The Holy Spirit - God's Spirit
E-book and Audio series
PART 2 - The Roles and Activities of the Holy Spirit
Chapter 13 - The Work of the Spirit in OT - Pt 2b - A Revealer of Truth (continued)
Summary: The role of the Holy Spirit as a Revealer of Truth in OT times (from the time of the Judges until after the Jewish return from the Babylonian exile).
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Study Notes - No.13 – The Holy Spirit in the OT Pt 2b – Revealer of Truth
(Some of these points are elaborated in more detail in the audio recording.)
SO FAR – to remind you of where we are in this series, we firstly spent quite a few studies considering something of the being and nature of the Holy Spirit. For the last few studies, we’ve shifted our focus to consider some of the roles and activities of the Holy Spirit, and we’ve been looking at some of these activities in the OT in recent weeks.
I’ve suggested that there were three main activities of the Holy Spirit during OT times – Enabling, Revealing, and Guiding - and that the ways these activities were carried out differed from one phase of the OT to another (eg, Genesis is different to the time of the kings). We looked at how
the Spirit enabled certain people to perform extraordinary deeds (interpreting dreams, superhuman strength, extraordinary skills of craftsmanship, healings, raising people from the dead, etc). Last week, we saw that, in the earliest OT times, God proclaimed His messages to mankind most often by appearing to people in a humanlike form – In earliest ages, He appeared, probably regularly, to Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Enoch, Noah. Mankind showed its wickedness, so then the world was destroyed by the Flood, and God’s appearances to people were a lot less frequent after this. He appeared, but less frequently, to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, but these occasions were so rare that they built altars in the places that God appeared. God began speaking to people through prophets (God’s mouthpiece).
Remember 2 Peter 1:21 - "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy
Ghost."
Moses was one of the first of these, and God appeared to him quite frequently during the 40 years in the wilderness, and gave Moses messages to pass onto the nation of Israel. Remember, the people were frightened of God and said to Moses, “Let God speak with you, and then you tell us what He says” (paraphrased from Exodus 20:19).
Let’s pick up the thread from here, and then continue –
READ Numbers 12:6-8a Prophecy would be given to prophets by vision – v.6 “I speak to him in a dream”
(but not Moses – God's revelations to him came face to face, “… he sees the form of the LORD” Numbers 12:8)
Deuteronomy 34:10-12 – since then, there has not arisen another prophet like Moses, “whom the Lord knew face to face.” So, people like Joshua were almost certainly spoken to via a dream or a vision. We’ll consider God’s dealings with leaders like Joshua in the next study, however, we will refer to this “speaking in dreams and visions” again when we talk about Samuel in a few moments.
Judges
For a while after Moses’ time, there’s not much mention of prophets - in fact, only two are mentioned in the book of Judges:
(1) Deborah – QUICKLY - Judges 4:4 (more about this “judging” aspect in the next study).
(2) An unnamed prophet Judges 6:1,7-10.
The Spirit was upon the Judges, and God ruled Israel through them. Up to this time, God’s spirit had been upon those who were leaders of His people - Joseph, Moses, Joshua, the Judges - and, primarily, His will for the people was made known through them.
Samuel
Let’s now read about the last of the Judges - Samuel. A transitional phase begins with Samuel, who was both a judge (the last
non-monarch leader of Israel for centuries), and a prophet. In the time of Samuel’s youth, God was ruling over Israel via his judges, and
there was hardly any prophetic activity. By the time of Samuel’s death, kings were ruling over Israel, and there was a multitude of prophets. Let’s follow the progression …
READ 1 Samuel 3:1-11 … 15 … 19-21
v.1 boy = youth
- “the word of the Lord was rare in those days”
The Lord here spoke to Samuel by a "vision" (v.15), not “face to face” with the Lord (cp. Numbers 12:6-8).
v.19 tells us that "Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground".
This unusual phrase may mean:
Possibly - (a) everything Samuel said came to pass. Cp 1 Samuel 9:6.
Probably (b) Samuel took in everything the Lord said, and in the midst of adverse influence, he wasn’t going to let anything sway him from God’s truth.
v.20 – It became apparent to the people that Samuel had been established as a prophet.
A Turning Point
The Spirit was upon the Judges, and God ruled Israel through them. This was soon to change.
READ 1 Samuel 8:1-9a
v.5 - The people ask for a king, and in doing so are rejecting God’s way of ruling. Note: God was often dealing with the people through more than one judge at a time. (A good job description of the role of a judge can be found in Exodus 18. They weren’t the absolute rulers of the nation –
God was. Rather, the judges were overseers of particular jurisdictions, "departments" or regions.
Soon after the people ask for a king, we begin to read of "groups of prophets". Before 1 Samuel 8, we barely read of them – prophets are there, but are hardly mentioned, and God’s spirit seemed to be working primarily through the leaders of His people, the Judges. However, shortly after rejecting God’s way of ruling, just as Saul is to be anointed as king, we read about a group of prophets:
READ 1 Samuel 9:25 to 10:2a …5,6
We don’t know much about where they came from, but it seems as if, from this time onwards until the exiles, there were "schools" of prophets.
We find an interesting parallel in Scripture about this situation.
In the OT, in Samuel's day, the rejection of Jehovah as the king of Israel was followed by a flurry of miraculous and prophetic activity of the Holy Spirit by way of prophets.
In the NT, in Christ's day, Pilate said to the chief priests- “Shall I crucify your king?”; the response – “we have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15). The rejection of the Son of God as their king was shortly followed by a flurry of miraculous and prophetic activity of the Holy Spirit, this time via the apostles who were, on occasions, referred to as prophets.
Single Kingdom
Moving forward now, in terms of God speaking to the people, the time of the kingdom under Saul, David and Solomon was somewhat of a transitional period. Each of these three kings received supernatural guidance from God, yet various prophets are also said to have ministered to Saul, David and Solomon...
To Saul - Mostly via the prophet Samuel. We have already read 1 Samuel 9:27, but by 1 Samuel 28:6,15, Saul had gotten to the point where the prophets had
stopped speaking to him, which is why he consulted the medium.
To David - Mostly via the prophets Gad (1 Samuel 22:5), and Nathan (2 Samuel 7:1-5).
To Solomon - Nathan the prophet was present (1 Kings 1:38,39 – incidentally, this passage forms the basis of the text in the famous “Coronation Anthem" by Handel, sometimes known as "Zadok The Priest"), and possibly the prophet Ahijah (1 Kings 11:29).
This remained the case when Israel were granted kings – Saul, David and Solomon were all blessed with God's spirit upon them to help them lead the nation - more about this aspect of being guided by God's Spirit in the next study. However, in a "prophetic" sense, i.e. being a spokesperson for God, it is interesting to remember that Saul is said to have prophesied at various times, David wrote over 70 Psalms and Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes and large portions of the book of Proverbs. (cp 2 Timothy 3:16 – "all Scripture is God-breathed").
Divided Kingdom
The situation does not seem to be the case any longer after the kingdom divides: there is no mention of God's spirit being upon any of the kings
after the division.
God’s way of speaking to people was purely through the prophets from the time of the divided kingdom onwards. Notice the proliferation of prophetic books written during the divided kingdom. In fact all seventeen OT books of prophecy (e.g. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Micah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, etc.) all were written after the kingdom split into two. We should be reminded again of 2 Peter 1:21 - "For the
prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost".
The era of the Divided kingdom was a time of turmoil, and witnessed frequent lapses into idol worship by both the kings and their subjects. God's prophets regularly spoke out against such idolatry, and were often persecuted because of this.
1 Kings 18:4 - Obadiah says to Elijah that he had hidden 100 prophets from Jezebel
1 Kings 22:1-9 - Ahab consulted prophets about going up with Jehoshaphat as allies in war. Ahab's prophets say "go", but Jehoshaphat challenges this by saying "isn't there a prophet of Jehovah here?". There was, and that prophets said that the move would lead to Ahab's death. He was, of course, proven correct.
This incident reveals that the other prophets were deceived by a lying spirit from the Lord. Note that there were warnings about false prophets in Deuteronomy 13:1-5.
All through that period the Lord sent His prophets to warn the leaders and the people to follow Him only, not false gods. There were many other false prophets around at the time; for instance, there were prophets of Baal referred to in 2 Kings 18, whom Elijah confronted at Mt Carmel.
We read also in Jeremiah 14:13-16 ; 23:9-40; 27:9-18; Ezekiel 13:1-12, and elsewhere, about the lies of prophets just before the exile. I.e. prophets not sent by God.
Exile
Micah 3:5-7, actually written in the times preceding the exiles, seems to be saying there would be no prophecy in time of exile, and it is consistent with what we read about when the exile finally comes.
Lamentations 2:8,9, written by Jeremiah during the exile, tells us that the "prophets have no vision from the Lord".
The books of Jeremiah & Ezekiel both cross the boundary of before / during the exile, but only spoke in the early days of the exile. Mainly, their message for the exiles was, "this happened because of your unfaithfulness", and there are few if any messages directed to the people in terms of blessings for their day, or instructions on how God wanted them to act. By and large, the message was, "this is why you have been exiled". It should be mentioned that there are promises of Israel being in her own land again one day, and Ezekiel chapters 40-48 speak of the (still) future millennial kingdom. Neither of these aspects were really instructions or revelations bearing on the day to day lives of the captives in Babylon. They simply had to understand why they were there, learn the lessons, pass them onto their children and ride it out.
Essentially, there were no new prophecies to Jews / Israel during the exile that I can see. The prophet Daniel is an interesting case. he was one of the exiles who was transported to Babylon as a young man and was still prophesying there in his 80's or even 90's. His prophecies were mostly new, but were directed to the Babylonian and Persian rulers who reigned over the Jews, not actually to Jews of his time. They may have been helpful to Jews of a later time, but not really during the exile. Broadly speaking, the Lord, who had sent myriads of prophets to His people before the exile, was not really giving messages to His chosen people during the exile.
After Exile
With the captives being allowed to return to their homeland, we see a relatively brief period of prophetic activity again, as evidenced by Zechariah 7:8,9 - "Thus says the Lord of Hosts ...". He was speaking after the exile, and reminded the people that they should have listened to the former prophets; i.e. those who spoke before the exile (chapter 7). Also, bear in mind that the entire books of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi were God-inspired prophetic books, all addressed to Israel back in her land after the exile.
This prophetic activity, and indeed the working of God's spirit, tailed off soon after this, as we shall see in chapter 15 when we examine the work of the Holy Spirit in the Intertestamental period.
Summary of the Holy Spirit as a Revealer in the OT
Here, then is a chronological overview of the Spirit's activities as a Revealer of truth, as we have observed in this study and the previous one:
- Earliest times – God spoke directly in human form to people like Adam, Noah, etc.
- After the flood, he appeared, but less frequently, to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.
- During the exodus, he spoke “face to face with Moses”, a prophet, who passed on God’s messages to the nation of Israel.
- Once the people were in the land, the Spirit of God was upon the judges. God was ruling Israel via judges. Only sporadic prophetic activity, but God’s spirit spoke to prophets through dreams and visions, not face to face. Prophets spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
- Sporadic activity was still the case leading up to Samuel’s time, but once the people requested a king to rule over them, and the monarchy was established, we begin to read of a multitude of prophets.
- God’s spirit was still upon the first three kings – Saul, David Solomon - primarily for the purpose of guidance, but He used prophets to speak to each of them.
- Once the kingdom divided, the Lord always spoke to the kings and the people through prophets only.
- There were lots of false prophets around during that time, leading the people astray, and God’s prophets were largely ignored.
- The true prophets of God pleaded for the nation to repent, which they didn’t do, so they were sent into exile.
- During the exile there doesn’t appear to have been any prophetic messages to the exiled Jews and Israelites.
- After the exile, there is some prophetic activity again for a time.
Generally speaking, there is a pattern of God speaking closely and personally to people, until they indicate that they don’t want to hear what God has to say. Hebrews 11:6 – “God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” - perhaps this is a principle which has been true of all time.
In the next study, we shall look again at the Holy Spirit in the OT, this time focussing on His roles and activities as a Guide and a help.
(Some of these points are elaborated in more detail in the audio recording.)
SO FAR – to remind you of where we are in this series, we firstly spent quite a few studies considering something of the being and nature of the Holy Spirit. For the last few studies, we’ve shifted our focus to consider some of the roles and activities of the Holy Spirit, and we’ve been looking at some of these activities in the OT in recent weeks.
I’ve suggested that there were three main activities of the Holy Spirit during OT times – Enabling, Revealing, and Guiding - and that the ways these activities were carried out differed from one phase of the OT to another (eg, Genesis is different to the time of the kings). We looked at how
the Spirit enabled certain people to perform extraordinary deeds (interpreting dreams, superhuman strength, extraordinary skills of craftsmanship, healings, raising people from the dead, etc). Last week, we saw that, in the earliest OT times, God proclaimed His messages to mankind most often by appearing to people in a humanlike form – In earliest ages, He appeared, probably regularly, to Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Enoch, Noah. Mankind showed its wickedness, so then the world was destroyed by the Flood, and God’s appearances to people were a lot less frequent after this. He appeared, but less frequently, to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, but these occasions were so rare that they built altars in the places that God appeared. God began speaking to people through prophets (God’s mouthpiece).
Remember 2 Peter 1:21 - "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy
Ghost."
Moses was one of the first of these, and God appeared to him quite frequently during the 40 years in the wilderness, and gave Moses messages to pass onto the nation of Israel. Remember, the people were frightened of God and said to Moses, “Let God speak with you, and then you tell us what He says” (paraphrased from Exodus 20:19).
Let’s pick up the thread from here, and then continue –
READ Numbers 12:6-8a Prophecy would be given to prophets by vision – v.6 “I speak to him in a dream”
(but not Moses – God's revelations to him came face to face, “… he sees the form of the LORD” Numbers 12:8)
Deuteronomy 34:10-12 – since then, there has not arisen another prophet like Moses, “whom the Lord knew face to face.” So, people like Joshua were almost certainly spoken to via a dream or a vision. We’ll consider God’s dealings with leaders like Joshua in the next study, however, we will refer to this “speaking in dreams and visions” again when we talk about Samuel in a few moments.
Judges
For a while after Moses’ time, there’s not much mention of prophets - in fact, only two are mentioned in the book of Judges:
(1) Deborah – QUICKLY - Judges 4:4 (more about this “judging” aspect in the next study).
(2) An unnamed prophet Judges 6:1,7-10.
The Spirit was upon the Judges, and God ruled Israel through them. Up to this time, God’s spirit had been upon those who were leaders of His people - Joseph, Moses, Joshua, the Judges - and, primarily, His will for the people was made known through them.
Samuel
Let’s now read about the last of the Judges - Samuel. A transitional phase begins with Samuel, who was both a judge (the last
non-monarch leader of Israel for centuries), and a prophet. In the time of Samuel’s youth, God was ruling over Israel via his judges, and
there was hardly any prophetic activity. By the time of Samuel’s death, kings were ruling over Israel, and there was a multitude of prophets. Let’s follow the progression …
READ 1 Samuel 3:1-11 … 15 … 19-21
v.1 boy = youth
- “the word of the Lord was rare in those days”
The Lord here spoke to Samuel by a "vision" (v.15), not “face to face” with the Lord (cp. Numbers 12:6-8).
v.19 tells us that "Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground".
This unusual phrase may mean:
Possibly - (a) everything Samuel said came to pass. Cp 1 Samuel 9:6.
Probably (b) Samuel took in everything the Lord said, and in the midst of adverse influence, he wasn’t going to let anything sway him from God’s truth.
v.20 – It became apparent to the people that Samuel had been established as a prophet.
A Turning Point
The Spirit was upon the Judges, and God ruled Israel through them. This was soon to change.
READ 1 Samuel 8:1-9a
v.5 - The people ask for a king, and in doing so are rejecting God’s way of ruling. Note: God was often dealing with the people through more than one judge at a time. (A good job description of the role of a judge can be found in Exodus 18. They weren’t the absolute rulers of the nation –
God was. Rather, the judges were overseers of particular jurisdictions, "departments" or regions.
Soon after the people ask for a king, we begin to read of "groups of prophets". Before 1 Samuel 8, we barely read of them – prophets are there, but are hardly mentioned, and God’s spirit seemed to be working primarily through the leaders of His people, the Judges. However, shortly after rejecting God’s way of ruling, just as Saul is to be anointed as king, we read about a group of prophets:
READ 1 Samuel 9:25 to 10:2a …5,6
We don’t know much about where they came from, but it seems as if, from this time onwards until the exiles, there were "schools" of prophets.
We find an interesting parallel in Scripture about this situation.
In the OT, in Samuel's day, the rejection of Jehovah as the king of Israel was followed by a flurry of miraculous and prophetic activity of the Holy Spirit by way of prophets.
In the NT, in Christ's day, Pilate said to the chief priests- “Shall I crucify your king?”; the response – “we have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15). The rejection of the Son of God as their king was shortly followed by a flurry of miraculous and prophetic activity of the Holy Spirit, this time via the apostles who were, on occasions, referred to as prophets.
Single Kingdom
Moving forward now, in terms of God speaking to the people, the time of the kingdom under Saul, David and Solomon was somewhat of a transitional period. Each of these three kings received supernatural guidance from God, yet various prophets are also said to have ministered to Saul, David and Solomon...
To Saul - Mostly via the prophet Samuel. We have already read 1 Samuel 9:27, but by 1 Samuel 28:6,15, Saul had gotten to the point where the prophets had
stopped speaking to him, which is why he consulted the medium.
To David - Mostly via the prophets Gad (1 Samuel 22:5), and Nathan (2 Samuel 7:1-5).
To Solomon - Nathan the prophet was present (1 Kings 1:38,39 – incidentally, this passage forms the basis of the text in the famous “Coronation Anthem" by Handel, sometimes known as "Zadok The Priest"), and possibly the prophet Ahijah (1 Kings 11:29).
This remained the case when Israel were granted kings – Saul, David and Solomon were all blessed with God's spirit upon them to help them lead the nation - more about this aspect of being guided by God's Spirit in the next study. However, in a "prophetic" sense, i.e. being a spokesperson for God, it is interesting to remember that Saul is said to have prophesied at various times, David wrote over 70 Psalms and Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes and large portions of the book of Proverbs. (cp 2 Timothy 3:16 – "all Scripture is God-breathed").
Divided Kingdom
The situation does not seem to be the case any longer after the kingdom divides: there is no mention of God's spirit being upon any of the kings
after the division.
God’s way of speaking to people was purely through the prophets from the time of the divided kingdom onwards. Notice the proliferation of prophetic books written during the divided kingdom. In fact all seventeen OT books of prophecy (e.g. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Micah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, etc.) all were written after the kingdom split into two. We should be reminded again of 2 Peter 1:21 - "For the
prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost".
The era of the Divided kingdom was a time of turmoil, and witnessed frequent lapses into idol worship by both the kings and their subjects. God's prophets regularly spoke out against such idolatry, and were often persecuted because of this.
1 Kings 18:4 - Obadiah says to Elijah that he had hidden 100 prophets from Jezebel
1 Kings 22:1-9 - Ahab consulted prophets about going up with Jehoshaphat as allies in war. Ahab's prophets say "go", but Jehoshaphat challenges this by saying "isn't there a prophet of Jehovah here?". There was, and that prophets said that the move would lead to Ahab's death. He was, of course, proven correct.
This incident reveals that the other prophets were deceived by a lying spirit from the Lord. Note that there were warnings about false prophets in Deuteronomy 13:1-5.
All through that period the Lord sent His prophets to warn the leaders and the people to follow Him only, not false gods. There were many other false prophets around at the time; for instance, there were prophets of Baal referred to in 2 Kings 18, whom Elijah confronted at Mt Carmel.
We read also in Jeremiah 14:13-16 ; 23:9-40; 27:9-18; Ezekiel 13:1-12, and elsewhere, about the lies of prophets just before the exile. I.e. prophets not sent by God.
Exile
Micah 3:5-7, actually written in the times preceding the exiles, seems to be saying there would be no prophecy in time of exile, and it is consistent with what we read about when the exile finally comes.
Lamentations 2:8,9, written by Jeremiah during the exile, tells us that the "prophets have no vision from the Lord".
The books of Jeremiah & Ezekiel both cross the boundary of before / during the exile, but only spoke in the early days of the exile. Mainly, their message for the exiles was, "this happened because of your unfaithfulness", and there are few if any messages directed to the people in terms of blessings for their day, or instructions on how God wanted them to act. By and large, the message was, "this is why you have been exiled". It should be mentioned that there are promises of Israel being in her own land again one day, and Ezekiel chapters 40-48 speak of the (still) future millennial kingdom. Neither of these aspects were really instructions or revelations bearing on the day to day lives of the captives in Babylon. They simply had to understand why they were there, learn the lessons, pass them onto their children and ride it out.
Essentially, there were no new prophecies to Jews / Israel during the exile that I can see. The prophet Daniel is an interesting case. he was one of the exiles who was transported to Babylon as a young man and was still prophesying there in his 80's or even 90's. His prophecies were mostly new, but were directed to the Babylonian and Persian rulers who reigned over the Jews, not actually to Jews of his time. They may have been helpful to Jews of a later time, but not really during the exile. Broadly speaking, the Lord, who had sent myriads of prophets to His people before the exile, was not really giving messages to His chosen people during the exile.
After Exile
With the captives being allowed to return to their homeland, we see a relatively brief period of prophetic activity again, as evidenced by Zechariah 7:8,9 - "Thus says the Lord of Hosts ...". He was speaking after the exile, and reminded the people that they should have listened to the former prophets; i.e. those who spoke before the exile (chapter 7). Also, bear in mind that the entire books of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi were God-inspired prophetic books, all addressed to Israel back in her land after the exile.
This prophetic activity, and indeed the working of God's spirit, tailed off soon after this, as we shall see in chapter 15 when we examine the work of the Holy Spirit in the Intertestamental period.
Summary of the Holy Spirit as a Revealer in the OT
Here, then is a chronological overview of the Spirit's activities as a Revealer of truth, as we have observed in this study and the previous one:
- Earliest times – God spoke directly in human form to people like Adam, Noah, etc.
- After the flood, he appeared, but less frequently, to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.
- During the exodus, he spoke “face to face with Moses”, a prophet, who passed on God’s messages to the nation of Israel.
- Once the people were in the land, the Spirit of God was upon the judges. God was ruling Israel via judges. Only sporadic prophetic activity, but God’s spirit spoke to prophets through dreams and visions, not face to face. Prophets spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
- Sporadic activity was still the case leading up to Samuel’s time, but once the people requested a king to rule over them, and the monarchy was established, we begin to read of a multitude of prophets.
- God’s spirit was still upon the first three kings – Saul, David Solomon - primarily for the purpose of guidance, but He used prophets to speak to each of them.
- Once the kingdom divided, the Lord always spoke to the kings and the people through prophets only.
- There were lots of false prophets around during that time, leading the people astray, and God’s prophets were largely ignored.
- The true prophets of God pleaded for the nation to repent, which they didn’t do, so they were sent into exile.
- During the exile there doesn’t appear to have been any prophetic messages to the exiled Jews and Israelites.
- After the exile, there is some prophetic activity again for a time.
Generally speaking, there is a pattern of God speaking closely and personally to people, until they indicate that they don’t want to hear what God has to say. Hebrews 11:6 – “God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” - perhaps this is a principle which has been true of all time.
In the next study, we shall look again at the Holy Spirit in the OT, this time focussing on His roles and activities as a Guide and a help.
