Spirit of the LORD
Holy Spirit Series
July 30th, 2023
Scripture: Isaiah 11:1-3
Introduction-
I got saved in July of 1993, and thrown into the deep end of what it means to be a Pentecostal. Coming through a Lutheran background, I thought that the hand waving, speaking in tongues, dancing, and occasional prophetic word were pretty radical for church.
We had to relearn what we thought we knew about Christianity, and one of these things was the power of the Holy Spirit.
Over the years, we came across many people that claimed to have a special gift from God called “The Annointing”
The word anointing in the bible has a special meaning.
The Hebrew word for anointing is Mashach- which means to smear, press in, and infuse. An example of this is seen in Psalm 23, when the scripture says “He anoints my head with Oil, my cup runs over”.
In the case of the Holy Spirit anointing, it’s God smearing on, pressing into us, and infusing us with power from HIM.
In the Old Testament, this anointing was generally limited to Kings, leaders, warriors, or prophets. They were the only ones that typically received this extra special blessing from God through the Holy Spirit coming upon them in power.
So todayy, we are going to be looking at the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament.
Turn in your bibles to Isaiah 11, and we are going to look at a prophecy given specifically about Jesus about 500 years or so before He was born.
If you remember the details about Jesus’ baptism, it said that after HE came up out of the water, that the Holy Spirit came upon HIM like a dove, symbolizing the Holy Spirit being upon HIM- anointing HIM for the mission.
The big idea I want us to get from this scripture today is that the anointing that was available to Jesus at his Holy Spirit baptism, is the same Holy Spirit anointing available to us today.
Scripture- Isaiah 11:1-2
There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse,
And a Branch shall grow out of his roots.
2 The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him,
The Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
The Spirit of counsel and might,
The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.
Prayer
Today’s message is going to be more teaching than preaching, which is why I’m doing this from down here instead of at the pulpit.
Many Old Testament commentators have labeled this section of Isaiah as the 7 fold Spirit of God. It gives a general idea of what the Holy Spirit’s function is in our lives, and what kinds of things we can expect from having a Holy Spirit baptism.
We are going to break these 7 descriptions down, and give an Old Testament example of how this was seen in their lives.
We are going to take them one at a time, but I will note at the beginning here that these gifts or attributes are not mutually exclusive- the bleed into one another and I think you will see this as we go through the lesson.
We begin today with-
Spirit of the LORD- Example- Moses
The Spirit of the LORD is tied into Leadership or Kingship.
Moses was called by God to do an impossible task- singlehandedly take on the world’s only superpower Egypt, which was being led by a man who considered himself to be a god.
Moses’ task was to demand the freedom of the people who were propping up Egypt’s entire national economy and making them the wealthiest nation of the known world.
No small task.
In fact, Moses tried to argue with God not to send him.
Imagine God calling you to walk into the Kremlin, barge into Vladmir Putin’s office, and demand that he do what the God he doesn’t believe in wants him to do.
That was the first major task Moses had to do.
The second, and probably most draining, was lead 6 million former slaves walking in circles in the desert for 40 years.
Not only was he the leader of the people, but also the senior pastor in many aspects, even with Aaron taking the role of high priest.
I want to take a moment and point out something very significant about this particular revelation of the Holy Spirit.
1. It’s name. The Hebrew for the word “LORD” here are the letters YHWH. It’s the Holy Name of God, from which we get the English transliteration of Yahweh or Jehovah from. The significance of this for us is that the person exhibiting the attributes of the Spirit of the LORD is acting in God’s power and authority.
2. This was very true of Moses. The bible said that he was so filled with the Spirit of the LORD that his face literally glowed.
3. The consequence of that is when the people rebelled against him, it was a direct attack on the Holy Spirit, or God.
4. This is why in the case of Moses, when the people rebelled against his leadership, God immediately judged it harshly.
This is why we are warned against rebellion against spiritual authority- because in some measure, they carry the Spirit of the LORD within them.
The next attribute of the 7 fold Spirit of God is
Spirit of Wisdom- Example- Solomon
When we talk about wisdom in Old Testament, Solomon’s name is the first one that is usually brought up. After all, he wrote the majority of the Wisdom literature like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
For all you who don't know who Solomon was, he was the son of king David and Bathsheba. Even though he was one of the youngest sons of David, God chose him to become king.
At 12 years old.
One night, this very young king was spending time with God in prayer, and God appeared to him in a dream and told Solomon to “Ask for whatever you want me to give you”
If you ask a 12 year old boy today this question, how to you think they would answer?
New Xbox
The pretty girl to like them
More followers on TikTok
In Solomon’s case- remember he is a 12 year old boy who is now king.
Think about how vulnerable he is. Do you think he has to worry about being assassinated, even by members of his own family who want the throne?
Yep, and one of his brothers is already scheming to do just that.
He is feeling hugely vulnerable.
To the point of having to ask his own mother if she is coming in peace or to kill him.
All of this is on his mind as he ponders what to ask of God. Solomon, realizing his rather tenuous hold on the kingship being so young, asked God for wisdom.
Let’s define wisdom-
“the ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting”
Solomon realized he would need massive amounts of wisdom to properly rule the Kingdom that God had given him.
God granted that request and made him the wisest man who has ever lived.
That was great for Solomon, but I want to remind you that same spirit of wisdom is available to you and to me.
The ability to discern or judge what is true right or lasting.
Do you think that God's people need the spirit of wisdom today?
Next is the-
Spirit of Understanding- Example- Daniel
Understanding is a little different than wisdom or of knowledge by itself.
Understanding is both a supernatural gifiting, but also comes through extensive learning.
I would define it this way- it's the supernatural application and use of knowledge you have learned.
This is why Daniel is such a perfect example of having that spirit of understanding.
Background-Daniel was the exiled Jewish boy who came to serve in the courts of King Nebuchadnezzar.
As part of his role as one of the learned wise men, he was highly educated in Languages, literature, history, of the known sciences of his time to the PhD level in each category.
He was the most highly educated person in the Kingdom of Babylon.
I know in our day and age, many people in the church look down on higher education because many of the people in higher education are the ones that are destroying our country by pushing non-sensical social theories on the population.
In their case they have knowledge but no understanding. I like to say that educated way beyond their ability to comprehend what they think they know.
But education by itself is not a bad thing.
The end of August, I should be finished with a bachelor's degree in science, specific to nursing. Over the last several years, I have studied what life on this planet looks like, from single celled microbes to advanced human anatomy and physiology. I’ve also studied psychology, sociology, public health, and even what they are now calling normal human sexuality.
A couple of my friends were worried about me taking so many science classes- that I start to believe in evolution and dismiss what we see as the truth of what the bible has to say about all of these things.
I can tell you that standing here today, my faith in the bible and God is actually stronger than when I started, because I have looked through microscopes, poured over diagrams, and read thousands of pages of textbooks and everything I read about and looked at wasn’t some random collection of unlikely tissue.
I saw intricately designed machines.
If I could just show you how muscle fiber works to contract a muscle, or the intricacies of vision, or even the machinery seen in a virus or the flagellum of a bacteria- it’s living machinery.
After learning all of this, I have found that I don't have enough faith to believe that happened by accident. It's more likely that a tornado would hit a junkyard filled with Ford vehicles and produce a fully functional Lamborghini then life occurring on this or any other planet by time and random chance.
That's the difference between knowledge and understanding. The evolutionist will try to blow you away with their knowledge but they don't understand what they think they know.
That has to do with anything today. You can listen to the news, but not understand the significance of the story.
That’s why we need the spirit of understanding in our day.
Moving on-
Spirit of Counsel- Deborah-
Judges 4:4 Now Deborah, a prophet, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading Israel at that time. 5 She held court under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites went up to her to have their disputes decided.
The spirit of counsel is taking the spirit of wisdom, knowledge, and understanding and applying it to life.
Remember I said that these attributes overlap a lot and are even co-dependent on each other.
In the case of Deborah, she was a judge, or leader of the people in the Old Testament, and was known as a wise decision maker. So much so, that people came from miles around to hear her judgements concerning situations occurring in the nation and even personally among the people.
I’m thankful for Deborah because of a few reasons-
1. It shows the Holy Spirit’s gifts are for woman as well as men
2. It shows the power of the gift of arbitration.
Arbitration is simply hearing both sides of a dispute, and coming to a solution that can satisfy both sides. Usually, both sides won’t get 100% of what they want and will have to give a little, but the end results is going to be fair to everyone.
Deborah is a key example of that. She shows us the value of having a faithful counselor available to us in life.
(Solomon and the two mothers if time)
Moving on, we see the Spirit of Might-
Spirit of Might- Samson
Supernatural power is the hallmark of the Spirit of might, and that is really displayed in Samson.
Like Deborah, Samson was one of the judges, or leaders of Israel after they conquered the promised land under Joshua.
Samson’s gift from God was physical strength.
An ancient commentator of the bible said that Samson was so strong that he could pick up two giant boulders and rub them together until they turned into dirt. Probably a little exaggeration there, but you get the point.
In fact many scholars say that the Greek demigod known as Hercules was based off of Samson.
Samson did many feats of mighty strength in his life-
Tore an attacking lion apart, with his bare hands
Killed 30 men with his bare hands
Tied torches to fox tails and let them run around, burning all the crops in the area.
Killing 1000 men with a donkey’s jawbone.
They tried to capture him by locking him in a city, so he ripped down the gates and carried them away.
But for all of that strength, Samson had neither wisdom, knowledge, or the fear of the LORD, and let a prostitute take him down by cutting off his hair, which was the symbol of his strength.
We might not do huge feats of strength in our lives, or do exploits like Samson, but the lesson here is this-
God gifted Samson with natural strength, which was supercharged by the Spirit of might into something supernatural.
Sometimes we wait for God to do the miraculous through us.
But, The Father is waiting for you to start using what you already have, so that HE can give you the spirit of might and supercharge that natural gift to bring The Kingdom of God and His power into that situation.
Next we see-
Spirit of Knowledge- Example- Samuel
The spirit of knowledge is a prophetic gift. It’s both a discernment gift and an imparting of facts to a situation that you could not have known apart from God telling you.
An example of this was Samuel.
Samuel was both a prophet and the last of the judges of Israel. He was both revered and feared because everyone knew that God was with him.
Under God’s direction, Samuel anointed a man named Saul as king over Israel. Then Samuel takes a step back from leading the nation and let’s Saul be king. He would occasionally show up as a prophet to give direction from God, but then disappear into the background.
One of these times God tells Samuel to have Saul wipe out the Amalekites.
This is a little difficult to understand from our 21st century perspective, but in this situation, the Amalekites had gotten so bad that their evil was threatening to spread to the other nations in the area so God ordered their destruction.
And when God orders destruction like that HE means everything- men women children cattle, family dog everything that is breathing must be destroyed.
Saul takes the assignment but doesn't do it the way God wanted him to do it.
First of all he doesn't kill the enemy king.
Second he kept all the best cattle and livestock for himself
God supernaturally told Samuel what Saul had done and Samuel confronts him about this. Saul tries to lie way out of it- “Oh, I just kept these to sacrifice to God”
and Samuel calls him out on it.
And 1st Samuel 15:22 he says
1 Sam 15:22-23
"Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king."
NIV
Powerful words
We see this example of how it was used in the Old Testament, but how is The Spirit of Knowledge today? In our day, this Spirit of Knowledge can bring supernatural insight to a believer.
An example-
Tammie and I were doing counseling, and God suddenly showed me what the problem and I stopped the conversation to ask a question. That question shocked the person we were talking to as it laid bare one of the central problems going on, and now healing could take place.
That spirit is available to you and me today just as it was in the Old Testament.
The final example of the 7-fold spirit of God, and probably the most important-
Landing Strip
Fear of the LORD
That word fear means to hold in ultimate and reverent respect for who the person it is given.
There is an interesting fact about this concept.
How many people here have experienced someone who is living a very immoral life talk about how much they love God?
I would remind such a person that the concept of loving God only appears about 150 times in the bible, but the idea of fearing God appears over 300 times.
Proverbs tells us that the Fear of the LORD is the being of wisdom, not the love of God.
Every single thing we have talked about this morning- the other six attributes of the Spirit of God have to start with having a pure, reverence for and a fear of God.
You need to fear God to properly use His gifts. We need to fear God to live a life of purpose for HIS Kingdom, not ours.
In fact, I’d say that the Fear of the LORD is the number 1 spiritual attribute of a Christian.
Why?
Verse 3
Isa 11:3 and he (Jesus) will delight in the fear of the Lord.
NIV
These are not our gifts to use as we please. They are HIS gifts to use as he directs. Not to enrich us, but so that HIS kingdom may come on this earth.
Prayer/Altar call, p
