THE SPIRIT'S SERVICE
E.C.Burr
What our beloved brother has said in relation to the words of the Lord Jesus Himself in regard to our hearing what the Spirit says, led my mind as we have sat here to these verses, being again His own reference to distinctive functions of the Spirit in the time of Christ's absence. I wondered whether these three things do not embrace the fulness of the Spirit's service in the present time; that is to say, that He will guide you into all the truth, He will announce to you what is coming and He shall glorify Me.
There are other references, very distinctive references, especially in the first epistle to the Corinthians, as to the functions of the Spirit - the greatness of the Spirit's service in chapter 2, where He searches the depths of God, where there are things that are known by the Spirit of God, and where He makes known to us the things that are freely given to us of God - but I wonder whether they are not an enlargement of what Jesus speaks of here, and therefore whether if we reflect on the activity of the Spirit we would not find indications here of what the service of the Spirit will be.
The first thing that Jesus says is that the Spirit of truth would guide them into all the truth. Now this, I take it, is not merely the informing of the minds of the disciples and of ourselves in this the Spirit's day. The Spirit certainly does that; the Spirit is, indeed, the nourishment of the renewed mind. The Spirit is not the nourishment of man's mind as it is, but He is the nourishment of the transformed mind, the mind which has been the subject of the work that is embraced in the gospel in its fulness the Spirit is the nourishment and the food and the filling of the mind that is thus transformed. But I believe that His guiding us into all the truth bears on more than knowledge; that is, it bears on more than objective knowledge, as we speak of it. It bears on our actual entrance into the things which the Spirit knows about and which He communicates to us. There is no other means of our entering into them than by the Spirit of God. There are things that the natural mind does not perceive, but there are things that are spiritually discerned and for spiritual discernment we need the activity of the Holy Spirit. In fact, the activity of the Holy Spirit is indispensable in spiritual discernment. I have rather thought of this in much the same way as the children of Israel were guided through the wilderness by the cloud and the fire, not with a view to their remaining in the wilderness but to their entering into the actual possession of the things that God had prepared for those that loved Him in that day and the things that God has prepared for those that love Him in this day. The Spirit guiding us into all the truth is, I believe, to bring us into the actual possession of the things which are presented to us in the Scriptures, things which in themselves are spiritual but substantial. They are things that are not seen and are eternal and this service of the Spirit is to bring us in reality, one hesitates to say in actuality, into those things. I think that Jesus indicates here that the Spirit is going to unfold more things than He had Himself unfolded, because He goes on to say that He "shall not speak from himself; but whatsoever he shall hear he shall speak". That is to say, there will be the continuous leading of the Spirit, the guidance of the Spirit, into all the truth. The guidance is an interesting subject in itself, because it has in mind more than just leading; that is to say, we are not left just to follow the Spirit, although that is right - the Spirit leads in chapter 8 of Romans, it is right to follow the Spirit - but I think that guiding has in mind the Spirit's care and the Spirit's direction, the sense of "This is the way, walk ye in it", Isa 30: 21. I think if there is a tendency to stray, then the Spirit would bring us back. He would guide us, and as He guides us He would show us the way and illuminate things for us so that we may the better be able to know where we are going and what the objective is. All these things, of course, require that the Spirit is actually free among us, and I suppose we would all endorse the fact that the Spirit is free among us; hence we are able to touch things in spirituality at all.
Then Jesus says "He will announce to you what is coming". This, I think, is another distinctive service of the Spirit and it is a service that only One who is Himself God can fulfil. Man cannot announce what is coming; if man does that he speculates: if the Spirit announces what is coming, He knows. The Spirit "will announce to you what is coming". I suppose that may be a particular aspect of the service of the Spirit which is perhaps least experienced by us. There are certain major things that the Christian anticipates of which he already knows, which the Spirit would continually keep before us, most notably the return of our Lord Jesus Christ, but 'what is coming' bears on the history of the testimony. If you look at the beginning of this chapter you will see what kind of history the testimony was going to have, a kind of testimony and history that we ourselves know very little about in the mercy of God, but the Spirit will announce to you what is coming. And His announcing it is connected with His guiding us into all the truth, so that we may, as it were, have prior information about what is coming and be guided in relation to that. I suppose we need a distinctive sensitivity to learn from the Spirit what is coming. It is one of the distinctive services of the Spirit that Jesus mentions here and I suppose it has gone on from that day until this. The question is whether we are sensitive enough to discern the Spirit's announcing what is coming, because as He announces it He prepares us for it. We may ourselves have a certain discernment by the Spirit of what may be coming; then we would take that to the Spirit and seek His confirmation of it, or His adjustment in relation to it, because one important thing for the course of the testimony is that the saints should not be going on without direction and without guidance, in the direction in which they are going.
Then Jesus says "He shall glorify me". Now that is a service that the Spirit never fails to undertake. I believe that at the present time this is a service that the Spirit would be particularly delighting in. "He shall glorify me"; that is, as one of the hymns says, "The Spirit would keep Him before us, Our living and glorious Lord" (No 53). That is what the Spirit would do, He would keep Him before us; and I suppose that as we hear what the Spirit says it would tend to turn us away from occupation even with the situation in the breakdown and the state of individual saints and even of companies, and turn us towards Christ Himself so that we may be occupied with a Man who has never broken down and who will in the end restore what He took not away and bring in everything according to God, and the Spirit will glorify Him. What a service the Spirit thus delights in! You would feel that if the assemblies in Revelation 2 and 3 had been occupied with what the Spirit said as to the glory of the Lord Jesus, so much failure in history would have been averted. How could one leave one's first love if one were listening to the Spirit glorifying the Lord? One might go on, but I just refer to these verses. We sat here a few moments, no doubt wondering what else the Lord and the Spirit might say to us, but following what our beloved brother said as to hearing what the Spirit says to the assemblies, I wondered whether this indication by Jesus as to the normal services of the Spirit would help us, as we reflected on them, to anticipate what the Spirit might say to him that has an ear to hear.
LONDON
17 March 1981