The lead up to the Biblical account of the anointing of the 70 elders of Israel with God’s Holy Spirit reminds me a little of a family road trip.
The kids in the back seat are tired, bored, and listless. As a result, there’s a never ending chorus of complaint.
In the front seat, things aren’t a lot better. Worn down by the incessant grumbling, the adults too are over it all.
If that sounds like a far fetch comparison consider: the people of Israel are grumbling incessantly about all sorts of issues and are constantly at the door of Moses’ tent. Moses, despite being blessed with God’s Holy Spirit, simply can’t cope with the volume of complaints.
In response, God anoints 70 of the elders of Israel to function as Moses’ assistants. No more will Moses have to listen to and rule upon every complaint. He will have, thanks to them having the same Spirit as Moses himself, ample assistance to ensure everybody gets a fair hearing.
What the story shows us is that the anointing of God’s Spirit is indispensable but that it doesn’t mean an end to all human limitation.
Let’s start with human limitation. At the outset we find that although Moses is anointed with the Spirit, he’s still overwhelmed. What’s true of Moses is universally true. Regardless of the role one is called to play, the anointing of the Spirit plays an indispensable part in ones ability to play that role. However, this doesn’t mean we transcend our humanity. We have, as Paul said, this treasure in earthen vessels (2 Cor. 4:7) and like Moses we too may find that the gift of God’s Holy Spirit doesn’t mean the limitations of our humanity are abolished.
As for God’s Spirit being indispensable, we shouldn’t miss the rather obvious point that God didn’t simply select 70 assistants for Moses. He selected them and then he anointed them. Clearly to do the task to which God was calling them they would need more than just their unaided natural capacities.
Followers of Jesus should learn a lesson from this episode. We affirm that we too are anointed with God’s Holy Spirit in order to carry out the task to which God has called us. For us, like the ancient Israelites, the presence of the Spirit is indispensable if we are to do what God has called us to do. But also like them, nothing in Scripture suggests that the gift of the Spirit will enable us to transcend our human limitations.
All of this can be understood if we dwell briefly on the idea of “the body of Christ” which Paul discusses in 1 Corinthians 12. There the idea is that each person forms one part of the body. The role they play is dictated by the gifts that God has given. Yet no person is independent of any other. Indeed, the gifts of the Spirit are given precisely so that each person might have some contribution to make to each of the others. It would be entirely contrary to Paul’s point to suggest that the anointing of the Spirit makes each person fully self-sufficient. Indeed, the point is that we need one another precisely because we have all been given the Spirit and we can only obtain his full benefit through the ministry of others.
This requires humility – a willingness to acknowledge that others are better equipped to do some things than we ourselves are and that if we are each to become fully mature in Christ, we need to be helped to that end by others.
This, interestingly, is a point that Moses recognises and we can take to be the last lesson from our passage. When Joshua hears that Eldad and Medad, having just been anointed by the Spirit, are prophesying in the camp he urges Moses to forbid them. Moses refuses. He’s wise enough to know that it’s to his benefit that some of his power and authority be given to others as only in this way can his burden be eased and, importantly, God’s people obtain the benefit of the gifts God has given to Moses and the 70 elders.