The Holy Spirit in the Old Testament

Lately, I have been looking into the Holy Spirit's role in believers today. From John 16:8, we know that it is the Holy Spirits role is to "convict the world concerning sin, righteousness and judgement." From verse 13-14,  we know that the Spirit guides you into all truth and that He will glorify Christ.

We see from Galatians 5:22-23 that "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." With the Holy Spirit living within us, these attributes should be displayed.

We all know that the Spirit came and permanently resided in the believer at Pentecost. But what about before then? What happened during the Old Testament? Was the Holy Spirit there? If so, what was His role?

We know from Mal 3:6 that the Lord does not change. His nature now is exactly the same as that from the beginning and before the beginning of the world. The first mention of the Spirit in the Bible is found in Genesis 1:2 - "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." We know that God (the Spirit) is just as holy and loving now as he was when he first appeared in the Bible. Again, His nature doesn't and never will change.

However, the ways in which the Spirit deals with mankind does change. We know this primarily through the way in which God dealt with man under the Old Testament versus the New Testament.

We find that the Spirit came upon these men in the Old Testament:
Othniel in Judges 3:9-10
Jephthah in Judges 11:29
Balaam in Numbers 24:2 (note: Balaam was a pagan soothsayer (Joshua 13:22) who was killed for his wickedness, yet the Spirit of God came upon him for a while)
Amasai in 1 Chronicles 12:8
Azariah in 2 Chronicles 15:1
Zechariah in 2 Chronicles 24:20
In these places in the Old Testament, the Spirit coming upon these men was always for some special work of God and not a permanent condition. We find that the Spirit of God would repeatedly come upon Samson in Judges 13:25 and Judges 14:6. A similar thing happens to Saul where the Spirit came and went and came back again (1 Samuel 10:6, 16:14 and 19:23-24).

We find that the Spirit of God dwelt in these men in the Old Testament:
Joseph in Genesis 41:38
Joshua in Number 27:18
Moses in Isaiah 63:11-12
Ezekiel in Ezekiel 2:2 and Ezekiel 3:24
Again, we find that the Spirit was never a permanent condition or event as opposed to what happened to the believers at Pentecost.  We know this because Ezekiel had the experience of the Spirit entering into him on numerous occasions - see references above.

 We find many other ways in which the Holy Spirit worked.
He fell upon Ezekiel in Ezekiel 11:5a
He remains among men in Haggai 2:5
He upholds men in Psalm 51:12
He covers men in Isaiah 30:1

We also note that King David was afraid of losing the Spirit of God as he prayed in Psalm 51:11, "Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me." No Old Testament believer was guaranteed this permanent indwelling of the Spirit that we have now.

Glory to God in the Highest.
Amen.