The Spirit & Other Ministries; OT Ministries

We are really coming to a point where we're just kind of tying together some loose ends and putting a wrap on this study. It's not that we're going to be done next week, there are several loose ends to pull together, but we've really covered all of the big things. The big things that the Bible talks about in regard to the Holy Spirit and we're just kind of pulling together some loose strands. Last week we talked about some of the lesser mentioned ministries of the Spirit. I might say it that way. It's not that they're less important, they're just not referenced that much in Scripture. For instance, the one we're going to look at tonight is just mentioned one time, but it is an amazing ministry of the Spirit. We're doing that, we're going to finish one of those tonight. Then we're going to look at the Old Testament ministries of the Spirit. We're going to look at five of those and we may spend a couple of studies on that. Then we're going to take a study, at least one study, to talk about the sin against the Holy Spirit or what's often called the unpardonable sin in Matthew 22. Any study of the Holy Spirit has to deal with that topic because it's an area of such interest and question. We'll deal with that and then we'll finish up our study on the Holy Spirit by talking about the Holy Spirit in prophecy. What will the Holy Spirit role be, for instance, in the tribulation time or in the millennium? Will the Holy Spirit be active? What will he do? What does it mean when he is withdrawn? The restrainer is taken out of the way. Those kinds of things we'll deal with and that will finish our study on the Holy Spirit. Then after that Lord willing, we will begin a study on angels. What the Bible says about angels and demons. That's where we're headed for the next six months or so. I'm not sure, but that's where we're headed. If you have your outline, you'll notice that last time we talked about several ministries of the Spirit. We'll begin lesser mentioned ministries. The leading of the Spirit mentioned only twice. It's an incredible ministry, but mentioned by those words only twice in the New Testament as far as we are concerned. The teaching of the Spirit, we talked about the anointing of the Spirit and the assuring of the Spirit. Tonight we're going to finish up the last of those lesser mentioned ministries of the Spirit and then we'll talk a little bit about some of the Old Testament ministries. Let's turn to Romans chapter 8 where we will see what the Bible says about the praying of the Spirit. Just a couple verses, but they are chock full of comfort and encouragement. This is really, I think, one of the most encouraging truths in all of the Scriptures. Paul begins in verse 26 by describing our weakness or our infirmity is the King James word. Our weakness, verse 26, he says in the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. Now, our weakness is mentioned in the first part of the verse. The Spirit helps us in our weakness. What kind of weakness is he talking about? Physical weakness, emotional weakness. What kind of weakness is he talking about? I think the rest of the verse goes on to define specifically what the weakness is that he's talking about here. Also, how the Holy Spirit helps us. In the first part of the verse, he just makes this blanket statement. The Spirit helps us in our weakness. Then he defines, okay, this is the weakness I'm talking about, and this is how the Holy Spirit helps. The last part of the verse is kind of an expansion of the first part of the verse. The weakness is in the middle of verse 26, we do not know what we ought to pray for. That's the specific weakness he's talking about. Now, we have to understand what he means by that. Obviously, Paul knew what prayer was all about, and he knew the teaching of scripture about prayer and what we ought to pray for. It's not that Paul is clueless as to how to pray, and he's not suggesting that we are clueless how to pray about how to pray. But there are specific instances in particular difficulties or situations where we sometimes do not know what to ask. It is just not clear how we should pray. And we all face that. We all bump up against that from time to time, don't we? We know the general teaching of scripture to some degree, at least on prayer. We know the things Jesus taught us we should pray about in the disciples prayer. We understand that. But in certain situations, in difficult or particular situations, sometimes he's just not clear how we should pray. For instance, sometimes you just don't know what to ask. When you're burdened about someone, when there's a concern about a member of your family, and maybe you see them headed a direction that you wish they would not had, when there's a serious problem that another person has, or maybe even in your own life, sometimes you just simply don't know what's the right thing to ask. And you struggle for the right words and to even express the burden on your heart. That's included here. And then there are other times when you simply can't pray. It's not that you can't think of what to pray, but you just can't pray. There are times when maybe you're seriously ill, and you can't even verbalize a prayer. You can't even put your thoughts together. There's stuff in your heart that's a concern to you, but you're maybe seriously ill and can't even really put things together. Or maybe you're devastated by an event that's taken place in your life. You're just thoroughly confused about something, and you just find yourself stymied in kind of a state of shock, and you can't even pray. I think all of us have been there. We've been in positions where something has hit us with such force and shock that we didn't even know what to say, or how to say it. We couldn't even verbalize what we wanted to say to the Lord. And sometimes, just because we think we need to pray about something, we pray the wrong thing. Because we don't know how to pray. Paul did. Paul prayed three times in order to remove a thorn in the flesh, and God kept saying, no. Paul was praying the wrong thing. Nothing wrong with his prayer, but it wasn't God's will, obviously. So sometimes, this not knowing what to ask for, basically boils down to the fact that we're not praying the right thing. We're not praying in line with God's will. So that's our weakness. That's our infirmity that he's talking about. It has to do with prayer. It has to do with those times when we don't know what we should ask for. We don't know how to pray as we ought. It is in those times that he says, the spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. It is in those times when we don't understand what we should pray for, how we should pray that the Holy Spirit literally words our prayer. I think about this. When the Holy Spirit, or when you come up against a point where you have something in your heart that you need to express to God that you're concerned about, you're burdened about, and you don't know what to ask. The Holy Spirit words that prayer. He intercedes for us. He prays for us. He says what we're feeling, but we can't express. He says what we're thinking, what our hearts are burdened about, but we don't know how to put into words. He takes that heart burden, that heart grown, that cry, and prays for us. It's interesting that the verse says he intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. If you look back at verse 23, Paul says that we grown, not only so, not only is the creation-growning in verse 2 under the curse, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit, we've grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption of the sons, the redemption of our bodies. So we've grown under the weight of the curse, and all that we do in falling short of what God wants us to be. We've grown under that. And the same idea here is used of the Spirit. It's not that the Holy Spirit grows under the curse, or because of weaknesses or failings, because that's not the case. But it's the same thought. The Holy Spirit grows for us as he sees our burdens, our troubles, our heartaches that we don't even know how to put into words when we come to God. The Holy Spirit grows for us, and it's like the groaning of a parent kneeling beside the bedside of a child who's very sick and trying to pray for that child. It is a groaning that cannot even be uttered with words, but is a groaning that longs for us, in the Holy Spirit's love for us, he longs for us to be delivered from our groaning under the curse. He longs for us to be delivered from that which weighs us down and burdens us and causes us to groan, and so he groans with us. It's just a beautiful picture of the Holy Spirit taking the groanings of our heart, and we can't even put them into words, and he groans. He groans them to the Lord, if you will, and takes them to the Lord and words them appropriately. Well, then that leads us to the Father's interest. The Father is very interested in what is happening here, and he's listening. Look at what he's doing, verse 27, and he who searches our hearts, and stop right there, he knows that burden that's on your heart. God searches your heart, so he knows that burden, he knows that concern, he knows that situation that you can't even put into words because he knows what's in your heart. You may not be able to verbalize it, you may not be able to get the right words out, but he knows what's in your heart, because he searches down into your heart. But not only does he know your heart, notice what else he is interested in, he knows the mind of the Spirit. So here's this terrible burden on your heart that you can't even put into words, and here's the groaning of the Spirit for you, and God knows what's in your heart, and he also knows what the Holy Spirit is saying. As he groans your prayer without even using words, without even being able to utter any words, groans that words cannot express. The Father knows what's in the mind of the Spirit, and why does the Father know what's in the mind of the Spirit in the verse 27, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will. In other words, what's in the mind of the Spirit, same thing, it's in the mind of the Father, they think the same, because the Holy Spirit always prays in line with God's will. We may not, but he does, and so God, the Father, automatically knows what the Holy Spirit is praying because they think the same thing, they think exactly the same way. And so the amazing thing here, in this intersection of the Spirit, the Spirit praying for us, is that in those times, when you are so burdened, or maybe so weighed down with physical ailment that you can't even muster the focus and the energy to pray, the Holy Spirit knows what's in your heart, and the Father searches what's in your heart, and knows that. The Holy Spirit takes the groaning of your heart and groans them to the Father in a way that can't even be expressed in words, and the Father who knows the groaning of your heart also knows what the Holy Spirit has in mind, and so the prayer gets to him. It gets to him. And that, I will say again, has through the years been one of the greatest comforts in all of scripture to me, just these two verses to think that, and in times when I don't even know what to say, or how to express the groaning of my heart, the Holy Spirit does, and he lifts up that groan to the Lord. And the Lord knows both what's in my heart and what's on the Spirit's mind, and the prayer reaches him. That is a blessing. What a blessing. Okay, I've done all the talking so far. Questions? Yes, Kelly? Then he says no. Then he says no, just like he did Paul. When Paul was praying outside the will of God, asking God to take away something that was not God's will to do, God said no. He knew it was in Paul's heart, and we don't know if Paul was at a point where he didn't know how to verbalize or express his prayer. He seems to have expressed it very clearly to the Lord, and the Lord said no. So if we're praying outside the will of God, that means that we are verbalizing requests. We are saying something, and if it's outside the will of God, then God says no. Sure. Oh, that's a whole different subject. That's a whole different topic. Is there a need for prayer if God already knows our hearts? Yes, there is. In a mysterious way, God does respond to prayer, even though God has His will and purpose are already established, but a part of that is God answering our prayers. Even though He knows our hearts and He knows what He's going to do, He does respond to prayer. Again, it's that whole battle between human responsibility and God's sovereignty, which we will never fully logically explain. We will never be able to do that. But I do believe that in God's eternal plan, He also factors in not only the end, but the means to the end. And so God knows that part of the means to an end to accomplish something is our prayers, and He does factor that into how He works. So He does listen to our prayers, and our prayers are answered. Yeah. In a way that fits perfectly with God's sovereign plan. I'm sorry. Right. We sometimes don't know what we're praying. True. Yeah. Again, God answers in the way that is in accordance with His will. And so if I'm praying for patience, and I don't know what I'm asking for, because I haven't thought carefully enough about how the Bible says patience comes, I don't think we should see God is saying, OK, I'll teach you not to pray for that. Yeah, that's not God. That's not that we can't see Him that way. God is extremely patient with us in our weakness in how we pray. And He has a number of different ways He can respond. OK. But the point here is when I'm so burdened that I do not know how to put the heart cry into words, the Holy Spirit does it for me. That's really the point of this passage. When I'm so burdened in heart that I don't know how to pray, I don't know what to ask. The Holy Spirit presents my request to the Father, and the Father who knows the burden of my heart and knows the mind of the Spirit receives the request and answers in accordance with His will. That's the real point of this passage. OK. Other questions, comments? OK. We're going to shift gears a little bit now and talk about the Old Testament ministry of the Spirit. And the reason why I want to do this is because I think this is a greatly neglected topic and greatly misunderstood topic. If the Old Testament ministry of the Spirit is discussed at all, there's usually a quick mention of His work in creation in Genesis 1. And then maybe there's a little bit about the Holy Spirit coming on people and leaving. And that's about it. And I know that because I did a good bit of work on this when I was in seminary and scanned all of the theologies that were available that they in written in written form had to do that for my thesis actually. And so scanned them all and noted how many pages they deal with the Old Testament ministry of the Spirit. And you'll get a 500 volume work and there's like five pages on the Old Testament ministry of the Spirit. It's just incredibly neglected. And the reason is there's a great misunderstanding about some of the ministries of the Spirit that are just as real in the Old Testament as they are in the New Testament, but there's not as much said about them. And that's what we want to talk a little bit about. Usually the focus of most people, especially in dispensational circles like us, you know, we believe that God deals differently with Israel and with the church. Those are two different dispensations, two different peoples of God. And we believe that God will deal differently with people, the millennium and so forth. That's what a dispensationalist generally is. Most of the time people of our stripe and persuasion teach the Old Testament doctrine of the Spirit this way. The Holy Spirit came on people and left, so that means he didn't indwell anybody and didn't do anything else. There was no regeneration, no ceiling, none of the other ministries of the Spirit that we've seen. My conviction is that's a very grave misunderstanding of the ministry of the Spirit. And we're going to try to see why on several fronts here. I just want us to take a little more careful look at what the scriptures are actually saying and then be open to what the text really is telling us. The first Old Testament ministry we're going to talk about is the Old Testament ministry of empowerment. This is where a lot of dispensationalists and I'm one of them, but this is where a lot of dispensationalists run the train off the tracks because they look at all these passages that have to do with empowerment and they see them as teaching that the Holy Spirit didn't indwell anybody in the Old Testament. When the passages are not even talking about indwelling, I mean I could point out to you probably six different dispensational theologians like Charles Rirey and John Walver and Dwight Pentecost and all those guys that taught this, that taught the Holy Spirit did not indwell anybody in the Old Testament because of these passages that describe the Holy Spirit coming on people for a period of time then leaving. But those passages are not talking about indwelling. They're talking about empowerment. They're talking about what we saw a few weeks ago of the special sovereign filling of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit coming on someone with great power to enable them to do a particular task that has nothing to do with indwelling. So you cannot use these passages to determine whether or not the Holy Spirit indwelt anyone in the Old Testament. Let's look at these passages. We're going to look at them hopefully very briefly. Most of them we've already looked at under the special sovereign filling of the Spirit. Let's look at Exodus 31, 3, first. And we saw that this may be that special sovereign filling of the Spirit or this one may be more in line with spiritual gifts. But either way it's not talking about indwelling. Exodus 31, verse 3, this is one of the men who was enabled by God to build a tabernacle. Bezilell is his name, verse 2, verse 3, God says, I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge and all kinds of crafts. So God enabled him to do a particular task and that was to build a tabernacle. There was nothing like the tabernacle and so God gave him the ability to build that and that was a specially divinely given ability. Okay, the next one is in Numbers 11, Numbers 11, verse 17. This is the 70 elders that God chose to help Moses oversee the people of Israel and the wilderness. And God says of them in verse 17 of Numbers 11, I will come down and speak with you there and I will take of the Spirit that is on you. This is the Holy Spirit coming on Moses to enable him to lead the people, to give him special enablement, wisdom, insight, power, all that to be able to lead God's people. I'll take of the Spirit that is on you and put the Spirit on them. They will help you carry the burden of the people so that you will not have to carry it alone. So the Spirit coming on them is Spirit empowerment or enablement to lead God's people. Okay, to do a particular task. The next two or three passages are in Judges. Judges chapter 13 and this is a familiar character. In fact, the next four verses have to do with Samson. Samson is one of the most well-known figures where this expression is used of the Holy Spirit coming on him. And it's very clear in Samson's case this was a sudden empowerment enablement with spiritual power to do a particular task. It had nothing to do with a permanent or temporary indwelling. It was a sudden enablement of power. First one is in chapter 13 verse 25. Verse 24 describes Samson's birth. He grew. The Lord blessed him verse 25 and the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him while he was in Mahanandan between Zora and Estal. So just a kind of a brief reference that the Holy Spirit began to stir him up, began to motivate him and energize him to do something for the Lord. And those things are described in the next few verses, some of them at least chapter 14 verse 6. We looked at this earlier when they're going down to meet his bride to be. He's with his parents. A lion comes roaring toward him in verse 5 verse 6. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him in power so that he tore the lion apart with his bare hands as he might have torn a young goat. So obviously this is very clear. The Holy Spirit rushes on him, comes on him in power. This is a sudden infusion of power to do a particular task. And then verse 19, same chapter when he tried to fool the Philistines with the riddle and his wife got the riddle from him and gave it to the Philistines verse 19. Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon him in power. He went down to Ashkelon, struck down 30 of their men, stripped them of their belongings and gave their clothes to those who would explain the riddle. Because that was the deal. He basically said, I'm going to give you a riddle. If you answer it, I have to give you 30 changes of clothes. If you can't answer it, you have to give me 30. And so his wife stole the riddle from him basically. And Samson makes one of those famous quotes of the Old Testament in verse 18. If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have solved my riddle. Very interesting. So the Holy Spirit comes on him in great power and enables him to get victory over the Philistines in this case. Then the last one, chapter 15, verse 14, this is where they're going to time up and try to capture him. Verse 14, as he approached Lehigh, the Philistines came toward him shouting, the Spirit of the Lord came upon him in power. The ropes on his arms became like charred flocks. The bindings dropped from his hands, finding a fresh jawbone of a donkey. He grabbed it, struck down a thousand men. This may be the most glaring, most visible, obvious case of the Holy Spirit coming on a sudden infusion of power to do an incredible task. Next one, and stop me if you want to ask a question about any of these. Otherwise we'll just kind of rust through them to give you a big picture of what we're talking about here. The next one is in 1 Samuel 11. And verse 6, this is Saul. When the Ammonites threatened the men of J. Bashgiliad, the men of J. Bashgiliad, they're going to have their eyes put out. Let me say, give us a little time to see if we can raise some troops from the Israelites. Verse 6, when Saul heard their words, the Spirit of God came upon him in power. And he burned with anger. And he basically gathers an army and goes up and defeats the Ammonites. So again, the Holy Spirit giving a sudden infusion of power. 1 Samuel 16, and verse 13, this is going to be probably a little more familiar to you. David, when David is anointed king by Samuel, 1 Samuel 16, 13 says, so Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers. And from that day on, the Spirit of the Lord came upon David in power. Samuel then went to Rama. So how can David do the things he does? Gilgoliath, defeat, Philistine armies time after time, be successful in warfare, eventually rule the nation of Israel. It's because of this infusion of power from the Holy Spirit to do those tasks. And I put alongside this verse, Psalm 51 11, because I believe Psalm 51 11 is tied to what we've just read. When David had sinned with Bathsheba and was confessing that sin in Psalm 51, one of the things he praised the Lord as part of that confession of verse 11, is do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Now again, a lot of writers say, well, that's that's a proof that the Holy Spirit didn't entwine people in the Old Testament because he could be taken away. Well, in what sense is David thinking? And obviously in the sense of empowerment, if you go back to 1 Samuel 16, we read verse 13, if you look at verse 14, it says, now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul. And it's not an indwelling that he's talking about there. It's the enablement to be king and to do king work and to defeat enemies to have this infusion of power to do the work of God. In that sense, the Holy Spirit left Saul and no longer empowered him. And the Holy Spirit did come on David to empower him. And David was praying because of his sin, don't remove that enablement from me. I saw it happen with Saul. I'm asking you, God, please don't remove that spiritual power from me because I cannot lead your people. And he goes on to talk about, I want to teach, teach your people and lead, lead your people and teach the centers. He wants to do that in Psalm 51. He knows he can't do that without the Holy Spirit's power. So this is divine enablement, empowerment that's being talked about here. A couple more. Second Chronicles 15. This is King Asa. Second, Chron 15, verse 1, the Spirit of God came upon As Raya, son of Odad. He went out to meet Asa and said to him, listen to me, Asa gives him a message. So the prophet is empowered by the Holy Spirit to speak this message to King Asa. So the power of God, the Spirit of God came upon Asa Raya, the prophet. And then the last one is Ezekiel, another prophet in Ezekiel 2. This is at the time Ezekiel is called into his prophetic ministry. Ezekiel 2, verse 2. As he spoke, and what he had spoken was in verse 1. He said to me, son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you. As he spoke, the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet and I heard him speaking to me. He said, always say, came into me. That's into dwelling, isn't it? Well, the prepositions of coming in, coming on, poured out on, all of those prepositions are just always of saying the Holy Spirit gave special enablement or power. It's like being full of joy or full of faith or full of power doesn't mean there's something actually inside me. Remember the Holy Spirit is a spirit being. He doesn't need to crawl down inside your left arm to be present with you. So all the prepositions basically are describing the Holy Spirit's presence and here in power. The same thing in chapter 3 and verse 24. The Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet. It was the Holy Spirit gave him an infusion of power, raised him to his feet, spoke to me and said, go shut yourself inside your house and he goes on to continue to talk about the call of God in his life. Now, those are the texts that deal with empowerment of the Spirit and the Old Testament. Let me quickly draw together what they teach about the meaning of empowerment. In each of those cases, there is an enablement to do a special task. The concept is not, did the Holy Spirit come to indwell and remain with you in an abiding presence for the rest of your life? That's not the issue here. In each of these cases, it is clearly the Holy Spirit coming on people in power to do a particular task. And we've already seen that that is a special enablement of the Spirit. It is a sovereign filling of the Spirit. It has nothing to do with indwelling. So you cannot draw conclusions about the indwelling of the Spirit and the Old Testament from these passages. And that is the, I believe, the failing of many writers who deal with the Old Testament texts on the Holy Spirit. They look at these passages and say, oh, the Holy Spirit didn't indwell people. He came and went. Well, he came and went in the sense of giving spiritual power. He did the same thing in the book of Acts. Remember when we studied the sovereign, special sovereign filling of the Spirit. There were numerous occasions and acts where the Holy Spirit came on people and filled them with boldness to proclaim the Word of God. Same thing. That is nothing to do with indwelling. It has everything to do with Holy Spirit enablement for a particular task. Now, I know I've probably ground that one to death, but I think that's a key misunderstanding of the Holy Spirit's ministry and the Old Testament. And it leads to a lot of what I think is erroneous teaching about the Holy Spirit. Okay, let me start long enough to see if you have questions. I could, I wrote 140 pages on this when I was in seminary so I could spend all night on it. Bob. It's a little, it's a little different in the sense that in that, in that story in Acts chapter 19, there were some disciples of John that all they had heard was the message of the promise of the Messiah. And they were baptized by John. They hadn't gotten the rest of the story. So the Holy Spirit was not yet indwelling them. And the Holy Spirit did not indwel them until Paul prayed that the Holy Spirit would indwel them. And then they spoke with tongues. And we looked at that before, but I know you're usually in divorce care through the year. But when we looked at that before we saw that what that's dealing with is there are several occasions like them, the book of Acts. Four of them in all where unusual things happen. And the reason why they do is to tie what's happening. People getting saved from a different people group into what happened to next chapter two. So they spoke in tongues, the Holy Spirit indwel them because they were just now getting the full story of the gospel. And so in each of those cases an apostle is there to tie what's happened back to the book of Acts so that there's not in chapter eight of Samaritan church. There's not in chapter 10, a Gentile church. And there's not in chapter 19 of John the Baptist church. Okay, there's one church that started in Jerusalem and everybody that has these crazy things happen into them. Speaking in tongues, the Holy Spirit coming indwelling them after they've already believed. Sometime before all that's happening to show that that the unity of the church is there's one church. It's all tied to what was happening on the appendix cost. So that's that's a little bit of a different situation, but very similar kind of misunderstanding. Okay, yes, Max. I would say there's basically no difference in indwelling the main differences in the baptism of the spirit. Now, I don't have time to back that up because that's I think the third or fourth one on our list that we're going to get to. It's not even on your list tonight that we're going to get to the indwelling of the spirit and the Old Testament. That's what I wrote my T.H.M. thesis on was the indwelling the spirit and the Old Testament. And so we'll look at some clear text that teach that even one in the New Testament that says the spirit was in them using the same terminology that Jesus did in John 14. But basically I would say personally I would say there's no difference in indwelling the difference in the ministry of the spirit is in the baptism of the spirit because baptism in the spirit uniquely places into the body of Christ and that can't start till acts to after the head has been crucified, buried, risen and ascended. And the head of the churches in place, the church begins and the baptism in the spirit is the unique ministry of the spirit in the New Testament church age. Now, that's not a very common view. There have not been many dispensations that were willing to step out on that limb. But one of the four runners of my thinking was Leon Wood who taught at Grand Rapids Baptist Seminary was kind of a lone voice in dealing with the spirit and the Old Testament really did the groundwork dealing with the text that nobody else did. And so there's not that's not a very popular view. Most of the people you read like Dwight Pentecost and Walverdon, Rary and all the Dallas guys and all the guys at Grace when I was there except the professor who encouraged me to work on this all of them believed no indwelling in the Old Testament. And I just don't think that's appropriate. It's on shaky ground. But we'll deal with that next time. We'll get into that more fully.