BibleProject - The Holy Spirit Part 2: God's Ruakh

Episode Date: March 4, 2017

In this episode, Tim and Jon continue to unpack the concept of the Holy Spirit. Last time, they focused on the spirit of God. This time, they’ll look at what the word spirit means and the difference between God’s spirit and human spirit. Scripture is full of examples of God’s spirit influencing and empowering people, but is this really still happening? What does the spirit of God have to do with us today as followers of Jesus, and how will God use his spirit and use people to fulfill his purpose for creation? In the first part of this episode (01:33-18:36), the guys look at the Hebrew word for spirit, “ruakh.” They track the ruakh of God throughout Scripture, so that we can begin to understand the purpose of God’s spirit. They also talk about what it means for humans to have a spirit. In the next part of the episode (19:00-40:43), Tim and Jon break down the four different definitions of ruakh. They look at the way God’s spirit empowers people in Scripture, working with their human spirit to accomplish God’s will in the world. God uses some pretty bad guys in the Bible, but understanding the different aspects of God’s ruach can help make this a little more clear. In the final part of the episode (41:26-51:38), Tim and Jon look at the Hebrew prophets and the way they spoke about the ruach of God. God’s ruach and the new creation are directly connected. The Messiah is described as one who will be fully permeated by the ruach of God, and his coming will completely change the way creation operates. The prophets reiterate what so much of the Hebrew Scriptures are pointing to: The only hope for creation and humanity is for God to recreate humans through his spirit. Video: This episode is designed to accompany our video, "Holy Spirit." You can view it on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNNZO9i1Gjc Scripture References: Psalm 33 Psalm 51 Genesis 41 Exodus 31 Deuteronomy 34 Micah 3 Isaiah 11 Ezekiel 37 Show Music: Defender Instrumental by Rosasharn Music Blue Skies by Unwritten Stories Flooded Meadows by Unwritten Stories

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it in. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

This is the Bible Project Podcast. In this episode, we're going to continue conversation I'm having with Tim Mackey about the Holy Spirit. If you haven't listened to the previous episode, I highly recommend it. We're going to pick up where we left off. In the last episode, we talked about Ruaq being wind, breath, and spirit. A word used for all three of those concepts. In this episode, we're going to pick up and talk about a fourth meaning of the word Ruaq, which is man's spirit. What does it mean for humans to have a spirit? And how is that different from the breath of life? Then we talk about the three main activities

of the Holy Spirit and the Old Testament. Last episode we talked at length about the first one, which is the spirit involved in creating and sustaining all of life. We'll talk about the second activity, which is God empowering people for specific tasks. Spirit is something that keeps you alive. You live by the Spirit, but then he says it.

You can also get out of step with the Spirit. So the Spirit never leaves any living creature in the sense that it takes them alive. But you can be filled with the Spirit of life, but not be in tune with the Spirit of God. And then we talk about the third activity, which is God's Spirit recreating the world and humanity itself. What's going to have to happen to humanity so that we become people who truly love God and love others? Thanks for listening in. Here we go.

Okay, let me do the Blitz recap. Okay, it's for my benefit. Creation. Creation is this way to describe when the wilderness, the Tohu-Vahu, just the waste and wild creation, becomes ordered and meaningful and full of life. And in order to do that, God's spirit, his ruaq, was hovering and actively participating in how that was done. So it's the ruaq of God that brought forth creation in the first place, and by creation we mean the ordered life full place that we know. And not only that, in Genesis 2 humans were given the Rua of God so that they weren't just dirt, but were also now animated.

So in the world view, as you look around at yourself and you're breathing in, Rua can you breathing in, Rua can you breathing out, Rua can you see the wind blowing and you see things just coming out of the ground that you can eat and that other animals eat and you see all this order in the sky, all of that in your psychology is must be powered by the Rua of God. It's coming into your lungs, but it's also all around you. And so while everyone, everyone alive has the breath of life,

has God's energizing spirit, keeping them alive. There's another biblical concept that man has his own spirit, his own Ruaq, and that's where we're gonna pick up right now. The last main nuance of the word spirit is a use of spirit to talk about a human mindset or intellectual consciousness or purpose. Psalm 33, to bless is the one who sin, the Lord does not account against them, and in whose spirit is no deceit. Deceit or treachery isn't something that I breathe.

Or is in your breath. Yeah, it's so now the animating life energy has, which is already a metaphor for breath, has another layer of metaphor to it that we're talking about, the invisible mindset, or frame of mind that I have here, that consciousness or purpose of treachery or deceit. And so you can just say, there's no deceit. So is this talking about consciousness, in a way? Yeah, I've used here the phrase frame of mind, or you could say conscious purpose, but it's, where is deceit? Can I touch deceit?

No, it's invisible. It's a series of thoughts and ideas in my mind, but in the Old Testament, there's no word for brain. And so really, mind is probably the best English translation of this use of rule. Okay, so this idea of breath that animates when the ancient thinker wants to explain how I have purposefully decided to try to deceive. I'm thinking, well, this intent is in no way physical, but it belongs to me, it's my intent. It no way physical. Right. But it belongs to me. It's my intent.

Yep. It's within me. And so what is it? It must be that breath. It must be that animated force. Which again, it's not my life, my roof. It's my roof. And we would use the word mind.

Yep. Yeah. And whose mind is no deceit? And that's why this is different than heart in the Old Testament Heart is where is your will and Desire and affection, but these uses of Spirit have to do more with what we would call mind or consciousness. Oh interesting. So in Ecclesiastes He says don't be quickly provoked in your Rua for anger resides in the lap of fools.

Wouldn't that happen in your heart then if it's about emotion and affection, love, feelings. There is some overlap, but here it's in both cases it's something to do with a purpose. So you get angry in your mind. And intent. Yes. Look, the famous Psalm 51, this last example, that David prays after messing up with Baschiba and it's creation language, he says,

create in me a pure heart. And renew a steadfast ruach in me. So create in me new affections, a new love and desire. Your will and desire. And renew a steadfast, let me look it up real quick. A pure heart create for me, and a spirit that is upright.

Renew within me. Don't cast me away from you. Don't take your holy ruach from me. Create me a pure heart. You say heart means will. Will and feeling and emotion. The will is different than feeling and emotion. It is in English.

I'm just saying the kinds of things love the Lord your God with all your heart. So love is an affection, but it's also about a will and a choice and devotion to. But spirit in these is about a mindset or a purpose. What's the difference between will and mindset or will and intention? It might be that they overlap in some ways. One begins with an affection and one begins with a... But nowhere in the Hebrew Bible do you feel something in your spirit? You feel things in your heart and in your guts. Your spirit is about ideas,

the purpose, mind. My mind is the perfect word for it. Interesting. Rua. So it's the animating life principles invisible, but then that invisible animation itself becomes a way of talking about your thoughts and thinking up purposes and ideas and things you want to do. Yeah, you're right. I haven't thought about this before, but yeah, intent, conscious intent,

mind, purpose, that can be called a person's ruach, your ruach, and this is where the idea of God's ruach and the human ruach began to relate to each other because there's going to flow out of this. A whole what flows out is that God's ruach can enter into humans and influence them and empower them. So even though I'm already being empowered by God's rock, I have my own rock. That's right. And then God can influence my rock with his rock.

Yeah, so I have my life breath that is borrowed and gift and animates me. I didn't ask for it. You just given it to me. I don't have to thank God for it. But then there's my mind. My own Rua. My own Rua. That's different than the life breath. Correct.

It's because it's my thoughts and my purposes. But they exist on the level of Rua because they're invisible. I can't see my thoughts. And it's different than my emotions and my affections and my heart. Yeah, you can't see it at podcasts listeners, but I'm pointing to my brain. Yeah, that's my sense of- Yeah, you're wrong. But in, they don't have any concept of brain.

Right. And it's not your heart, it's your ruch. Right. Where do your thoughts come from? Right, yeah. It's your ruch. The invisible ideas and things that occurred to you. And that's yours.

It's hard for us not to point to our heads, but that's yours. And so you have here then this overlapping concept of that God's Ruaach, his own personal life presence that already animates you anyway, but that can interact with your mind, Ruaach, and influence. So the first person full of the spirit in the Bible? This is another good Bible trivia. Let me not look. The first person, I saw the word Joseph. Oh, well there you go.

Really? That's the first person? Joseph? Yes. When Pharaoh has those weird dreams, the book of Genesis, chapter 40 and 41, too. And nobody can interpret his dreams. And then there's this slave and prison, Pharaoh.

He interprets the dreams and Pharaoh says, oh my gosh, you are a man in whom is the Rua of the gods. So this is being empowered differently than being created. Everyone's been created with God's Rua. Yeah, what he's not saying, oh, you're alive. Yeah. He's saying that you have been influenced by thoughts outside of yourself. Correct.

You've been privy to ideas and thoughts that there's no way you could know them unless they were given to you by a divine source. The rule of God. And so you normally just give life. It gives ideas. Yeah, here I have to influence or empower or enhance human abilities with divine enablement. So here we call that the muse. Yes, that's what the Greeks call it, the muse.

Yeah, which was a god, a deity. Yeah, there's the deities of music and poetry and so on that the divine muses. Do we get these ideas that feel like they're coming from outside of ourselves? Yeah, totally. Yeah, isn't genius the word genius? Oh really? Isn't the word still get up? Yeah, look it up. The word gene gene. Oh, gene comes from that. Yeah, it's a spirit being that comes into your mind and gives you ideas. Yeah, it was a moral spirit who guys and governs an individual through life from the Latin genius, guardian deity of spirit, which watches over each person from birth. But it's also a prophetic skill. So these are kind of overlapping ideas, the muse, the genius.

This is God's ruok empowering you. That's how you would think about it biblically. Is being empowered for a special task, given divine skill. So let's keep going. This all overlaps. The second Rewach-filled person in the Bible is in the next book of the Bible, Exodus. This one's a little more well-known. Exodus chapter 31. God says, Look, I have chosen Betzalel, son of Uri, the son of Huer, from the tribe of Judah,

and I have filled him with the Ruhach of God. Oh, to do the Tabernacle. And with Hochma. I have filled him with the Ruhach of God and Hochma, and understanding, and knowledge,

and all kinds of skills to make the artistic designs of wood and stone and gold. So this is the second time someone's given the rock. The first time it's Joseph is given ideas to interpret a dream. To interpret a dream and information he couldn't have otherwise known. Here it's an artist. Yeah, given. Who can? The muse.

The muse. Yeah. He's given a divine rua, which is equated with wisdom, hoch maa, a applied knowledge and skill to understand and work with these raw materials and to bring out of them beauty and order that just blows people's minds. So this is cool. There's something transcendent when he was like the Michelangelo of the same day.

Totally, yes. No, that's exactly right. There's something transcendent that we're encountering in beautiful art because it's the product of a human, but within the biblical world view, it's the product of the divine ruaq expressing itself in and through a human. It's this beautiful art. So once again, it's not life, biological life. We're talking about... Yeah, we're talking about here ability to perceive things that are hard to perceive and then to be able to apply that.

Well, the perceiving of it seems to be the Ruak and then the application seems to be the Hokuma, like taking it and doing something with it. Correct. So, the ability to see what a dream means or to see how this connects to that, or so what poetry comes from, or to be able to perceive a melody that no one has ever perceived before, or all these things that we think of as artistic that comes from the Ruaq. Ruaq. And we're right back at the first page of the Bible, the Ruaq of God. The creative force.

The create bringing light and life and beauty in a garden out of Tohu-Bah-Vohu. It's exactly the same, except here it's not biological life, it's order and beauty and meaning. Intent, purpose. Again, intent. It's applying conscious purpose to these raw materials. So there's that. God's Ruaq can also influence rulers. It's a big theme in the Old Testament. So there are individuals who are given positions of leadership, and if they do a good job, they are said to be filled with God's Ruaach. So Joshua, when he's commissioned at the end of the Pentateuch to lead

Israel and Moses place, he's filled with the Ruaach of Hochma, the spirit of wisdom. So he's going to need some kind of divine enhancement of his skills. So wisdom, because we know from the wisdom literature that wisdom is an attribute of God. So in that sense, then it can have a rock. Yeah, we're blending Proverbs 8, the lady wisdom as a divine attribute of God, in with spirit and wisdom. They overlap here. It's just like wisdom and Proverbs. This invisible cause-effect pattern woven into the universe.

It's an order, which is exactly what the Ruaach of God is creating. And so you can say, oh yeah, the Ruaach of Hochma. So this is a really common theme. When Israel is on the verge of chaos, when Israel, when God's people need a leader who will help bring order and justice and wise guidance, you see the Ruaach appearing. So Joshua, in the book of Judges, when Israel is getting taken over and beaten by their enemies, there's all these guys, Othnale,

Gideon, Jeff the Sampson, and not all of them are great moral characters. But God gives the Ruh. Gives the Ruh to them to enable them to rescue or something like that. And so this is also the role that the prophets play, too. God sends his Ruh to influence the biblical prophets. So Micah in chapter 3 says, I am filled with power and with the Rua of the Lord, and with justice and courage to make known to Jacob his rebellion and to Israel his sin. So here is the prophet being given a divine perspective on Israel's state. It's kind of like the Joseph image. He's being, he's privy to the divine perspective on Israel's history and on the meaning of current events and then he will call out on God's behalf, you know, how they're breaking the covenant and so on.

So this is a whole, it's a whole theme through the Old Testament that God influences humans by his Rua, by connecting himself to their real ah, their mind. Yeah, giving you a perspective that you wouldn't normally have, ideas and insight that you wouldn't normally have. Yeah, that's right. So this is all the seed bed. All of this is a seed bed then for the work of the spirit in the ministry of Jesus and then the way Paul and the other apostles

talk about the spirit affecting our renewing your minds. Paul will say, or he'll talk about, if you live, Paul says, if you live by the spirit, keep in step with the spirit and to produce the fruit of the spirit. So the spirit is something that keeps you alive. You live by the spirit. But then he says, you can also get out of step with the spirit. So the Spirit never leaves any living creature in the sense that it keeps them alive, but you can be filled with the Spirit of life, but not be in tune with the Spirit of God. Right, so you could be alive with the breath of God, but the ruch of God won't be influencing your ruch. Yeah, yep, shaping your mind and your thoughts and your purposes. So now we're talking about four words that we have.

That's one word. Yeah, that's right. Because there's no word from mind or brain. And he got wind, breath, spirit in mind. Yes. And in Hebrew, it's all ruch. Ruch. In Greek, we have a word for mind.

Greek has a separate word for mind to separate it. From ruch, from numa, excuse me, but Paul will often use the word numa of a human for intentions. To talk about the aspect of humanity that is capable of relating to and connecting with the close connection with God. He'll talk about his spirit being united with God's spirit or that kind of thing. So yeah, this is true. Did we get all of them? There's not a fifth word. I'm worried now there not a fifth word.

I'm worried now there's a fifth word. Those are the four main ones. If you look through the main dictionary entries. That's how it's translated. Yep, wind, breath, mind, spirit. And I'm always really fascinated at how language develops. So this is a great example. You have a very simple concept that we all understand, breathing and wind.

Both of those are very rudimentary. They would have been some of the first words that we understand as humans. Because it's like, oh, that guy's breathing, I have, I'm breath. The leaves are moving. What is that? But what's cool about that word? Let's say it's a ruck. that's how I'm learning that word. As I'm breathing, that's Ruaq, the wind's Ruaq.

What's cool about that word is it's identifying something that's invisible. So unlike saying, hey, what's that? That's a table. It's like, oh, okay, cool, it's a table. That's a rock. It's something that I can't see, but it's something that's very significant. It keeps me alive. And very clearly real. And very clearly real. Not a signal in my imagination.

Right. Like ghosts. It's out there. Yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah. No one's debating about whether or not Ruak is real. People debate whether or not spirit is real or ghosts are real.

Sure. But no one's debating about the way it ended. That's right. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. Keep going. It's a good train. I thought you're on. And then, yeah, so what's significant about that word is it's invisible, but it's super important. I know that it's real. It keeps me alive. Also, it influences everything around me. And so as I'm wrestling through a more abstract concept such as

God's divine nature and how it interacts with me in the world. Yes. I need a word I need language to start to think about that. I can create a new word But that's weird because now I have this Blake canvas and people are just gonna look look at me and they're like, that word is gibberish. And I have to explain that what that word is. So instead, I use a word that they already know that I'm intimately familiar with. They're intimately familiar with. And we can start there because it's a great metaphor to begin to talk about something very significant.

Correct. So now all of a sudden, we have the same word and it means wind, breath, and spirit. And so when I say in Genesis 1.1, the spirit of God, the ruac of God is hovering over the waters. You have this image, you have handles to this thing, and it makes sense and you're thinking about God in that way,

but you know I'm not talking about literal breath, but it's a good place to start. And then I'm going along in life and I realize, you know, there's this weird thing that's like consciousness, like I have this ability in my own self to decide something and then make it happen. Or to think up, we call them concepts or ideas. To think up a concept, to have an idea and then turn that D into an reality. What is that? Where is that coming from? I don't see it.

Like I don't see breath. Right, I can't see your ideas. You can be sitting there right now coming up with an idea and I would have no idea. Is that pun intended? No. This gave out. I would have no clue that you were ideating because it's invisible.

And so I go, okay, so what's that? What's that thing that I have? It's super powerful. And it produces a visible result in that I go do something. And then I go do something. I can decide I'm gonna go deceive someone and that deception is very significant. It's gonna change the course of their life

and it happens within my own something. I was about to use a word. In me. It happened, yes. And it's invisible, it's effective, it belongs in me. It happened. Yes. And it's invisible. Yeah. It's effective.

Yeah. It belongs to me. And I'm like, what is that? How do we talk about that? Let's use the word ruak. It's your ruak. It's my ruak. Now I should step back because as soon as I say that, you go, yeah, you have breath.

You have ruak. And there's already a very significant spiritual understanding of that, which is that breath comes from God. God gave you that breath. God gave you life. And you'd be like, yeah, your breath and God gave it to you. It's your life. And it will be taken from you one day and we'll go back to God. No, no, no, that's not the Ruak I'm talking about. I'm talking about the Ruak that I have that I'm talking about the Ruaq that I have that I'm using and it's a different Ruaq and people go, oh, I get that because God has a Ruaq. Yep, that's right. And so and and it's his intention and his creative ability to do things.

So yeah, you have a Ruaq too. Yeah, that was really enjoyable. So watch you process through that. Yeah, the way you just phrased all of that is what was in my head, but I've never even fleshed connected it all that way. But that's exactly right. It's that there's a unifying, there's a unity to all those ideas in that word. That in English we have separated into different words altogether. And that's the challenge.

And that's just to start the conversation. Right? Right. This is just the ways the word gets used. The second layer to this is to then go look at all of the things that God does. Now we've got the range of meaning of the word. Let's look at all the places where God's Ruaq is doing things. And that fits into three buckets.

There we talked about two of them already. Talk about two of them, yep. One in much detail about the God's creator, the creator and sustainer of all life. We talked about that. And then we talked about the second one, which is of God's Rua that can interact with and influence your human Rua. And then we talked about Joseph there. Joseph, we talked about Betzalel, the artist. And here we're in the category, you could call it God anointing. That's a biblical image for a anointing spirit. Yeah, that's a Bible word though. Yeah, it is. So, but it's so cool, because it's

where the image of the spirit as a liquid begins. So you have, you have, I've never thought of the spirit as liquid. Well, where are the images? Am I supposed to? If you're gonna be filled up with the spirit or the spirit is poured out, those are liquid metaphors. Those are liquid metaphors, but I've never realized that. Yes, yeah, those are both liquid.

So those both depend on a handful of passages in the Old Testament where the spirit those are both liquid. So those both depend on a handful of passages in the Old Testament where the spirits described as liquid. Saul and David, when they are appointed as kings, they get oil. Samuel, the prophet comes and pours oil over their heads as a symbol of commissioning and anointing. And then on both of those occasions, marks a moment where God's ruach fills them or comes upon them to commission them

to rule and lead the people. So that's of anointing. And also the high priests were anointed with oil. They're not connected with ruach, but they are anointed with oil. So that's where that image comes from. And being to be anointed with oil. They're not connected with ruach, but they are anointed with oil. That's where that image comes from. Being to be anointed means to be appointed and commissioned. Forgot to do something on God's side.

And you're always something's poured on you. Yeah. But it's with Israel's kings, the king, specifically David, that with the anointing oil then gets connected to the spirit coming upon him. And that's why he can say at the poem that he says at the end of his life, in 2nd Samuel 23, he writes his poem and he says, the rua of God speaks by means of me and he writes his poem. So David had this awareness of this special, empowering presence of God's Rua as he was king. And that's why in Psalm 51, he's afraid that his sin with Bashiba is going to forfeit. He's so compromised, he's afraid that he's forfeited the special, empowering presence

of God's Ruaq on him. So he begs God to create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew an upright Ruaq in me. Don't cast me away. Please don't take your holy Ruaq from me. And he's talking about God's Ruaq, not his Ruaq. Yeah. So give me a new Ruaq and use this. So give me a new mind.

Give me, yeah, a new sense of self. Whole new value system and a whole new way of thinking about myself and other people. And that, and uses the word create from Genesis 1. It's gonna be, it's gonna have to be so radical. It's like, you're gonna have to recreate it. Yes, it's like brand new creation of my values system of my mind.

And the parallel to that is, That's like true repentance. Yes, it's like brand new creation of my values system of my mind and the parallel to that is That's like true repentance. Yes. Yeah, and then renew a Rewach of integrity in my mind. So give me a new heart Give me a new Rewach that's full of integrity and don't take your holy Rewach from me. So your personal take your holy ruach from me. So your personal presence, the anointing presence that commissioned me and empowers me to be the king of Israel. So yeah, so that's about... And that only happens with kings? No, no, it happens with Betzalel to be an artist. Okay. It happens with Joseph. It happens with a number of really morally with Joseph. It happens with a number of really morally questionable figures in the book of Judges. They get gods in the rock. Yeah, so you know, there's Oath Nale, first one, Ehood, Gideon, you know,

they're mixed bag. Gideon's a pretty good guy. He's kind of a coward. He lacks faith. But Samson, he's just a horrible, horrible man. And I don't know how on earth he's been whitewashed to the children's books. Christian children's books. Yeah, as a real story, he's a sex addict. He can't get enough sex. He's full of himself. He doesn't care about the laws of the Torah at all. And he's totally violent, super violent.

And then God's Ruach points him and knows him. But God's Ruach can influence his Ruach to do what needs to be done at moments of crisis. So it's good, the whole book of Judges, this guy, is another example of God working with Israel as he finds them. And yeah, so the fact that God's Ruach can influence someone doesn't mean that he endorses them of all their behavior. And it doesn't mean that he has recreated them.

It doesn't mean that his heart has been recreated like what he does. It just means that he's come and said, I'm going to influence you right now. I'm going to, I'm going to help you understand this dream, Joseph. I'm going to empower you, Samson, to, yeah, to go kill a bunch of Palestinians, to rescue the Israelites. And I'm going to give you David the ability to lead as a king. Yep. And so it's God's Rewach interacting and an anointed way with our Rewach. So, yep. So that's leaders. The other main type of person who gets that anointing ruach of empowerment are the prophets. And here it's God's ruach influencing the ruach of these prophets so that what they say out loud, what they go preach on the street corner is what God

wants his people to hear. Usually to expose their injustice or rebellion or idolatry to warn them about the consequences and to give them hope about the future. So could we say that Bailem was God's Ruak anointing Bailem? Or you don't use a word, but interacting with using Balum. Yeah, yeah. Spirit comes upon Balum. God's Ruach comes upon Balum. And so that would be in that same category of God.

Yeah, there you go. God doesn't. What's the word we're using? Well, I don't know, let's have a debate. We could do a annoying thing. That's very biblical, I agree with you. Some people use empowering. That's very biblical. I agree with you. Some people use empowering, God's empowering presence or God's empowering rua. The word appoint or commission,

I think kind of gets in English the idea across because it's about a task or purpose, whereas empowering is like makes me strong. A nointing is I don't, whatever. It's going to do something. It's going to give me something. Yeah, but appointing or commissioning gets to an important part of that. It's about you. It's related to a task. A task. And it is always related to a task. A specific task that needs to get done that God's like, look, I know you're screwed up.

I haven't made you a new human, which we'll get to, but I need to use you for this task. Yes. God's Spirit doesn't. In the biblical authors would say, God's Spirit came upon that person, which doesn't mean, yeah, to talk about the Spirit coming on someone in modern English in the American context. I mean, that means so many things, depending on what church tradition you grew up in.

But in the Bible, it, you know, it's not as if his eyes rolled back in his head. He's just doing his deal as a pagan sorcerer. But what he says... It's influenced by God. In fact, what God wanted, Baalum, to say. If you saw a Samson out there knocking down the pillars of that temple, killing all those people,

you would have seen a man full of vengeance. Baylam was aware of what was happening. That's true, Baylam's aware. The Samson aware of what was happening? He calls upon God and says, God, this one last time. Give me some. David's aware that he has the purpose of it. So there's always a sense of being aware that it's happening. Okay. That's a good point. But it's not apparent. You wouldn't, if an outside observer wouldn't go,

oh, that guy has gots in and pointed. Yeah. You know, outside observer may not know. Right. The point is they don't, they're not depicted as having some glowing aura around them. Right. A cloud doesn't descend on Baileum. They're not having a Holy Spirit seizure. Correct. Or something. Correct.

Yeah. So, and just to remind our listeners, we haven't even talked about the New Testament yet. This is all just Old Testament usage. So that's second bucket. God's empowering, commissioning, appointing spirit. Covers a whole bunch of things that God's Ruaq does. Our vocabulary for artistic or creative inspiration. Inspiration is a breath word in spirit, in spirit word.

Inspiration. Yeah, our vocabulary for ideas, occurring to us, uses the image of it being breathed into me from the outside. Yeah, it in-spirited. Well, that's what it feels like. It feels like a, the muse. It feels like something gave me this thought.

Totally. Many cultures. Something gave me this ability to see this this way. And I'm just an instrument making it happen. Totally. Many cultures, something gave me this ability to see this this way and I'm just an instrument making it happen. Yeah. Yeah. Many cultures have a concept of the oracle of a person who's in touch with the gods and therefore can be given revelations and so on. Yeah. Not just to say, and the Bible just is like that too, but the Bible is working with a related idea that humans can be influenced by God's Rua.

And what's important there, this is, in Old Testament, this is key. One, it's the seedbed of the whole concept of spiritual gifts in the New Testament, is of where the Spirit empowers people for the mission of Jesus in the world and in the church. Comes out of this concept of the appointing spirit in the Old Testament. And two, the... Then why doesn't Paul ever talk about the spiritual gift of arts and crafts? I don't know. I don't know.

I mean, I don't think his lists of the gifts are comprehensive. Okay. They're just examples. But also a very important idea is that a human, fully alive to God is a human empowered, connected to and influenced by God's Rua. And we're very close to the concept of the incarnation of God entering humanity through the work of the Numa in the New Testament. That God wants to be so closely bound to humans.

We have this concept of spirituality that if I am truly a spiritual person, I somehow have to divorce myself from human life, or existence. Carnal existence. Yeah, or even the word spirit in English is in contrast to what is physical. Right. And so the most spiritual people in many religious traditions are people who are called aesthetics, they withdraw from everything that's physical, they eat simple foods and right, they don't engage in the physical world. Yeah.

And that's a foreign idea to the Jewish Christian tradition. In the Bible, to be influenced by God's spirit means I'm more human. If there's more of God at work in me, it doesn't mean I'm less human. I'm more human. I'm doing these human things in the way they were really meant to be done. Correct. I'm ignoring them or... Yeah, just there's so many popular expressions of this in Christian spirituality of more of God and less of me. Well, okay, less of my selfishness. Sure, but not less of me. But more of your creativity. Yeah, more of God, and more of me.

I'm capable of so much more if all of me was more of my love, more of my compassion, more of my creativity and imagination. Yes, less of my selfishness, physical appetites that make me do selfish things. I don't want that, less of that. But more of me as a human made in God's image. But wouldn't an ascetics say that? More of me, more of my joy, more of my love.

Less of less worrying about food and chasing down fashion. Yes, yeah, you're right. I think the best of the monastic tradition in Christian history has that sense of withdrawal and then engagement for service and love in ministry. But the extremes of like the Christian monastic, like Simon the Stylite, you know that Simon the Stylite, he crawled up on top of a pole and lived on top of a pole for years as legs, atrophied and got gangren. Oh, he died up there. That's interesting. He was up there for years. His legs, atrophy, and got gang-grained. He died up there.

That's interesting. He was up there for years. And it was just purely, how would he eat? People would bring food. Food up to him. And he was just crazy. He was basically just, I'm on this top of this pole for Jesus.

He will all this poetry that's really disturbing. Talks, it's really, Simon the Stylite. So he was definitely more of God and less of me as a human, because my body is just right here. I don't need this half of my humanity, it was like spectacle. Yeah, he was a Syrian Christian monk, Linda,

I think in the fourth century, something anyway. So that's an example of the idea of if I'm truly spiritual and in touch with God's spirit, I have to divorce myself from the physical. But when David was more in touch with the spirit, he was a better king. Correct. And when Samson was, he was a better fighter.

Yeah. Joseph was better at interpag dreams. And Paul with Salel was a bet. What kind of art did he do? He designed the tabernacle. Okay. He designed the arc of the covenant. Yeah, which I've heard is pretty cool. Yeah, I've never seen it. Yeah, yeah, or Paul would say, you're a better pastor, you're a better administrator, you're a better servant to the poor,

yeah, because of God's spirit in you. Yeah. So that's all the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. The third thing that God's Ruaqa does in the Old Testament is once Israel and all humanity has rebelled and made a mess of God's world and made a mess of Israel, then the prophets who are appointed by God's spirit to accuse Israel, warn them of the consequences, but then give them promises of hope that a future ruler would come and bring a future hope to creation,

and that God's people would one day actually not rebel, but be truly faithful. All of those things are connected to God's Rewach. And it's parallel to God's creating Rewach, but then it's God's Rewach bringing about new acts of creation. So, an example is Isaiah 11, verses's such an, it's one of the coolest messianic prophecies in the whole of the Old Testament. And you have a king coming from the line of David and we're told that four times the God's Ruaach will influence him. So this, the Ruaach of the Lord will rest on this future king. The Ruaach of Wisdom and Understanding, the Ruaach of the Lord will rest on this future king. The Ruaach of Wisdom and Understanding.

The Ruaach of Council and Strength. The Ruaach of the Knowledge and Fear of the Lord. And what's the difference between all of these? There are just different ways of talking about God. Yeah, so God's Ruaach rests on this person and permeates their Wisdom and Understanding. It permeates their Council and understanding. It permeates their council. It's like Solomon. This king will have wisdom, understanding, strategy, power. He'll fear the Lord, that we're back in the wisdom literature here. Every aspect of this king's leadership will be

influenced, enhanced, empowered by God's rule. And then the lines that follow are, he's going to bring justice to the poor. Everybody who takes advantage of the poor, he's gonna pronounce guilty. Then this is the lion in the lamb passage. The lion will lay down with the ox and the child will play near the cobra's nest. And the earth will be permeated with the knowledge of God, Isaiah 11.

So this king will bring about a new creation. He'll bring about something so radically new, the only way we can describe it right now is something as absurd, as a line in the lab chilling together. And the bear becoming a total vegetarian. And kids playing with Cobra, which is happening in India, probably, right now. Many parts of the course.

And at the core of it all, it's brought about and led by a human, a human king, but who is hyper-influenced and empowered and permeated by God's Rua. Four times over, God's Rua. And so this is a picture of what you would you would call new creation new creator because yes because it's a new creative act it's a creative act to do this That's going to fundamentally change the way creation is Right how it operates how it operates yeah, and at its helm here the point is the king at the helm of the new creation

Is described as being And at its helm, here, the point is the king at the helm of the new creation is described as being wholly permeated by God's rule. Is it the prophets who first start talking about things changing in the creative order, this dramatically? Yeah, it's the poetic imagination of the prophets. The... So David, King David and any of his poems or anything, he was never thinking about.

I mean, I guess in that one verse we talked about, he said, create a new heart. In me. Yeah, that's in the second, that's in me. And that's the same kind of idea. Yeah, David, I have a heart. It needs to be fundamentally different. Re-create it.

Yeah, that's right. So that's the second part. If creation itself is going to be overhauled by a king who's empowered and permeated by God's Spirit, God's own people who inhabit, who are led by that king and inhabit that, how are any new humans not going to be like Israel or humanity? What's going to have to happen to humanity so that we become people who truly love God and love others. We have to be recreated. And the prophets use the vocabulary of new creation and spirit together. So Ezekiel is the most important prophet here in Ezekiel 36 and 37. God says he's going to give a new heart and a new spirit to his new covenant people. I'll remove your heart of stone

and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my ruach within you and it will cause you to obey my statutes and observe my laws. So Ezekiel envisions that the only way that a human is ever going to be fully alive to God and love God and love neighbor is if God's Ruaach recreates them. Specifically their heart. And that's exactly what David prays for in after the Baths Juba Incident in Psalm 51.

Create a pure heart and renew a spirit, a Ruaach of integrity within me. He wants his heart and his Ruaach to be renewed. And that's exactly what Ezekiel says. I'll put a new ruach in you. It's my ruach. And that will transform your heart, your value system, your... Your ruach's not recreated. You're given a new ruach. Yeah, for Ezekiel, he's so pessimistic about the human condition.

Yeah, he's like for it's scrapped the old you need brand new humans. And that's what Paul essentially says too. Well, yes, let's not get to Paul yet. It's not going to Paul yet. The next path, the next prophecy in Ezekiel 37 is the Valley of Dry Bones. Right after that is the Valley of Dry Bones. He has the strange dream vision. Where he's looking out this mojave desert of skeletons. And then God says, start yelling to the Ruaach. To the wind. Yeah, he says. Is he referring to the wind there?

Well, it's Ezekiel 37's brilliant, because it's melding together all three meanings or nuances of Ruaach. So God brought me out by his Ruaach into this valley. Okay. Then God says, By the way, what does that mean? This is like a prophetic... It's like a dream vision. brought me out by his Ruaach into this valley. Then God says, by the way, what does that mean?

This is like a prophetic, it's like a dream vision. It's like, yeah, so. He has tons of these. God gave me a dream. It's a symbolic dream vision. Yeah, he's in a dream. A way to say God gave me a dream is his Ruaach

brought me to this place. Correct. Yep, got it. And shout to the Ruaach and say to the bones, I'm going to make Ruaach enter you all. So there it's God's Ruaach, let me hear. Shout to the Ruaach. I'm going, God says, I'm going to make...

End of the bones. End of the bones. And then God says, I'm going to make Ruaach enter the bones, which there we think creative life energy. I'm going to put sinews and flesh and cover you with skin and put ruach in you all so that you come alive And then you'll know that I'm the Lord. So I started prophesying as I was commanded and as I did so There was a noise behold rattling and the bones started coming together and then I looked there's sinews growing on them and flesh grew and skin covering them. He's watching. It's the opposite of them decaying. Yes, the opposite of decomposition.

Yeah. Recomposition. But once they're all put together, there's no rua in them. Then God said to me, prophesy to the rua. Yeah. So just start talking to the rua and you're like, wait, the wind or the breath. prophesy, son of man, say to Ruaach, thus says the Lord God, come from the four Ruhot.

Which is plural of Ruaach? Yes. Oh Ruaach, breathe, bring Ruaach to these bodies that they may come to life. So it's playing on the ambiguity of Ruaach, that it can mean wind, it can mean breath, it can mean God's personal presence, it's uniting all of them. And so I prophesied and as I did so, the Rua came into them and they all came to life. And this is all a symbolic visionary metaphor, he goes on to apply to the exiles.

Because the exiles are saying, God's forgotten about us and Babylon were dead. And he says, well, you are actually dead. You're like this heap of skeletons. This is what you're like. And if you are ever going to love God and love your neighbor, this, something like this is going to have to happen to you. The brand new recreation of humans. This would be so cool to animate.

Oh, dude. It would be incredible. So Ezekiel 37 is something of a high point in the Old Testament. Conception of Ruaach, God's Ruaach, because it unites breath, creative God's creative life, it's Ruaach, it's Ezekiel appointed as a prophet by God's Ruaach, and it's the only hope for creation and humanity is for God to recreate humans in our hearts, and through a metaphor of to create to make new humans, just like Genesis, too. And that's as good a summary of the Old Testament vision of Rulach, as you could ask for. Thanks for listening, and that's the end of this episode. We're going to continue and

I think finish off the Conversational Holy Spirit in the next episode where we break ground into the New Testament, talk about Jesus, and how the apostles build on this rich Hebrew concept of God's Ruaq. The Bible project is a nonprofit that sees the Bible as unified story that leads to Jesus and has profound wisdom for the modern world. We've got a lot of videos on our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash the Bible project.

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