“And I will
pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter,
that he may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of
truth”. (John 14:16,17).
We are going to think about the
dispensation of the Spirit. This is not something apart
from what we have been considering hitherto. I think we
shall see how this matter of the Spirit is a part of that
greater vision that the Lord has been bringing before us
— the Man in the glory. In our last study we were
for a little time occupied with the subjective side of
this matter of the Spirit — receiving the Spirit as
an indwelling Person, the seal and earnest of our
inheritance. We shall now look at it from the other side
— the objective side of the Holy Spirit and His
work.
Let me say here at once that, while
the subjective side of truth is of very great importance,
as a source of strength and light and help generally to
the spiritual life, the objective side of revelation is
usually the more joyful side. If we are feeling ourselves
to be in need of more joy, I doubt whether we shall find
our need supplied by more subjective occupation. Our need
will be met by objective occupation — by turning
outwards and viewing the Lord’s provision for us, as
in Heaven and as here, altogether apart from our own
inner attainment unto it. It is this matter of attainment
that is the trouble with us, and so, although we may not
find the same inward teaching value in the objective
side, I am quite sure we shall find a great deal of
inspiration and uplift as we contemplate for a little
while those activities of the Holy Spirit out of His own
sovereignty.
“The
Acts” Covers the Dispensation of the Spirit
Here, then, in the passage from John
that we have read, the Lord Jesus points to that event so
soon to take place as He was going, the advent of the
Spirit. “I will pray the Father, and he shall give
you another Comforter” (or “Advocate”
— neither word is an exact translation), “that
he may be with you for ever (for the age), even the
Spirit of truth”. He indicated an age, or, to use
the other word, a dispensation — the dispensation of
the Spirit. The Holy Spirit has inaugurated a
dispensation and has taken charge of it. That comprehends
everything. The book which goes by the title of “The
Acts” — certainly only in a subsidiary way the
acts of the apostles, primarily the acts of the Holy
Spirit — is a book which covers the age or
dispensation of the Spirit from first to last.
You may argue with me that the book
only goes as far as Paul’s imprisonment and leaves
him there. I repeat, it covers the whole dispensation.
That will be shown quite clearly before we are through.
Actually, as to time, the book only covers about thirty
years. All that took place as recorded in this book was
crowded into something round about thirty years. How do
we arrive at that? Well, the ascension of Christ was
about 33 AD and the last letter written within the
compass of this book was written about 64 AD. So you see
all that is here is within that brief time.
“The
Acts” a Book of Principles
What a crowded thirty years it was!
What a seed plot for a dispensation, a whole
dispensation! And that is exactly what it is — a
seed plot. This book of the Acts laid the foundation of
the whole dispensation. The dispensation was to rise out
of and upon what took place as recorded here, and so the
book is a book of principles for all time. The meaning of
this is that, while it is not at all necessary for the
Holy Spirit, at any other time in the dispensation, to
repeat Himself in exactly the same form, nevertheless He
will always act on the same principle. If you read this
book and see what is here, as “acts of the Holy
Spirit”, you will have to come to one of two
conclusions. Either that the Holy Spirit is not the same
today as He was then, because the things that are
recorded as the normal and ordinary happenings no longer
happen. Or, that what is here embodies a principle, and
whether the form of its expression is repeated or not,
the principle remains intact.
Take the simple example of Ananias
and Sapphira and their sin against the Holy Ghost. I
venture to say, with very little fear of contradiction,
that there are many in the church today who are guilty of
a like misdemeanour, a like sin; seeking to hoodwink the
Holy Spirit — forgive the word — seeking to
deceive the Lord, seeking to cover up a double life.
There are many who are positive contradictions to a life
under the government of the Holy Spirit, whose lives are
an affront to the Spirit of truth: there is a lie. But in
how many cases does the same thing happen as happened
with Ananias and Sapphira? I suppose we should be
involved in very serious legal trouble if it did! It
would not do for any Peter among us today to pick out
such people, with the result that they instantly fall
down dead and have to be carried out as corpses! The Holy
Spirit may not do things in the same way physically, but
He has established a principle that, if any Christian
lives a double life, if any Christian is living, acting,
practising inconsistency, a lie to the Holy Ghost, their
spiritual life is seriously at stake, and they will
become corpses in a much more serious way than
physically. There are a lot of “corpses” in the
church — dead people — because of something
that is an affront to the Holy Spirit. We cannot continue
to deceive the Holy Spirit and at the same time maintain
spiritual life. That is the principle.
So we could go through this book,
indicating that it is a book of principles. We have to
say all the time, “Now, are we to expect a
repetition of the form of the act of the Holy Spirit in
every matter, or are we to look to see the principle that
is involved?” For when we find the principle, and
lay hold of it, we find that the principle works;
whatever may be the external form of its working, the
principle works. May that not be a key to the very
difficult subject of the gift of tongues? It is there.
Are we to say that that manifestation is to follow in
that same form, universally and invariably, throughout
the whole dispensation, or are we not to conclude from
the book of principles, and from the full way in which
the principle was established at the beginning, that in
the Spirit there is a universal spiritual language which
you and I speak, and we understand one another in that
language of the Spirit — not necessarily literally
in a tongue; that Pentecost sees the triumph over Babel
— the destruction of that cause of division —
in a spiritual way, so that, in Christ, all nations and
tongues and languages and peoples understand the language
of the Spirit? We know we have something in common:
spirit speaks with spirit. We may not speak one
another’s language, but somehow there is a concord
and a flowing together, and it is so often more easy,
even in the spoken word, when you are spiritually one, to
understand things of the Spirit than to understand
natural things. There you have a principle.
So the Acts is a book of principles,
and it is for us to look at it and say, “Now, what
is the principle in this?” Do not let me be
understood as saying that the Lord does not sometimes
exactly repeat His actions — He does; but not as a
normal and general rule. He has shown us, by very clear,
positive examples, what His principles are, and He would
say to us, “If I do not smite you dead for that lie,
do not think that I condone the lie, that I am any less
against the lie than I was in the fifth chapter of the
book of the Acts.”
The Spirit
Providing for the Whole Dispensation
Now, the next thing is that, in
providing this book, God has provided for the whole
dispensation. I said that, although its actual history
according to time was gathered into about thirty years,
yet this book covers the whole dispensation, and it does
so by way of its provision — through that which it
provides. The Holy Spirit gave in those thirty years all
that which was to be the church’s life and light for
the whole dispensation. That needs no argument. We should
not be meditating today on the record of those thirty
years, and deriving spiritual life and benefit and
instruction from it, if that were not true. The Spirit
provided, then, for His own full dispensation —
provided Himself with what He would need right to the end
of the age; and He is using it still, not acts only, but
utterances. Let us then look at this work of the Spirit,
this acting of the Spirit, as we have it here.
The Spirit
Bringing the Church to Birth
First and inclusively, His act was
that of bringing the foreknown and foreordained church to
birth. He reached right back to the eternal counsels,
right down to the hiddenness of past ages, and He brought
from the eternity past and from the hiddenness of the
ages the church foreknown, foreordained. Sooner or later
we shall find that, in the course of this record, He
gives His own explanation of that. But here is the act,
bringing the church to birth. In the light of its
eternity past and future, what a mighty act that was! In
the light of those eternal counsels of God, in the light
of the meaning and calling of the church, what a great
thing it was to bring that church to birth, to bring it
out into actual being on the day called the day of
Pentecost. Yes, He at once reached back to those counsels
before times eternal and took up the purposes and
intentions of God in and through the church, and brought
them into the church to which He gave birth, to which He
became the Spirit of life on that day.
I said He reached down into the
hiddenness of the ages. I am not one of those who hold
that there is no church in the Old Testament Scriptures.
I am agreed that it was not recognised; agreed that they
did not see the meaning of what was going on in
themselves as a people. Oh, yes, I am agreed that there
was no revelation of the church in Old Testament times:
but not agreed for a moment that there is no revelation
of the church in the Old Testament ages to the church in
this age. With the Holy Spirit’s enlightenment now,
we can see all the eternal principles relative to the
church hidden in the Old Testament Scriptures. They are
there; we can see them now. And the New Testament uses
the Old Testament Scriptures to explain and illustrate
the church. Strange things are said about some of the Old
Testament Scriptures, that might well be thought to be
straining them, making them mean what they do not mean,
unless the Holy Spirit had shown the mystery.
“Mystery” simply means something that was there
but hidden. You cannot hide a “nothing”, a
something that does not exist. If it says that it was
hidden, it must have been there to be hidden. But now at
the end of those ages it is brought to light. And so the
Holy Spirit uncovered the mystery hidden from the ages or
in the ages, and brought out the eternal counsels of God
when, by sovereign act, He brought the church into being
on that day, at that time. That was no mere happening;
there was nothing casual about that: it was a sovereign
act of the Spirit.
The Spirit
Directing the Church’s Movements
Then we find that from that point He
proceeds in the directing of the church’s movements,
that being the object with which He is concerned. Having
brought it into being, He assumes charge of its
movements. Here is a wonderful story of the sovereign
activity of the Holy Spirit to make the church move
— and moreover to make it move as it would not move,
as it would refuse to move, as its prejudices would
forbid its moving; but He sees that it does. If it does
not do so spontaneously and voluntarily, it will do it
under compulsion of circumstances. He has taken up this
matter of directing the church’s movements for the
age. This obtains with the Holy Spirit as much now as it
did at the beginning.
The Spirit
Ordering the Church’s Constitution
Next we see Him arranging and
ordering its constitution: wonderful sovereign acts in
the choosing of men and the giving of ministry, gifts in
persons, selecting, choosing, bringing forward. It is as
though the Spirit reached out His hand, and, where men
would not have looked, where men were afraid, fearful,
put His hand on this one and on that one; and they had to
come forward, they had to come into place, and they had
to be taken into account. The Spirit has said so; the
Spirit is doing this: you cannot refuse Saul of Tarsus
and keep him out, however bad his record is.
In other cases He is ordering the
constitution of the church. He is seen giving the gifts
of the ascended Lord and establishing the functions by
means of those personal gifts. It is a matter for the
Holy Spirit what ministry men fulfil in the church. It is
not for us to select our ministry, either its kind or its
place; it is not for us to choose what we are going to be
in the work of God; it is not for us to say what kind of
ministry we are going to engage in: “I am going to
be an evangelist”; “I am going to be an
apostle” (if you like you can use the word
“missionary” in its place — it is the same
word in another language); “I am going to be a
pastor, a teacher”. That is not given to us at all,
thank God; that is with the Holy Spirit.
And every other gift and function is
the Holy Spirit’s matter, entirely in His sovereign
hands, and that is a thing set forth here. Would to God
that men would keep close to this book of principles and
not try to do that for which they are not qualified, and
to which they are not called, by the Holy Spirit. There
are many misfits; many have to give up because they find
the Lord is not taking them through, is not with them in
it. There are many who are trying to do that for which
the Lord never called them. It works too the other way:
there are many who are not doing, simply because they do
not feel qualified to do so. They have not recognised the
principle that it is not on the basis of any ability of
our own at all, but by the Holy Spirit. He can take up
the most unlikely and make functionaries or functions in
the church. Both negatively and positively this whole
matter is seen here to be a matter of the Holy
Spirit’s sovereign ordering of the constitution of
the church.
The
Spirit’s Sovereign Use of Every Agency
Then, further, we see the Holy
Spirit using all agencies in relation to the purpose of
the dispensation. This is grand — this is where I
think objective contemplation is so inspiring and
helpful. Would to God we had a more ready apprehension or
grasp of this: the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit, not
only in the church through this dispensation, but as
wide, as far, as all-embracing as the Throne of the
exalted Lord Jesus. And here you see Him using all
agencies, heavenly agencies. In this book you have a
record of angelic activities: the ministry of angels
co-operating with the Holy Spirit. In the letter to the
Hebrews, we are told that we are come to
“innumerable hosts of angels” (12:22).
“Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to
do service for the sake of them that shall inherit
salvation?” (1:14).
Now see one beautiful little example
of co-operation between angels and the Holy Spirit. It is
in the tenth chapter of Acts — the record of Peter
on the housetop in one part of the country, and the sheet
let down from heaven, and Cornelius in another place, 35
miles away, seeking the Lord for light. Peter is a man
who knows the Holy Spirit: therefore the Spirit can speak
to Peter. But Cornelius is not yet in the dispensation of
the Spirit experimentally. He has not come into the realm
of receiving the Spirit yet. That is coming soon, that
will not be long: in three days it will happen, but not
yet. Therefore an angel comes to him. He cannot
understand the Spirit yet, but he can understand angels.
A beautiful co-operation. But do not think that the Holy
Spirit is confined to spiritual people, or that spiritual
people have only the Holy Spirit. They may have both the
Holy Spirit and angels, for Paul, who certainly knew what
it was for the Spirit to speak to him, was able to say:
“There stood by me this night an angel of the God
whose I am, whom also I serve, saying, Fear not,
Paul” (Acts 27:23,24). But here, in this incident of
Peter, is a heavenly system at work in co-operation with
the Holy Spirit, and this is soon to happen again and
again. My point is this, that the Holy Spirit has all
agencies of a celestial order at His service,
co-operating with Him; all heavenly resources are at His
command.
Then we also see how the Holy Spirit
is making use of earthly agencies, people and things
— very often of those that are inimical,
unsympathetic, hostile. He just uses them, that is all.
And behind them there is the sub-earthly, the diabolical.
Oh, what a record of forces of evil at work this book
contains: the spiritual hosts of wickedness, the
adversary himself, working through things, working
through nature, working through people. What is the Holy
Spirit doing? He is just using them. They mean it for
evil; He makes it work for good. Of course, that is
easily said. In actual experience, we do not always look
at it like that. It is the last thing that we do, when we
are up against some terrific position of the enemy, to
say, “That is all right! This is splendid! The Holy
Spirit is going to turn this to glorious account!”
We do not do that. But this book is a record of the
sovereignty of the Spirit, using all agencies, heavenly,
earthly and sub-earthly, unto the purpose of His
dispensation. He has taken charge. Is that not helpful?
That is what I mean by objective apprehension.
The
Spirit’s Provision in the Matter of Revelation
Next, we see the inspirational work
of the Holy Spirit making provision for the whole
dispensation in the matter of the revelation of the
church — the church’s nature, the church’s
vocation and the church’s destiny. The Holy Spirit
has taken up this matter and is here seen giving
progressive instruction, by inspiration, as to what this
thing is that has been brought in by birth on the day of
Pentecost — what is its vocation, what is its
destiny.
The progressive aspect of this fact
is a most helpful one. We probably know that, although
the letters of the New Testament are arranged in our
Bibles in a certain order, this is not the order in which
they were written. The order in which the Spirit has
sovereignly arranged them for us is the progressive
spiritual order, the right spiritual order. For students
of the New Testament, and for merely informative or
academic purposes, it is quite helpful to have the New
Testament in the chronological order. You can actually
buy a New Testament bound up in the order in which the
letters were written. The first is Thessalonians, and so
on. But the Holy Spirit has had a say in our having it in
the order in which we do have it. It is quite clear. You
cannot get anywhere until you have got Romans. Everything
else will wait until what we have in Romans is
established as the beginning, the very genesis, of the
new creation. And it is quite as much in order to have
Thessalonians at the end, its chief theme being the
coming of the Lord. And if you look you see that each
letter as we have it, represents one step further than
the last. It is in the progress of things —
spiritual progress. You would not want to have Ephesians
before Corinthians. It would be terrible if, after
reading Ephesians and Colossians, we then had to drop
right down to Corinthians — that awful
contradiction; but, with the letters in the order in
which we have them, we say, “Well, here is
Corinthians, and this is not how it ought to be: we must
get out of this on to higher ground!”
So the Holy Spirit has brought about
this order, given it to us by His sovereignty as a
progressive revelation of the church’s nature, of
the church’s vocation and of the church’s
destiny. For the whole dispensation He inspired the
providing of this light, this truth, this revelation of
God for the church. Men of God wrote “as they were
moved by the Holy Spirit”, and there is far more in
that than I have been able to point out. The most
enlightening, the most instructive matter is to see how
the Holy Spirit puts things in order — to see the
order in which He puts things as He gives His revelation.
The Spirit
Relates Everything to Christ
Finally, for the present, we see in
this book of Acts how the Holy Spirit relates everything
to Christ. While He, the Spirit, is the worker, while all
that is here is the expression of His energy, His
activity, He is keeping Christ in view all the time. He
is not speaking of Himself; He is keeping Christ in view
and relating everything to Christ. He is relating to
Christ in a threefold way.
Firstly, eternally. He makes it
perfectly clear that God’s purposes, His vast,
great, wonderful purposes, were all settled in His Son
before ever this world was. Before this world was, He
summed up all things in Christ, He centred all things in
Christ. The Holy Spirit makes it perfectly clear that all
things relate to Christ eternally.
Secondly, incarnately. What is
before is subsequent. It is all heading up to that great
consummation, and all things are gathered together in
Christ, related to Christ incarnately. (This is the point
at which I think this falls into line with our first two
meditations in this series — the Man, the Son of
Man, and how this Man gathers up all things into
Himself.) He is made man, becomes man. The Holy Spirit
keeps the Man in view — “the Man Christ
Jesus”. In the seventeenth chapter of this very book
of Acts we have: “He hath appointed a day, in the
which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man
whom he hath ordained” (verse 31). There is another
fragment very much like it in the tenth chapter (verse
42). The Holy Spirit is keeping everything related to
Christ incarnately as the Son of Man, God’s Man.
And then, in the third place,
exaltedly: for what the Holy Spirit is always careful to
point out is that God raised Him, God exalted Him, God
gave Him the place of supreme exaltation and glory —
“crowned Him with glory and honour” — and
everything is related to Him as there. He it was who
filled Stephen on that memorable occasion, when Stephen,
“being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up stedfastly
into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing
on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55). By the Holy
Spirit Stephen saw Christ exalted at God’s right
hand. Everything is related to Him as exalted. The Holy
Spirit quotes the Psalms — the inspired Psalms. How
the Holy Spirit brings in all that He Himself has before
provided! See how He uses them through inspired men. He
draws in the Psalms concerning the exaltation of the Lord
Jesus: “Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine
enemies the footstool of thy feet” (Heb. 1:13).
“Therefore being at the right hand of God
exalted...” (Acts 2:33). That is the work of the
Holy Spirit, to keep everything related to God’s
central object and interest and concern — His own
Son.
Our
Responsibility in Relation to the Spirit’s
Sovereignty
All this robs us of every bit of
ground for being introspective. All that has been said is
a provision for rejoicing. If this is true, what a
wonderful confidence it brings — this contemplation
of divine sovereignty. And yet remember that there is
another line running parallel — the line of our
responsibility in relation to the Spirit’s
sovereignty. The Spirit says very often, Go here, go
there, do this, do that. Then responsibility comes in to
respond, to obey, to be in subjection to the Spirit, to
be completely yielded to Him; and that is all embraced in
one principle at work all the way through. The
Spirit’s ground of sovereign activity, so far as the
church is concerned, is the ground of the cross —
the application of the principle of the cross all the
time. Unless the Lord’s children, even these
apostles, will allow a further working of the cross, the
Holy Spirit, as far as they are concerned, is unable to
go on. He must bypass them, He must take up some other
instrument.
Yes, responsibility is there, even in sovereignty. Do
not let us, in our joy of contemplating the sovereignty
of the Lord, think, Oh well, we can sit down and it does
not matter — He will do it in spite of everything.
So far as the church is concerned, and that means you and
me, there is a responsibility running alongside of the
sovereignty of the Spirit: the call for yieldedness which
is the principle of the cross, the setting aside and
putting to death of self-will, self-interest,
self-assertiveness and everything that is of self. All
that is of self must go under the power of the cross, and
the Spirit goes on (and only goes on, where we are
concerned) on that ground — the ground of the cross.
That is how He makes the cross work for us unto glory:
whereas those outside the church, who do not accept the
cross, find that the cross is made to work for their
undoing, their destruction. Herod knew all about the
cross, but he refused to be subject to it. He set himself
and his own interests in opposition to it, and he was
destroyed out of hand. For its enemies, the working of
the cross is death, but for us it brings to glory, by the
sovereignty of the Spirit.