Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Power: 11. A Double Center

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Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Power: 11. A Double Center



TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Power (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 11. A Double Center

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A Double Center

It has helped me greatly in understanding the Master's insistent emphasis upon the promise of power to keep clearly in mind that the Christian system of truth revolves around a double center. It is illustrated best not by a circle with its single center, but by an ellipse with its twin centers. There are two central truths—not one, but two. The first of the two is grained deep down in the common Christian teaching and understanding. If I should ask any group of Sabbath school children in this town, next Sabbath morning, the question: What is the most important thing we Christians believe? Amid the great variety in the form of answer would come, in substance, without doubt, this reply: "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." And they would be right. But there is a second truth—very reverently and thoughtfully let me say—of equal importance with that; namely, this: the Holy Spirit empowereth against all sin, and for life and service. These two truths are co-ordinate. They run in parallel lines. They belong together. They are really two halves of the one great truth. But this second half needs emphasis because it has not always been put into its proper place beside the other.

Jesus died on the cross to make freedom from sin possible. The Holy Spirit dwells within me to make freedom from sin actual. The Holy Spirit does in me what Jesus did for me. The Lord Jesus makes a deposit in the bank on my account. The Spirit checks the money out and puts it into my hands. Jesus does in me now by His Spirit what He did for me centuries ago on the cross, in His person.

Now these two truths, or two parts of the same truth, go together in God's plan, but, with some exceptions, have not gone together in men's experience. That explains why so many Christian lives are a failure and a reproach. The Church of Christ has been gazing so intently upon the hill of the cross with its blood-red message of sin and love, that it has largely lost sight of the Ascension Mount with its legacy of power. We have been so enwrapt with that marvelous scene on Calvary—and what wonder!—that we have allowed ourselves to lose the intense significance of Pentecost. That last victorious shout—"It is finished"—has been crowding out in our ears its counterpart—the equally victorious cry of Olivet—"All power hath been given unto Me."

The Christian's range of vision must always take in two hilltops—Calvary and Olivet. Calvary—sin conquered through the blood of Jesus, a matter of history. Olivet—sin conquered through the power of Jesus, a matter of experience. When the subject is spoken of, we are apt to say: "Yes, that is correct. I understand that." But do we understand it in our experience? So certainly as I must trust Jesus as my Saviour so certainly must I constantly yield my life to the control of the Spirit of Jesus if I am to find real the practical power of His salvation.

As surely as men are now urged to accept Jesus as the great step in life, so surely should they be instructed to yield themselves to the Holy Spirit's control that Jesus' plan for their lives may be carried through.

You remember in the olden time the Hebrew men were required to appear before God in the appointed place three times during the year. At the Passover, and at Pentecost, and again at the harvest home feast of Tabernacles. So it is required of every man of us who would fit his life into God's plan that he shall first of all come to the Passover feast, where Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. And then that he shall as certainly come to the great Pentecost feast, or feast of first fruits where a glorified Passover Lamb breathes down His Spirit of power into the life. And then he is sure to have a constant attendance at a first-fruits feast all his days, with a great harvest home festival at the end.

I said there were two central truths. Will you notice that the gospels put it also in this way, that Jesus came to do two things—not one thing, but two things—in working out our salvation. That the first is dependent for its practical power upon the second, and the second is the completing or carrying into effect of the power of the first. That the first—let me say it with great reverence—is valueless without the second.

What was Jesus' mission? Would you not expect His forerunner to understand it? Listen, then, to his words. When questioned specifically by the official deputation sent from the national leaders at Jerusalem, he pointed to Jesus, and declared that He had come for a two-fold purpose. Listen: "Behold the Lamb of God who beareth away the sin of the world"; and then he added—and the word comes to us with the peculiar emphasis of repetition by each of the four gospel scribes—"this is He that baptizeth with the Holy Spirit." That was spoken to them originally without doubt in a national sense. It just as surely applies to every one of us in a personal sense.

Mark also the emphasis of Jesus' own teachings regarding this second part of His mission. At the very beginning He spoke the decided words about the necessity of being born of the Spirit. And we are all impressed with that fact. But observe that several times, in the brief gospel record, He refers the disciples to the overshadowing importance of the Spirit's control in the life. And that He devotes a large part of that last long confidential talk which John records, to this special subject, pointing out the new experiences to come with the coming of the Spirit, and holding out to them as the greatest evidence of His own love the promise of power.

It adds intense emphasis to all this to note that Jesus Himself, very Son of God, was in that wonderful human life of His utterly dependent upon the Holy Spirit. At the very outset, before venturing upon a single act or word of His appointed ministry, He waits at the Jordan waters, until the promised anointing of power came. What a picture does that prayerfully waiting Jesus present to powerless men today! From that moment every bit and part of His life was under the control of that Holy Spirit. Impelled into the wilderness for that fierce set-to with Satan, coming back to Galilee within the power of the Spirit, He himself clearly stated more than once, that it was through this anointing that He preached, and taught, and healed, and cast out demons. The writer to the Hebrews assures us that it was through the power of the Eternal Spirit that He was enabled to go through the awful experiences of Gethsemane and Calvary. And Luke adds that it was through the same empowering Spirit that He gave commandment to the apostles for the stupendous task of world-wide evangelization. And then at the very last referring them to that life of His, He said: "As the father hath sent Me even so send I you." Let me ask if He, very God of very God, yet in His earthly life intensely human, needed that anointing, do not we? If He waited for that experience before venturing upon any service, shall not you and I?

But we must turn to the book of Acts to get fully within the grip of this truth. For it, with the epistles fitting into it, is peculiarly the Holy Spirit book, even as the Old Testament is the Jehovah book and the gospels with Revelation the Jesus book. The climax of the gospels is in the Acts. What is promised in the gospels is experienced in the Acts.

Jesus is dominant in the gospels; the Spirit of Jesus in the Acts. He is the only continuous personality from first to last. He is the common denominator of the book. The first twelve chapters group about Peter, the remaining sixteen about Paul, but distinctly above both they all group about the Holy Spirit. He is the one dominant factor throughout. The first fourth of the book is fairly aflame with His presence at the center—Jerusalem. Thence out to Samaria, and through the Cornelius door to the whole outer non-Jewish world; at Antioch the new center, and thence through the uttermost parts of the Roman empire into its heart, His is the presence recognized and obeyed. He is ceaselessly guiding, empowering, inspiring, checking, controlling clear to the abrupt end. His is the one mastering personality. And everywhere His presence is a transforming presence. Nothing short of startling is the change in Peter, in the attitude of the Jerusalem thousands, in the persecutor Saul, in the spirit of these disciples, in the unprecedented and unparalleled unselfishness shown. It is revolutionary. Ah! it was meant to be so. This book is the living illustration of what Jesus meant by His teaching regarding His successor. It becomes also an acted illustration of what the personal Christian life is meant to be.

The Spirit's presence and the necessity of His control is deep-grained in the consciousness of the leaders in this book. Leaving the stirring scenes at the capital the eighth chapter takes us down to Samaria. Multitudes have been led to believe through the preaching of a man who has been chosen to look after the business matters of the church. Peter and John are sent down to aid the new movement. Note that their very first concern is to spend time in prayer that this great company may receive the Holy Spirit.

The next chapter shifts the scene to Damascus. A man unknown save for this incident is sent as God's messenger to Saul. As he lays his hand upon this chosen man and speaks the light-giving words he instinctively adds, "and be filled with the Holy Spirit." That is not recorded as a part of what he had been told to do. But plainly this humble man of God believes that this is the essential element in Saul's preparation for his great work.

In the tenth chapter the Holy Spirit's action with Cornelius completely upsets the life-long, rock-rooted ideas of these intensely national, and intensely exclusive Jews. Yet it is accepted as final.

With what quaint simplicity does the thirteenth chapter tell of the Holy Spirit's initiation of those great missionary journeys of Paul from the new center of world evangelization: "the Holy Spirit said, etc." And how like it is the language of James in delivering the judgment of the first church council:—"it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us."

Paul's conviction is very plain from numerous references in those wonderful heart-searching and heart-revealing letters of his. But one instance in this Book of Acts will serve as a fair illustration of his teaching and habit. It is in the nineteenth chapter. In his travels he has come as far as to Ephesus, and finds there a small company of earnest disciples. They are strangers to him. He longs to help them, but must first find their need. At once he puts a question to them. A question may be a great revealer. This one reveals his own conception of what must be the pivotal experience of every true follower of Jesus. He asks: "Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye believed?"

But they had been poorly instructed, like many others since, and were not clear just what he meant. They had received the baptism of John—a baptism of repentance; but not the baptism of Jesus—a baptism of power. And Paul at once gives himself up to instructing and then praying with them until the promised gift is graciously bestowed. That is the last we hear of those twelve persons. Some of them may have been women. Some may have come to be leaders in that great Ephesian Church. But of that nothing is said. The emphasis remains on the fact that in Paul's mind because they were followers of the Lord Jesus they must have this empowering experience of the Holy Spirit's infilling.

Plainly in this Book of Acts the pivot on which all else rests and turns is the unhindered presence of the Holy Spirit.