Nevertheless I tell you the truth: It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send Him unto you.
And He, when He is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:
of sin, because they believe not on Me;
of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold Me no more;
of judgment, because the prince of this world hath been judged.I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the truth: for He shall not speak from Himself; but what things soever He shall hear, these shall He speak: and He shall declare unto you the things that are to come.
He shall glorify Me: for He shall take of Mine, and shall declare it unto you.
All things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine: therefore said I, that He taketh of Mine, and shall declare it unto you.
Brethren, I may say unto you freely of the patriarch David, that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us unto this day.
Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins He would set One upon his throne;
he foreseeing this spake of the resurrection of the Christ, that neither was He left unto Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption.
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.For David ascended not into the heavens: but he saith himself,
The Lord said unto my Lord,
Sit Thou on My right hand,
Till I make Thine enemies the footstool of Thy feet.Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God hath made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified.
Look therefore carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but as wise;
redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
Wherefore be ye not foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
And be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit;
speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord;
giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father;
subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.
Shall we just bow together in a word of prayer?
Lord, we just want to confess before Thee once again, as we come to Thy Word, that apart from Thee we can do nothing. Lord, we thank Thee for the anointing which is ours in the Lord Jesus, and we take that anointing for speaking and for hearing, that He may be glorified in this time.
And, Lord, all of us may be brought into something more of what Thou hast so dearly won for us through the work of our Lord Jesus. We ask it in His name. Amen.
Now, I have been speaking in these evening times about the matter of living faith—living, practical, working faith. We have now said quite a bit about this matter of living faith, and I am not going to go over that at all.
What I want to talk about this evening is living faith and the work of the Holy Spirit. Living faith and the work of the Holy Spirit: a tremendous subject, and a very controversial subject—a subject over which there is so much perplexity, so much confusion, and so much division.
And yet, the person and the work of the Holy Spirit are fundamental and essential to everything that God is seeking to do. So this matter of living faith and the Holy Spirit is not just the definition of doctrine that we want tonight. I want to talk about the relationship of living faith to the work of the Holy Spirit.
I spoke last night from a picture in the Old Testament: the promised land that was given to the covenant people of God. That land had clearly defined borders. Within it, God gave them every single thing necessary for His purpose to be fulfilled. Everything was found within that land, and outside of that land He provided nothing.
We also saw last night that although He gave that land freely to them, it was, “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto thee.” In other words, we do not just wait for the Angel of the Lord to go before and clear out all the enemies so that we never get a sight of them.
We have to go in ourselves and place our feet down upon our Jordans, our Jerichos, our Ais, the valleys, the mountains, and the Jerusalem that God wants in our life and in our life together. Until we do that, we shall never enter in and possess what is ours in the Lord Jesus.
I spoke also about the spies that went in, and the principle that the land has to be revealed. You cannot take something you are ignorant of. You cannot take something you have not seen. You cannot exercise faith unless you have seen something—an eternal fact, something of the Lord, something that is yours in Him. Then the response of faith comes in our heart.
Now, I want to speak about the Holy Spirit’s work because it is the work of the Holy Spirit to lead us into that land. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to enable us to put our feet down upon whatever situation confronts us and take it in the name of the Lord.
It is the work of the Holy Spirit to tell us whether it will be a moment and a time, or a week, or a year, or many years that we have to, as it were, put our feet down and take something—faith and patience inheriting the promises of God.
Now, without any further introduction, may I first of all underline just a little about the work of the Holy Spirit? Without the person of the Holy Spirit, there is absolutely nothing whatsoever of the Christian life—not even of the salvation of God.
It is an entirely mistaken concept that you can have forgiveness, you can know repentance, you can have conviction of sin, you can come to a knowledge of God’s saving path, without the person of the Holy Spirit.
You may not know that it was the Holy Spirit who was leading you, but from beginning to end, from the very first to the very last, the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential to every part of our salvation, Christian life, and service.
For instance, there can be no conviction of sin. That first day when it dawned on you that you were a sinner—that was the work of the Holy Spirit. The first day you became convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the living God—that was the work of the Holy Spirit.
You may not have known it. The moment that you took a step forward in faith, it was faith born in your heart by the Holy Spirit. It was He who gifted that faith to you, though you did not know it.
The first time you got a glimpse of the Lamb of God, or you got a greater glimpse of your Lord and Saviour, it was the work of the Holy Spirit. Every fresh truth that has come to you has been the Spirit of truth Himself leading you into all the truth, bit by bit, stage by stage. It was His work to do it.
You cannot be born of God. You cannot be born again. You cannot be born anew. You cannot have a second birth without the Holy Spirit. You have to be born not only of water, but born of the Spirit.
Every single part of our life is tied in to the person and work of the Holy Spirit. You cannot know anything about holiness, anything about sanctification, anything about being conformed to the image of God’s Son, because you cannot see the glory of the Lord, even as in a mirror darkly, but by the Spirit of God.
It is the Lord, the Spirit, who changes us from glory into the image of the Lord Jesus.
You cannot serve God without the Holy Spirit. The anointing of God is the work of the Holy Spirit. The power to live for God, to do the will of God, and to be positive instead of negative is the work of the Holy Spirit.
The church cannot be planted, nor born, nor can it function apart from the Holy Spirit. Now, I may be boring you, stiff, going through all this, but the fact is it needs to be said.
For you only have to mention the person of the Holy Spirit in some circles and immediately, “Oh, he’s Pentecostal.” It is amazing. You have only to open your mouth and say something about the Holy Spirit, and people immediately decide, “You must be Pentecostal.”
Worse still, you must be on the lunatic fringe of the Pentecostals. If you mention the Holy Spirit more than two or three times in any given message, you are bound, in some circles, to have people come up and say, “Are you one of them?”
Now, I do not know whatever they mean by “one of them”—whether it is charismatic, whether it is lunatic fringe, whether they mean, “Are you one of the holy rollers?” or one of those that sort of swings around, or whatever else we are supposed to do. It is an amazing thing.
I have no doubt about it: the work and person of the Holy Spirit has been terribly misrepresented. A caricature of Him has been presented to many Christians because of the excesses, the extremes, the counterfeits, and so much that is not the work of the Holy Spirit and does not originate within His person.
But just because there are things that are wrong does not for a single moment invalidate the absolute necessity of knowing in full the work of the Holy Spirit. Is there any believer who is going to be frightened to death of the person and work of the Holy Spirit just because there are things done in His name that are wrong?
Just because things that claim to be His work, which are not His work, lead you into fear? This would be a most productive and effective propaganda work of the enemy if all he has to do is so misrepresent the work and person of the Holy Spirit that thousands upon thousands of believers will shy away from anything to do with the Holy Spirit.
How can we be sons of God, led of the Spirit, if we are frightened of the Spirit? How can we be being filled with the Spirit if we are afraid all the time of any single manifestation of the Spirit, of any single coming to us of the Holy Spirit?
There can be nothing apart from the person and work of the Holy Spirit.
Now, there are two aspects to the work of the Holy Spirit: there is His indwelling, and there is His empowering.
I have no doubt that there are many different ways in which we come into an experience of the power of His indwelling and the energy of His coming upon us. But the fact remains that, for our help, it is good that we distinguish these two aspects of the work of the Holy Spirit.
No one can be born of God without the indwelling Holy Spirit. When you are born of God, the Holy Spirit comes within. He takes up His residence within. You may not know Him; you may ignore Him.
In the first years of my Christian life, I totally ignored the Holy Spirit. I had not the faintest conception that He was actually within my heart or being. I lived as if He did not exist.
The day when God revealed to me, in a period of absolute spiritual exhaustion and desperation, that the Holy Spirit was within me was life-changing. I cannot tell you how life-changing it was. It simply blew me. I actually thought I had never been saved.
That day it was as if heaven opened above me, and I felt as if I would burst. I had no idea that the person of the Holy Spirit—God the Spirit—was within this body, actually within this body.
The One who brooded upon the formless and empty waters when the world was created; the One who, all the way through the generations of mankind, has watched over the development of God’s purpose, coming upon men here and there that the purpose of God might be fulfilled; the One who brought to birth the Lord Jesus; the One who anointed the Lord Jesus when He was thirty years of age, when He went down into the River Jordan.
The One who enabled the Lord Jesus to perform all His miracles; the One who enabled the Lord Jesus to offer Himself up without spot or blemish to God on the cross; and the One who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead—He was actually within this body of mine.
It was such a shock. I had ignored Him, bypassed Him, overlooked Him, treated Him as if He was not even there. Oh, what a life-changing moment it was when the Holy Spirit revealed to me that the Holy Spirit was within.
This marvellous work of the Holy Spirit, when He comes within: it is He who brings us into union with Christ. It is He who realizes our union with Christ. It is He who takes up the things of the Lord Jesus and makes them real in us and to us. It is He who takes the truth and shows it, illuminates it to us.
What a wonderful thing it is to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
I was so glad for what our brother Stephen said this morning about the unity of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God. How thankful we ought to be for such teaching, for such a setting out in such a balanced way of this whole problem that confronts believers.
How we divide on the smallest points. How we fight each other over points of interpretation instead of holding to that unity of the Spirit.
Now, you see, as I see it—and I have never had an adequate explanation for it—on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came. He was not given in this way before. He was in the world. It is not as if He was not in creation, as if He was not in the world. He was here.
He was the One who was with the Lord Jesus. It was by the Spirit that the Lord Jesus did all His mighty works. They knew something about the work of the Holy Spirit, but He was not given. He had not come to take up His residence inside of others.
On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came. Jesus received the promise of the Father and poured forth the Holy Spirit upon that one hundred and twenty saved men and women.
Now, in that moment, two things happened to them at once: they were indwelt and empowered. Indwelt and empowered. It all happened at once. Is that not marvellous?
Not only did the Holy Spirit come within; never again did they cast lots to find out who should take the place of somebody. What an interesting thing it was, casting lots.
You know, those lots were knucklebones of goats or sheep, upon which were written certain Hebrew letters, and they used to shake them, have a word of prayer, shake them, and throw them down. Now, you laugh, but in actual fact the Urim and Thummim of Scripture in the breastplate of the high priest was very much the same.
Some rabbis believe that Urim and Thummim were two great crystal stones that were taken out and thrown down, so that by that you could find guidance. I personally prefer the other interpretation: that they glistened when God was saying yes; there was like an inner light. When they clouded, God was saying no.
Anyway, that is an aside. It may help you in guidance sometimes. I do not mean throwing lots. I mean that sometimes, how wonderful it is when we inquire of the Lord and get a marvellous sense of radiance, of sunshine, of an open heaven, of life, of light.
At other times, we have a terrible feeling of darkness, a cloud, a closed heaven, as if God is like, “Don’t. No, no, no.” Well, that may help you. But it is an interesting thing: the early church never again cast lots.
They did what was natural before the Holy Spirit came. But after the Holy Spirit came, it was the Holy Spirit who said, “Separate Me Saul and Barnabas.” It was the Holy Spirit who produced this one and that one and the other, and so on. You understand?
My point is this: on that day of Pentecost, when the promise of the Spirit was obtained by the risen, ascended, and glorified Messiah, and poured out upon that one hundred and twenty, instead of being just units in a congregation, they became members in a body, belonging one to another.
No more rivalries, no more infighting in quite the same way. They still had their differences. Later on, Peter was to say, “Our beloved brother Paul writes things it is hard to understand.” But he did call him his beloved brother.
They had arguments sometimes in public, but still they seemed to come through. Before then, it was all real fighting: “Who would be the greatest?” They were always getting mother to go up and put in a word for them, somehow or other, that they could have the best positions in the kingdom that was to come. The others got very angry about it. Why? Because they wanted the positions—that is why.
They did not like the initiative of John and James and mother in this whole affair. No, when the day of Pentecost came, all eleven stood up as one man. All the others said nothing, although they had all spoken in tongues and everyone had heard them in their own language.
It was Peter who preached that great first message, the first preaching of the gospel. It was as if Peter was their mouth. They were like a body; they were just members with Peter. They did not think, “Why should Peter have the right to speak to this great crowd? I should have the right. John said, ‘I am the beloved of the Lord. I was the one nearest to the Lord. Peter was the one who fell. He should take a back seat.’”
No, no arguing at all. They were together in it.
Now, on that day when the Holy Spirit was given in that one hundred and twenty, two things came at once: the indwelling and the empowering of the Holy Spirit.
In John 20:19-23, we have an incident recorded which I think is very, very important in connection with this matter. The disciples were behind locked doors. Thomas Didymus was not there. Suddenly, the Lord was in their midst, and He said:
Peace be unto you: as the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.
And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit:
whosesoever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them;
whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.
Some people believe that they actually received the Holy Spirit then. I find that very hard to believe, and I will tell you why. A few days later, Jesus again appeared amongst them, and this time Thomas was present.
Do you not think that the first thing the Lord Jesus would have said to Thomas was this? Thomas, when he had said, “My Lord and my God,” when Jesus had said, “Thomas, you have been doubting. Here are My hands; see the marks. Here is My side. Thrust your hand into it, if you will. Know that it is I Myself who is here.”
When Thomas said, “My Lord and my God,” Jesus did not say to him, “Now, Thomas, whilst I was with the other apostles a few days ago, I breathed on them, and you missed out. This is very important. You must now receive the Holy Spirit,” and then breathe on Thomas and say, “Receive.” No, He did not.
That leads me to understand that Jesus did that deliberately, in order that all who follow after the day of Pentecost should understand that there are two aspects to the work of the Holy Spirit. There is His indwelling, and there is His empowering. We have to understand these two things; otherwise, we get into a mess.
For it is the birthright of every single believer to know the full work of the Holy Spirit—not just a little, but the full work of the Holy Spirit.
Having said that, let me speak for a moment about the power of the Holy Spirit. There is no need, in my estimation, to say too much about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, because it is a subject that most of us understand.
We know that the Holy Spirit, coming within us, leads us into union with Christ. By the Holy Spirit, we know Christ living in us. But there is also something more, and this is all to do with service, work, and multiplication.
Since we have been talking this afternoon a little bit about work, it is good for us this evening to consider this aspect also of the Holy Spirit.
There are a whole number of symbols that are used of the person and work of the Holy Spirit: rain, dew, fire, wind, breath, the dove, and so on and so forth. There are so many. We cannot possibly consider all of these.
I want to take four aspects of the work of the Holy Spirit, and I just want to underline them with you tonight.
Now, can I just say something? If you do not like my interpretation, please do give diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit with me, and I will try to do the same with you as well.
Because people always get quite upset on anything like this, and I can only say this. Look, this is what I always say wherever I go: if you feel no further need of anything more of the work of the Holy Spirit, have a little sleep while I am speaking.
Really, it will not upset me. Just have a nice little snooze. I do not want to upset you and get you all neurotic and worked up. I would rather you just sat there and went to sleep. At least you will get some value out of this hour.
If you can cultivate the habit, which is very common amongst the Lord’s people, to sleep with your eyes open, please do so. If, out of respect to me, you would like me to think that you are in fact listening, I do not mind.
But I want to speak to those who are conscious that, in spite of knowing the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, there is something more they need.
No amount of just telling people that they have got it all will help until finally our eyes open to the fact that it is ours in the Lord Jesus and has to be entered in and possessed in the name of the Lord Jesus.
When our eyes see something in the land which is ours, we enter in and take it: living faith and the work of the Holy Spirit.
One of the first marvellous symbols is this matter of rivers. We have already touched upon this on the first evening that we had together this year. It is in John 7:37-39:
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.
That is the way we got saved. That is the way the Holy Spirit came within us. We drank of the life-giving water, and into us came the Holy Spirit.
How interesting it is that the Lord Jesus said, “He that believeth on Me.” There is living faith. “He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, from within him shall flow out rivers of living water.”
Oh, what a river can do to a desert. It can turn a desert into fertility. It can make the wilderness blossom as a rose.
We pipe down water all the way from the Sea of Galilee, all the way through Galilee, right through the Sharon Plain, right down through the lowlands, the Shephelah, into the Negev, into that great desert area all around Beersheba. There, I could take you to areas that are as green as anything in the United States, all produced by water.
One of the nice things that Anwar Sadat said to Mr. Begin was that if once we got a peace treaty signed, he would pipe water from the Nile into the Sinai. Think of it. You may live to see the Sinai blossoming like a rose with water from the Nile, if they can overcome the technical difficulties.
We are told that the desert area of Sinai is so rich that if once water were to get into that land, it would turn it into a paradise. I do not know if this is true, but what I do know is this: you have only got to get water into the desert, and it blooms and blossoms. It is amazing the amount of fruitfulness you can have in the desert.
This is the work of the Holy Spirit. He does not just want you to be a drinker. He does not just want you always to be quenching your thirst with the Spirit, just coming for a sip every now and again, or coming for a long draught—a long drink that will just quench your thirst for a day, or for an hour or two.
He wants that from within you shall flow out rivers of living water.
One of the things that has always convinced me about this work of the Holy Spirit—I do not care how many people rave and rant about some things to do with the Holy Spirit—is this: I know people who were as dry as dust. They were servants of the Lord, and it was all you could do to sit through a twenty-minute sermon.
A person said they would have dropped dead—more dead than they were—if someone had got saved. It was impossible. Then something happened, and instantly that ministry began to live. Amazing. I have seen it with my own eyes.
The ministry lived. One after another, church officers got saved, without being pulverized, without being cornered. Somehow or other, the same person in the same pulpit, with the same Bible and the same personality, had suddenly started to bring people to the Lord. What had happened?
Furthermore, you could sit and get something living. There was something. What? You do not have to tell me that the Holy Spirit came upon the man.
He may have preached conversion for years, but he did not do anything. He may have preached the truths of the gospel, but he did not do anything. But when the Holy Spirit came upon him and something broke out from within him, suddenly things began happening all over the place.
I remember once a dear, sweet missionary. She was a marvellous person. I really would highly commend her anywhere—one of the most conscientious, efficient matrons of a hospital you could ever think of. That was the problem: she was a matron, and she treated you like a matron.
You could not have fellowship with her because she was always looking down at you. She was a few years older than me, and she saw me the day I was converted. So she never thought—I could not, even if I had wanted fellowship with her, I could not fellowship with her. I was a boy. Even when I was thirty, I was a boy.
She was a very successful missionary in one way. Then one day, I shall never forget it, the bell rang. When I went to the door, there she was—but she was a different person. I cannot tell you: it was the same person, and yet it was not.
“Oh,” she said, “can you spare a few moments?” I was so taken aback, my mouth dropped open, and I said, “Why, yes, come in.”
She came and sat down, and during the first time we had fellowship, she said, “Can you pray with me about this—such and such, and such and such, and that?” She never mentioned the Holy Spirit once.
I suddenly said—I will not give away the name, just in case some people know—“So-and-so, you do not have to tell me. You have had an experience of the Holy Spirit, have you?”
“How did you guess?”
I said, “It is the difference between chalk and cheese. You do not have to tell me. Something has happened. Rivers are flowing out of you.”
I can sense the Lord for the first time in you. I know many believers in whom I never sense the Lord. They are just crabby, mean, strait-laced, straitjacketed believers. Do you know what I mean?
Many of them are neurotic, always living in a kind of egocentric type of Christianity, running around trying to get help from this, help from that, from this one, from that one, from the other.
Then the Holy Spirit comes upon them and rivers start to flow out to others. It is not, “Give me, give me, give me.” “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.”
Oh, some Christians, they will take and take and take and take, and never give a thing. Their whole Christianity, from alpha to omega, from beginning to end, is just what they can get. They treat every meeting by what they get, every speaker by what they get. Everything is judged by how they get through it.
But when the Holy Spirit comes upon the person and there is a breakthrough in living faith—“He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, from within him shall flow out rivers of living water”—it is not that person getting; they are giving, and giving, and giving, and giving, and giving again.
That is the meaning of being a true believer. It is more blessed to give than to receive.
What a tremendous thing it is when we are delivered from our egocentric, self-centred, selfish Christianity, where the whole kingdom of God revolves around us, where the whole church is there for our benefit, where every servant of the Lord is for us, until we come to the place where we are serving everybody else, where we are ministering to the Lord, where we are giving of the Lord to others: rivers of living water.
This is not for the elite. This is the birthright of every truly born-again believer. Have you come to Jesus thirsty and drunk of Him, of that life-giving Spirit? Have you been born again?
Then your salvation is incomplete unless there is a breakthrough in living faith and you go through to, “He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, from within him shall flow out rivers of living water.”
Oh, what a change would come, as I have said before, to our families, to our relatives, to all those unsaved ones in our families and amongst our relatives, if there were rivers of living water.
We would not have to corner people, buttonhole them, push pamphlets into their hands, ask them, “Are you saved?” We would not need to do it. Rivers do their own job. They get hold of the barren, infertile sand and turn it into a paradise.
In one prophecy, it speaks of a river coming out from the altar and flowing down, and it says that there will even be fishermen around the Dead Sea.
Now, of course, it may not mean anything to you, but the Dead Sea—why, there is not a single thing that can live in it. There is not a crab, a prawn, a tiny tiddler. There is not a fish in the Dead Sea. Nothing can live in the Dead Sea.
I will tell you another thing too: you could not live in it for long either. They will hoick you out. You can only go in for about half an hour at a time or you begin to feel it.
What kind of miracle could take place that there will be one day fishermen all around the Dead Sea, casting their nets, throwing in their fishing lines, and fishing out fish? It says it all comes from this river that flows down and changes every single thing around it, and changes even the deadest of seas in the whole world into something alive.
Oh, I do not know if you have got a Dead Sea which is absolutely impossible. It is all take and no give. That is the trouble with the Dead Sea, by the way. Someone once said, “It takes everything and gives nothing.” It takes all the life-giving waters of the River Jordan and destroys the whole lot because it does not give.
What a wonderful thing it would be, would it not, in your life, if you have got a Dead Sea, that somehow or other these life-giving waters should change everything and then flow on out through you to others: rivers of living water.
Life is the most wonderful thing. Life is really the most wonderful thing.
Oh, it is marvellous to know the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That is simply marvellous. When the fruit comes, how marvellous it is. You do not tie it on; it is produced from the life within. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit—how wonderful it is.
But there is also something more: not just that there should be fruit in you personally, but that you should become like a divine watershed, out of which great rivers will flow and change people all around you.
Oh, dear people, have we not sometimes done great damage even to these conferences by going around and pestering people with the news about it? “Read this, read this.” People get sort of frightened: “What kind of thing is it that goes on there?”
Someone gets hold of me saying, “Read this, hear this, do this.” Far more wonderful if a few rivers started to flow out of you. Before long, people will come to you and say, “Where did all this happen? How did it begin? Tell me!”
Rivers of living water. You cannot hide them. Maybe they begin in a very insignificant way, but when they get flowing out, everyone else knows about them. You cannot hide them for a moment.
Could you ever hide the Nile? Could you ever hide the Mississippi? Could you ever hide the Amazon? The Lord says, “From within you shall flow out rivers of living water.”
There is another, quite different but marvellous, picture of the Holy Spirit, and it is fire. I always find this very, very wonderful: fire.
Acts 2:1-4 says:
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.
Fire! Everywhere through the Bible, fire is a picture of the Holy Spirit. You remember when God attracted Moses: it was in a thorn bush, a dried-up, dead thorn bush. But it was not the dried-up, dead thorn bush that attracted Moses. It was the fire in the dried-up, dead thorn bush, and the fact that the fire went on burning and burning and the bush did not get consumed.
That was what attracted Moses. You will remember that when God spoke, there was great fire at times on Mount Sinai. You will remember, again, in other places, that it was fire when God took up the offering. It was fire that fell down and consumed the offering.
You remember Elijah’s great contest with the false prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. It was fire that fell down and consumed the whole thing. Fire is such an amazing thing.
You do not need fire, in one sense, just to be a Christian, just to be a child of God, and just even to bear fruit. But if there are going to be men and women saved through your testimony, and if other believers are going to somehow or other receive something of the Lord Jesus through you in a way that influences them toward the Lord and builds them up in the Lord, fire is a necessity.
The Holy Spirit did not come upon all that one hundred and twenty as a dove. He could have done. He did not just come upon them as a gentle breeze, a breath. He could have done.
When Jesus breathed into them in that time before those twenty days or more, He breathed. How silent that must have been. You could hardly hear that at the back.
But on the day of Pentecost, it was not only a wind that came and filled the house, but fire came. That was the symbol of the Holy Spirit on that day when He came and every single one of them was filled with the Holy Spirit.
Not only indwelt, but empowered. The symbol of their being empowered, anointed, was fire.
Fire speaks of energy. Fire speaks of light. Fire speaks of warmth. These are the things which attract other men and women in this dying world all around us. Is it not so?
When a person has power that is not just themselves, they have power to live a holy life. They have power to share the Lord with others in a natural, normal way—not an artificial way. They have power to be pure when the atmosphere in a factory, an office, or a college is not pure at all, but evil and dark.
They have power to serve the Lord. They have power to sacrifice themselves. Many Christians know they should lay down their lives, but they cannot. When the issue comes, they fight for their rights. They stand up for their rights. They would rather have a collision, a confrontation.
They know they should lay down their lives, but they have not got the power to do so. When the Holy Spirit comes as fire upon us, we are able to fall into the ground and die. We are able to lay down our lives as a sacrifice. We are able to do the will of God, however difficult. We are able to overcome that instinct of self-preservation.
Fire.
It is also light. There is something in the human heart that, if it has anything at all toward God, is drawn by light. Jesus said it: all those who are of the truth will be drawn to the light.
It is an amazing thing. Light is not a cold thing—I will come to that in just a moment—but truth makes you free. One of the saddest things I find amongst the people of God is that apparently truth has bound them.
When truth binds people, it is not truth. It is truth mentally apprehended. Every time truth is mentally apprehended—that is, understood in the soul—it binds you. You become fearful, afraid, because it puts you in a straitjacket.
But when truth really is revealed to you, it liberates you.
The truth shall make you free.
And if the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
There is something about light which will attract anyone who has the slightest desire for God. Light is not heavy. It is not dark. It is not bondage. It is the opposite.
Oh, that every one of us was filled with such fire.
I think of those marvellous hymns of Wesley:
O Thou Who camest from above,
The pure celestial fire to impart,
Kindle a sacred flame of love
On the mean altar of my heart.There let it for Thy glory burn
With inextinguishable blaze,
And trembling to its source return,
In humble prayer and fervent praise.Ready for all Thy perfect will,
My acts of faith and love repeat,
Till death Thine endless mercies seal,
And make the sacrifice complete.
Fire! Never in the history of the church has there been a single moving of the Spirit of God without fire.
Even with the phlegmatic British, it is not a temperamental matter. They were never volatile people, never rolling around all over the place, always under control, always orderly. But you take the Wesley brothers—what fire there was. Take the early Quakers—what fire there was.
Do you know that at one time two-thirds of the Quaker ministers, servants of the Lord, were in prison? What happened? They transformed the prisons from inside. One judge who hated them said, “They have made the prisons their Bible schools.”
Now, prisons in those days were not places where you could study. They were filthy, rat-infested, disease-ridden, evil places. But when two-thirds of those sons of the Lord were shut up in prison, the light, the fire, and the love that was in them transformed the prison.
The early Puritans, whom people nowadays look upon as so strait-laced and such killjoys—what fire there was in those early Puritans. Why, some of them even got over here and did a few things. There was fire in them.
They were not just little believers who had something deep within them, so hidden that hardly anybody could see it. They had a flame of fire that came into them and burned within them. They were able to become martyrs. They laid down their lives. They took the spoiling of their possessions. They were prepared to be shipped away thousands of miles from their homes rather than compromise.
Fire speaks of warmth. We all warm ourselves at fire. What would we do without fire? How it warms us. Only God knows how we need that warmth.
We Christians can become so technical, so cold. We become like civil servants. We have got the book, we go by the book, we have got the regulations, we have the concept, we have got it all; but somehow or other, we are just bureaucrats—Christian bureaucrats.
God preserve us from being Christian bureaucrats. What we need is warmth: the kind of fire that burns within us, that makes us weep for what God weeps for; that makes us cry out for what God cries out over; that gives us a spirit of travail that is like unto the travail that is in His heart.
We need that kind of warmth. We cannot work it up naturally. Only the Holy Spirit as fire.
Perfect love casteth out fear.
And fear hath torment.
How many of us suffer from fear? We know something of love. We love the Lord, do we not? But do we know anything about perfect love—full love, complete love?
This is a little poem that has always been a favourite of mine, by Amy Carmichael:
But I have seen a fair flame take
To His pure and burning heart
Mere dust of earth, to it impart
His virtue, till that dust became
Transparent loveliness of flame.O Fire of God, Thou fervent Flame,
Thy dust of earth in Thee would fall,
And so be lost beyond recall,
Transformed by Thee, its very name
Forgotten in Thine own, O Flame.
Does that not create a hunger in you? When I first read that, it sparked a hunger in me.
We do not want fire for exhibitionism. We do not want fire just to be able to exhibit ourselves or express ourselves. We want fire that attracts people to God.
We may be dried-up, dead old thorn bushes, but we want fire in the bush which will cause people to turn aside. In turning aside, out of the thorn bush, from the fire, comes the voice of God.
There is another thing that is found in the Word which speaks of the Holy Spirit, and that is fullness, or however you like to put it.
If you look at Matthew 3:11-12, the words of John the Baptist:
I indeed baptize you in water unto repentance: but He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire:
Whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly cleanse His threshing-floor; and He will gather His wheat into the garner, but the chaff He will burn up with unquenchable fire.
“He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire.” That is a very interesting thing. Whatever we may feel about the interpretation of the verse, the fact remains that John described the ministry of the Lord Jesus as a baptism in the Holy Spirit—literally, a baptism into the Holy Spirit and into fire.
When John was describing the heart of his own ministry, he said, “I baptize with water.” That was, as it were, the summing up of his whole ministry—that baptism of repentance. But he said, “He that cometh after me will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire.”
Here is the interesting thing. Whatever interpretation we have of the matter, I believe in a baptism which is immersion—not sprinkling. I believe in a baptism that is immersion.
Jesus went down into the River Jordan. If He was only going to be sprinkled, why did John the Baptist not take a jug of water from the Jordan, go up, and pour it over Him? Why did He have to go down into the river?
This experience of the Holy Spirit is to be immersed in the Holy Spirit. Now, I may be putting it very poorly, but for me, for myself, it redeems this whole matter.
People sometimes come to me and proudly tell me that they have got the Holy Spirit. I am never very impressed. I wish the Holy Spirit had got them.
There is all the difference in the world between thinking you have had an experience of the Holy Spirit, whether you call it a baptism or whatever, and going around as if you trapped the Holy Spirit, and the person of the Holy Spirit, within you.
That, to me, is not what Jesus does. It is Jesus who baptizes with. He takes you and immerses you into the person of the Holy Spirit. Well, if that is an experience, I want it. I want to know what it is to be immersed in the person of the Holy Spirit.
I do not want to feel that I trap the Holy Spirit within me, that I paralyse Him into the small context of my being and my understanding, that I bring Him into the limitations of my own experience. I want to be lost in Him, in the fathomless riches and power of His person.
I may have used this illustration before. Forgive me, those of you who remember, but if you went down to Virginia Beach here, and there you came to the Atlantic Ocean, and you took a bucket and went down into the sea and took a bucketful of the Atlantic Ocean, then turned round to me and said, “I have got the Atlantic Ocean in my bucket,” I could not argue with you.
What else have you got in your bucket? You have got the Atlantic Ocean in your bucket, but you have limited the Atlantic Ocean. You have to be correct: one small bucketful of the Atlantic Ocean.
But suppose you went down to Virginia Beach, waded out into the Atlantic, and threw that bucket as far as you could out. A wave came and half-filled it; then another wave came, and the bucket disappeared into the Atlantic. What has happened? This time the Atlantic has got the bucket.
It is one thing to try and trap the Holy Spirit within the limitations of your experience and understanding. It is altogether another thing to be immersed into the person of the Holy Spirit, so that for the first time you are truly humbled.
You become the small person you are and I am, and the Holy Spirit becomes the fathomless third Person of the Godhead.
I know that it is a mystery: the triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. How sad it is that most believers treat the Holy Spirit as an “it.”
They actually use a Scripture and say, “He shall not speak of Himself,” as if He is an “it.” It does not say He shall not speak of Himself. It says He shall not speak from Himself.
There are times when the Holy Spirit has to draw attention to Himself, but only with one aim: He wants to make the Father and the Son a living reality in your life.
But if you spurn Him, ignore Him, bypass Him, limit Him, quench Him, grieve Him, how can you expect Him to come to you?
Some people say to me, “Well, I am forty years old in the Lord, and I have never had another experience of the Holy Spirit,” and then give me a lecture upon the person of the Holy Spirit. Then I have got the answer why they have never had another experience.
It does not surprise me at all. You cannot despise the Holy Spirit, even if you do not mean to; but by your words, by your manner, you cannot despise the Holy Spirit, dear friend. There is far more than you have ever had—far, far more.
I do not care whether you have had a second blessing, baptism, whatever else. There is always more of the Lord to be experienced, always more to be explored, always more to be realized, always more to be discovered—all this land which is ours, if we could only go in and possess it.
Fullness. I think that is what this world needs, to be perfectly honest. I think we have presented such a small gospel, such a small God, and such a small Saviour that, really, I can understand that they are not very attracted.
They are going for transcendental meditation and all these other isms and its, and cults, and so on, because some of them seem to have something that attracts them, gives them something. It is not good enough to say we are in the last days and people are just like that. The trouble with us believers is that we have not got the goods.
We are saved, but we are not expressing what is ours in the Lord Jesus. It is not apparent.
All evangelism, outreach, and multiplication is in the overflow. Never forget that. It is when you are full to overflowing that people get saved, and it is the overflow that attracts them.
All I am saying is, oh, what an experience of the Holy Spirit could be yours, could be mine, in that way. Thank God for all of us who have in any way experienced the Holy Spirit in this way. He has got you.
It is only another way of speaking about the lordship of Jesus. You came to Him. You found Him a Saviour, but you did not make Him Lord. Then came a day when He had to become Lord. In that day, He got you.
Well, dear folks, I must say this: if there is such a fullness for me to be lost in, I want to be lost in it. I want to be able somehow to convey to the world that there is an infinite greatness into which I have been introduced—something so fathomless, so enormous, so magnificent in its dimensions that I cannot grasp it.
I have just seen a little, but it fills me. It blows my mind. All the little that I have seen, there is infinitely more yet for me to see. If I can convey that by my life, my being, my behaviour, my living, to others, surely somewhere someone will be attracted to the Lord.
There is one other matter I would just like to touch on before we close this evening: the relation of living faith to this matter of clothing.
When our Lord spoke in Luke 24:49, He said:
Behold, I send forth the promise of My Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city, until ye be clothed with power from on high.
The old version, the King James Version, says, “endued with power.” This is a lovely Greek word: clothed with power.
You see, when you are rightly clothed, you are unselfconscious. I know that we live in days when people dress in anything now. I mean, I do it myself, so I know what I am talking about.
But in the days when I was young, my goodness me, we had to be in tie and suit. Folks would have died if they thought I was standing up here speaking without a tie and a suit. It was not respectable. Done.
Nowadays, we are much more casual, much freer, everywhere throughout the world—and you in particular over this side. But the fact still remains: if you are wrongly clothed, you do feel inhibited.
If the Queen of England wanted me to go to Prince Charles and Lady Diana’s wedding, and I arrived in tennis shorts and a T-shirt, I think I might be a bit self-conscious. You understand what I am trying to say?
This goes to the heart of a lot of our problems as believers. Many of us could not even open our mouths to an unsaved person because we are so self-conscious.
We are not clothed. It is just as if we are naked. We feel as if, “I cannot do it. I could not do it.” We have that kind of feeling that we have got to cover ourselves somehow or other. We are not clothed properly.
When you have got the right clothing, you do not think about yourself.
What a wonderful work of the Holy Spirit: to clothe us with power. I know some people’s idea of power is that you tremble with it. You know, sort of, it makes you just so strong you tremble.
You still remember, in early days—perhaps I should not tell you this story, but it illustrates the point—we had a sister in our company who used to have boots which she always wore, summer or winter. She was an older sister, and when she used to pray, the little zipper on the boots used to go, “Click, click, click, click, click, click, click.”
It used to worry people. People used to say, “What is that funny noise every time Mrs. So-and-so prays?” I thought, “Oh, poor dear, she is old. She does not realize.”
So, very tactfully, over a cup of tea—you know, in England we do everything over a cup of tea—I said to her, “Mrs. So-and-so, do you think when you pray, unbeknown to you, your zip-up boots, they click, click, click, click? If you undid them, just did it down, I do not think it would happen.”
She said to me, “Oh, no. Never. That is the sign of power.”
Oh, dear. Some people have got this idea that the Holy Spirit comes upon you and manipulates you. He sort of opens your mouth and you say things that you do not even know what you are saying, and you cannot even remember. It is not true.
The spirit of a prophet is always subject to the prophet.
Furthermore, true inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit, never suspends our faculties. The Holy Spirit always inspires us. He comes to us; He never suspends everything. That is mediumistic. That is Christian so-called spiritism. It belongs to witchcraft, to the occult.
When the Holy Spirit comes, why, do you know what the Apostle Paul said? “I was amongst you in much weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.” My word, we would rush the man with deliverance ministry today.
We would say, “Oh, poor Paul, in much fear, in weakness, and in much trembling—the man needs deliverance. How can he possibly minister in a spirit like that? We must take him along to Brother So-and-so, who will, in the name of the Lord, deliver him from all weakness, trembling, and much fear.”
But what does the Word say? He says:
I preached to you in demonstration of the Spirit and of power;
that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
So, on the one side, weakness, much trembling, and fear; but on the other side, demonstration of the Spirit and power. That is power: death in us, life in them.
It is not the kind of power that comes in and shakes us and makes us rigid and strong in that way. We never feel strong. It is the kind of power that, in our actual weakness, is expressed through us in a way that we do the will of God in a way that we would not be able to do apart from the Holy Spirit.
Power: clothed with power from on high.
Let me tell you another story. I remember, on one occasion at Halford House, just before I was about to speak in the evening meeting, it was an evangelistic time. There were quite a few unsaved people present, and we brethren had been committing the whole time to the Lord.
As I got up and they were all going out, I looked down and said, “Oh!” They all turned to me and said, “What is wrong?” I said, “I cannot preach.” They said, “Why not?” I said, “Look.” They all looked down, and of course they started to laugh.
I said, “Well, I cannot preach. I had my red carpet slippers on.” Now, of course, here in the United States, I do not suppose it would have bothered anybody if someone had red shoes. But I could not preach with red shoes.
I thought of myself up there on the platform. I thought, all the eyes of everybody in the congregation! Someone might bow their head in prayer and actually really be praying, but as they bowed their head, I would think, “They have seen my shoes.”
It was not as if we had a pulpit behind which you could hide. We had no such thing. One dear brother said, “Where are your shoes?” I said, “Well, I must have left them at home,” which was ten minutes’ walk away, and walked all over there in my carpet slippers.
He said, “I have got a bike. I will quickly go over to your home. Where are they?” I told him where they were, and he cycled very fast. With one minute to spare, he rushed in with my shoes.
I took off my slippers, put on my shoes, and preached the gospel, and never thought of my feet once.
Now, you laugh, but I would not have been able to preach because I would have been so self-conscious about my feet. They were not clothed the right way.
It is silly, you will say. “Do not be stupid. What difference could that make to your ministry? If you have got a gift, you have got a gift. If you have got a ministry, you have got a ministry. If you have got a word from the Lord, you have got a word from the Lord. Surely having carpet slippers does not make any difference.”
Ah, that is just where you are wrong. You may have a ministry, a gift, a calling, a word from the Lord; but if you are clothed the wrong way, you are so self-conscious that every single look accuses you, every movement of anybody—you cannot speak.
That is why many of us cannot witness, why we cannot share our faith, why we cannot, in a most normal, natural way, gossip the gospel to others. We are sort of wrongly clothed, naked. We feel as if people are looking at us.
You get it? When I was clothed in the right shoes, I can honestly say I never thought once about my feet. People could have bowed their heads; they could have looked at my shoes. It would not have done anything at all. I would have gone on preaching.
I was only conscious of a message God had given me to preach and getting that message communicated.
Clothed with power from on high. How on earth can you and I ever do what God has given us to do unless it is that we are clothed with the Holy Spirit, with the power of the Holy Spirit?
Some years ago, a man came to me and said, “I do not want any gifts. I want Jesus.”
I said to him, “I am awfully glad that you want Jesus and you do not want any gifts. I once used to say that.” He looked me straight in the eye and said, “What do you mean?”
I said, “I once put Jesus on one side and gifts and equipment on the other. But I have come to see it very differently today. I do not see gifts as something in themselves. I see them as gifts of Jesus. They bring more of Jesus in. They communicate more of the Lord Jesus.”
If I suddenly had appendicitis and had to have an operation, it would be no comfort to me if a man came forward with a string of letters after his name and years at a medical college, and came to me with a tree saw and a chisel.
I would have said, “You can tell me he has got the most wonderful character in the world, that he is the most moral man in the world, that he is the most trained man in the world; but if he has not got the right equipment, I do not want him fiddling with my appendix. I do not want him cutting me open with a tree saw and using a chisel.”
I want to know that he has the right equipment for the right job.
If we see it like that, this matter of clothing makes all the difference in the world.
Living faith and the work of the Holy Spirit. Do you see? This work of the Holy Spirit is your birthright. You do not have to labour for it. You can enter in. Thank God, you can enter in.
Jesus is the One who has obtained the promise of the Father and poured forth this which you see and hear. It is for the church. It is within the church. It is within the body. It is to produce the body. It is for the building up of the body. It has all been given.
Oh, for the eyes of the heart to be opened: to see what is ours in the Lord Jesus; to see that it is Jesus who takes the Holy Spirit and you, if I may put it rather irreverently, and puts you into the Holy Spirit and into fire.
May God help you, and help me, in this matter. Shall we pray?
Lord, on this matter of the work of Thy blessed Holy Spirit, there is so much confusion, so much division, so much fear, and so much controversy.
Dear Lord, we pray that Thou wilt watch over this word, that it be not used in any way to foster any such thing. We pray, Lord, that Thou wilt bring to us something of His work in clarity.
And where there is a need in any one of our lives, we pray that we may come to the Lord Jesus, the One who alone can take us.