In the book of Acts, chapter 2, and the first verse:
And when the day of Pentecost was now come, they were all together in one place.
We are in these gatherings having our attention taken up with the crisis of Pentecost and the significance of the Holy Spirit. We continue with that this morning.
Now, when we take up the Bible, we find there are two books which are the seed-plot and plan from which many succeeding generations take their character and their explanation. They are the two books of Genesis: one in the Old Testament, which in the English Bible goes by that name; the other in the New Testament, which goes by the name of Acts.
You must remember that the writer of the second book never gave to it the title The Acts of the Apostles. To him it was simply Acts. Others have appended definitions.
In that very fact, you have the first similarity: beginnings—Genesis, the book of Acts. Both are books of the beginnings of creation: the first, the beginnings of the material creation; the second, the beginnings of the new and spiritual creation.
That is a very simple statement, one to keep in mind always, because especially this book of Acts is so often taken up in its fragments, its parts, its components, and looked at, handled, and dealt with as things in themselves.
We concentrate on the various incidents and spend a lot of time with the details of the book—the chapters and their contents, the movements and the happenings. That is right; we shall continue to do so more and more. But we shall be particularly helped if we always keep this in mind: that this whole book is a book of Genesis, as truly a book of Genesis in the new creation as the other is the book of Genesis in the material creation.
No one would take one part of the Old Testament book—I refer particularly to the first chapters—and look upon it as something in itself. We look upon all that we have there in the first two chapters of Genesis as of one piece, all making up the creation. We have to do that with the book of Acts: see that everything here belongs to this new order which has been introduced on the day of Pentecost.
Both these books have a clearly defined line—the same line. The one is in material things, but the other exactly the same line in spiritual things. The spiritual principles are the same in both books.
In the one, those principles are perhaps hidden, enshrined, embodied in temporal things, in material things, in earthly things. In the other, they are manifestly spiritual things—we might say, nakedly spiritual things. But in principle they are identical.
That is for one simple and yet profound reason: they both come from one Mind. They both emanate from a single Mind with a single purpose. There is not one purpose in the material creation and another in the new creation. Behind them both is the one thought—and one thought that I think we shall see.
Now, if you just make a summary of some of the major features of the beginning in the Old Testament, it is not difficult to make your transition to the new. That we shall do.
In the Old Testament book, you have these seven beginnings:
All those seven things are in the beginning, in the book of Genesis in the Old Testament.
In our thought, then, we pass over to the book of Acts. Here we are confronted with that first and primary fact of the Bible: unmistakable—“In the beginning God.”
“In the beginning God.” That is where the Bible begins. That is where the old creation begins: with the primary act of God.
You remember the Apostle Paul made his so rich, full statement that in Christ Jesus there is a new creation. The old things have passed away, and all things have become new. He was careful to add, “But all things are of God.” As truly in the new creation as in the old, it begins with God. It all comes out of God.
When we come to this book of Acts, we are encountering God at every point and at every time. It is God with Whom we have to do in this book.
In the days of these happenings, these many wonderful happenings, that was the thing which was being brought home more and more to everybody: the encounter with God.
We might just pause to remember that in the Old Testament statement, “In the beginning God,” the word is Elohim: the Triune God. It is the plural term for God.
You come to the book of Acts, and there is no doubt about it that you are dealing with the Triune God. They are so one and yet so distinct that sometimes you do not know which of the Trinity you are dealing with.
There is no doubt that you are dealing with God the Father here, for the book begins with the ascension of the Lord Jesus. All the teaching about that is that God raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand. The position in which you find the Lord Jesus throughout this book is the direct act of God.
And, to take the words of the writer of the Hebrew letter:
But of the Son He saith,
Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever.
It was at least the possibility that it might be so that caused Gamaliel to warn, “Let these men alone. If this thing be of God, you might be found to be fighting against God.”
We would like to think that it was not just a philosophical statement, a bit of human wisdom, but that Gamaliel was seeing, or discerning, or sensing something in this movement which was more than human.
But whether that was so or not, the fact remains—and remains—that what we have here is the encounter with God and God’s encounter with man.
On the one side, it did prove to be fighting against God. There are a few people in this record who found that that is at least a precarious thing to do. Herod, outstandingly, found that. The Lord smote him. Ananias and Sapphira discovered that. Simon the sorcerer discovered this fact.
Here it is not just God’s representative, not an apostle, not new teaching, not a new religious system, not a new cult, but God—immediately, directly.
Dear friends, we do not hurry on just to accumulate truth and material. I am sure you agree that the great need today, above all needs, is that men should encounter God in the church, encounter God in the preacher; that it should be the bringing of God into the scene and the situation—the impact of God, the Triune God.
We need to recover that sense when we meet together. For when they met together, that was their dominating consciousness. And when others came in, they fell down and said, “God is in the midst of you.”
“In the beginning God.” Out of that, everything takes its rise and its character. We are dealing with God—a very solemn thing, a very solemn thing.
Should it be less real now than it was then? Is this another dispensation? Have we moved out of the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, of the book of Acts? No, we are still in that age; we are still under that age.
But, oh, for this recovery, this restoration, of the tremendous solemnity of the personal presence of God in everything.
Of course, we believe these things, but we take so much for granted, do we not? We assume so much.
If we had the consciousness that they had of God—the presence of God, the Spirit of God—if our belief were a living belief, meaning that the thing was real to us, how much more careful we should be. We would take the warnings from the incidents of this book and walk softly before God. On the one side, there is a warning in this.
Any company of people—be they a hundred and twenty, or fewer; you do not have to have a hundred and twenty, you can have a dozen or less—any company anointed with the Holy Spirit has to be regarded as having the presence of God. God is there.
As it worked out in this book, not only in the company and the companies, but in the individual—the individuals—and they were not all apostles. That is why you dare not call this book The Acts of the Apostles, because the apostles are hardly mentioned. Only one or two of them figure in this book.
The people who do figure here in outstanding service were not apostles, but they were filled with the Holy Spirit; they were anointed. The result was that when men met them, they met God and had to reckon with God. To touch them was to touch God.
Pentecost means that, you see. Right at the beginning—it is the beginning of things—you get nowhere until this is recognized: all comes out of this, “In the beginning God.”
Let us pray earnestly for a recovery and restoration of the sense, and power, and holiness, of God in our own personal lives.
In our own personal life: “Know ye not that your bodies are a temple of God?” That is addressed to individuals. To the same people, the Apostle addressed the word to the corporate body: “Know ye not that ye are a temple of God?” That is corporate—a company in Corinth.
Now, in the Old Testament, especially at the beginning before the great apostasy, the tabernacle and the temple meant, in this respect, the presence of God. It was glorious, it was joyous, but it was terrible. It was terrible.
Now, we think about that side because it is very important, dear friends, that we have a new sense of God. But, on the other side, the presence of the Lord—in His presence is joy. There is gladness. When the Lord filled the sanctuary, the song began: “The song of the Lord.”
Well, I need not, and I am not going to, enlarge upon this first of these many features of beginnings. I will tell you quickly: everything else comes. I notice first that the primary factor in the new creation is God.
There is nothing cheap about this, nothing commonplace about God, nothing ordinary about God.
Perhaps our God is too small. Perhaps we have made Him like ourselves—and we do. We do think of the Lord as being according to our own minds.
I so often have to remind people who come to me and tell me their deplorable state. They have done this and done that, or they have failed to do this and that, and therefore they have fallen out of the favour of God and lost their salvation.
When I come to say, “What is it?” they focus it all down to some fault, some mistake, some thing. And I have to say, “Is that the size of your God? Is He no bigger than that? Is He not capable to deal with a thing like that, to handle a matter like that?”
He has been handling tens of millions of things like that all through the centuries and clearing them up. Is He so small as your one delinquency? Is that the size of your God?
Now, in many other respects, dear friends, we need to get the true dimensions of God as the background of everything. We are upset through unless He is an adequate Lord, unless He is God over all. That is what this book has at its background.
The second characteristic of the two creations is the brooding Spirit.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
That is the Old Testament statement. You come to the book of Acts. You cannot escape, if you are entering into the spirit of it, the atmosphere of it, dwelling with it—not just reading on to read a book or a story or narrative—you are quietly thinking and feeling your way from the beginning, giving time. You cannot escape feeling that in chapter 1 of this book.
There were no chapters when Luke wrote it. It just moves quietly from phase to phase in one unbroken narrative. But in what is, in our arrangement, chapter 1, there is a pause—a very pregnant pause.
There is something suspended, and something is going to happen. I think if you had been with the hundred and twenty there, that would have been the thing that you would have felt. We are in a kind of parenthesis; we are in a pause; we are holding our breath. Something is going to happen. There is something, as we would say, in the air.
It is only in the book of Acts, remember, that we know anything about the forty days after the resurrection. Although Luke wrote his Gospel and brought us to the time of the Lord’s ascension, he never said anything about forty days—plus ten. When he wrote Acts, he put that in.
A period between two periods, a parenthesis; but a waiting, an expectation, a wondering, a sense of something going to happen.
I am quite sure that is exactly what obtained in the Old Testament when, over the chaos, the Spirit brooded. It was not just negative, nebulous, and abstract. There was something of attention; there was something there with a meaning, something positive in its way. Something was going to happen.
Whether that was so or not, there is no doubt about it here: this waiting, this waiting, this having been commanded by the Lord to tarry in Jerusalem.
Waiting had a positive element in it. You see, if you are waiting for something, if you have been told it is going to happen, you might go out shopping by the way. You might take a walk around the country while you are waiting. Well, we have got to wait, you see; you are just waiting, that is all, and so you occupy the time.
But they were not like that. They were poised. They were together, it says; they were all together. They were under the government of something that was about to take place: the brooding Spirit creating this sense of suspense—if you like, even tension.
But note again the correspondence. In the Old Testament, in the first material creation, the Spirit brooded over a state of chaos—an unorder. Forgive me for creating a word; I prefer it to disorder: an unorder.
You look at everything from the moment that the Lord Jesus was crucified and died. You find something that came to chaos. All integration had been lost; things had gone to pieces. No one knew what to do, where to go, how to behave.
There was no pattern, no plan, no ability to do anything. Everybody was governed by one big question: “What does it all mean? Where is it leading?”
Well, in mind and heart they were truly in chaos. You can see it—all of us like that. No order, no system, no assurance, no certainty, no confidence; all at a loss to know what to do. The Spirit brooding over it all. So it was as this new creation was about to be brought in.
I wonder what was happening during that whole fifty days. Of course, from the Old Testament we have some indication in the types—that is, the presenting of the firstfruits to God before the harvest. We have all that. But have we got something more than that?
I trust this is not imagination. I think there is Scripture for this. There is that statement made by the writer of the Hebrew letter about the Lord Jesus. You know that letter is about Him, and particularly in its beginnings about the Son—the Son.
Having tasted death, and being made perfect through sufferings, crowned with glory and honour, there is this statement:
Whom He appointed heir of all things.
That appointment may have been made before the first creation, but it would seem to be like this: that before God came out in creative activity in the first creation, before He began what we have in that first book of the Bible and its first chapter, He had appointed His Son heir of all things—through Whom also He made the worlds.
The creation demanded and required that the Son should be in the divinely appointed place. Nothing can be done until that happens. He was the heir.
A usurper came in and stole the inheritance. But the Son came forth and cast out the usurper, and recovered the inheritance in His cross. He now takes His place—the divinely appointed place—as heir of all things. From that, the Spirit of God proceeds to secure unto Him a new creation in Christ Jesus.
What was happening during those ten days in particular? We have intimations that even during the forty days He was appearing in the presence of the Father. We will not make everything of that. During the ten days after He had gone, was He taking His place divinely appointed from all eternity? Was He being given the place at God’s right hand, which was His by right—the heir of all things?
I think that is what the Word teaches very clearly. That is what was happening. He is in His place as the heir of the whole created universe. The Spirit begins the new creation in Christ Jesus, and the rest of this book is the Spirit proceeding to give to the Son His rights in this universe.
The appointing of the heir of all things—from eternity, through redemption, now installed for ever. We will have more to say about that probably later on.
But note: so soon as the Son, the Heir, is in His place, established where Stephen saw Him—the Son of Man. One little thing: that is the only time after Jesus used that title of Himself that it is used in the New Testament, “Son of Man.”
Stephen saw the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. Paul saw Him seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
When He is there, the Heir in His place, the suspense is ended. The parenthesis is blotted out. The Spirit comes.
And what a breaking of suspense it must be, a shattering of tension. It is as though everything hanging in the universe said, “This is what we have been waiting for.”
Then we see what an abundance of Scripture rushes in: the promise of the Father, the promise made to Abraham, the promise made to David—all fulfilled on the day of Pentecost. The promise was the promise of the Spirit.
The promise made to Abraham was that upon the Gentiles might come the blessing, that we might receive the Spirit. And there it is: the suspense is broken.
A brother was saying something to us yesterday afternoon about this. It is still true; it is still true in spiritual experience.
Your life and my life may be in a state of suspense, or may have paused, or may be wanting. The Lord may be, on His side, prepared, but the Son is not in His place, and everything is in suspense.
How much is held up on this one thing: that Jesus is not yet absolutely Lord. He is Saviour, yes; but that is what we get. I am quite happy about Him being Saviour, because that is for us. Lord means what He gets. This is not always so pleasant.
Do you notice? This book is just the book of the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ. As they went down before Him, as they proclaimed Him, “Jesus Christ as Lord,” something broke. Something broke.
It is a principle, dear friends, in the spiritual life. In the individual spiritual life, the lordship of Jesus Christ is the key to so much release, so much relief.
What is true in the individual may be true in a company of the Lord’s people anywhere. In the company together, as a whole, without one of its parts standing out, resisting, rebelling, acting contrary—where there is a company with Jesus as Lord completely, you will find release.
But where it is not so, there is suspense—there is suspense. The Lord just cannot find His way, cannot go on. He is bound by this. The Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, is bound to the lordship of Jesus Christ. He is committed to that. He will not depart from it.
He will not put it aside and say, “Yes, on seven points you acknowledge it and accept it, but there are three points where you do not. On nine points, but there is one point where you do not.”
Many of you, if you did not know him, know of him. I speak of Dr. F. B. Meyer, greatly used of God, undoubtedly. Those of us who knew him personally knew the fragrance of Christ in that life.
Do you know how he came to be such a fragrant life and such a used servant? He tells his own story. Indeed, he was never tired of telling his own story, giving his own testimony, and it is on record now. I heard him tell it personally.
He said, “Up to a point in my life, as a minister, I was very earnest. I was very sincere. I gave myself with all my might to preaching and to working for God.”
“And there was a considerable amount of blessing. But I knew that it was not all well in my own heart. I knew there was something that was standing in the way of what I felt ought to be the fullness of the Spirit.”
“I longed for the fullness of the Spirit. I prayed for the fullness of the Spirit. This great craving and longing steadily brought me lower and lower, until the day came when I cast myself at the feet of the Master and said, ‘Lord, I hand up the keys of my life and put them into Your hands.’”
He said, “The Lord looked at the bunch of keys and said, ‘There is one missing—one missing.’”
He said, “I thought I was getting away with it, but the Lord—I thought that I was going to get through. And I knew about that one key in my life that I had not included, that I had kept back, that I had taken off the bunch and was holding in reserve. And the Lord knew it as well.”
“The Lord said, ‘We are not going to get any further until you bring that key.’ Oh, there is a large bunch of keys. All this you offer Me, all these things you will do for Me and be for Me; but the whole is held up for the one thing. We are not going to get through until it is a complete surrender.”
Now, I happen to know what that one key was. I am not going to mention it, because it might not be your key at all. It might just divert the point and say, “Oh, well, that is not my trouble.” But it might be something else.
But, my, let us go. He broke there, and he said, “Lord, here it is. You take it. I give it. I have nothing more in reserve.”
The blessing came into his life—wonderful blessing it was. But he got a new lease of life for twenty years, twenty years. Some of us saw the tremendous change that took place at that point, and what was afterwards—how fruitful.
Now, I am not concentrating upon a matter of an experience like that. I am simply concentrating upon the principle of the old and the new creation: it is the Heir of all things, not nine-tenths but all things, in His place.
“And whom He appointed heir of”—not this and that, a few things or most things, but all things. When that is settled, the Spirit proceeds, as He did at that time.
Jesus was not—and I may not stay with too much detail—but if you will just look into it, you will see that there were two sides to this matter. There was what took place in heaven in the exalting and enthroning of Jesus as Lord.
But, you know, there had been quite a lot of things amongst these very people—the hundred and twenty, even the twelve—that they were not prepared to let go of.
Some had said, “Lord, we have forsaken all; what shall we have?” What do we have? What are we going to get out of this? They had been inquiring for the top place in the kingdom, questing for that.
You see, there were jealousies and rivalries, and it all amounted to personal interests—personal interests, even in the kingdom of God. The lordship of Jesus had to come upon all that, come upon all this. When that was settled, the Spirit went on.
If we would take one further feature this morning—it is quite clear that we are not going to get through this morning. We are dealing with a universe; you want more than an hour or so.
The third feature in these creations is what we may call the divine fiat—the divine fiat.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
That is in the old material creation. The starting point of real activity down here is when things are right in the presence of God and the Son is in His place, in His appointment. Then, down here, things begin.
There was this divine fiat: “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”
We can leave the Old Testament. You see the correspondence to this in Acts. There is no mistaking this. The day of Pentecost was a day of revelation, a marvellous illumination.
Immediately Peter stood up with the eleven and said, “Men of Israel, be it known unto you.” That is a new movement for Peter: “Be it known unto you.”
It was the day of the beginning of a new revelation. Then you go through his discourse—his discourse. What a revelation it is! He is taking up the Old Testament.
If Peter had really seen all this before Calvary, he would never have denied his Lord. But it has broken upon him now, and he begins to use the Old Testament in an altogether new way. The Book has become alive and alight.
“These are not drunken, as ye suppose; but this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel.” This is that. That is something new to Peter. He knew Joel, but he had never seen Joel.
And he goes on with David. What a large section in that discourse there is about David—David, what David said, and what the Lord said to David—leading right up to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
David said:
Thou wilt not leave my soul unto Hades,
Neither wilt Thou give Thy Holy One to see corruption.
And Peter says, “All this is before you now fulfilled.” His Bible has leapt into light and life. God has said, “Let there be light.” The Spirit of revelation had come. His eyes were open.
How profound is his insight when he says that the things which had happened at Jerusalem were all according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.
Oh, Peter, Peter! You denied the Lord Jesus because you were afraid that you might be involved in the trouble. Peter, is it you speaking? All that which caused you the utmost consternation, made you go to the utmost limits to save yourself from being involved in it—is it you speaking, Peter?
“This was according to the foreknowledge and determinate counsel of God. This was all planned and meant long, long before it happened, in the counsels of God.”
Yes, truly, this was the day of the breaking of the light for a new creation.
Now, that is not all words, friends—not all words. Believe me, it is true; it is true in principle. It is.
There is everything in the Bible leaping into life which was a closed book; and because it was a closed book, it never lived to you, it never saved you, it never meant very much to you. But something happens—something happens.
God says, “Let there be light,” and the Bible becomes a new book—or we call it an open heaven. It lives, it lives. Many things still we do not understand, but the thing is living, and understanding is growing. There is light.
Read this discourse of Peter again. See the life that this man has got from the Bible and in the Bible. It is just wonderful, just wonderful.
That is the Spirit brooding, the Heir in His place, the divine fiat: “Let there be light,” and there was light.
The effect—the very first effect—of the Holy Spirit coming at Pentecost over this scene, in this realm, to begin with the hundred and twenty and then moving out, was to change all their sense of disorder, or unorder, and chaos into a mighty sense of purpose and plan.
They are now an integrated people. They are now a one people. I want to dwell more fully upon that sometime, but they are not all fragments, bits scattered here and there. They are not only gathered in one upper room; they are gathered now under one mighty Spirit, making them inwardly a unity.
What is it that does that? By the Spirit they have become possessed of this consciousness: “We are in a mighty movement of God, in a mighty going of God, in a mighty plan of God.”
There is meaning in life. There is meaning in things. Very simple, but there it is. You do not get anywhere until you have this strong sense that you are called according to purpose.
You never have that sense until the Holy Spirit comes in, and the Holy Spirit never comes in until Jesus is Lord. That is the sequence of things.
We are now saved from a state of disruption and disintegration and emptiness and void and meaninglessness. We are now in something—we are in something.
Oh, that every life and every young life here this morning might come under this tremendous effect of the Holy Spirit: that you become governed by a sense that God has called you for something, laid hold of you for something; that there is a meaning in things, that you are in a movement and a purpose of God.
You have got that. It is an early thing where Jesus is Lord. It is an early thing where the Holy Spirit is in procession: meaning, purpose.
Then order. I am following after the Old Testament line. After meaningfulness came into that erstwhile meaningless creation, or state, then a new order began to emerge—wonderful order, beautiful order.
What the prophet calls the ordinances of the heavens and the ordinances of the earth—beautiful order about everything, is it not? It is an order of creation.
When you get order, you always get growth. Order and growth come together.
We do know that disorder is a very paralysing thing. Disorder—well, if it means growth at all, it means the growth of more disorder and confusion and regrets. But a real divine order produces a wonderful development, increase.
So it was in the natural creation; so it is in the spiritual. Look at this so-called second chapter. Before you have gone very far, you find they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching, in fellowship, in breaking of bread, and prayers. Lovely order introduced—it goes on.
And growth, and growth. So it should be under the age of the Holy Spirit.
Fruitfulness and reproduction—surely they are characteristics of the book of Acts, are they not? Spontaneous fruitfulness and reproduction.
There is a striking absence of a lot of things from this book that men today think necessary to get results and fruit and reproduction. There is no mention of any organized campaigns, no mention of any machinery set up, no mention of any committees or boards.
No mention of all these things. It happened. It came about. Spontaneous, spontaneous reproduction.
Very beautiful, very simple, and not very costly in terms of material things. When there is expenditure, there is often only a little result. But here is—
Oh, for recovery of this! We will have to pray again, very much and earnestly, about this whole matter, and seek from the Lord whether this is right doctrine or not. I do not know, and I do not care; but let us seek from the Lord a renewed fiat from heaven, a renewed act of God.
May He bring this new creation onto the basis and ground that it was on at the beginning, and make it possible for us really and honestly and truly to say, “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.”
We must break off there—not halfway through that section, but it is enough.