"But the Lord said unto Samuel,
Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his
stature... And Samuel said unto Jesse, Are here all thy
children? And he said, There remaineth yet the youngest,
and, behold, he is keeping the sheep. And
Samuel said unto Jesse, Send and fetch him; for we will
not sit down till he come hither. And he sent, and
brought him in. Now he was ruddy and withal of a
beautiful countenance, and goodly to look upon. And the
Lord said, Arise, anoint him; for this is he. Then Samuel
took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of
his brethren: and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily
upon David from that day forward" (1
Sam. 16:7,11-13).
"And the angel answered and said
unto her, The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the
power of the Most High shall over-shadow thee; wherefore
also the holy thing which is begotten shall be called the
Son of God" (Luke 1:35).
"And Elisabeth was filled with the
Holy Spirit" (Luke 1:41).
"And... Zacharias was
filled with the Holy
Spirit" (Luke 1:67).
"Simeon... was righteous and
devout, looking for the consolation of Israel; and
the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed
unto him by the Holy Spirit, that he should not
see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.
And he came in the Spirit into the temple" (Luke
2:25-27).
"He shall baptize you with the
Holy Spirit" (Luke 3:16).
"The Holy Spirit descended in a
bodily form, as a dove, upon him, and a voice came out of
heaven, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well
pleased" (Luke 3:22).
"And Jesus, full of the Holy
Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led in the
Spirit in the wilderness... And Jesus returned in the
power of the Spirit into Galilee" (Luke 4:1,14).
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me, because, he anointed me to preach... to proclaim...
to set at liberty... to proclaim the acceptable year of
the Lord" (Luke 4:18).
I feel it very much on my heart that the
Lord would have me to say a little to you about the Holy
Spirit. To some of you what I shall say will probably be
very elementary, but it may be helpful to others, and we
never get beyond the place where we need to be reminded
of things which are, after all, the greatest things in
the life of a child of God. It is not my intention to
take up the above passages and speak about them in
particular. They have been read in order to bring this
matter before us with one object - at least to indicate
how large a place the Holy Spirit has in the bringing in
and the carrying through of God's purposes and God's
instruments.
Some False Ideas Associated with the
Spirit
Let me say at the outset one or two things
about the negative side of the Holy Spirit and His
presence, that is, what the Holy Spirit does NOT
imply - for it is necessary for us to adjust our thoughts
in this matter so that we have not wrong ideas which will
lead to disappointed expectation. Many people seem to
have the idea, more or less vaguely or certainly, that
should anyone really be filled with the Holy Spirit and
live in the mighty power of the Holy Spirit, certain
things are sure to result.
One is that of course such an one will
never come up against any difficulties which to him are
completely insurmountable. He will, by the power and
wisdom of the Holy Spirit dwelling within in fullness,
surmount his difficulties and solve his problems very
easily. Or again, such a life ought to be very largely
free from suffering and adversity; being sealed, owned of
God, it could hardly be set aside and rejected and driven
out, and, amongst men, made a thing of nought; God would
see to it that it was not so. Such ideas do exist, and
when experiences to the contrary come, a good deal of
perplexity and questioning arises. After all, is the Lord
with us? Is the mighty power of the Holy Ghost amongst us
and in us? If the Lord were mightily with us, surely we
should be carried right on and all our mountains would go
down and our difficulties would be swept aside, our
sufferings would be as nothing? And so on. Well, from the
moment of the Spirit's descent upon the Lord Jesus at the
Jordan, there followed the wilderness and the devil. By
the direct action of the Holy Spirit it was so. He was
led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tried by the
devil. So with David; from the day the Spirit of Jehovah
came mightily upon him his troubles began. Almost
immediately he found himself a target of the devil. From
that day he was a marked man and an outcast, and we know
the long periods in which he was hunted, "as when
one doth hunt a partridge in the mountains" (1 Sam.
26:20). This man, upon whom the Spirit of Jehovah came
mightily, was hunted for his very life. Yes, he was
completely rejected and set at nought, and even, at one
time at least, despaired in his own heart of survival. So
much for a man upon whom the Spirit of the Lord rests
mightily. Let us adjust ourselves to this matter and not
entertain false ideas of what life is going to be if only
we are filled with the Spirit and the power of the Spirit
of God rests upon us.
The Basic Fact in the Life of a Child
of God
That is the negative side very briefly.
Come now to the other side and get right back to the
beginning of Christian life - for the sake of anyone who
may have an insufficient understanding of what happens
when you become the Lord's. Here again we need to correct
ourselves, for many think that when you become a
Christian, you just adopt a certain line of procedure:
you are expected not to do many things that you have been
in the habit of doing before, and you begin to do other
things that you have not been in the habit of doing. You
go to meetings, you associate with Christian people, you
begin to pray, and to read the Bible, and do all sorts of
things which are regarded as proper to a Christian. That
all may take place and then life become one continuous
struggle to keep it up. You have taken on something and
you have to live up to it, and it is a struggle, and
there does not seem to be very much in it more than that.
Perhaps you enjoy the fellowship of God's people. You
sometimes enjoy the meetings and sometimes you do not! It
is a very unsatisfactory experience from your own
personal standpoint in an inward way. After a while you
get very weary and you wonder whether there is anything
in the Christian life at all.
Well, there is a great deal to be said to
correct this point of view. We must understand exactly
what does happen when we really become children of God.
Let us consider the case of the Lord Jesus, because in
everything, from first to last, He is the exemplar, the
representation of the whole Christian life. If you had
looked upon Him as an ordinary person in
this world in the days of His flesh, you would have seen
nothing that marked Him out as essentially different from
any other man - that is as a person in the world. You
might have noted that He was a fine type of man and have
been impressed by certain things about Him, as in the
case of any other man; but apart from that you would not
have noticed anything different. In outward appearance He
may well have been like David, a splendid specimen of a
man. I do not know what He was like physically, but David
was that. The Lord had said to Samuel, "Look not on
his countenance"; and almost immediately afterward
the Word says of David "he was ruddy, and withal of
a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look upon."
The implication is this, that, while you are not making
the outward the criterion, there may be something quite
good there; that is, ugliness is not at a premium. But
that is not the point - "God looketh on the
heart." Don't you look at the outward appearance;
and even although the Lord Jesus may have been amongst
men exceptionally fine in physique and appearance, His
essential difference from other men was not in that fact.
The difference lay deeper, hidden, quite out of sight.
Even those in the closest association with Him
physically, living with Him all day and every day, week
after week, month after month, were not able to discern
that difference until long afterward. They had
suspicions, perhaps - fleeting impressions; they were
often bewildered; but the vital factor lay hidden from
them. "Have I been so long time with you, and dost
thou not know me, Philip?" (John 14:9). The
difference lay deeper. What was the reality, the great
difference, in the case of the Lord Jesus? It was a link
between His inner being and His Father God. Those two
were in perfect oneness, and out of that perfect, hidden,
secret, spiritual oneness of His spirit with the Father,
everything in His life took its rise. All His guidance
came by that, and He did not act on any of the other
lines of guidance common to men - advice, counsel,
coercion, custom, expectation, even sympathetic appeal.
He put back appeals that were made to Him out of the best
of motives and desires for His good and well-being - even
a mother's appeal. He had an inner union with God, and
out of that He took His guidance, the yea and the nay for
all His movements and for everything else. He lived on
that, and that was the great inner difference between
Christ and every other person. And that is the thing
which distinguishes a child of God. No one who has not
been born of God has that, but everyone who has been born
of God has it - doubtless in a very elementary and infant
form to begin with, because it comes by birth.
Here is the Lord Jesus again as example.
He could have come and occupied the body of a man fully
grown, and done the work which He really took up only
when He was thirty years of age; but He started with
birth because we all start there in our relationship with
God - new birth; and the new birth is just the bringing
about, by a miracle of the Spirit of God, of a union with
God which was never there before, and it is out of that
that everything of the Christian life takes its rise. It
is by reason of that that you begin to do things that you
never did before and you stop doing things that you did
before. There is no question of strain about it, of
compulsion, of law. From the beginning it is just the
work of that Spirit's law of life, and you act
spontaneously, you, do not stop to think about it. In the
physical realm you never stop to ask yourself if you are
going to take another breath, you just do it. That is
living, and it is because you are alive that you do other
things. You do your thinking because you are living, but
you do not have to think in order to live. It is like
that in the life of a child of God. You are alive, and
then because you are alive, you become conscious that you
are no longer drawn to certain things, but you are drawn
to certain others.
The Basis of Spiritual Education
Now what is the outworking of this great
fact of being thus alive unto God? As we go on, that
factor of life-union is the basis of all our education.
It is the nature of our life and it is the basis of our
education. David, as an Old Testament saint, was not on
the ground of a "born again" believer, but his
life was lived under the government of the Spirit and
therefore can serve our present purpose by way of
illustration. Why, after the Spirit of the Lord had come
mightily upon him, did David have the history which was
immediately subsequent - adversity, expulsion, suffering,
perplexity, bewilderment, even despair? It is a common
experience of those who have the Spirit. Even the Apostle
Paul - who unquestionably had the Spirit - said at one
time that he "despaired even of life" (2 Cor.
1:8). Why that? For this reason, that this nature of our
spiritual life has to be perfected. The way of spiritual
joy is through natural sorrow. The way of wisdom is
through utter confounding. And that is not done once and
for all; that is repeated again and again, and the
process becomes more severe as you go on! You are brought
more and more to an end of any possibility of
understanding the ways of God naturally, and more and
more to the place where a Divine revelation is absolutely
necessary to survival and emergence.
We have said, through sorrow to spiritual
joy. We are talking about SPIRITUAL joy. It is
different altogether from mere optimism and suchlike
things. Oh, it is so different! You ask the question, how
can certain people rejoice over against such and such
circumstances? Well, there is the mystery. It is not
something that you can explain naturally at all; it is
supernatural, it is Divine, it is a miracle. And so it is
with everything - joy, wisdom, strength. Spiritual
strength is an altogether different thing from natural
strength. Natural strength ebbs and comes to an end.
Spiritual strength comes in and even vitalises the
physical and the mental. But the position is this, when
that work is advanced - should the Spirit of God leave
you for a moment, you are utterly weak; that is, for all
practical purposes you are useless. But now, for the
demands laid upon you physically and mentally, you are
living upon another energy, though in the natural world
you are weak and a fool. You might be otherwise; if you
had not been brought on to this level, you might be
amongst men other than a fool, but you have come under
the hand of the Spirit of God, and He is making all
things to be out from God and nothing out from yourself,
physically or mentally or in any way. It is "by my
Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts" (Zech. 4:6), and
the education is going on in order to develop our
spiritual strength to be the energy of mind and body, the
wisdom and the understanding of our lives. It is
developing another entity in us, or, to put it more
correctly, it is the growth of Christ in us over against
ourselves.
Dependence on the Lord and Spiritual
Responsibility
Now this further word. The point you and I
have to watch carefully is this, that we do not get into
the habit of expecting the Lord to do everything
objectively to us and for us. If we do that, the
inevitable result will be the stultifying of our
spiritual life. You do everything for little children:
you hold them up on their feet to start with; if they
begin to fall, you at once save them; and you explain
everything, you tell everything, and do everything
objectively to them and for them. What would you think if
you had to do that to a grown person? It would be
altogether abnormal and wrong. And it is no less wrong in
the spiritual realm. But this is where many become
confused; for they realize that they are utterly
dependent upon the Lord - and of course that dependence
is necessary essential and right - and then they
mistakenly collapse on the Lord because they are so
utterly dependent and wait for Him to do everything. They
expect Him to carry them, to support them, and to provide
them with a life of continuous miracles. That is all
wrong, and it is just there that we have to harmonize
these two things - dependence upon the Lord, and
spiritual responsibility; by no means an easy task.
That brings us to a more advanced point.
We have got away from the beginning now. We are told we
have to be utterly dependent on the Lord; on the other
hand, we have to be responsible people. How do we
reconcile these two things? How is it going to work out?
In actual experience we often find that the Lord simply
does not do the thing for which we had been waiting. He
wants us to come into intelligence, where we recognise
whether He says yes or no about the matter. When He says,
Yes, we move forward and act, trusting Him of course for
the necessary resource. We do not wait for Him to do it.
If we have any witness of life and peace in our heart
that that is the Lord's mind after sufficient testing of
it by the Word and by prayer, then the responsibility for
acting is ours. If, on the other hand, we have any reason
whatever to doubt that that is the Lord's way, we must
take the opposite course; however much we may want to do
it, we must say, No; we must refuse to be moved in that
direction by any kind of coercion or personal preference
or desire. Let everybody say that is the direction in
which we ought to move - that of itself is not a
sufficient ground for moving. But here we must add a word
of caution. What we are saying is based upon this - that
the one concerned really has a life with the Lord, really
does know the Lord, and that a sufficient breaking has
taken place in the realm of natural will and natural
likes and dislikes. The Lord Who lived on this basis and
moved according to this law had been to Jordan and in
type had there renounced the entire ground of self. There
are many people who take an independent attitude
on the ground that they have received their guidance from
the Lord and therefore they are not going to take any
notice of what others may say. But they are unbroken
people; that is stubbornness, self-will, natural
strength. We have to go through discipline, through
testing, and through a measure of breaking, to be in the
place where our interests are not governing, where what
we would like is not dictating and where our natural
thoughts and judgments are not the criterion. But given a
true walk with the Lord inwardly, then there is a place
of responsibility which we must recognise and accept and
where we move or do not move according to what we judge
to be the Lord's way after testing the situation.
It is then that the Lord comes alongside.
We have been waiting for the Lord to come and act apart
from us, and the Lord has been waiting for us to come to
a place of spiritual intelligence where we move in that
intelligence. As we move He begins to move alongside of
us, and we find that things do happen, they do open up.
It is wonderful how the Lord comes in and we find that is
just what we have been praying for all along - for the
Lord to do it; but the Lord has been waiting for
something also. The Word speaks about the "set
time." David said, "Thou wilt arise, and have
mercy upon Zion: for it is time to have pity upon her,
yea, the set time is come" (Psa. 102:13). Yes, the
Lord may have His set times, but in His infinite wisdom
and perfect foreknowledge He makes His set time
synchronize with a set condition. We cannot explain that,
but there it is. The truth is that when the Lord's time
comes and the thing happens, it is not just by an act of
God unrelated to other conditions; you will find that
that synchronizes with the end of a preparation, the
arrival at a state on the part of those concerned, and
the set time is in effect the time when they have reached
a certain spiritual position. It may be a position of
complete disinterestedness, where they are out of the
picture - the last vestige of self-interest has gone and
the set time has come. Or it may be any one of a number
of other things. Whatever it may be, remember that the
Divine activities are intimately linked up with a work in
us, and that although it will be God's working alone that
accomplishes anything, yet that working is delayed until
we are ready to take our place of responsibility and to
act in faith.
First published in "A Witness and A Testimony", Sep-Oct 1947, Vol. 25-5. This version from
"This Ministry" - Messages given at Honor Oak -
Volume 3.