The Holy Spirit in the Old Testament Covenant

 Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34

 

^31 (32) It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day I took them by their hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt; because they, for their part, violated my covenant, even though I, for my part, was a husband to them,” says Adonai. ⁽³³⁾ “For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Isra’el after those days,” says Adonai: “I will put my Torah within them and write it on their hearts; I will be their God, and they will be my people.  ⁽³⁴⁾ No longer will any of them teach his fellow community member or his brother, ‘Know Adonai’; for all will know me, from the least of them to the greatest; because I will forgive their wickednesses and remember their sins no more.”

 ⁽³⁵⁾ This is what Adonai says,who gives the sun as light for the day,who ordained the laws for the moon and stars to provide light for the night, who stirs up the sea until its waves roar —Adonai-Tzva’ot The Lord Of Hosts is his name:

Key Verse: ...I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts (Jeremiah 31:33b,).

Meditation: In order to understand the Bible better, we must understand both the Old and the New Testament covenants. In the Old Testament God established His covenant through Moses by promising to be Israel’s God. This covenant was based on the law, but with the onus of keeping the law placed on the shoulders of the people themselves with repeated “thou shalt” admonitions.( This covenant was ratified with the shedding of the blood of sheep, goats, oxen)  The New Testament covenant was based on Christ and ratified by His shed blood on the cross. This new covenant was based on God’s promises, in which He himself accepts full responsibility by saying repeatedly, "I will."

I have already mentioned that under the Old Testament covenant the Holy Spirit did not, as a rule, come upon a community of believers, but only upon a selected leader. It seems that the Spirit was most active times of crisis. When that crucial time passed, the dynamic sense of the Spirit’s working seemed to wane. In the Old Testament we have numerous references of the Spirit’s presence being removed, whether by the disobedience or the death of their selected leader. The book of Judges suggests a connection between this recurring cycle of death and the immediate spiritual decline of the nation, It appears that the promise of God putting His law in their minds and writing it on their hearts was futuristic and would not be fulfilled until Pentecost had finally come.

Also, under the Old Testament dispensation there remained only a tribal sense of Israel and totally lacking the larger “one body ’ consciousness that is so apparent after Acts 2. Neither was there any sense of an overflow of the Spirit even in those divinely chosen by God to be recipients of the Spirit. This abundant fellowship of the Spirit would have to wait for the glorification of Jesus.

Thought for the Day: The Holy Ghost was not yet given (in His fullness) because Jesus was not yet glorified.