1 Samuel Lesson 20
Evil Spirits –
Last week we began the third large section of this book; it begins in 1
Samuel 16 and continues through 2 Samuel 1.
The overall theme is the decrease of Saul and the increase of David. We divided this section and said that
chapters 16-17 have to do with God choosing the second incumbent, David. We sort of subdivided these two chapters, so
that in 16:1-13 we have the first increment of this story: God guides Samuel to
anoint David. And out of this we
obtained several principles. The one in
verse 7 was that God looks not as man looks, but that God looks upon the heart
and does not see as man sees for man looks on the outward appearance. The point there was that when God chose the
second incumbent to the office of king, He chose a man who on the outside did
not fit the political template of the generation. That generation had a model or a template of
the kind of personality who would be the great leader or the great king. And David did not fit into that template or
that model. But to assure us that God
did not pick out somebody who was just totally out of it on the external we
have that rare description in verse 12 of what David looked like. And that truly is a rare verse in God’s
Word. Very rarely do we have such a
detailed analysis of how a man looks physically. This is why most of the art work that you see
that is supposedly Biblically based is nothing but a sheer guess. And in most cases is a bad guess simply
because the artists have not had the training in the Word of God.
We left off in verse 13 when the prophet, Samuel, anointed David. He sought him out and anointed him. “Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and
anointed him in the midst of his brethren; and the Spirit of the LORD came upon
David from that day forward. So Samuel
rose up, and went to Ramah.” Verse 13 in
order to finish it requires that we study the work of the Holy Spirit. And this will consume most of the time
tonight, and what time we have left will be to explain verse 14 how “the Spirit
of the LORD departed from Saul and an evil spirit from the LORD troubled
him.” We have a lot of background that
is necessary to understand verses 13-14.
Not only that, but beginning in verse 15 and following we have an entire
analysis of music and why music was able to suppress demon powers in the
person’s mind. This is one of those rare
points in the Word that we have a very total revelation of music and please
notice it is instrumental music. And it
is music that is played by means of the harp and we will study and understand
how the harp was considered to have certain qualities by Plato, by Aristotle
and by many of the thinkers of the ancient world. It goes back to the mathematical structure of
music itself and the role that music plays on the human soul. So beginning in this section we have a lot of
detail necessary for us to master in order to understand the text.
We’ll begin with verse 13 and work with this anointing with oil. The anointing with oil is a picture of the Holy
Spirit. Christians are said to be
anointed in 1 John 2 and the anointing comes from the word Mashach, and from this word we get Messiah or Christ, Christos in the Greek which is the word
which is the translation of the Hebrew word for Messiah. And this is what we mean when we call Jesus
the Christ, Jesus is the anointed One.
Jesus has been picked out.
Someone handed in a question last week that said why is it that Jesus
comes to John instead of John going to Jesus?
The answer is that it was a variable form in the Old Testament and
probably the best explanation of the New Testament variation why Jesus came to
the prophet or the king-maker rather than the king-maker going to Jesus is that
Jesus was one of the rare individuals of history who knew that He was chosen
before the prophet came to Him. Remember
Jesus Himself was a prophet and therefore already knew that He had been
chosen. We know that Jesus had known for
some time because of a remark He made to His mother when He was about 14 years
old. In Luke 2 when His mother caught
Him in the temple and she complained that He had misled her, He said mother,
you do not know your own son do you, “for I must be about My Father’s
business.” At that point we know that it
dawned on Jesus Christ, probably at the age of 12 or 14, somewhere in there,
that he was the Messiah, and He had a very strong consciousness of it. So Jesus didn’t have to be picked out by the
king-maker, He knew the king-maker, He knew the principle of the Old Testament,
He simply went down and was anointed.
But the anointing with oil was a sign in the Old Testament that was
linked up with the Holy Spirit. And in
order to understand this external sign of the anointing with oil with the
internal giving of the Spirit mentioned in verse 13, we have to discuss the
contrast between the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and the Holy Spirit in
the New Testament. This is one of the
most important contrasts that we can ever have as far as understanding the Christian
life. And people who do not understand
the contrast between the Old Testament and New Testament are never clear on the
filling of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. So if you want to be clear on the New
Testament doctrine let’s look at the Old and see if we can develop the contrast
clearly.
Contrast number one, in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit had a limited
ministry in certain people. So you have
a limitation to certain people; that’s the first way the Holy Spirit works in
the Old Testament, a limitation to certain people. In the New Testament the Holy Spirit is given
universally, is given to all believers.
That is a major change in the dispensation as you move from the Old to
the New. And it is failure to understand
this shift that has led to a lot of wrong material being put out by Christian
organizations, and otherwise well-meaning sincere believers, but it’s
absolutely wrong. The Holy Spirit has
changed his ministry and it’s important we understand why the Holy Spirit. First, that He has indeed changed His
ministry. In the Old Testament who were
these people that were ministered to?
They were various kinds of people, for example, people who worked on the
tabernacle.
Exodus 31:3, here’s an illustration of how the Holy Spirit worked and I
want you to notice and think, how would you describe this in your own
vocabulary. Is this what you would call
a spiritual working of the Holy Spirit or a physical working of the Holy
Spirit? The situation is the
construction and erection of the tabernacle of the Old Testament. “And I have filled him,” who, verse 2,
“Bez-alel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of
The second group that we could use as examples, I’m not going to give
all the examples but these are just samples, would be the judges. Samson, what was the ministry of the Holy
Spirit in Samson? It was to increase his
physical strength; it certainly didn’t give him too much spiritual
perception. So we couldn’t say the
ministry of the Holy Spirit in Samson’s life was (quote) “spiritual,” it was
physical. And the Holy Spirit ministered
to kings in the Old Testament; the Holy Spirit ministered to Saul, turn to 1
Samuel 10:9, remember after Saul had been anointed the Holy Spirit came upon
Saul and here we have a hint of more than just a physical ministration, “And it
was so that, when he had turned his back to go from Samuel, God gave him
another heart; and all those signs came to pass that day. [10] And when they
came there to the hill, behold, a company of prophets met him; and the Spirit
of Go came upon him, and he prophesied among them. [11] And it came to pass,
when all that knew him previously saw that, behold, he prophesied among the
prophets, then the people said one to another, What is this that is come unto
the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the
prophets? “ And you remember that became
a byword in the nation, and to this day among Biblically literate people, a
vanishing minority, this is an expression, “is Saul among the prophets” is an
expression you would use when something’s unusual. When somebody does an unusual thing that would
be the time to use this expression, “is Saul among the prophets,” meaning that
this person, you’d never expect that person to do that.
The working of the Holy Spirit on the king in the Old Testament was
physical too, because the Holy Spirit empowered him with military skill; the
king had to be the military deliverer of the nation. And where the Holy Spirit came he would
provide a military skill. It’s
significant that after the verse we’re about to study in 1 Samuel 16 Saul does
not win any major battles. His military
career is just over, it peaked out in what you have seen and from this time
forward he does do battle but he never has the significant victories that he
had before this time. So the Holy Spirit
working in the kings had a physical manifestation.
Now here’s something else you want to notice, and please notice this
very carefully. When God’s Word makes a
statement God intends that we understand what He says in the spiritual realm by
looking at the physical realm. When God
makes a claim to forgive sins up here in the invisible realm that you cannot
check empirically in any way, accompanying that same claim will be another
claim down in the realm of space/time history where you can see it. You always know this about God’s
promises. Jesus articulated the
principle in John 3:12, “If I tell you earthly things and you do not believe,
how are you ever going to believe if I tell you things in heaven” that you
can’t see? So the Bible always has some
openness where you can check it. Don’t
for got this thing, I just believe for the sake of believing, uh-huh, the Bible
always provides evidences and you are never expected to receive Christ, you are
never expected to become a Christian or move in the Christian life except as
you are convinced by the evidences.
Biblical faith is not the way the word “faith” is used in the 20th
century. Most men today use the word
“faith” as an antonym or as a word that contrasts with knowing something for
sure, well I don’t know for sure I just believe it. That’s the wrong way; the Bible is exactly
the opposite, I know it for sure, therefore I believe it. That’s the way the Bible uses it.
Now all of these illustrations I’ve given have empirical signs that if
you were an observer with a camera and a notebook you could check on whether
God the Spirit was working in these men.
How could you check whether God truly had worked in the lives of the
artisans? By watching what they made, of
course. Do you think what they made
fulfilled the Word of God? Yes it did. So therefore the conclusion is that this
claim that they were filled with the Spirit is a valid claim. The claim that the judges were filled by the
Spirit, didn’t the judges, when they were filled by the Spirit do something
that was observable, that you could take pictures of, write notes about? Yes.
And so you have factual empirical evidence that substantiates this. Did the kings do something when they were
filled with the Spirit? Yes, there was
something you could photograph, something you could see, something you could
write about. There were always physical
evidences of the filling of the Spirit or the work of the Spirit.
But this was only limited to some individuals; it was limited to some individuals in the Old Testament,
not all, some. Now why is it that the
Holy Spirit did not have this ministry in every believer in the Old Testament
and only on some believers. The answer is the work of the Holy Spirit and
what He does. And to see this better we
have to go to the doctrine of the Trinity; God the Father, God the Son and God
the Holy Spirit. God the Father is the
planner, that is God the Father is the One who does all the planning, anytime a
plan is conceived it’s always the Father that does it. The Father is the ultimate source of the divine
plan of salvation, etc. The Son is
always the actor, He is always the focus of revelation. Whatever is revealed is always centered on
the Second Person of the Trinity. It is
always our Lord Jesus Christ that is the center of God’s revelation. Don’t let anyone ever, ever, ever, ever pull
you away from this.
This is one of the great dangers of the modern charismatic movement that
so emphasizes the Holy Spirit and yet we have in the New Testament the Holy
Spirit did not come to glorify Himself, the Third Person, He came to glorify
the Second Person. So here’s a little
test that you should remember. When you
read literature and you may be suspicious of the literature, read through it
and ask yourself which member of the Godhead is receiving the greatest
attention in this material, the Third or the Second. Obviously, if you’re going to read a
doctrinal study of the Holy Spirit you can’t apply it that way but if you deal
with the average piece of Christian literature this is a valid test you can
make as you read. Just ask yourself of
whom do they speak, the Holy Spirit or God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is one way you can have some
discernment of what you’re reading and who’s written it and why they’ve written
it.
Now the Holy Spirit, what is His job?
The Holy Spirit is the revealer; Christ is the revealed one, but the
Holy Spirit is the one who does the revealing.
I like to think of the Holy Spirit, this is my own way of thinking, and
you’re free to develop your own ways of thinking about the Trinity, it’s a
mystery and there are many, many different possibilities and ways of thinking
about it as long as you protect yourself by going back to Scripture. But I always like to think of the Holy Spirit
as the divine technician; the plan, the architect is the Father, the One who
does the acting is the Son, but the technician who works behind the scenes to
bring the revelation to you is that unknown.
It’s like on television, you never see the cameraman, you never see the
technicians behind it, you only see the picture of what those technicians bring
to your eyes. And the Holy Spirit is in
that kind of a ministry; His job is to get the camera focused in on the person
of Christ and to get it all in focus for you so you can see clearly. That’s the job of the Holy Spirit.
Now in thinking it terms of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son,
God the Holy Spirit, what is God the Holy Spirit doing in the Old
Testament? To answer the question, ask
yourself another one. What is the Son doing
in the Old Testament? Whatever Jesus
Christ the Son is doing in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit will be revealing
Him. How is Jesus Christ operating in
the Old Testament, God the Son, they don’t actually call Him Jesus Christ
because He’s not yet incarnate, but God the Son, the Second Person of the
Trinity, what is happening to Him in the Old Testament. Isn’t He being revealed, so to speak, in
pieces, there are limited truths about Him.
For example, He is being revealed in the Law, he’s being revealed in the
tabernacle, He’s being revealed by the way the judges fight their holy war; He
is being revealed by the office of the king.
So does it not follow that the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old
Testament will do exactly in those areas that are most crucial to picture for
us Jesus Christ? And all believers in
the Old Testament were not involved in the process of building up a historic
revelation. They were receivers of the
revelation; all the believers were saved, they all trusted in what they knew of
Christ in the Old Testament economy, yes, in that sense the Holy Spirit was
working. I’ll clarify that in a moment
but first, why is the Holy Spirit only involved with some in a special way? Because the people with whom the Holy Spirit
works are the people that are involved in the stepping stones to building this
great, great edifice, this great building of the revelation of Christ in the
Old Testament.
Therefore why is the Holy Spirit involved in the artisans? Because it was those believers more than
other believers, it was those believers who were involved in the carpentry, who
were involved in the metal work of the tabernacle. And why was that so critical? Because the tabernacle pictured Christ. So obviously believers that were involved in
the historic development of God’s revelation were the ones that were filled
with the Spirit. The judges, the same
reason, because what the judges did in their area of deliverance is going to be
a type of what Christ is going to do in His deliverance as the great
Judge. And when we come to the office of
king, what the king does is obviously very, very, very close to Christ, of all
the offices in the Old Testament that picture Christ, the most sensitive one is
the office of king… the most sensitive one.
Therefore does it not follow that the occupant of that office would be
the one who would be filled with the Holy Spirit. Yes.
So this is why the Holy Spirit has particular ministry with the kings
and not with most people.
Now in the New Testament that is not the case; in the New Testament all
believers are indwelt by the Spirit and to see this turn to Romans 8:9, the
last part of verse 9, “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of
His.” There’s your proof text and that
proves there is no such thing as receiving the Holy Spirit after
salvation. If a “believer” exists
without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit he’s not a believer, period. The Holy Spirit after Pentecost, after the
adjustments in the book of Acts have been made and the Church has settled down
to the economy described in Romans, after that has been reached then every
believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit from the time of salvation.
Now this should save you a lot of sweat because there are some circles
who would have you agonize in a closet, attend all of their hand-holding
meetings, go to this and that and everything else so that you can get baptized
by the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit can come upon you and you too can
blabber all over the place. Now the
Bible doesn’t teach that. In this verse
you have it clear, it should be no question in your mind that the Holy Spirit
has indwelt you from the point of salvation, period, over and out; nobody else
can add or subtract, that is a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. You may not feel any different, how you feel
doesn’t mean a thing. It is what God’s
Word says and this is what God’s Word says; don’t get angry at me, I didn’t
write it, Paul did. Some of you are
vibrating but just relax, I’m just repeating Paul says… I take great pleasure
in repeating what Paul says, but that’s what it says, if any man have not the
Spirit of Christ, he is not of His. Now
another text is Jude 19, a similar kind of verse
You might ask, why this change, why is it that the Holy Spirit has
suddenly changed His methodology? Why is
it in the Old Testament you have the Holy Spirit just working with a few
individuals that are critical to the ongoing process of revelation and in the
New Testament suddenly everybody is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Why the shift? The answer is given in John
7:39, Jesus Himself gives us the answer for the shifting work of the Holy
Spirit. “But this He spoke of the
Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive, for the Holy Spirit was
not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified.” There is your answer. Let’s tie it in with the doctrine of the
Trinity again so we catch the big picture.
Here’s the Trinity; the Father is the planner, the Son is the actor, the
Holy Spirit is the technician. Now what
is going to happen according to verse 39 to the Son; notice which of the three
personalities of the Trinity is involved.
The Son is involved, and what is going to happen to the Son according t
verse 39? The Son is going to be
glorified. What does that mean? Do you know what glorification of the Son
means? It’s part of the gospel. Jesus Christ died on the cross, Jesus Christ
ascended into hell, Jesus Christ rose the third day, He ascended to heaven
after a time interval, and He sat down at the Father’s right hand. This entire process after death is summarized
as glorification. Jesus Christ is fully
glorified when He sat down at the Father’s right hand. There was a process of time here, this
involved some 40-50 days. What Jesus did
in the 50 days between Passover and the time He’s seated at the Father’s right
hand, we have some of the days recorded, a week or so in the New Testament, but
the rest is a mystery. But Jesus Christ
was somewhere, remember in His humanity, He’s operating from time and space, He’s
located at a point. So somewhere Jesus
was doing something until He sat down at the Father’s right hand, and when He
did, then He sent the Holy Spirit. The
Father through the Son sent the Holy Spirit.
Now when that happened we say Christ was glorified, and after Christ was
glorified the Holy Spirit became available on a universal basis. Go back to the doctrine of the Trinity, and
by the way, what I am doing for you is an illustration of what we’re trying to develop
in the Framework course, and that is if you will master a few simple basic
doctrines, you use these doctrines as tools to solve more complicated
problems. Tonight we have a complicated
problem but it’s not so complicated that you can’t sit there and think your way
through it if you have a key. And
tonight’s key is the doctrine of the Trinity.
If you know the doctrine of the Trinity and keep solidly in mind the
roles of all the three persons, then you can use this as a key to work your way
through this complicated problem of what is the Holy Spirit doing. Watch.
We know what the Holy Spirit always has to do, that’s the doctrine of
the Trinity. He’s the technician, He
always tries to reveal the Son. Now if
the Son rose into a position of glorification in history, then the Holy Spirit
now is going to do what? He is going to
be interested in making that historic objective truth subjectively true to
believers. And so the great ministry
then of the Holy Spirit from this point forward is not like He was doing in the
Old Testament. In the Old Testament He
was building up a revelation that pointed to Christ. He was building a physical tabernacle, He
was acting out physically through the judges; He was acting out physically
through the kings, giving us a physical time/space picture of the whole
thing. But the Holy Spirit doesn’t have
to do that any more because Christ has already come. The reality has historically come into
history and now it’s here, it’s gone, the Son is now at the Father’s right
hand, so it’s all over. So all that building
process of the Old Testament is finished.
So now what does the Holy Spirit do?
Now the Holy Spirit is not building it any more, He’s taking the
finished edifice, which is the person of Christ, and now teaching that to each
believer. So this is why the Holy Spirit
now indwells every believer because it’s every believer’s privilege and right
and duty to understand the Savior, in His office today; not just as a dead
Savior on the cross, not just as a resurrected Savior on the third day, but as
a Savior who is seated at the Father’s right hand, far above all principalities
and powers. It is that job and function
of the Holy Spirit. Why? Because today we are in the middle of an
intense phase of the angelic conflict and in the angelic conflict Satan is
behind the 8-ball because He can’t stop the historic progress of revelation,
He’s cut off. He’s been cut off because
Christ made it to the cross and He got to the goal, He finished, He arrived at
the goal line and the race is over.
So Satan can’t stop the race so what Satan is trying to do is to cut off
and darken the human race to the truth of the resurrected, seated, Jesus
Christ. It is that central thing that he
wants obliterated from history. And he
is desperately trying to hide this truth, confuse the truth, do anything he can
to remove the effect of the completed race.
He can’t remove the race itself, it’s past, he lost it, but he can
prevent the news of the race, the news of the victory, from appearing to be
real to the believer, and that is Satan’s objective in this age. So therefore to fight off Satan and to give
the believer a chance now God has put the Holy Spirit inside every
believer. That is why, if you have
personally accepted Christ as your Savior, then you have the indwelling Spirit. You may never have known that before but the
Holy Spirit has been there, working in your life, in your soul, ever since you
became a Christian.
Now one other point about this first contrast between the Holy Spirit in
the Old Testament and the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. There’s an analogy which will help you
immensely from becoming confused over a lot of the things that are said today
about the Holy Spirit if you remember something else. And that is that there’s a parallel between
the Son and the Holy Spirit. In the Old
Testament the Son had not fully been revealed.
There were pieces of the Son, a piece here in the tabernacle, a piece
here in David’s life, a piece over here.
And so you have a lot of pieces about the Son and who He was and what He
did. The Son had a First Advent and a
Second Advent but in the Old Testament Messiah had one advent. It wasn’t obvious that there were two
separate advents until Christ had come, had died, and only fulfilled half the
prophecies. And then, wait a minute,
Chris was supposed to be glorified, Christ was supposed to rule the nations
with a rod of iron. Where is the world
peace. And so man has come to believe in
two advents, that Christ came once to accomplish all of his ministry and He
will come again t finish that ministry.
But now look, you have an analogy with the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament the Holy Spirit operated
in pieces which corresponded to the pieces of Christ’s revelation. It wasn’t universal. He operated here, here, here, wherever there
were pieces about Christ being revealed, here, here and here. Now the Holy Spirit, like Christ, has a First
Advent and a Second Advent, and in the Old Testament the First and Second
Advents of the Holy Spirit appear as one, just like the first and Second
Advents of Messiah appear as one. The
First Advent of Christ has been finished.
The Second Advent of Christ is your future. How foolish it would be to think that we are
now in the millennium, as some do, because Christ has come. It should be apparent we do not live in the
millennium, either that or your understanding of the millennium is under the
Scriptural norm. But nevertheless, I
think it’s obvious that Christ has not come again, and therefore we don’t live
in the millennium and so there’s a separation.
Now the same rule applies to the Holy Spirit. These people that quote Joel 2, in the latter
days God is going to pour out His Spirit on all the people, that is a prophecy
of the Advent of the Holy Spirit, yes, that is a bona fide prophecy. But to
interpret that prophecy you’ve got to use the same rule on the Third Person of
the Trinity as you use on the Second Person.
The Second Person had two advents and it would be foolish to mix things
from these two advents together. We’d
get confusion; so here, the First Advent of the Holy Spirit was on Pentecost
and the Holy Spirit did certain things on Pentecost and He did not do other
things. In the prophecy of Joel the Holy
Spirit was supposed to have darkened the sun and the moon. Where in the book of Acts on the day of
Pentecost was the sun and the moon darkened; obviously it was not. In the prophecy of Joel the Holy Spirit is
supposed to come out on ALL men. Do you
read in Pentecost it came out on all men?
It probably only came on eleven, maybe on all disciples but maybe on
only eleven. So obviously the prophecy
of Joel was not fulfilled on the day of Pentecost, there is a yet future
fulfillment and the future fulfillment, like the Second Advent of Christ is a
Second Advent at the beginning of the millennial kingdom. And that is where God is going to pour out
his Spirit on all flesh; those are the latter days and that is the Second
Advent of the Spirit.
And today has nothing to do with the advent of the Holy Spirit; the Holy
Spirit has already come, it’s a pity that the people involved in this kind of
thing are depriving themselves, these are believers who are ignorant of the
magnificent work that the Holy Spirit has done and intends every believer to
enjoy today. And a person who’s seeking
for something else is a person who has never known the riches of his position
in Christ today. It’s a sad
situation. But there’s the analogy
between the Second and the Third Persons of the Trinity.
So our first contrast is that in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit was
limited to some believers because there were the pieces that correspond to the
pieces of the revelation building up. In
the New Testament the Holy Spirit indwells every believer.
A second contrast between the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old
Testament and the work of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, a second great
shift. In the Old Testament the work of
the Holy Spirit was temporary; the Holy Spirit could come and the Holy Spirit
could go, the Holy Spirit did not have to abide. He did not have to stay with the believer,
and we’ll see this in the passage before us, that the Holy Spirit’s leaving
Saul. And we also see it in Psalm 51:11
where David is threatened with the loss of the Holy Spirit and he says “Take
not Thy Holy Spirit from me, O LORD.”
That is a prayer that you cannot pray; oh you can pray it but it’s not
going to do any good because God isn’t going to take His Holy Spirit away from
you today. God cannot take His Holy
Spirit away from you today because He’s promised He’s going to stay there and
if God took His Holy Spirit away from you today it would prove God a liar, it
would violate the doctrine of God’s immutability. So God the Father is not going to take the
Holy Spirit away from you, no matter what you do. Don’t draw the wrong conclusion, there is
fine print in the contract which reads that the abiding presence of the Holy
Spirit means that you can go out and do whatever you want to, but the Holy
Spirit can also do to you whatever He wants to.
So let’s not draw any illegitimate conclusions from the permanency of
the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Now in the New Testament we know that the Holy Spirit is permanent. In the Old Testament the verses for the
temporariness is Psalm 51:11; 1 Samuel 16:14.
Those are the two verses showing the temporariness of the Holy Spirit in
the Old Testament. In the New Testament
the permanency of the Holy Spirit is taught in Eph. 4:30. Ephesians 4:30 says you are sealed by the
Holy Spirit unto the day of redemption, and there is a dogmatic statement of
permanency of the Holy Spirit; He cannot be removed.
A third contrast between the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and the
Holy Spirit’s work in the New Testament is that primarily this specialty of the
Holy Spirit in Old Testament was job centered.
That is, it connected to a job, it connected to a king, it connected to
the judge, connected to the artisan, it was always connected with a particular
job of building up the structure of historic revelation. It was those physical things. But in the New Testament the role of the Holy
Spirit is the total transformation of a human personality into the new
man. +R learned behavior patterns to
replaces –R learned behavior patterns.
The Holy Spirit’s job is to incarnate, if I can put it this way without
you taking the wrong view of what I’m saying, the Holy Spirit’s job in the New
Testament is to incarnate a part of Christ in every believer. Just as the sin nature is a part of Adam in every
believer, so that Christ’s nature is to be incarnated in his body, so the work
of the Holy Spirit is to do just that, to incarnate. It involves not just job-centered, not just
some limited area but a whole total transformation.
The fourth contrast, this is a contrast in function, is that in the Old
Testament enablement, that is how did the Old Testament saints ever make it
without the indwelling Holy Spirit? They
made it because the Holy Spirit in some way enabled them to live the Christian
life and that flows out of the Abrahamic Covenant, grace. God chose them and God provided for
them. We do not know and the Bible does
not tell us the mechanics of how these men were able to live such great
spiritual lives, men in whom the Holy Spirit did not dwell. But this should tell you something; this
should also tell you that the spiritual life is a ministry of the Holy Spirit
but not the only one. You see, our
tendency in our age is oh, the Holy Spirit indwells so I’ve got the power to
live the Christian life. That’s true but the Holy Spirit’s indwelling is not
necessarily the only way to get power to live the Christian life because there
was a power available in the Old Testament that was not associated with this
particular indwelling ministry of the Spirit.
But in the New Testament enablement is directly associated with the
indwelling. So whereas in the Old
Testament it was made contingent on the Abrahamic Covenant, and we just have to
put a question mark because the mechanics are not revealed to us. In the New Testament it definitely is tied to
the indwelling Holy Spirit.
The fifth contrast, and this is where there is the most confusion today;
the fifth contrast is that in the Old Testament believers could ask for the
Holy Spirit and in the New Testament believers do not ask for the Holy Spirit
because He’s already there. In the Old
Testament believers could ask, 2 Kings 2:9, Elisha asked for a double portion
of Elijah’s Spirit. Luke 11:13, Jesus
instructs the disciples to ask for the Holy Spirit. But after Pentecost we never ask for the Holy
Spirit, there’s not one command to ask for the Holy Spirit. Why ask for something you’ve already
got? It’s that simple. The Holy Spirit is indwelt from salvation so
why should I ask for the Holy Spirit?
There’s all this stuff about asking for the Holy Spirit. The danger of this material, again, there’s
sincere people involved, I’m not impugning their motives, but I’ll tell you one
practical danger of asking for the Spirit, and that is asking for the Spirit
tends to make you look for an emotional evidence of it. You think of asking the Holy Spirit and then
you should feel differently. And that’s
a danger; that’s wrong. And to avoid
that I’ll just head you off at the pass in case you have tendencies in that
direction, just forget it.
Now to summarize the contrasting ministries I want to take you to John
14:17; this summarizes what we’ve been trying to tell you; you can understand
better what’s happening to David. The
last part of verse 17, here is the difference between the Old Testament and the
New Testament ministries of the Spirit.
Jesus, talking to His disciples, “Even the Spirit of truth, whom the
world cannot receive, because it sees Him not, neither knows Him, but you know
Him, for He dwells with you, and shall be in you.” Now isn’t this interesting. The word “dwell” is the Greek word meno, it means to continue. There’s your verb. But we know Him, He, the Holy Spirit meno, He dwells with you and the
preposition is para, and it means
next to or with. Now that’s the language
the Lord Jesus Christ used to describe the Holy Spirit’s ministry before
Pentecost. The Holy Spirit continues
next to you, and it implies that the Holy Spirit is there, He’s working, but He
is not in you. Now the next part of
verse 17, “and He will be,” future tense, that is after Pentecost and it’s eimi, to be, and it’s “in you,” en the Greek preposition to be in and
it’s an entirely different story. So
this verse should teach you clearly the difference in the ministries of the
Holy Spirit so we won’t be confused.
Now let’s turn back to 1 Samuel 16.
In verse 13 we have Samuel anointing David. He uses oil and oil is a picture of the Holy
Spirit. I think for two reasons; number
one, oil was used for medicinal purposes in the ancient world. Oil was that which soothed, and so the Holy
Spirit has a soothing ministry and a healing ministry in the sense He works in
the person’s soul, He works on interpersonal relationship’s and so on. The Holy Spirit reduces friction, like oil.
So that’s one of His ministries. Another
why I believe oil was used as an emblem of the Holy Spirit is because this
particular oil in the Old Testament was burned for light. And so the Holy Spirit is the revealer, He’s
the One that provides light. And so
Samuel is doing something that can be observed… by the way, as a test and you
read verse 13 and it says, “the Spirit of the LORD came upon David from that
day forward,” if you were there and you watched Samuel pour the oil all over
David’s head, from our culture we’d probably have laughed at it, giving David a
shampoo or something, but if we were there and watched the process would we
have seen the Holy Spirit come like a dove or something. Answer: No, all we
would have seen to our eyes would be the oil; that would be the only historical
empirical evidence up to that point, at that moment any way. But the author here says that “the Spirit of
God came upon him from that day forward.”
Now “from that day forward” points us to the next section of this book
that begins at verse 14 because like with Saul, so with David, if God chooses
somebody then He proves the validity of His choice by evidences.
And now beginning in verse 14 we enter a new section which runs from
verses 14-23 and is entitled the first historical confirmation of God’s choice
of David. And here we have the first
thing. In chapter 17 David is going to
kill Goliath. Some of you have known
that story for many, many years but did you realize that the whole story of
Goliath is really there in the Bible for one reason, to prove that David is the
anointed. It’s cited as empirical
evidence, his victory proves his anointing.
And so what is going to happen beginning in verse 14 also proves David’s
anointing. Remember how Saul was
vindicated in the choice. Number one, he
was publicly identified by lots; remember they cast the lots and cast the lots
and cast the lots and got down to Saul and they were looking around for him and
somebody said hey, he’s under the suitcases over there. And they dug around and there was Saul hiding
under the suitcases in all the rest of the junk. And that was how Israel was
introduced to her first king, from a junk pile.
And this was the evidence, it was a public picking by lot. The second evidence for Saul was military
victory. So here we have the first
historic evidence of David and in chapter 17 a military victory, the same
thing.
Now verse 14, and we have enough in this verse to keep us going for the
rest of the time. “But the Spirit of the
LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD troubled him.” Now
here we have one of the great texts that shows what happens when a
believer attains compound carnality and how God uses demon forces to
discipline. Here we have negative
volition; remember what Saul’s soul looks like.
First he’s been on negative volition which has resulted in darkness or a
blackout of the soul, and we’ve seen the blackout of the soul effective in
Saul’s life from a very early age, even back before he was anointed he had this
problem because he had a dullness about him, he wasn’t just sharp, he’d meet
problems in life and just not even think of spiritual solutions. So he had a general dullness about him that
clues us that he already had blackout of the soul. Then after this we have the development of a
human viewpoint type of framework, and this leads to the faith shutdown in
which the person, because he has absorbed human viewpoint can no longer
believe; he just simply can no longer believe.
God’s promises just don’t work, I can’t believe that for me, I know it’s
there, I’ve memorized the verse but I can’t believe it. Now why is this? This is because the believer has entered the
phase of compound carnality where he is destroying his ability to believe by
sucking in like a vacuum all the human viewpoint that Satan has put into the
culture around us. He just slurps it up,
because in rebellion against God he creates a vacuum and this causes all this
stuff to come in.
And we have seen that this first failure of Saul, remember the faith
shutdown, that was the source of Saul’s first failure, remember he had his army
there and they were all going by deserting and he panicked and he didn’t wait
on the Lord. He couldn’t believe, He was
overwhelmed by the panic of the moment and this was a major failure in his life
and just simply shows the effect of being out of fellowship for a sustained
time. Then the next interval is hate, a
hatred that replaces love of God with a hatred for God. And Saul’s second and third failures were
tied to this stage of his carnality, whereas here Saul began to resent the
Lord, and furthermore, as always happens, he resents anyone who reminds him of
the Lord. This is one of the symptoms of
a person who is in this stage. They are
very resentful people and they resent authority. They can’t stand authority, they resent it
deeply. Now we all resent authority to
some degree because we’re all sinners, and any time we have any flesh working
we have violation of authority. But these people are specialists in resentment
toward anything. They will resent you
for example, if you are a grace oriented believer these people will just hate
you and you can’t understand what is going on, I didn’t say anything to the
person, why are they so irritated. And
it’s because they resent you for what you stand for. It’s as simple as that and it’s just a deep,
deep resentment. The other thing that is
characteristic of this is a slavery to pseudo authorities and you see Saul’s
failure because he was a slave, because you see, if this is love, what is
it? It’s loyalty to God. What is the opposite of loyalty to God? Defiance of God, but man is made in the image
of God and so therefore under hate we become subservient to pseudo authorities,
falsified, inconsequential authorities, authorities such as our emotions, such as
the mob, what the academic mob thinks I will go for, this kind of thing. And so this person falls victim to this and
this was Saul’s thing.
Now, at this point God disqualifies from the office under the Old
Testament system of the working of the Spirit.
Saul does not lose his salvation in verse 14. This is not loss of salvation, this is a
termination of his ministry under the Old Testament system. And under the Old
Testament system what was Saul supposed to do?
Let’s go back and crank through it again? What did I say was the key for understanding
the Word? Doctrine of the Trinity. All right, let’s go back and apply doctrine
of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. God the Son is the revealed one, God the Holy
Spirit is the technician. Now, when you
come to the office of Saul, how is the office of Saul connected to the Second
Person of the Trinity? He was supposed
to be a mirror of Christ. Saul is
supposed to set up into history a picture of Jesus Christ. Now he doesn’t have to be perfect; David
wasn’t perfect. But Saul has accumulated
compound carnality to the point where he no longer can serve as a model and
therefore the Holy Spirit who is interested in picturing Christ through the
office of a king cops out, that is why the Holy Spirit leaves Saul at this
point. It is not a rejection of Saul’s
salvation; it is a rejection of Saul’s position in history as a possible
picture of Christ. He’s disqualified by
his compound carnality at this point. He
has reached a point, because of his hatred for the Lord, because of his
resentment of authority, there is no human way God can work in Saul’s life to
make it something that will glorify Christ.
He’s had it, he has just tubed it as far as his ministry is
concerned.
Now this doesn’t mean that Saul can’t enjoy life, it doesn’t mean that
theoretically for the many years he sat on the throne he could have gotten back
in fellowship and moved on and had limited blessing in his life. But as far as his major calling, it was over,
right here. So God calls the Holy Spirit
and shifts; He shifts because now the Holy Spirit goes to a young red-headed
Jewish teenage boy by the name of David, and immediately the Holy Spirit is
going to develop in David’s life. And
please notice, David is off the throne; you’ve got to see this; the Holy Spirit
goes to David before David gets to the throne.
Now you say wait a minute, I thought you said that the office of the
king was the place where the Holy Spirit was working. Yes, but when the Holy Spirit works in
David’s life, before he gets to be king, what is the Holy Spirit showing in
David’s life that will point to Christ.
The Psalms, when were most of the Psalms written? Before David got to the throne. And what do the Psalms reveal? The heart of Jesus Christ, persecuted by
Satan. And so now the Holy Spirit is
going to… see how neatly the sovereignty of God works in history. Through Saul’s failure he actually gave God
an opportunity to reveal more of Christ because you see, had Saul gone on and
been a perfect king, then we would never have had that time of persecution and
then you’d never have the Psalms written and then you’d never have that
beautiful portrait of the life of Christ under the condition of persecution.
So Saul blows it and God says thank you because now I can use David and
he will provide Me with an even better picture of My Son. This is, by the way, the story of
sovereignty. Sovereignty is one of those
things, heads God wins, tails you lose.
And there’s just no other way around it because that’s the way God has
sovereignly worked history. So David is
going to be developed as a type of Christ off the throne. And so the Holy Spirit transfers His allegiance
at verse 14 and is replaced by an evil spirit.
Now first doctrine of evil spirit, this gets into the angelic conflict
series, I’m not going to repeat that, the evil spirit here is a fallen
angel. Now the thing about angels we
want to understand, another one is that they apparently have bodies of some
sort, they are not Cartesian bodiless entities, they have some sort of a body,
it’s called a spiritual body. Now how
you can combine the terms I have no idea, but the Word of God reports this, and
since I am not an eyewitness and these people were, I take their eyewitness observations. I don’t have any contra evidence; neither do
you. So don’t laugh at the people of the
Old Testament until you can come up with some empirical counter evidence and you
haven’t got any. So if you tend to make
fun of the Old Testament view, you’d better be careful because intellectually
you are on very weak grounds; you’re arguing from silence and that’s the
weakest kind of philosophic argument.
So the doctrine of angels is prevalent in the Old Testament and the
angels are tied in with matter in some way.
Now they are pure spirit, but they are linked with matter. Wherever you find angels working, for
example, they are tied with stars, same noun used for angels, same noun used
for stars. They are tied with fire; God
the Father in one of the Psalms makes fire his ministering spirits and His
ministering spirits fire. When the fire
of God came down on Mount Sinai the New Testament reports that angels came down
on Mount Sinai, it wasn’t fire. But to
all the reports of the Old Testament it looked like fire whereas in the book of
Hebrews it talks about angels. So
therefore these material things that we see, and I notice these are bodies of
energy, please notice, stars—source of energy; fire—manifestation of energy. And any energy manifesting system in this
physical universe seems to, in the vocabulary of the Bible, be associated with
angels in some way. I do not know what
the detail is but I just observe this as I read the text. The second thing you want to remember about
angels is that Jesus Christ believed in them. If you are to accept Jesus Christ
as an authority you have to accept angels.
If you don’t like to accept angels then chuck Christ, but you can’t have
one without the other, they both go together and there’s no way of separating
them.
The second thing to say about verse 14, after evil spirit, is that the
evil spirit is “from the LORD,” and this is the most critical truth you can
ever get across in this area of demon powers and powers of darkness. Where you have the rise of the interest in
demon powers, such as is occurring in our own generation, you always have to be
very careful of a heresy known as dualism in which Satan and Christ are pitted
as equals and that is just wrong. Christ
is here, Satan is underneath Him and don’t ever forget it. The evil spirit from Saul’s are under the
sovereignty of God. And that is clearly
stated here, it was “an evil spirit from
the LORD,” and this is absolutely critical in understanding the ministry of
evil spirits in believers.
Now let’s look more carefully at the last verb of verse 14, “and evil
spirit from the LORD troubled him.” The
word “trouble” is the word to terrify, and it means to cause a tremendous panic
in the individual, absolutely terrify him.
And so here we have God opening up Saul to this. Now again looking at Saul’s soul, Saul is on
negative volition, experiencing darkening, experiencing human viewpoint, he
experienced hatred. When he got to the
hatred section, because his negative volition had gone on and on and on and on
and on, God did what is described in Romans 1 as turning him over or releasing
him, or taking his hands off.
You see we believers live in a charmed world. We live in the middle of a fallen hostile environment
and the reason more of us don’t experience horrible disasters in our life is
because God has put a shield of fire around all of us. That’s His grace. The reason that Satan doesn’t take us all is
merely because of one thing, God’s grace.
Do you realize that if you are a believer Satan hates you all the way to
the core, and the reason he does is because you stand for the Lord Jesus
Christ. Just because you don’t see
Satan, and don’t, by the way, think of Satan as some red-hooded creature some
place, he appears as an angel of light, he appears as a serpent and so on, he
has various ways he manifests himself.
But the believer, we believers in Satan’s world, could be slaughtered if
God’s grace were withdrawn. Satan’s fury
is directed against believers. If we
could, as it were, have our eyeballs peeled to be able to see into the fifth
dimension all around us, we would see the demon forces just gnawing at the bit
to attack us, to destroy us, to remove us, and the stronger believer you are
the more intense they would love to have you off the scene. And it is by God’s grace that He has not
given us empirical sense to detect what kind of an atmosphere we are in. I think this is one reason why our spirit in
this age is locked into a physical body; God keeps us from seeing the horrible
thing that is surrounding us and if we could look out and watch the environment
of the principalities and powers we would be horrified. We would be terrified all the time. But thank God He has put the blinders over our
eyes and all we see is the trivial problems in our life. And we think those are bad. But God has reduced our vision so we
deliberately cannot see what the environment looks like.
But in this environment there are tremendous satanic forces that all the
while want to destroy, destroy, destroy, destroy, destroy. Now God in common grace protects, He protects
unbelievers. If you’re here and you
haven’t accepted Christ don’t gloat, the reason that you are here is because of
God’s grace; you may be on negative volition tonight, you may never have
understood the issue of salvation because you may have come out of a bad
religious background, you may have come out of some other background, you may
never have realized that becoming a Christian is as simple as knowing what
Christ as done for you on the cross, that Christ has died for your sins on the
cross, that you don’t have to do a thing, you don’t have to join Lubbock Bible
Church or any other church, all you have to do is be sure you understand who
and what God is and that’s a major accomplishment, but at least get some idea
of what we’re talking about when we use the word
G-o-d. We have some idea of what
the word s-i-n means and it doesn’t mean your little pet thing or the pet
things of some preacher that you listen to.
It means that you are in rebellion against God and it can take various
manifestations. It means that if you
were to die tonight and you had to face God eyeball to eyeball, on what basis
would you claim acceptance with Him? Are
you really assured that if you died tonight that you facing God tonight would
be perfectly acceptable with Him. If you
don’t have that confidence there’s something wrong. And sin is the issue and your sins are what
disqualify you from God’s righteousness.
Now Christ has paid for all of your sins and so your sins don’t have to
disqualify you. Christ has paid for them
all and all you have to do is receive Him; you can’t do anything; all you can
do is say Father, I accept the finished work of Christ on my behalf.
Now, you may have years and years and years and years and years to think
this over. You may have heard this
message 25 years ago, oh yeah, I heard that, and all these 25 years God has
been protecting you. Do you know what
Satan would do if he could have you tonight?
He would blind your mind, and if you’re close to seeing the truth he’d
probably try to kill you physically. But
at least he would try to blind your mind, turn you away, do everything he could
to destroy you. And there’s only one
hand that stays between you and Satan and that’s the grace of God and the grace
of God keeps you able to be saved, because if Satan had his way you wouldn’t be
able to be saved because you never could understand, you’d be so fouled up.
Now the same thing works with believers.
We are protected from satanic attack; Satan wants to get at us, get at
us, get at us, get at us, but there’s a wall of fire that is built around the
believer, always; eternal security. But,
when a believer gets involved in compound carnality God takes a little hole in
that wall of fire and He lets some satanic attack come through. Now a lot, what you see here with Saul is
peanuts compared to what could have happened.
He lets one spirit come through in this case, an evil spirit come
through and begin to attack Saul. So
what does God do? He withdraws His
restraining here, and that doctrine is explained in detail in Romans 1. But please notice, the source and reason for
the withdrawing of God’s hand is a negative volition of the individual. Under dualism the tendency always is to blame
Satan and give him credit. Now why do we
give him credit? We shouldn’t be giving
him any credit for anything. He couldn’t
have done this except God permitted it.
God permits it to happen. Why?
Because he loves Saul. It’s hard for you
to think about this but God loves Saul. Do you know one of the reasons why we
know that God loves Saul? He didn’t
allow him to be totally clobbered. He
left Saul on the throne for years and years and years, He loved Saul so much
that He allowed Saul to sit there in the court one day and take a spear and
heave it at David, and God still let Saul sit on the throne day after day after
day after day of his carnality. That’s
God’s grace. So God is very gracious,
but He withdraws some of His grace, just enough, if you like the details of
grace and the problem of evil, chapter 4 of the second framework pamphlet deals
with the Biblical argument for this.
So we have this, and briefly in summery here are the mechanics of how it
works. We go back to what the soul looks
like and under the concept of the soul, and the spirit, and the body, we know
pretty much how these forces work. In
fact, this passage I’ve discovered teaches us a lot about the mechanics,
because of the therapy that’s used to fight this kind of thing. We can draw some interesting conclusion. Number one, we have the mind and we have the
emotions; together we have a cycle and every person has this, the mind and
emotions work together. But our mind and
emotions have certain ways of working together; we call those learned behavior
patterns. That is under certain
conditions your mind and you emotions work in a certain way. That’s your response in a situation. And you may have responded to a situation
carnally under negative volition and now you’ve got a wad of –R learned
behavior patterns, so every time you hit a situation, bang, it’s automatic.
See, that’s a habit. That’s the
difference between something conscience and a habit, you get into this thing
before you know it, it’s a habit.
So here’s –R learned behavior patterns; now look what happens. This thing gets bigger and bigger and
bigger. Now it just turns out that we
are made of body and spirit. It also
means that they meet in the central nervous system. And apparently what happens in the mechanics
of this is that God allows an evil spirit to come in through the central
nervous system because the flesh is corrupt and He doesn’t change anything in
here, nothing. All the evil spirit does
is increase the amplitude of a pattern that’s already there. So the evil spirit here isn’t doing anything
original; all he is doing is like hooking up a new battery to the circuit and
he’s increasing the intensity of the circuit.
But who made the circuit to start with.
The believer. Saul did. Saul did
the circuit, he got the thing organized and he got resentment because remember
what I said, hate, hate, resentment.
Who do you think is the cause for the near assassination of David? Saul is sitting there on his throne one day
and one moment he’s tremendous; one moment he says David I love you, David, I
admire you, David you’re going to be my armor-bearer, and five minutes later
he’s reaching for the spear to heave through the back of this young soldier. Who do you suppose did that? That was demonic activation in Saul’s
life. Why? Because Saul himself set up mental attitude
resentment and now what he has done, he has turned himself into a tool that
Satan can use because any time Satan wants to activate the hate he just kind of
puts the juice on it, the circuit is already there. The circuit is already built in by his own
carnality; all Satan has to do is press a button, put some juice in there and
bang, he’s going. And at this point,
verse 14, we haven’t got to the details of how this works in Saul’s life but
here we have the spirit of evil from the Lord terrifying him and so apparently
at this point, in the early stages of this, the manifestation of this evil
force in Saul’s life was an extreme
terror. And later on we’ll begin to
study some more details. Next week we’ll
deal with the music therapy that was used by David on this situation.