Pentecost 1: The Spirit Promised in Isaiah
Here’s the goal we’re working toward: Gaining a solid understanding of the Pentecost event, what it was and what it was not.
Since the pouring out of the Spirit on Pentecost was a fulfillment of promise (Act 1.4; 2.33,39), our first step toward understanding Pentecost is to investigate the OT prophecies of the then future working of the Spirit. We began last week with the prophecies regarding the Spirit in the book of Isaiah.
We saw in Isaiah 11.1-10, that a thorough anointing of the Spirit of the Lord would rest upon Messiah. The passage describes Messiah’s ministry from the time of His emergence (birth) out of the lineage of Jesse till the time when He raises a banner for the nations in the Yom YHWH (Day of the Lord). In our discussion we concluded that though this prophecy looked forward to a future agency of the Spirit during Christ’s earthly ministry and beyond, it did not describe hitherto unheard of ministries of the Spirit for Isaiah’s contemporaries, but rather a greater manifestation of already familiar ministries in the life of Messiah. The idea that the Holy Spirit gave wisdom and power was familiar and made sense to the Israelites of Isaiah’s day; the promise was that these workings of the Spirit would particularly and intensely characterize the coming Messiah.
What does this prophecy have to do with the future Pentecost event? Nothing directly, although we will see that there is a common thread having to do with the idea of “power.” What does the study of these OT passages have to do with hermeneutics? Well, as Kaj Martin pointed out, studying OT prophecies concerning the Spirit in order to understand Pentecost is an application of the principles of Context (HP 11) and Internal Consistency (HP 9), and involves us in applying the principle of the Already/Not Yet tension (HP 17).
posted by Roderick of TMin @ 8:17 PM
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