Would you turn with me again to the Scripture that we have read each evening in the Gospel of John, chapter 7?
Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying,
If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.
He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.
But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believed on Him were to receive: for the Spirit was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified.
And then, if you will turn to the Old Testament, to the little prophecy of Joel, chapter 2, verse 28:
And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh;
And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
Your old men shall dream dreams,
Your young men shall see visions:
And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids
In those days will I pour out My Spirit.
Then, if you will turn back to the New Testament, to the Gospel of John, chapter 20, verse 22:
And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit.
And then in the book of Acts, Acts chapter 2, beginning at verse 1:
And when the day of Pentecost was now come, they were all together in one place.
And suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.
And there appeared unto them tongues parting asunder, like as of fire; and it sat upon each one of them.
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Verse 14:
But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and spake forth unto them, saying,
Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and give ear unto my words.
For these are not drunken, as ye suppose; seeing it is but the third hour of the day;
But this is that which hath been spoken through the prophet Joel:
And it shall be in the last days, saith God,
I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all flesh:
And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
And your young men shall see visions,
And your old men shall dream dreams:
Yea and on My servants and on My handmaidens in those days
Will I pour forth of My Spirit; and they shall prophesy.
Verse 33:
This Jesus did God raise up, whereof we all are witnesses.
Being therefore by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He hath poured forth this, which ye see and hear.
Beloved Lord, we are so thankful that we can turn to You. We praise You, Lord, that You are here. We thank You that we are shut in with You.
We praise You, Lord, that we are not asking You to support us or stand behind us. We are coming to You with open hearts and open minds, asking, “Lord, will You touch the eyes of our hearts? Will You, in some way, give us a glimpse of Yourself?”
However much we know You—or to those who hardly know You at all—Lord, let us catch a glimpse of Yourself: the kind of illumination, the kind of revelation, that will come to us by the Holy Spirit; that will create living, functioning faith in us; and bring us to the place where each one of us, Lord, becomes a soul winner, becomes a builder of the Body of Christ, becomes a lover of Yourself, and a lover of one another.
Only You can do this, Lord. We are living in days of apostasy and days of affluent lukewarmness. Lord, we think we have arrived, and You know we have not. We think, Lord, that we are clothed, and You say that we are naked. We think we are mighty people; You say we are poor, wretched, and miserable.
Lord, have mercy upon us. Be gracious to us, Lord. We are Your children; we belong to You.
We ask, O Lord, that this night You will grant that that anointing which You have so dearly won through that finished work at Calvary will be upon us, both in the speaking and in the hearing, in double portion.
Lord, we stand by faith into that anointing. We do not want human words merely; we want to hear Your voice behind the human voice. We want to be able to say that we have heard what the Spirit is saying to the churches. We want to hear You, Lord.
Grant that this may be so this night, and that obedience may be granted to us by Your grace. We ask all this in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
The little phrase that has been with me for these days, for the evening times, is found, of course, in John 7:38: “He that believeth on Me, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.”
I have said every evening that this was the last day of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles—the great day, called Hoshana Rabbah in Hebrew. It was the day of the water ritual, when the Levites carried these twelve huge flagons upon their shoulders into the Court of the Women, went up the fifteen steps leading into the Court of Israel just before the sanctuary, turned round, and poured out the water upon the fifteen steps so that it flowed down to the women’s court.
And on that great last day, Jesus stood and cried, “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.”
The tense actually is, “If any man thirst, let him keep on coming to Me and keep on drinking.” Then He said, “He that believeth on Me, from within him shall flow out rivers of living water.”
We talked about the rivers and the effect of rivers—the effect of water in the desert, how it turns everything to fertility, how it brings fruit, how it brings life. Everywhere the water comes, it is almost like a jungle where you have water in the desert, especially in tropical and subtropical areas of the world. It is a tremendous picture: rivers of living water.
We so need that the Lord shall be this in us. We need to see our relatives and our co-workers, the business life we have or the workaday life we have, touched by the Spirit of God—plucked like brands out of the burning. And this will only come when we are filled to overflowing.
We talked about the rivers and their effects, and I talked also about the little phrase, “He that believeth on Me.” It is so interesting, as I see it, that the King James translators were so faithful. They did not want to say, “He that believes in Me,” because that meant you are here and He is there, and you remain here while you believe in Him there. But that is not what the Greek says.
The Greek is a preposition of motion. It really means, “He that believes into Me,” but they felt that was too awkward. So they created a new phrase in English, which you find in all the old versions: “He that believes on Me.” It has within it the idea that you moved. You no longer stayed where you were. You committed yourself to the Lord, lock, stock, and barrel. You left your old position and followed Him.
That kind of faith—there is no other faith. Let me be very clear on this. All this idea that you can pack your head with biblical knowledge and call that faith is rubbish. It is absolute rubbish.
The devil himself is the greatest student of the Bible. It is always an amazing thing to me that he does not believe in its truth, but he does study it. And, when he needs to, he can sometimes use it, as he did with Jesus.
But it is not academic faith. I am not for one single moment speaking against memorising the Word of God, studying the Word of God, or getting to know the Word of God. But if you think that that is saving faith, you are mistaken.
Saving faith is the gift of God whereby, when you suddenly see that He is the Lamb of God who has borne away the sin of the world, you leave your position and follow Him. You are joined to Him. You believe into Him, and the position God has given you is in Christ.
We spent a whole evening on that, so I am not going to go over it again, or we will not get anywhere tonight. But I want to take another phrase in this passage: “But this spake He of the Spirit.”
“But this spake He of the Spirit.” The Lord Jesus could rightly—absolutely rightly—have said, “I am the water of life. If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believes on Me, into Me, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.”
It would have been absolutely correct, absolutely legitimate. It would have been in tone with the whole of the Bible. But He did not say it.
In John’s Gospel there are those wonderful “I am” statements of the Lord Jesus:
Why did we not have one more: “I am the water of life”? It would have been absolutely correct.
It is highly significant that the Lord Jesus did not say that. I do not know whether you are following my tortuous mind, but it would have been so correct if He had said, “I am the water of life.” Have you ever noticed why, in the record John wrote, you have that little word, but?
Why did John not just say, “He spake of the Spirit”? But he says, “But this spake He of the Spirit.” It is almost as if John said, “Of course, everyone who really knows the Lord will say that Jesus is the source of rivers of living water. But this He spake of the Spirit.”
In other words, it is almost as if the Lord Jesus was saying something of tremendous importance, and John confirmed it and underlined it. You can never know rivers of living water without an experience of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the key to those rivers of living water. For this reason, many people have no experience in this way.
We have read the prophecy of Joel, when the Spirit of God Himself said through Joel the prophet, “I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh.” Then it goes on about sons and daughters, servants, old and young. It includes everybody. It is a marvellous picture.
Of course, you have the same thing again in Isaiah 44:
For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty,
And streams upon the dry ground:
I will pour My Spirit upon thy seed,
And My blessing upon thine offspring:
And they shall spring up among the grass,
As willows by the watercourses.
These wonderful prophecies are fulfilled in the Lord Jesus. But you can never divide the Holy Spirit from the Lord Jesus, or the Lord Jesus from the Holy Spirit.
It is the work of the Holy Spirit to unveil the Lord Jesus. It is the work of the Holy Spirit alone to take of the things of the Lord Jesus, not only to declare them to you and reveal them to you, but to make them yours.
It is the Holy Spirit’s work to make your position in Christ a living reality—with impact, with fruit—so that men and women are saved as a result of it, and the house of God is built up: living stones built together.
Oh, I wish I were able, with much greater words than these, to speak of this. The person and work of the Holy Spirit is essential. It is not some luxury.
Many Christians have been so put off by people who have gone overboard on the question of the Holy Spirit. It becomes so radical and strange—in some cases, weird—that they will not touch the subject. They will not even consider the person and work of the Holy Spirit.
This grieves the Holy Spirit. This quenches the Holy Spirit. To grieve the Holy Spirit—the Greek word simply means to make Him sorrowful.
Why would the Holy Spirit be sorrowful over a child of God? Because He knows very well that once you ignore the work of the Holy Spirit, you have paralysed yourself. You are left to grow merely in knowledge. You can only be an academic Christian and an academic member of the Body of Christ.
Only when the Holy Spirit is present, ungrieved and unsorrowed, is He free—free to mould you, free to lead you, free to bring you into the treasures of the Lord Jesus, free to bring you into a deeper experience of the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus.
Without Him—the Holy Spirit—there will be no rivers of living water. The Bible is full of this picture of water, and it is always a symbol of the Holy Spirit.
Let me take you a step further in this matter. We believe in the triune God. We cannot trap Him in words, even in a creed. We believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: equal Persons, one God, three Persons.
Some people get upset on this, but the fact remains. I am now seventy-four years of age. I have studied my Bible since I was saved, when I was approaching thirteen. I will not say that I am a walking encyclopedia; I am still learning and learning and learning from the Word of God.
But I can tell you this: I have discovered in the Word of God that you cannot despise the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. You cannot make the Son less than God and more than man, and you cannot ignore, deny, or devalue the Holy Spirit.
It is not only grieving the Holy Spirit; it is quenching the Holy Spirit. It is a fearful thing to quench the Holy Spirit. That means you put the fire out.
Well, dear friends, that describes many of our assemblies. The fire has long gone out. You quench the Spirit; you have actually put out the fire of God. Now, there is a lot of strange fire. Some of it is fraudulent. But that does not mean there is not real fire.
I do not want to get into the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, because I know there is bound to be some dear believer in this place who immediately decides that they have committed the unforgivable sin.
It is funny how some people are like sticky paper—you know, the old days when we used to have those sticky papers for flies. Everything sticks on them: everything negative, everything dark, everything diseased. Some people are like that by nature, so I want to be very careful.
But I do want to point this out: you can sin against the Father and be forgiven. You can sin against the Son and be forgiven. But you cannot sin or blaspheme the Holy Spirit and be forgiven, neither in this world nor in the age to come. That is what the Book says.
There may be explanations for it, but the fact remains: if you attribute to the devil what is the work of the Holy Spirit, you are in danger. Do you not think that is a remarkable fact? Do you not think that this should be said of the third Person of the Trinity?
That should wake up every child of God. Thank God, I do not believe any true believer would ever commit the unforgivable sin. It belongs to the unsaved. But you can grieve the Holy Spirit.
It is not for nothing that the Holy Spirit is spoken of as a dove. A fire on one side, a dove on the other.
I remember at Halford House, when we were doing the upstairs room, there were a couple of doves—the stupidest creatures you have ever seen. They came in, cooed, danced up and down, and laid eggs on the rafters. They laid eggs on the mud, and, of course, the silly things pushed the eggs over every now and again.
Well, I have to be careful what I say. But have you ever noticed how doves fly away? They are very—one could almost say—nervous. You so easily grieve the Holy Spirit, and He withdraws.
It is even more terrible when we quench Him.
Let me say it again. This is the explanation why so many of our fellowships and assemblies have all the teaching, all the knowledge, and the right practice—yet no one ever gets saved.
We are a holy huddle turned in upon ourselves. The Holy Spirit has been quenched at some point.
It is not that we are not saved; it is that the whole building work has stopped. The whole work of gathering material for the building of the house of the Lord has stopped.
Dear friends, you have the Father: He is the originator of all things. You have the Son: everything is through Him, for Him, and in Him. Think about it. Everything created—things visible and things invisible—has been created through the Son and for the Son, and exists in the Son.
And the Holy Spirit has always been, if I may carefully describe Him this way, the supervisor—the manager. I do not like the word agent. I will tell you why: Christians say the Holy Spirit is the agent, and they mean He is some kind of impersonal force without personality. He is just an agent. I do not like it.
The Holy Spirit is a Person.
It is very interesting that He is the doer of all, if you understand what I mean. Do you remember how He hovered over the void and formlessness of this planet at the beginning? Whether you believe it was re-creation or creation, He hovered over it all. Through Him form came back, and design, and everything else.
When God made us in His image and after His likeness, He breathed into us the spirit of life, so that we have something the animals do not have. They have soul and body; we have spirit, soul, and body. Something eternal is in us. As the preacher says in Ecclesiastes, God has put eternity in the heart of man.
Every single thing that God has done has been through the Holy Spirit. He has been the manager, the doer, the practical supervisor of it.
Now listen carefully—if you are awake; if not, have a good sleep. Who conceived the Lord Jesus in the womb of Mary? The Holy Spirit.
Who came upon the Lord Jesus when He was thirty years of age, anointed and empowered Him to fulfil that Messianic ministry? The Holy Spirit.
Who enabled Him on the cross to offer Himself up without spot or blemish? The eternal Spirit. Who brought Jesus up from the dead? The Spirit of God.
Who created the church? Oh, would to God we could get this. Who created the church? The Holy Spirit.
When the Lord Jesus received the promise of the Holy Spirit and poured Him forth, in that moment one hundred and twenty units of a perfect congregation became one hundred and twenty members of a Body.
It was a difference of dimension. You can have a perfect congregation with sound doctrine and everything right, but it is man-made. But when the Holy Spirit comes down and unites one hundred and twenty units of a congregation into one living organism, joined to a Head at the right hand of God, you have something invincible.
It is rivers of living water. They came to Jerusalem and turned it upside down. They came to all Judea and turned it upside down. They came to Samaria and turned it upside down. Then the rivers came to the Gentiles and went through the Gentile world, right through the whole world: rivers of living water.
How do you think you are going to be raptured? Some of us—I speak to myself—are quite heavy people. How are we going to be raptured?
Have you ever thought about it? Who do you think is going to supervise the rapture? The Holy Spirit is going to absolutely supervise the whole operation. He has always done these things, right from the beginning of creation to the end. He is the One who has done it.
People tell me all kinds of things about the rapture. They do not want to leave the dog; they do not want to leave the cat; they are afraid of this and afraid of that. You just wait for the Holy Spirit. I am not saying your pets will be raptured with you, but I am sure the Holy Spirit has the whole thing under control. He knows exactly what He is doing.
The Holy Spirit, it is absolutely true, does not speak of Himself. But many Christians have taken this word and made it into a reason for ignoring the Holy Spirit.
The fact that the Holy Spirit does not speak of Himself does not mean that He is one whit less powerful or less valuable in the work of the Lord. It is not His job to speak of Himself. But if we speak against Him, everything stops. If we devalue Him, everything stops. If we dethrone Him, everything stops.
“But this spake He of the Spirit.”
Think of the believer and the work of the Holy Spirit. You would not be here if the Holy Spirit had not convicted you and convinced you.
You did not even realise, in those unsaved days of yours, that the Holy Spirit was working on you—arranging your circumstances, arranging relationships, arranging all kinds of things.
It is His job to convict of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. It is His work to create faith. Who touches the eyes of a person who has somehow never considered these things, and suddenly, in a flash, they see Jesus? They do not see everything, but they see something, and they respond. It is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Who brings to birth? The Holy Spirit. Who develops and causes you to grow? The Holy Spirit. Who sanctifies you? The Holy Spirit. Who instructs you, trains you, and disciplines you? The Holy Spirit.
I do not want to belabour the matter too much, but I think it is very important that we understand that everything from the beginning to the end is very much the work of the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus is the beginning and the end, the first and the last. He is the whole language of God when it comes to the Christian life. But it is the Holy Spirit who makes this a reality.
It is the same with the church. Once the Holy Spirit has gone, the church becomes a social club, or just religion.
What can I say more in this matter? I want you to consider what I call the twofold work of the Holy Spirit in the believer.
You know, the work of the cross is twofold. It is contained in those wonderful words in Galatians 2:20:
I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me:
And that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
You have two things there: “I have been crucified with Christ,” and “The Son of God loved me, and gave Himself for me.”
“I have been crucified with Christ.” When Christ died, you died in Him. You died with Him. When He was buried, you were buried with Him.
Well, that would be very good if it were a fact. Most of our church problems come because people are not buried. If we could get them properly buried! It is one thing to have them crucified, but then they are moaning and groaning all the time about how afflicted they are and how dreadful it is—“Oh, look at me.” But buried is something wonderful. You are out of sight.
And when He rose from the dead, you rose with Him. What a wonderful picture.
“The Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me.” There is the other side: the initial side, shall we say, of the work of the cross. He died in your place.
You could not be here, saved by the grace of God and born of the Spirit of God, unless He loved you and gave Himself for you in your place. He substituted Himself. He bore your sin. He was made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. It is wonderful.
That is one side of the cross. We sing about it in all our hymns. The other side of the cross is this: “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”
“I have been crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” Once that comes home to you as a living reality, it releases you. It frees you.
I will say more about that tomorrow, but all I want to say tonight is this: you have two sides to the work of the cross. In exactly the same way, you have a twofold work of the Holy Spirit in the believer.
One is His dwelling within, and the other is His coming upon. In other words: in and on—in or upon. Do you understand?
The interesting thing is that the mark of the new covenant is that He came to dwell within. He had always visited the saints in the Old Testament. He had used them. He had come upon them.
It is proved that some of the prophets asked the Lord, “What does this mean? What does this signify?” concerning the Spirit of Christ within them. But the Holy Spirit did not dwell within; He was not at home. Do you understand? He only visited.
The mark of the new covenant is not merely the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon us, but His indwelling of us. That is the thing that bowled over the one hundred and twenty. They could hardly believe it: the Holy Spirit has come home. He is living within us.
He has brought the Lord Jesus at the right hand of God into us. Our legal position in Christ, He is making a reality.
You can have a legal position that you are in Christ and never see His riches, never see His fullness, never see His power, never see His life. You do not experience anything of it, but you are saved. As far as God is concerned, you are in Christ.
But it is the Holy Spirit who makes that a living reality, so that you view Christ, you see Christ, you experience Christ all the time. This is the work of the Holy Spirit.
He does not do it all at once, or we would all be in mental homes. Can you imagine what it would be like if the Holy Spirit unveiled everything at once? It would blow us. We see one thing at a time.
The Holy Spirit arranges our circumstances, sometimes painful circumstances. We are at our wits’ end, and then He shows us something.
I remember one sister, a very aristocratic lady from a very well-born family in Britain and Scotland. She became ill, and the doctor said, “I am very sorry, but you are going to have to go into a mental home for a while.”
In those days, it was considered one of the most terrible things in the world to go into a mental home. You never talked about it. If someone in the family had mental problems, you never talked about it. It was a terrible shame, like a disgrace. Today, there are so many that we have to talk; we have to.
But she went into the home. As she was going in, she closed her eyes. She did not want to see anything. As she was carried into the home, she said to herself, “This is hell.”
And the Holy Spirit whispered in her ear:
Even if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there.
In that single moment, she was healed—just by that ministry of the Holy Spirit.
I could tell you story after story of people I have known, and in my own little life as well, of times when the Holy Spirit has arranged circumstances to bring us to a new place. Then suddenly we see it. Who does this? The Spirit of God.
This is tremendous. Now think for a moment: the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Did you notice that Scripture we read in John? It gives a lot of people a headache, because they cannot understand how Jesus breathed on them and said, “Receive ye the Holy Spirit,” when He was not yet actually glorified in the sense of being at the right hand of the Father.
Now, there are those who say He was glorified, and therefore it actually happened. I have a problem with it, so forgive me; I will not spend too much time on it.
My problem is very simple. If Jesus breathed on them after appearing to them and saying, “Peace be unto you,” then Thomas was not there. A few days later Thomas appears.
I would have thought that, if they had received the Holy Spirit, the one thing the Lord Jesus would say was, “Thomas, put your hand in My side. See My hands; see the nail prints; touch them. Now, Thomas, you missed something. You did not receive the Holy Spirit. Stay here. I am going to breathe on you. Receive the Holy Spirit.”
But He did not. Which makes me feel that, actually, on the day of Pentecost—on Shavuot, the full day of Pentecost—when the Holy Spirit fell, two things happened at once: He indwelt them, and He empowered them.
I may be wrong. It does not matter whether they actually received the Holy Spirit when He breathed on them. But what I want to point out is this: the indwelling of the Holy Spirit leads to the fruit of the Spirit.
The indwelling of the Holy Spirit leads to spiritual character. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit leads you to being changed into His likeness—transformation. And the indwelling of the Holy Spirit enables you to serve the Lord quietly.
Do you not think? I mean, am I being stupid? Listen again. I have this here to make a sound so you can hear—but listen.
Can you hear us at the back? I will do it again.
Can you think of anything more quiet? Have you ever heard fruit grow? No, you have never heard it. Have you ever heard character being produced? No.
When you are changed into the likeness of the Lord Jesus, is there a great big noise about it? Often it happens in the most painful circumstances. So quiet.
That is the way the Lord Jesus grows in us. That is the way the Holy Spirit takes of the life of Jesus and makes it a living thing within us: character, transformation, fruit.
But on Pentecost, listen to me: when the Holy Spirit came, there was the sound of a gale. It shook the whole place. Fire appeared, and the fire divided into one hundred and twenty flames.
In Christian tradition, you always put a saint with a circle round their head—a halo. But in Jewish tradition, you always put them with a little flame. So, in many ways, what happened there was that they were saints by position. Now the Holy Spirit had to do the work of making them saints in fact, in reality.
Everything about the coming of the Holy Spirit on that day of Pentecost was outward and public: fire, noise, tongues, prophesying. Everybody could see it. Look at them! Look at them!
Why are Christians afraid? They like the indwelling, but they do not like the empowering. What is wrong? Do you not think that is an extraordinary thing?
We need the empowering. You cannot have one half of the Holy Spirit’s work. You must have both.
Well, I think it is time to close. I do not know whether you will be talking to me again, but when the Holy Spirit comes upon you as fire, there comes clothing.
It is the fire that clothes you. It comes between you and the enemy, like the pillar of cloud and fire. When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you have equipment. You have the utensils to do the job.
When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you have gifts. When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, rivers of living water flow out of you.
Do not say that you question whether I am right on this. I am not worried what anyone says, because you have only to look at church history to see that every person God has ever used has had this experience of the Holy Spirit coming upon them. It is not just for special people; it is for every child of God.
We have to start drawing this to a close, but I always tell this story, and I will tell it again for the sake of some of the younger ones—and older ones who have heard it before.
Years and years ago, at Halford House in southern England, one Sunday I got to Halford House and went up to the library. The brothers were all there praying for the service. It was an evangelistic service.
As we bowed our heads, I said, “Oh!” The brothers wondered what had happened. I saw that I had my red slippers on.
I had walked all the way from the family home on the other side of Richmond Bridge, over the Thames. I had walked all the way there because I was so concerned about this ministry, about the message I was going to give. I walked out in my slippers—just red leather slippers—over the bridge, up the back way, into the garden of Halford House, into the house, upstairs.
Nobody had said, “What is that you have got on? Red shoes?” Well, we knew that I sometimes did strange things, but this was something!
When I said it, the brothers said, “No one will see your shoes. Do not worry about it.” But I said, “No, no, no. I cannot preach. I cannot preach. Every time any one of those godly sisters bows her head, I will say, ‘She has seen my shoes. She has seen my slippers. Fancy that, he is wearing red slippers!’”
I said, “No, I cannot do it. I would be self-conscious.” One dear brother said, “I have got my bike here. I will get on my bike, cycle straight over, and bring back your shoes.”
He got back in time. I took my slippers off, put the shoes on, and went into the meeting. When I preached, I thought only about what God had to say. I never thought about my feet once.
That is what happens when believers are not clothed with the Holy Spirit, when they are not clothed for the job God has called them to do. They are self-conscious. They are thinking about themselves. They are worried about their slippers. They have not got the right shoes on.
Do you understand? When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you do not have to bother about yourself—only about the job that God has given you.
We need to recognise that both aspects of the Holy Spirit’s work are essential: necessary, vital.
Pentecost was the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. Please listen to me once for all. I do not have any doubt about that. It was a historic act of God, an act of God in history.
But it worries me sometimes that when people say that, that is it: it happened two thousand years ago, no more. We have to enter into that pouring out.
Every time in the history of the church that a nucleus of men and women has come under the poured-out Holy Spirit, it has been like a mini-Pentecost all over again.
It does not matter whether it was Luther and Zwingli, or Calvin and others; whether it was later the Moravians; whether it was the Quakers; or whether it was the early Methodists. Wherever you look in the history of the church, when men and women have rediscovered the ministry of the Holy Spirit, they have seen the Lord Jesus.
They have fallen in love with Him, and love has filled their hearts for Him, for one another, and for a dying world. How in the world can we meet together and never think of dying men and women?
How is it possible to be near to the Lord, seemingly, and not feel His heart?
We need the ministry of the Holy Spirit. It is as simple as that. The Holy Spirit keeps our hearts tender, sensitive—like a Geiger counter, picking up everything.
Well, dear friends, we have to take our position in Christ and claim what He has won for us and poured out for us.
I am not afraid of the term baptism of the Holy Spirit. I have not used it because it confuses people. There are so many things said about it, and everyone gets into a great theological argument about what the baptism of the Spirit is.
I personally believe that it is a term for the whole work of the Holy Spirit: indwelling and empowering—His being within us, and His anointing on us, energising us.
But I still believe baptism is baptism. I do not believe in this sprinkling business that some go in for. I hope I am not upsetting people. Is this another thing we are not supposed to talk about on this platform? I do not know, but I am going to say it.
I cannot see, from the Jewish point of view, how you sprinkle people on the head in a cross, or sprinkle a few drops of water on them, and say they are baptised. I have never heard of such a thing.
Baptism is being pushed under water fully. It is very disgusting, vulgar—much more sophisticated to put a little water on the head, or even, if it is in the shape of a cross, better still. Very sophisticated, refined. To take people, put them in water, push them under it, and bring them up is so vulgar!
But the whole thing about baptism is death, burial, and resurrection. It is exactly a picture.
When it says that Jesus is the baptiser in the Holy Spirit and in fire, it means not that you are sprinkled, but that you are immersed in the Holy Spirit.
When the Holy Spirit is only dwelling within you, you can hide Him. You can trap Him. You can somehow or other cover Him up.
But when you are baptised by the Spirit, you have not got the Spirit; the Holy Spirit has got you. And that is all the difference in the world.
Then you are under the lordship of Jesus. Then you are hearing Him. Then you are following Him. And then, miracle of miracles, from within flow out rivers of living water.
How about you? Do you know that blessed ministry of the Holy Spirit?
Shall we pray?
Beloved Lord, what can we say? Only, Lord, that we are a poor people, and we are in need.
Many of us have never led another person to the Lord. Many of us cannot even take part in prayer warfare, in witnessing. O beloved Lord, we are a poor people.
Yet You have saved us by Your grace and made available to us everything we need, both individually and corporately.
Beloved Lord, touch the eyes of our hearts this night. Unveil the Lord Jesus, dear Holy Spirit. Unveil Him in all His glory, in all His power, in all His beauty, in all His grace.
Touch the eyes of our hearts and bring us to a new place with Yourself. We ask it in His name. Amen.