Come Holy Spirit

Father, we offer this service as it continues to you. We praise you for the dynamic of the Holy Spirit. We thank you for the full person of the Holy Ghost.

We bless you that the mystery of the Godhead is revealed to us. As Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we acknowledge this. We glory in something that we do not comprehend.

And indeed, could we comprehend, we would be suspicious of it, for that would elevate us to an understanding that alone belongs to you. You are an awesome God. We honor you in all your perfections.

We pray that as this service proceeds, we might be more aware of your grandeur, your majesty, and of the intimate relationship which is possible between you and us through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. You may be seated.

So how do you explain the church? Let me try that again. How do you explain the church? I don't mean this church, I mean Christendom. After all, its start was abysmal.

The main character dying in an unsavory fashion, eleven men, there had been twelve, but one was a dud, 120 there on the day of Pentecost, all right, I'll concede, 500 had received a resurrection experience of the Lord Jesus, so probably the early company of the followers was in that sort of number. But nonetheless, by the time you get to the Acts of the Apostles, they've made such an impression, it's said of these men, they turned the world upside down. By the time you get to the third century, you discover that the might of the Roman Empire has capitulated, and that Christianity has far more clout than imperial Rome.

How do you explain it? What is the greatest evidence for Christianity? Well, you'll say the resurrection, and in one sense you're right. There's no way I would detract from that. Jesus Christ raised from the dead.

But what happened to the disciples when He appeared to them? Did they start preaching? And the answer is no, they didn't. They went back to fishing. And that's where Jesus discovered them on the Sea of Galilee.

He was by the shore and He cooked them breakfast, do you remember? One of the final resurrection appearances. And when He's returned to heaven, what are the disciples doing? And the answer is they're not preaching. So the explanation for the Christian church is not solely the resurrection.

So what is the explanation? What is the other evidence, the unanswerable evidence as to the truthfulness of Christianity? What is it that demonstrates the power of God amongst ordinary men and women? And the answer, of course, has to be the Holy Spirit. And the explanation for the success of Christianity is one, the resurrection of our beloved Lord, and two, the dynamic of the Holy Spirit, which was released on the day of Pentecost. These men tapped into something that they could hardly have understood, as none of us can understand God.

They are brought into a relationship with Him. These men and these women, and because of the Holy Ghost, they are emboldened. You shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses, both in the immediate locality and to the end of the frontiers of Israel and on beyond.

It will be a global thing. And I say that apart from the power of the Holy Spirit, the dynamic of the Holy Spirit, you can't explain the church. She got nothing going for her, no radio, no literature, no Bibles.

She got nothing. Just a group of unsophisticated, uncoordinated, as far as the organization was concerned, men and women. But by the time you get into the mid-chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, they have already become an army with clout, an irresistible force.

And our Lord Jesus, you remember on the day of Pentecost, or rather preceding the day of Pentecost, at one of the Jewish feasts, at the Feast of Tabernacles, He stands up and He actually predicts, He predicates what's going to happen to the disciples. The Feast of Tabernacles was one of the most remarkable of the several Jewish feasts, and Jesus astonishes everybody when in the precincts of the temple, when the whole of the feast comes to its climax, He says, "'If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me, and out of his innermost being will come rivers of living water.'" And that really was the most extraordinary statement, rivers of living water. What did Jesus have in mind? Well, several things.

In the Old Testament, you'll discover there is a prediction that God is going to pour His Spirit out on ordinary men and women. I have to correct to chapter 63 of Isaiah, in verse 11, my first reference, if you're following my notes, I'm not staying close to them, they're just there for you, to help you if you want to revise on this address later on. In Old Testament times, the Spirit was poured out, but with restriction.

And when you move from Isaiah into the mysterious prophecy of Ezekiel, he gives you some picture of a river, a river that flows out from Jerusalem, which is nonsense, Jerusalem doesn't have a river. Jerusalem is land-bound. And yet, the man brings me chapter 47 of Ezekiel, the man brought me back to the entrance of the temple, and I saw water coming out from under the threshold of the temple.

The water was coming down from under the side of the temple, south of the altar. And this flow of water, it deepens so that you can get ankle deep, you can get knee deep, you can get waist deep, it can cover you. And the flow of this water is quite extraordinary.

It has healing propensity. A fisherman, verse 10, will stand along the shore from En Gidi to En Engliem, there will be places of spreading nets. Fruit trees, verse 13, of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river, their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail.

What does this all mean? It's parabolic, of course, it's metaphor. It's got the idea of the power of God, the presence of God, the message of God going out as a mighty flood of water from Jerusalem, penetrating the whole of that city, and then into Judea, into Samaria, into the uttermost parts of the earth. And when Jesus comes to the temple, and He says, out of your innermost being, speaking to those who will believe on Him, will flow rivers of living water, what in effect He was doing was saying this, that He has the ability to release this sort of force, this sort of power, this sort of agency into this world.

Who is Jesus? Well, He's God the Son, God's own beloved Son, the second person of the Trinity, the second person. There are three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they're of the same essence, and yet they manifest themselves in different facets. God the Father, well, it's easy to perhaps grasp hold of the concept of Father.

God the Son, it's not too easy, it's not difficult to grasp that. But when you got to God the Spirit, then you're in difficulty. All business of Spirit, it seems to be unreal.

Listen to this. I take it from a book I've just been reading. It's a thousand-pager, if anyone wants to speed-read it this afternoon.

It's called God's Empowering Presence, just devoted to analyzing Paul's teaching on the Spirit. But the author, Gordon Freeh, a very great man, in the preface to the book, he rehearses an incident in the Sunday school in the States, and he was in attendance. The Sunday school teacher, Ruth, was trying to illustrate the reality of the Spirit by blowing on a piece of paper and letting it fly away.

The Spirit is like that. She was saying to the children. It is like the wind, very real in its effects, even though invisible to us, at which point a six-year-old blurted out, but I want the wind to be un-invisible.

I want the wind to be un-invisible. How do you know about God, the first person of the Trinity? Jesus made Him un-invisible. You see God in me.

Have I been so long time with you and you haven't realized who I am? There's a sense in which the Father is in me and I am in the Father. The Apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says exactly the same thing. We see the glory of God reflected through our Lord Jesus.

He is the image of God. It's our Lord Jesus Christ who introduces us to the Father. Jesus is the human face of God, but moreover, He is also the human face of the Holy Spirit.

You see in those passages that were read, that little catena of the selection of verses, the commencement of the service by Brother John, reference was made to the Lord Jesus sending another comforter. Now, that presumes He is a comforter, as indeed He is. But another comforter, and the word another in the original means of the same essence.

I will send you another comforter. Lord Jesus, what will He be like? Well, He will be like this. When I go and He comes, it will just be like having me still around.

I'm going and yet you'll not be impoverished by my going because the one who comes, He approximates to me. He continues what I am doing. And our Lord Jesus is predicting that as God the Father, in His promise to send the Son into the world, also maintains His promise to send the Spirit into the world.

You see, here's our Lord. The chapter is the last one in Luke's Gospel. He's addressing the disciples.

He's reminding them, yes, they'll need to go to the upper room. They'll need to wait when He's gone for the coming of the Holy Spirit. But how does He define the coming of the Spirit? And the answer is the promise of the Father.

And at the back of our Lord's mind, no doubt, are those scriptures in Zechariah and in Joel which speak of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The day will come. Your young men will dream dreams.

Your old men will have visions. Your old men will dream dreams. I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.

What is the Holy Spirit? Not an influence, not a power, not a fluid. You have to use metaphors that sometimes suggest this because, well, language is not easily used to explain God. The best way to define the Holy Spirit is that He is God's empowering presence, God's empowering presence.

He is personal, the Holy Spirit, corresponding to the Holy Father, corresponding to the Holy Jesus, personal, not just personal, but powerful. Acts 1.8, you will receive power after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you. Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, this unlettered man, preaches an amazing sermon in which he draws together a brilliant summary of Hebrew history and makes conclusions that cause the theologians to gasp.

The Holy Spirit empowering, He's a person. He is powerful. He is present.

Here's Moses on Mount Sinai, you remember? And God is giving him a new commission. He wants him to take the Israelites, having successfully brought them from Egypt, He wants to take them into the Promised Land. And God is saying that He'll be with Moses, but in perhaps a less intimate fashion than He's been before.

You read this story in Exodus 33, and Moses says, no, unless your presence goes with me, then I can't do this job. Remember, and far from God being put out, he applauds what Moses is requesting, and he continues with him. And you find time and time again in the Old Testament, in the tabernacle and in the temple which replaced it, reference made to the presence of God, the Shekinah glory of God.

Now, don't you see that all that is part of the ministry of the Holy Spirit? When you come into the New Testament, the Spirit is personal, the Spirit is powerful, the Spirit is God being present amongst us. Where two or three are gathered together, there am I in the midst. You can only sense God by an awareness of the power of the Spirit.

Now, the guardian, as it always does theologically, is askew. It was yesterday, made some reference to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, always brings a liberal in, never an evangelical, to present the teachings of Christianity. The Holy Spirit does not need a small S. It needs a capital – the Holy Spirit, He needs a capital S. The Holy Spirit is powerful, He's personal, He's present with His church as we meet together in the name of the Lord Jesus.

So Gordon Fee, in the quote I give you in my notes, I'm convinced that the Spirit in Paul's experience, theology, was always thought of in terms of the personal presence of God. The Spirit is God's way of being present, powerfully present in our lives and communities as we await the consummation of the kingdom of God, precisely because he understood the Spirit as God's personal presence. Paul always understood the Spirit in terms of an empowering presence.

So it's the Holy Spirit who makes possible for us an experience of God in terms of our emotions, confirming what we have received in our minds, because Christianity is directed to both. You see, it's not just an intellectual thing. You start to talk about the resurrection, well, yes, you've got some idea of the resurrection, there is historical proof and so forth, and you can come at it from that frame, but you can't experience the resurrection.

Not in terms of being there, witnessing that historic occasion when Jesus is brought back from the dead. It's a marvelous thing, as I said, I wouldn't detract from it. It's the cornerstone of Christianity, but alongside that is the coming of the Holy Spirit, the story of the church who is empowered by the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit who so brings the presence of God that when the early church people go into a secular society, ordinary people say of them, they seem to have a different personality.

There's something about them that is completely unusual, extraordinary. How do you explain it? Well, they've been with Jesus. You see why evangelicalism, if it does not constantly underline the importance of experience, really has taken leave of its moorings in Scripture.

Ours is not just a theology. We do not just come to study the Word of God. That's all you've ever got from me, then I've done you a disservice.

Theology, the Word of God takes you to theophany, the experience of God. How can we experience God? By the power of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes it comes in a very remarkable fashion in terms of the experience.

You're aware you can't rationalize on it, you can't explain it to anyone else, but this is the uniqueness of coming together in the Christian church. You have an appreciation that there's something other. You know, the Apostle Paul, when he was writing to the Corinthians, he talked about the unbeliever coming into a church that was Bible-centered, and suddenly there is a demonstration of the power of God, and the unbeliever said, well, I never realized it was like this, you know? I came into this place, I came capriciously, I came without thought, and then I was caught up.

There was an emotion, there was something that I couldn't really comprehend. I couldn't rationalize, but I knew it was there. I wrote a little bit at the back of Notes and News on the Emperor of Japan.

I remember some Japanese girls, some Malaysian girls, some girls from the Far East coming to Westminster Chapel, churches I used to attend during my student days. They didn't understand much English, and yet they used to come to the chapel week after week and listen to Martin Lloyd-Jones preach. And about a year or a year and a half went by, and they had to return to Japan and to the rest of the countries from which they'd emerged in the East.

And they came to say goodbye to Lloyd-Jones, who wasn't a very emotional man in terms of his personal relationships. He was emotional in the pulpit. And someone who was there said, for the first time they noticed that Lloyd-Jones had got tears in his eyes.

He said to these girls, why did you come? And they said, Dr. Lloyd-Jones, we didn't understand you when we first came. You spoke with your Welsh intonation, the English language, and our English was not so good. But we came back, and we came back, and we came back, and our English improved, and our comprehension improved.

I asked Lloyd-Jones, but why did you come back in the first instance? And they said, we felt such a presence. There was such a sense of God. That's what I mean.

That's what I mean. What is this sense of God? You can't contrive it. Oh, I tell you, there is nothing worse than evangelicalism, when you try to boost people's emotions in a false way, play on people's emotions.

You can't do that. You finish up with something that, well, it may be akin to the Spice Girls, God bless them. It sounds as though they need it at the moment.

Or the last night of the Prums, when God comes down in the power of the Holy Spirit. That's what we need to know more and more, the personal filling, the personal dwelling of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in our church. Well, that's the teaching.

Well, the Holy Spirit brings us to our Lord Jesus. I'm going to stop right now, and we're going to sing, and we're going to come around communion. The reason why I'm doing this is because I believe that you'll see later on, that as we take our communion and then come around some words of our Lord Jesus, to which I've already testified, you'll see that we've got the order right.

The Holy Spirit is always teaching us about our Lord Jesus, Spirit of God, show me Jesus. And yet it is the Lord Jesus who sends with His Father the Holy Spirit into the world, the Holy Spirit allowing us to experience the presence of the Lord Jesus, the presence of the Father, and the Father ever wanting the Holy Spirit's ministry to continue amongst us. It was the Father who sent Jesus into the world, His first promise to die on the cross, the Father who permits the Holy Spirit to come also, to make valid to us, of value to us all that Jesus accomplished there.

So let's be singing this as we bring bread and wine to you, two or three times, 609. Let's listen to our musicians, move on to, Be still for the presence of the Lord, the Holy One is here. Come bow before Him with reverence and fear.

In Him no sin is found, we stand on holy ground. Be still for the presence of the Lord, the Holy One is here. It's number 50, but I'm not inviting you to sing the words.

Similarly, to let the Holy Spirit make these words even more real to you. So you ask yourself, why are you here? Why you and your family and no one else, perhaps, who's a believer? Why you, 10% of worthy, going to church on an infrequent basis? What about the other 90%? How is it that you have an understanding and other people don't? Because of your intellect? Perish the thought. The kingdom of God is not entered by intellectualism.

It's by the work of the Holy Spirit who makes plain to you what is unplain to others. William Wilberforce once went to hear a great preacher and Wilberforce took one of his fellow MPs. Wilberforce was so moved, the other of intellectual ability equal to Wilberforce.

He wasn't moved a little bit. One thought it was so wonderful, the other was not touched at all. What was the answer? How do you explain this? The Holy Spirit working on a person's mind, heart.

That you're here is a demonstration of the power and the person of the Holy Spirit, even if you've never explained it like that. You're taking a bit of bread, a bit of wine, people would think we're mad. Bread, wine, a little bit of that on a Sunday morning.

It doesn't even satisfy your physical hunger, let alone your thirst. You say no, but to us, maybe stupid to you, but to us it's the greatest thing that we ever do. Remembering the death, the broken body, the shed blood of our beloved Lord Jesus.

And this has become precious to us because of the ministry of the Spirit in our hearts, in our minds. Let's give thanks for this bread. Father, we bow before you in wonder at your mercy, your patience and your love towards us.

We admit to our shame that our lives fall far short of the perfection that you require as an almighty and a holy God. We can claim no right to forgiveness, no merit of our own. We just cast ourselves on your unbounded love.

And we do thank you, Father, that that love was shown towards us when you sent your Son to take upon himself the punishment of our sin. And this table reminds us of the bitterness of that punishment. This bread reminds us of Christ's body broken for us.

Oh, we thank you, Jesus, for being willing to die for us. We praise you for overcoming death and for opening the gates of eternal life. We thank you, Father, that our eyes and our minds and our hearts were open to this wonderful message of reconciliation.

We thank you for sending the Holy Spirit into our lives to guide and direct. We do pray, Lord, that you will be with us. Help us to know the touch of your hand upon our lives so that we can show our thanks in the way we live.

The way we love you. The way we love one another. And the way we love those around us.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. So our beloved Lord, in the company of his disciples, took bread.

And when he had blessed it, he gave it to them and said, Take it, this is my body which is broken for you. Our God and our Father, we thank you for these precious moments at this table. Thank you, Father, for these symbols that we have.

The broken bread and the poured out wine. And thank you, Father, for the richness that it speaks to our souls. Thank you, Father, that your Son gave himself to that horrible, revolting, cruel death of the cross for us.

And Father, now, in the power of the Holy Spirit, touched by the essence of the Trinity, Father, we can stand and give you praise and give you thanks for the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Lord, recognize before you that it is only the empowering of the Holy Spirit that makes us able to come and to give you this praise and to give you this worship. And Lord, the amazing thing is that it is also in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So, Father, accept of our thanks, accept of our worship. Thank you for this blessed occasion of remembrance. In the name of Jesus.

Amen. So our Lord Jesus took the cup, and having given thanks, he gave it to his disciples and said, This cup is a new covenant in my blood, which is shed for many for the remission of sin. This do you as oft as you drink it in remembrance of me.

Let's sing that one verse. Thank you, O my Father, for sending us your Son. Amen.

On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him. By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.

Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified. That Feast of Tabernacles, by the time you read this particular incident, had actually been extended. It was in the Old Testament seven days, but another day had been latched onto it.

And in that day, the priests would go down to the Pool of Siloam, and they would take a vase filled with water, and they would pour that water over the altar. It was a moment of ecstasy as far as Hebrew worship was concerned, for that was no dull, somber business. This was a recognition that there was a time in history when Moses struck a rock in the wilderness of Sinai, and water gushed out.

And when the Apostle Paul thinks on that incident, when he's writing to the Corinthians, he refers to our Lord Jesus. That rock was Christ, and from Him shall flow streams of living water. And when our Lord makes this particular proclamation, He is doing something which is quite sensational.

All the Old Testament Scriptures that speak about God's Spirit, which was only given in a sort of irregular fashion, in a discriminant way in the Old Testament times, that prediction in the Old Testament that this would be enlarged would come about as a result of the ministry of our Lord Jesus. And He who has been sent from the Father and returns to the Father, cooperates with the Father to send into this world the Holy Spirit, so that on the day of Pentecost, as the disciples receive power, they have the ability to continue to do what our Lord has demonstrably been successful in performing throughout the whole of His three years. He is the man who is filled with the Spirit without measure, and that spirit fullness is now made available to the disciples.

So, Jesus gets up and He makes this prediction, If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. Now, this invitation is not being directed to the unbeliever. This invitation is being directed towards those who are sympathetic to Jesus.

Now, where do you stand in this measure of spirit fullness? Are you happy with the condition in which you find yourself? Or is it that you would like more from God? A.W. Tozer says that you can have as much of God as you ask for. In terms of your salvation, it is God's fashion in using the Holy Spirit to bring you to a knowledge of Him. In one sense, it is God who takes the initiative.

But as far as the Spirit is concerned, to a large extent it is your willingness. If anyone is thirsty, it doesn't say if anyone is empty. If that had been the case, then I would have suggested these words were directed to the unbeliever.

Rather, it is if anyone is thirsty, if anyone wants more, let him come. Let him come to whom? Well, let him come to the Lord Jesus Christ. Let him come to me and drink.

Do you remember the Old Testament metaphor in one of the Psalms of David of the fleet-footed deer who is thirsty and it goes over a hillock, goes down into the valley? It goes in and out in order to find some refreshing stream, and when it discovers it, it stoops down and it greedily gulps. That's the idea that our Lord Jesus has here. Let him come to me and drink.

A real desire. You can say this to the credit of those 120 men and women on the day of Pentecost. They had shown their desire to be filled.

They had shown their desire to have the acquaintanceship of the Holy Spirit released to them. They had spent 14 days. They had spent a long period in prayer.

And to some degree, the fullness of the Spirit is correlated to your desire to want to know Him and His fullness. You don't play fast and loose with God in the measure of developing spirituality. To some degree, the responsibility is yours.

To come, to thirst, to drink. Jesus says, whoever believes in me. Again, He's narrowing it.

He's already speaking to those who have made that commitment. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him. And now I believe He's conjoining those two Scriptures, one from Isaiah and one from Ezekiel, which speak about the Holy Spirit and His activity in a prophetic prediction.

Even though there were times in the Old Testament when the Holy Spirit was given to special men in special circumstances. I make that qualification because in the 39th verse, the narrator adds this little explanatory comment. By this He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive.

Up to that time, the Spirit had not been given. The implication there is not that there was no Holy Spirit, but the resources of the Holy Spirit had not been tapped into on any general basis. Electricity was in the world before we discovered the power of electricity.

So many things that are part and parcel of the technological age today. The essential materials were there hundreds of years gone by, or one hundred years gone by, but we didn't have the knowledge, we didn't have the ability to plug in. And this is what our Lord Jesus Christ is saying about the Holy Spirit.

Ah yes, He's known to David. David says, take not your spirit from me. He's known in measure to Samson.

That's why He was able to perform some of the most remarkable acts that He did physically speaking. But on the whole, the giving of the Spirit in the Old Testament times was discriminant. But that which was available to a few in New Testament times will be available to the whole.

And so it's the 120. It's the 3,000. It's all who come to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Every generation that has a crop of people who believe to you this promise is given. The promise of what? The promise of the Holy Spirit. To know Him, not it.

Not an influence, not just an emotion. There may be emotions that are in some way triggered by the Holy Spirit of joy or great sorrow. There may be times of physical response to the presence of the Holy Spirit.

But they're never anticipated. They're always a sort of natural reaction, if that's the right word, to God coming down in great power amongst us. But the point is this, that when you move into the New Testament era, it does become the era of the Holy Spirit.

We're not binatarians. We're Trinitarians. When we meet together, we need to have a consciousness of God's presence.

He can dwell with us as He dwelt with the Old Testament people in the temple or in the tabernacle. And to some degree, my friends, the success, if that's the right term, of meeting together is judged by the question that can be put after the meeting. Did we sense Him? Was He present? And to some degree, the test of your spirituality is to what extent do you reflect Him? To me, it was not the truth you taught, to you so clear, to me so dim, but when you came to me, you brought a sense of Him.

And from your eyes He beckons me, and from your lips His truth is shed, till I lose sight of you and see the Christ instead. The spiritual man, the spiritual woman, it's not someone who needs to tell you. You know.

You know. Thank God for Pentecost. For Pentecostal Sunday.

The Spirit that came then is a Spirit that we desperately need now to energize us, to make the presence of God felt individually and corporately. Listen again to a far greater preacher than, alas, I could ever have been. I'm not going beyond the grievous truth, says Charles Spurgeon, speaking from John 7. If I say that only here and there will you find men and women who have believed up to this point, their thirst is quenched and they live because Jesus lives.

But health and vigor they have not. They have life, but not that life which is more abundant. Their wading into the sacred river has contented them and they have known nothing of waters to swim in.

Brothers, let us all go in. To get of God all that God will give us, let us set our heart upon this, that we mean to have by God's help all that the infinite goodness of God is ready to bestow. Let us not be satisfied with the sip that saves, but let us go on to the baptism which buries the flesh and raises us up in the likeness of the risen Lord.

Even that baptism in the Holy Ghost which makes us spiritual and sets us all on flame with zeal for the glory of God and eagerness for usefulness, by which that glory may be increased among the sons of men. Let's pray. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Make me anew. Veil me anew.

Spirit of the living God, Let's stand in the prayerful attitude and sing now. Spirit of the living God, Spirit, Spirit of the living God,