Alastair's Adversaria - Anticipations Of Pentecost (with Rev Benjamin Miller)

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

This is the second of my discussions of Pentecost with Benjamin Miller. You can listen to the first of our discussions here: https://soundcloud.com/alastairadversaria/pentecost-and-the-gift-of-the-spirit-with-rev-benjamin-miller. Follow my Substack, the Anchored Argosy, at https://argosy.substack.com/. See my latest podcasts at https://adversariapodcast.com/. If you have enjoyed my videos and podcasts, please tell your friends. If you are interested in supporting my videos and podcasts and my research more generally, please consider supporting my work on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/zugzwanged), using my PayPal account (https://bit.ly/2RLaUcB), or by buying books for my research on Amazon (https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/36WVSWCK4X33O?ref_=wl_share). You can also listen to the audio of these episodes on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/alastairs-adversaria/id1416351035?mt=2.

Hello and welcome. This is the second of our discussions of the meaning of Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit. I'm joined again by my friend Ben Miller and we're going to be thinking this time, particularly about Old Testament background for the event of Pentecost. In the preceding episode, we gave some thought to the importance of Babel, the events of Genesis chapter 11, and then some of the ways that those get played out in later scripture. But we're going to be spreading a, wider net in this particular discussion. And we're thinking about everything from the very first chapters of the Bible until the end of the Old Testament. And maybe some parts of the new two. Thank you very much for joining me again, Ben. Glad to be here, Alistair, looking forward to it. So at the very beginning of Scripture, we already have intimations, perhaps, of Pentecostal themes in the opening chapters. What are some of the places where, you see these themes already emerging in maybe the first couple of chapters of scripture, even before the fall?

The obvious initial answer, I think, would just be the first two verses of Genesis, that vivid imagery of a formless, unfilled, kind of void. It's mysterious, dark, chaotic, and God's ruyre. His spirit, his breath, his wind is moving over those waters. Imagery that, of course, will be seen again in the time of Noah's flood. And so this is God's power. It is his presence. I think we can also say it is his love.

Moving on, his, I think we can say already there is creation. this, this, whatever this is, this watery waste that would not exist, except that God has brought it into being. And yet he is, he is forming it into something that is inhabitable. And then, of course, the spirit is, as it moves, is, is filling that formed world with creatures. And, and then in, um, later in chapter one and, and then in chapter two, you have God breathing into, creatures he has formed the breath of life, filling them with his life, and what emerges from all of this breath work of God, which I think also is reflected in his speaking. John, of course, another place in scripture this will be referred to as the word, the Lagos, and I think those

are conjoined. The result of this is what the Bible calls a kingdom. God is the king over all the earth. This is a home. It is a kingdom that that is habitable and where there is a father and his creatures are blessed by him. I think we can say that his human creatures made in his image are clearly his royal children. And so all of this formative, filling, life-giving work of God brings into existence not only a relationship between himself and his creatures, but also it establishes the relationships between creatures. I think this is one way referring to this is that this kingdom is, we could say, covenantal. And by that I mean, there's a love bond between God and his creatures

established by his spirit. And there's a bond between the creatures established by the spirit. And so it's not a violent kingdom. It's not a discordant kingdom. It's a kingdom that reflects, if we can speak cautiously here, it reflects God's own life as the God who loves himself in himself from all eternity. And so I think that really establishes the pattern to which there is a return in the work of the spirit throughout the rest of the scriptures, although it's more than just a return. It's also an amplification and glorification ultimately. But I think Genesis 1 and 2 are the obvious places where you really see what the spirit is up to what God's purpose is for his creation in the Spirit.

We've thought already about the way that the Spirit is connected with life and animation. Think about the imagery of the wind, which animates and moves things, or the imagery of breath. You discussed this in our preceding discussion, where the breath is something that we receive from outside of ourselves. But without breath, we are dead. Likewise, you can think about the imagery of water. The spirit is the one that gives the water of life.

The spirit is described in ways that connected with water, connected with breath, evoke some of the most fundamental things that sustain our existence. You can think of the way that this imagery is explored in scripture. The breath is connected with the mighty rushing wind of Pentecost. then there's also the idea of the spirit being poured out. That suggests not something that's wind or even the image of fire that we have on the day of Pentecost, but the image of water. And in scripture, this image of waters descending is a common one.

And it's not necessarily descending from heaven. It can be descending from a higher place. Most notably in chapter two of Genesis, the image of the water's descent. from Eden. Our sermon yesterday in our church was on the subject of the descending waters. And our pastor was discussing the way that this imagery is evoked and returned to it several points in scripture, most notably in Jesus' teaching in the book of John, where he talks about on the last great day of the feast in John chapter 7, he talks of the water of the Holy

spirit that would be given. And he describes it as rivers of living water. Whoever believes in me as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Now this he said about the spirit whom those who believed in him were to receive. For as yet the spirit had not been given because Jesus was not yet glorified. So we've got the imagery of Eden. You've got the image of these waters proceeding from the heart. And then in the Old Testament you have imagery of waters proceeding in the visionary temple of Ezekiel. And he sees these waters, first of all, coming from trickling out from beneath the threshold of the temple towards the east.

And then it gradually grows deeper. And as the prophet walks through these waters, it's first of all ankle deep, then it's knee deep, then it's waist deep. And then it becomes a mighty river that he can, swim in. And as it goes out, it has on either side these banks with these trees and is it proceeds even further. It goes to the Dead Sea and brings life to the dead waters, the brackish waters. Zachariah has a similar image in Zachariah chapter 14 at the end of

that book. On that day, living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea, and half of them to the Western Sea. It shall continue in summer, as in winter. And so this imagery of waters flowing out is a common one within Scripture, and it appears at these climactic moments. When God has established his kingdom, he's won the great victory, then the waters flow out. It's the image that we find in the final chapter of Scripture,

drawing our minds back to Ezekiel chapter 47, the river of living water that proceeds from the river of life that proceeds from the throne of God. And as it goes out, we see it providing trees, the leaves of which will be for the healing of the nations. And you can also see within that there is a Trinitarian image. The river of life that proceeds from the throne is a way of describing the spirit's relationship. to the Father and the sand. So all of these things, I think, provide us with, in the very first chapters of Scripture,

already part of the vocabulary that will be used and the symbolism that will be used to characterize the work of the spirit. I wonder if I could put a pastoral pin in the conversation now, and we could return to this at any point that it seems appropriate. I was having a conversation last night with some young Christian,

young people. I'm trying to do some careful work as I get on in ministry to try to help young Christians not only understand their Christian faith, but be able to put it in fruitful dialogue with the world that they're living in, the intellectual milieu that they're living in, which can be a pretty dismal place right now. But one of the things that strikes me so much, as I've reflected on the work of the obvious example it comes to mind as Charles Taylor, but many others have done work on this, our friend Joe Minnick, the kind of iron cage of the modern view of things, that the materialistic, anti-supernatural,

enclosed world with the kind of buffered self as opposed to the poorest self, as opposed to the poorest self, as Taylor describes it. The idea that we're living in a world where we've, the supernatural things we used to believe in, we've outgrown all of that silliness. And now we're enlightened, modern, scientific people. And we still probably have our spirituality that we indulge. But those are largely explorations that we ourselves launch. And we're certainly not being, as Lewis pointed out,

that the god of popular religion doesn't really demand much of us or hunt us. pursue us, approaching with infinite speed. Rather, we are engaged in, you know, man's search for God. It's very humanistic, very man-centered. And one of the things that strikes me about this world is at an imaginative level, at an intellectual level, and at an emotional level, how different it is from what Lewis described as the world of the discarded image, right? The medieval worldview with its deep sense of doing everything and living every moment in the presence of God and the music of the spheres, just gazing into the heavens. There was this encounter, as it were, with the majesty and glory of the God who turns the spheres of the heavens. And it's, I think we could say perhaps

that older view of the cosmos was a more truly spiritual one, such as we find in the scriptures, like what you're describing with the water and the wind, there is in the biblical view of the world this profound sense that God is so active in his creation. And in fact, the creation would be an arid, it would be a nothing. It would be a formless, unfilled waste, but for God being in it and present to it and acting for it, for it. And you see that both in creation, you clearly see it, and redemption. All of the mighty works of God that redeem and restore and resurrect his people, Ezekiel's dry bones.

I heard a message about that yesterday. And I just would like to sort of put a pin in this. As we talk to Christians today, how can we, in a way that doesn't just sound like we're kind of babbling on in mythologies, really try to reinvigorate this view of reality because it's so life-giving, it's so hopeful, it's so full of the water of life. I'm struck as I work with,

especially young people now, we're some generations into this anti-supernaturalistic understanding of things, very mechanistic, very closed universe. And I just wonder sometimes if the sense of emotional kind of starvation and imaginative depletion that I've so often run across, the almost obsessive need for stimulus is in part because we no longer know how to be in the natural world and in the things God has made sense the presence of his spirit. I don't mean that in some strange

mystical way. I hope this makes sense. But I do think there's been a real, a great loss in this shift in the way we imagine the world. I think that's absolutely right. I found it very interesting when teaching things like Pierre Marie Emane's book, God's Seen in the Mirror of the World. A sort of phenomenological twist on Aquinas's Five Ways. Just thinking about the way that we look at the world and how to recapture a vision of the world that's formed by this deep, instinctive apprehension of God's presence. Exactly. His sustaining of things in being, his sustaining of things in their existence, his sustaining of his ordering of things to their ends. Yes.

The way that things are straining and relating to this higher good. the more exalted reality that he represents. And in all of these respects, you feel what you've described as the impoverishment or depletion of our modern views. There is something about the rushing mighty wind or the breath or whatever it is that has been lost. There's something of the fire of reality that is lost. The spirit is represented as breath.

breath, as wind, as fire, but also as water, this power that flows out and can't be, it will overflow and it will break through obstacles. It will be something that catches up other realities in its flow. And all of these images of the spirit give us a sense of a dynamic world order that's not just a static reality of things. And even when we're thinking about creation in terms of these fundamental trinitarian images of the father and his word. The father speaks forth his word, but he speaks forth his word on the breath of his spirit and recognizing the role of the breath of the spirit, sustaining everything in being by the word, but also holding everything in breath.

There's something of the strength when we think about the word holding everything and being, but also the contingency of the creation. When you think about it as breath, that that breath, when we think about breath, the breath dies on the air. We speak the word and the word fades. But the Lord's word is sustained. And that sustained word on the breath of his spirit is that which holds us in being. and his commitment to speaking forth his creation, to empowering it, to giving it its breath, moment by moment.

It's a constant arrival, not just something that's a static existence. And those images, I think, are fundamental to scriptural presentations of the creation. In him, we live and move and have our being. Living and moving are things that we maybe don't give enough attention to. We don't think about the continued providential work of holding creation in its being. And we think about it merely as an initial act, and then the Lord sets things in motion, and it goes under its own steam. And a sort of daistic framework, that is not the picture that we have in scripture at all. Creation is constantly arriving.

It's this constant donation of breath. Yes. And as we experience that, we have a sense of our dependency. And there's just a profound sense of excess in that, that God isn't even trying. It's as if here is a breath, but there's just infinitely more where that came from. You know, the picture of water just overflowing. You get the sense that water rushing out of Ezekiel's temple, it will only become deeper and faster and stronger and more abundant.

And I think that is what is so often missing in the modern world as we have blinded ourselves to the presence and power and just super abundance of God's life among us, what you have a sense of is things just winding down. Like that's the gloom of the deistic view. The clock will eventually stop ticking. We're just kind of slouching toward the burning up of the cosmos in the end. And our lives feel that way, I think, often, as opposed to, as you just said, having been made by the breath of God, being held in being by that same powerful word, and it's just getting started. I mean, the new heavens and new earth will be an entirely other experience in a glorified form. We almost can't begin to imagine of God just pouring out the

life that he is and that he just, as you said, donates with extravagant generosity. I think I'm not trying to suggest because it wasn't the case that in medieval times, for example, with this image we've discarded, that everything was perfectly cheery because of this. But it certainly is a fundamentally more joyful vision of reality than so much what you find today. Despite all of the wonders of the modern world, there is often a sense of things just winding down. I think that's true. And in scripture, the fact that it ends with this image of the, the water's going out.

I think it's not an accident. It gives us a fundamental framework for thinking about the future as this overflowing abundance, this outpouring, this superfluity. And this description at the beginning of Revelation 22, the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of garden of the lamb through the middle of the street of the city. Also on either side of the river, the tree of life, with its 12 kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month.

The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the lamb will be in it. And his servants will worship him. They will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads, etc. That vision of the water flowing out picks up the language of Ezekiel chapter 47. There it's connected with this small stream that's coming. out from the side of the temple that then grows into this mighty river. And here you have some of that same image. It's now from the throne of garden of the lamb and it has the trees on either side,

the trees of life that are described back in Ezekiel. One of the things I've noted that I hadn't really picked up on to the same degree before is the way that the book of John ends with this image of the water flowing out, picking up on the image of, Ezekiel 47, too. But Richard Borkham notes that there is a sort of gamutria in the number of the fish, the 153 fish that are caught. It's the triangular number of 17, something Augustine and others noted. But that's connected with the prophecy of Ezekiel chapter 47, where you have the waters flowing out. And it says that fishermen will stand beside the sea from Angedekyll. to an egg limb, it will be a place for the spreading of nets.

Fish will be of very many kinds like the fish of the great sea. And the description of the very many fish is, of course, what we find in the final scene of John, where after everything has taken place, the resurrection in chapter 20, you have this epilogue that seems maybe tacked on. And within it, you have a number of things that take place. you have most notably the restoration of Peter after his denial of Christ, the threefold restoration. You have a resurrection appearance. You have the words given to John and to Peter in that context.

And then you have this miraculous catch of fish, which calls back to the original event of Peter's calling, where he was called in the context of a miraculous catch of fish with Andrew. And in that context, he was first told that he would be a fisher of men. Here's, in the end of John, there's another image of Peter and the disciples as fishes of men. But now it seems to me it's picking up the imagery of Ezekiel chapter 47. The river of the water of life has gone out. And now it's producing this mighty catch of fish.

And that number 153 is connected to the Dmitria, the names Geddy and Egleam, the two places between which the great catch of fish is found in this. Ezekiel 47, one being the number 17, and the other being the triangular number of 17, which is 153, eggling. And so you put these things together, and it seems like, I want to be a better way to put it, an Easter egg, a way to give a sense of what's truly taking place here. The book of John has been throughout the story of Jesus, the temple, and the river of living water, or living water being provided. It's the conversation that Jesus has with the woman in the well in chapter four.

It's Jesus' statement from the last great day of the feast in chapter seven. It's the pierced side of Christ from which blood and water flows. It's the allusion perhaps back to the story of the song where living water is going to come up, come from the fountain that's opened. And in all of these ways, in that final, scene with its call back to Ezekiel 47, as Revelation has a call back to Ezekiel 47 in its final scene, you have a sense of where this is all going. This water is only going to go out further.

It's only going to get deeper. It's only going to bring life to more and more places. This is the vision of Eden. It's a barren land. And then you have this garden planted in the midst and then the rivers flow out. and the rivers are going to be irrigating the whole earth. And so that expectation, a crystallological expectation, is then expressed in the flowing out of the Spirit of Christ as the Anointed One,

is the hope of the New Testament. And it's its final note. It's the note of expectancy that it concludes with. Well, in view from that perspective, John 21 directly anticipates Pentecost, because it is on that day that the net of the spirit, as it were, is gathering all kinds of fish into the church. And Peter is, his word ministry is, is, you could argue, you know, also you could use the metaphor of a net. He's, he's, he is the gatherer of, he's the fisher of men that day. So that's just remarkable.

Again, you pointed out last time that Pentecost is not directly mentioned in John, or directly anticipated, but it certainly is anticipated. And I'd never thought of that connection you just drew between that final fishing scene. And of course, what you do see on Pentecost is the human version of exactly that. And some have noted, I am not sure about this myself, but some have noted the 17 different people groups that are mentioned in Acts chapter two as perhaps another connection there. But yes, the church is a vessel going forth upon the waters. and it seems to be a frame for understanding what's what's happening at Pentecost. And Pentecost, as we've noted before, is just anticipated again and again in the book of John. It's alluded to, even though it's not there, within the events itself, themselves.

We can think also of the way that Jesus breathes upon his disciples. There's first of all his breathing out of the breath of the spirit as he gives up the ghost, as it were. And then he breathes upon his disciples after his resurrection. And then that breath becomes a mighty rushing wind from heaven when he is ascended. And so there's a movement at each stage to a greater and greater form of the breath. So perhaps we could then, we've been thinking about this, these metaphors of fire and wind and water, how hopeful they are, the kind of, increase that you see with these things that they don't they don't tail off or wind down but

there's a sense that it's just a growing expanding uh refreshing renewing thing god's presence and his purposes um it is interesting to me that in the genesis account there is also this profound structuring of things and god's rule um create order. It doesn't just create an excess of animation, but it structures life. It allows that life to coexist in many different forms, but in harmony, harmony between God and his creatures, harmony between the creatures themselves. And so it is a kingdom building power. The spirit is the, I think it was Sinclair Ferguson once who referred to the spirit as the divine homemaker. I think is a lot to think about there.

But I wonder if that then, the Genesis picture of the spirit as the homemaker, the kingdom builder, if that opens up some other things in the Old Testament before we get to the Gospels in Pentecost and Acts, ways in which we see the spirit working. So it seems to me that with the coming of Jesus and the new covenant, there is a renewed emphasis. It's anticipated in the prophets. but now the time of that outflowing spirit has come. Now God's going to pour out his spirit on all flesh,

and that expansiveness, that excess comes very much into view. I wonder if in the Old Testament, though, there's also, there's a lot that we are shown about how the spirit also builds a structured kingdom, building a house, building a people, building, well, I just wonder if that's something we could explore. I hope it seems to me that before we get to that worldwide outflowing of the spirit with Christ in the new covenant, there is a lot that we see. People often talk as if the Holy Spirit is not so present in the Old Testament. Maybe you kind of jump from Genesis to the New Testament, but there's so much of the Spirit's work in the Old Testament before Christ comes.

And it is more confined in a way to Israel, though not entirely confined. There is a lot of structure in the old, old covenant, especially under Moses. So maybe we could just talk about the Holy Spirit between Eden and Christ. Yes. I think it seems to me that if we're thinking about structure, many of the structural themes would be maybe more appropriated to the sun than to the spirit. So we think about the sun as the one who holds everything. who gives them everything, it's consistency, as it were. He's the one who forms and holds things together.

Whereas he's the one connected with order and structure, whereas the spirit is the one who fills, who animates, who gives life, brings glory. And yet the spirit is never without the sun. And the son is never without the spirit. We think about Christ as the anointed one, anointed with what, with the spirit and by the father? He is the one who is the man of the spirit. He receives the spirit without measure.

And so the structure, it seems to me, is often connected, maybe more with, appropriated by the son. The father, son and spirit are never working independently. It's not a division of labor. It's not a parceling out of different roles. But we speak in a way that recognizes a connection between certain, facets of God's work that are particularly connected with one of the persons of the Trinity. So we talk about the doctrine of appropriation in this context.

And it can be helpful to think, for instance, of the prepositional or the way that we'll talk about the Father, Son, and Spirit in terms not so much as dividing them out, giving them particular tasks to perform that are different, but rather thinking about everything from the father through the son in the spirit. And so there's a constant unity. There's never a time when the father is working without the son or the spirit, but there is this constant unity and yet an appropriation of certain things of that work to one or other of the persons in a specific sense.

So when we think about the spirit, we think very much about the in facet, for instance, of God's work, the way that the spirit is the one who fills, the spirit is the one who animates, the spirit is the one who is the means by which God communicates his special presence or his empowerment. Now, the image that might be very helpful to focus of it. upon in this context is that of temple or tabernacle. At the very end of the book of Exodus, we have the tabernacle finish, this structure is then filled with the presence of the spirit of God, the glory of God. Or in 1st Kings chapter 8, in the case of the temple of Solomon, you have something

similar there, the filling of a structure with the presence of God that makes it's the home. And of course, I think in the story of the Gospels, at the very beginning, you have something similar in the spirit overshadowing Mary, Christ being formed in her, and the spirit dwelling within her. There is this way in which Christ is the man of the spirit is the one who bears the spirit's presence without limit. And that connection, although it can be challenging to understand in an orthodox way, because printarian theology, and particularly when we're thinking about in the context of the incarnation is complicated. Nevertheless, I think these are the images that we are given as focal images. The word became flesh and tabernacle the ones. Christ

describes his body as a temple as the temple in John chapter 2. Or we have the sort of Marian and Pentecost in the beginning of Luke. And in all of these ways, Christ is the fulfillment of temple imagery. And the spirit that comes upon him is like the spirit dwelling within the temple, except that Christ is never without the spirit. And the spirit is one that he has in its fullness. And I was just reflecting as you were tracing all that out on your piece. I forget the exact title of it.

something along the lines of the music and meaning of man and a woman, that primer you wrote some time ago in which you were pointing out that you, this that you've been describing, this distinction of forming and filling, which are united, but they're recognizably distinct. This is right there in the beginning of creation where the Tohu of Abohu, the unformed, unfilled waste, as it were,

the darkness, the watery void that God's spirit moves upon, it is first formed the first three days of creation, then it is filled, the days four, five, and six. And then you pointed out that there is a way in which God's creation of man is, there is a kind of gendered inflection of man's calling to be one who forms. and in unique ways, God's creation of a woman is directed toward filling. Again, these are not absolute different callings, but just there's some emphasis. And I was just reflecting, again, if you see that creation kingdom as a temple, a house that God has built, the heavens, the earth, the waters under the earth, and God's children living in it, there is that distinction of forming and filling that you pointed out so helpfully in that piece.

and now reflecting on how then that is shown in another way in the tabernacle, obviously in a more permanent way with the temple, and then in Christ himself, in his person. And then Christ, the son, is the one who has formed this group of disciples, which he then fills by the spirit. They are now a body, a house in the spirit, which I think is language that Paul picks up in Ephesians too. We are being built together to be a spiritual house in the spirit.

And it'd be interesting to reflect upon just some of the ways in which those callings to imitate God by forming and filling are played out in the lives of individuals, individual Christians. But anyway, that imagery, you can see it all the way from Genesis clear through to to Acts and well beyond in Paul's epistles. Yeah, so I think this is fundamental biblical grammar, as it were. This is not something that is just introduced in the New Testament when we talk about being filled with the spirit. Exactly.

It's something that comes from the very story of creation. It's developed further in the story of the tabernacle and the temple. And if we understand our role within creation, we understand it also in terms of forming and filling. I think it might be helpful on the subject of filling a building, thinking about the tabernacle, and the way in which the whole story of Sinai provides a paradigm for thinking about what's taking place at Pentecost. So the story of Sinai occurs about the same time after the events of the Passover as Pentecost does. and many have seen Pentecost as the feast of the law, the celebration of the gift of the law,

Sinai in Genesis chapter 20 in particular, or Exodus chapter 20 in particular. You have the leader ascending to God's presence. He receives the law. He delivers it to the people. And in that context, it helps us to see something of what's taking place at Pentecost too. Christ ascends to the presence.

of the father. He receives the spirit. And the spirit is the fulfillment of the law. The spirit places the law upon the hearts. The spirit is the one who is the consummation of full realization of God's revelation. And the whole way that Paul explores this within his epistles, particularly in Romans, is showing the integrity of that relationship between spirit and law. The law cannot be opposed to the spirit because the law itself is spiritual. And it's by the the spirit, we fulfill the righteous requirement of the law, or that righteous requirement is fulfilled in us. And Christ is the end of the law is the one who is the man of the spirit. He's the one who embodies the full intent of the law. And so when we're thinking about

Sinai, there is a paradigm for understanding what takes place at Pentecost that I think Luke is very conscious of in his telling of the story. So he talks about the way that 3,000 people are saved and they're convicted first. They're convicted by being cut to the heart. Back at Sinai, 3,000 men were killed by the Levites on account of their unfaithfulness in chapter 32 of the book with their sin concerning the golden calf. Now you have 3,000 people being saved. you have similar things taking place in the gift of the law. And now there's the gift of the law within the heart.

There's the establishment of a new priesthood in the events of Sinai. The Levites are set apart. Now there's a new priesthood set apart. You can think about the filling of the temple. At the very end of the story of the Exodus in chapter 40, the spirit descends upon the tabernacle. The tabernacle is a movable mountain. It continues the event.

of the theophony at Sinai and enables them to take that with them on their journeys. There's something similar that happens at Pentecost. The spirit fills the temple, but it's the temple of the disciples, the new temple of the Holy Spirit, formed by Christ. And we can also think about this as a way in which the church is going to play out, the full intent of what Sinai was about. So in the events of Numbers chapter 11, we have the spirit of Moses being placed upon 70 of the elders,

the rulers and leaders of the nation. And then they speak in prophecies. And they never do so again, but it's a remarkable event that demonstrates that they have indeed received the spirit. And two of the elders are not present. Eldad and Medad. They're away from the other elders who have been brought around the tabernacle. And Joshua sees them prophesying in the camp and he says, Moses, you have to stop these guys.

Moses said, I will not stop them. Would all of the Lord's people were prophets and prophesied? And there's something that is fulfilling the meaning of that at Pentecost. There is the gift of the spirit of the leaders that all might bear that authority. that the spirit that is given to Christ as he ascends to God's presence might be enjoyed by every single one of the disciples that they might speak with the authority. And so when we think about Sinai, we think about this great theophonic event, this dark cloud, the fire, the smoke, the loud trumpets, the we think about thunder and lightning and all these sorts of phenomena. and now the fire is descending upon each and every disciples head. They are the site of this new Sinai event.

I listen to this and I must say it seems to me that we in the New Covenant often live so far beneath our privileges. To have the privilege of the gift of the Holy Spirit, to have Jesus tell us, to have Jesus' telling us if you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children how much more will the father give the spirit to those who ask him that that spirit is just freely available to us it has brought gods i mean to stop and think about the fact that all of that glory that was on display at sinai paul actually describes that i think in second corinthians three as I'm paraphrasing here, but a fairly pale shadow of the glory that has been revealed in Christ and that is now we are being transformed from glory to glory by the spirit as we gaze upon God's

glory in Christ. And just, I just, we discussed a moment ago, the kind of cultural malaise in a society that has so far forgotten God's presence in creation, but I often wonder in the church, how much do we underestimate, undervalue, underappreciate the presence of the spirit to us as children of God? I mean, I find myself,

I've mentioned in our last episode, I find myself so often when I pray for the Lord's people praying Paul's prayers, where he, for example, we'll pray in Ephesians 3, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven or earth derives its name, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power by His Holy Spirit in your inner being, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith,

and that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which is beyond, knowing that you might be filled up with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think according to his power that there's work in us to him be glory in the church. And there's just this, it seems to me that Paul is praying that the spirit would essentially open people's hearts to know the love of the father through the son in the spirit, as you said. I mean, that is just, it seems to me that that would, that as a greater

focus in our preaching and teaching and fellowship and just private reflection on the scriptures, it seems to me that that would produce such a lively life of faith. And I think this is one place where I've, I, as I told you in last episode, I grew up in the charismatic movement and I would have some critiques of certain theological things in that movement now. But one of the things that I did appreciate about growing up in that was that there was a real sense that the spirit is real and he is present and he's going to do things. And it seems to me that that should just be a very basic New Testament Christian sense, is that we are really truly truly living in the presence of the spirit of God himself that made the heavens and the earth.

And he is not only in our bodies as individual temples, he is in us as a as a corporate body. And that just brings so much hopefulness as you wrestle with remaining and dwelling sin. As you think about the healing of communities, you just think about relational possibilities where sin has brought so much disruption and distortion between people. And I think there is a whole political vision that flows out of this too, that it is possible to dwell together in unity in the Holy Spirit. I just wonder how much we underestimate this.

Absolutely. one of the areas that I studied in the past is the connection between the spirit and the and prophethood. And so when we think about the great events in the stories of the Old Testament prophets where they are appointed for their mission, and so many of them, we see just how insufficient they feel in and of themselves. Moses in chapters three and four of Exodus, he's not a man of fine speech. he feels overshadowed by his brother, Aaron, who can speak far more eloquently that he can. He's a man who's been with a sheep for the last 40 years.

He's not really the guy to be speaking to kings. And then you read maybe Isaiah, I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips. Or you might think about other prophets who feel themselves to be but youths. You think about Jeremiah, the Lord touches his lips so that he might be. his word or you think about Ezekiel, he must eat the book and the book empowers him to speak forth its prophecies. And then as we go into the story of the, their Pentecost, the fact that it is fiery tongues that come upon them. There's not, there is a significance in the wordplay there, a wordplay that works in Greek and in English. Tongues of flame are tongues of flame,

tongues that are able to speak with a fiery power. think maybe of the image of Elijah calling down fire from heaven on Mount Carmel or in the beginning of Second Kings. And the spirit of God empowers and sets a light the word of the people of God to bear a prophetic and powerful authorized witness out into the world that will be effective. Purifies the words. We are people of unclean lips like Isaiah. We are people who use our tongues constantly as tongues set alight by hell itself, as James can talk about it.

And now we can have our tongues purified to bear the very word of God. And as we look at the Book of Acts and what happens after Pentecost, the way that they speak with the authority of Christ, the way that they speak words that are persuasive, transformative, life giving, Words that are holy and good and true, that transformation of speech and the ability of the church to speak with a prophetic voice is one of the things that arises out of Pentecost. That's what it means to have fiery tongues. And we can think also of the way that the prophet is the one who receives the spirit of the great prophet. Christ is the prophet like Moses. He's the greater than Moses.

But Moses' spirit was given to the 70 elders. Christ's spirit is given to his church, so that when we speak, we speak with the Spirit of Christ, not just our own authority. You might also think of the way that the Spirit is received by the church like Christ received the Spirit. The Spirit descended upon Christ in Luke chapter 3 and elsewhere in his baptism. And as it descended upon Christ,

it empowered him for his mission and sent him forth and declared him to be the Son of God. And the church receives the spirit in a similar way descending this mighty, mighty rushing wind. And the spirit is also received by the church as a continuation of Christ's mission. We can think about 2nd Kings chapter 2 and the spirit of Elijah. Elijah is told in chapter 19 of 1st Kings that he is going to perform this task. He needs to appoint Haziel, king of Syria. he needs to anoint Jehu, the son of Nimshy, and he needs to anoint Elisha as his replacement.

And he doesn't do any of those things except the anointing of Elisha. And Elisha completes his mission. And so it seems to me that something similar is taking place in Acts chapter one and two to what we see in Second King's Chapter 2. In Second King's Chapter 2, Elijah's ascension is Elisha's Pentecost. As Elisha ascends and Elisha sees him, Elisha will then receive the spirit of Elijah, Elijah, Elijah, his master, and will continue in the power of Elijah's spirit to do what Elijah started. And the church has something similar. The church sees Christ ascending in chapter one. And then in chapter two, the mantle of Christ descends upon the church so that it might continue that prophetic mission. And whether it's Moses and the 70 elders, whether it's Elijah and Elisha, or whether it's the appointment of the prophets, this is a vision of prophetic initiation and appointment and empowerment. And as you say, we just do not know what we've been given.

And a rediscovery of that through these biblical images and through the teaching of the apostles and through the teaching of the epistles and through the teaching of the epistles. is transformative. It's something that gives us a sense of just how good God has been to us and how confident we can be in the resources that he has provided us with for the mission that he has set before us. Do you also think that there's empowerment by the spirit for priestly and kingly functions for us as believers? So you've outlined, I think, incredibly persuasively the the image of the spirit of Christ, the prophet, descending upon his successor, or not in the sense that we replace him, but rather we speak for him in the world. But I wonder, too, we are called temples. And I think there's quite clearly language in the New Testament that speaks of believers offering sacrifices.

So we are both the house of God, we are the temple of God. And it seems to me that in the spirit, in that temple, as we offer our bodies as living sacrifices and do other. or acts of worship, there is a spirit-filled priestly function. And I also reflect, too, I know this is now something that there's a bit of a shade of suspicion over it because of misuse. But I spend quite a lot of time trying to make sense of what Paul means when he says that we have been seated with Christ in a position of royal authority. And it seems to me that for all of the, frankly, prideful and just carnal ways in which that could be misused,

thinking of power like the Gentiles do. Nevertheless, we need to not back away from the fact that our dominion, our Adamic dominion has been restored in Christ, and that too is in the spirit, which is an enormously important qualifier. It is not fleshly dominion, it is spiritual dominion, but it is very, very real. I mean, the kingdom of God is here in Christ's reign, and we are participants in Christ's exercising dominion and extending his dominion in the world.

And it's a life-giving rule. It is a reign of Christ that is as waters that transform dead seas into places where the tree of life flourishes. And so I wonder, I mean, do you think that's a fair extension of our pneumatology to see not only a prophetic function for believers, but also priestly and kingly functions? I think so. And I think there are ways in which we can pick up on Old Testament imagery and New Testament imagery to support that claim. So first of all, we might think about the fire coming down from heaven and lighting something, might think of about that as the lighting of fire coming down and coming upon the altar. We are altars.

Yes. And we are also filled with the spirit like temples. Paul describes us explicitly as temples of the Holy Spirit. Absolutely. In 1 Corinthians chapter 6, we might think also of the way that the church is compared to a lamp stand. And that's quite literally. Yes.

The church becomes a sort of lamp stand quite literally in Acts chapter 2. And so when Christ walks as like priest in the midst of the lampstands, that's what we are like. The lampstand was connected with the priest in the Old Testament. The oil for the lampstand, the oil for the priest were paralleled with each other. One is the physical light bearer and the other is a moral light bearer. It might think about parallels between Aaron's rod bringing forth almonds and the fact that the lamp stand is an almond lamp. And in these ways, it seems that there are parallels to be drawn with priesthood. Christ also gives his spirit to fill the temple.

And so we are filled temples as such. Our task is to guard the fire that God has lit within us, to maintain the presence of the spirit that fills the temple. You are not your own, right? You are not your own. You are not your own. God, yes. And our bodies, our very bodies, not just our minds or our spirits or our souls, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. And so we need to act in a way that takes a sort of

priestly responsibility for guarding the house and tending to its various tasks. We need to be those that trim the lamps. We need to be those who hide the word of God within our hearts. And this is all built on, I think, imagery of the Old Testament, where the temple is, it is a cosmos, a miniature. Yes. It's the polity in miniature. And you can have different parts of the polity mapped on to different parts of the building. But it's also a human body, macrocosm. Yes.

Can think about the way that the human body has trunks, the trunks of the feet or the legs. and the way that we have the trunks of the legs in the two great bronze pillars outside the temple, or the hidden place of the heart with the treasure of the law and the other treasures that are stored within the throne room, as it were, where God must be enthroned in our midst. You can think about the way that there are five tables and five lamp stands on either side of the central area, like the torso with five digits coming out from it on the hands and the hands on either side. And it seems to me that there is this human model that's represented in the temple. So when we get into the New Testament, we're, and we're told Christ is the temple,

we're told that there is a reality of our bodies that they are the temple of the Holy Spirit. It's working with imagery that's already there. So there's that. I think the priestly imagery that you identify is very clearly present. Then in the story of the establishment of the kings, in things like Saul, there's signs that would accompany his anointing. He has told, first of all, that the donkeys, he'd be met with people who told him that the donkeys of his father had been found.

Then there would be an encounter with. with people bearing water, bearing wine and ingredients for feast, the goat and bread. And they would give him some of those items. And then finally, he would meet with prophets coming down from the holy place, and the Holy Spirit would come upon him, and he would become a new man. It seems to me that Christ gives his disciples instructions at the end of the book of Luke, the parallel with each one of those signs. They're told that they will go into the city,

they'll go into the village, and they will find donkeys, the cult tied up, and that they will bring that to him. The donkeys have been found. Then they will go into the city, and they go into the city, and they'll meet a man carrying a water pitcher

who will lead them to the place where they will celebrate the supper, last supper. And that will be using the ingredients, bread and wine and a goat or a ram that would be the means of celebration. celebrating the Passover. And then finally, they're told at the end of the book to tarry in Jerusalem until they are clothed with power from on high. They'll become new men. And so there's the symbols

connected with the kingdom. They're told in the upper room that you will sit on 12 thrones judging the tribes of Israel. I bestow upon you a kingdom. We might also think of the very beginning of first kings. The Davidic king is about to leave, he's about to die, and he's giving instructions concerning the kingdom to his son and his successor. And then in chapter two, there's the removal of certain people who have been unfaithful from office and replacement with others. And then in chapter three, there is the receipt of wisdom. And in what follows, the building of the temple. That's what we find at the beginning of Acts. Christ, the Davidic king, is about to leave the scene. He's giving instructions to his disciples. Then unfaithful people,

are removed from office, and I think there are more specific allusions to be drawn there, but Judas is removed, Matthias is placed in his role, and then you have the gift of the spirit of wisdom, and then the building of the temple. This is the task of kings. And so we've been anointed as kings, we've been anointed as priests, and we've been anointed as prophets. We share in all the riches of Christ's office. And that's picked up, of course, at the beginning of Revelation, he has made us a kingdom of priests to our God. I mean, and, and, and first Peter, you are that royal nation, everything Israel was intended to be. I just, I just, I think that sort of thing, picking up that biblical imagery and explicating it the way you've done. Again, it's, it's a,

there's a kind of renovation of the, of the moral and social imagination and spiritual imagination of God's people. I just matters to me quite a lot as a pastor because I find that so much, so much of the impartation of wisdom really is a renewal of the imagination. It is seeing reality as you have not seen it before, but as it truly is. And there's a kind of brilliance that shines out of seeing reality as it truly is, as God has truly made it, and finding your place within that, and finding purpose within that, and being able to then wrestle with the problems of life under the sun in that framework where it's not wisdom is not this sort of encyclopedic thing where you just look up in the index, here's the answer to every singular

question so much as having an understanding of reality within which then you can ponder and reflect upon the problems and questions of human existence and get insight into how to live well that goes beyond specific precepts. It's a sense of thing. It's a sense of what's bidding, a sense of, you know, as the phrases often use, what really cuts with the grain of reality and what, as Paul puts it in Ephesians 5, trying to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. That is not just a matter of following rules. It's a, it's a kingly work of, you know, Solomon's out there looking at ants and rock badgers and reflecting on what this means for human life, I'm fascinated by the theme of wisdom.

In both the Old Testament wisdom literature, but far beyond the wisdom literature, and in the New Testament, too, wisdom is, again, I'm struck by how often when Paul prays, he's praying for the spirit of wisdom. And I think that is one of the ways I've been very excited by the theme of the spirit within scripture, because the spirit is presented as a principle of revelation that once we understand the role of the spirit. We understand the role of the law. We understand the role of the letter. We understand what wisdom means. We understand what prophecy means. And so often it seems to me we have an understanding of God's word as something external, merely against us and commanding us,

maybe against what we'd prefer to do. And yet within scripture, there's almost this development from the law, which is do this, don't do that, this commandment from outside of ourselves, to the law taken in, we might think about the Psalms. The Psalms as the law meditated upon and treasured within the heart. The law remembered and the law turned into song. It conscripts the desires and expresses the delight of the heart. It's no longer just this external command. Now the heart rejoices and sings according to it. It's become the animating principle. And then we might think about wisdom. Wisdom is that which no longer is just following certain rules, it's internalized the principles of reality can now see reality in terms of those deep moral, that deep moral order. And so that apprehension of reality

in terms of wisdom is an apprehension of the sort of spirit of reality that is externally expressed in the law. But when the law becomes part of you and you can internalize it not just in the the light in God's word and his truth and his instruction and his, the records of his deeds, but internalizing in deep understanding that you can look at the world and you can see it in the light of what he has revealed. There's that, but then there's even further, we might think about the way that we illustrated the word of God touching the lips of the prophet, whether it's Isaiah cleansing his lips or Jeremiah placing, the word on his lips so he might be strong and stand against all these resisting forces

and speak God's word powerfully to them, or the ingested word of Ezekiel. The word becomes part of him to the point that he embodies the revelation at certain points. And the spirit in the New Testament, I think, is a principle of revelation that helps us to understand the telos of law, of Psalms, of all these sorts of things. So when Paul speaks about what it means to sing the Psalms, he can talk about it in light of the spirits in dwelling. So he'll say in Ephesians chapter 5, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is,

and do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the spirit, addressing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always, and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. And then in a parallel passage in the book of Colossians, he talks about the way that let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,

teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. The parallel between the Word of Christ dwelling in you richly and the Spirit dwelling in you is not accidental. Yes. The Spirit is the means by which the word becomes animated within us. It's the means by which we treasure the word. We memorize the word. We ruminate upon it.

It's the means by which the word becomes embedded in our understanding, enlightening our eyes. the means by which that word is empowered in our mouths so that we speak with prophetic authority into situations where that word is transformative. It's the means by which that word is made fruitful and persuades and changes things. And so an understanding of revelation that misses the role played by the spirit is incredibly far from what we find in scripture. Scripture works towards the role of the spirit as the full. realization of what it means to have the word of God.

I think there's a certain understanding of how authority is exercised that flows from that as well. This is certainly not the only thing if you said about what you just laid out there. There's just so much to say. But I was just reflecting as you spoke. So in positions of human authority, there's a kind of keeping in step with the spirit, it seems to me, not at all trying. to take over as if this was even possible, take over the work of the spirit in changing hearts. But there is, and it seems to me, in truly spirit-filled authority, exercises of authority, there is a really great concern to give reasons, to not merely command, to not merely enforce,

but to, I mean, I think as you look at the work of the Holy Spirit and scripture, you see how God treats us as the creatures we are. Wisdom is uniquely human in the sense that it is God's reasoning with us. It is God's appealing to our love of the good. It is, I mean, ultimately, only God can change the heart. But humanly, there's a, you listen to Lady Wisdom as she calls out to people in the streets and proverbs. There's, there's, there's, there, it's, she's not just giving orders.

She's not threatening, you know, violence, although there is clearly, those who hate me love death. I mean, there is a warning, profound warning. But, but there's this, there's this reasoning and laying out the wise and the wherefores and inviting toward the good and the true and the beautiful and the real. And I just, I just think there. many, many times in church, in family, in obviously political contexts and other contexts, it seems to me that social problems very often come down to a breakdown in authority and

how it's exercised. And I just wonder if there's something to be learned in what you've laid out about how the spirit works. Not that we should, again, try to presume that we could do what only the spirit does in the heart, but that we can speak to people as from positions of authority in a way that honors the way the spirit works. And I wonder if that's part of what Jesus means when he says, the Gentiles are not, you're not going to exercise authority the way the Gentiles do. I think that's true.

It's something that's always stood out to me about Paul's rhetoric. He doesn't really command for the most part, as we find in the Old Testament commands in the law. Rather he, and that's not to say that if you read a book like Deuteronomy, so much of it is about understanding wisdom. There's a deeper logic to the book that encourages you to look more deeply. But Paul gives these really developed arguments. For instance, one of my favorites is in 1st Corinthians 8 to 10 when he's talking about eating food sacrifice to idols.

It's a whole sustained argument with all these different phases to it. It's not the sort of thing that any of us are really accustomed to in contemporary Christian discourse. But what it does is provide the whole moral framework within which to understand the correct way to approach that issue. And what you've got at the end of it is not just you must do this or you must do that in this specific case, but a deep understanding of the things that would motivate you to do it. Exactly. To do the thing that he would have you do. And the instruction that you have at the end of it is one that enables you to reason about completely different situations with that same degree of insight. And I think that's a gospel rhetoric, a gospel rhetoric that is about not just the law, do this, don't do that, but recognition of the spirit being conscripted by persuasive power of God's Christ's word.

accompanied by the power of his spirit. So we are moved to obey, obey as willing adult participants. Yes. And it seems to me that that's integral to proper Christian ethics in ways that once that gets lost, we either move in the direction of legalism or license and or a sort of prophetic legalism,

where with some sort of moral authority, claim for some specific person, they're able to speak with great authority to the specifics of our lives. And so there's an overreach in those situations that leaves us less free. Or we just have this vague, it's a wisdom issue, just decide what you want. Whereas what Paul gives us is a way of directing our emotions, our desires, our understanding of what is good so that we freely act towards what is good. So the spirit of the law is aroused within us. And so as people who bear the spirit of God, who have received the spirit of God, that that spirit is excited to that which is good as our eyes are enlightened to its good character. And it seems that very often our ideas

of authority treat as the paradigm case, those situations where there are. is disagreement, where there is antagonism, where there is resistance, whatever it is. The paradigm case, it seems to me, should be that marriage of the spirit and the law. And that's what we find in the word of

the gospel. Right, because otherwise, you end up with a vacillating back and forth between these two alternatives as if they're the only two, which is either autonomy or being infantilized. and those are just not the clearly not the biblical only biblical options. It is not man being autonomous

or man being infantilized. It's man becoming a royal son of God, completely under authority, but also profoundly thinking his own thoughts after his father in heaven. And that breathing into man of this breath of life, that man in a greater sense,

man with a capital M, as it were, might act with authority and dominion within the world. That's part of the meaning of Pentecost. This is why it can be the alternative to Babel. Man's attempt to, this sort of Promethean attempt to snatch fire down from the heavens. Right. Man has received fire from the heavens. Amen. And with that fire, we can go forth with flaming tongues and change the world.

And words that were once powerless are now words that can speak with authority and persuasion. And words that were once scattered and divided are now words that unite us in the worship of God and the declaration of his great deeds. It seems to me that without some response in our hearts of just a thrill that this is what it means, we've just not gotten Pentecost. It's one of the severely neglected feasts of the church. There is so much richness to explore that. And if we just discovered what it meant, I think it would transform our lives. Completely agreed. I must say, I mean, I've been thinking quite a lot about these things in the last few years,

but even these conversations have just been so enriching for me along those lines to realize these are the deep, deep wells from which we drink as, as the, people of God. And in a very real sense, our entire purpose and mission is tied up in just unpacking what God has given to us in the spirit. And that's not just rhetoric. I mean, that is that is God with us in the fullest sense. Thank you very much for listening. And thank you, Ben, for joining me. This has been a delight. Both of these conversations have been such an encouragement for me. And I'm really feeling the Pentecost season at the moment. It's always one of my favorite seasons, but it's been especially good this year.

God is good.