The Trinity and the Nations, 3

The Spirit of Speech

The last period in Israel’s history arrives almost from nowhere. The prophets appear unannounced, give short, but earth-shattering messages and then are whisked away by the Spirit (1 Kings 18:12). They do not hold high positions in Israel, but their words give them great political sway. They seem to be in the minority, opposed by kings and their power, yet they are in the Council of Yahweh and can even cry out in dissatisfaction. In them, Yahweh shows how the Spirit works through the prophets. The remnant of prophets is the bit of leaven that leavens the whole lump of Israel.

In particular, the Spirit works through speech that reveals the deceptiveness of visible earthly powers. Elisha appears to be surrounded by the forces of Syria, but the reality is that the Lord’s chariots and horses surround and guard him (2 Kings 6:17). Moses showed signs to all the people, but now the prophets are given the power of seeing secret things and then merely reporting them to Israel. Isaiah is allowed into the throne room and a messenger of Yahweh touches his mouth with a burning coal. He begins, like Israel, with unclean lips, but by the end is cleansed and empowered to be sent (Isaiah 6:1-8), but as a councilor before Yahweh, he knows that he will be unsuccessful (6:9-13). Similarly, the Lord puts his hand on Jeremiah’s mouth and tells him, “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:9-10). Those who receive God’s Spirit are given to Israel, but they know that their words will not be heard. Yet they still must speak.

The prophets protest. Isaiah dares to ask how long and Yahweh tells him, “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste” (Isaiah 6:11). Yahweh seems to have hardened Israel’s heart, like he did to Pharaoh. Jeremiah wishes he could just stop: “For whenever I speak, I cry out, I shout, ‘Violence and destruction!’ For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long. If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” (Jeremiah 20:8-9). The Spirit of the Lord is so strong that Jeremiah cannot stop speaking, because the Spirit burns in him. This appropriately foreshadows Pentecost and matches what Jesus says of the Spirit: “And when they bring you to trial and deliver you over, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.” (13:11) Elijah complains: “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away” (1 Kings 19:10). Yahweh tells him he will avenge his prophets and that seven thousand remain that have not bowed the knee to Baal (vv. 15-17).

In Genesis 2:7, Yahweh breathes into man’s nostrils, causing Him to live, but as Yahweh pours his Spirit into the prophets they seem to breathe out death and destruction, scattering them in exile upon the wind. Yet, Yahweh will gather a remnant (Micah 2:12) and use them to rebuild Israel in a foreign land. In fact, the nations play a role the resurrection of Israel. As Jeremiah tells the captives who are taken into Babylon, “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 29:5-9).

Israel’s role has radically changed. Instead of fighting the nations and inviting them to come to the temple, they must become Yahweh’s Spirit scattered among the nations. The Spirit gives illumination causing them to filled with wise counsel, interpretation of dreams, and discernment between true and false prophets.

It is this Spirit that is said to be in Daniel (Daniel 4:9, 18, 5:11, 14). Daniel is not a King like David, but a counselor to Nebuchadnezzar and Darius. Nonetheless, the Jews who go into exile must resist the temptation to grasp at rule. Daniel and his friends refuse to eat the food from the king’s table and later disobey the command to worship the image of gold. They do not have Yahweh’s promise that they will be saved from the fiery furnace or the lions (Daniel 3:18), but they still honor Yahweh above Nebuchadnezzar. As he did with the prophets, Yahweh vindicates his servants, saving them from death and confirming Daniel’s interpretations of dreams.

Yahweh increasingly becomes silent, revealing Himself through the wisdom of his servants. Esther and Mordecai acknowledge the Lord and pray to Him, but they act independent of a revealed word or promises of deliverance. Ezra and Nehemiah rebuild Jerusalem without a Word from the Lord. Yahweh is silent and rare during earlier periods of Israel’s history (cf. 1 Samuel 3:1), but now Israel’s leaders rule and act with wisdom in a way that reveals Yahweh is working through them. C.S. Lewis once said that God is most pleased when a man “no longer desiring, but still intending, to do [God’s] will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” [1]

Opposed to the Spirit of God are the rulers who believe that they have come to power by the strength of their own arm. Nebuchadnezzar’s spirit is hardened (Daniel 5:20) and takes credit for the City of Babylon and is shown that, without the Spirit of God within him, he is nothing more than a mighty beast. Belshazzar lifts himself up and forgets the God in whose hand is his breath (5:23). Haman sets himself high above the princes (Esther 3:1) and is lifted up on the gallows. Daniel, not the kings of the Empires, is lifted up to see the mysteries of Yahweh’s plans.

Israel finally begins to fulfill her mission to the nations, causing them to praise Yahweh and acknowledge that Yahweh is the one who lifts up. Nebuchadnezzar repeatedly praises Yahweh and Darius praises him after Daniel is delivered from the lions. Just as Daniel’s service and wisdom was a blessing to the kings of Babylon and Persia, so Israel will become a Spirit within the nations, causing them to praise Yahweh and acknowledge His hand in lifting them up.

But again, Israel fails. By the time Israel is under Roman occupation, the Pharisees have forgotten their role as ministers of the Spirit and have regressed back to strict obedience to the laws of Moses, insisting upon strict separation from the Gentiles. The Pharisees are focused on purity, on maintaining the cultural borders between Israel and the nations. Again, Israel wickedly desires to be like the nations. For years, Israel has been part of Yahweh’s great drama to reveal to the nations the distinct persons within God. At this time, Israel was supposed to reveal how the Spirit could work through the nations and empires, but instead the Pharisees jealously ward off the nations, causing Jesus to remind them that His Father’s house is supposed to be a House of Prayer for all the nations (Mark 11:17). As N.T. Wright has argued, the Pharisees emphasized obeying the Law not primarily for individual justification, but so that they would attain national purity and be able to achieve political independence again. [2] The Jews do not mean it, but when they tell Pilate that they have no king but Caesar, there is a thread of truth to their lie. [3] Instead of picturing Yahweh to the nations, the Pharisees obey the Law to keep Israel a nation unto itself.

The message of the Israel that Jesus finds is simple: God is a cruel Father, a disobedient Son, and He will not share his Spirit among the nations.

Jesus overcame all these false claims as he came to represent Israel truly as an image of Yahweh. He who sees Jesus sees the Father (John 14:9) and He blesses us with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3). Jesus like a warrior casts out demons, but those in his kingdom do not fight like the nations (John 18:36). Jesus is full of the Spirit (Luke 4:1) and prophesies that again Jerusalem will fall (Luke 13:34-25). Jesus’ death foreshadows the destruction of Israel in 70 A.D, but the resurrection of His body prefigures how Israel will be reborn as the Church, an Israel that will finally preach the good news of God to the nations.

Coda on the New Birth

This discussion of Israel affects a dilemma in soteriology. On the one hand, the Scriptures emphasize the newness of the new birth—this is nothing like what we have seen before in Israel’s history. We also have numerous godly Israelites and gentiles, none of whom know anything about the Trinity. In an important respect, the new birth is not birth leading to eternal salvation. On the other hand, Jesus treats the new birth as salvific (John 3:3-5) and says that “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). We also have the witness of the Church which has judged that to deny the Son and Spirit’s divinity is to cast oneself outside the Church. Yet the Old Covenant knew nothing of these two persons. How can we have salvation in which Jesus is both integral, but explicit knowledge of Him is not necessary?

However, if we look carefully at the Old Testament we have already seen how Yahweh indwells Israel and reveals Himself to Israel and, eventually, becomes Israel, then both the exclusiveness and inclusiveness of Israel makes sense. An Israelite who doubted that Yahweh was, in fact, the God who blesses, saves, and embodies Israel would have died in the wilderness. A nation that stood against Israel, refusing to accept Israel’s blessing, fighting the Lord’s anointed, and speaking against the Spirit was fit for destruction. [4] There were probably many like Melchizedek who knew nothing of Israel, but when they saw Yahweh embodied in Israel, their response is praise and blessing. Similarly, when a true Jew saw Jesus, he realized that this is the God who delivered Israel out of bondage. Luke records that Cornelius was “a devout man who feared God with all his household” (Acts 10:2). I do not believe that when Peter preached the Gospel to him in order to save Cornelius from hell. Cornelius already knew and recognized Israel’s Yahweh as God. Now that Israel had undergone a new Exodus, Cornelius had to either deny that Yahweh had resurrected Israel in Christ or to die and rise with Christ in baptism. By baptism, Cornelius chose to enter the kingdom of heaven, the Church.

The new birth does not just mean repenting of sin, though it does for some. Individuals who turn from selfish lifestyles to Christ, seeking the blessing of God, hoping in God their warrior, and being filled with the Holy Spirit, are in an important sense, born again like Israel is in Jesus. They are trusting in Jesus and are united to the new Israel, even if they are not baptized and join a Church right away. When Christian adults refuse or put off baptism, they are delaying to join themselves to Christ’s body, the Church, and endangering their union with head of the body. When a baby is baptized, he joins the kingdom of heaven that Jesus is establishing through his Church and can be said to have truly been born again by water and spirit without knowing a thing about Jesus; he has been joined to the assembly of Israel that trusts in Yahweh. Some believers will never see a dramatic life-changing switch from death to life, but every one of us will experience periodic deaths and resurrections, hoping in the one who delivers from death to life, in a God who is, at his essence, “roomy.” [5]

Brian Marr is a senior at New St. Andrews College, Moscow, Idaho.

[1] C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1959; reprint, 1987) 40.

[2] See N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1996).

[3] I confess. Some of these ideas can be found in Doug Jones’s Dismissing Jesus: How We Evade the Way of the Cross (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2013).

[4] This makes sense of why Jesus’ claim that whoever speaks against the Spirit will not be forgiven (Matthew 12:32). It is an insult at what is the most mature stage of development and indeed it could be argued that when the Jews persecute the Spirit-filled Church this is what finally brings God’s wrath upon them.

[5] Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Triune God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) 226. Also, for a balanced exploration of regeneration, see James Jordan’s essay on conversion in The Sociology of the Church: Essays in Reconstruction (Tyler, TX: Geneva Ministries, 1986) 151-161.