He longs for us to be filled up with His very life in us through the Spirit. As we go on in the series, you'll see that the Spirit is connected with love and with joy and with life and with character transformation and with healing. It's the Spirit of life. And that's the one who Jesus has come to reveal to us. Amen? What does this mean for us? So I always end here and say, I have no idea what this means for you, right?

But I have a hunch. I have a hunch. Because is there anyone here who has a feeling like life, like you're not full of vitality and life? Anybody? Do you have a feeling that you actually feel like God's distant? And like actually he's not involved in your life at all,

and you feel like you're talking to a wall when you pray or whatever, and anybody. Is there any of us who we feel like we have life circumstances or we have traits, character traits, things within us that they actually diminish life from us? And they might be very sinful or selfish patterns, and they actually diminish life, they diminish our relationships from each other and from God. And what this whole series, as we go into the Spirit, is about is it's like the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus, it's in the business of entering dark, chaotic environments and bringing change, bringing life, bringing hope, and bringing beauty. And it's not a force.

It's not an impersonal energy. It's a person who's there sitting next to you when you pray and you're feeling like your prayers are hitting the wall and the scriptures are inviting us to see that God's own breath is sitting there next to you, waiting to be acknowledged and invited into our life, into our experience. And so that's what I would encourage us to do with the time that remains. Think about the parts of your life, the relationships, the circumstances where you feel like it's formless and void, where it's a dark chaos of confusion or despair or selfishness or sin.

And let's just, in the time that's here, let's just invite the Spirit, the Spirit of the living God, to once again enter into our lives and to guide us and to point us towards Jesus, to help us focus on Jesus and what he did for us, and allow him to speak life and good news into our lives. Amen? You guys, thanks for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible podcast. I hope that you have so many questions right now, and that you have a whole bunch of new categories to think about your own life and the world and how you meet God's personal presence within it all. So we're going to keep learning in further episodes about the Spirit and we'll

see you next time. Thanks. Thank you.