Twenty-Fourth Meeting
(February 22, 1964 P.M.)
I am
going to continue this evening where we left off last
Saturday night [19th meeting]. So I would ask
you just to turn again to the passages of Scripture which
were before us then. In the Gospel by John, chapter
sixteen, at verse seven, "Nevertheless I tell
you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away:
for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto
you; but if I go, I will send Him unto you."
Verse thirteen, "When He, the Spirit of truth,
is come, He will guide you into all the truth."
Back to chapter fourteen, at verse sixteen, "I
will pray the Father, and He shall give you another
Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever."
And verse seventeen, "The Spirit of truth; Whom
the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth Him not,
neither knoweth Him; ye know Him; for He abideth with
you, and shall be in you" (ASV). And the Book
of Acts, chapter nineteen, at verse two, "Did ye
receive the Holy Spirit when ye believed?"
So we
are going to say a little more about this very important
matter of the Holy Spirit. One of the greatest needs of
our time is to recover the realization of the greatness
of those things with which we are very familiar. There
are many things in our ordinary everyday life which are
very wonderful things, but we take them for granted. I
have in front of me five microphones, and through these
microphones, people some miles away might hear what I am
saying at exactly the same moment that I am saying them.
Although it may not be true of these microphones, yet in
this city men can speak into a microphone and be heard at
that very moment three to six thousand miles away. It
does not take one hour, one half hour, nor five minutes,
on the other side of the world, while a person is
speaking, other people can hear. Now when I say that to
you there is nothing on your faces that makes me feel
that you think that is very wonderful. You see, it has
become just a common place thing that we take for
granted. The same is true about a great many things in
everyday life.
I
remember the day when the first motor car came onto the
street, it traveled at about four miles an hour. It made
a terrific noise, and everybody rushed into their houses.
Well, now look at our streets today, but we do not think
it anything very wonderful. It is so common place that we
take it for granted, and so it is with many other things
in natural life. Because we are so familiar with them, we
have lost the sense of wonder. We never look at the motor
car now and say, 'oh! what a wonderful thing!' It is just
a motor car, and that is all there is to it. Now you know
that this has become true of many of the greatest things
in this universe.
In the
beginning of the Christian era, the world was startled
and shocked by the preaching of the apostles. The things
that they said from day to day just shook the world. Some
people said, 'The men that had turned the world upside
down had come here.' What they said was just turning the
world upside down. Of course, we should have said, 'They
were putting the world the right side up.' But that is
how the people felt about the things that they were
saying. We are not shaken by these things, we are so
familiar with them, they do not mean to us a turning of
everything upside down. We can hear them every day and
every week and we are never shaken by them. They are the
same things as the apostles said. But they do not affect
us as they affected the world in those days. We know them
so well. We are so familiar with them. They have lost all
the sense of wonder for us. And the world is not shaken
by these things when we say them. Perhaps that is because
they are not wonderful enough to us.
You see,
the things with which we are familiar are things which
are the greatest things that have ever come into this
universe. But the fact is that Christianity has been made
too small, too easy, too cheap, and too popular. We here
this evening are just thinking about one of these things.
It is one of the most wonderful things that has ever
happened in this world. That is the coming from Heaven of
the Holy Spirit. You have read the story of the coming of
the Holy Spirit, and you know what it meant in those
days. We had a great fire here in the last twenty-four
hours. All the city is talking about it. Perhaps all the
country is talking about it. Perhaps the newspapers of
the other parts of the world have got the report of it.
But that fire is nothing compared with the coming of the
Holy Spirit. This fire was put out in a few hours, bad as
its work was, it was finished in a few hours. The fire
that came into Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost has
never yet been put out for two thousand years, and that
fire was not just localized to a little area. That fire
had gone all over the world. It is still burning today,
and it will go on burning until Jesus comes again.
You see,
John the Baptist said about Jesus, "He shall
baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and fire." I
do not suppose they had any fire engines in the days
of John the Baptist. If they had any fire engines then, I
think John the Baptist would have added: 'and all the
fire engines in the world will never put out that fire.'
Now look
at one of the passages which we read, Jesus said, "It
is expedient for you that I go away, if I go not away,
the Holy Spirit will not come." Do you recognize
what that means? It was of tremendous importance that
Jesus Himself came into this world. It was of tremendous
importance that He spent thirty-three and a half years on
this earth. But do you notice, He said, 'It is far more
important that I go away.' Now, if Jesus were on the
earth today, if He were living in Palestine, you know the
people from over the world would be making pilgrimages to
go and see Him. People would go from every country of the
world to get His help. Well, you say, that makes Him very
important. It would be a very important thing for Jesus
to be here on this earth. But Jesus Himself said, 'It is
far more important that I go away.' Just think about
that! 'It is far more important that I go away, because
if I do not go away, the Holy Spirit will not come.'
Therefore, it must be much more important that the Holy
Spirit could come, than that Jesus should stay here in
the flesh.
Jesus,
while He was here on the earth was always using one
phrase, the phrase was this, "In that day." He
was constantly saying, "In that day, in that
day." He put tremendous emphasis and importance upon
what He called, "that day." And, if you
look to see what He meant, you will see "THAT
DAY" was the day when the Holy Spirit would come. It
was not only a day of twelve or twenty-four hours. It was
not only the day of Pentecost. The day of Pentecost only
began that day. The sun has never gone down on that day
yet. That day is not closed yet. The day to which Jesus
referred was the day which will last from the day of
Pentecost, till Jesus comes again (John fourteen through
sixteen).
It was
not only a matter of time; it was a matter of a "new
order." So Jesus constantly said, "In that day,
in that day, in that day." And He said tremendous
things about that day. Do you realize that we are now
living in that day? That day has come! It came
when Jesus went back to the Father. We are living in that
wonderful day of the Holy Spirit. THE COMING OF THE HOLY
SPIRIT BROUGHT IN A NEW AGE AND A NEW ORDER. The coming
of the Holy Spirit was the first thing in Christianity.
And Jesus said that He would be with you, and He will be
in you, and He will abide with you for the age. This
wonderful Holy Spirit, more important than Jesus being
here in the body, is in you. I am looking at your faces
to see if you see how wonderful the thing is that we are
living in. We are living in the most wonderful age of the
history of this world. I say that to you on the authority
of Jesus Christ Himself. "It is necessary that I go
away in order that the Holy Spirit may come." You
know we ought to get up and go away feeling tremendously
impressed with the day in which we are living. Why is it
so wonderful that the Holy Spirit should come? What is
this great importance of the coming of the Holy Spirit?
For this reason, among others, but this is the first
reason, because the Holy Spirit makes a new creation,
because the Holy Spirit when He comes into us makes
different creatures of us.
Forgive
me for asking you a very impersonal question. Do you know
the difference between a vegetable and an animal? I
expect you will say, of course we do. We know the
difference between a cabbage and a dog. Let us go
further, Do you know the difference between an animal and
a human being? Well, if you had any doubt, you people who
love music, get your dog by the piano, and then begin to
play one of the great composers - a Beethoven or a Chopin
or someone like that. Then say to your dog, 'Now do you
hear this? I am interpreting to you Beethoven or Chopin.'
And you tell him all about it, and then you look at your
dog, and the poor fellow looks terribly bored. The look
on his face is, 'I do not know what you are talking
about. That may be all right for human beings, but that
is not all right for dogs.'
Now we
know the difference between a vegetable and an animal.
Now we know the difference between an animal and a human
being. Do you know the difference between a human being
and a child of God? It is just as big a difference
between a child of God and an ordinary human being, as
there is between a cabbage and a dog. The word says, "If
any man be in Christ, he is a new creation: the old
things are passed away; behold, all things are become
new." And that is why the Holy Spirit came to
make such a difference in us that we are a new and
different kind of creature. You so often hear about being
born again, you know the word of the Lord to Nicodemus,
"You must be born again." Perhaps you have
heard that a hundred, or a thousand times, you know it so
well. But do we really know what that means? When we are
born naturally, when we come in this body of ours into
this world for the first time, we come into a new world
that we have never been in before. The little baby has
come into a new world. It does not understand everything.
It does not know what everything is. It is quite a new
world.
You must
be born again, which means that the Holy Spirit brings us
into an altogether new world. Now do test the work of the
Holy Spirit in your life by this. Do test your Christian
life by this simple fact. When you came to the Lord
Jesus, when you gave your life to the Lord Jesus, when
you believed that the Lord Jesus came into your life,
your first realization was this: That you have come into
an altogether new world. You have come not just into a
world where people are called Christians, not just into a
world or a system called Christianity, but for you in
your consciousness, everything was new. The Holy Spirit
said, "Behold, I make all things new." You
did not understand everything, and you do not
understand everything now in that new world. But we, by
the work of [the] Holy Spirit have come into another
world altogether. A whole new world had opened to us.
Now this
is the Word of God. This is why the Holy Spirit came. Is
that true for all of us here tonight? We know that we
have come into a world where we never were before, and in
Christ all things are new for us. We have a new
consciousness. What is our consciousness? We use the Word
of the Scripture, "We have passed from darkness into
light." Just as truly as if we put all these lights
off now, and then we were in total darkness, we could see
nothing and no one. We would have to try and find our way
out, all is dark. Then someone puts all the lights on,
and we said, 'Now I can see, my consciousness now is that
I am in the light.'
You know
that is the simple truth of the beginning of the
Christian life. It is not just a doctrine of Scripture,
it is an experience. As a new creature we have the
consciousness of having come into the light. THE REIGN OF
DARKNESS IS FINISHED FOR US. But again, the Scripture
puts it in this way, it is the consciousness of having
passed from death into life. Of course, the darkness and
light illustration is a simple one, and easy to
understand.
Now no
one here tonight has been actually, literally dead. You
have not been a corpse in a coffin, with the life having
gone right out, and you had someone come along and raise
you from the dead, so that you could really say,
"Well, I was dead, but now I am alive." But the
Bible says that is how it is outside of Christ, we are
dead. It says, we are dead, as dead as any corpse to God.
In Christ we are made alive, and the consciousness is, I
am alive now. The most wonderful thing is: I know I am
alive, but it is another kind of Life. It is God's Own
Life. It is not just natural life, it is another Life
that has come to me from God Himself. The point is that I
have a consciousness, I am alive. I am alive with a new
Life which I never had before.
Now
there is another thing about this new consciousness. You
see, we are following a little baby. A little baby comes
into this new world. A little baby comes from darkness to
light. A little baby comes from death to life. What is
the next thing about the little baby? I tell you a
secret. I had a new little grandson two or three weeks
ago, and I am told that he is a very big boy. And the
difficulty about this new baby is that he never can be
satisfied. He is shouting all the time for more food. He
was born with a great new desire, a wonderful new
appetite. Well, you understand that about the baby, do
you not? You know one of the first things they do is to
scream for food. They have a strong desire for something.
Now I
have been very simple, for the sake of the young people,
but no matter how old we are, we can test our
Christianity by this. The Holy Spirit creates in us a
tremendously strong desire for everything that God has.
What the Bible calls, hungering and thirsting after
righteousness. The Psalmist cried, "My soul
thirsts for God" (Psa. 42:2). Have we all got
this consciousness of a wonderful new desire and craving
for everything that the Lord has to give us? These are
simple tests as to whether we have the Holy Spirit.
Now
because my time is gone, I have got to finish there. I
have got a lot more to say to you about this. We will
hold it over for the time being, but, dear friends, these
are the simple basic facts about the Holy Spirit. These
are wonderful things. You know a little baby is a
wonderful thing. You look at a little baby, you look at
his eyes, his little fingers, his little fingernails, you
say, that is a wonderful thing. Well, to be born again is
much more wonderful. It is a very wonderful thing that
the Holy Spirit has come to do. HE HAS COME TO MAKE A NEW
CREATION OF US.
We all
know this teaching, so I go back to where I started
because we are so familiar with it, a great deal of the
wonder of it has been lost. Shall we all ask the Lord to
bring back the wonders of our salvation? And make us
realize what a marvelous thing it is to be born again.
How great a thing it is that the Lord has made us new
creatures. Then we shall realize something of what He
meant. It is very important that the Holy Spirit comes.
When Jesus was here, He could only mend broken bodies, He
could just heal physically sick people. The Holy Spirit
has come to mend broken souls, but IT is the same Person
- IT is the Spirit of Jesus. IT is Jesus Who is coming in
the Holy Spirit, but is just changing the nature of His
work. When He was in the flesh, His work was outward. Now
that He is in the Spirit, His work is inward. And the
inward is very much more important than the outward.