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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 73. Five Brief Chapters
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Five Brief Chapters
He is the Messenger, the great Messenger, the Messenger of power. These others are human messengers which the divine Messenger used, and uses. Does a hesitancy come at the thought of calling the Holy Spirit a messenger merely? He is God Himself! Shall we call Him a Messenger? Well, the ambassadors of the nations to each other are messengers; they are from among the choicest men, and are clothed with full power to speak for the whole nation. The king of a nation becomes, at times, the messenger of his people in visiting another country. Even so, in this higher realm, God Himself, the Holy Spirit, comes as a Messenger to earth. These others are His special messengers for special purposes; He Himself is the Messenger to earth, using these others on His errands, while ever at work Himself.
There's a simple practical understanding of the trinity which we may miss in attempts at profound explanation. The oneness of the three in God is the oneness of love. The love is so real and full that they think and act in all things as one. We know that perfect love among us humans requires three for its full expression. Where love has its own free way, there is a deepening and enriching of the love between father and mother, through the new love drawn out by the babe. The affection between two is immensely affected by a third one drawing out to himself the love equally of the two. These human experiences are bits of the likeness of God in man. In the Master's Thursday night talk in the upper room it is striking how He speaks of the Father and the Spirit and Himself interchangeably. What is said of one is also true of the others. The Spirit's coming is His own coming, and includes the Father's presence as well. [Note: Joh_14:16-23.] They act together, so that the act of each is as the act of all three. Yet there is a plan to all their love-work for us men, as well as rhythm of action in the plan. The Son carries out the will of the Father, both in creation and in the continuation of life, and He does it through the Spirit. In everything the Holy Spirit is the one who actually does what has been agreed upon. He is the executive on earth of the divine will.
Is there a misty impression among some of us that the Holy Spirit first came to dwell in men at Pentecost? It seems so sometimes. There is a distinctive meaning to the tremendous event of Pentecost, as we shall see in a little. But it will help us to understand the Holy Spirit better, and reverence Him more, if we can get a simple biography of His whole earth mission. It can be put into five brief chapters.
There is the creation chapter. Creation was the direct work of His own hand. [Note: Job_26:13.] It was He that "brooded tremulous with love" over the waste of waters, [Note: Gen_1:2.] and gave of His own breath to be man's life. [Note: Gen_1:26-27; Gen_2:7.] And it is by His own direct continuous touch that the life of the earth is sustained. The faithful return of sun and rain and dew, the answer of the soil to our needs, the life in beast and bird and in man everywhere, are all through His continuous touch, and are evidence of the Father's unfailing love. This has been the continuous thing from creation's morn up to this hour.
Seventeen centuries so intensified wickedness that the Flood became necessary as a measure of preserving the life of the race. The language used of the Spirit in this connection is instructive and significant. "Jehovah said, 'My Spirit shall not strive with (or "abide in") man forever,... yet shall his days be an hundred and twenty years.'" [Note: Gen_6:3.] Clearly this is speaking of the whole race, as such, then on the earth. It would seem to point to the Spirit's abiding in the race corporately up to the Flood, in addition to His dealing with each man individually. It would seem to point further to His withdrawal from the race corporately; He did not withdraw from all men individually; He still remained as the life of those in the ark. We shall run across this thing of His dwelling in a body of men corporately twice again.
Then there is the Hebrew chapter. The Hebrew people came to national consciousness, and national action, with the exodus from Egypt. The Holy Spirit came to them as a nation, corporately, at this time. In common with all men on the earth, they had known His touch individually in sustaining their life, before this. The coming of the Holy Spirit was to them as a nation. His presence was most strikingly apparent in the Pillar of Cloud and Fire, ever present in their midst. That presence was again signally revealed when the Tabernacle was reared, [Note: Exo_40:34.] and again, long after, when the temple was finished. [Note: 1Ki_8:10-11; 2Ch_5:11-14.]
Then the Holy Spirit withdrew from the nation as a nation. There are numerous passages, that do not mention the Holy Spirit which yet reveal this fact of a national withdrawal. There is a passage in Isaiah, where the Spirit is named, which will serve as an index to the whole group of similar passages where He is not named. [Note: Isa_63:10-14.] Verse eleven would better read, "then they remembered . . . where is He that brought us up out of the sea . . . that put His Holy Spirit in the midst of us. . . " and so on through to the end of verse fourteen.] It is the people speaking regretfully of former experiences,He still remained in the individuals of the nation, sustaining life and speaking as the inner voice of conscience, as with all men; He endued such leaders as Ezekiel and Daniel, and without doubt, many many others in humble walks, who kept in touch. But He had withdrawn from the nation as a corporate nation. This is revealed afresh terribly when the nation's leaders called the Holy Spirit a devil! [Note: Mat_12:24-32, and parallels.] And yet more terribly when they crucified their King; and yet again, when they stoned Stephen, the embodiment of the Holy Spirit.
Then comes the marvellous Jesus chapter in the biography of the Holy Spirit. That wondrous crucified King was in His human life subject to the Holy Spirit. The marvels of the Holy Spirit's power in personal life were wondrously revealed in Jesus. It was by His direct creative touch that the pure, gentle Hebrew maid of Nazareth conceived, and became the human mother of Him who was her divine Lord. And from birth on, through the Nazareth life, especially for the Kingly ministry, on to the terrible end when He "offered Himself," our Lord was under the dominance of the Holy Spirit.
How wondrous to us men is the sweet rhythm of action between these two! From creation on the Holy Spirit was acting constantly under the control and direction of the Jehovah-Son of God. From the time of His human birth on to the end, the Son of God in His human life was completely under the control and direction of the Holy Spirit. And then from the moment that Jesus returned to the upper glory, on through our time, the Holy Spirit has been under the control and direction of the glorified Jesus. This is the sweet rhythm of action that was meant to mark us followers in our service together for our absent Lord.
Then comes the Church chapter. Pentecost was the birthday of the Church. Even as the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary in Nazareth and Jesus was born, so He overshadowed the group of men and women in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, and the new messenger, the Church, was born.