April 28, 2010

ESV Genesis 6:3 Then the LORD said, "My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh:
his days shall be 120 years."
 
Having completed the reading of When Helping Hurts, our Wednesday evening mentor/study group began considering
our next journey.  When one of our team said, “I don’t know very much about the Holy Spirit,” just like that,
we were off on another investigation, this time just reading through the Scriptures in pursuit of a little more knowledge of God the Spirit.
 
Well, our “reading” didn’t get very far … we collapsed into quite a discussion at Genesis 1:2 and again,
here, at Genesis 6:3.  My usual take on this verse is actually more of a picture.  I have come to view
the Holy Spirit, hands on hips (sorry, I don’t mean any disrespect … but the Holy Spirit is a Person, NOT an “it!”),
with a kind of “I’ve had it with that Don” expression.
 
But read carefully.  First, the verb “abide” (ESV & NRS) is translated “strive” (NASV & NKJ) or “contend” (NIV) or “put up with”
(NLT) or even “be indefinitely responsible for” (New Jerusalem).  The Holy Spirit will not keep on contending with or
struggling against human beings … but not because he has exhausted his patience with us!
 
The reason he will not continue this work of striving and contending and struggling and shaping and putting up with us …
is quite simple: we’re not going to be around in this earthly, fleshly body very long, about 120 years at the most.
 
The verses just prior to this passage reveal a list of long-livers … 800, 930, 807, 912, 815, etc., etc.  But these men were to
be the exception, not the rule.  By the end of the Pentateuch (5 books of the Law), Moses dies … at 120 years of age. 
The reason for shortened lives was not merely atmospheric (changes via the flood) but spiritual, the striving against the Holy Spirit.
 
But… far from his impatience with us, the Lord, via the Holy Spirit, continues to work in and through us, until our death.
Our striving against him is always toward sin and self.  His striving in us is always to conform us to the image of
Jesus Christ.  One day his striving with us will cease … because we’ll be dead and the all-important questions of eternity
will already be made, if we succumb to that striving of the Spirit and say, softly, “Yes!”
 
Yes, the verse below is the same verse from last week.  But it reflects, again, this constant work of the Holy Spirit
transforming our lives, shaping, striving, contending with us to produce, in us, the image of Jesus Christ,
“from one degree of glory to another.”  Praise His Name!!
 
2 Corinthians 3:18
“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to
another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
 
Pastor Don