Holy Spirit: Filled/Permeates
September 22, 2024Pastor Patrick presented today's message, "Holy Spirit: Filled/Permeates." Here's a video of the message.
Pastor Patrick provided a word for the day: filled. Or as the Greek New Testament put it, pleroma (πλήρωμα), meaning permeates. So, I asked myself, how does the Torah (or anywhere in the Old Testament) express permeation, everywhere, all the time, throughout, etc.? Let's see what I found out (in order as I found them)...
God knows all (particularly about you). He is omniscient, Psalm 139:1-4, "O LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O LORD, You know it all."
God is everywhere. He is omnipresent, Psalm 139:7, "Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?" God permeates the world. Another is in Joshua 1:9, "for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go."
Love of God is to permeate us. The way it's put in Deuteronomy 6:4-5 is "Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God; the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind." The last phrase alone, "with all your mind" could just as easily have been translated as "with all your muchness," or "with all you've got," or "with all your resources." You may recognize this as part of the Jewish prayer called the Shema. It's been described as the pledge of allegiance for the Israelites.
And when should you teach God's ways to your children? As it's put in Deuteronomy 11:19, "You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up." In other words, all the time. Let it permeate your life.
To permeate time is to be "throughout all the generations" (Exodus 31:16).
There is a Biblical Hebrew word ad (עַד) that means perpetuity. This is another way the Torah said forever, through all time, permeate time. Exodus 15:18, "The Lord shall reign for ever and ever." Can you hear Handel's Hallelujah Chorus!? Sometimes in the Bible, forever doesn't mean eternally. It means more like "until conditions change." When "eternity" is meant, the phrase "and ever" is added to forever.
Another phrase for God permeating time is "from everlasting to everlasting." See Psalms 90:2, "Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God."
Omnipresence (permeating space) is often phrased using two opposite places or things, like from the mountains to the oceans. In Psalm 113:4-6 the phrase is, "heaven and earth." Likewise, in Jeremiah 23:24, "'Do not I fill heaven and earth?' declares the Lord." Or how about Deuteronomy 4:39, "Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that the Lord, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other."
Forever distances are also described using opposites, such as "as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us" (Psalm 103:12).
You're probably familiar with the Greek-word expression "alpha to omega" built of the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. It can mean everything in all kinds of senses: all things, all time, all places, etc. Whatever is being talked about, it permeates all. There is an Old Testament word, an "untranslatable accusative," made up of the first letter (aleph, ת) and the last letter (tav, א) of the Hebrew alphabet: et (אֵת). And it occurs right at the beginning of the Bible, Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created [et] the heavens and the earth."
Interestingly, the last verse of the Old Testament, Malachi 4:6, also uses et: "He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike [et] the land with total destruction." The first phrase (hearts of sons and fathers) suggests "everyone." The last phrase with the et suggests striking to destruction and everything in between, aleph to tav.
Bonus
The Best Form of Government is Bible-based
That doesn't mean there's a national religion. It means the government is formed based on Judeo-Christian values, mostly as found in the Bible.
Everyone should be interested in the wisdom of the Bible, whether religious or not. In large part, it was Judeo-Christian values that formed the foundation for the United States and led to the greatest civilization ever seen on Earth, Western Civilization. I know that's a bold claim, but it appears true by most metrics I've seen (advancements, poverty rates, mortality rates, wealth-creation for everyone, morality, etc.).
And you don't have to be particularly religious to grasp the fundamentals. The Founding Fathers who often quoted the Bible were variously religious. Regardless, Deuteronomy was the book they quoted the most of all books, religious and secular. They simply recognized the wisdom in it.
For a run-down of some of these values, see Prager's 5-minute video, "What Are Judeo-Christian Values?"
For more, see Ben Shapiro's 5-minute video, "Why Has the West Been So Successful?"
If this has gotten you into a patriotic mood, it might be a good time to check out my new hobby and its website: Jamie's Flags. Today's flag flying out front as I type this, is the Green Mountain Boys Flag.