If you will turn with me to the New Testament, I would like to read in Colossians, the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Colossians, chapter 2, from verse 8. Colossians 2, from verse 8.
Take heed lest there shall be any one that maketh spoil of you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ:
For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,
And in Him ye are made full, Who is the head of all principality and power:
In Whom ye were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ;
Having been buried with Him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God, Who raised Him from the dead.
And then, in the Ephesian letter—the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians—chapter 3, from verse 14.
For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father,
From Whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,
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.
Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,
Unto Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever. Amen.
And then, lastly, in the second letter of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 4, from verse 7.
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves;
We are pressed on every side, yet not straitened; perplexed, yet not unto despair;
Pursued, yet not forsaken; smitten down, yet not destroyed;
Always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body.
For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
So then death worketh in us, but life in you.
Wherefore we faint not; but though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day.
For our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory;
While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
So we bow together in a word of prayer.
O Father, we just want to open our hearts to You as we come to the ministry of Your Word. We need You, Lord. We want to recognize, both speaker and hearer together, that unless You give us an experience tonight of that anointing which You have provided through the finished work of our Lord Jesus and made available to us in the Person of the Holy Spirit, this time will be futile.
Preserve it, Lord, from just being a sermon. Preserve it, Lord, from just being the outline of truth. Preserve it even, Lord, from being merely teaching, much as we need deep teaching. Lord, make it a meeting with Yourself, we pray.
Challenge us by Your Spirit, Lord. Confront us with Your claims, Lord. Bring us to a new place. Make this time life-changing, Lord. Make it the kind of meeting that we will forever remember simply because we met with You, when speaker and place and people all recede into the distance and we are left with Yourself.
And know that You have met with us and had dealings with us. Lord, we pray that You will make this time, this evening, like that. And we shall give to You all the praise and all the glory. In the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
As you know, the theme of our time is pressing on to fullness—the fullness of Christ, the fullness of God—pressing on into that fullness. My responsibility has been to do with the epistles, that is, from Romans to Jude. That is quite a sizeable portion of the New Testament.
As I said yesterday evening, it is important for us to understand what those letters say to us, what the Lord is saying to us through those letters, because we have there foundational teaching.
Last night, I spoke about the greatness of the calling and destiny of the child of God. That you and I should be filled unto all the fullness of God is an incredible calling, an incredible destiny.
If it were not that the Bible itself says it in so many words, straightforwardly and simply, it would be almost blasphemous for us to say that we could be filled unto all the fullness of God. Even if we take every saint, every believer who has ever lived in all the ages of time, still we cannot contain the fullness of God Himself.
Yet we are told that the end of all the work of the Lord in our lives is that we may be filled unto all the fullness of God; that we may arrive at, or attain to, the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
So last night we spoke at some length about the greatness of the calling and the destiny of the child of God.
Now tonight, I want to move on, and I want to underline one little phrase that we read in our first reading, 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 ye are made full.” That is the phrase I want to underline tonight. “In Him ye are made full.” That is the exact, I think, more literal translation than even “complete.” It is perfectly right to say that we are complete in Him, but “made full” somehow or other refers back to this fullness—all this fullness of the Godhead that dwells in the Lord Jesus. And in Him we are made full.
It is absolutely marvellous. What I want to seek to communicate tonight is this: how can you and I enter into that fullness? It is one thing to sing about it, one thing to study it, one thing to hear it preached; it is another thing to be entering into it.
But the whole point of the Word of God is that it might somehow bring us into a deeper, progressive experience of being made full in Him.
Now I want just to underline one or two things, going over a little of what we said last night in the last point I made. The fullness of God is in Christ.
There is no fullness of God outside of Christ, or apart from Christ, for the believer. All the fullness of God is located in the Lord Jesus. God has placed all His fullness in the Lord Jesus.
If you understand what I mean, without reducing it to something mundane, God has defined exactly where the fullness of God is to be found. It is not some mystery up there in the heavens. It is not some kind of secret that you have got to be elite somehow to discover. You have not got to go through a theological seminary before you can understand where this fullness is.
God has placed all His fullness in the Person of the Lord Jesus. He has defined the boundaries, if you like, of that fullness. He has defined the place, or the location, of that fullness. It is in the Lord Jesus.
And in Him we are made full.
This fullness is not found in knowledge. Knowledge is a wonderful thing, but we never have an experience of the fullness of God through mere knowledge. All we do is get big heads, which stand for our mental, academic appreciation of the Word of God. But we do not have an experience.
This is what is happening in Christian circles. Many people read books, they go to conferences, they put it all down in their notebooks, but they have no experience of being made full. Up here, they know it all; down here, they experience very little.
It is not in knowledge that we are made full—not even knowledge about the Lord Jesus, not even knowledge about the Word of God, not even knowledge about the purpose of God, not even knowledge about the truth concerning the church of God.
It is in the Lord Jesus that we are made full, not in knowledge about Him. It is in knowing Him that we are made full, not in knowing about Him.
It is not in practice that we are made full. We can try to take these things and put them into action, and it is perfectly right. The Lord Jesus said that we should not only be hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word.
But we make a big mistake if we think that we can become a kind of imitation saint, trying somehow to project holiness, somehow to copy something, somehow to make something second-hand instead of direct. Then we think we have got fullness, when it is perfectly clear to the unseen world that we are empty.
Nor do we find fullness in zeal. Thank God for zeal. Our meetings are so unbelievably boring—not these ones here, but in general—because there are so few people of any zeal.
Oh, it is a wonderful thing to hear someone break forth with a bit of fervour in their voice. You know, they really feel as if they feel something. There could be a zeal in them.
I used to go to prayer meetings where it was very much the thing to pray in a very steady and measured tone. It was wonderful in one way, but after a while one got a little bored by it all. One felt as if, somehow or other, even if an angel appeared, they would not—doom, doom—very, very measured, because it is terribly British, not very American.
But it is wonderful when some young one gets saved and suddenly breaks forth in praise or testimony, and there is a zeal and a fervour about it. It is almost as if we are all renewed by just listening to someone. They do not use the old clichés. They do not use the Canaanite language that we have all got used to. Somehow or other, they just burst through the sound barrier, and it is all so real.
But fullness is not found in zeal or emotion. We may be so zealous and yet somehow have no experience of being made full. It is not in that that we are made full.
Nor is it in emotion. In some circles, we go to the opposite extreme. We feel that somehow, in many evangelical meetings, it is like a cemetery. So we decide that the best idea is to have emotion, and the more emotion the better. When you have got emotion, you have got fullness—that is the way the reasoning goes.
Let us work everything up. So we go from a kind of quiet thing to a crescendo, and somehow we kid ourselves that in this great crescendo of emotion and feeling, we have fullness. But we do not get fullness in emotion.
It is good to have emotion. We were created with emotion. But nevertheless, to think that we have got fullness just by being emotional is a mistake.
I was in Egypt shortly after I was saved, and I very well remember to this day two missionaries who used to visit another two missionaries. These other two missionaries were absolutely like walking Bibles. They led me into a knowledge of the Lord for which I shall ever be thankful.
But I have never forgotten these other two missionaries. They seemed to be perfectly normal until they prayed. And when they prayed, they began to go, “Ohhh,” and it was the most extraordinary thing. The whole time they prayed, they had this quaver and this wail and this kind of honeyed sound all the way through. Then, as soon as they said, “Amen,” it was turned off, and they became perfectly normal human beings.
Now, I was a rather godless youngster before I was saved, so I had my eyes open, watching these two. I wondered what in the world was wrong with them. As soon as they had departed, I turned around to the others and said, “Auntie, tell me what in the world was wrong with them.”
They tried to be loyal to them, but in the end one of them said to me with a twinkle in her eye—she was an Estonian, and quite calm emotionally, but she had a twinkle in her eye which told me exactly what she meant—“Well, you see, they believe that if you do not sow in tears, you will not reap in joy.”
So apparently the Lord was going to be somehow deluded into thinking, by all this sniffling and quavering, that they were sowing in tears. You know the idea: somehow or other, we can get something done. It was not real.
It is a wonderful thing when emotion is real, when there are real tears, when it comes from the heart. When we are in prayer, we may be moved to tears. But, my dear friends, you cannot just turn it on.
Sometimes I think that in some of our Christian meetings, we have got to a place where emotion is turned on like a tap. There is no way we find fullness there.
We do not even find fullness in mere experiences. Thank God for every experience. It is a marvellous thing to experience the Lord. It is a wonderful thing for the Lord to touch us. It is marvellous when we enter into deep, real dealings with the Lord.
But this fullness is not found in experiences as such. It is only found in the One Whom we are experiencing. Do you understand?
If it is the Lord Jesus Whom we are experiencing, then we shall come into fullness. But if we think that just by having experiences, as such, we are going to be made full, we shall be disappointed.
Nor is this fullness to be found in meetings. Thank God for the meetings of the saints, and we are told not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, and so much the more as we see that day approaching. But being made full of the Lord Jesus is not something we find in meetings.
Nor is it even in church systems or church patterns, as if by setting up a church pattern or some church system of truth—even if it is sound—we shall automatically know fullness. It is in Him, and in Him alone, that we are made full, or made complete.
God has located this fullness in His Son. He has defined the place where you and I alone can experience the fullness of God, where we can be filled unto all the fullness of God. It is the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
Consider for a few moments some other Scriptures we did not look at last night in this matter of all the fullness that God has placed in the Lord Jesus.
I think of Ephesians 1:3. I am sure it is known to many of you very well:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
Now, will you please notice: every spiritual blessing. He hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing. Where? In Christ. Outside of Christ, no blessings; in Christ, every blessing.
It does not say that He hath blessed us with many spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Nor does it say He hath blessed us with very especial spiritual blessings in Christ. It says, “Every spiritual blessing.”
This is not just a second blessing; it is not even a third blessing. It is not even a hundredth blessing, or a thousandth blessing, or a millionth blessing, or a billionth blessing. Every blessing that God has for His child, for His church—every one of them—is ours in the Lord Jesus.
God has given them all. Thank God we do not get them all together. Can you imagine what it would be like if we had every experience and every one of those blessings all at once? We would all be in mental homes. It would just completely blow our minds. We would not be able to contain it.
It is marvellous enough to be truly saved, is it not? What a blessing. What a marvellous thing it is when you and I come into a new experience of the Lord Jesus. We walk on air for a couple of days. What a marvellous thing it is when we have a touch of the Holy Spirit, when we are anointed or baptized in the Holy Spirit, when something happens concerning ourselves and the Holy Spirit. We walk on air for weeks on end.
Can you imagine what would happen if we had every one of these blessings? Yet they are all ours. It is not as if God has said, “No, I will not give you that, and I will not give you that.” He has already reserved them all for us. It is just a question of when we enter into them.
He plans our entering into them so that we can assimilate them, appreciate them, understand them, and appropriate them. It is all ours. Where? In Christ. Every single one. Think of that.
Look at Philippians 4:19:
And my God shall supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
Now, it does not say, “My God shall supply every spiritual need of yours.” It does not say, “My God shall supply every necessary need of yours.” It says, “Every need of yours”—physical, mental, spiritual, material.
My God shall supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Where does He meet every need? In Christ. He meets no need outside of Christ, but in Christ every need is met.
This is fullness: every spiritual blessing, every need met in the Lord Jesus, according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
Now, just think about that—“according to His riches in glory.” That means that when God meets your needs, He meets them magnificently; He meets them munificently. I hope you understand these wonderful English words. He meets them in a grand way, because He meets them according to His riches in glory.
If I were to try to meet your needs according to my riches, you would have a very bad time. But if I were one of these great multimillionaires, and I said, “Come to me afterwards and I will meet your material need according to my riches in the bank,” you would have a marvellous time.
God says He will meet every need of yours according to His riches in Christ Jesus.
Or I think of Colossians 2:3:
In Whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.
Every treasure of wisdom and knowledge is in the Lord Jesus. When you need that word of knowledge, when you need that word of wisdom—sometimes when you need to know the facts about your situation, or what is confronting you—God by His Spirit draws it out in Christ. It is all there in Christ.
When you need to know what to do with the facts, that is wisdom—how to apply the facts. Then a word of wisdom can be given. It is all in the Lord Jesus.
I do not know whether this means anything to you about being made full in Him, but all the fullness that is yours and mine is in the Lord Jesus. Yet we live like paupers.
Most of us are living just as if nothing belonged to us, as if we are saved by the skin of our teeth, and hardly by that; as if we had just narrowly managed, by the grace of God, to get into the kingdom.
But we are least among them all, so we must never presume that we shall ever have a blessing other than being converted; that we shall ever have a need met. “Not me—maybe others, not me. I am only just in the kingdom, you know. I just got in by the skin of my teeth. Oh, I must not presume.”
But all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are yours in Christ, every need of yours can be supplied in Christ, and every spiritual blessing is yours in Christ.
Or I think of 1 John 5:11-12:
And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.
He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.
It is an amazing thing, when you consider all the books that have been written on the subject, all the sermons that have been preached on it, and all the seminars in Christian circles on it, that the phrase “the Christian life” does not appear once in the whole Bible.
Does this mean there is no such thing as a Christian life? Why does the Bible not talk about the Christian life? We are always hearing about the Christian life—this is the Christian life, that is the Christian life, how you can experience the Christian life. There are books galore, pamphlets, tracts, sermons, messages, seminars, conferences—and the phrase never appears once in the whole of the New Testament.
But what we call the Christian life, God calls eternal life. It is as simple as that.
And the witness is this: God gave unto us eternal life. May I be so bold as to put it another way? The witness is this: God gave unto us the Christian life. And this life, this Christian life, is in His Son.
He that hath the Son hath the Christian life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not the Christian life. You can go to church, you can take communion, you can join the membership, you can have water sprinkled over you, or you can be immersed under it; but if you have not got the Son of God, you are not a child of God. It is as simple as that. You are kidding yourself.
It is like tying apples to a maple tree and saying it is an apple tree. A maple tree cannot produce apples because it is a maple tree. But there are many Christians who spend their whole Christian life and all their energies tying Christian apples to what is a maple tree.
Of course, what happens is this: the apples wither. They are not coming from the life inside. But this life God has given us—this eternal life—is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath the life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not got this life.
I think of another. We will just take this last one and then we will go on. Philippians 4:7:
And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus.
The peace of God which passeth all understanding shall guard, or garrison, your hearts and your thoughts—your hearts and your thoughts—in Christ Jesus. So where is this peace of God, which passeth all understanding, experienced? In the Lord Jesus.
This just makes you and me realize how marvellous this is: “For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and in Him you are made full; you are made complete.” This is meant to be our present and growing experience.
Every experience of the Holy Spirit is only to lead us into a deeper discovery of the fullness of the Lord Jesus, only to bring us to a deeper appropriation of what is ours in Him, so dearly won for us.
But then I have to ask the question: what does it mean to be made full in Him?
You know, there is a kind of idea among some Christians that you cannot see this, and you are not meant to see it. You take it by faith. If a person is filled with the Lord, you just have to take it by faith. They have to take it by faith, and you have to take it by faith.
Now, it is perfectly true that sometimes we have to take it by faith, but everybody else should know it. “Death may work in us, but life in you.”
The unfailing hallmark of a man or a woman filled with the Lord Jesus, or filled with the Holy Spirit, is that all the other believers touch the Lord in that life. How else could they in the early church have selected people filled with the Spirit, if there was no way of telling?
There must have been something in their lives: an overflow of the Lord, a love of the Lord, a joy of the Lord, a peace of the Lord, a character of the Lord. There must have been something they touched when they touched their lives that set them apart from others.
Now, I do not want to insult your intelligence or your sophistication—especially here in the United States—but wherever I go, especially among people who are not quite so sophisticated as you, and when I have to be translated, I often go through agonies as to how to get the truth across to them and somehow get through the barrier of my interpreter.
The Lord has, at different times, given me some very simple illustrations that I have used. So tonight, I am going to illustrate this.
Now, this is you. Okay? What does it mean to be made full?
First of all, if you are filled with earth, you cannot fill the vessel. I can try to pour water into that, but how can I do it when it is already full of earth? There is no way.
The only way I can fill that is to empty the earthiness out of it. Then I can fill it with the water of life. Do you understand?
Many of us here are just like this vessel—saved by the grace of God, but full of this world. We are filled with earthiness.
This does not mean to say that you should not have a normal, natural life, in one sense, as the Lord directs you and delivers you. But this is one kind of believer.
Here is another kind of believer: full of beans.
This is another vessel full of beans. Now, these beans are not as bad as the earth, because if I pour water in, quite a few of the beans will come over. But it is obvious that I cannot fill it in the same way with water if the beans are there.
Many of us are full of beans—emotional beans and lots of other kinds of beans. It is not the Lord. It cannot be filled.
Now here I have to be very careful. Some of us, as Christians, look very beautiful on the outside—polished, noble. We love the decoration.
Many Christians, many of you, are just like this. You come to this kind of conference and you get a filling, and it leaks out within weeks of your going. You look very beautiful, you look tall, you look elegant, you look very nice, very presentable, a real good Christian. You have been saved, but you are cracked.
I hope this lesson is going home for you all. Some are filled with earth, some are filled with beans, and some have a vessel that leaks—which means that you are forever coming, always learning, never arriving.
Then there are other believers, and the Lord fills them just a little—some of the others a little more, and some of the others even more. But that actually is not really the way the Lord wants to do it.
You see, He did not say, “And He will make you full.” He said this: “In Him you are made full.”
Now what does that mean? If I take you—and this bowl, if you can see it, filled with water represents the Lord Jesus—and I am the Spirit of God, and I take you and put you in the Lord Jesus, now what happens?
Now you are not only filled. I am going to spill it, though, if I lift it up. You see? Well, we are not Episcopalians here. If you had got there early, I could have christened you.
Now you are in Christ; you are made full. You are filled unto all the fullness of God. This is not just that you have half a vessel full, two-thirds of a vessel full, or a vessel filled. You are immersed in Him.
Now the fullness surrounds you. It is in you, around you, over you. You are in Him. In Him you are made full. Do you understand? You understand?
That may be me, and here is you. Then we put both of us in here—both of us in. Tomorrow we shall talk about that.
Now we ask the question, what does it mean to be made full? It means that God has placed you in Christ, and in Him you are made full.
Why are you and I not always full of the Lord? Because there are other things in the vessel, and we are not prepared for those other things to be dealt with by the Spirit of God.
Therefore, even though we sing hymns and come to conferences like this, we have an argument with the Lord. Those things have to be dealt with.
When God can, by His Spirit, empty us out and deal with the things that are taking the place that He ought to have, then He can fill us.
Our vessels may leak. It does not matter how many experiences we have; it all drains away. We are not prepared for the discipline of the Lord. We are not prepared for the work of the Lord to make us a vessel that can be filled to overflowing.
Now that leads me to another vitally important subject in this whole matter. I want to talk about the Holy Spirit and the fullness of Christ.
The only way to experience the fullness of Christ, to be filled unto all the fullness of God, is by the Holy Spirit. There is no other way. Let me underline that: there is no other way.
Sometimes people come to me and say, “All this talk about the Holy Spirit—I do not need it. All I need is the Lord Jesus.” What are they talking about?
What in the world is the meaning of Pentecost unless it is that the Holy Spirit has come to join you to the Lord Jesus, and to take the things of the Lord Jesus and make them real in you? Unless it is to take you and immerse you, as it were, into His fullness, to bring you into an ever-growing experience of Him.
The Holy Spirit is the only custodian of the fullness of God. There is no other.
If we look at these epistles again, we find it everywhere. We find it, for instance, in Ephesians 5:18:
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.
“Be being filled with the Holy Spirit.” What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? It means that you are being filled, in some measure, unto the fullness of God. It means that you are being filled with the fullness of Christ to your present measure. That is what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Take another Scripture, 1 Corinthians 2:12:
But we received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God; that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God.
There is no way that you and I can know the things which are freely given to us by God except through the Holy Spirit.
Or again, I take you to the passage we read together in Ephesians 3. I want you to notice very carefully where the apostle, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, begins in verse 16. This is his prayer for these dear ones:
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.
That is where he begins: that you may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
There is no way that Christ can dwell in my heart through faith except through the Holy Spirit. There is no way that the Lord Jesus can dwell in you, be manifested in you, fill you to overflowing, except through the Holy Spirit.
So he goes on to say that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, to the end that you, 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 you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.
Now listen:
Now unto Him Who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.
According to the power that worketh in us. So if the Holy Spirit is cramped in my life, how can God do exceeding abundantly above all that I ask or think?
Only when the Holy Spirit has free way in my life, when I am filled with the Holy Spirit, then the Lord can do exceeding abundantly above all that I ask or even think, according to the free, unhindered power that works in us.
Dear brothers and sisters, once we begin to see this matter, it revolutionizes our whole thought, our concepts, our behaviour.
We speak about eating Christ, drinking Christ, living Christ, breathing Christ. My dear friend, the Lord Jesus is at the right hand of God the Father. He is located. He is coming back in exactly the same way He ascended.
Now, I am not saying that the Lord Jesus is not God the Son and therefore everywhere at the same time, or that He does not know everything. But what I am saying is this: that the second Person of the Godhead is located and defined. He is at the right hand of God, the Father.
The only way you and I can know Him is through the Person of the Holy Spirit. We cannot be born again except through the Person of the Holy Spirit. We cannot know repentance and godly sorrow except through the Holy Spirit. We cannot be convicted of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment except through the Holy Spirit.
We cannot know the things of Christ made real to us and in us except through the Person of the Holy Spirit. We cannot be filled with Christ except through the Holy Spirit. There is no way you and I can eat Christ unless it is by the Holy Spirit. There is no way that you and I can drink Christ except through the Holy Spirit. There is no way that you and I can breathe Christ except through the Holy Spirit. There is no way you and I can live Christ except through the Holy Spirit.
You see, we all sometimes scorn theology. But in the end, we have to come back to true theology. It is true that the triunity is a mystery.
I remember years ago a man, whom Miss Fischar told me the brethren said was like a worm in a certain fellowship in Britain. He said to me after the visit of a certain brother how glad he was for that visit, how it had helped him and blessed him. But he said, “You know, dear brother, I have one very serious question about our brother’s ministry.”
“What is that?” I said—not at all agreeing with him at that point.
He said, “When you talk about eating Christ, drinking Christ, breathing Christ, and living Christ, how can you worship Him?”
He and you have become one in such a way—because we talked a lot about the mingling—how can you worship Him? The other aspect of the truth is that He is at the right hand of God, seated objectively. He is there. Then I worship Him.
Oh, I did not agree with him at all then, because I knew he was such a great spiritual man. I reserved it all in my heart, and all these years later, I wholeheartedly agree with it.
It is because sometimes we do not really understand true theology. So the only way that I can know the Lord Jesus is through the Person of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is not an “it.” He is not just an agency. He is not some power, some impersonal power, some impersonal instrument. He is the Person of the Holy Spirit. He is God the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is the One Who has come to bring us into an experience of the fullness of Christ.
That is why, in the very last verses of the Bible, just as in the very beginning verses of the Bible, the Holy Spirit is met.
In Genesis 1:2, it says:
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
It uses in Hebrew that wonderful term of the eagle looking for its nest. It could not find anything, so it was hovering, looking like an eagle does—almost motionless—looking, looking, searching, searching for home, and could not find a home.
When you come to almost the last verses of the last chapter of the Bible, in Revelation 22, it says:
And the Spirit and the bride say, Come.
The Holy Spirit has produced the bride.
So, my dear friends, when I consider this whole matter, it makes me realize how vitally important, how strategic, is the Person and work of the Holy Spirit. It is essential to understand the Person and work of the Holy Spirit if you and I are going to be filled unto the fullness of God.
When believers are afraid of the Holy Spirit, they have unwittingly alienated themselves, divorced themselves, from the only One Who is able to lead you into the fullness of God.
My dear friends, I do hope that this really comes home to you. It leads me to ask a question: is there a second experience? Some call it a baptism of the Spirit. I just call it the anointing of the Spirit. Is there a second experience of the Holy Spirit?
I believe that everything is given to you when you are saved, but you must enter in. If you do not enter in, it is not yours.
Now there is one exception, and that is anointing for service. Anointing for service is a second experience, just as the Lord Jesus was born of the Holy Spirit and, when He was thirty years of age, was anointed with the Holy Spirit.
So it is in the service of God that sometime, at some point later, when God has dealt with us and brought us to a certain point, we have an experience of the anointing of the Holy Spirit for service.
When the Lord Jesus ascended to the right hand of God and obtained the promise of the Father, do you remember, and poured forth the Holy Spirit on that day of Pentecost, that was, in one sense, once for all.
There have been many Pentecosts all down through church history. Every single great move of the Holy Spirit has, in one sense, been a mini-Pentecost. But we must be careful, because there was only one Pentecost.
In that moment the Holy Spirit came. He was given because the Lord Jesus won the gift, the promise of the Father, through His finished work. And it was the Lord Jesus—do you understand what I am saying?—it was the Lord Jesus Who took the Person of the Holy Spirit and poured Him forth upon the one hundred and twenty.
From that day onwards, the work of the Holy Spirit, the Person of the Holy Spirit, is ours. If you are a child of God, then God Himself has given you this new covenant. He has given you the Holy Spirit, and He has put the law within your heart.
But now, having said that, that is the theology. Let me just say this: I personally like sometimes this kind of sign, this kind of illustration, because it brings something home to some people. It does not always bring it home. I think the Greeks like everything up here, but we folks like this kind of thing because it brings it home to us.
Now, my dear friends, do not argue about theology. If you are not experiencing the fullness of God, there is some weakness in the work of the Holy Spirit in your life.
It is no good just saying, “Well, I got everything when I was converted. I got everything.” You need the eyes of your heart opened so that you may see what is yours, so that you may enter in, so that you may possess.
The Holy Spirit has been poured out upon the basis of the finished work of the Lord Jesus. But have you entered in?
The best way I always see this is in that marvellous picture in the Old Testament of the promised land.
God said to the children of Israel, “This land is yours,” and He defined it. He said it is from the Mediterranean to the river Euphrates, and from the mountains of Lebanon down to the river of Egypt. “All this I give to you, every part of it.”
Then He made this wonderful statement:
My Angel shall go before thee, and shall drive out all the inhabitants.
In another place He says, “I will send the hornet before you.” Again, it is the Angel of the Lord Who will drive out all these people from before you.
But there were two other vital matters. Suppose all the people said, “Oh, praise God, the promised land is ours. Now we will have a conference.” So when they got to the eastern bank of the river Jordan, they all sat down and had a wonderful conference.
They would have sung about the promised land which is ours, from Lebanon to the river of Egypt, from the river Euphrates to the great sea—all ours. The Lord is going to send the Angel of His presence before us and drive out all the enemies. They would still have been sitting there till they all died there.
Because there were two other vital matters. One was the Captain of the Lord’s host.
What an extraordinary meeting Joshua had with the Lord outside the walls of Jericho. Joshua was a military man, and he went on a reconnaissance mission. He went out to walk around the walls and have a good look.
Suddenly, he saw Someone in front of him, and the first thing he thought was, “Who is this?” So he said, “Who are You? Are You for us or for our adversaries?”
The One answered, “Nay; but as Captain of the host of the Lord am I now come. Put off thy shoes from off thy feet.”
Now, no military man would ever take his shoes off. That is a very stupid thing to do. But what was this Captain of the Lord’s host saying? Did He mean that He was for the Canaanites and not for the children of Israel? Or did He mean He was for the children of Israel and not for the Canaanites?
No. He was saying this: “It is not for you to put Me under your direction. You are under My direction.”
So there is no way to possess our possessions except under the direction of the Captain of the Lord’s host. Do you understand?
And here is the second thing:
Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, to you have I given it.
Now, does not the Lord seem to have contradicted Himself? First, He tells us this whole promised land—from the mountains of Lebanon to the river of Egypt, from the river Euphrates to the great sea, the Mediterranean—is ours. The Angel of the Lord is going to go before us and drive out all these enemies.
Then the next minute He says, “Whatsoever you set the sole of your foot upon, that will I give you.” He seems to contradict Himself—not at all.
What the Lord is saying is this: the whole land is yours, all its fullness, everything within it is yours. I give it to you on the basis of the blood of the Lamb. It is yours, but you must go in and put your feet down and say, “This is mine in the name of the Lord.”
If you do not, under the direction of the Captain of the Lord’s host, it will not be yours. So the Lord said to them, “Very well, you will go to Jericho. You will walk round it once a day for six days, and on the seventh day you will go round it seven times.”
Why in the world the Lord did that, I do not know. You did not bring down the walls any more quickly. Did the Lord need them to have a whole week walking around the walls in order somehow to build up power to bring down the walls of Jericho? No. He could have brought down the walls of Jericho with one word.
Even more interestingly, He said, “Silence.” Absolute silence. Knowing the Lord’s people, I understand it. But still, He said, “Absolute silence.” You go round the walls once a day in silence for six days, and on the seventh day you shall go round it six times in silence. On the seventh time round, at a certain signal, you shall blow the trumpet, and you shall all shout, and I will give you the city.
You can say, “Well now, why all that? Did they not have enough faith?” No, it was the direction of the Lord. You have to listen to the directions of the Lord and obey them to the letter.
You cannot just be legalistic and say, “Well now, when we get away, we have found the technique. We can publish a few books on this: How to Take Cities for the Lord. Six days we walk round once in silence; on the seventh day, we go round six times in silence; on the seventh time we shout and blow the trumpet. We can do it in every city.”
No, you do not. You see, you have to walk with the Lord. You need the Captain of the Lord’s host. You need to hear Him. You need to be near enough to Him to get direction. Then you will possess all that is yours.
How are you made full in Christ? All the fullness of God has been given you: every blessing, every need, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, a peace which passes understanding, the life of God. All this is yours.
All the supply—fullness of joy, fullness of peace, fullness of power, fullness of grace, fullness of wisdom—it is all yours in the Lord Jesus. He has won it for you through His finished work.
But, my dear friends, unless you put yourself under the direction of the Spirit of God, unless you learn how to truly and genuinely be led by the Spirit of the Lord, you will never possess what is yours.
You will always be on the wrong side of Jordan. You will always have a wilderness experience of the Lord. Marvellous as you imagine it: a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, water out of the rock, manna for six days out of every seven, shoes that never wear out, clothes that never get holes in them—all these marvellous things.
You could not ask for more in some ways, and yet it is not the promised land. It is only the wilderness. Most Christians spend all their Christian life in this time span that is given to them down here, going round and round and round.
So, my dear friends, we need the Holy Spirit. It is yours. You need to enter in. Only God can touch the eyes of your heart so that you see that it is yours.
Only you can put yourself under the direction of the Lord’s host and start to use the soles of your feet to stand upon what God has given.
But that leads me finally to say this: the problem is not just that sometimes we are ignorant of the Person and work of the Holy Spirit. The problem is the earth that is inside. Sometimes the problem is the beans that are inside.
How does the Holy Spirit deal with that? Through the cross, and no other way.
If you are not prepared for the work of the cross in your life, then sooner or later your self-life—the “I” in you—will halt the whole work of God in your life. You will grow in knowledge. You may seem to be a very good Christian, but your experience of the Lord will be static. You will never enter into anything more of the Lord.
Sometimes we have bad “I’s,” and at least then, when we have a bad “I,” we call to God for deliverance. But many believers have good “I’s,” and that is the whole problem. They dress them up as Christians, put Christian phraseology into their mouths, make them look good, and they become the stumbling block. They cannot enter in.
How amazing was that passage we read together in 2 Corinthians:
We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves.
Then he gives a catalogue of things that many people would hardly feel had anything to do with a child of God: pursued, smitten down, perplexed.
Then he says:
Always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested.
The Holy Spirit is the only One Who can enable you to put to death the deeds of the body. Anything else ends in religion. But the Holy Spirit can enable you to put to death the deeds of the body.
Only the Holy Spirit can reveal to you that when Christ died, you died; when Christ was buried, you were buried; and when Christ was raised from the dead, you were raised from the dead.
It may not mean a lot to you now as I say it, but only the Holy Spirit can show it to you. When He does, your life will be revolutionized.
Why do we not experience this fullness of God, this fullness of Christ? Because so very often we are afraid of any real work of the Holy Spirit.
Because very often we do not want the Lord to touch the essential “I.” We want Him to make us happy, peaceful, joyful, living, able, powerful, wise, without touching the essential self-life. But it is impossible.
May God help every one of us tonight so that we may be filled with the Holy Spirit, so that we may begin to know what it is to be filled unto all the fullness of God, that we might begin to know what it is, in Him, in Christ, to be made full.
Shall we pray?
Lord, You alone know the condition of every one of us in this place tonight. You know, Lord, where there is so much of this world, so much that is of this earth, that stops our knowing anything of being made full or complete in the Lord Jesus.
You know, Lord, where there are issues and arguments we have with You in our lives. We do not want to be disciplined. We do not want to yield ourselves. We do not really want You to be Lord in every part of our lives.
But, O Lord, You Who know the condition of every single one of us, for Whom every life is an open book, have mercy upon us, O Lord. This night, bring home to us our condition.
Lord, lead us into deeper experiences of Yourself. Where there is a need of a breakthrough in the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, bring us, Lord, to that place where we are filled with the Holy Spirit.
Lord, where there is an issue to do with our self-life, and we have never seen that we have been crucified with Christ, O Lord, open our eyes to see that truth.
By Your Spirit, Lord, somehow reveal this truth, and enable us from that moment to lay down our lives for You, to let go of our lives, to deny ourselves, and to take up our cross and follow You.
O Lord, there is nothing like being filled with You. It is so wonderful, so marvellous. Even in all our afflictions, tensions, pressures, and troubles, we can be filled with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
O Lord, we yield ourselves to You this night, that we may not just talk about being made full in You, but that from this night we may begin to experience what it is.
Holy Spirit, come and do Your own special, specific work of taking of the things of the Lord Jesus and making them real to us; of taking us and bringing us into an experience of His fullness.
Do this work. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.