His face was set as a flint to go up to Jerusalem. See what that means—all that was involved in that. We know. Continue.
But He set His face as a flint. The figure is very graphic. He is committed; He is under the Spirit’s government.
When you travel by air over long distances, there is always a point which the pilot knows to be the point from which there is no turning back.
They have gone too far to turn back. It would be more fatal to turn back if anything went wrong. From that point, the only thing to do, whatever happens, is to go on—committed.
Jesus went all the way. From the day when the Spirit came upon Him, His heart had gone all the way. There was no turning back. He set His face as a flint.
I repeat: our life under the Holy Spirit’s government is a committed life, from which there ought to be no turning back.
Have you reached that point of commitment? Have you really reached that point of commitment?
As we say, all the boats burned behind, all the bridges of the past destroyed—blown up. Committed.
The Spirit is a force of mastery, subduing and controlling—a force which subdues every other force in us, every other portion. See that working out in the moment.
So the first thing—and, friends, I keep very strictly to the Scriptures, to what I see in the Scriptures—the first thing about the Holy Spirit as the wind from heaven, as seen on the Day of Pentecost, the great foundation of the dispensation which is the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, is that He takes everything into His hand and demands the place of absolute sovereignty.
Are you going to argue with the wind? No, it is futile to argue with a mighty rushing wind. It is futile to try to come to conclusions with a mighty rushing wind.
You will either be disastrously broken or gloriously broken.
It is possible to be gloriously broken. But everything of Christ comes along that line: following the Spirit.
The next thing about the wind is that the wind chooses and takes its own course.
You cannot tell the wind which way to go or to come. You cannot dictate to the wind as to what its choice should be—this or that.
The wind just chooses its own course and takes its own course.
So is everyone born of God, born of the Spirit.
The Spirit demands the right to do this with us, dear friends: to choose His course with us and to take His course with us. He demands the right to do it.
Now Peter is a very splendid example of this whole thing. In a very real sense, Peter is the embodiment of all that I am saying. It is not without significance that Peter is the foremost figure on the Day of Pentecost.
Not without significance, I said. What significance? Why, the very significance of Peter himself.
Remember the last words that the Lord said to Peter in the old regime, before the Ascension:
Simon, when thou wast young, thou girdest thyself, and wentest whither thou wouldest.
But when thou art old, another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.
Whither thou wouldest; whither thou wouldest not—naturally.
Here you have Peter presented with his own natural temperament, this mercurial man.
What a descriptive word that is. Have you ever spilt some mercury on the ground and tried to pick it up again, get it together? Why, you have to go after it in all directions; and when you think you have got it, you have not.
That is Peter, is it not? Simon—very descriptive.
The old Simon: his temperament, his natural makeup and constitution and disposition, darting about all the time, frustrated in one way, often another.
So, “wentest whither thou wouldest.” The Lord had got Peter well, son of John: “Whither thou wouldest.” You dictated your own course. You chose your own way. You followed your own likes and dislikes and preferences. You were the sovereign of your own life, unless you thought of your own death.
But another shall gird thee. Another shall gird thee.
That belongs to your spiritual immaturity—all that. Your spiritual maturity is going to come out by this: another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldest not—the old Simon—which is not good.
This Spirit that will gird you will work quite contrary to your own makeup, your temperament, your disposition; make it impossible for you just to do as you like, or as you are disposed to do. Another shall gird thee.
The wind chooses its own course; it takes its own course. So is everyone.
Peter, on the Day of Pentecost, came under the mighty girding; and now the battle between old Simon and new Peter begins.
You know Acts 10. Peter is on the housetop praying. He had been fasting and praying, and he became very hungry, fell into a trance, and saw a vision. Remember the story of this sheet let down, full of unclean creatures.
And the voice said, “Arise, Peter; kill, and eat.”
Old Simon rises up and says, “Not so, Lord.”
How we mix things up, do we not? We get into that old nature. “Lord”—that word will not do. That word will not do when it is our saying, “Not so.” You cannot say, “Lord,” and at the same time say, “Not so.”
And three times this happened. Then came the vision—and Peter pondered.
Oh, you know the rest of the story, do you not? There arrived the three men from Caesarea, from Cornelius the centurion, knocking at the door. Read the story. I have not time to go through it again.
Peter was called. The Lord said, “Go with them.” The Spirit said, “Go with them.” The Spirit said, “Go with them.”
There is a headache for Simon. And he was girded, and he went into the house of a Gentile, into the company of Gentiles—unclean beasts according to Jewish ritual.
According—mark you; you have heard me say this before—to the Scriptures of the Old Testament. He had the Scriptures on his side, as he thought.
Standing upon his interpretation of Scripture, they were supporting him; but the Spirit was doing something which appeared to contradict the very Scriptures and his whole position.
I know the danger of what I am saying, but you see the point. The Holy Spirit knows what He is doing, and He demands absolute sovereignty in this matter.
For it is not even our interpretation of the Scriptures that is final; it is the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of the Scriptures. Very often, as we go on with the Lord, we come to the place—yes, repeatedly in our lives—where we have to say, “I have got to make an adjustment over that.”
“I believed very strongly this and that about that, but I have got to adjust. The Lord has made a demand that I change my position over there.”
Some years ago, a retired army colonel, a friend of mine, had written books and books and books on a certain prophetical subject. They were published, well known, and read everywhere. He said to me, “You know, I have got to recall the whole lot. The real light that the Lord has shown me upon this matter makes it necessary for me to change my whole position—my whole life position—over this matter.”
Be honest. He was honest.
But there is no doubt about it: the Holy Spirit had taken over this matter of his mental interpretation of Scripture. There is all the difference between a mental interpretation and a spiritual revelation.
Well, here is Peter in the house of Cornelius, and this wonderful story. What was Peter doing, really—or the old Simon going in this manner?
Listen: he was making Christ much smaller than He really is. And if there is one thing that the Holy Spirit is against, He is against that—He is against that.
Israel: the elect, the spiritual aristocracy. The Gentiles: the dogs, the unclean beasts. Israel.
The Spirit is saying to Peter, very emphatically, “Jesus Christ is a much bigger Christ than ever you have seen, Peter. You have to adjust to that.”
If there is one thing that the Holy Spirit is against, it is exclusivism. Make no mistake about it. Exclusivism makes Christ smaller than He is.
That is the tragedy of Israel. Children? Yes. Elect? Yes. Given the oracles? Yes. All that. But what for? Why?
For the sake of the nations: a testimony of God in the midst of the nations, that the nations might see and believe and turn to the Lord. That is the horizon of God for Israel.
Oh, Jonah—Jonah is really an example of this. “Go to Nineveh, that great, that mighty city.” You know the story of Jonah.
But Jonah represents the traditional position of Israel: exclusive, shut up within themselves. “We are the people, and no others.”
“We are the children. We are the elect. We have received the light. We have got the truth.” But why? Why?
Not for ourselves. Not to make us something in ourselves. Not to draw round us a fence, shutting out all others, but for the sake of all others. For the sake of all others—that is all.
This is our last deposition, dear friends, for this whole dispensation. These two thousand years of Israel’s tragic, so tragic history, issue in making God’s Son less than He really is.
Oh, what Christ is! What God made Him to be to Israel and to the world!
See, it is in this very chapter that we have the most familiar words of all: “For God so loved the world … whosoever.”
You have got to be born from above—out of this exclusivism, out of this narrow traditionalism, out of this fixed and set position of yours—born right out into the greatness of God’s all-comprehending purpose in His Son.
How great Christ is!
Oh, may we be saved from having a smaller Christ than God means us to have.
There is no danger in that. The Holy Spirit can look after that.
So my point is that the Holy Spirit, in this tenth chapter of Acts, is just saying this: “I am not having any of your circumscribing of Christ on any ground whatsoever.”
You may quote me a little Leviticus 11 if you like. I am not having it. “What God hath cleansed, call not thou unclean.” The Cross has dealt with all that ceremonial uncleanness and opened up the vast vistas of grace for all men.
Third occasion with Peter, you see: first, his temperament; then, his spiritual bigotry.
In Acts 15, Paul refers to what happened in his letter to the Galatians. So what happened?
Peter is called to account for this by the elders at Jerusalem. He is, as we say, on the carpet, on the spot, having to answer for this unusual, unheard-of behavior.
Now, you know, Peter sums it all up in this: “Who was I? Who was I to resist God?” That is what it is to be mastered. “Who was I to resist God?”
Then something else happened.
Peter is at Antioch. Gentiles at Antioch have been saved, gathered; the Spirit has done something with the Gentiles. Peter is down there rejoicing. He is following up Caesarea, the house of Cornelius, happily following it up with the Gentiles at Antioch, eating and drinking.
All right. Well, certain men came down from Jerusalem—from James and certain others came down from Jerusalem.
And when they had come down, Peter withdrew. Peter withdrew. Peter withdrew.
There is a withdrawing. This is a dangerous offence to the Holy Spirit, violating what He is doing. And Paul recognized the significance of this, and he said, “I withstood him to the face, for his dissimulation.” I withstood him to the face.
Simon is having a bad time, is he not, under this aegis of the Holy Spirit? He really is.
What has happened now? Here something has come up in the old Simon: bondage to men.
“What will the brethren say? What will the leaders say? What will the chief men say? I must—I must be careful because of what they will say, and perhaps what they will do.”
And that kind of thing is set over against the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit—two things in collision. You cannot have this.
I am so glad that Peter must have got the better of this. He could not have written his two letters if he had not.
And he could not have said later on about this man who withstood him to the face and said, “Peter, you stand condemned. Before God you stand condemned. You are guilty of dissimulation”—later Peter wrote, “Our beloved brother Paul, in all his writings, in which there are some things difficult to understand.”
You see? But he has got further in his schooling. The Holy Spirit, who is choosing the way and taking it, is finding Peter coming into line, coming into life.
There were some, mark you, who did not come into line. “Demas hath forsaken me.” The coppersmith—I do not know that one. Even Barnabas—it is called “even Barnabas.” Even Barnabas was unthinkable: dear, beloved Barnabas, who meant so much to Paul and so much to the church at Antioch. Oh, so much! But even Barnabas was carried away.
Barnabas falls out of the New Testament. I hope I do not exaggerate—judgment, condemnation—but there are those who just get out of the way of the wind when He is blowing toward this great, full purpose of God: dissemble, withdraw.
Lord, save us.
I do not know where to finish this. The wind searches. May I finish on this? Leave the other.
The wind searches and tests everything, especially foundations and structures—what kind they are.
I have spent a great deal of my life in Scotland—my childhood, and later. There is a common sight in Scotland. We had there many pine trees, pine forests, and pine trees growing along the roadside.
It is a land in which the wind blows sometimes. And after any of our great windstorms, you can go along and see these pine trees uprooted, themselves lying level, with their upturned roots in the air.
Before, people had remarked and said very nice things about what fine trees they were. What a magnificent sight!
And the wind blew. And the wind blew—testing the depth of their roots, testing their power of endurance, testing stamina.
And down went so many of these formerly admired, praiseworthy trees. Down they went, crashing to earth.
The wind blowing. The Holy Spirit just does that, you know, friends. That is what He is doing.
The Holy Spirit is going to blow on us all.
Christian experience is just this: under the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit, our foundations are going to be tested. Make no mistake about it—they are going to be tested.
And our structure, our beauty, our stamina, our endurance.
Is the wind blowing today? My, it is blowing. Look at all the testing. See all the tragic crashing to the ground.
You know, dear friends, that Christianity as we now know it is going to be blown to bits—absolutely to bits—and there is going to be nothing of it left: Christianity as we know it.
“All these things must be dissolved,” says Peter. The whole cosmic order, and this whole Christian system as we know it, is going.
You say, “That is a terrible statement. On what authority?”
Well, politically, I have lived through two world wars. What have we seen? Alone, there is a simple and very small example of what I am saying.
We have seen many and many a place with a great Christian tradition, something that has stood for something, simply crushed to the ground—hardly one stone left upon another.
Everywhere: destruction. No preference, no favouritism.
And God—where is God? Where is God?
“Oh, if anything ought to be preserved, that ought to be preserved. God ought to protect it, then.” No. The answer is no.
Why? Because God is not interested in things. God is only interested in one matter.
The Holy Spirit is only concerned about one matter, dear friends—one matter only.
And history bears this out. The Holy Spirit is only concerned with Christ—with Christ; with what is Christ; what is of Christ; with the measure of Christ.
The Holy Spirit has only One in His vision: that is Christ. And He is always saying, “How much, really, of the eternal fullness of Christ is here?”
And so you can go into Asia Minor today and find no trace of the churches in Asia. You can go to Galatia. You can go to all these places of the New Testament, but nothing today as places.
Now the first three chapters of the book of Revelation just bear down upon that. Note: the churches. There are seven churches in Asia. “What the Spirit says, what the Spirit says, what the Spirit says”—seven times: what the Spirit says.
The wind is blowing upon them just to discover, not whether they have tradition, not this and that and something else, not whether they have a building and a place of meeting, or a technique of worship, or a kind of New Testament order, but whether they have that—or not—how much of the risen, living, exalted Christ is here.
And the Holy Spirit will go as far as to say, “Repent, or I will remove thy lampstand out of its place,” because the light has gone.
What is the good of a lampstand if there is no light? Mere ornament—the Holy Spirit is not interested.
You see the point? The light is Christ—the measure of Christ. It is Christ, Christ.
What the Spirit says is not, “This and that. I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience.” Oh, that is very good.