"But We Have The Spirit"

Who do you suppose had a closer relationship with God, Moses or the Apostle Paul?

I gained some insight this past week at Church by a statement that was made to me in the context of discussing the Jewish Roots. The statement was simple and to the point, “but we have the Spirit to guide us”. Its simplicity argues for the entire rejection of the Jewish Roots movement, while at the same time, demonstrating a blindness by implying that men and women of the Jewish nation before Yeshua were not God’s people and had no access to the Holy Spirit. A belief that simply is not true, nor can it be supported by scripture. In fact, the reverse is true.

Paul writing to the Church in Corinth may have been dealing with a similar misconception when he wrote…

For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. (1 Cor 10:1-4)

Paul is telling us that the saints of the Jewish Text “all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.” In other words, the nation had access to God through the same Spirit as we do.

We remember that Moses was unique because he spoke “face to face” (Ex 33:11) with God. What many Christians do not remember, the LORD came down and took some of the Spirit that was on Moses and “put the Spirit on…seventy of Israel’s elders who are known to you as leaders and officials among the people” (Num 11:16-17). At this point, at least seventy-one people had the Holy Spirit on them.

Before he died, Moses placed his hands on Joshua and he “was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him” (Deut 34:9). By tradition, this transfer of the Spirit also occurred from the seventy elders to other Godly men who were seen to be elders and leaders. Yet the vast majority of the original seventy men remain unknown to us, as do the myriads who received the Spirit from them by the laying on of hands over the 1500 years from Moses to Yeshua.

In addition to these people and their descendants, the LORD seemed to select others on whom He would pour His Spirit, such as Jeremiah whom the LORD knew and appointed to be a prophet even before his birth. Among the people receiving the Spirit were the prophets, as Peter has testified, “the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow” (1 Pet 1:12).

Further, the Spirit of the LORD was said to come upon most, if not all, of Israel’s leaders from judges like Gideon to kings like David. Even the Gentile Balaam, received “the Spirit of God” (Num 24:2) leading him to proclaim the Messianic prophecy, “A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel” (Num 24:17).

Before the days of Pentecost, the Spirit was said to be on woman and men like Anna and Simeon, who received the word of God and were moved to action by the Holy Spirit (Luke 2:25-27). I believe that many of the Jewish Sages were men like Simeon, filled with the Holy Spirit like the prophets. How can I be sure? I will test the words of these men against scripture to determine if their word is consistent with the inspired word and profitable for instruction. After all, isn’t that the standard that any commentary or word from a brother should be measured?

Any person, who throws out Jewish commentary without consideration, must also throw out Gentile commentary on the same basis, or stand as a hypocrite before others. After all, many Jewish sources are positioned infinitely closer to the historical events and are more enlightened to the cultural context of scripture, then contemporary Gentile writers.

Finally, the argument, “But we have the Spirit to guide us”, fails to explain the continuing division of Christians on issues pertaining to specific areas of our belief. If the Spirit guides us, why are we not united in all things? The best explanation is to quote Paul, “I know in part and we prophesy in part” (1 Cor 13:9) and realize that no single person has complete knowledge even though the Spirit lives in them. God has made us incomplete apart from our brothers and sisters. Yet, for 2000 years the body of Gentiles has been content to separate ourselves from a part of the body that could bring completeness. Who’s idea was that anyway? I guess it was those people who said, “we have the Spirit”, which reminds me of those people who thought their lineage alone was sufficient to save.

So did Paul or Moses have a closer walk with Elohim? I think if you even asked Paul, he would say, Moses because “The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend” (Ex 33:11). This example represents a personal relationship unparalleled in scripture except for that which exists between the Son and the Father. Although Paul talked about receiving the gospel as a revelation from Yeshua the Messiah (Gal 1:12), he seems to characterize our (and his) relationship with God as seeing “a poor reflection as in a mirror”, but in the future we will see “face to face” (1 Cor 13:12). In other words, Paul looked forward to a future time when his relationship with God would reach the intimacy that Moses was able to reach in his lifetime.

Thoughts??? Have a Happy Thanksgiving. Scott