Would you turn with me to a number of passages in the New Testament: the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 3, verses 11 and 12.
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.
Then in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 1, verses 7 and 8:
There cometh after me He that is mightier than I,
the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.
I baptized you in water;
but He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit.
In the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 3, verses 15 through 17:
And as the people were in expectation,
and all men reasoned in their hearts concerning John, whether haply he were the Christ;
John answered, saying unto them all,
I indeed baptize you with water;
but there cometh He that is mightier than I,
the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose:
He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire:
Whose fan is in His hand, thoroughly to cleanse His threshing-floor,
and to gather the wheat into His garner;
but the chaff He will burn up with unquenchable fire.
The Gospel of John, chapter 1, from verse 29:
On the morrow John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith,
Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world!
This is He of whom I said, After me cometh a man who is become before me: for He was before me.
And I knew Him not; but that He should be made manifest to Israel, for this cause came I baptizing in water.
And John bare witness, saying, I have beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven; and it abode upon Him.
And I knew Him not: but He that sent me to baptize in water, He said unto me,
Upon whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and abiding upon Him, the same is He that baptizeth in the Holy Spirit.
And I have seen, and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.
Lastly, in Acts, chapter 1, verses 4 and 5:
And, being assembled together with them, He charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, said He, ye heard from Me:
For John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit not many days hence.
Shall we just bow together in a word of prayer?
Heavenly Father, we just want to bow here in Your presence this morning, and we want very simply to recognize that apart from You we can do nothing. Whether it is in speaking or hearing, Lord, we can do nothing. We can speak words, we can hear words, but, Lord, if something of Your purpose for this time is to be fulfilled, then You need, Lord, to be here Yourself.
You need, by Your Spirit, to reveal things and illuminate things, and so anoint both speaking and hearing that Your glorious purpose, Your specific purpose for a time such as this, may be fulfilled. Then, Lord, we commit ourselves to You by faith, taking that anointing which is ours, for the speaker and for every hearer, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
The burden I have had has been centred in these words in 2 Corinthians 11:2:
I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy:
for I espoused you to one husband,
that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ.
But I fear, lest by any means,
as the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness,
your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity and the purity that is toward Christ.
In these last days, in this last phase of world history, you and I need to get clear that the end of all our walk with the Lord, of all the dealings of the Lord with us, of all service and work, and of church life, is that you and I should be presented a pure virgin to Christ.
That we should not have our minds corrupted from the singleness which is toward Him, the unaffectedness which is toward Him; that our minds should not be corrupted from the purity which is toward Him.
Yesterday morning, I spoke about the need of knowing the Lord Jesus as our covering. That is foundational, not kindergarten. It is foundational. If you and I have not had revealed to us something of the nature of the atoning work of the Lord Jesus, something of the nature of justification, something of what it means for Him who knew no sin to be made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him, we shall be compromised, contaminated, tripped up by the enemy somewhere along the way, and certainly in these last days.
For this accuser of the brethren will have come down unto the earth, knowing his time is short, and will do such an insidious and powerful work that there will not be two brothers left together. There will not be a fellowship in harmony with each other in the Lord. There will be even clouds between believers and their Lord.
We need to know the Lord Jesus as our covering. They overcame the accuser of the brethren by the blood of the Lamb.
Now, this morning, I would very much like to have talked about Christ as the life and the power, but I feel that, in some ways, the word has already said quite a bit about that. I find it a tremendous joy and a tremendous discovery to find that the Lord Jesus is the life.
There is no such thing as the Christian life. You know, this Christian life is so complex. I do not know if you have discovered that yet, but it is the most complex thing in the whole world. Trying to be holy in an unholy world is a dreadful business, and trying to turn the other cheek in a world that is continually hitting you is no easy matter.
It is bad enough amongst believers when they are hitting you. You must have all discovered that.
We all talk so much about the Christian life. The interesting thing is, the Christian life is not mentioned once in the whole Bible. You would almost think it does not exist. But what we call the Christian life, the New Testament calls eternal life. That is the life of Jesus, and that life of Jesus is communicated, is transmitted to us, in the person of the Holy Spirit.
You do not have to try and tie apples on an apple tree to make it fruitful. It may look pretty, but it is a dreadful job. Can you imagine it? Going down to the supermarket, buying so many pounds of apples, then going out to the orchard, getting a ladder, going up in it, and tying each apple on the branches.
Now, my dear friends, for a few days it will look good, which is what happens with many people in these kinds of conferences. The apples are tied on the branches. They look pretty good, but within a week the apples are withered.
They never came out of the life in the apple tree. They never went through the organic process. They do not actually belong to that particular apple tree; they have been borrowed from another. That is what it means to be affected.
That is why we need the simplicity of Christ: to get back to the simple, simple truth that Jesus is the life. If you and I could only see that Jesus is the life, and that He is within you and me, and if He is only free, and we will obey the law of life, then we will have fruit. There will be fruit, there will be character, there will be fulfilment.
Our problem is to get the life flowing. That is what the word has, I think, put its finger on by the Spirit of God. There is no way to know the release of the life of the Lord Jesus in a human being apart from the work of the cross. In other words, you must know death so that His life may flow through you, and that is our problem.
The thought of dying, somehow, for many of us, is not part of the gospel. That He should die for us, that is the gospel. But that we should die with Him, that is not the gospel.
We are here to get what we can: life, salvation, an eternal position in the kingdom of God, peace, joy, power—anything. We do not want to die.
Now, when we cannot come to that simple falling into the ground and dying, we may know all the theory, but the life of Jesus is trapped within us. It will never be expressed. It will never, never grow. It will never bear fruit. It is there, but it is trapped within you.
Or again, think of Jesus as the power. What a need there is for power—power to pray. Some people are so flattened they cannot even open their mouths in a time of prayer, and when they do, you cannot hear them. It is so feeble, no power.
When you have got no power, you become self-conscious. All you are conscious of is your inadequacy, your inability, your unworthiness, everything that you are. But when there is power, you can forget yourself and get on with the job.
You can minister to the Lord. You can minister to your brothers and sisters. You can witness spontaneously, not murder in a dreadful corner some poor soul and ask them if they have seen the light, or whether they are saved.
What a disaster this has been, just because God used D. L. Moody so greatly in this way. Many believers who have followed have not been so singularly blessed in following the technique of D. L. Moody. People come up, shove a tract in their hand, tell them that they are going to hell and that they need the Lord. That is not what I mean by witnessing.
I mean that when people begin to note that there is a fire in you, and there is a life in you, and there is a love in you, and there is a peace in you, and there is a joy in you, they begin to ask. You have an answer. You are able to share the Lord in the most spontaneous, unaffected, normal way.
Such power. Jesus is the power. It is the power of His resurrection. And does not that give the clue straight away? If we are to know the power of His resurrection, we have to know something of what it is to die with Him.
In other words, there is no power unless you and I are broken, unless you and I become weak. Then the power of the Lord Jesus tabernacles upon us.
But that is not my subject this morning. To know Christ as the life and the power, that is tremendous. What I want to talk about this morning is to know Christ as the Baptizer in the Spirit.
Now, I am very well aware that this is the most controversial subject. But I have to point out to you that at the beginning of all four Gospels and the beginning of the book of Acts, we have this fact: “He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire.”
You cannot get away from it. It must be not only vitally important, but deeply significant. It is not as if one of the Gospels mentions it and none of the others do. Every one of the four Gospels—the three Synoptic Gospels and John, which is the interpretation—every one of them mentions this statement of John the Baptist:
I indeed baptize you in water;
but He that cometh after me,
He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire.
When we come to the book of Acts, which is another foundational book as far as the Gospel goes, we discover right at the beginning the words of the Lord Jesus:
John indeed baptized with water;
but ye shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit not many days hence.
Now, I want just to point out two or three things. I know that there is colossal controversy over this subject, and I know that it would be much easier not to use the words “baptism of the Spirit.” In this way we worm out of it, and everybody is happy.
But the fact is, the Book speaks of this baptism in the Spirit, and therefore it is best for us to face squarely what it is all about.
Now, it is interesting that John the Baptist described the heart of his ministry. I do not suppose there is a single one of us who has any question about the calling of John the Baptist. We know that he was called by God. He was a man sent by God. He was a fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophetic word: “A voice crying in the wilderness, Make ready the way of the Lord.”
And this John the Baptist described his ministry as, “I indeed baptize you in water,” as if that was the summing up of his ministry: his call to repentance, his call to turn away from an old life, from an old way. As if, in this baptism, it was a preparation for the coming kingdom. He summed it up in his baptism.
When certain people tried to misuse and abuse his ministry—certain Sadducees and Pharisees—he said to them:
Who warned you, ye offspring of vipers, to flee from the wrath to come?
It was not just a little ritual which he did not mind administering to anybody and everybody. John, as far as was in him, wanted to be certain that everyone who was baptized understood, at least a little, of what they were doing.
He described and summed up the heart of his ministry as this baptism in water. If you had lived in those days, then you would have been identified with the purpose of God at that particular time in history by being baptized with John’s baptism. That is how you would have identified yourself with the purpose of God, with the phase of the purpose of God in which the people of God were living.
And this John the Baptist describes the heart of the Messiah’s ministry as: “He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire.”
Now, I just find it impossible to relegate that to some sort of theological shelf and say, “Oh well, do not put too much on that. There are much more important things than that. You mean rolling on the floor and acting in an inordinate manner, and all that kind of thing. That is what you are talking about.”
I am not going to repudiate believers who have had such an exotic experience, but I do not actually catch the heart, I think.
But what an extraordinary thing: John the Baptist described the heart of his ministry as baptism in water, and the heart of the Lord Jesus’ ministry as baptism in the Spirit and in fire. And yet it is treated as only an exotic experience for elite people, something that is not necessary, only for perhaps one segment of the family of God.
Surely we cannot ignore or devalue this whole matter without doing serious damage to our own life in the Lord, to the service of God in which we are involved, and to the church life that you and I long to see.
Now, I say there is colossal controversy over this matter, but I think we can clear the ground of certain misapprehensions. First of all, there is nothing at all possible without the person of the Holy Spirit. Nothing at all possible without the person of the Holy Spirit.
For instance, there is no such thing as repentance and conviction of sin without the person of the Holy Spirit. If you look in John 16:7-8, Jesus said:
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.
In other words, there is not a single person who has repented from their sin, who has been convicted of their lost state, who has been convicted of their destiny for hell, but by the Holy Spirit.
Nor has there ever been a single believer who has become convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. They may not know it. They may never have heard of the Holy Spirit. But it is the Holy Spirit who takes the salvation of the Lord Jesus, who is at the right hand of God the Father, and makes it a living reality to a human being.
Who opened your eyes? Who caused you first to behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world? The person of the Holy Spirit. You did not even know Him, but it was He who graciously came to you and began to lead you, pricking your conscience, convicting you of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, and leading you into a vision, however dim, of the Lord Jesus as the Lamb of God, the Saviour of the world.
But again, no one can be born again of God apart from the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, “You must be born of water and of the Spirit.” There is no way that anyone can be born again unto a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead apart from the person of the Holy Spirit.
There is no way. You may not even realize it, but you are born of God. You are in the family of God. The Spirit of God is shed abroad in your heart, crying, “Abba, Father.” For the first time, you have a relationship with God. He is Father to you, not just some awesome God. He is Father.
Or again, there can be no life and power without the Holy Spirit. In Romans 8:6 we read:
For the mind of the flesh is death;
but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace.
And in Acts 1:8:
Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you:
and ye shall be My witnesses.
There is no way that you can know the life of the Lord Jesus apart from the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus, if I may put it very poorly and almost irreverently, is the located person of the Godhead. You understand what I am trying to say? What I am saying is this: the Lord Jesus is at the right hand of God the Father.
How then are you in Christ? How then can you know the resurrection life of Christ? Only by the Spirit. There is no other way. For the Holy Spirit is everywhere at one time. He has no body. Do you understand what I mean?
Well, I am very well aware that whenever we touch the triunity, we are touching essential mystery, and I am not at all sure that any one of us—and I in particular—would ever be able to interpret or adequately explain the Godhead.
But what I do know is that nowhere in the New Testament does it say that Jesus is everywhere. He is at the right hand of the Majesty on high, from whence He shall come. As God, He is everywhere, but He even bears in His hands, His side, and His feet the marks of His passion: the God-man, the Word made flesh, who had a mother.
But the Spirit of the Lord, He is everywhere, and He makes the Lord Jesus, at the right hand of the Majesty on high, a living reality in any human being. He transmits the power of the Lord Jesus. He is the One who opens the eyes to the fathomless fullness of the Lord Jesus. He is the One who leads us into everything that the Lord Jesus is: the Spirit of truth, who leads us into all truth; or, I like it another way, the Spirit of reality, who leads us into all reality.
Or again, there can be no fruit without the person of the Holy Spirit. For it says in Galatians 5:22, “The fruit of the Spirit.” There can be no fruit.
That is why so many Christian lives are religious. They are not spiritual; they are not Christian lives, they are religious lives. They are saved, but there is no such thing as organic fruit being produced by the indwelling Christ through the person of the Holy Spirit.
I hope I am getting this over to you, but the Holy Spirit is the ignored person of the Trinity. He is an influence, a power, an agency, instead of God the Spirit. You know, the discovery of the person of the Holy Spirit is as tremendous as the discovery of the person of Christ.
Now, my dear friends, let me just go on and get this right over to you: there is no such thing as any experience of the cross apart from the Holy Spirit. Oh, would to God this could burn into every heart.
I have been in so many places, especially in Europe, where I have seen people who have got this teaching of the cross, and they are bound, crabbed, narrow, straight-laced, without any life or power at all. Yet they have got the whole teaching of the cross up here.
My dear friends, you can apprehend the teaching of the cross mentally. You can make it an affliction of the flesh. You can make it a will-worship: “I am going to suffer. I am going to suffer.”
My dear friend, if you have ever suffered, or know anything of the fellowship of the sufferings of the Lord, you will never again say, “I am going to suffer.” It is something inescapable, but you will not ask for it. You know that it is something that lies in the way: through many tribulations we enter into the kingdom of God.
Now, my dear friends, we can make this whole matter of the cross a heaviness, a darkness, a sombreness, a seriousness which is religion. It is what the Hindus do. Even the Buddhists are a bit more light-hearted.
It is a matter of religion. I think of those poor saints—I may have to meet some of them one day—but when I think of some of those poor saints in the early ages of the church who sat up on poles in the desert, I cannot help thinking they had to be Greek. That is not anything unkind to anybody here who is Greek, but it is a mentality that you must do affliction to the body in order to save the spirit.
They sat up on top of poles all day and all night, and had their food put out on another pole—very little of it, of course. Or I think of those who have walked in the wadis and valleys around Jerusalem, in the wilderness of Judea, where to this day you can see some of the caves that are walled up. There are still some who have never been out of those walled-up caves. A little bit of food is put through a little hole to them. They spend their lives, they say, in prayer and devotion.
Now, God forbid that I should devalue them if it really is of God, but I can only say the lamas do it in Tibet.
We can make this matter of the cross something like that, but the Book says:
If by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
The whole work of the cross is not simply to leave us in some kind of sombre sobriety, a kind of heavy bondage. The whole work of the cross is to move us into resurrection, into fruit, into life, into power—something swallowed up by the life.
The real work of the cross is impossible without the Holy Spirit. I have noticed that those who really have an experience of the cross—and thank God there are many who really have such a real experience—you see the beauty of the Lord upon their very faces. You see a radiant shining out of their inner man. You see, when you touch them, something of the Lord Jesus; there is a fragrance left by their presence.
Well, take church life. There can be no true church life without the person of the Holy Spirit. All it is otherwise is a collection of people with an understanding of the nature of the church, as denominational as anything else.
They make the very truth of the church a thing and divide it from others, so that it becomes in the end just like everything else. They are built on baptism; someone else is built on tongues; somebody else is built on a second experience of sanctification; somebody else is built on something else, gifts of an end; and we are built on the truth of the church. But that is not the church.
The church is inclusive. Everyone born of God is in the church. We belong to them and they to us. We are not partakers of their sins, but that is all the difference between an inclusive spirit and an exclusive spirit.
When the Holy Spirit begins to bring believers together and relate them one to another, so that they begin to flow together, so that they begin to maintain the unity of the Spirit together, so that they begin to function by the power of the Holy Spirit, then the church is built and the testimony of Jesus is held.
Otherwise, we are forever talking about truth and never experiencing, in reality, church life. Oh, we need the Holy Spirit.
And then I do not think I need to say that gifts and equipment for service are impossible without the Holy Spirit. There are some strange notions. I was once standing in a queue for lunch—and this is where, generally speaking, most people get hold of me for theological questions, that or when we are eating.
This brother said to me, putting his arm on my back, “Isn’t it wonderful to know Jesus?”
“Oh,” I said, “yes, it is.”
He was a dear old brother. And then he said, “You know, what do you think about the gifts of the Spirit?”
Trying to think of my meal, I looked at him straight in the eyes and said, “I believe there are such things as gifts of the Spirit.”
“Oh, brother,” he said, “Jesus is enough for me.”
“Oh,” I said, “well, He is enough for me. But I do not see it as you evidently do. You see the gifts of the Spirit there and Jesus here. I see the gifts of the Spirit as gifts of Jesus. Every time there is a real gift of the Spirit manifest, there is something more of Jesus deposited, because it is Jesus who has been manifested.”
He looked at me in a rather sad manner. Then I said to him, “Do you mean to tell me, if you had appendicitis and had to be rushed into hospital and operated on, and your wife came to you and said, ‘Don’t worry, dear. The man who is going to operate on you has degrees like this behind his name’—but when he came, he came with a tree saw, a chisel, a hacksaw, and some garden shears—would you be happy?”
You see, because this man has character, this man has maturity, that is all that matters. My dear friend, I said, I think if your appendix were coming out, you would like him to have character, maturity, and the right equipment.
How can you and I do the job that God has given us to do if we do not have the right gifts and the right equipment? It is a monstrous idea. It is an error. What we need are the gifts and equipment of the Holy Spirit, and we can only have them with the Holy Spirit. Any gift or any equipment that is not through the work and person of the Holy Spirit is counterfeit and dangerous.
Nobody can call Jesus Lord except by the Holy Spirit. That is what it says in 1 Corinthians 12:3:
No man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit.
Now, my dear friends, in the Greek it is very interesting. This is how it puts it: “No man can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit.”
Try. I do not mean—I know that those who are really afflicted by the enemy are not even able to call Jesus Lord. I know that. But I am not talking about even things that are perhaps a little more superficial.
Have you ever found a single believer, or a single company of believers, that is really under the lordship of Jesus—hearing the will of God, hearing the word of God, and obeying—except in the Holy Spirit? There is no way to do it.
Everybody puts their own little heads together, and either with a consensus of opinion or from one man’s opinion they do what they think is right. They say Jesus is Lord. He is not Lord.
People go off and say the Lord has told them to do this. He has not had anything to do with it at all. They just want to do their own thing. When later they discover it is wrong, they say, “Oh, the Lord has shown me something else,” and off they go, as if the Lord does not know His own mind. First He takes them there, then back, then forward, then over here, then that. It is ridiculous, but it is all the Lord.
It makes a mockery of the lordship of Jesus. There is no way to know the lordship of Jesus until, in the Holy Spirit, your spiritual ear has been opened to hear the voice of God.
My dear friend, you see, I think this matter is quite an important matter. I do not know why people are so afraid of the Holy Spirit. What is there to be afraid of in the Holy Spirit?
I have, in my little life, found the Holy Spirit to be, at one and the same time, the most gentle, the most sweet, and the most marvellous person in handling one; and at the same time, the most firm—if I may put it one way—the most obstinate, the most uncompromising person in dealing with me.
There is nothing to be afraid of as far as the Holy Spirit is concerned. He has come to take you home. If you are going to have problems with Him all the way through, you are going to make it very difficult.
He wants to change you from sinner to saint, and that is a job. He wants to conform you to the image of the Lord Jesus. Oh, the glory of it! The ugliest of us—and there are plenty of us—He wants to take those who are by nature so difficult, so ugly, so unlike Christ, and conform us to the image of God’s Son.
What in our world is wrong with us that we are so afraid of the Holy Spirit? You know, I hope this does not upset anybody, but I do not mean it in a malicious way: you can talk about Jesus as a form of escapism. You can almost talk about Jesus, and everything being in Jesus, and Jesus being everything, and in reality you do not know the life and nature and power of Jesus because we are avoiding the person of the Holy Spirit.
Only the Holy Spirit can make the life, nature, and power of Jesus a living reality both in me and in you and in us as the church.
Would you note something about this statement we find in all four Gospels: “He that baptizeth in the Holy Spirit and fire.”
Now, I do not know about you; I do not know your theological persuasion. I think I know quite a lot here, but I understand baptism as immersion. I do not think anybody with a Jewish background could understand baptism in any other way, because that is the way everybody was baptized in the time of Jesus.
I mean before Christian baptism, not even John’s baptism—what we call proselyte baptism. We have found all over Jerusalem, and at every single one of the Jewish sites uncovered in the whole of the Middle East, baptistery after baptistery after baptistery. We now see that everybody was immersed. Everybody tried to keep the truth away for religious reasons.
But now we know, and the very word in Greek means to dip. Originally, primitively, it means to dip. In fact, it is used in classical Greek of dyeing a garment.
Now, have you ever heard of someone taking a garment, and wanting to change it from yellow to deep green, and sprinkling green dye over it? Nobody has ever heard of such a thing.
Or suppose you take a piece of yellow cloth and say, “Well, I will not sprinkle, but I will pour some dye over it.” You are going to have a very blotchy business.
What do you do when you dye material? You dip the whole thing in a great vat of dye, and it goes completely in and out.
You do not leave it in. Who can wear a piece of cloth that is left in the dye? You have got to get it out. Somebody goes in and it comes out. That is baptism. You go into the waters and you come out of the waters. You are immersed. You are dyed.
Now listen again: “He that cometh after me, He shall immerse you in the Holy Spirit.”
For me, this takes the whole question out of controversy and puts it into a new dimension: immersed in the person of the Holy Spirit.
My dear friend, sometimes I hear people have had an experience of the Holy Spirit, and I would imagine from the way they talk that they have got the Holy Spirit. It is as if they have somehow obtained the Spirit, tapped the Spirit, encompassed the Spirit. They have got the Spirit located; they have got Him.
I do not find this to be baptism in the Spirit. I find this baptism is that you are dipped in the Holy Spirit. You are immersed in the Holy Spirit. Somehow or other, you discover that it is not that you have got the Spirit; the Holy Spirit has got you.
Do you notice that John the Baptist does not say, “He shall baptize you in spirit and fire”? He does not say that. He says very carefully, in every instance in the Gospels, “He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire.”
In other words, this marvellous thing is that you and I should somehow or other be immersed in the person of the Holy Spirit.
I think of these words of Jesus 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.
“If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.” That is how we get born of God, is it not? We receive the Spirit then. He comes to live within us.
But then there is something else: “He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.” Not a river, not a stream—rivers of living water, able to turn desert areas into a garden, able to transform whole great areas around us. Rivers of living water.
Dear, dear, note: it is all to do with Jesus. “He that believeth”—not on the Spirit, but “He that believeth on Me”—from within himself flow rivers of living water. I believe that it is almost every time you believe more deeply in the Lord Jesus, the rivers of God flow out of you in a fresh way. It is a faith position.
Or I think of the wonderful words in Colossians 2:9-10:
For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,
and in Him ye are made full.
In Him—not He in you, trapped inside of you—but in Him you are made full, as if your little vessel is submerged in the fullness of God in Christ.
Or again, I think of another marvellous word, in Ephesians 3:16 and following:
That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory,
that ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man;
that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be strong to apprehend with all the saints
what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge,
that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.
Theology, ideal, or reality? For many believers, it is an ideal. It is meant to be a reality.
But on the day of Pentecost, when the Lord Jesus obtained the promise of the Spirit and poured Him forth, then it was as if those one hundred and twenty suddenly were submerged in a fullness they had never known before. Rivers of living water began to flow out of them, to turn the whole Roman world, and far beyond it, upside down; to turn a wilderness into a garden.
They were filled unto all the fullness of God. So filled that people looking on them thought they were drunk. Something had taken them over, submerged them as it were, overflowed them.
Would to God the meetings of our fellowships and assemblies were like that—overflowing with the Lord.
Oh, my dear friends, I think of a little poem by Amy Carmichael. I have to watch the time now, but it is one that has meant a lot to me:
Upon the sandy shore, an empty shell;
Beyond the shell, infinity of sea.
O Saviour, I am like that empty shell;
Thou art the sea to me.A sweeping wave rides up the shore, and lo,
Each dim recess, the coiled shell within,
Is searched, is filled, is filled with overflow
By water crystalline.Not to the shell is any glory then;
All glory give we to the glorious sea.
And not to me is any glory when
Thou overflowest me.Sweep over me Thy shell, as low I lie;
I yield me to the purpose of Thy will.
Sweep up, O conquering waves, and purify,
And with Thy fullness fill.
That is what it means to be immersed in the Holy Spirit.
But there is something else. It is fire. Now, I think fire is the most wonderful thing in the whole world, really, and also the most terrible thing.
Fire speaks of warmth, of love. It speaks of energy, power. It speaks of radiance and light. It speaks of refining and purity. Fire.
The symbol of the new covenant is fire. On the day of Pentecost, it was a rushing sound of a mighty wind that came in, and fire fell upon every one of them. Fire.
You know, those who have had a gift for poetry or hymn writing, this thing has caught them again and again and again. I think of Charles Wesley’s wonderful hymn. I wish we had it to sing:
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.Jesus, confirm my heart’s desire
To work, and speak, and think for Thee;
Still let me guard the holy fire,
And still stir up Thy gift in me.Ready for all Thy perfect will,
My acts of faith and love repeat,
Till death Thine endless mercies seal,
And make the sacrifice complete.
No wonder God owned men like that.
Or I think again of another little word by Amy Carmichael. I do not know if it means anything to you, but:
I have seen the fiery flame
Take to his pure 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.
My dear friends, that is fire. If that does not awaken in you a hunger, nothing will. You will never win another soul to Christ if there is not fire in you. No one will ever turn aside to see this great sight unless you are a thorn bush burning with fire and not being consumed.
It is fire. Oh, my dear friends, I think of Moses’ cry when he had seen so much and heard so much: “Show me Thy glory.”
And so, my friends, the last thing I said—that fire was the second; here is the last point. I want you to note that the whole emphasis in all four Gospels, in this statement, is not, if I may say it reverently, on the person of the Holy Spirit as much as the Baptizer.
He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire.
There is only one person in the universe who can take you, saved by the grace of God, and immerse you in the person of the Holy Spirit and in fire, and that is the Lord Jesus. He is the Baptizer.
Your zeal will not bring it about. Your waiting will not bring it about. Your tears will not bring it about. Your sacrifice will not bring it about. Your knowledge will not bring it about. Your devotion will not bring it about. There is only one person. Not even your good works can bring upon you that immersion in the person of the Holy Spirit.
There is only One who can do it. He is the One who died for you, and because He died for you, He has won for you an eternal and so great salvation. He has won for you a birthright, and the birthright is that you be immersed in the person of the Holy Spirit.
When we see Jesus at the right hand of God the Father, and we see that He has obtained the promise of the Father and poured forth this which ye see and hear, then for the first time you might understand: He is the One who can take you and me and immerse us in the person of the Holy Spirit and of fire.
Dear friends, there will be no way in which you and I will be presented a pure virgin to the Lord Jesus apart from the person of the Holy Spirit.
I do not know about you. I do not know whether your circumstances are too much for you. I will tell you, no amount of knowledge will get you over those circumstances. You can know all mysteries and all kinds of things. It may help you quite considerably, but you will not come through those circumstances unscathed.
Maybe you have got situations too much for you, and you say, “Well, if I am more devoted, will it not help?” Of course it will, but it will not change the situation.
The only way that you and I can come through these things is by being immersed in the person of the Holy Spirit. It is like the tide coming up and covering everything.
Oh, dear brother and sister, may God open your eyes and deliver you from this spirit of controversy over this subject. Different techniques, different steps, different ways—I am not bothered about that.
All I am bothered about is this: Do you know Jesus as the Baptizer in the Holy Spirit and in fire?
You say, “Well, yes, I am converted.” I did not say that. I know you are converted. I know you are saved.
“Well,” you say, “I am walking with the Lord.”
Yes, I know. I am asking whether you are immersed in the person of the Holy Spirit and in fire.
If God would open our eyes to see Jesus as the One who, by His finished work, has obtained the promise of the Father and poured forth the Holy Spirit, then you and I may come to know what it is to be lost in the fullness and power of God.
May the Lord do it for every one of us in these last days, and may that glorious power and fire of the Holy Spirit enable us to be unaffected, single-hearted, and single-eyed—not corrupted from the simplicity and purity which is toward Christ.