05 Did the Prophets Have the Holy Spirit?

Krisan Marotta: Thank you for joining me today for Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. This is the fifth talk in my series called Who is the Holy Spirit? We're going to be looking at several Old Testament passages today. The lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below the podcast, and you can also find those notes at wednesdayintheword.com slash Holy Spirit 5. Thanks so much for joining me. As I've said, my goal in this series is to understand what scripture says about the Holy Spirit and to build an understanding from the bottom up. Therefore, I'm not approaching these passages with the goal of answering specific questions about the Holy Spirit. So, for example, I'm not trying to figure out the nature of the Trinity or the metaphysics of how all that works. Rather, my goal is to see what Scripture has to tell us about the Spirit. So far, we've seen that the Holy Spirit is God's agent of change, and one of his most crucial works is the inner transformation of the hearts of believers. Without that change, we cannot be saved. Then we divided his work into two broad categories, universal and individual. And I define the universal work of the Spirit as that transformation in the hearts of believers. So the work that the Holy Spirit does in every believer to give us saving faith. The individual works of the Spirit are the things that the Spirit does in one believer's life, but not in another. So these are things we commonly think of as spiritual gifts. They're the roles and the opportunities individuals are given to serve the body of Christ. And we applied that distinction between universal and individual to understanding and revelation. God gives revelation to His prophets and His apostles. This is an individual work of the Spirit. Understanding, on the other hand, is a universal work of the Spirit. It is the receptivity that the Spirit gives us so that we embrace and believe God's message as true. In the last podcast we started exploring what the Old Testament teaches about the Holy Spirit, and most of the discussion of the Holy Spirit concerns this individual work of the Spirit. In various ways we see the Spirit of God intervening in the lives of particular individuals in order to protect and defend and guide the nation of Israel. So we saw the individual works of the Holy Spirit to empower Israel's leaders, the judges and the kings, so God could bless the nation. We looked at Moses, we looked at some of the judges, and we looked at King Saul and David, and we saw the Spirit of God coming upon the leader to give him strength or wisdom, courage, or maybe military might in order to protect and lead the people. So God empowers Israel's leaders through the Spirit in order to bring about his blessings for the nation. Well, there's another way we see the Spirit of God working in the Old Testament, and that is the Spirit of God giving revelation to the prophets. And we're going to look at that theme today, and again, we're going to start with Moses. We're going to look at Numbers eleven. This is a passage that is taking place during the Exodus. Moses has led the nation out of Israel, across the Red Sea, and into the desert where they are wandering, and the people are complaining to Moses that they don't have any meat to eat. They're sick of eating the manna, and they want to go back to Egypt where they had a variety of food. Moses is getting tired of having to deal with the continuous grumbling of the people, and he turns to God and says, basically, I can't do it anymore. So I'm going to pick up the story in Numbers eleven, I'm going to read verses fourteen through seventeen. This is Moses talking to God. I am not able to carry all this people alone. The burden is too heavy for me. If you will treat me like this, kill me at once, if I find favor in your sight, that I might not see my wretchedness. Then the Lord said to Moses, Gather for me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them, and bring them to the tent of meeting, and let them take their stand there with you, and I will come down and talk with you there, and I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them, and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so that you may not bear it yourself alone. And then skipping down to verse twenty four through twenty nine. So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord, and he gathered seventy men of the elders of the people and placed them around the tent. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders. And as soon as the spirit rested on them, they prophesied, but they did not continue doing it. Now two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them. They were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, so they prophesied in the camp. And a young man ran and told Moses, Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp. And Joshua, the son of Nun, the assistant of Moses from his youth, said, My Lord Moses, stop them. But Moses said to him, Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets that the Lord would put his spirit on them? So here we learn that Moses is the complete package. Unlike the warrior judges, Moses is also a prophet, and he is a godly wise man. The power of the Spirit works miracles in his leadership, but he is also a prophet who speaks to the people about God and speaks to God about the people, and Moses is a person of faith. So God sends the same spirit that's been at work in Moses upon seventy elders and they begin to prophesy. And this seems to be a spontaneous kind of event similar to what we see on the day of Pentecost in Acts. I suspect that God's purpose here in having them prophesy is to validate their ministry and their authority to speak for him. They're going to take some of the burden off Moses, so the Spirit of God comes upon them, and they prophesy in a visible and audible way so that everyone will know that God has chosen these folks to lead alongside Moses. Their prophesying shows God's approval of this change. It verifies and authenticates the new role that these elders are about to play. But we also see here what kind of man Moses is. He's not jealous that others share in this work of the Spirit. He's glad that they can serve God in a similar way, and he longs for the day when God will pour out his spirit on everyone. So here we see the Spirit coming upon a person not so that he can lead as a judge did or the kings did, but so that he can lead as Moses did as a prophet, adjudicating and speaking the words of God to the people. We see a similar kind of event in the life of Saul. We're going to skip to first Samuel chapter ten. Here the prophet Samuel anoints Saul as king in private, and then Samuel tells Saul a series of signs that are going to befall him. And the last one we're going to start reading in ten five. And we looked briefly at this passage in the last podcast, but I want to go back to it. So I'm going to look at first Samuel chapter ten verses five through eleven. So this is Samuel, and he's speaking to Saul after he's anointed him. And he says, After that you shall come to Gibbeth Elohim, where there is a garrison of the Philistines, and there as soon as you come to the city, you will meet a group of prophets coming down from the high place with harp, tambouring, flute, and lyre before them, prophesying. Then the Spirit of the Lord will rush upon you, and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man. Now when these signs meet you, do what your hand finds to do, for God is with you. Then go down before me to Gilgal, and behold I am coming down to you to offer burnt offerings and to sacrifice peace offerings. Seven days you shall wait until I come to you and show you what you shall do. And when he that saw turned his back to leave Samuel, God gave him another heart, and all these signs came to pass that day. When they came to Gibeah, behold a group of prophets met him, and the Spirit of God rushed upon him, and he prophesied among them. And when all who knew him previously saw how he prophesied with the prophets, the people said to one another, What has come over the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets? So here we see language that is very similar to the kind of language we saw in Judges. The Spirit of the Lord will rush upon you. But in this particular case, Saul was not given military might, he was given the ability to prophesy. And I understand that to mean he was able to speak truth for and about God. It seems to be a kind of special understanding and clarity that was given to him so that he could speak about the mighty works of God, and it seems to be spontaneous. So the same kind of event we saw with the seventy elders with in Moses' time, and the same kind of event we see again at Pentecost. The people involved are being equipped for a new role through the Spirit, and one of the signs that God is with them and equipping them for this role is that they prophesy. Now this experience is repeated later in Samuel's life in a kind of final tragic irony. At this point in his life, Saul is trying to capture and kill David. David has been anointed king by Samuel, the spirit that enabled Saul to be king has been taken away from him, and Saul is desperately anxious to eliminate David as his rival and to hold on to the kingship. So I'm going to read first Samuel nineteen verses eighteen through twenty four. Now David fled and escaped, and he came to Samuel at Rama and told him all that Saul had done to him, and he and Samuel went and lived at Niowath. And it was told Saul, Behold, David is at Nioath in Rama. Then Saul sent messengers to take David, and when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing his head over them, the Spirit of God came upon the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied. When it was told Saul, he sent other messengers, and they also prophesied. And Saul sent messengers again the third time, and they also prophesied. Then he himself went to Rama and came to the great well that is in Seku, and he asked, Where are Samuel and David? And one said, Behold, they are at Niowath in Rama. And he went there to Niath and Ramah, and the Spirit of God came upon him also, and as he went he prophesied until he came to Niowath and Rama, and he too stripped off his clothes, and he too prophesied before Samuel, and lay naked all that day and all that night. Thus it is said is Saul also among the prophets. Well you can see the tragic irony in this. In the first event, the Spirit came upon Saul as one of the signs that God was with him and had accepted him as king over Israel. And Saul was prophesying as evidence to the people that God had chosen him to be king. Now we see Saul prophesying that David is God's choice to be king. The Spirit not only thwarts Saul's plans to kill David, Saul prophesies that David is king. And as Saul spends his time prophesying, David is able to slip away out of his grasp. Now notice in all these cases we've looked at so far, the content of the prophecy is not mentioned. And I suspect that's because the content of the prophecy is not particularly significant to the story. What is significant in the story is that the Spirit of God is empowering a particular individual to fulfill a particular role. The Spirit of God leaves an observable mark on that person such that they prophesy and everyone around them knows that God has verified and authenticated their new role. So with Moses, it's confirming that God has put his mark on the seventy elders. With Saul the first time, it's that God has put his mark on Saul to make him king. And with Saul the second time, it's to show that God has chosen David as king, and God has put his mark on Saul to show that God has rejected Saul's kingship and will keep him from carrying out his plans to kill and capture David. So in these cases, God's mark on someone is more important than the content of what they were saying. But most of the time in the Old Testament, the content of the prophecy is what's most important. However, we have one striking reference to the Spirit empowering the words of David, and David was king. He was not a prophet in the official sense. He didn't hold the office of prophet. He was king, but we see this in 2 Samuel twenty three verses one through three. Now these are the last words of David, the oracle of David, the son of Jesse, the oracle of the man who was raised on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, the sweet psalmist of Israel. And then they quote David, saying, The Spirit of the Lord speaks by me, his word is on my tongue, the God of Israel has spoken, the rock of Israel has said to me, and it goes on from there. But we have David here claiming that the Spirit of God spoke through him, and he goes on to tell what he learned. David is claiming for himself that when he's writing psalms, when he's speaking at certain times, it is the Lord speaking through him, putting his words on David's tongue through his spirit. And the New Testament echoes this idea. Peter says that David was speaking the words of God by the Spirit when he wrote his Psalms. This is Acts chapter one verses fifteen and sixteen. In those days Peter stood up among the brothers, the company of persons wasn't all about a hundred and twenty, and said, Brothers, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus. Here we have Peter saying The Holy Spirit spoke through the mouth of David. The Holy Spirit empowered David to speak words that would later be fulfilled in the life of Judas. We see this same idea again later, this is Acts chapter four, twenty three through twenty five. When they were released, this is Peter and John, when they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, Sovereign Lord who made the heaven and the earth, and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, Why did the Gentiles rage and the people's plot in vain? So again, here they're praying, and they're saying, Your servant spoke through the mouth of our father David. The same kind of thing David was claiming for himself. And one more example, the author of Hebrews quotes a psalm of David and then says, this is Hebrews 3 7, therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, Today if you hear his voice. So he's quoting a psalm David wrote and directly saying, These are words from the Holy Spirit. David's claim that God was speaking through him is confirmed by the apostles. Primarily, God was speaking through the Psalms that David wrote, and notice in each case in the New Testament, the Spirit is specifically mentioned as enabling David to speak the truth of God. So we've seen the Holy Spirit coming upon leaders of Israel and they prophesy as a sign that God is with them. We've seen David saying that he is able to speak truth because the Holy Spirit is giving him the words to say. And then finally, as you would expect, we're told that those who hold the office of prophet are also given the Spirit of God, and they are able to announce the Word of God because of this activity of the Spirit. Interestingly, with the writing prophets, most often the language we see is the word of the Lord came to me, and then they will tell you they saw a vision or whatnot. For example, this is Isaiah chapter forty eight, sixteen through seventeen. Draw near to me, hear this. From the beginning I have not spoken in secret, from the time it came to be I have been there. And now the Lord God has sent me and his spirit. Thus says the Lord your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go. So here we have Isaiah claiming God sent him and his spirit, and then he says, Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, and goes on to quote what God told him. Ezekiel says something very similar. This is Ezekiel chapter two verses one and two. And he said to me, Son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak with you. And as he spoke to me, the spirit entered into me and set me on my feet, and I heard him speaking to me. This account is from Ezekiel's call to be a prophet, and Ezekiel tells us God spoke to him and his spirit entered Ezekiel such that Ezekiel could prophesy and fulfill his role as prophet. And one more example, this is Zechariah seven, verse twelve. They made their hearts diamond hard lest they should hear the law and the words that the Lord of hosts had sent by his spirit through the former prophets. Therefore great anger came upon the Lord of hosts. Zechariah is saying here that all the prophets who came before him were speaking words sent by the Spirit of God. And the New Testament confirms this. Perhaps the most well known passage is Second Peter. This is Second Peter chapter one verse twenty one. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of men, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Now there's some debate about exactly how we're to understand Peter, but I think most people agree that the basic idea is that every one of the prophets speaks from an understanding that was given to them by the Holy Spirit. So what have we seen in the Old Testament so far? We've seen two main themes. First, in the last podcast, we saw that the Spirit empowers the leaders of Israel to give them what they need to fulfill their leadership roles. He works miracles through them, he gives them strength and wisdom to prevail in battle, or he gives them the wisdom and power to lead as king. So this is an individual work of the Spirit empowering and equipping them to fulfill their leadership roles. Then today we've seen that the Spirit gives revelation to the prophets. Through His Spirit, God reveals to the prophets his will, his plans, his warnings, and his blessings, and then they speak or write based on that understanding. And in David we see both these themes. The Holy Spirit empowered him in his kingship so that he could prevail in military battles and lead the people, and the Spirit also inspired him to write true words from God in his Psalms. Now remember that David is also important in that he establishes a line of kings which will ultimately produce the Messiah. Given what we've seen with David, we would expect to find the Spirit of God working in the Messiah just as he did in David, and that's exactly what we find. This is Isaiah chapter eleven verses one through four. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit, and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see or Or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth, and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Now Isaiah is predicting the coming Messiah here, the stump of Jesse. Jesse was David's father, so he's saying from the stump of Jesse, from David is going to come a king, and this king will have the spirit of the Lord on him. He'll have a spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear of the Lord. So Isaiah is predicting the coming Messiah, and he says the Spirit of the Lord is going to rest upon the Messiah to equip him for this role. Later Isaiah comes back to this idea. Only in this passage, Isaiah is telling us words that God himself is speaking. So this is Isaiah 42, one, and Isaiah is quoting God's. I have put my spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the nations. In the first quote then we saw Isaiah predicting the Messiah would come or the servant would come and the spirit would be upon him. Then he gives us the words of God, saying God has put his spirit upon his servant, and then still later in Isaiah sixty one, we see the servant himself speaking and confirming this. This is Isaiah sixty one verses one and two. The servant, who I believe is the Messiah, is speaking, and he says, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God to comfort all who mourn. The Messiah then is going to be the full package. He's going to bring good news from God, he's going to have understanding and wisdom from God, he's going to be both king and prophet, and he will speak a message from God. But he's also coming with the power to make things right. He will bring forth justice and freedom to those captive, and all of this comes about because the Spirit of God rests upon him. Not only then is the Spirit given to the kings and judges of Israel, the prophets and the Messiah are empowered by the Spirit of God as well. The New Testament portrays Jesus as working by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus and the Gospel writers quote from these very passages. Jesus goes into the temple and they ask him to read from Scripture, and he reads this very passage from Isaiah sixty one. This is Luke chapter four verses sixteen through twenty one. And he came to Nazareth, that's Jesus, and he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and as was his custom he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it is written The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him, and he began to say to them, Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. So Jesus tells them, I am that person that the Spirit has come upon. I am the one who has been anointed to proclaim the good news of the gospel and to free those who are oppressed by sin. We see then that the Messiah is the ultimate example of what I've been calling the individual work of the Spirit, of the Spirit working powerfully within an individual so that that person can fulfill the calling and the purposes of God. The Spirit gives the Messiah, Jesus, strength and power and wisdom and courage and the understanding necessary to fulfill his ministry. And Jesus is the clearest and the most perfect example of that equipping. Most of what we see in the Old Testament relates to this individual work of the Spirit. But that is not to imply that the Old Testament does not also talk about the universal work of the Spirit. To the extent that there were people of faith in the Old Testament, and we know that there were many people of faith in biblical history, the Holy Spirit was at work in their lives to transform them and give them faith. I would argue that the universal work of the Spirit in the lives of believers is the same in the Old Testament as in the New. That just as we see today, the Holy Spirit is the one who gives all believers saving faith and performs that transforming work of changing their hearts such that they believe. But this activity of the Spirit is not spoken of in quite the same way or highlighted in the same way in the Old Testament as it is in the new, and that's what we're going to explore in the next podcast. Most often, the way we see the Spirit of God at work in the Old Testament is what I've called the individual work of the Spirit. I can't raise my arms and part the Red Sea. That was an individual work of the Spirit given to Moses. I can't defeat the Philistines in battle, that was given to the King of Israel. And I can't say, thus says the Lord, that was given to Old Testament prophets. Those were works given to God's chosen individuals, leaders, messengers, and prophets, not something he gives to all believers. Now that still has significance for us today. It's important that God imparted miraculous powers to the leaders of Israel, because although these works were given to just a few individuals, the benefits of their works extend to all of us. Their ministries benefited the people of Israel in fulfilling the promises that God made to them. And their ministries benefit believers today because they teach us that God is faithful and he keeps his promises. It might involve parting the Red Sea, it might involve bringing down the walls of Jericho, it might involve victory given to the king of Israel, but it demonstrates that God has both the power to keep his promises and the intention to keep his promises. God protected and saved his people throughout history. He could save his people and he did save his people, and scripture tells us he accomplished that through his spirit. And that same God has made promises to us. Those of us who have faith in Jesus Christ have been promised an inheritance in the kingdom of God. We have been promised mercy and forgiveness for our sins through the blood of Christ, and we're looking forward to being freed fully and finally from all the power of sin. We're longing for the day when God will establish His righteous rule through the Messiah over all of creation, when all of his enemies will be vanquished and death will be no more. Those stories from the Old Testament teach us that God has both the power and the intention of keeping his promises, and he will bring them about through the work of his spirit and the return of Christ. The Spirit of God still intervenes to ensure that the blessings God has promised will come to his people. And the intervention of God through his spirit makes all the difference because we cannot save ourselves. We don't have the power to conquer sin or conquer death left to our own devices. By ourselves we lack the wisdom to know what we truly need to know. To close, I want to remind you of a passage from Zechariah. When the first group of exiles returned to the land, they were led by a man named Zarababel. Around this same time, the prophet Zechariah was given a complicated vision regarding lampstands and olive trees, and an angel explains to Zechariah that the message was intended for Zarababel, and he says this, this is Zechariah 4.6. Then he said to me, This is the word of the Lord to Zarababel, not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts. How is all this going to come about? Not by might, not by military might, not by power, but by the Spirit of God. The world is filled with things that demand our allegiance and make us think that we can solve all our own problems. The world constantly tells us we have the power and the strength to figure it all out, to forge the path, to right all the wrongs and empower ourselves. But God says differently. But that's not gonna come about by might or by power. It's gonna come about by the Spirit of God. Sooner or later, our own strength is gonna fail us, but the promises of God will not fail us. He will bring them about through his spirit, just as he did in the Old Testament. You've been listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. My mission is to explain not only what a passage means, but how we figure it out. Please subscribe to the podcast. You'll find it on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, TuneIn, Stitcher, just about any place you can get your podcast. You'll also find hundreds of past episodes on my website so you can browse for any topic or passage you're most interested in. Our theme music is graciously provided by my friend and my favorite musician, Reggie Coates of Heartfeltmusic.org. I invite you to go to his website and check out his other music. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I hope you'll join me again at Wednesday in the Word.