TBP - "The Holy Spirit"

1) What words does the Old Testament use to describe God's spirit?
Ruakh which refers to God’s personal presence, energy, wind, and breath.

2) What do the Old Testament prophets see as the fundamental problem with the
world? That the world is chaotic, disorderly, full of evil and injustice.

3) How will God solve this terrible problem?

By sending his energizing spirit to the world through Jesus Christ to transform hearts
and empower people to love GOD and their neighbors

4) Where in the New Testament does the Holy Spirit show up?
When Jesus appeared to his closest followers, he breathed on them and said,
"Receive the Holy Spirit." and soon after that, the Spirit powerfully comes on all his
disciples and so they become a part of this new creation. Also, when Jesus rises from
the dead to become alive and defeat death.

5) What is the Holy Spirit doing today in the lives of God's people?
Today, the spirit is still hovering in dark places, pointing people to Jesus,
transforming, and empowering them so they can love God and others.

TBP - "ACTS 1 & 2"

6) Summarize the book of ACTS in 3 movements using no more than 100 words to
explain each section:

     a) The opening of the book until Pentecost

Jesus claims restoring God's kingdom over the world, beginning with Israel calling
Israelites to live under God's reign by following Him, that He was enthroned as king
when He gave up His life, and conquered death with His love. As the risen King, He
instructs His disciples about life in His kingdom promising that the Spirit will soon
come and immerse them in His personal presence, fulfilling one of the key hopes
from the Old Testament prophets and take up residence among His people in a new
temple, and transform their hearts.

     b) Pentecost through the conversion of Cornelius the Centurion

Jesus leads His people by the Holy Spirit which comes on the disciples as a great
wind, and like flames, to go out into the world, invites all nations to live under His
reign, and that message spreads in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, to non-Jewish
people, and out to all the nations of the earth. Peter and the Apostles kept calling
Israelites to acknowledge Jesus as their Messiah. Jesus's followers donated property
and possessions help the poor. Thousands responded positively but some Jerusalem
leaders in hostility to their generosity, which culminated into arrests and
persecutions of Jesus’ followers.

     c) Paul's ministry around the Roman Empire

Paul and his co-works travel to different cities around the Roman Empire announcing
the good news that Jesus is King. Paul goes on three different missionary journeys.
When Paul enters a new city, he always goes first to the Jewish synagogue to share
about the risen king and how he is forming a new multiethnic family of God. He was
opposed most of the time. Later Paul returns to Jerusalem and gets attacked by
Jewish people. In prison he writes Apostolic letters. And this becomes the way his
missionary legacy is carries on long after he dies.

7) What was the strange paradox of Christianity that confounded the Roman
empire and its rulers?
The strange paradox of Christianity was that it was a Jewish Messianic movement,
ethnically diverse, full of communities that treated men and women and rich and
poor and slave and free, all as equals. And they all gave their allegiance to King Jesus
alone and no other god or king, yet in the beginning they had refused to
acknowledge Jesus as the Messianic King