Passover to Pentecost – Holy Spirit in the Old Testament        Week 7 Day 3

And will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth.  John 14:16 + 17 (NIV)

I am telling on myself.  My paradigm had been the disciples were “in the dark” about the coming of the Holy Spirit and what that would mean to them (possibly because I don’t remember anyone ever teaching on this).  THEN I studied the topic.  There is so much about the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament that I will finish my study after Pentecost, I will try to stick to the season and the things that relate to this Feast.

Isaiah writes in chapter eleven that the Spirit that will rest on the Branch, will bear fruit is one of wisdom, understanding, counsel, power, knowledge, and the fear of the Lord.  This is a mixture of what we now call the fruits and gifts of the Spirit.  The Spirit is talked about approximately seventy times in the Old Testament. We will look at the times He is referred to in connection with those first two years of the Exodus.

In Exodus 31 and 35 He has “filled” Bezalel and Oholiab, the men who were to do the work on the Ark and Tabernacle.  The verb indicates they were “running over” with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to do the work.  The next mention is in Numbers 9 when the Lord gave the Spirit from Moses to elders of the people.  Even though it is never talked about Moses was filled with the Spirit, because He went from him to the elders.

The next three references are commentaries about the Spirit and Israel in the desert.  Isaiah 63: 10 -14, Nehemiah 9: 20 -30, and Psalm 106: 33 tell how the people acted toward what the Spirit was doing with them in the desert and His reaction to them.  He was teaching and testing, and they did not like it.

In looking at the references in my concordance I noticed that the Spirit is mentioned by Moses in Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers, but not in the Books that “cover” the Law – Leviticus and Deuteronomy.  I will let you ponder the relationship between the Spirit and Law.

Just because he is a topic in the sermon on the day of Pentecost by Peter I will mention that King David had a “forceful” relationship with the Spirit.  The King James Version says in 1 Samuel 16 that the Spirit was with David his whole life.  So the Spirit was very busy and mentioned many times in the Old Testament.