The Holy Spirit and the Salvation of Israel
"Neither will I hide my face any more from them, for I
have poured out my Spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord God."
(Ezekiel 39:29)
These words, with their preceding context, contain a
prophecy of "the bringing again the captivity of Jacob." From the terms of the
prophecy itself, not to mention the place assigned it in the series of
prophetic announcements, it is manifest that it relates not to the past, but to
the future restoration. Two circumstances especially may be adverted to as
determining this point.
1. The universality of the restoration (verse 28):
"I have gathered them into their own land, and have left none of them any more
there that is "in captivity among the heathen."
2. The permanence of their
restored state, of God's favourable regard to them and of their spiritual
worship of Him, as set forth in the text.
The blessings promised to be
conferred on the house of Israel in that happy time are not merely temporal.
Indeed, according to the tenor of the covenant made with Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob'to which, and to Adonai's faithfulness in keeping the covenant for ever,
the whole current of prophecy is one continued witnessing none of the promises
was, at least in the ordinary sense which is now generally attached to the
words, merely temporal. However, in other respects the land which Adonai sware
unto the fathers to give it may resemble other lands, the relation which it
bears to Him and, by his oath and gift, to Them, is a thing spiritual, sacred,
divine, pledged by indissoluble covenant and secured by purpose and oath, two
immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie. But whatever may be
thought of this we expect it will be readily granted, that the mercy of the
Lord (v25), the knowledge of God (v28), the enjoyment of the light of his
countenance and the effusion of his Spirit (v29), are blessings in the fullest
and most emphatic sense spiritual, and such as accompany eternal salvation.
The last of these the effusion of the Sprit'stands prominently forth as a
cause and a security for all the rest. I will do all these things, for I have
poured out (or I shall have poured out) my Spirit upon the house of Israel,
saith Lord God".
Our design, at present, is to show the dependence of the
salvation of the house of Israel upon the pouring out of Adonai's Spirit.
Throughout the body of the lecture, it is deemed fit to confine ourselves
to testimonies of the Tanakh and to direct our address peculiarly to the house
of Israel. It is hoped, however, that the attentive hearing of our Christian
brethren will not be altogether profitless to their personal edification, while
it may serve to strengthen their interest in the cause which has assembled us.
The Holy Spirit in the Old Testament
Though the mystery of the
blessed Trinity, subsisting in the unity of God, be not so clearly and
explicitly revealed in the Scriptures of the Old Testament as it is in those of
the New, yet it was made known sufficiently as a basis for the faith required
of those placed under that dispensation, and as a preparation for the
disclosures kept in store for the fullness of the times when the Messiah should
come. On the proofs of the Godhead and of the Messiah, the subject of this
evening's lecture neither requires nor permits that we should enter.
But we
no sooner open the sacred volume of the Law and begin to read the stupendous
history of the creation than straightaway our adoring attention is demanded to
all Agent to whom an important place, and a mysterious but benevolent and
beneficent operation on the mass of the world's matter, is assigned the Spirit
of God: "The Spirit of God was brooding upon the face of the waters" (Genesis
1:2). And as the fostering care of this blessed One, tenderly moving on the
unformed mass like some loving parent bird over the young progeny of her nest,
till the genial heat brings forth the breathing life gave to the shapeless lump
(Hebrew: tohu wa-vohu) fitness to receive all forms of beauty with which the
hand of Adonai invested it. So, also, the whole adorning of the heavens above,
and the exquisite marshalling of their armies, in comeliest, sublimest order,
is ascribed to his skill and power: "By His Spirit He garnished the heavens",
or "by His Spirit, the heavens are elegance, splendour, dazzling beauty" (Job
26:13).
But it is not in the beauty of earth alone, as it came forth "very
good" from the hand of its Creator, nor in the sublime spectacle of heaven and
all its hosts, that the glory of this blessed Spirit is to be most clearly
beheld. Placed amid His works, and ourselves a part of them, but for the word
of revelation we would remain entire strangers to His very existence. And
revelation, which is sparing though explicit in its notices of His work in
creation, is full of the doctrine of His operation on the minds and hearts of
men. That He is the Former of the spirit of man within him is not obscurely
taught in Genesis 2:7: "He (Adonai God) breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life." As an intelligent and spiritual being made in the image and after the
likeness of God, destined to hold humble, ennobling communion with his Maker,
man is fitted to receive the communications of God's Spirit in a way in which
no other creature is here below, and so to show forth the glory of the Divine
Spirit in a more exalted manner than it could be displayed in the material of
the universe.
Before proceeding to consider the nature of the Holy Spirit's
operation on the human soul, we assume here, as already proved by others, or as
otherwise known from the Scriptures of the Old Testament that Adam fell, and
all mankind in him, from that state of holiness and bliss in which he was
created, and that being justly subjected to the curse of God threatened in the
event of disobedience, the whole hope of mankind is shut up unto the faith of
the great Deliverer whom God, of His mere mercy, His abundant mercy, having
provided, was pleased to reveal as "the Seed of the woman" that should bruise
the Serpent's head while His own heel should be bruised in achieving the
victory. That this "Seed of the woman" is the same who was afterwards more
determinately made known as the "Seed of Abraham", the Seed "called in Isaac",
and the "Seed of" David, the Messiah.
With this promise was miserable man
driven out of Gan-Eden. With this promise alone to solace him amidst all the
misery which the yetzer hara, the evil figment (the corruption of his
whole nature) had introduced into his depraved soul, amidst all the fears which
conscious guilt inspired (conscious which had made him vainly attempt to hide
himself from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden) amidst all
the disorders of a world made subject to vanity, cursed for his sake. This
promise, the gift of Adonai's grace to utterly ruined man was a light for his
feet and a lamp for his path dim, indeed, if compared with the brightness which
revelation in its onward progress communicated but still a ray of the Sun of
righteousness arising with healing under His wings, piercing through the
blackness of darkness and giving assurance of brightest day. This bringing of a
new and better hope laid the foundation of a new obedience corresponding
prompting return by the prospect of acceptance, while the knowledge that he had
destroyed himself, but that in Adonai was his help would fill the mind of man
with horror of sin, and astonished enraptured gratitude and love to the God of
his hope and his salvation. The disbelief then, the neglect and forgetfulness
of the promise must have been at the bottom of all the wickedness, which soon
overspread the Antediluvian world and provoked the holy Blessed One to bring in
a flood of waters on the world of the ungodly. The disclosure of this dread
purpose is introduced in these solemn, these most awful words: "My Spirit shall
not always strive with man, because that he also is flesh."
The Holy
Spirit and Man
I hope for the patience of Christian, and the candour of
Jewish hearers, while I remark in regard to the comments of Rabbis who would
make "my Spirit," to signify in this place the soul of man as a spirit which
may be called "God's" because given of God, that this is a mere wresting of the
Scripture as the word occurs in many passages where God is the speaker, and in
all of them means "the Spirit of God", in none "the spirit of man" ' a fact of
which any one who pleases may satisfy himself by referring to a concordance,
Hebrew or English.
Fixing our eyes, then, for a little on this passage, we
see that God, because of the fleshliness, that is, the unspiritualness, the
unholiness, of men, threatens with this most awful of all judgements, leaving
them to themselves, giving them up to the lusts of their own hearts,
withdrawing from them a testimony for Himself, a striving, or a judgement,
which, as opposed to their fleshliness, His Spirit, had hitherto maintained.
Here we see two opposing principles, the flesh of man aiming against the
Spirit of God and the Spirit of God aiming against the flesh of man. The Spirit
of God maintaining truth and holiness, the flesh of man rejecting the truth and
trampling down the commandments of God. And as we have seen that the promise of
the Seed was the brightest exhibition of the holy grace of the Lord, the only
foundation of man's warrantable hope, and the faith of it the only wellspring
of acceptable service, we may easily infer what the striving or judging is by
which the Spirit of God had been hitherto repelling the flood of wickedness
which fleshly men had been pouring forth to pollute the earth with their way.
He had been acting mediately, or immediately, or both, on the mind of man, as
one intelligent being doth on another, He had been acting in a moral and
authoritative way, as a judge, or as one who, by plea of right, maintains the
claim of truth and equity.
He had maintained a testimony for the being and
glorious nature of the one God Adonai, for the holiness, justice, and goodness
of His law; a testimony against the madness and sinfulness of sin and, above
all, a testimony to the word of promise in order that repentance, which issues
from faith and flows out into new obedience, might be produced, that thus
sinners might not continue in sin through despair of salvation or confirming in
it through very love to it, might not have to plead, even to their own
consciences, that the iron fetters of despair in which God had left them bound,
had tied them up to the hard necessity of remaining in their state of
alienation. In a word, the truths of Divine revelation in the measure then made
known'all of which cluster around and centre in the promise of the Seed'must
have been the subject matter of the Spirit's striving with, or judging in, man.
A striving which, though it was resisted, gradually impaired and at last
extinguished by wicked resistance on man's part and righteous withdrawal on the
part of God, was still so powerful that, till it was entirely quenched, the
flesh could not obtain its full unimpeded sway, nor an impious race fill up the
measure of their iniquity that the wrath might come on them even to the
uttermost.
This notice is, indeed, brief, as is the whole sacred narrative
of that period. But when we descend to the more ample record of God's dealings
with His chosen people and listen to the voice of prophecy opening up the
bright promise of grace stored up for the coming times, we find the references
to the work of the Holy Spirit becoming proportionally more numerous and
express.
The Holy Spirit and Moses
Indeed, upon examination we
find that it was by His Spirit that Adonai constituted and maintained all the
ordinances of His grace and administered all the affairs of His government
among the people whom He chose to be to Him a peculiar people above all people.
Of Moses we read that, wearied with the burden of the people which was too
heavy for him, he cried out unto the Lord, (Numbers 11:16,17,25). "And Adonai
said unto Moses, Gather unto me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom thou
knowest to be the elders of the people, and officers over them; and bring them
unto the tabernacle of the congregation, that they may stand there with thee.
And I will come down and talk with thee there: and I will take of the Spirit
which is upon thee, and will put it upon them; and they shall bear the burden
of the people with thee, that thou bear it not thyself alone. And Adonai came
down in a cloud, and spake unto him, and took of the Spirit that was upon him,
and gave it unto seventy elders; and it came to pass that, when the Spirit
rested upon them, they prophesied, and did not cease."
That we should here
understand a portion of Moses' soul or intellect is too absurd a supposition to
be for a moment entertained. The communication of qualities, the same in kind,
though in an inferior measure, to their minds, is indeed implied, but as the
effect, let it be remarked, of the Spirit which Adonai put upon them, a Spirit
which was upon Moses, a Spirit distinct from his own and which rested upon him.
Besides, it plainly appears that it was the Spirit of prophecy, for "when the
Spirit rested upon them they prophesied".
From all this, then, we learn
that what enabled Moses the servant of the Lord to bear the load of the people
entrusted to his care was the Spirit of Adonai resting upon him and that when
others for his relief were taken into a share of the burden, they had to be
taken into a participation of the benefit and that thus Adonai Himself, by His
Spirit alone, really presided over all the affairs of the children of Israel.
And if we pass from the executing of judgement, to the sacred service of
the tabernacle, we shall find that in no respect was it felt to be the product
of art and man's device. For not only was Moses warned of God, "See that thou
make it according to the pattern which was showed to thee on the mount" but we
also read in Exodus 3 1:1-11,
And Adonai spake unto Moses, saying, See I
have called by name Bezaleel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of
Judah: and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, and in
understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to devise
cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in cutting of
stones, to them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of
workmanship. And I, behold, I have given with him Aholiab, the son of
Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan: and in the hearts of all that are wise-hearted
I have put wisdom, that they may make all that I have commanded thee; the
tabernacle of the congregation, and the ark of the testimony, the mercy-seat
that is thereupon, and all the furniture of the tabernacle, and the table and
his furniture, and the pure candlestick with all his furniture, and the altar
of incense, and the altar of burnt-offering with all his furniture, and the
laver and his foot, and the clothes of service, and the holy garments for
Aaron, the priest, mid the garments of his soils, to minister the priests
office, and the anointing oil, and sweet incense for the holy place: according
to all that I have commanded shall they do.
It was not then by natural
genius, or art naturally acquired, whether Bezaleel possessed these or not, but
by a wisdom and understanding, a knowledge supernaturally imparted by the
Spirit of God, with which God filled him, that he was actuated in all his work
about the tabernacle, and the things thereto pertaining. The Spirit of God was
the real builder and maker, Bezaleel only an instrument, an intelligent
instrument indeed, working with the good skill of his hands, but that a skill
which the Spirit of the Lord, filling him, diffused through all his
constructive faculties.
And here we may also remark that what we have
learned about Bezaleel's ingenuity, holds equally true of certain endowments of
other persons, which we should be inclined to call natural, did not the Holy
Scriptures teach us the contrary. Take for an example the stirring courage of
Samson. We read in Judges 13:24,25: "The child grew, and Adonai blessed him,
mid the Spirit of Adonai began to move him at times in the camp of Dan, between
Zorah and Eshtaol."
Notes
1. The special name of God (found in
some English translations of the Bible in Isaiah 12:2 and elsewhere), in Hebrew
YHWH, or Jehovah, is one which Orthodox Jews religiously abstain from
pronouncing, substituting "Adonai". The translators of the Greek Septuagint
version of the Old Testament and the authors of the New Testament, who
substituted the Greek word Kurios, rendered in most English translations
"Lord", followed this practice. Return
2. A Jewish acronym standing for
Torah (the Law), Nevi'im (the Prophets) and Ketuvim (the Writings).
Go to number two?