My present watch has served me faithfully since then. However, I must have bumped one of the buttons and, annoyingly, it began reading 24-hour time. I still have the instructions. They are in four different languages, but nowhere does it say how to change back to 12-hour time!
The folk in the shop where I bought it in Ayr fared no better. So they phoned the Australian distributors. All you have to do it set the time in the afternoon and keep pressing the hour button until the time changes back to 12-hour time!
When I look at my watch, I have no doubt at all that there was a creator. I don't know who it was, but am thankful that he or she has revealed a large measure of how to operate the watch in the leaflet I had carefully stowed away. But my problem was different. I needed further advice from the maker NOW!
We've been thinking about how there is a God and how he has spoken in various ways and that this self-revelation has been written down for us as Scripture. We have considered Jesus, the eternal Son of God who became the focus of revelation in human history "for us men and for our salvation." We can grasp revelation in a human person, but how is God active in the world apart from the incarnation?
In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries there was a popular view known as Deism. Deists thought of God like a clock-maker who gave the world its initial impetus and then left it to run its course. God started everything, they said, but we are now alone to figure it all out.
That's not the Biblical and Christian view. God is revealed to us as a Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for, as the Nicene Creed affirms, "We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the prophets."
In the Old Testament we read that the Spirit of the Lord was active in creation, giving life (Genesis 1.2; Job 33.4). The Spirit filled specific people to enable them to do particular tasks. The Spirit didn't fill all of the Lord's people, but there are references to a future time when this would happen.
In Ezekiel the Lord promised that the people who had disgraced his name would be given "a clean heart and a new spirit" (Ezekiel 36.24-28). Joel looked forward to when the Lord's Spirit would be "poured out on all people" (Joel 2.28-32, words quoted by Peter on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2.17-21).
In the New Testament we begin to see a dramatic change. While Jesus himself was "full of the Holy Spirit" (Luke 4.1) and was described by John the Baptist as the one who "will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire" (3.16c), the promised general out-pouring of the Spirit would not occur until after his suffering and resurrection. After Jesus had spoken about streams of living water pouring out from within us, we read, "By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified" (John 7.39)
Jesus promised that the new era of the Holy Spirit would begin after those events. This is why they were to "stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high" (Luke 24.49b; also Acts 1.4b-5,8). The words of Peter to the crowd at the first Christian Pentecost announced the new era - "Repent and be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off - for all whom the Lord our God will call" (2.38-39).
Since Pentecost it is significant that the Holy Spirit is given to all Christians and that he brings moral change.
The Spirit is given to every believer, not to a select few. Paul wrote, "Those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God" (Romans 8.14). As Jesus said to Nicodemus, "No one can enter the Kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit" (John 3.5). So vital is this spiritual birth that Paul says, "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ" (Romans 8.9).
Not only is the Spirit given to all believers, but the result of his presence is "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Galatians 5.22,23).
Christians have a wide range of "spiritual gifts" (see 1 Corinthians 12), but these were to be subordinated to love (v. 31). We call the Spirit "holy", not simply to describe his nature, but to point to his particular function in the Christian life - to write the character of Christ into our personality. The Spirit gives gifts for building up the Body of Christ (Ephesians 4.7-16), never to glorify us.
The Holy Spirit is personal, not a force or influence. He is the Counsellor (John 14.16), leads believers and bears witness in them (Romans 8.14,16), loves (15.30), is made sad (Ephesians 4.30)… He is characterised by fellowship (2 Corinthians 13.13).
The Holy Spirit is divine. In today's reading (John 14.15-21) he is linked with the activity of the Father and the Son. Jesus says the Spirit "goes out from" the Father (John 15.26), is "given" by the Father at the Son's request (14.16) and is "sent" by the Son.
We know and receive the Spirit because we have been redeemed by Christ's atoning death and brought into a whole new life in him.
Four times in John 14-16 the Spirit is called the Parakletos. This word literally means "one who is called alongside to help". Jesus calls him "another Counsellor" (14.16). He would be all that Jesus had been to them, and yet even more. Jesus was restricted to one place at a time and was an "external" helper. It was to their benefit that Jesus left them so that the Spirit could come (16.7). He will be not only "with you" but "in you" (14.17). He is "the Spirit who reveals the truth about God, he will lead you into all the truth" (16.13a) - particularly important as the apostolic church came to understand the significance of Christ's Person and Death, to carry the good news to the ends of the earth and to teach the converts how to live the Christian life. They also needed his help in being reminded of the words of Jesus himself (14.26b).
Jesus also described the Spirit as being at work in the lives of unbelievers for the purpose of bringing them to faith (16.8-11).
The Spirit is at work at every stage of personal Christian life -creating the faith to confess Jesus as Lord (1 Corinthians 12.3), giving assurance that we are God's children (Romans 8.16). The Holy Spirit is God's "mark of ownership" on us (Ephesians (1.13). He works to make us holy (Romans 15.16; 2 Thessalonians 2.13). He comes to help us in our weakness, "pleading with God for us in groans that words cannot express" (Romans 8.27).
The Spirit has a special relation to the church, the Body of Christ. It is by the work of the Holy Spirit that the diverse group of people become a body with a whole variety of gifts that can function together to nurture and build up the individual members, to enable the Body to grow and to fulfil the mission of Christ the Head in the world (see especially Ephesians 4.1-16; 1 Corinthians 12.12-31).
The Old Testament clearly teaches that there is one God. Yet the New Testament has shown us that Jesus Christ is God and that the Holy Spirit is God. The word "Trinity" isn't found in the Bible. We use it to describe how God has been revealed to us - not the three Gods of Mormonism, nor Jehovah plus a lesser "god" called Jesus and a divine power called the Holy Spirit as Jehovah's Witnesses teach, but one God in three Persons.
God is one, personal and triune. This belief is central to the Christian faith. It relates closely to the personal nature of God, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the life in the Spirit, and finally to the relation of the redeemed to God in Christ.
But belief in God's revelation isn't theoretical. What are we going to do about it? Do we pay close attention to the divine revelation recorded in the Scriptures? How do we respond to the Word-made-flesh - Jesus who came to be our Lord and Saviour? Do we allow the Holy Spirit to fill us, applying the grace of the atonement to change, renew and enable us?
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