THE POWER OF GOD
[p. 331] THE POWER OF GOD
The peculiar mark of this dispensation is that the Holy Spirit is here. This is just what christendom has given up. God gave man power in the days of Noah, power to govern everything here. When Israel failed, this power was given to the gentiles; the narrative of this you get in Daniel. The image represents the four kingdoms that had power - the Babylonians, the Medes and Persians, the Greeks, and finally the Romans. That was the power on earth and still is - “the powers that be”. We are bound to be subject to them. We are subjects in this world, though not citizens of it. We are properly citizens of heaven. There is now the power of the world, and also the power of God. It is this latter I wish to bring before you. The power of God came to the church; the world had refused Christ - the Roman power, for it was really the Roman soldiers who crucified Christ. It was not Israel; they said, “By our law he ought to die”; but it was the Roman governor who did it.
When failure came into the church it lost the power from God, for it gave up the Holy Spirit and sought power from the world. They could not hold the two together; the power of the world and the power of the Holy Spirit can never work together. I would we were all more jealous to use no other power than that of the Holy Spirit. It is a new power given to us since Jesus has been glorified, and we find great results from using it. The power that God gave to man, man used to drive God’s Son out of the world! You cannot use that power after that. How could you use the power that crucified Christ? But christendom gave up the power of the Holy Spirit and sought worldly power, and set up a man, the pope, as the [p. 332] vicar of Christ. I say, No, the Holy Spirit is His Vicar on earth!
When the Reformation took place they refused this spiritual head, but set up a temporal head; they made the sovereign head of the church. It is still the power of the world, and how glad they are to get the support of the world or its countenance upon their work; but does the influence and the power of the world help you - in preaching the gospel, for instance? I say, Certainly not! You say, I want to make an impression on souls. It is only the power of God that can do so, the power of the Holy Spirit. This was not given to the world; the world does not see Him, and you will find that the moment you try to make a display for the world to see, you have lost the power. It is a secret work, like the still small voice. Elijah had to find that the Lord was not in the wind, neither in the earthquake, nor in the fire. The moment you become conspicuous you have lost the power of the Holy Spirit, for the world neither sees Him nor knows Him. It will help you much to keep before you the distinction between the power of the world and the power of Christ.
Now it is the same Spirit of God in both these passages. In John 14: 26 He is the Comforter, that is what He is to you. In John 15: 26 it is how you are to appear to this world. One is outside - your testimony. If you are not standing for Christ here in company with the Holy Spirit in His testimony as to Christ, you will not have the comfort of the Holy Spirit in your heart. You cannot separate the two actions of the Holy Spirit. The first is for our own individual comfort; think of His sending such a Messenger to me - it is not an angel.
The Lord is going away, and He tells His disciples what He will do for them; He will send the Holy Spirit, “whom the Father will send in my name”. He will reproduce Christ in their hearts.
[p. 333] They had seen the Lord, walked about with Him, known all about Him. He was talking with them here in private - very different from the way He spoke to the world; frequently taking them aside and teaching them, as we see in Matthew 13. After giving the first four parables to the multitudes, He takes the disciples inside and expounds to them and gives them three other similitudes. You will find it very interesting to study how He told things in public, and then privately, when they were alone, how He expounded them to His disciples.
The presence of the Holy Spirit here is in connection with Christ’s rejection. He had offered Himself fully to Israel, and had set forth what God was in the world; but they would not have Him.
“Whom the Father will send in my name”. I do not think we really take in what a wonderful thing that is; the Holy Spirit comes here not to speak of Himself but of the absent One. He is sent “in my name”; the name conveys the thought of the Person, therefore God puts great importance on His name. He tells Moses, “By my name Jehovah was I not known”. Abraham knew Him as God Almighty.
When the Lord was gone away, the Holy Spirit was to come down, a divine Person, not to speak of Himself, but of that blessed One; to recall to the apostles all that He had said to them - thus it is that we have the gospels. And now I can always know when the Holy Spirit is leading me, because He always occupies me with Christ. True, He may have to occupy me with my own state, but if He does, He leads me to Christ, not merely to condemn me, but to relieve me.
The Lord tells us that He had come in the Father’s name; everything He did down here was showing forth the Father; and hence the wonderful position we are in now, that we derive from the Father because we have to do with the Son.
[p. 334] In the gospel narrative He is setting forth the Father as lifting you out of every pressure, so that if I am in a storm, I have confidence in my Father that He will bear me out of it. Do you think He will send a calm? No, He sends me to look at the Lord asleep in a storm! We are looking for Him to make circumstances comfortable for us; that is the way people speak of the Father. He can do so, no doubt; and when I come to look at what God is, I can say, like Paul, “My God shall supply all your need”. God is able to make all grace abound toward you. But when I look at the Father it is that He lifts me above all the pressure here.
The Lord comes into the synagogue and sees a man with an unclean spirit; He casts him out thus practically saying, I am come from My Father to relieve you from all this. Satan obeys Him; the Lord begins with the devil. Next, He finds a woman in a fever - natural excitement; He takes her by the hand and lifts her out of it. The next is the leper - sin and condemnation. The fourth was palsy - inability, absolute powerlessness; to this last the Lord says, Take up thy bed and walk. These four things comprise the whole pressure on the human family.
Now we come to Levi sitting at the receipt of custom, one thoroughly in the world. He had sacrificed his country and his religion to make money. The Lord says the word to him, and immediately he is lifted clean out of it all. He does not plead inability, or sin, or his own natural feelings, but just simply obeys the word of the Lord, and is delivered from it all.
It is to me a most interesting study that the Holy Spirit has to bring that Person before me in that way; He shall come “in my name”. What a wonderful Comforter! See the deep interest the Father takes in us to send this divine Person, whom the world does not see, neither knows, to revive in them the things the blessed Lord had said to them. You may say they had a great advantage over us. No doubt they had,
[p. 335] because they had been with Him in the world and had seen Him; yet what He said to them did not come in divine power to them until the Spirit came; and what the Spirit produces in us is what He brought out then, and that is what the Spirit is in relation to ourselves. You say, What a time of enjoyment we might have! But you will not have it without the aspect which is presented to us in John 15: 26. Many are defective in this, they have not taken the place of testimony. It is not a question of what you are doing, but you are to set forth Christ here. “The Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me”; this is of Christ in glory, not merely Christ in resurrection. Many souls have apprehended Christ risen who have not an idea of Christ in glory. The testimony is to be descriptive of that Man, to set Him forth on earth as Elisha set forth Elijah.
The world is against His own, this new company who are of Him in the world, like an island in the sea, with all the force of the world against it. But I learn that the same Holy Spirit who brings Christ before me in all the blessedness of His work on earth, showing me in the gospel narrative how He is able to lift me out of all the pressure here, then shows me that I am to stand here for Christ; to be a soldier, to wear my proper colours, to come out in a new style in testimony to the One whom the world has rejected. It is not you that do it, it is the Holy Spirit, representing here on the earth the glorified Man who is in heaven.
The apostles had to bear witness to His resurrection, and we find in Acts that one had to be added to them for that purpose, Paul was seen in that testimony; he was not with Christ in the flesh.
If you get this one thing from God tonight, you will pray to Him, not only for the comfort of John 14: 26, but that you may better understand John 15.
Now if I turn to chapter 16: 8 - 14, I find the character of the testimony, and what flows out of it. “And [p. 336] when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment”. He absolutely exposes the character of the world. When He is come He will convict (not convince) the world of sin. Now you must be on the side of the One who convicts, or among those who are convicted. The one is distinctly opposed to the other, and this is the reason that you have not the comfort of chapter 14: 26, because you are not distinctly with the Holy Spirit as in chapter 15: 26. Suppose the Lord asked me what I think of the world, I believe in its thorough badness because it will not have Him, and because the Holy Spirit is here. I want no other evidence. The Holy Spirit is here because of sin, “because they believe not on me”. The moment the church amalgamated with the world, it gave up the Holy Spirit.
Now can you go on with the world, and with the One whose presence condemns the world? He is the proof that Christ is rejected, that there is no righteousness here; you must go to heaven to the Father for righteousness, and that is what people know so little about - divine righteousness; they have not found it in the presence of the Father. “Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged”. There is a greater power on this earth than that of the devil, a greater power seen in us, that is, speaking of ourselves individually. It is an immense comfort for us to say, I know the Comforter. “Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world”.
“The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh .. . so that ye cannot do the things that ye would”. Thank God there is a greater power in us than the flesh, but we must have this mission of the Holy Spirit in this twofold character, and if you are to have the deep blessed enjoyment of the Comforter, you must stand for Christ here. Where will it put you? Straight against the world. It is like the tide and wind blowing in different directions, and if [p. 337] you will not go with the wind, you must go with the tide, like the dead fish - the living ones swim against the tide. You think it a difficult position; but remember you have a greater power than any in the world, an immense power! He is here to set forth that wonderful Person whom the world would not have. By the power of the Holy Spirit I am to be descriptive of Him down here. I cannot think of anything more wonderful than for the Holy Spirit to be here to enable a poor feeble creature like me to be descriptive of Christ as a member of His body. Of course it is only a minute expression, as you are one little member, but I speak of the power. It is that which makes known to us the exalted One, the heavenly Man, and which makes us descriptive of Him here where He is rejected. Nothing exasperates Satan like that, and he will not give you easy times; but the One who is your Comforter, and also your power, is above the power of all the evil here. He demonstrates the character of all man’s organisation here, because He is connected with God’s organisation, the church.
Now we come to the gain of verse 14: “He shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you”. In Acts 16, when Paul first came into Europe, he had a vision. He went and worked on as any man should in the work. At last a woman with a spirit of divination followed them and highly commended them as “servants of the most high God”. You can understand men in their position thinking, What a favour from God, this woman proclaiming us thus! If one of the local newspapers began to praise me up as a preacher, you might think it a fine thing, and say, You will get plenty of people now to come and hear you. No, I say, it is not divine power, there must be something wrong, I cannot have that power. It is remarkable that it was in Europe that the church first accepted patronage under the Emperor Constantine, and thus became allied to the world. Paul says,
“In the name of Jesus Christ” - that is the power we want here. Is not this a power greater than that in the world? Well, did the apostles have an easy time of it? No, they soon found not only the authorities against them, but also the mob. You see now what the devil does to these men. It is very solemn when you think that he - for it was the devil - had first been proclaiming them as the servants of the most high God.
The jailor goes to sleep thinking all was right; all the power of the place had done it, and therefore the matter was all settled. But another power comes into action. Do you believe that there is another power? I often ask myself that question, and I do not find many who believe in that power. I have seen a little company in a place, and a man has said to me, I could drive them all out with a stick. I simply defy him to do it. I say, No, the power of God is there.
Now what follows at Philippi? God comes in with great power; there is a great earthquake, the prison doors are thrown open by it and everyone’s bands are loosed, and the jailor - the man the apostle is sent for - is brought out! He cries, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” I want to show what the power of God is. The Holy Spirit has put you against the world, but what a wonderful position you have arrived at in verse 14! Alas, beloved friends, I know many and I love them, who have not this compensation. “He shall receive of mine” — Mine, what is that? Is it nature? No, it is things heavenly - heavenly things, things that “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man”. What, in a Man? Yes, the Holy Spirit is come to show me all these things. From man? No, nothing from man. I have lost the world, but have I nothing in the place of it? Yes. “He shall receive of mine”; then I am well off, yes, wonderfully well off! And let me say, I never saw a man that served God and honoured the Spirit of God, refusing to have any other power for Christ’s [p. 339] work, but that man got the heavenly things down here. He lost the world, got suffering from it, but he was not only able to stand for the Lord, and to do true work for Him, but he had the deepest enjoyment in the blessed fact that he had better things than the world could give him. I commend to you these two verses, not only to look at them in their own greatness, but that your heart may be so sensible of the divine nature of what the Holy Spirit has come for, that you may not try to have one without the other. Take them together, and be able to say, I am so drawn to Him that I am glad to be here as a vessel of testimony, though it puts me right against the world, so that I have to stand against it; not aggressively, like Moses - I have not to knock a man down, but I have to take a different course altogether from the world, saying, I have nothing to do with you; yet obedient to the authorities over me, but as a subject, not as a citizen. I am not looking for favours from it, though thankful for quiet times. We are to be patrons of the world, not the world our patron. The church should be the friend of the world, not looking to the world to support the church, but the contrary. We are told to pray for peace always, and I am glad when one is led to pray for the peace of the country, and the establishment of order according to the power God has established. But I would do nothing with the power that crucified Christ, nor attempt to carry on the Lord’s work with a power that would not have Him here. The Lord grant us to understand the wonderful place we are set in in this world, and the wonderful nature of the power that God, in His grace, has given us to stand for Christ here.