This article is for inclusion in a one month devotional for new believers called, “So You’ve Accepted Jesus.” It is almost finished.
A Tip for Reading: You may want to read through at first just taking it all in, without looking everything up. Then it would be beneficial to you to take time later to look up each reference as you read through again… for there are many.
In an earlier post, I noted that a lot of the weird things that modern Christians do are weird because they are anything but modern. They are, rather, modern attempts to practice ancient things like covenant through things like communion, and baptism.
Another weird thing that modern Christians talk about… a lot… is the Holy Spirit. God is spirit, so the idea of the Holy Spirit is not much of a mental stretch. What’s weird is the WAY Christians speak of the Holy Spirit, claiming that they are “filled”[1] with the Holy Spirit, that they have the “gift”[2] of the Holy Spirit that “falls”[3] “leads,”[4] “speaks,”[5] “is poured out,”[6] and pours out.[7] We speak of the Holy Spirit changing us in “regeneration”[8] and “indwelling”[9] us and “convicting”[10] us, “guiding”[11] us, “sanctifying”[12] us.
One of the things that adds to the oddity of Holy Spirit talk is what many perceive to be a late introduction of the idea that born again believers[13] would someday “receive”[14] the Holy Spirit, be “baptized”[15] in the Holy Spirit, and under this new condition operate in supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit.[16]
I cannot deal with the entirety of what is called Pneumatology (study of the Holy Spirit), whose details can cause not a little contention even among devout Bible-believing Christians, but I do want to put these issues on your radar. I will add, however, that if you know nothing of such encounters with the Holy Spirit, that lack might be a check-engine light blinking in your soul. Whatever label you may give it (I prefer biblical labels) cry out to God that you might walk in the fullness of His Holy Spirit as manifested in the pages of the New Testament.[17]
Contrary to what many imagine the promise of the Holy Spirit is not new in the New Testament. It is not new to the prophetic writers like Isaiah,[18] Ezekiel,[19] and Joel,[20] who predicted that all the faithful of the Lord would someday be filled with the Holy Spirit, letting God speak the divine word through them and manifesting power from on high through Spiritual gifts. The promise of the Holy Spirit is not new to the early kings who received a taste of this promise in the empowerment to lead, like Saul[21] who had the Holy Spirit taken from him, and David who feared that the same might happen to him because of a terrible series of sins committed in a dark period in his life.[22] Indeed, it is not new to the Judges of Israel,[23] nor to Moses the great prophet who did mighty deeds through the empowerment of God,[24] nor even to the ancient fathers like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph who met with the Lord and saw the Spirit of God do wonders.[25]
The first promise of the Holy Spirit is given without those express words in the very creation of man.
While many debate what it means to be “made in the image of God,” what’s called “the Imago Dei,” the essential meaning of that making is in the nature of the word “image” which is one of two main words used concerning the idols of pagans, as in Numbers 33:52, “Then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images,” and 2 Kings 11:18, “Then all the people of the land went to the house of Baal and tore it down; his altars and his images they broke in pieces.”
The pagans didn’t worship wood and stone and metal, they worshipped carvings that through magic rituals they made into spiritual portals for the god or goddess of any given temple so that said deity could rule and reign there. It was called, “opening the mouth”[26] of the idol.
Both Genesis creation stories use Temple imagery. In Genesis 2, God establishes the garden of Eden as a garden Temple and sets in it His living Image/Idol to rule and reign on His behalf just as He declares of their making in Genesis 1:26-28:
“Then God said: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
God likes to work cooperatively with His creatures and the highest of these on earth are those made to be His living image there, filled with His Holy Spirit, led by His Holy Spirit, instruments of His Holy Spirit, His representatives in the world… His regents.
We rebelled, however, and have continued to rebel against Him, against His mission, against His right of place in our lives. Thus, Adam became the father of a fallen race of selfish rebels. But even in that moment the promise of restoration came. In Genesis 3:16 God says to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” This is the first promise of the coming of a Messiah who, it is revealed more fully in time, would repair the path between God and Man,[27] die a sacrificial death for all who will believe,[28] and resurrect to become a new father of a new race of men and women ready to fulfill their original purpose as God’s Image bearers. And that is what begins anew in Acts chapter 2 in the coming of the Holy Spirit to fall, pour out, fill up, lead, empower, gift, and sanctify.
~Andrew D. Sargent, PhD
[1] Luke 1:41, 67; Acts 2:4, 4:8, 31, 9:17, 13:9, 52; Ephesians 5:18
[2] Acts 1:45, 2:38, 10:45, 11:17; Hebrews 6:4, also called the promise of the Holy Spirit Luke 24:49, Acts 1:4, 2:33, 39, 7:17.
[3] Acts 10:44, 11:15.
[4] Matthew 4:1; Luke 4:1; John Romans 8:14; Galatians 5:18.
[5] Acts 4:31; 1 Corinthians 14:2; Ephesians 1:13, 6:17.
[6] Acts 2:17-18, 10:45; Romans 5:5.
[7] Acts 2:33.
[8] Titus 3:5.
[9] John 14:17; Romans 8:9, 11; 1 Corinthians 3:16; 2 Timothy 1:14; James 4:5.
[10] John 16:7-11; Acts 2:37.
[11] John 16:7-15
[12] John 17:17-19; Acts 20:32, 26:18; Romans 6:19-22, 15:16; 1 Corinthians 1:2, 30, 6:11; Ephesians 5:26; 1 Thessalonians 4:3, 5:23; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; Hebrews 2:11, 9:13, 10:10-29; 1 Peter 1:2.
[13] John 1:33, 3:5-34,
[14] John 7:39, 14:17, 20:22; Acts 2:33-38, 8:15-19, 10:47, 19:2; Romans 8:15; 1 Corinthians 2:12; Galatians 3:2, 14.
[15] Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33; Acts 1:5, 11:16; 1 Corinthians 12:13.
[16] Acts 1:8; 1 Corinthians 12-14; Ephesians 4:8-16; 1 Timothy 4:14; Hebrews 2:4; James 1:17; 1 Peter 4:7-11
[17] Remember though, things recorded in Scripture are extraordinary moments in lives that looked very much like yours and mine. We shouldn’t compare our daily grind to someone else’s highlight reel. I’ve had extraordinary moments in the Lord, led on by the Holy Spirit, as have many of the other believers I know, but mostly, life is… just life.
[18] Isaiah 11:2, 32:15, 37:7, 42:1, 44:3, 59:21, 61:1, 63:14
[19] Ezekiel 2:2, 3:12-24, 11:5, 36:26-27, 37:1-14, 39:29.
[20] Joel 2:28-29
[21] I Samuel 10:10, 11:6, 16:14-23
[22] I Samuel 16:13; 2 Samuel 23:2; Psalm 51:11
[23] Judges 3:10, 6:34, 11:29, 13:25, 14:6, 19, 15:14.
[24] Exodus 35:31; Numbers 11:17-26; pay attention to the Mosaic hope in Numbers 11:29. Numbers 24:2 and 27:18
[25] Genesis 12:7, 17:1, 18:1, 26:2, 26:24, 20:2-8, 28:10-19, 31:8-13, 32:24-30, 41:38.
[26] This is an important association in Isaiah’s call into prophetic ministry in Isaiah 6.
[27] Ephesians 2:14-16
[28] Isaiah 52:12-53:12
