TYPES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

Dr. W. A. Criswell

Zechariah 4:1-6

5-1-66    8:15 a.m.

You are listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, and this is the pastor bringing the early morning message entitled Types of the Holy Spirit.  I could not urge you too earnestly to bring your Bible with you when you come to church, or if you listen on the radio to take your Bible in your hand; almost always you can follow this early morning message in your Bible.

Now, all through the Bible there are certain types that are used of the Holy Spirit of God; and this morning we are going to take five of them.  And the first one will be in Zechariah 4:1-6.  Malachi is the last book in the Old Testament; Zechariah is next to the last.  In the fourth chapter of the Book of Zechariah, you will find a type of the Holy Spirit of God.  Now I begin to read Zechariah, the prophet Zechariah, the fourth chapter:

And the angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep,

And said unto me, What seest thou?  And I said, I have looked, and behold a candlestick, a lampstand all of gold, with a bowl upon the top of it, and his seven lamps thereon, and seven pipes to the seven lamps, which are upon the top thereof:

And two olive trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereof.

So I answered and spake to the angel that talked with me, saying, What are these, my lord?

Then the angel that talked with me answered and said unto me, Knowest thou not what these things be?  And I said, No, my lord.

Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.

[Zechariah 4:1-6]

All right, there is a type of the Holy Spirit, and I have read this one because it is so plain and so very picturesque.  But all through the Bible, you’ll find that type of the Holy Spirit.  That is oil; oil is a type in the Scriptures of the Holy Spirit [Luke 4:18; Acts 10:38].  Here this prophet sees a vision of the beautiful seven branched lampstand, with the bowls of oil, and on either side olive trees, an olive tree on each side, he sees two olive trees that are feeding the oil into the burning of the beautiful lampstand [Zechariah 4:2-3, 12].  Now, that is a type of the Holy Spirit of God; and wherever you find oil in the Scriptures, it will usually be a picture of, a figure of, a type of the Holy Spirit of God.

“Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over” [Psalms 23:5].  Now if you have ever been in an old time church, in another generation, you’d know what they were talking about when they said, “And their cups ran over.”  And sometimes they’d clap their hands, and sometimes they’d shout, “Glory to God,” and sometimes they’d be so happy they couldn’t contain themselves; they were filled with the Holy Spirit of God, and their cups ran over.  You know, there comes into my mind a little chorus we used to sing:

Running over, running over,

My cup’s filled and running over,

Since the Lord saved me,

I’m as happy as can be,

My cup’s filled and running over.

[author unknown]

Now why don’t you sing that?  That’s a good scriptural song.  The oil, “Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over” [Psalm 23:5], filled with the Spirit of God.  Well, now we haven’t time to elaborate on these because I have determined we’re going to encompass this message in one this morning, instead of five or six.  But that’s just one of the instances now where in the Bible, when you see oil, it refers to the Holy Spirit of God [Zechariah 4:6].

All right, now we’re going to take a second one, in the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel.  Now when you go beyond the Book of the Psalms and the Proverbs, you come to the great prophets; you come to Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel.  Now turn to the thirty-seventh chapter of the Book of Ezekiel, and here you’re going to find another type of the Holy Spirit of God.  Ezekiel 37, the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel; now if you’ve read your Bible very much, you know what story we’re coming to in the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel.  You have the vision of the valley of the dry bones [Ezekiel 37:1-28].  “And the hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones” [Ezekiel 37:1].  And there they were, that valley filled with bones.  Now, in order to hasten through, let us look at the ninth verse:

Then the Lord said unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.

So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceeding great army.

[Ezekiel 37:9-10]

Now in the fourteenth verse he applies it:  “And thus shall I put My Spirit in you, and ye shall live” [Ezekiel 37:14].  Now the purpose of the vision I’m not referring to, nor shall we mention this morning; I’m talking about a type of the Holy Spirit.  Now, here is another type of the Holy Spirit:  the wind, the breath [Ezekiel 37:9-10, 14].

There’s a strange thing in the Bible when you look at it in these original languages:  the same word for “spirit” is the same word for “breath” or for “wind.”  In Hebrew, it is ruach, ruach; and in Greek it is pneuma.  Your word a “pneumatic tire,” tire with air in it, pneuma comes from that Greek word p-n-e-u-m-a, pneuma.  Now, the Greek word for “wind” is pneuma; the Greek word for “breath” is pneuma; the Greek word for “spirit” is pneuma.  The Hebrew word for “wind” is ruach; the Hebrew word for “breath” is ruach; and the Hebrew word for “spirit” is ruach.  Now, when you come to a passage like this, “Then said He unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, ruach, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, ruach, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, ruach, O breath, ruach, and breathe upon these slain . . . So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath,” ruach, [Ezekiel 37:9-10]. All right, now look at the fourteenth verse:  “And I shall put My Spirit in you, and I shall put My ruach in you” [Ezekiel 37:14].  All those different words that are translated here are the same word, ruach.

Now, there is a second type of the Holy Spirit of God:  the wind, the breath.  Now do you see how the Bible uses it?  Let’s think of a passage.  Here is one in John 3:8:  when this man Nicodemus is marveling about Jesus’ statement, “You must be born again” [John 3:7], the Lord says, “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth:  so is every one that is born of the Spirit” [John 3:8].  That is, He is taking a type in the Old Testament, and He is applying it; the type is the wind [John 3:8].  All right, now let’s take another one.  In Acts 2:2, it says, at Pentecost, that, “There came the sound . . . as of a rushing mighty wind,” as well as the cloven tongues of fire, there came a sound [Acts 2:2-3].  Now there didn’t come a rushing mighty wind; there was no wind there at all:  there was a sound as of a rushing mighty wind [Acts 2:2].  That is, it is a type of the Holy Spirit of God.  So there is a second one; oil [Zechariah 4:1-6], and now wind, a type of the breath [Ezekiel 37:9-10], the Spirit of the Lord.

All right, now we turn to a third one.  In the forty-sixth Psalm and the fourth verse, here will be another one.  And with that, in order to illustrate it, I want you to turn to the forty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel.  Psalm 46:4, and then turn to the forty-seventh chapter of the Book of Ezekiel.  This is one of the most beautiful types in all the Bible.  Here is a third type of the Holy Spirit.  In Psalm 46:4, it is said, “There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God.”  A river, a life-giving stream, is also a type of the Holy Spirit of God.  Moses struck the rock, and there flowed out a living stream of water [Exodus 17:6].  The rock is a type of Christ—and we’re going to read that in a minute—the rock is a type of Christ.  The striking of the rock, of course, is a type of the suffering, the wounding, the crucifixion of our Lord [Matthew 27:32-50].  And the stream that flows from the rock is a type of the Holy Spirit of God that flows from the prayers, and the death, and the resurrection, and the life, and the intercession, and the promise of Jesus Christ our Lord [John 14:16].  “There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city, the people of God” [Psalm 46:4].

Now, all through the Bible you will find the Holy Spirit likened to a river of life.  Now one I’m going to cite for you, and the other one I want you to turn to.  One of the most beautiful, beautiful types, one of the most beautiful illustrations that mind could think of; in the garden of Eden, there is a river that branched out and watered the four corners of the earth [Genesis 2:10-14].  Now, let us turn to another instance of that life-giving river; then we’re going to turn to the one that John saw in heaven.  Now this beautiful one is in the forty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel.  Have you turned to it?  The forty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel.  Here that life-giving river, that life-giving stream is seen as pouring forth out of the sanctuary in Jerusalem, pouring down through the dry wilderness of Judea, pouring into the dead waters of the Dead Sea; and everything lives whither the river cometh [Ezekiel 47:1-9].  All right, now let’s look at it:  in the forty-seventh chapter of the Book of Ezekiel.  “Afterward he brought me again unto the door of the house; and, behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward” [Ezekiel 47:1].  There in the temple of God he sees the pouring forth of the waters of the Lord.  Now we haven’t time to read it all.  In the third verse:  “And he brought me through the waters; and the waters were to the ankles” [Ezekiel 47:3].  Now that’s in the third verse.  Now in the fourth verse:  “And he brought me through the waters; and the waters were to the loins [Ezekiel 47:4].  And afterward he measured again; and it was a river that I could not pass over [Ezekiel 47:5]: for the waters were risen, waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over.”  Now the seventh verse:  “And when I returned, behold, at the bank of the river were very many trees on the one side and on the other” [Ezekiel 47:7].  Now the ninth verse:  “And it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither: for they shall be healed; and every thing shall live whither the river cometh” [Ezekiel 47:9].  Now the twelfth verse:  “And by the river upon the bank thereof, on this side and on that side, shall grow all trees for food, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed:  it shall bring forth new fruit according to his months, because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary:  and the fruit thereof shall be for food, and the leaf thereof for medicine” [Ezekiel 47:12].

Now where did you ever hear something like that in the New Testament?  In the last chapter of the Revelation, you see that beautiful same river of life again:

And he showed me a pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.  In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, each fruit in its month:  and the leaves thereof were for the healing of the nations.

[Revelation 22:1-2]

And Jesus said, Whosoever drinketh of the water of this life shall thirst again; but whosoever drinketh of the water that I give him shall never thirst: for the water that I give him shall be an eternal water, a fountain of water, a spring of water, a never-ending supply of water, bubbling up, springing up, a fountain up, into eternal life.

[John 4:13-14]

All of these things are figures of the Holy Spirit of God that issues out of the life and blessed hands and ministry of Jesus Christ our Lord:  the river of life, the Holy Spirit of God.  “And everything shall live whither the river cometh” [Ezekiel 47:9].

Now, if we had a long time, we’d expatiate on that.  You can’t have life without water.  You cannot have the quickening power of God without the presence of the Holy Spirit [Romans 8:6; Galatians 6:8].  You can just preach, and preach, and preach, and preach, and it is just talk, talk, talk, talk.  And you can go to church and go to church and go to church, and it’s just one convocation after another; an assembly and that’s all.  There is a something other, and a something else, and a something beside that has to be in the message of the preacher, that has to be present in the congregation of the Lord; and that something is the convicting, quickening power of the Holy Spirit of God [1 Corinthians 2:14].  There is no life without Him, the river of life, the Spirit of the Lord [John 4:13-14].

All right, now we go to another type.  This is a fourth one:  oil [Zechariah 4:1-6], and wind [Ezekiel 37:9-10], and the river of water [Psalm 46:4]—the fourth type we’ll just mention—the fourth one is the dove [Matthew 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32].  Now we are so familiar with that, that I just need refer to it and that is all.  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all four of them refer to the fact that when Jesus was baptized, there descended from heaven upon Him the Spirit of God in the form of a dove [Matthew 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32].  All four of them mention that, which is unusual, because usually what the three mention, John does not.  But even John mentions that.  The Spirit of God descending from heaven, and abiding upon the Lord, and John saw the Spirit of God in the shape, in the form, in the likeness of a dove [John 1:32-34].  In all Christian art—and I haven’t thought to look, I think over there in Embree Hall you’ll find it—in all Christian art, you will almost inevitably find in every stained-glass series of windows, you will find almost always a picture of a—there’s one—when you get through church and turn around, the one, two, three, the third great big window, the one right in front of me, has in the medallion a dove in flight.  Well, it’s just everywhere.  It is a sign and a symbol of the Holy Spirit of God.  And it was from the beginning!

Now you look at this.  In the second verse of the first chapter of Genesis, it says—you know the world, the earth was waste and void, darkness covered the abyss of the deep—all right, now listen to it:  “And the Spirit of God,” you have it translated “moved,” now the Hebrew word there is this very same thing, “And the Spirit of God brooded,” like a dove, “and the Spirit of God brooded over the face of the deep” [Genesis 1:2].  There’s that same picture, that same type; the dove, the Spirit of God brooding over the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God brought light and order out of chaos [Genesis 1:2].

Now I want you to see here how those things so beautifully typify one another.  “And the Spirit of God brooded over the face of the deep.  And God said, Let there be light:  and there was light” [Genesis 1:2-3].  Now, when the Lord Jesus came to bring light to them that sat in darkness and in the valley of the shadow of death [Luke 1:79], the Holy Spirit of God brooded, abided, hovered over them [Luke 1:35, 41].  Isn’t it remarkable how those things are in the Bible?  Just all the way through, all the way through.  You don’t know your Book and you don’t know your Bible until you begin to see these things.  Because until you do, the Bible is just a disjointed piece of collected literature.  Now that’s what many people think it is; the first has nothing to do with the last, and the back and the front have nothing to do with the middle, that’s what a lot of people think.  But when you begin to look at this Book, you’ll find from the first verse clear to the end of it a wonderful continuity; and it’s held together in these types and symbols.  What is back here in the Old Testament in a figure, is the whole truth of God someday fully revealed in the New Testament, and finally when we shall listen from the words of Jesus Himself, when He comes in glory, many of these things that even now we see by figure and type, but then face to face.  “Now seeing through a glass, darkly; but then fully, wholly, face to face” [1 Corinthians 13:12].

All right, now we take one more.  We have time for one more, and this one again is a gloriously beautiful and meaningful one.  Now if you want to follow me, where I want you to turn is back here in the thirteenth chapter of the Book of Exodus, and the ninth chapter of the Book of Romans, I mean the ninth chapter of the Book of Numbers.  Now I’m going to start in 1 Corinthians, but you don’t need to turn to that.  Turn to the thirteenth chapter of the Book of Exodus.  Genesis, Exodus, turn to the thirteenth chapter of the Book of Exodus, and the ninth chapter of the Book of Numbers; and hold your finger there.  The thirteenth chapter of the Book of Exodus and the ninth chapter of the Book of Numbers.  Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, hold your finger at those two places.  Now, I’m going to read, as an introduction to it, in the tenth chapter of the first Corinthian letter:  “Brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud” [1 Corinthians 10:1].  Now, the last type I have chosen, the fifth one, is the cloud, the shekinah glory of God.  “Brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; And did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink the same spiritual drink:  for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them:  and that Rock was Christ” [1 Corinthians 10:1-4]. That is, it was a type of Christ; “and that Rock was Christ.”  And out of that stricken, smitten Rock flowed the river of life [John 7:38].  And we’ve just discussed that.  All right, now here is another type:  “How that all our fathers were under the cloud, and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea” [1 Corinthians 10:1-2].  Now in 1 Corinthians 12:13, we are told that, “By one Spirit are we all baptized into, unto Jesus Christ.”  And we’re all baptized in the cloud, “by one Spirit are we all baptized into Jesus Christ.”  Now, just to hasten here, you have two types there:  through the Red Sea, that is dead to the old life, dead to Egypt [Romans 6:3], and now brought into a newness of life in the promise of God [Romans 6:4].  That’s what baptism means:  dead to the old world, dead to Egypt, dead, dead, and raised to a new life through the waters into the newness of life with Christ [Romans 6:3-5].

Now, a picture of that Holy Spirit baptism, of which this is a type, a picture, a type of that Holy Spirit baptism, leadership, direction, is the cloud.  Now, let’s turn to the cloud, the cloud.  In the thirteenth chapter of the Book of Exodus and the twenty-first verse, “And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night:  He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people” [Exodus 13:21-22].  That is, now look, the people have been blood-bought, redeemed, under the blood they have been saved [Exodus 12:7, 13, 22-23]; and now God’s blood-bought people are journeying through the wilderness to the Promised Land [Exodus 13:21-22].  Don’t you see how all of that is a type?  God’s blood-bought people out of Egypt now, through the wilderness of life, turning to the Promised Land; but they need a guide, they need somebody to lead them in the way.  So God gave them a type of the Holy Spirit of God who leads us through the pilgrimage of this life; and it is here, a cloud, a pillar of a cloud by day.  Wasn’t a cloud, you just looked at it, and it looked like a cloud.  Wasn’t fire, it just looked like fire.  It was the outward sign of the presence of God, that it is a type of the Holy Spirit of God.

So these people, blood-bought and redeemed, that God has taken out of Egypt, out of this dark world, they must have a guide to lead them the way.  And the Holy Spirit of God is that gift of the Lord to lead us in the way.  Now sometimes we don’t understand how He leads.  Do you see here the Holy Spirit of God led them up there, the mountains were on one side, and Pharaoh’s army was on the other side, and the sea was in front of them, and it looked as though the Spirit of God had certainly led them in a wrong way [Exodus 14].  But God doesn’t ever make a mistake.  We may not be able to understand sometimes how God leads, but He never makes a mistake.  And the Lord’s Spirit led them triumphantly through the sea [Exodus 14:15-31].  And we’re going to see that in a minute.

All right, now look here, in the twenty-second verse:  “He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night” [Exodus 13:22].  He took not the pillar of fire or cloud away.  And what did the Lord say:  “And if I go, I will send you the Holy Spirit, another Comforter,” He calls Him, “that He may abide with you forever” [John 14:16].  Don’t you worry that the Lord’s going to forsake us now:  He is going to save us out of this world, and lead us halfway to heaven, and then forget us, forget us; take His Holy Spirit away from us and let us fall into hell.  No sir.  “That He may abide with you forever” [John 14:16].  The Holy Spirit of God seals us unto the day of redemption [Ephesians 4:30], and no man can break that seal, no man can.  The devil can’t, nor the angels of hell.  Brother, we’re going to get there.  “And He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night [Exodus 13:22]…That He may abide with you forever” [John 14:16].  It is a type of the Holy Spirit of God.

Now we must hasten.  Now turn over the page; look here in the fourteenth, the next chapter of Exodus, the nineteenth and the twentieth verses:

And the Angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went [behind] them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them:  And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these:  so that one came not near the other all night.

[Exodus 14:19-20]

Now what the Bible says there was, when God led these people up here to the Red Sea, and the mountains on one side, and Pharaoh’s army on the other side, why, that cloud, it was darkness to the Egyptians, but it was light to the people of God.  Now, there you have another type:  think of the world looking at the Book, think of the world listening to the messages of the Lord; “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God:  for they are foolishness unto him:  neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned” [1 Corinthians 2:14].  But to a child of God, the Holy Spirit sheds a light upon the Book, and upon the message, and we can see it, and feel it, and glory in it.

We must hasten.  The Angel of the Lord was in that cloud, and the Bible says, “And God spake unto Moses out of the cloud” [Exodus 24:16].  God speaks to us by His Holy Spirit.  I’m not going around here looking for an audible voice from God, I don’t need it.  God speaks to us in our souls, in the Holy Spirit, out of the cloud, out of the cloud [John 14:17].

Another thing, that cloud, the shekinah glory of God, abode in the tabernacle [Exodus 40:34], and abode in the temple, so much so sometimes they couldn’t even go into the tabernacle  and couldn’t even go into the temple [1 Kings 8:11].  Looked like smoke to them; they couldn’t enter into it.  We are the holy temple of God, and the Spirit of the Lord lives in our hearts [1 Corinthians 3:16].

Now, I have time for one other thing about this cloud.  Now let’s turn to the ninth chapter of the Book of Numbers, then I have to quit.  The ninth chapter of the Book of Numbers; now this is our pilgrim life:  following the cloud, following the cloud, following the cloud.  You couldn’t find a more beautiful picture of it than you’ll find here in the ninth chapter of the Book of Numbers, beginning at the fifteenth verse.  Following the cloud in our pilgrimage:

And on the day that the tabernacle was reared up the cloud covered the tabernacle, the tent of the testimony:  and at even there was upon the tabernacle as it were the appearance of fire, until the morning.

[Numbers 9:15]

You see, it’s not fire, it just looked like fire; it wasn’t cloud, it just looked like cloud.  It was the presence of God, a type of the Spirit:

So it was always: the cloud covered it by day, and the appearance of fire by night.

And when the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, then after that the children of Israel journeyed:  and in the place where the cloud abode, there the children of Israel pitched their tents.

At the commandment of the Lord the children of Israel journeyed, and at the commandment of the Lord they pitched:  as long as the cloud abode upon the tabernacle they rested in their tents.

And when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, then the children of Israel kept the charge of the Lord, and journeyed not, they tarried many days.

And so it was, when the cloud was a few days upon the tabernacle; according to the commandment of the Lord they abode in their tents, and according to the commandment of the Lord they journeyed.

And so it was, when the cloud abode from even unto the morning, and that the cloud was taken up in the morning, then they journeyed:  whether it was by day or by night that the cloud was taken up, they journeyed.

Or whether it was two days, or a month, or a year, that the cloud tarried upon the tabernacle, remaining thereon, the children of Israel abode in their tents, and journeyed not:  but when it was taken up, they journeyed.

At the commandment of the Lord they rested in the tents, and at the commandment of the Lord they journeyed:  they kept the charge of the Lord, at the commandment of the Lord by the hand of Moses.

[Numbers 9:16-23]

Now isn’t that the most beautiful type you ever saw in your life?  All the people of God following the Holy Spirit of the Lord, and when the Lord said go, they journeyed; when the Lord said wait, they waited.  There are times to wait, to wait.  “This is not the time,” God will say, “wait.”  Then there are times to journey: heist your stakes, fold up your tents, move out for God.  And when we follow the Holy Spirit of the Lord, we’ll always be in the divine will, all of us going together following the pillar of the cloud by day and the pillar of the fire by night.  Bless your heart, this Book is just full of glorious things of the revelation of the truth of God.

Now we sing our song, and somebody to give his heart in faith to Jesus, somebody to put his life with us in the church, in this moment that we tarry and sing this hymn of appeal, would you come?  Into the aisle and down to the front, “I take Jesus today as my Savior, openly, publicly,” or, “We’re putting our lives in the church.”  While we stand and while we sing.