"And Jesus,
when he was baptized, went up straightway from the water:
and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the
Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him;
and lo, a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is my
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt.
3:16,17).
"Then was
Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be
tempted of the devil... Again, the devil taketh him unto
an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the
kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and he said
unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt
fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get
thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship
the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve"
(Matt. 4:1,8-10).
"And bring us
not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil
one" (Matt. 6:13).
"The Lord said
unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make
thine enemies the footstool of thy feet. Let all the
house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God hath
made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye
crucified" (Acts 2:34-36).
"...which he
wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and
made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places,
far above all rule, and authority, and power, and
dominion, and every name not only in this world, but in
that which is to come: and he put all things in
subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over
all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness
of him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:20-23).
The
Exaltation of Christ
It will at once be
recognized that the thing which is in view in these
passages is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, and now
as gathered up and vested in the Lord Jesus, and it resolves
itself into a matter of the exaltation of Christ. It is
all a question of where the kingdom, the power and the
glory reside, of where the Lordship is established, where
the government is; and this is the grand issue of all
time. It runs through the whole of the Old Testament as
the supreme issue back of everything else, and you will
always be helped if you take account of that fact
whenever you are reading the Old Testament. Wherever you
read, you will find that things gather round this one
issue. The thing which, while it may not immediately be
patent, lies there inherently is the seat of government,
the place of authority, rule, dominion; and, of course,
not only is it there in the Old Testament whether
manifestly or hiddenly as the issue behind everything,
but it has come out very clearly as the issue in the New
Testament. Here, for a very obvious reason, it has been
brought right out into the light. That obvious reason we
shall mention definitely as we go on; but no longer is
the thing hidden when you come to the New Testament,
because you hardly begin to read the New Testament with
the first chapters of Matthew, before you find this
question of the kingdom, the power and the glory, a
manifest question, a thing brought right out into the
open and made now, not a hidden battle, but a very
conspicuous matter of conflict, and from that point right
through to the end of Revelation it is this tremendous
issue which is being fought out in the heavenlies and
having an expression also in the earth. So then, we are
now concerned with the issue of all time as becoming more
and more manifest as we move toward the end.
This calls for
something. It calls for the Church to take up its
position most deliberately and positively on the ground
of the exaltation of the Lord Jesus; for, until the
Church does take that position, there is no hope whatever
of the Evil One being cast down. Let me repeat that in
the opposite order. The only prospect of the overthrow of
the kingdom of darkness, the powers of evil, the Satanic
system, is by reason of the Church standing into all the
meaning of the enthronement of the Lord Jesus. That is
the challenge of this hour as it has been the challenge
of every hour, and it is becoming a much more pressing
challenge. It cannot be more definite than it has ever
been, but it is becoming more pressing as we near the
end. So it is with that the Lord leads us today to be
especially concerned, really solemnly occupied with it,
and it spreads itself over several of the primary matters
in our Christian life and activity.
The
Holy Spirit and the Throne
In the first place, it
brings us immediately into touch with the Holy Spirit and
all that is signified by the advent of the Holy Spirit.
Let us allow a great many of our particular interests in
the Holy Spirit to fall away from us for the moment. What
I mean is that we have particular interests in the Holy
Spirit along the line of gifts, power, sanctification and
so on. But let us leave those for a minute. They are
truly related to the Holy Spirit, but they do not
represent the inclusive and the pre-eminent concern of
the Holy Spirit. They are the outworkings of something
else; they follow, they are not initial. What we have to
see is that the primary and all-inclusive concern of the
Holy Spirit is with the throne. When I use that word
"throne" I am speaking about the Lordship, the
sovereignty, the government, the dominion; the kingdom,
the power and the glory, and the seat thereof, and it is
with that, all that is represented by those various words
and terms, that the Holy Spirit is primarily concerned.
That statement embraces a vast amount in the Word of God.
I am not going to attempt to gather up the evidence of
that. I simply indicate it from one or two instances.
A familiar one, by way
of type, in the Old Testament, is given us at the opening
of the book of Joshua, where Joshua is challenged by the
presence of the One standing with the drawn sword, who
announces Himself as the Captain of the host of the Lord
and whom we recognize to be none other than the Holy
Spirit Himself, who is always represented as being in
possession of the sword. "The sword of the
Spirit": familiar words, are they not. Here, then,
stands the Holy Spirit as Captain of the Lord's host, and
the issue in view is that of the kingdom, the power and
the glory. In other words, it is the rule of the heavens.
It is the seat and exercise of Divine authority, it is
Lordship. The whole thing there lying ahead is the
overthrow and casting out of the entire system of false
and evil government in the realm of God. Seven nation's
speak of a complete spiritual government that is in
opposition to God, and it has to be entirely cast out and
the establishment of God's government, God's kingdom, has
to take its place. This, then, is the very object for
which the Holy Spirit appears on the scene. His interest
now, though including many things, is primarily and
ultimately the establishment of the throne of God in the
realm where the evil rulers and powers have held sway,
and that is a key to the whole subject of the Holy Spirit
and His advent.
You may take another
illustration from the Old Testament, and perhaps with
this one we should be sufficed, so far as the Old
Testament is concerned. You come to the matter of the
monarchy. David is anointed; and you know the anointing
always sets forth the coming of the Spirit to commit
Himself to a purpose. Here, in the anointing of David, it
is in type the Holy Spirit committed to the matter of
kingship; the kingdom and the power and the glory. Well,
it is not long after the anointing that the antagonism is
dragged out into the open. Indeed it follows
spontaneously. It always is the case, because of the
issue which is bound up with any coming of the Holy
Spirit. The primary issue is not some detail of the Holy
Spirit's work, but that inclusive purpose of the Holy
Spirit to establish the Divine government. So the
anointing of David is very quickly followed by an
uprising of antagonism, and David finds himself soon
after committed to years of terrible conflict because of
the anointing: and that clearly indicates that the evil
powers recognize what that anointing signifies. It does
not signify anything merely as to man. While it might be
of concern to the enemy that a man should be holy, that
he should be sanctified, or that a man should have this
or that spiritual gift, that is not the thing which
supremely concerns the enemy. That anointing sets forth
the fact that the government is being taken from the
enemy and centred somewhere else. That is what
precipitates the warfare. Thus David, because of the
anointing is thrown into those years of terrible
conflict: and there are two things about that which we
may recognize to our encouragement.
Two
Grounds of Encouragement
One is this, that the
very conflict itself which was produced by the antagonism
of the Evil One was the very thing which prepared and
qualified David for government; and that is true also of
the Church.
The second thing is
that, where the anointing really does abide, the issue is
settled: the government is there, you cannot set it
aside. There may be weakness, there may be failure, David
may at points break down; but the anointing abides and he
is God's king, and there shall never fail to sit upon the
throne of David a king because of the anointing. It is
the anointing which is the principle of succession
always, and the occupied throne of David for ever and
ever is because of the anointing. And where does the
anointing rest? Well, upon David's greater Son. That
throne has never been vacant because of the anointing. It
is the Holy Spirit committed to the throne. Well, there
is the Old Testament signification.
The
Antagonism of the Enemy
(a) The Assault on our Lord Jesus Christ
When we come to the New
Testament, the thing comes right out into the light. The
Lord Jesus steps upon the stage of this world's history,
the anointing comes upon Him, and immediately the enemy
is out, the battle is set, the conflict begins. There are
two sides to that. The fact of the anointing drags the
enemy out into action always, but the fact of the
anointing also commits the anointed to worst him. While
the anointing or the Spirit with us will drag the enemy
out and we shall be aware that he is against us with all
his force, the fact that we have the Spirit commits us to
see to it that the kingdom, the power and the glory are
God's; that is, we are committed to stand for the rights
of God against the challenge of the enemy. We must not
let it be a one-sided battle in which the enemy does all
the attacking. The anointing commits us to the battle on
the surest ground of ultimate triumph. Here, you see,
this committing of Himself to the Lord Jesus at the
Jordan on the part of the Holy Spirit, means that the
issue is joined anew out in the open spiritually with
Satan, and the question at issue as ever is this supreme
matter of the throne.
Well, that fact is
headed right up: "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy
God, and him only shalt thou serve." That is the
seat of authority, of government. It is to that seat that
the appeal is to be made, and that, as you notice, over
against Satan, in his presuming to offer the kingdom to
God's Son; a repudiation of Satan by relating the kingdom
to the Father. Then, soon after, we have the Lord Jesus
showing His own, His Church in representation, the
principles of prayer, and, in the light of chapter 4, He
teaches them to say, "Bring us not into temptation
but deliver us from the evil one, for thine is the
kingdom, and the power and the glory". Thine! We
must be delivered from the enemy in his attempts to get
us on to his kingdom line of things and take and maintain
our position that the kingdom, the power and the glory
are in heaven. The Holy Spirit has that in view.
Well, you see, that
follows at once in the temporal realm in the case of the
Lord Jesus. Satan has failed in the spiritual realm. He
has failed and been defeated in the unseen back of
everything. Now he will seek to move through the realm
seen, the earthly. Thus we find that Matthew's Gospel
heads right up to one issue. The claim of the Lord Jesus
to the kingdom is turned against Him as the very case for
His destruction. He has claimed to be King of the Jews,
He has claimed a kingdom, and subtly oh, we see this
subtlety working today in the twisting of things round in
propaganda - subtly there is a taking hold of His very
claims to the kingdom, and a turning of it against Him -
"We have no king but Caesar". Oh, the evil of
it; surrendering to something which was utterly false!
That was not true. Those Jews would not really in their
hearts acknowledge Caesar as their king, but they are
willing for anything in lie, in false position, in
iniquity, if only this One who claims the kingdom can be
destroyed. That is the sort of thing the Devil will do.
He stands at nothing. When you come to deal with the evil
powers, with the Evil One, you are not dealing with any
consideration for truth, any consideration for moral
standards. Not at all! That is all flung to the winds.
Any lie, any depth of iniquity will do, because of the
greatness of the issue. The thing which is at stake is
the kingdom, the authority, the throne.
Thus between Christ and
the Jews it is the same eternal issue. Where is the
Lordship? Where is the throne? Who has it? Satan seeks
His destruction because of the anointing. The triumph,
you see, over Satan in that last fell, foul, iniquitous
act of compromise to destroy the Lord Jesus, is this,
that in that very thing the Holy Ghost Himself takes hold
and turns it to the supreme triumph over the powers of
the enemy, as represented by those words, "who
through the eternal Spirit offered himself" (Heb.
9:14). That is another complexion upon the thing
altogether! Satan on the outside has brought this King to
the Cross, has brought Him under the hand of the
murderer, has brought Him to destruction because of this
big issue, the throne. But the anointing is there, and
the anointing takes hold of this very thing, this Cross,
and makes it something altogether other than Satan meant
it to be, and, through the eternal Spirit, the Lord Jesus
offers Himself without spot to God and there is triumph.
But our point now is that the anointing, the Holy Spirit,
is all the time committed to the matter of the exaltation
of the Lord Jesus, committed to the throne.
(b)
The Assault on the Church
Well now, from Christ
Himself, of course, we can easily follow on and see that
this same issue has been behind the history of the Church
ever since. It was the issue back of the conflict between
the Church and the Roman Empire. It was a question of
Christ or Caesar. Where is the authority, where is the
throne, where is the government; where is the kingdom,
the power, the glory? With Christ or with Caesar? The two
cannot co-exist. The conflict between the Church and the
Roman Empire was simply the conflict between Satan, and
Christ as to the throne. So the conflict started on the
day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came in. Again, it
is the Spirit committing Himself to this; and what is the
supreme note that is sounded forth, that clarion note, on
the day of Pentecost?
"The Lord said
unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make
thine enemies the footstool of thy feet."
And the grand summary
of all is: -
"Let all the
house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God
hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom
ye crucified."
Everything is headed
right up to that. That is the topstone and the battle is
joined. The Spirit has done that. That is the Holy Spirit
proclaiming aloud the Lordship of Jesus Christ through
the Church, and it is not long before you come into the
new conflict. The Church meets the implication of that,
and the Church's history of suffering and persecution
begins and has gone on down the ages; and today, beloved,
that is what lies behind the world situation. This is not
just a bit of the course of history that finds nations
once more locked in war as they have been again and
again. No one today can really fail to see that there are
great spiritual factors in this. We are all impressed
with it. Men who are not spiritually minded men, who are
not really discerning in spiritual matters, but who have
just a very ordinary sense of things, leading men, during
these past few months have been saying that this thing is
Satanic. Has not that escaped the lips of many leading
men? That is the feeling about it. We have never had it
like that before. But what is it? It is the kingdom and
the power and the glory. It is the throne; and this thing
is intended, back of everything else, to be a blow at the
coming, the imminent establishment of the throne of the
Lord Jesus.
What I want us to see
now is that the Holy Spirit, above all other
considerations, is committed to, and concerned with, the
throne. Therefore if you and I are at all under the
government of the Holy Spirit, it will be in that matter
that we shall be mainly exercised. It will be in the
matter of the overthrow of the powers of evil, the
dethronement of Satan and his system. That will be the
object to which the Holy Spirit is working in us and
through us continually, and we must recognize that;
because, until we really get on the main thing which the
Holy Spirit has in view, we cannot know the fulness of
the Spirit. You ask for Pentecost rightly or wrongly, you
pray for Pentecost to be repeated. What do people mean
when they are praying in that way for another experience
of Pentecost? I think we have missed the point. We are
after some thing, something to be experienced in
the matter of sense, power, demonstration. All sorts of
things will happen if only we can get Pentecost again.
Revival will come! Such is the common outlook. The Lord
open our eyes! While those things may be quite good and
may result, that is not the essential meaning of
Pentecost. The fulness of the Spirit is related to the
Lordship of Jesus Christ, nothing less, and that will
find us very much in need of the Holy Spirit because of
the intensity of the conflict on that issue.
The
Authority of the Name
That means, then, that
two things will result from the Holy Spirit being really
committed to us. If really the Holy Spirit gets His place
and His way, two things will result, will need to result.
One is, that we shall have to learn the values of the
authority of the Name of Jesus. You notice that came up
very quickly at Pentecost. Oh, do get hold of that! From
that moment when the Holy Spirit came, the thing upon
which the Apostles were moving, acting, challenging, was
the Name, the Name of the Lord Jesus. You have seen that,
of course. That is no new thought to you, but it will do
you good if you underline those early chapters of Acts
again at the points where the Name was used. "This
name, through faith in his name..." and so on. You
and I will have to learn the values of the Name of Jesus
anew because it is by means of those values that this
precipitated conflict is to be waged to a triumphant
issue. I cannot stay now to speak about the power of the
Name: that is not my point. I am simply saying that, when
the Holy Spirit comes, His object is the throne, the
dominion, and for the Church, therefore, by the Holy
Spirit, the Name has to be known in its values, its
virtues; and you see, you cannot say that Jesus is Lord
but by the Spirit. That does not mean that you cannot use
the phrase "Jesus is Lord". It is quite clear
that the Apostle meant that the spiritual virtue of that
declaration requires the Holy Spirit. You cannot, with
any spiritual power or value, make the declaration apart
from the Holy Ghost; but when you do in the Holy Ghost,
something happens all the time.
"God hath
highly exalted him, and given him the name which is
above every name" (Phil. 2:9).
It means, beloved, that
you stand in the apprehension and appreciation of the
exaltation of Christ, and, because you are there, the
values of His Name are made effective.
The
Testimony to the Lordship of Jesus
The other thing which
will arise with the anointing, with the Spirit committing
Himself, is that we shall have to stand quite
deliberately, positively, on this ground before God
against the Evil One that Jesus is Lord, and that stand
will be challenged, challenged up to the hilt, challenged
in every way, and we shall find that our Ephesian
position becomes a necessary one - standing,
withstanding, and having done all, to stand. By that I
mean that just to take a position will not be enough. We
have to act upon the position in resisting every
encroachment upon that position - standing! And, when you
have done all that, you have still to be found there,
holding the ground. It is all a matter of the throne as
related to the people of God, as the thing with which you
and I, in the eternal counsels of God, are connected.
Perhaps as we go on we shall see more how that is so, but
here we begin, and our first important thing is to
recognize this fact, that the Holy Spirit has one object
in view, and all His activities are toward that one
object, namely, the establishment of the Lordship of
Jesus Christ. That is what He is after, and if you want
the Holy Spirit to operate, to work in your life and
through you, remember it is to that He will work, and it
is not always the Holy Spirit's way to give us lovely
sensations and beautiful experiences which would bring us
into prominence, and make something of us. The Holy
Spirit may take us into deep depths in order to get the
Lordship of Jesus Christ established, and He will do it
in the way which will reach His end best. He will
dethrone, He will break down all our strength, our glory
and our kingdom. His end is the Lordship of Jesus Christ,
and the Holy Ghost prayer is, "Thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory for ever".