Michael Brown interviewed me (and sort of himself–we coauthored the book 🙂 ) on his radio program last week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkAYKG8g3os
(It’s video as well as audio but you can’t see me except for the photo 🙂 )
Category Archives: Current issues
Why Both Gifts and Fruit Matter
The fruit of the Spirit is produced by the Spirit working in us; it expresses God’s character, his heart, especially in relationships. As this fruit grows, we are increasingly conformed to Christ’s image. God’s seed in us (cf. 1 Pet 1:23; 1 John 3:9) grows the fruit of his character within us. We may welcome this growing by distinguishing between the fruit of the Spirit and the work of the flesh (Gal 5:19-23) and so choosing to sow to the Spirit rather than to the flesh (Gal 6:8). The work and the credit, however, belong to the Lord.
Like the Spirit’s fruit, the gifts of the Spirit are also the Spirit’s work within us. These gifts empower us as individual members of Christ’s body to share with other members of Christ’s body. But because these gifts are for building up Christ’s body, and express our functions as members of his body, they, like the Spirit’s fruit, help us reflect the image of Christ. When we function together as Christ’s body, as his body we together reveal his image. Like the seed, the body members share the spiritual DNA of the one whose body we are. Whereas fruit reveals God’s character in each of us, gifts reveal Christ’s character in us especially corporately.
The fruit of the Spirit shows what God can do in us, and the gifts of the Spirit show what God can do through us. In both cases, it’s God’s work and he should get the glory (or again, in modern Western language, the credit).
If one had to choose, the fruit would be more important than the gifts, because in Galatians 5:22-23 (the passage that specifically articulates the fruit of the Spirit), the key and ultimate fruit is love (cf. the context of 5:14). In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul reminds us that the gifts (ministries to one another) without love are worthless (13:1-3), and that the gifts are partial and will be supplanted or fulfilled by what is complete when Christ returns. By contrast, love endures forever (13:8-13). We need gifts right now to build one another up, but when Christ returns we will no longer have this need.
Rating fruit above gifts does not diminish the present importance of the latter. The purpose of the gifts is to build up Christ’s body. Thus they offer a concrete way to express Christ’s love to one another. What can we offer to others more than Christ’s own work through us? We often think of gifts in a corrective context especially because we are thinking of Corinth, where Christians were abusing some gifts. Yet Paul lists gifts also in Romans 12:6-8 and (in a different sense) Ephesians 4:11 (cf. also 1 Peter 4:10-11), just in terms of mutual edification.
The two verses that frame 1 Corinthians 13 remind us how gifts are valuable when used in love: we should pursue the gifts that most build up the body (1 Cor 12:31; 14:1). Thus we do not say, “I value love, so I don’t need spiritual gifts.” Rather, we say, “I can serve others in love by pursuing the gifts that will build them up, and by sharing the gifts Christ has given me.”
What Revival Looks Like: III. Pentecost, Part B: Sharing Possessions
If Pentecostals and charismatics have taught the church much about the Spirit empowering our speaking (treated in part A), Anabaptists (and early monastic orders) have taught us much about sharing.
If the immediate expression of the outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost was prophetic empowerment, the longer-range impact was a new community of believers who walked together in their lives and shared one another’s needs.
Much of Acts 2:41-47 follows the following structure:
A 2:41 Successful evangelism (3000 converts)
B 2:42 Sharing meals, praying together
C 2:44-45 Sharing possessions
B’ 2:46-47a Shared meals, worship
A’ 2:47b Successful evangelism
Whereas the conversions in 2:41 responded to Peter’s preaching, the conversions in 2:47 apparently responded to the life of the new community. Peter’s preaching explained divine signs at Pentecost; but the sacrificial love that Christians showed one another was no less divine, no less supernatural.
At the heart of this display of unity was the costly expression of commitment to caring for one another’s needs, in 2:44-45. This sharing exemplified on a literal level what Jesus taught, sometimes on a hyperbolic level. For example:
- Luke 12:33: “Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys” (NIV)
- Luke 14:33: “So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions” (NRSV)
- Luke 18:22: “One thing you still lack; sell all that you possess and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me” (NASB)
- Cf. also John the Baptist in Luke 3:11: “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise” (NRSV)
In Luke’s Gospel, sharing possessions is actually a sign of repentance, an answer to the question what one must do to have eternal life (Luke 3:9-11; 18:18, 22). It does not earn eternal life, but it concretely evidences the reality of their turning to God. In Acts 2:37, hearers ask Peter what they must do, and his answer is more general: repentance and baptism in Jesus’s name (2:38). The sharing of possessions, however, soon follows as a fruit of this repentance.
In Acts, believers do not immediately divest themselves of all possessions and move onto the street at conversion. They do, however, sell what they do not need to live on, whenever someone is in need (Acts 2:45; 4:34). That this mutual caring is no fluke is clear because at the next corporate outpouring of the Spirit on the Jerusalem church—the next “revival” or “awakening”—sharing again takes center stage (this time, if anything, more emphatically; 4:32, 34-35). Caring for the needy continues afterward, although eventually the Twelve have to delegate this ministry to some other Spirit-filled ministers (6:1-6). Churches in one location also helped churches in another in view of impending famine—even though the famine was predicted to strike them as well (11:28-30).
Often people today pray for revival, thinking of the emotional benefits to individuals involved. But we might demonstrate to God better our commitment to such revival if we recognized up front what it might cost us. If we are ready to devote everything to God that he asks of us, it is clear that we really want revival. And when we are really fully devoted to God and dependent on his grace and power, revival has already begun, at least with us.
For one longer video on this topic, see http://www.craigkeener.org/radical-for-jesus-sharing-possessions-acts-241-47/
What Revival Looks Like: III. Pentecost, Part A: Prophetic Empowerment
I will address this topic more briefly because I have touched on it in some earlier posts:
Video:
sort of related: http://www.craigkeener.org/what-is-baptism-in-the-holy-spirit-in-the-book-of-acts/
But let me summarize here. The outpouring of the Spirit in Acts is not self-focused. The purpose of the Spirit’s outpouring is not just to make us feel good (although that can often happen—the disciples were filled with joy and the Spirit in Acts 13:52, albeit in a context of persecution).
But the purpose of the outpouring of the Spirit is stated more directly in the closing of Luke’s Gospel and the beginning of Acts. (When I speak of the outpouring’s purpose there, I do not mean that this is the Spirit’s only activity, but only that it is the one that Luke is emphasizing.) Right at the transitional point between Luke’s biography of Jesus and his story of the church, as key elements of Jesus’s mission are becoming the mission of the church, Jesus lets us know what to expect.
- Luke 24:45-49 (NIV): “Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
- Acts 1:8 (NRSV): “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
I describe this as “prophetic” speech because it is speaking for God inspired by the Spirit, as in the prophets of old. In fact, the Spirit often is associated with inspiring prophetic speech in the Old Testament, and that was the most common association of the Spirit in early Judaism: the Spirit that inspired prophets.
God was giving the Spirit as a gift for his people so they could be witnesses to all nations. This gift is also the evidence that Christ has been exalted (2:33, NASB): “Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear.” The mighty one greater than John the Baptist is now pouring out the Spirit, even though in the OT it is clear that only God can pour out God’s Spirit. That is, Jesus is divine: “He will be baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire” (Luke 3:16).
What is the sign or evidence of this empowerment to speak for God? At the risk of sounding tautological, it is: speaking for God! When the Spirit comes on the gathering of disciples, they begin speaking other languages, as the Spirit is giving them utterance (2:4). That the Spirit gives utterance indicates not just any kind of speech, but speech empowered and directed by the Spirit. That they were worshiping God in other people’s languages signifies the purpose of this prophetic empowerment: if we can worship in other people’s languages that we don’t know, how much more can we evangelize in languages that we do know. The speaking in other languages shows us that God seeks a body for Christ from all peoples, and that he is ready to speak in and so consecrate all langages to reach them.
(One may leave aside here the question as to whether every believer empowered to speak for God will speak in tongues. Clearly in Acts 2, the tongues-speaking shows what the empowerment is about: declaring Christ to all peoples. But does everyone so empowered express that gift? Acts does not make that explicit claim. One logical inference, however, is that those who receive this prophetic empowerment ought to express it, sooner or later, by prophetic speech, and ultimately in cross-cultural witness.)
Peter is clear in his interpretation of this experience: “In the last days” (which, since we are later than Peter, are presumably still going on!), Peter quotes the LORD as saying,
“I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy”
(Acts 2:17-18, NRSV)
The last line, “and they shall prophesy,” is not in Joel, but belongs to Peter’s expansive paraphrase to ensure that we do not miss the point. This is prophetic empowerment. It might be expressed in visions or dreams or direct speech, but it will be moved by God’s Spirit.
It is also clear that it is for everybody. When Joshua was jealous for Moses’s sake about the Spirit coming on the elders, Moses declared, “I wish that all the LORD’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!” (Num 11:29). In Joel 2:28-29, after a time of repentance, this is fulfilled: both genders (sons and daughters, male and female servants), both ages (old and young), and both classes (Israel was not supposed to have other classes besides these two: slave and free). Moreover, “male and female slaves” in the OT often designated gentile slaves, suggesting that the “all flesh” on which God pours out his Spirit is on Jew and gentile alike, all peoples.
Although Jesus spoke the promise to the eleven appointed witnesses and those who were with them, we also are witnesses of God’s work. The mission to the ends of the earth (1:8) continues in our day, and so does the power to go with it. This is clear from Acts 2:38-39, which evokes language (“promise,” “gift”) of the earlier promise to the first witnesses: “Turn from sin, and be baptized, each of you, identifying with the name of Jesus Christ, so your sins may be forgivem; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For this promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away [cf. Isa 57:19, possibly imply gentiles], whoever the Lord our God calls.”
We can experience this empowerment of the Spirit individually, of course. “Revival” can happen on an individual level, but we also pray for it on a corporate level. Lest we suppose this experience of the Spirit in Acts 2 was a one-off rather than simply the first and seminal corporate experience, it is not the last outpouring of the Spirit even on the Jerusalem church. In Acts 3 and 4, after a healing the apostles preach boldly, and are ordered by local officials to stop doing so. So they gather and pray again for yet more healings and more boldness (4:29-30), and God’s Spirit fills the community of believers again: “and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke God’s message with boldness!” (4:31).
This gift is for you and for me. Let’s welcome the Spirit’s power, praying and trusting that he enables us to share the message of Jesus Christ to those around us and ultimately to those culturally distant from us. Revival is not just to make us feel good, though that may be a side benefit in the process. True revival makes us agents of God’s grace to change the world for Jesus, by preaching him as the true, rightful Lord and Savior of humanity.
Discussing the New Perspective
This video link is a discussion among three of us professors at Asbury regarding the New Perspective(s): Joe Dongell, Ben Witherington, and myself, with Prof. Ruth Anne Reese moderating. I am just about nine minutes at the end before I get cut off (maybe because I am too old-fashioned on pistis Christou 🙂 ) but I get to pick up in the second half. The three of us vary on some minor details among ourselves and this is really more about introducing the topic of New Perspective(s) than about our specific views, though we touch on those some …
https://vimeo.com/318782568/88c8c7d4f2 and https://vimeo.com/318781979/ea6077bfc7
Continuationism discussion (1 hour video)
Josh and Jeff interviewed me on The Remnant Radio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InKAO3x5N5o
(I usually don’t have time to watch videos, but I can listen to them when I exercise or something!)
Should wives call their husbands “lord”?—1 Peter 3:6
When Peter calls on slaves to submit even to harsh treatment (2:18), even beatings (2:20), is he endorsing slavery? Is he at least suggesting that we should embrace harsh treatment even when we can avoid it?
When we look at Peter’s sections addressed to slaves (2:18-25) and wives (3:1-6), we should consider what setting Peter was addressing. He was not addressing a setting of voluntary employees who could simply resign from work if they were being mistreated. He was not addressing women who might readily find different husbands who did not expect unilateral submission.
Peter’s advice to both slaves and wives belongs to his larger section of what are often called household codes, which ancients in turn often discussed in the context of civic management (2:13—3:12). Ancient writers often used such codes to express conventional expectations. For the sake of honoring the Lord (2:12-13), Peter urges compliance when possible with “every human institution” (2:13). This exhortation not endorse all these human institutions, such as slavery (2:18-25), monarchy (2:13, 18), or wives calling their husbands “lord” (3:6), as universal and eternal. It is not claiming that all these human institutions are permanent divine institutions. It is just calling on those in these settings to make the best of their circumstances.
Unless they earned enough money on the side to buy their freedom, slaves did not have much say concerning their slave status. Slaveholders often did eventually free slaves (though sometimes to preclude having to support them in their old age). A minority of slaves in the Roman empire achieved status and even wealth—even as slaves. But the legal authority to emancipate slaves lay solely with the slaveholders. Peter thus provides advice for how to bear up under a difficult situation that his addressees could not control, not how to address a situation that they could not control. This is the same approach taken by many ancient moral teachers, such as Stoic philosophers, who focused on what is in our power to control, rather than on what is not.
His comments to wives follow along a similar line. (The first word in Greek in 1 Peter 3:1 is homoiôs, which the NRSV translates, “in the same way.” It explicitly links the case of wives in 3:1-6 with the case of slaves in 2:18-25.) Addressing wives married to nonbelieving husbands (3:1), Peter urges them to win over their husbands by gentle and pure behavior. Illustrating such behavior, he uses the example of matriarchs such as Sarah who, functioning within the conventional expectations of her culture, obeyed Abraham. Sarah calls her husband “my lord” (Gen 18:12), fitting convention (though not always translated this way from Hebrew), just as others could so address various respected figures (Gen 18:3; 23:6, 11), including fathers (31:35) and brothers (32:4-5, 18; 33:13-14).
Yet just as Sarah may have done what Abraham said, so also Abraham did what Sarah said (Gen 16:2), once with God’s direct backing (21:12)! So why does Peter offer only the example of Sarah? Only Sarah’s example is relevant for these wives, because they cannot control what their husbands will do. Although the degree of power varied, in virtually all cultures Peter addressed, husbands governed their wives.
Yet we need not infer from this an endorsement of universal husbandly rule or lordship any more than we infer an endorsement of a universal practice of slavery in 1 Pet 2:18-25. Husbands ruling their wives is common through history, and we might expect as much from the effects of the curse (Gen 3:16). Yet we are not called to enforce the effects of the curse (e.g., requiring men to sweat when they work, or proliferating sin and death as much as possible).
Although Peter is mainly addressing those in subordinate positions in society (1 Pet 2:13), and ancient evidence suggests that women probably outnumbered men in the churches, Peter addresses husbands here as well. He summons them to care for and honor their wives (1 Pet 3:7).
In the case of wives, Peter is addressing the norm in his day, not the question direct physical abuse that he addressed with slaves (2:20). Unlike slaves, wives were not usually objects of beating in the regions that Peter addresses (1 Pet 1:1). Also unlike slaves, wives had options to safely remove themselves from such situations, if they arose; no laws compelled them to stay. Even Judean Pharisees, who normally recognized only the husband’s right to divorce, approved of intervening and making an abusive husband grant a divorce, thus freeing his wife to remarry. In other words, Peter is not advising against escaping such abuse for those with the freedom to do it.
Is it ethical to flee abuse? Scripture provides numerous examples. David fled from Saul, and Jesus’s family fled to Egypt to escape Herod. Even in cases of persecution for the name of Christ, Jesus allows fleeing (Matt 10:23), and his disciples normally did so when possible (Acts 14:6).
Let us be careful to use these passages the way they were meant to be used: to encourage one another’s faith in the face of difficult situations, not to make those difficult situations harder!
(This brief study addresses one subject only, not all the nuances of ancient slavery, the Bible and gender, etc. I originally wrote this as part of my preliminary contribution to an Anglican study group on 1 Peter at Lambeth Palace in London. The group’s final version will probably look different, so they should not be blamed for any oversights in my own!)
What does revival look like? The Spirit Speaks (application)
(picking up after last week’s post)
What did revival look like in 1 Samuel? First, it affected even the wider culture, even those who would not have been seeking God on their own.
Second, there can be times when the corporate presence of God is so strong that it affects even those around us. That is, its effects are not exclusively individualistic, though it begins with individuals whose hearts are for God. In terms of personal responsibility, we want to live our individual lives in the light of God’s presence. But sometimes God’s Spirit impacts even those around us through what we do or even how we worship.
I never visited “the Toronto Blessing,” and my illustration here need not reflect on everything that happened there. But I had a friend who visited it to check it out. He tells me that as he was approaching the entrance of the building he spoke to someone beside him, whom he didn’t know. “Do you think this is for real?” he asked. The other man shook his head. “I’m just coming to prove how fake it is.” The moment their feet touched the threshold, the other man dropped flat on his face, and my friend jumped back. “Is he dead?” he asked himself, terrified. Anna Gulick, a neighbor who participated in the Asbury Revival of 1970, said that even a block away from the campus, one could feel the presence of God so strongly that one could barely speak, so in awe was one of God’s holiness.
Third, we can see one of the ways that hearing from God spread from one boy, Samuel, to many others over the course of a generation. In a time when few were hearing from God (though some were—cf. 1 Sam 2:27-36), God sovereignly reached out to a boy consecrated by others for his service. Samuel began hearing from God and became widely known for this as he grew to be a young man (3:19-21). Still, Israel was following its institutional leaders, who were either corrupt (Eli’s sons; 2:12-17, 22, 25) or compromised and ineffective (Eli himself; 2:22-25, 29), and they led the entire nation into judgment (1 Sam 4). After twenty years, Samuel was in a position to summon Israel back to the Lord (7:2-6).
But many were thereafter drawn to Samuel, and learned from his experience of God. As we see in 1 Sam 19, Samuel was mentoring many younger prophets. Although God’s Spirit speaks perfectly, we humans do not always hear perfectly. Samuel, who had a perfect batting average in prophecy (3:19), could oversee younger prophets and help guard against them going astray. (In the first-generation churches of the Pauline mission, Paul has to appeal instead to peer review; 1 Cor 14:29; 1 Thess 5:19-22.)
Was this generation a one-off? Or did God work this way at other times? In a generation when Jezebel killed the prophets of the Lord (1 Kgs 18:4, 13) and replaced them with her prophets of Baal (18:19), Elijah thought that he alone was left a prophet of the Lord (18:22; 19:10, 14). (Technically, 18:4, 13, suggest that he was wrong, though he was probably the only one still speaking for God publicly.)
But by the time that Elijah is about to be taken to heaven in a chariot of fire, the land abounds with prophets (2 Kgs 2:3, 5, 7; cf. 1 Kgs 20:35). Although 1-2 Kings does not specify Elijah’s time mentoring these prophets, we do see his successor Elisha leading them (2 Kgs 4:38; 6:1; 9:1; cf. 2:15; 4:1).
I believe that this suggests that God can raise up leaders who not only experience the Spirit but who lead others into this experience, who over the course of a generation transform their generation by the spreading of the Lord’s message.
We shall see something similar or related in the Book of Acts, in (hopefully) future installments on this theme. Prophetic revival is not, however, the only way that God works, as if he is limited to a single method. God also works through societal transformation through godly leaders, as we see through King David or King Josiah or William Wilberforce. (I will take Josiah as my example for this.) God also brings revivals of worship, as we shall see in 1-2 Chronicles. God also works in other ways than what we might call revival in any sense—e.g., through promises of progeny to patriarchs (Abraham and Sarah) or through preserving people in famine (Joseph).
What does revival look like? And who gets to define it as such? There have been times in my life when I experienced such a deep spiritual connection with certain brothers and sisters that when we encountered each other even in a casual situation we began to overflow with worship and soon prophesying. Sometimes in a small group we would take turns prophesying. (Apologies to my cessationist brothers and sisters here, but with some of you I have experienced the same joy of us excitedly discussing Scripture; we all agree that God speaks through that, at least!) Essentially, we worshiped God, experienced his Spirit strongly, and I shared what I felt that he was speaking and encouraged others in the group to do the same. We sometimes kept going for a couple hours. Of course, in that small setting we could also offer course corrections without embarrassment if the others felt that someone went off biblically or said something that interfered with the sense of the Spirit’s approval (cf. 1 Cor 14:29). But it wasn’t something we worked up; it flowed naturally from the overflow of the experience of God’s Spirit among us. Whether you want to call that prophecy, as I would, or just worshiping and listening for God’s voice, seems to me just a matter of semantics.
I don’t think that a small group experiencing God’s voice together is what people mean by revival. But what happens if it spreads?
When I came here to teach at Asbury Seminary I learned more about the two twentieth-century revivals at Asbury College (now University), which of course impacted the seminary as well. When Anna Gulick shared with me her own experience of the 1970 revival, it triggered my memories of experiences I had at a Pentecostal Bible college (now part of a university) maybe ten years later. More than once the Spirit so moved us during worship in chapel that we couldn’t stop worshiping without neglecting his awesome presence (and who would do that?) Classes had to be canceled, and the Spirit of worship and prayer settled on the campus for days. Through Spirit-led leadership, we regularly sent out mission teams. We didn’t know to call that “revival.” But we cherished it, and expected that it would happen periodically.
What is the long-range impact? That’s much harder to measure. Out of the Asbury Revival did come a generation of servants impacting the world for Christ, such as Ajith Fernando. I have kept up with a couple of my friends from those small, usually spontaneous prophetic prayer meetings; one went to share Christ with an unreached people group, and the other facilitated training for over a million believers in a closed country. Not all my colleagues from Bible college even persevered in the faith, but many are now doing ministry all over the world and leading in cutting-edge mission. While we’re called to evaluate fruit, however, only God’s perspective in eternity will show us the fruit that comes from the true moving of God’s Spirit.
Whether we want to call something revival or use some other terminology, may we embrace whatever God’s Spirit wants to do among us. When our hearts are so tender before him that we want what he wants, willing to interrupt our otherwise-appropriate schedules when he invites us into special times of intimacy with him, when we refuse to limit what God might do if he wishes … call it what you will. Just welcome, embrace, and passionately desire his presence.
What does revival look like? Part I: The Spirit Speaks
Many of us pray for revival, but what are we expecting? How would we recognize that God is answering our prayer?
Since our usual definitions of revival are largely shaped by movements of the past few centuries, rather than from a particular passage in Scripture, it’s possible that we are blending together a few different biblical models of how God works. That is, God works in various ways, and we have clustered some of those ways under particular expectations of what we mean by revival.
Having said that, there are times in history when God expressed his presence in such a way as to transform a generation, and if we are praying for such transformation, these are worth looking at. We cannot determine what shape the answer to our prayers will take—Hannah was simply praying for a son from a desperate heart, not for revival. Revival was in God’s own heart when he answered Hannah’s prayers with the boy Samuel. God is sovereign, stirring us to prayer and answering prayers in ways that sometimes make us uncomfortable. Catholics were praying for a new era of the Spirit just before the Pentecostal revival broke out among ultra low-church Protestants. Many Pentecostals were suspicious when the Spirit began moving among mainline Protestants and among Catholics. And Peter was certainly taken by surprise when his sermon was interrupted by God’s Spirit falling on uncircumcised gentiles.
Moreover, keep in mind that the long-range measure of impact may take a generation—or even eternity—to evaluate. Nevertheless, those experiencing God’s presence in these dramatic ways were not waiting for such full-scale evaluations, but were embracing what God was doing in them and through them at that time. So let’s look at one example of a revival that changed a generation. Because even this part I (on 1 Samuel) is longer than most of my posts, I will divide it into two sections.
When Samuel was a boy, the word of YHWH was rare and visions were infrequent (1 Sam 3:1). But by the time that Samuel is an old man, prophets are traveling in bands, prophesying all together with their worship instruments (10:5-6, 10). The Spirit of the Lord could come on someone else who came among them so that he too began prophesying, although afterward he might act mostly the same at the beginning (10:10-13).
By “prophesying together” I do not mean that they were prophesying in unison, but that they were all experiencing the Spirit’s inspiration and were expressing this inspiration from God rather than, or more than, paying attention to each other. Or possibly they were taking their turns (if we think of something more orderly, as in 1 Cor 14:31). The point is, that the word of YHWH was no longer so infrequent. (For the sake of some readers who are accustomed to hearing “inspiration” used in a narrower, more technical sense, I add a parenthetical digression here: I do accept Scripture as inspired [2 Tim 3:16] and as uniquely canonical. But I am using the term here in the broader sense of the Spirit moving people to speak or act for God. The English term has wider usage, of course, than even how I am using it here.)
What changed between 1 Samuel 3 and 1 Samuel 10? The author may take for granted that we already know, but he nevertheless provides a window into what was happening. Later we see Samuel presiding over a group of prophets who are prophesying (1 Sam 19:20). The Spirit of God was so strong among them that when Saul sent messengers to apprehend David, the messengers, overwhelmed with the Spirit, began prophesying. This happened also with the next two groups of messengers that Saul sent (19:20-21). Finally, Saul himself went to capture David, and was so overwhelmed by God’s Spirit that he too cast off his honorable robes and, on the ground, prophesied all day and night (19:23-24).
Keep in mind that this same Saul had lost the royal anointing of the Spirit earlier, replaced by a spirit sent for judgment (16:14). Saul had been “prophesying” by this bad spirit (18:10), and had wanted to kill David as this spirit was tormenting him (19:9-10). But when he came to where God’s prophets were prophesying, the Spirit of the Lord was so strong in that place that Saul fell down and began prophesying by God’s Spirit.
This account provides us with several insights. First, just because someone can prophesy doesn’t mean they’re super “spiritual”; it might just mean that they’re in a place where God’s Spirit is moving. There may be some leaders today living in sin who experience God’s anointing not because they are walking with God but because their mission is bathed in prayer by others. Their anointing is not permanent; compare those whose gifts leave them because of persistent sin, as in Judg 16:1-20). In times of revival, even the wicked may be affected, though they may still be wicked when the anointing “wears off.”
More next week …
Miracles interview with Scott Rae of Talbott/Biola
https://www.biola.edu/blogs/think-biblically/2018/present-day-miracles Grateful that Scott made it an audio interview. If it were a video interview, I’d have had to have tied my tie! 🙂