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Transcript - SF507 Foundations of Spiritual Formation I: The Work of the Spirit

© 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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Holy Spirit, Prophetic Spirit, and Missional Spiritual Formation Part I: The Biblical Theological Foundation

Foundations of Spiritual Formation I: The Work of the Spirit

This lecture is entitled Holy Spirit, Prophetic Spirit, and Missional Spiritual Formation. We’re moving to the third concentric circle now in the chart. This is part one of the biblical theological foundation for understanding this work of the Holy Spirit. Turning us into prophetic people for Him in the world is a big part of what spiritual formation is about. This is one of the main things the Holy Spirit is intending to do like the other two: His work in our human spirit to transform us from insideout and then His work to make us into a community that is truly sanctified as a temple for the Holy Spirit and then His work to thrust us into the world as prophetic speakers of His Word and the gospel of Jesus Christ. The focus again is on building from the Old Testament into the New Testament and then specific applications for the Christian life, being bound up inextricably together between these three concentric circle types of principles.

Now prophetic spirit and Holy Spirit focuses on the same Holy Spirit who indwells us and transforms us—also empowers us—for prophetic ministry and motivates us for it. This is essential to our mission in the church and in the world. We can be prophetic within the church, but we can also be prophetic moving out from the church into the world—speaking up, stepping up, for Jesus. This is the essence of our mission. In this dimension of what’s going on in spiritual formation we should focus significant attention on our witness and our life as salt and light for Christ in the church and in the world.

Now the foundation that’s laid for this in the Old Testament, perhaps the best place to begin is Numbers 11. Here we have a very intimate connection between the Holy Spirit and the prophetic institution. If you look in the Old Testament, what you’ll find is this close connection, and we want to lay that out because that becomes a foundation for how this effect comes through into the church, beginning on the day of Pentecost.

Richard E. Averbeck, Ph.D.

Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Transcript - SF507 Foundations of Spiritual Formation I: The Work of the Spirit © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.


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In Numbers 11 the people are complaining again against Moses because they didn’t have meat. And Moses is getting tired of all the complaining and he says, “Okay Lord, just kill me. Just get rid of me. I’d rather this all be over with.” But the Lord says, “No, I’m not going to do that.” So in verse 16 we begin:

“The Lord therefore said to Moses, ‘Gather for Me 70 men from the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and their officers and bring them to the tent of meeting, and let them take their stand there with you.’”

So what He’s doing is He’s creating a leadership team to help Moses with this obstinacy amongst the people.

Verse 17: “Then I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take of the Spirit who is upon you, and will put Him upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so that you will not bear it all alone.”

So now we’re connecting the Spirit—the Spirit that the Lord has put on Moses. He’s going to bring it over to them so that they now are empowered and are part of the team, so to speak, in this work of bringing the people into the Promised Land. So you have the Spirit that’s put on them.

Now Moses goes through a process of consecrating the people and getting the people ready for all of this. In verses 24-25:

“So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord. Also, he gathered 70 men of the elders of the people, and stationed them around the tent. Then the Lord came down in the cloud,”

referring to this glory cloud that we discussed before,

“and spoke to him; and He took of the Spirit who was upon him and placed Him upon the 70 elders. And when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied.”

So the close connection between the Spirit coming upon and them becoming prophetic, but they did not do it again. This was something to just show that they are now on the team with Moses. So the Spirit rested upon them and they prophesied. That’s the idea that we’re getting at.

Verses 26-30: “But two men had remained in the camp; the name of one was Eldad and the name of the other Medad. And



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the Spirit rested upon them (now they were among those who had been registered, but had not gone out to the tent),”

which they should’ve done,

“and they prophesied in the camp. So a young man ran and told Moses and said, ‘Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.’ Then Joshua the son of Nun, the attendant of Moses from his youth, said, ‘Moses, my lord, restrain them.’”

But then Moses says this very interesting thing. He says,

“‘Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!’ Then Moses returned to the camp, both he and the elders of Israel.”

So the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied, and then,

“I wish,” in verse 29, Moses says, “that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put His Spirit on them.”

The connection: if you’re a prophet, you have the Spirit; if you have the Spirit, you’re a prophet. This kind of connection is being made here in the Old Testament.

So the work of the Holy Spirit, institutionally, in the Old Testament is very bound up with this prophetic institution and making people prophetic and working through them and in them in that way. This continues on through the Old Testament. It becomes a major part of a pattern, and it continues. For example, if you would look at I Samuel 16, this is the anointing of David as king. And we know the story: they’re looking and he sees the other brothers, but then finally David comes in and David is the one. And so in I Samuel 16:13-14, we read this:

“Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers; and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward” this prophetic Spirit. “And Samuel arose and went to Ramah. Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord terrorized him.”

Now this is an evil spirit from the Lord. We’ll talk about that in a moment. But first, going back to the time of Saul earlier on when he was anointed, if we go back to I Samuel 10, he’s been told to go up and he’s going to meet these prophets and so on. He’s been



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anointed by Samuel to be king. And so I Samuel 10:9:

“Then it happened when he [Saul] turned his back to leave Samuel, God changed his heart; and all those signs came about on that day,”

that Samuel had predicted would come about.

“When they came to the hill there, behold, a group of prophets met him; and the Spirit of God came upon him,”

so again, we’re connecting this to the Spirit, “mightily, so that he prophesied among them.” So he went into this prophetic activity, and it was distinguishable activity.

“It came about, when all who knew him previously saw that he prophesied now with the prophets, that the people said to one another, ‘What has happened to the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?’”

So has he become one of these prophetic people who praise the Lord and speak out for Him?

“A man there said, ‘Now, who is their father?’” In other words, “who’s in charge?” “Therefore it became a proverb: ‘Is Saul also among the prophets?’ When he had finished prophesying, he came to the high place.”

So the point is that Saul first was anointed as king—of course, he failed as king—and then David in I Samuel 16 is anointed as king. And in both cases the Spirit comes upon them in this powerful, prophetic unction sort of way.

There are other passages. In chapter 19, for example, of I Samuel there is this time when Saul is attacking David and sends people to bring him to him. The Spirit comes upon the messengers and they are incapacitated by the Spirit not allowing them to offend David. Finally Saul goes to him and he is incapacitated by the Spirit as well. So there are all sorts of interesting passages associated with this in the Old Testament.

Now this question in I Samuel 16 about this evil spirit from the Lord in verse 14, “The Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul.” So the anointing that he had to be prophetic as the king of Israel departed from Saul. The Spirit departed, and an evil spirit is in him instead. Now the word here for evil spirit could be misunderstood.



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It is a confusing or disrupting spirit. The word here is a particular word and God cannot do moral evil and this is not the word for moral evil. This is a word that means He can bring bad things on people because of their obstinance. He can create trouble for them, and that is what He is doing here.

This idea where the Lord does this to work His will is referred to elsewhere in Scripture. For example, back in Judges 9:22-23, “Now Abimelech ruled over Israel 3 years. Then God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem.” Because of all the corruption involved in this, God sends trouble, a troubling spirit, something that brought trouble.

There is a very interesting passage in I Kings 22 that connects to this. First Kings 22—the Michaiah incident. Michaiah is a prophet of the Lord, and Ahab wants to go to battle. He gets Jehoshaphat, the king of the southern kingdom along with him, the king of the northern kingdom to go to battle with him. But Jehoshaphat requires that he calls upon a prophet of the Lord in order to get the Lord’s willingness to make them successful in battle. Well Ahab was not happy about this, but he did send for Michaiah. So what happens here is that we have in I Kings 22:19-23 this report of Michaiah about how the Lord was going to resist Ahab:

Michaiah said, “Therefore, hear the word of the Lord. I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the hosts of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left. And the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramothgilead [entice him]?’ And one said this while another said that. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord and said to Him, ‘I will entice him.’ And the Lord said to Him, ‘How?’ And he said, ‘I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets [his false prophets].’ Then He said, ‘You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so.’ Now therefore, behold, the Lord has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the Lord has proclaimed disaster against you.”

Now Ahab was not happy about this. But he did speak the truth, and this is what actually happened. The point is the Lord can use a deceiving, a troubling, a disrupting spirit. And that is what He did in this situation with Saul here back in I Samuel 16. He took back the Holy Spirit’s prophetic empowering from Saul and instead put it on David’s. Along with that He put in Saul this troubling spirit.

Now what is interesting about this, and important, is David’s fear



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of this in Psalm 51:11. In Psalm 51, this is the Psalm that talks about the trouble of David and his penitence for the sins against Bathsheba and Uriah, but in this Psalm, verse 11, we read this, David says, “Do not cast me away from your presence and do not take your Holy Spirit from me.” So it’s possible that the Lord could do the same thing to David that He had done to Saul, and David knew what this looks like, because back in the I Samuel 16 passage he [Saul] had this troubling spirit. The servants of Saul suggested this to him. Saul’s servant, verse 16 [of] I Samuel 16, verses 15-19:

Saul’s servants then said to him, “Behold now, an evil spirit from God is terrorizing you. Let our Lord now command your servants who are before you. Let them seek a man who is a skillful player on the harp to come about when the evil spirit from God is on you, that he shall play the harp with his hand, and you will be well.” So Saul said to his servants, “Provide me now a man who can play well and bring him to me.” Then one of the young men said, “Behold, I have seen the son of Jesse the Bethlehemite who is a skillful musician, a mighty man of valor, a warrior, one prudent in speech, and a handsome man; and the Lord is with him.” So Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, “Send me your son David who is with the flock.”

Now David had been anointed as this young man. Saul didn’t know all about that at this time. He just found out that he could play, and David played. Verse 23:

“So it came about whenever the evil spirit from God came to Saul, David would take the harp and play it with his hand; and Saul would be refreshed and be well, and the evil spirit would depart from him.”

It would not have this control over him to make him go mad and crazy.

Well we know other passages, and I listed those passages on the sheet here. But the point that I’m trying to make is that when David realized what he had done and when he confessed it and he was penitent about it, he was really terrified that the Lord would bring upon him the same kind of spirit, that He would take the Holy Spirit from him and put in him this destructive spirit. He had plenty of experience with this with Saul, and he certainly did not want that to happen to him. He was terrified by the whole prospect of that because of the great sins that he had committed against Bathsheba and Uriah.



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Now this ties in to how the Holy Spirit worked in this prophetic institution in the Old Testament. Not everybody was a prophet. Not everybody had the spirit in this way. This is evident from these passages that we’ve been talking about.

When we move into the New Testament, something very interesting and very important happens that really brings this to a great crescendo, this work of the Spirit, this prophetic empowerment. One of the key texts for this is Joel 2:28-32. The quote of that passage in Acts 2—we’ve mentioned this before. We haven’t dealt with this particular part of it. That passage in Joel begins with verses 17 and 18 as they’re quoted in Acts 2, so this is the quote from Joel 2 in Acts 2:17-18:

“‘In the last days,’ God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.’”

So pouring out the Spirit, connected with prophesy. The same thing is going on here, this prophetic book Joel here, through the inspiration, the spirit.

What happens is that on this day of Pentecost, when there’s all of this speaking in these various tongues and the various languages of the people that were there, some of the leaders of the Jews thought that they were drunk, but it was only the ninth hour of the day. It was in the morning. So what Peter did is he quoted this passage to say,

“No, they’re not drunk. They are being effected by the Holy Spirit coming upon them and they’re speaking out prophetically, even in various languages, what God has done through Jesus Christ.”

Now therefore this direct connection from this prophetic institution in the Old Testament comes on through into the New Testament right on the birthday of the church. This is pivotal. It defines the church. And frankly what it does is it defines the church as a prophetic institution by its very nature from the beginning and in an ongoing way.

There are a lot of Old Testament and New Testament steps in between here. For example, in Malachi, the last prophet, the last verse of the Old Testament in our bibles, in Malachi 4 we read this, verses 5-6, the last two verses of the Old Testament,



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“Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord.”

So before the great and terrible day of the Lord—when He sets everything right—before that comes He’s going to send an Elijahtype prophet, this person who turns out to be John the Baptist. This Elijahtype profit, okay, comes and he’s going to come and what he’s going to do is in verse 6,

“He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse.”

So what we have here is this anticipation of John the Baptist. Of course, this comes through, turning to Luke 3. Luke 3, we pick up on that passage where we have John coming and John baptizes a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And it comes down to, okay, who is he as opposed to who is coming after him? When we come to 3:16 of Luke and it says,

“John answered to them all, ‘As for me, I baptize you with water; but One is coming who is mightier than I and I am not fit to untie the thong of His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.’”

Now we’ve talked about this principle before. It goes on and says,

“His winnowing fork is in His hand to thoroughly clear His threshing floor, to gather the wheat into His barn; but He will burn up the chaff with the unquenchable fire” [Luke 3:17].

So John is calling to this baptism of repentance so that the people are ready and prepared and purified for receiving the Messiah, the One who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.

If you go to the last chapter in the gospel of Luke [chapter 24] we come to this, verses 47-49:

Repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.

Well that leads us then from Luke’s gospel to the writing of Luke in Acts, the history of the church—the history of the first church.



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Acts 1 connects back to the end of the gospel written by Luke. And so it comes down to verses 4-5. It talks about Jesus at this point in Acts 1:4,

“Gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, ‘Which,’ He said, ‘you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’”

And then he jumped on it to verse 8,

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”

So one of the main purposes for this power is to make us people who are witnesses who step up and speak up like the prophets did in the Old Testament. Therefore we get this quotation that we read from Joel 2 in Acts 2 that Peter uses as the basis of the first sermon ever preached in the church age. We are fundamentally, basically—in our basic makeup as a church and as believers in the Church—prophetic.

First Corinthians 12 carries us on in to the Pauline literature. First Corinthians 12, and we’ll say more about this later, but to just to introduce it here. First Corinthians 12:12-13,

“For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,” cleansed, purified into one body, “whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”

Now baptism has to do with washing, dunking in water. But then you can use water to wash with, but you can also drink it. The combination is found there, and we will come back to that later.

One of the main issues that comes up here now is the whole question of the relationship between the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and His work—how is it different? What’s going on in the New Testament that’s different about [the Old Testament]? In John 7:3739 we read this—it’s a passage we’ve referred to before, but now we need to deal with some of the



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issues here—

“On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’”

He had said this same type of thing to the woman at the well in chapter 4.

“By this He meant,” John, now the apostle, gives a commentary later on about what Jesus said on this day. In his commentary [John 7:39],

“by this Jesus meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given,” literally, the Spirit was not yet, “since Jesus had not yet been glorified.”

So how does that relate to how the Holy Spirit would work in the Old Testament as opposed to in the New Testament? This is the real question that needs to be dealt with here at this point.

There’s another passage that comes in here, and I’ll mention it here. John 20:21-22 reads

“Again Jesus said, ‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent Me, I am sending you.’” This is after the Resurrection, “And with that He breathed,” very Spirit connected word, “He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.’”

This seems to be connected specifically to the apostolic ministry from this time leading up to the day of Pentecost and maybe beyond. One of the things that we find in the book of Acts is that there are times when the people receive the Lord in the book of Acts but they don’t receive the Spirit and they actually wait to have one of the Apostles come to actually distribute the Spirit. That happens for example in Acts 8:14 and following.

The point that I’m trying to make here is that there is something special happening in John 20 that specifically has to do with the Apostles and not with others that needs to be taken into consideration here. But this is not the same as Pentecost. Pentecost spreads through the Church far beyond the Apostles. All people



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are receiving this Spirit—sons and daughters and prophecy and so on.

Now going back then to the John 7 passage. The Spirit had not yet been given. In John 14:17 when it talks about how Jesus is going to pray to the Father and the Father will give the Spirit, it talks about the Holy Spirit lives with you and will be in you. There are textural problems, even there in Greek. But the point is that there is this issue about what then is going on with the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament as opposed to how that gets worked out in the New Testament. Now the most natural way to understand the intent of these passages is to think of this: that in the days of Jesus, the Holy Spirit was not yet active in the lives of believers in a way that He would be after Jesus was glorified starting on the day of Pentecost. That is the most natural way to read such a passage.

The question is: does this mean that in the Old Testament Abrahamic faith believers were not regenerated and indwelt by the Holy Spirit? No, I don’t think so. There is a debate about this. I have written on it. I have the bibliography here in the notes for you. I don’t think that’s what’s going on. Rather, in the Old Testament they could not really talk about things in the same way. The reason was that in the tabernacle in the temple God Himself dwelt. It would not have made sense to say that God, through the Holy Spirit dwelt in them. He dwelt in the temple.

The Holy Spirit did work on them in regenerating and sanctifying, bringing them to faith. I think that’s what’s really going on. But the bottom line is that the difference here really between the Old Testament and the New Testament is that the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament was a continued work of regeneration—same as in the New Testament—and ongoing sanctification work. But not all those who had Abrahamic faith in the Old Testament had the prophetic unction of the Spirit. In other words, the Holy Spirit did not make everyone in the Old Testament prophets. This is clear. It’s a distinction. The Holy Spirit regenerated all believers in the Old Testament, but not all of the regenerated had the prophetic empowerment of the Spirit for prophetic ministry in the Old Testament.

On the other hand, in the New Testament all believers do have the Holy Spirit in this way. That’s what the link between Joel 2 and Acts 2 teaches us. Now we become prophetic speakers like the Old Testament prophets. There are actual passages that develop this



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in a very foundational and important way.

Probably what we have going on here is a combination of things. There is a Jewish tradition about the cessation of the time of prophecy with the last of the Old Testament prophets. It’s called the quenched Spirit tradition. You can see this in Gordon Fee’s big book on the empowering presence on the Holy Spirit. In an appendix at the end of that book he refers to many of the passages. In the books of Maccabees it talks about that they had to wait so that a prophet could arrive to tell them what to do with the stones on the altar that they took down. There are various other passages. So there seems to be this quenched Spirit tradition in the intertestamental period where prophetic activity stopped with the last prophets in the canon of the Old Testament. So that is part of what’s going on. It was the stopping of this prophetic thing.

It gets started again with John the Baptist, who comes as the prophetic speaker. That begins again to bring this whole prophetic work back, and therefore you follow John the Baptist from the Gospels into the beginning of Acts, which we already read—1:1-5. His baptism then becomes the sign of the beginning, the reworking, the reinstitution of this prophetic Spirit where as Jesus said—or as John the Baptist and Jesus said—John baptized with water; Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

So similar to the Old Testament from Pentecost forward, to be indwelling on the Holy Spirit is closely tied to His prophetic work as a powerful thing that makes the church into, by nature, a prophetic institution. All Christians are called to be prophetic. We are one in this way. There is a unity in this. We have received the Spirit to empower us as His testifiers in the world. This is the will of God for each one of us; not just an elite. It is the norm for every Christian.

This was not true of Old Testament believers as the background discussion we had in I Samuel 16 shows. It could come and go. It was intended as a prophetic thing within the nation of Israel. Being prophetic by the Holy Spirit was selective in the Old Testament. This is not true in the New Testament. The coming of the Holy Spirit in our lives today brings with it the accomplished work of Christ in His life, death, burial, and resurrection. More of God’s redemptive program is activated and we represent that in our prophetic activity.



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So we stand here in the last days actually. We are looking forward next to the coming of the day of the Lord. The point is that this is an increased emphasis time on the work of the Spirit to transform people and to bring them to God. There is an intensity of the spirits activity in the church age because it spreads through the church by the work of the Spirit making us prophetic.

Now I need to clarify a few things at this point. I am not talking here about everyone having the gift of prophecy. There is a special gift like this in the New Testament that is talked about. That is not what we are talking about here. Just like in the Old Testament, you had the Aaronic priests who function for this kingdom. This kingdom of Ancient Israel was also a kingdom of priests. Those both are true. There were priests and then there were the people of the kingdom of priests, all of whom had this priestly connection with God.

The same is true here. The ultimate prophet, of course, is Jesus Himself, and we are therefore given this prophetic gift as followers of Him to speak up for him in the world. I am also not concerned here with the debate over spiritual gifts, specifically the charismatic Pentecostal gifts and cessationism or not. That’s not what I am concerned about here. Good people can differ on these matters. What I am concerned about here is what is common to us all. The Holy Spirit is in us to make us people who stand up, step out, and speak up for Jesus in the world. This is by nature being prophetic. This is a major element of what spiritual formation is about. The Holy Spirit is about making us effective in this way.

It’s interesting how this comes out in the nature of the prophetic ministry, even reflected in the Sermon on the Mount in one of the Beatitudes. Matthew 5:11-12 read this way,

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

We actually get to be prophets who step up in the world. You should consider yourself blessed to be one who is put out there in that way and has this great opportunity to speak up for God, but it does bring persecution with it. If you live as a prophet, you will have trouble in the world. It comes with the territory. The church, like the Old Testament prophets, is not supposed to fit in to the world with the prince of the power of this age ruling in the



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darkness of the world. We are made to stick out. If we fit in the world as it is, something is really wrong with us, terribly wrong. We are to be prophetic. This is one of the main things the Holy Spirit is working in us to make us that for Him.

Now as we continue on then, we take this and we talk about a couple of things. For example, there are different metaphors or figures of speech for understanding the Holy Spirit’s work. One is “He is like water,” another is that “He is like wind.” We’ve talked some about each one of these. In the Old Testament we looked at the Ezekiel 36 passage, the “sprinkling of clean water on you” and “putting a new spirit in you.” God’s spirit is put in us. We talked about that. It’s connected with water.

In Ezekiel 39, at the end of that unit we read this in Ezekiel 39:29: we read,

“‘I will not hide My face from them any longer, for I will have poured out My Spirit on the house of Israel,’ declares the Lord God.”

He is looking forward to the day when things are turned right. This is parallel to some of the same expressions that come out in Joel 2:28-32, which we’ve already talked about.

In the New Testament we have this application of this pouring out of this Spirit in this double image. In I Corinthians 12:13 that we referred to earlier,

“For we were all baptized by one spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink,”

so it’s the Spirit as water to wash with, or the Spirit as water to drink. We have water purification baptism with the Spirit in the first part of this verse. We talked about that and the connection of John 3, Jesus talking about being born of water and the spirit, [and] Ezekiel 36.

This imagery comes through in other places too. For example, in Titus 3:5-6,

“the washing of rebirth and the renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior.”



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That passage talks about that washing principle and the pouring out of that water. The pouring out of the Holy Spirit as an indwelling sort of thing comes out in many different passages. “Everyone who drinks of this water will never be thirsty again,” Jesus says in John 4, to the woman at the well. You can see the explanation we’d given of that earlier on in the discussion of John 7:37-39.

The Holy Spirit as wind is the second element that I want to talk about here. We talked [about] this wind of the Holy Spirit, who drives us along if we have our sails up like the sailboat imagery that derives from certain passages where the Holy Spirit carried the prophets along in the writing of Scripture. In II Peter 1:20-21 we read a major passage on Scripture itself.

“Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation.”

Now that’s the NIV translation.

In my opinion the NRSV translates better here. There’s lot of exegetical issues involved, and I’m not going to go into all that right here. The NRSV translates that “no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation.” It talks about how we’re interpreting the Scripture rather than how the prophet understood the Scripture. It’s how we are understanding the Scriptures that the prophet wrote and that we are reading. So that’s what the NRSV does with it. I think that’s the direction we should be understanding this passage in. Verse 21:

“For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

Now the Old Testament Scriptures came to us through the institution of prophecy. This is specifically connected, again, with this work of the Holy Spirit. In Hebrews 1:1-2 we read this:

“In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son,” the ultimate prophet, “whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom He made the universe.”

So the prophetic revelation finds its fullest consummation in the Son Jesus Christ as the ultimate prophetic revelation.



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Lesson 06 of 07

Now II Timothy 3:15-17 is one of the passages about Scripture that stands out. In that passage we read Paul writing to Timothy saying, “from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” Now what Scripture was it that Timothy knew from infancy? Well that was the Hebrew Bible—the Old Testament scriptures. The passage goes on: “All scripture, all the Old Testament, is God-breathed [theopneustos].” You even have the pneustos—the pneuma term within the verb for God-breathed; the same word that’s used for “spirit.” He breathed out the idea by the wind or breath of the Spirit of God. That’s how the Scriptures were produced.

“All scripture is Godbreathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” [verses 16-17].

So the Old Testament prophetic Word was created by, and lives and breathes, the life of the divine Holy Spirit. This is one of the main works that He did in the prophetic context is to create Scripture. It’s part of His ongoing work as well to bring it to bear upon us as we’ve talked about.

In its context, however, II Peter 1:20-21 does not limit itself to the Old Testament. We cited that passage earlier. We need to come back to it and talk about it a little bit more here. Here Peter’s main point is that the apostolic witness of the transfiguration referred to in verses 16 and 18 before verses 20-21 results in the word of the prophets made more certain. The readers need to pay close attention to this prophetic Word until it actually comes to pass. Jesus is yet to come in all his glory and power, and they need to be ready for that coming knowing that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation as they wait for that.

The point is that the apostolic witness needs to be followed in the interpretation, rather than just anyone’s own opinion. No one has the right to read the prophetic scriptures just any old way according to his or her own will, because it was not written just any old way. Verse 21:

“Prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

So this is driven along by the Holy Spirit. This wind imagery is being used here for the production of Scripture now. The apostolic witness—the eyewitness—recorded for us in the New



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Lesson 06 of 07

Testament is the inspired guide to interpretation of the inspired Old Testament prophetic Word. The New Testament apostles and the Old Testament prophets are bound together in this passage in I Peter 1:16-21.

Second Peter 2:1 brings the main point into full focus.

“But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you.”

See, the concern here is that there were false prophets in the Old Testament. We have to deal with the same thing here in the New Testament when we talk about false teachers amongst the people. There’s this falseness in Old and New Testament that you have to be aware of.

The prophets and apostles are also paired together in II Peter 3:2:

“I want you to recall the word spoken in the past by the holy [Old Testament] prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your [New Testament] apostles,”

the parallel between Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles. Peter even brings this apostolic authority of Paul’s writings into the discussion near the end of the letter where he says in verse 15:

“Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him.”

He points out that some of Paul’s writings had some things in it that were hard to understand in verse 16. It alerts them to the fact that some people might want to distort these writings of Paul as they do the other Old Testament Scriptures; in other words, as they do the other Scriptures to their destruction. Since the Old Testament writings are referred to here as the other scriptures, therefore the writings of Paul, and by implication the other apostles, are considered to be inspired Scripture as well.

The point that I’m making here is that God the Holy Spirit, what He has done in giving us the Scriptures—both Old and New Testaments—is a substantial part of the Holy Spirit’s work in history and, in fact, is essential to our spiritual formation. History is really His story—God’s story. The Bible provides a metanarrative—the big story—that makes sense of all our personal stories. When

Transcript - SF507 Foundations of Spiritual Formation I: The Work of the Spirit

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Holy Spirit, Prophetic Spirit, and Missional Spiritual Formation Part I: The Biblical Theological FoundationLesson 06 of 07

we read it that way we are inviting the Holy Spirit to make sense of our lives in that very process of reading it. We are putting up the sails, so to speak.

holy spirit, prophetic spirit, and missional spiritual formation … · 2019. 5. 24. · another,...

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