Breath and Spirit Job 34: 14-15 CLICK TITLE FOR AUDIO

There are two things given to us by God, without which we would not be alive.  They are our breath and our spirit [Is 42:5].  Job 34:14-15 shows us that without spirit and breath we perish.  Ps 104:29 says, “thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust.” Jas 2:26 says that the body without the spirit is dead.  Our spirit and our breath are essential to our natural lives.

Job 33:4 says, the Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.  See Gen 2:7 and Job 27:3.  Our spirit and our breath are closely connected but they are not the same.  Men and beasts, for instance, both have the same breath [Ecc 3:19].  However, our spirits are very different.  When we die, the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes downward to the earth [Ecc 3:20-21].  You see, the spirit of man returns to God who gave it [Ecc 12:7].  We have no power to retain our spirit at death [Ecc 8:8].  Now listen, without God there is no natural life, regardless what evolutionists, who deny God, say.  It is impossible for origin to be the result of the science of natural processes.

That spirit of man is part of our being, just like our soul and our body are.  Our spirit is manifested in our emotion, often, and reveals much about who we are [Prov 20:27].  Our spirits can be troubled, revived, willing, in anguish, jealous, hardened, sorrowful, stirred up, meek and quiet, contrite, right, broken, afraid, and so forth.  Our spirit must, therefore, be ruled [Prov 16:32; 25:28].  Listen, a society, which denies that you are responsible for your behavior, will crumble.  You cannot medicate a man’s spirit.  He must rule it.

We also notice in the Bible that a man’s spirit can be perverse or it can be excellent.  When Caleb refused to go along with the 10 spies who were afraid to go into Canaan, the Bible says, “he had another spirit,” [Num 14:24].  And that spirit in a man can be used by God to negatively or positively influence others.  The spirit in Moses was given to the 70 elders who helped bear his burden [Num 11:17],  A double portion of the spirit that was on Elijah was given to Elisha [2 Ki 2:9, 15].  That spirit was given to them by God and made them the men they were.

These are natural things provided to us by God.  But we also see supernatural work by the Spirit of God and by evil spirits, as well.  We notice, in the Old Testament particularly, that God’s Spirit could fill a man or he could be negatively affected by a familiar spirit or an evil spirit.  The Spirit of God came on Saul and then left him and he was, afterwards, affected by an evil spirit [1 Sam 16:14].  A lying spirit influenced the prophets of Ahab and caused them to prophesy a lie [1 Ki 22:21-23].

Just because you and I have God-given breath and a God-given spirit doesn’t mean that we are going to live forever.  These both provide us with natural life.  But our natural life has been affected by sin because of what Adam and Eve did in the garden.  We have the capacity to be God’s and live forever, but not until our spirits are quickened by God [Eph 2:1-6].  Like Jesus said to Nicodemus, we must be born again by the Spirit [Jn 3:3-7].  We must be quickened by God’s words [Jn 6:63].  The Spirit of God gives us eternal life and lets us know that we have become the children of God.  “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God,” [Rom 8:16].  You see both God’s Holy Spirit and man’s spirit in this verse.

The Spirit’s work in eternal life is likened to wind in Jn 3:8.  Look at Ezek 37:1-10, when the graves of Israel are opened after the return of Jesus Christ and the men arise as a great army with eternal life.  Their breath comes from the wind [Ezek 37:9-10].  And when the Spirit of God showed up to baptize the disciples in Acts 2, they heard the sound of a rushing mighty wind.  It was the breath of God, like we see initially in Jn 20:22.  There is a connection between the breath of God and the work of the Spirit of God.

Conclusion: Our temporal, natural lives, therefore, are the result of God’s breath and spirit in us.  We don’t have eternal life, however, until we receive Jesus Christ [Jn 1:12] and God’s Holy Spirit quickens us.