"Vindicated by the Spirit" 1 Timothy 3:16 Sunday Morning Worship Service

1 Timothy chapter 3 verse 16.

1 Timothy 3:16

I have described as the oldest Christmas hymn.

It is a song.

It's written in Greek in a way that highlights its poetic element of it.

The way Paul introduces it in 1 Timothy chapter 3 is with the familiarity as if the congregation knew it, as if they had sung it.

1 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

And it is about the birth and life of Christ.

And so it is right to refer to this as the oldest Christmas hymn.

Let me read it for us now.

It says in verse 16 Great indeed we confess is the mystery of godliness, that he was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, and then taken up in glory.

Amen?

Man, that'll sing.

That'll sing.

I hope it'll preach too.

Something that jumps off the page right away with this hymn is that it is very Trinitarian.

This is a song that highlights the persons of the Trinity for what they do in our salvation.

This represents the Word of God as flesh, that he was manifested in the flesh.

The flesh here, speaking of Jesus Christ, that He being the eternal God, the very Son of God, took on flesh when he came to earth.

Next, we see for today's passage that he was vindicated by the Spirit.

For somebody to vindicate God is a confession of the deity of that person.

God does not need our defense.

God does not call us as character witnesses.

For somebody in this sense to vindicate God, that person is elevated.

That person must be God, a very God Himself.

And that is Paul's point here that Jesus was vindicated by the Spirit.

That will be our outline this morning as we talk about the Trinity.

And by the way, I say that this is a Trinitarian song here.

I think it's important to understand that the early church, as early as Paul writing this letter to the church in Ephesus, all the way back then, he understands the Trinity, not of course in its fullness, not with the kind of language that we would even use today, of course, but he's describing God in such a way that he's highlighting the second person and the third person of God.

The Father, Son, and Spirit are all there in Paul's mind.

I say that because it is somewhat fashionable today for people to talk about the Trinity as if it was an invented doctrine, you know, like the Trinity comes from the 300s of the Council of Nicaea.

They're the ones that invented it.

You know, Constantine the Emperor said, I'll give you the Trinity if you give me 2 Peter in the Bible.

There.

And that's this idea of where the Trinity comes from, which just isn't true.

That comes from Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code, which is still for sale at Barnes Noble, by the way.

You can buy it in the fiction section over there.

The early church believed the Trinity.

And it's important to understand that as we go through this passage, I'll give you the main point this morning is that the Holy Spirit vindicates Jesus.

The main point for this morning's message is that the Holy Spirit vindicates Jesus.

I like taking small phrases, small phrases to preach on in the in the New Testament here because I can make the main point of the sermon the text itself.

He was vindicated by the Spirit.

So my main point is that the Holy Spirit vindicates Jesus.

And it sounds profound, but it's just what the Bible says right there.

Jesus is vindicated by the Holy Spirit.

The word vindicated, if you look up in a Greek dictionary, the word vindicated means to demonstrate that someone is morally right or prove them to be telling the truth.

That's what this word means.

That's the Greek word that's rendered here.

To demonstrate that someone is morally right, or to prove that they're telling the truth.

That's why this, just the existence of this verse, is a demonstration of the deity of the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is the one who is called upon to demonstrate that God is morally right, to prove that Jesus is God incarnate, to prove that that is a true statement.

Now, something you'll notice about all six of these statements in this hymn, I mentioned this last week, I'll mention it today and the next several weeks as well.

All six of the statements in this hymn, Jesus is passive in all of them.

These are all six statements of things that are happening to Jesus.

Jesus was manifest in the flesh.

Jesus was vindicated by the Spirit.

Jesus was seen or beheld by angels.

Jesus was proclaimed to the Gentiles.

Jesus was believed on in the world, and Jesus was taken up in glory.

These are things that are happening to him.

Six different actions here, and he is being acted upon.

That's important to understand that Jesus himself is not passive, but in the form of this hymn, it is celebrating, singing, contemplating things that are being acted upon Jesus.

We saw this last week, that he was manifest in the flesh, that the Father sent the Son of God to take on a human nature.

This happened to Jesus.

The Father sent him.

Today we'll see a second thing that happened to Jesus.

The Holy Spirit vindicates him.

Now there's three ways the Holy Spirit vindicates Jesus.

There's way more than three, but I'm going to choose three because it's a Trinitarian sermon, so you will have three points.

First, the Spirit validated his deity.

The Holy Spirit validated his deity.

Now, validated is a word that we are all familiar with.

We're probably more familiar with that than vindicated.

Validated is a it proves something.

You know, if you go see a movie at the AMC Hoffman down in Alexandria, you park in that structure there, you have to bring your parking ticket with you.

You get it validated in there.

If you forget to do that, that's like a$15 mistake.

And you have to walk back in and bluff your way through and go all the way up and scan it again.

That's what happens.

But when it's scanned, it's evidence that you really were there, that you really did pay for a movie to get back there.

That's what validation means.

When I say the Holy Spirit validates the deity of Jesus, what I mean by that is the Holy Spirit is authenticating that the person of Jesus Christ truly is the Son of God.

That this one person, Jesus, is truly God and he's truly man.

The Holy Spirit validates his deity.

It authenticates that this is God.

Now I want to take us this morning.

If we're in a swimming pool, I want us to swim down to the deep end of the swimming pool this morning as we talk about the Trinity for a moment.

I read recently a survey that said something like 90% of evangelicals say that the Trinity is never taught on or preached on in their church.

And that vexed me so much when I read that.

I purposed that if you were ever interviewed for that kind of survey, and the person asks you, is the Trinity ever taught on in your church that you would go ha ha ha ha ha hay Sunday, my friends.

So you understand that the Trinity teaches, it's the basic doctrine of the Trinity.

There is one God who exists simultaneously and from all eternity in three persons.

The three persons of God are always described in the same order.

One, two, three.

Father, son, spirit.

And when I use the word order, I don't mean chronologically.

There was never a time where one of the three persons didn't exist.

They are all three are eternal.

They're all three simultaneous.

When I say in order, I mean logically, that one leads to the other, leads to the other.

So first is the Father.

The Father is all of God.

Every attribute of God, every part of God, everything that is God is in the Father.

And I don't even like the phrase in the Father because that implies that there's, you know, some shell or some person that's not God for all of God to reside in.

No.

Everything that is God, all of the attributes of God, all of the essence of God, everything that is God is the Father.

It's not in Him, it is Him.

God is the Father.

All of Godness is the Father.

He is the first person of the Trinity.

He is God, the very God.

He is the true God.

Everything about God is true of him.

He possesses all of God.

He is all of God.

But he has a son.

He has an image of himself.

All that is God that is in him, he gives to his image.

He gives to himself.

And I really do think the easiest way to understand that is that if God has thoughts of himself, those thoughts of himself are not himself.

They are thoughts of himself.

They're an image of himself.

That image is perfectly, truly, and completely himself.

That would be the second person.

That would be the son.

The father is the source, the son is the image.

The father is the father, the son is the sun.

The father is the illuminator, and he illuminates all of himself.

He reveals all of himself.

He shines all of himself, and the sun is the light.

You know, if you have an image of yourself, it's it's messed up, you know?

Your image of yourself is tainted, it's distorted.

You might tell your wife about a conversation you had yesterday with somebody at work, but you would leave out all the parts of that conversation that make you look wrong or make you look dumb.

It's a selective picture of yourself.

The father's image of himself is not like that.

It is the totality of who he is, and it is perfect, and it is complete, and it is beautiful.

It is all of him.

If you look at yourself in the mirror, you don't see yourself right.

You look at yourself in the mirror, and you are you, in your mind, you're skinnier than you are.

You're more handsome than you are.

You look way better than you are.

You're like, ah, yeah, that's neat.

That's me.

You're not seeing yourself the right way.

When the Father sees himself, he sees himself perfectly, completely.

And that's why the Bible refers to the image of God as God, the very God.

In him the fullness of deity dwells.

Not part of deity, not some of deity, but God gives all of himself to his image.

There's no part of God that he does not behold in his own image.

There's no part of the Father that is not in the Son.

Every single thing about the Father is resonant completely, fully, and entirely in the Son.

That's why the Son is the very image of God.

Except that the Son is not the Father.

Only the Father is the Father, only the Father is the source.

And like I said, there's never been a time where the Father didn't have the Son, or there would be a time when he wasn't a Father, because that's what it means to be Father, is to give life.

To have an image of yourself.

And so the Father is the speaker, the Son is the Word.

The Father is the Illuminator, the Son is the light.

The Father is the source, the Son is the image.

The Father is the Father, the Son is the Son, and it is the second person of eternity that was manifest in the flesh, and that is last week's sermon.

Building one level on that.

Where does the Holy Spirit come into this?

You have the Father first, the Son second, the Son returns love and affection and delight and fellowship back to the Father.

The Son is aware of who he is, and the Son sees himself, which is really seeing the Father, and gives life and love and joy and fellowship and responds with an exuberance of joy back to the Father.

That is the Holy Spirit.

The Father sees the Son and has love and affection and delight and community with the Son, and that is the manifestation of the Spirit.

And it's full, it's all of God.

When the Son sees the Father, he responds with full joy, that is the entirety of his being.

All of who he is is radiated back.

When the Father sees the Son, all of who he is overflows with joy and love.

Every attribute of God is pouring forth in love and fellowship.

And so the Holy Spirit truly is every part of God as well.

There is nothing in God that is not in the Son, nothing in God that is not in the Spirit.

It's the exuberance and the fullness of God.

And this is, by the way, is reflected in just how we speak of the eternity.

The Father is the Father.

What does that mean?

It means that he's the source.

The Son is the Son.

Why do we call him the Son?

Because he's younger than the Father?

No.

Why do we call him the Son?

Because He's begotten from the Father.

Now, why do we call the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit?

I want you to wrestle with that in your mind for a few seconds.

Is it because, unlike the Father and Son, the Holy Spirit is holy?

No.

The Father is holy, amen.

The Son is holy, amen.

So we don't call him the Holy Spirit because he alone is holy.

We call him holy because all of God dwells in him.

Everything about God is his holiness.

God's holiness is his attributes, it's his glory, it's his beauty.

All of that is resident in the spirit.

When you refer to the Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit, it's another way of saying he is fully and truly and completely God.

What about the word spirit?

I mean, the father is spirit as well.

The Son is spirit.

It's not as if the Father is one thing and the Son is another and the Spirit is a third.

No.

The Father, Son, and Spirit, they're all spirit.

God doesn't have a body.

They're all three spirit.

So you think for a second, the Father is called the Father because of how he relates to the Son.

The Son is called the Son because of how he relates to the Father.

He's begotten from the Father.

The Spirit is identified as the Holy Spirit because of how he relates to the Father and the Son.

It's the exuberance of spiritual love and fellowship and joy and delight and community and just blessing.

That's why he's called the Holy Spirit.

Now I'll grant you that less is said about the Holy Spirit in the Bible than the Father or the Son.

He is certainly more mysterious, but not entirely mysterious.

He relates to the Father and the Son as Spirit, as the total and complete Spirit of God.

This is why 1 Corinthians chapter 2 says the Holy Spirit searches the innermost parts of God, that every single part of God, the Holy Spirit doesn't just possess, but he searches and knows in its fullness.

1 Corinthians 2 · chapter mention

He's omniscient.

He knows everything there is to know about God because he searches the very mind of the Father, the very mind of the Son.

The scripture refers to the Holy Spirit as the mind of Christ, even.

Now I don't know if you understand that question.

Shake your head, yes, if you understand that question.

Okay, I'm getting enough headshakes, I'm going to keep going.

Okay, for those that shook like this, just try to keep it the head shakes.

This is for you.

There's no fourth person the Trinity because the Holy Spirit's love and joy and affection is cycled back to the Father.

When he sees the Father and he has any affection and love, that's directed towards the Son.

When he sees the Son and he has any affection or love, that goes back to the Father.

So everything is complete within the Trinity.

The Father sees the Son and responds in love, the Spirit.

The Spirit sees the Father and responds in love and joy, the Son.

The Son sees the Father and responds in love and joy, the Spirit.

The Son sees the Father and love and joy to the Spirit.

It's all complete.

It recycles back and forth as the three persons of God love and overflow with each other.

God is all in, He's the fountain, and it is all overflowing, love, joy, fellowship, all the perfect attributes of God contains entirely in God.

This is the beauty of the Trinity.

And so the Son of God takes on flesh, comes to earth, and becomes a human being.

In the body of Jesus Christ are two natures God's nature and man's nature.

That divine nature, he's the eternal son of God.

How do you know he is the Son of God?

Because he says he is, first of all.

The scripture points to him.

But Paul's point here in 1 Timothy 3.16 is that the Trinity himself testifies and validates that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

You see this most clearly at the baptism of Christ.

John, filled with the Spirit, remember, John is filled with the Spirit since the womb.

John's whole life has been led by the Holy Spirit, has spent his life saying, someone is coming who's greater than me.

John is the greatest prophet ever.

The Bible says John is the greatest prophet, better than all the prophets in the Old Testament.

So for John to say, someone is coming who's well over me, I mean, that's an outlandish statement.

That's so high.

John's pointing to the deity of the Savior and says, someone's coming that's so high, so high above me.

I'm not fit to touch his shoe.

And then Jesus comes to be baptized, and John says, No way, I should be baptized by you.

And Jesus says, No, this is fitting to fulfill all righteousness.

Jesus goes under the water.

Then the voice from heaven, this is the voice of the Father, speaks and says, This is my Son.

I am well pleased with him.

That is a declaration of the deity of Jesus Christ, that the nature of God, the Son of God, dwells in the person of Jesus Christ.

You hear a voice from heaven.

This is him.

Scripture also says that every fact is attested to at the testimony of two witnesses.

So you have the voice of the Father who declares that this is the Savior.

And then you have the Holy Spirit, it's in Matthew chapter 3, descends upon Jesus as a dove.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

Now you have the Spirit of God visibly communicating that this is true.

Why doesn't the Holy Spirit speak like the Father does?

Think back to how the three persons of the Trinity relate to one another.

The Father is the speaker, the Son is the word, and the Spirit brings it, applies it, seals it.

So the Spirit testifies to Jesus Christ in a very spiritual way.

A dove, the image of peace, tranquility, spiritual fulfillment that settles upon Jesus to validate and to vindicate his deity.

Now understand, three persons of the Trinity, they work this way in all things.

The Father creates the world by speaking.

But he speaks in the world created through the Son.

This is what the scripture says.

The Father spoke, but the world was created through the Son.

The Son is the Word.

And the Holy Spirit did what?

Hovered upon the waters of our creation.

So the Father speaks, the Son is the creator, and the Spirit informs.

What about the Word of God?

The Father speaks, the Son is the Word, the Spirit inspires the authors.

What about regeneration?

Salvation.

The Father sends the Son, the Son is the Redeemer, the Holy Spirit brings that faith to your heart.

Everything is from the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit.

Even the baptism of Jesus Christ.

The Father says, this is him.

The Son is the Him.

And the Spirit settles upon him, affirming that this is God, the very God.

All joy and love and worship in response to that will be directed back towards the Father through the Son.

Have you ever gone to a website you haven't been to?

Tried to log into an account you haven't been to in like three years?

And it says, What's your password?

Like, okay, password time.

What was the password I used everywhere three years ago?

Let me think.

001122.

00112233?

It says you have one more chance.

And so at that moment, you decide, do I reset the password?

That is a lot of work.

Like I don't even know what email address that thing's going off to.

Or do I roll the dice?

If I mess up, I'm locked out of this account for like three days or something.

So how badly do I not want to reset?

And you put it in, and it's like ding ding ding ding ding.

Yes! I got it right.

When Jesus is baptized and the Holy Spirit comes upon him, it's password accepted.

This is the true God who will make his dwelling among us.

He's manifest in the flesh.

That's what verse 16 says.

He is manifest in the flesh.

When it says he's vindicated by the Spirit, it's not talking about the flesh.

It's talking about the He.

Who's the He that's in the flesh?

It is the very Son of God.

So, first, the Holy Spirit vindicates Jesus by validating his deity.

Secondly, by enabling his humanity.

By enabling his humanity.

He was manifest in the flesh, and this is what is vindicated by the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the one who brings Jesus into a human body, who brings the Son of God into the world.

Ask yourself.

How did the Son of God become a man?

How did that happen?

And you could say, oh, of course it could happen because he's God, he can do anything.

Well, I know it can happen, and I know it did happen.

Those aren't my questions, not can it or did it?

How did it?

That's the question.

And the Bible's not silent on this answer, although we don't often talk about it.

The Bible is not silent on it.

The Bible does not say that he became a man because he's God, he can do anything.

The Bible says very particularly how he became a man.

I think the best verse for this is Hebrews 10, verse 5, where Scripture says, consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me.

Hebrews 10:5

That's that's odd.

You might recognize the first half of this verse, sacrifices and offerings you have not desired.

Do you remember the rest of the verse?

It should be, but you delight in obedience.

This is the Saul Samuel showdown.

Remember?

God told Saul, wait seven days before you make the sacrifice.

Saul waits like, you know, six and a half-ish kind of days and makes a sacrifice, and then Samuel rolls in and says, What are you doing?

You should have waited.

And Saul says, But I made a sacrifice to God.

And Samuel says, God does not delight in your sacrifices and in your offerings, but in your obedient heart, you wretched sinner.

I mean, that's what Samuel tells him.

Saul has excuses, and Samuel says, God doesn't want your excuses.

That's where this verse is coming from.

Then it enters the Psalms this way sacrifice and offerings you do not require, but you gave me an open ear.

Which you can see how that's connected to obedience, an open ear.

God commands you to do something, and you say, I know God doesn't need my sacrifices.

He wants me to obey him from my heart.

I listen to his command and I respond in obedience.

That's what this verse is in the Old Testament.

But it jumps into the New Testament this way.

When Jesus says that verse, he doesn't say sacrifice is an offering because you don't desire, but instead, you want my obedience.

He says, but instead, you prepared for me a body.

You think, how do you go from obedience to open ear to body?

Well, that's the trajectory.

God delights in obedience.

For you to have obedience, you need an open ear.

For Jesus to be incarnate, God's not just going to give him an ear.

God's going to give him a whole body.

He's going to come to earth as a true human being.

Who is Jesus saying this verse to?

He's saying it back to God.

You, God, you, Heavenly Father, you, Holy Spirit, have prepared for me a body.

He doesn't say, I prepared my own body.

He didn't make it himself.

He says, You did this.

That's a window into the gospel that God does not delight in sacrifices, he delights in obedience, and he will make his own person to be completely obedient to himself, namely Jesus Christ.

You see this even more precisely in Luke 1, verse 35.

Luke 1:35

The angel answered, Mary, when Mary says, I'm a virgin, how can I have a child?

How can this be?

I'm a virgin.

The angel tells Mary, the Holy Spirit will come upon you.

Not the Father, not the Son, the Holy Spirit will come upon you.

And the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

Of course, the Holy Spirit possesses all of the attributes, all the power of God, so it's right to call him the Most High.

Will overshadow you.

Therefore, the child will be born, will be called holy because he's from the Holy Spirit.

He is the Son of God.

And so you see, even the angel describing this, it is the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, who will be put into your womb, Mary, and he will get there through the Holy Spirit, will bring him and form him a body.

The Mormon church teaches some kind of perverse action here where Mary is impregnated by the Holy Spirit.

But that's not what this describes.

This describes the Holy Spirit forming the body of Christ in the womb of Mary.

Mary's flesh, Mary's blood, Mary's DNA, not the Holy Spirit's flesh, he doesn't have any.

Not his blood, he doesn't have any.

Not his DNA, he doesn't have any.

It's the Holy Spirit is the agent, the actor, the one who forms the body of Christ.

So that the child is truly human from Mary and truly divine, formed by the Holy Spirit, the second person, the eternal second person of God, joined with a human body through the working of the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 1, Matthew described it the same way.

This is the very start of Matthew's gospel, right after the genealogies, the first part of the narrative in Matthew's gospel, the birth of Jesus Christ took place this way.

When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit placed the eternal second person of God in the womb of Mary.

The person of Jesus is eternal, all the way back into the Trinity itself.

The soul of Jesus, the human soul of Jesus begins right here.

When the Holy Spirit places it in Mary.

The human body of Jesus begins right here with the soul.

The two of them, true, the soul and body of Jesus, placed in human nature in the womb of Mary, joined with the eternal second person of the Trinity in the very womb of Mary.

That's what I mean when I say the Holy Spirit enabled Jesus' humanity.

The Holy Spirit brought Jesus' humanity into being.

Thirdly.

The Holy Spirit perfects the ministry of Jesus Christ.

Now, I mentioned that the Holy Spirit, this is how the Trinity functions in the world.

Father, Son, Spirit.

The Father sends, the Son goes, the Spirit applies.

The Father speaks, the Son is the Word, the Spirit inspires.

The Father speaks the universe into existence, the Son is the creator, the Spirit brings it together.

Regeneration from the Father through the Son by the Spirit.

Everything the Trinity does is always in that order.

Including the ministry of Jesus Christ.

The Father sends.

The Son comes to live the life.

The Spirit empowers and perfects that life.

Now, we're still treading water in the deep end.

Remember where I left you guys?

I was the lifeguard, I took a lunch.

You're still in the deep end of the pool.

One more little lap in the deep end here.

The person of Jesus Christ has two natures.

He's the eternal Son of God, the divine nature, and he also has a human nature.

Which nature needs perfecting?

Does the nature of God need perfecting by God?

No.

There's nothing lacking.

As Jesus is the true Son of God, He doesn't need any help.

He doesn't need any perfecting.

He is perfect.

But his humanity, his human nature, that's what needs perfecting.

And I don't mean it needs perfecting because it's failed in some place.

I mean it needs perfecting because it's human.

And humans are weak.

Humans are limited.

I mean, have you met one before?

I mean, we need sleep and we need food and we need family and we need life, you know.

We just are needy, needy creatures.

It starts as a baby and it just you're that needy the rest of your life, by the way.

Just as you get older, you do a better job hiding it.

Human beings are needy and weak and they need help.

They need help.

Now that help, it's not a deficiency in a human nature, it just is human nature.

And I tried to think of an analogy.

How do you explain that a human nature needs help without implying that that need of help is a deficiency?

And this is what I came up with.

So let me know if it works.

I haven't said it out loud before, but I hope this works.

Imagine a rose, a beautiful, beautiful rose, rose bush.

A rose bush to grow and bear beautiful roses needs about 70-degree weather, more or less.

It needs sun, it needs water, it needs a rich soil.

All of that will bring the rose and the rose nature into flu uh fruition, make it blossom and be beautiful.

But if a rose bush has the sun withheld from it, and the rain withheld from it, and the temperature drops down to like 20 degrees for a few months, and the soil has all kinds of lithium batteries in it, now the rose withers and dies.

Is that a deficiency in the rose?

No.

It's what it means to be a rose.

If it is a true rose, it needs the sun and it needs the water and it needs the soil.

The absence of those things does not speak to some kind of moral deficiency in the rose.

It just speaks of what it means to be a rose.

So it is with a human being.

Human nature requires to flourish and to grow and to blossom.

Human nature requires fellowship with God.

It requires obedience to God, and it requires like a right relationship, walking with God.

It requires communion with for human beings to really flourish.

You need to be in a right relationship with God and to flourish and thrive based upon being in his word, based upon his word thriving in your heart.

You need that to be in a right relationship with God.

And you need a right relationship with God as a human being to flourish.

So it is when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden.

First thing they did is they hid.

God went to go walking with them, and they hid.

And they wither and they die.

Now, granted, they withered and died because of their own sin.

But their own sin withheld the fellowship that they needed to thrive.

When Jesus comes with a human nature, he too needs a relationship with God to thrive because he's human.

He needs the love and joy and fellowship and the rich soil of God's word to bring him nutrients in his life.

He needs to grow up in the word of God and in a relationship with God for him as a human being to fully thrive.

So, in what way did Jesus receive that divine help and that divine relationship in his life?

He's, after all, the God man.

He's truly God and truly man.

In his humanity, did he receive that fellowship with God from his deity?

Did he just turn to the fact that he has two natures and rely on his deity to receive that encouragement, that fellowship?

That is not how the Bible presents it.

When Jesus was tempted by the devil, for example, he didn't say, Get behind me, devil.

You know, I can't sin because I'm God.

That's not how he resisted the devil.

He didn't fall back on his deity to resist the devil.

No, he resisted the devil in his humanity by claiming the word of God just like you can.

So how does he receive fellowship and communion and joy and love and affection from God?

Is it by falling back on his deity?

No.

It's as every godly human should.

It's by relying on God and turning to God and receiving it from the Word of God.

It's through the working of the Holy Spirit.

That's how the Bible presents it.

And has there ever, is there ever another person in the Bible that's described so closely to the Holy Spirit as Jesus?

I mean, the Holy Spirit is with Jesus at every moment of his life.

From his conception in Mary's womb all the way to the grave.

His ministry is marked by the Holy Spirit all the time.

From his baptism, which we talked about earlier, but after the baptism, remember the Holy Spirit drove him to the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

The Spirit drove him there.

This was the Spirit who did that.

After his temptation, he's led it by the Spirit into Galilee to reveal the power of God in him through the Holy Spirit.

His miracles were done through the Spirit.

Not because he needed help as God, but because he is a human and he needs a fellowship and a richness with God to thrive as a human.

So why did he not just avail himself of his own deity?

Because he's an example and a pattern for us.

He is our lifelong pattern.

That same fellowship is available to us, by the way.

Through the Word of God, through the Spirit of God.

Listen, as the Son of God, Jesus lacked nothing.

He possessed everything as a Son of God.

But when he took on a human nature, a limited human nature, he needed help.

And that help came to him through the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit didn't help his deity.

The Holy Spirit helped his humanity.

Christ didn't need to be regenerated.

Christ didn't need to get saved.

He wasn't a sinner.

He never sinned.

He didn't need new life from the Holy Spirit.

But Christ needed spiritual gifting, spiritual gifts to live out and act out on our behalf.

And that's what he received from the Spirit.

That's why I say the Holy Spirit perfected his ministry.

The Holy Spirit empowered his ministry.

The Holy Spirit fueled his ministry.

The Holy Spirit marked his ministry all the way to the cross where the wrath of God is applied to him.

All the way to the grave where the Holy Spirit resurrects him out of the grave.

That penalty was applied to him by God, poured out on him by the Father through the Spirit.

He suffers and dies in our place.

And then the Holy Spirit abides with him and resurrects him, empowers him, energizes his human body.

His human body that was decaying in the grave for three days, that human body was not energized by the Son of God.

That human body was occupied by the Son of God and energized by the Holy Spirit of God as he resurrects from the grave.

This is all in Paul's mind when he says the Holy Spirit vindicated Jesus.

What more vindication can there possibly be than resurrection?

You know, another word for vindicated would be I told you so.

You're familiar with that, right?

I know you're too godly to use it, but you say, I think we should go right, and your wife says, I think we should go left, and you go right because you're driving, and then you're totally lost, and you have to do U-turn.

Your wife is vindicated.

She's too godly to say, I told you so.

She just lets the U-turn speak for itself.

What better resurrection, what better vindication is there than the actual resurrection from the dead?

The Father says, This is my son.

I'm so pleased with him.

Do what he says.

And people resist that.

The Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus and authenticates him and seals him, and people ignore that and they quench the spirit and they fight with the spirit and they betray the Savior and have him crucified, and he's buried in the grave, and the Holy Spirit resurrects him from the grave.

That is vindication.

That is vindication.

The Holy Spirit acted upon Jesus to vindicate his ministry.

That's not all the Holy Spirit does as it relates to Christ, though.

There's one final thing I want to draw your attention to.

Everything the Trinity does is from the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit.

Including your faith.

Your faith is from the Father.

It is through the Son.

You're placing your faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And that happens to you by the Holy Spirit causing you to be born again.

When you place your faith in Jesus Christ, you're placing your faith in the triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit.

And no one can believe that Jesus is the Christ except by the Holy Spirit.

But all who confess that Jesus is the Christ by the Holy Spirit are giving praise back to the Father.

Do you see how it's the Trinity again?

It's recycling itself from the Father through the death and resurrection of the Son by the Holy Spirit.

You look at the cross and you say, I believe Jesus died for me.

You're directing the praise, Father, Son, Spirit, you're directing that praise in your heart back up through the Spirit, through the Son to the Father.

You're saying, I believe in Jesus.

That's the work of the Spirit.

He died on the cross for my sins, he rose from the grave for my sins.

Now I'm thanking the Father for sending him.

That is the full triangle right there.

That is what happens, what's available to you on Christmas morning.

Father, Son, Spirit.

It's a gift that comes to you, that Jesus Christ can be your Savior.

And when you place your faith in Christ, the same Spirit of God that drove Jesus out of the grave will dwell in your heart and give you life and joy and fellowship and love and community and all those things the Holy Spirit that makes him the Holy Spirit.

He does that for you.

Love, joy, peace from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.

God, we're grateful for the invitation to place our faith in you.

The triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit.

You are our Redeemer, Lord Jesus.

Through your death on the cross, you paid for our sins and you opened up the gates for heaven.

You gave Christmas its incarnation.

You manifest the message of Christmas through your dying and rising.

Now, Lord, I pray that that message would be manifest in our own lives as we believe the gospel.

I pray for anyone here today who has never placed their faith in you, I pray that today they would look to the sun and see their Savior.

Lord, I know if this eternity is complex and trying to explain it is nigh impossible.

So Lord, we just pray for grace and how we understand it.

But beyond all of the language and beyond all of the terms and concepts that I try inadequately to explain, I pray that people's hearts would be in love with the Savior who's in the middle of all of it.

The person of Jesus Christ.

Lord, help our hearts love him more as we behold his beauty.

That is all that is necessary for us to see him and to love him.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.