THE FEAST OF PENTECOST
THE FEAST OF PENTECOST
CAC We were looking at the passover and the feast of unleavened bread on Wednesday, and it was suggested that we should speak a little tonight about the feast of Pentecost in connection with the gift and presence of the Holy Spirit.
The first time that these feasts are referred to, this feast of [p. 132] weeks or Pentecost is called the feast of harvest (Exodus 23: 16). It would help us if we got very clearly before our minds that this is the time of God’s harvest. God has sown and He has also reaped. God has His harvest at the present moment; it really came in on the day of Pentecost. We think sometimes of what we gain by having the Spirit but it would help us greatly if we started with the fact that the great point in connection with the Spirit is what God gains. Think of the wonderful way in which God has sown in His field, God sending His Son into this world, Christ going into death, what a sowing! What is to be the result of God’s sowing? A harvest for God for His pleasure, the fruit of His own sowing. Do you not think it is helpful to see that? What did the Son of God come into this world for? To secure a harvest for God. The great object in view was that men might receive the Holy Spirit. Each gospel begins by presenting to us the Son of God as He who baptises with the Holy Spirit. That is His first introduction to us in the gospels. He came here and died here that God might give His Spirit to men and, if so, there is a harvest for God, something for His pleasure. Every Christian who has received the Spirit is part of the harvest from God’s sowing. The gift of the Holy Spirit is too great to be received on any other ground than on the ground of what God does Himself. How could He be given or received on any other ground? There is a harvest that springs from God’s sowing. The church on earth, as composed of all who are indwelt by the Spirit of God, is the result of it. The gift of the Spirit is the evidence of the value of the death of Christ. The first type of the Spirit given is in Exodus 17. Moses smote the rock. The water flowed from the smitten rock. The death of Christ is the procuring cause of the Spirit being given. It is His death that is the ground for it. We think of the death of Christ in its efficacy in putting away sin etc., but the first result is that God is glorified in the highest. The great result is that the Holy Spirit of God, a divine Person, can be given to all who believe. It magnifies the death of Christ; it is of such value that through it the Holy Spirit can be given.
Rem “He shall see of the fruit of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied”.
CAC That is right. There is a harvest for God. The object of the gift of the Spirit is that there may be a pleasurable result for God. What shall the harvest be of God’s sowing? There must be an adequate result if God sends His Son to die here. It is a result secured at this present time. It is the day of Pentecost now. “When the day of Pentecost was now accomplishing” (Acts 2: 1). Some think of it as having happened 1900 years ago but there is no time limit to the feast of Pentecost. And it is “the day of Pentecost”, not ‘days’. It is one of the longest days that has ever been. “And when the day of Pentecost was now accomplishing” or “running its course”. It is still the Spirit’s day and the time of God’s harvest.
Ques Would that be the thought in John 4: 35, “Behold the fields, for they are already white to harvest”?
CAC Yes, precisely; it is in connection with the giving of the Spirit. God is delighted with His harvest. He has had a good harvest, not a bad harvest. This is God’s harvest-time. It is not the sowing time now from this point of view but the reaping time. It was the sowing time when Christ came here and died. But it is now the reaping time when we are brought into the present wealth of the Spirit to be for the pleasure of God.
Ques Will the “trumpets” be sounded after this period?
CAC The day of Pentecost goes on until the time when God will send out a new testimony for the gathering of Israel, which will correspond with the “blowing of trumpets”. There is:
- The sowing. God sowed when he sent his Son into this world. An old man said lately in connection with some tracts he was distributing, ‘I like to sow the best seed’. God sowed the best seed. The seed God sowed and the harvest correspond.
- The sheaf of first-fruits.
The day of Pentecost was measured from the time when it was waved. It was waved [p. 134] upon the first day of the week, speaking to us of the resurrection of Christ. “On the morrow after the Sabbath” He was raised and He was waved. He was both the Sheaf and the waving Priest. Every question of sin settled, the sins of His people put away, sin in the flesh condemned and all the consequences of their unfaithfulness also met in the barley sheaf, the Lord as taking up all the unfaithfulness of His people.
The jealousy offering is an offering of barley (Numbers 5: 15).
And the prophet was told to take an unfaithful woman, in the type, and buy her with barley (Hosea 3: 1, 2).
The Lord has taken all that up. It is a comfort to us, a needed comfort. The Lord has taken up and settled every question in His death, not only the question of our sins and our state but also the question of our unfaithfulness as believers. All was tasted on the cross. Not only my sins as unconverted but the many sins and unfaithfulness since then, all were taken up and God glorified about them. If He had not been glorified about it all we should perish eternally. Now, in resurrection, He has been waved “to be accepted for you”.
You are transferred to the ground of a risen Christ. He was absolutely alone prior to that. A great many people are troubled and distressed about their unfaithfulness as believers.
I am not excusing that, God forbid. But our Saviour has borne the judgment of it, that we might stand eternally before God on the ground of a risen Christ.
Ques What would you say as to Hebrews 6: 4 - 8?
CAC It confirms what I am saying. Those who are brought to faith in Christ are “sanctified” by the will of God “through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all”.
Rem But I was thinking of Hebrews 10: 26, “where we sin wilfully”.
CAC Let us consider first Hebrews 10: 10, “By which will (the will of God) we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all”. Can any thing shake that? It is what Christ has done and what God has done. “For by one offering he has perfected in perpetuity the sanctified” (verse 14). Could anything be more blessed than that? The saints sanctified and perfected for ever, not by any work in them, but by one offering. Their consciences are purged and every question settled. Nothing can ever shake them. Now we will come to “where we sin wilfully” etc. He is speaking of those who deliberately turn their backs on all this, give it all up and go back to Judaism. There is no other sacrifice for sins; they have given up the only Saviour and the only work that can put sins away.
Rem It is apostasy.
CAC Yes, a turning away and there is no other remedy. The fact that they turn away is clear proof that they have never been the subjects of the work of God. Nothing can ever be touched that is the security of our blessing. “And the Holy Spirit also bears us witness of it ... their sins and their lawlessnesses I will never remember any more” (verses 15 - 18). If a man is an apostate he never was sanctified, purged, etc. He might have been a “washed sow” but never a sheep.
Ques We sing, ‘Fruit of Thy boundless love That gave Thyself for us’. Would that be connected with the “firstfruits” and our being risen with Him?
CAC We begin to count our weeks from that point. It is of the utmost importance that we begin to count from the resurrection of Christ. “And ye shall count from the morning after the Sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave-offering” (Leviticus 23: 15). He is in radiant suitability to God’s world. We count from that divine starting-point, the resurrection of Christ. We often start from ourselves and do not arrive at anything definite; we are working from self to God. But in the gospel I begin with Christ and God. My exercises start from God and from Christ, they are measured from the resurrection of Christ. You begin there, from the wondrous first day of the week when the wave-sheaf was waved for the acceptance of His people on the ground of the immutable value and precious worth of Christ. That is the ground upon which the Spirit is given.
“Ye shall count ... seven weeks” — seven blessed weeks,
[p. 136] starting with the resurrection of Christ. It is so blessed and is an imperishable foundation for the soul with God. I knew my Saviour and had done so for some time but one day it dawned on me that there was a blessed Man out of death and in the holy splendour of resurrection, and that that Man was my righteousness and my acceptance.
Ques You had a revelation?
CAC No. It is revealed in the gospel. The gospel is the blessed witness of God to His risen Christ. He has given “the proof of it to all in having raised him from among the dead” (Acts 17: 31). Happy the man who has got the gospel but miserable the man who has not.
Rem “God commends his love to us”.
CAC Yes, like a draper when displaying some material to a customer, He sets it out to the best advantage. If only we started with God. “In the beginning God”. That is where everything starts in the soul. I come in as a recipient of all the blessing that comes from God through Christ. I lose sight of myself and have God before me. Self nothing, God everything, Christ everything and the Spirit witnessing; that is the harvest. “To us there is one God, the Father, of whom all things, and we for him” (1 Corinthians 8: 6). Is not that blessed?
Everything originated there — “of whom all things”. And then there is His harvest, “we for him”. And how is it all brought about? “And one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things and we by him”. It constitutes us pleasurable to God as His harvest.
Rem That is very sweet.
CAC And then the Spirit is the seal of the righteousness of faith. How do I get the righteousness of faith? It says, “Believing on him who has raised from among the dead Jesus our Lord, who has been delivered for our offences and has been raised for our justification. Therefore, having been justified on the principle of faith, we have peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ”. It is settled. And “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us”. It never tells you in Romans [p. 137] how you get the Spirit, because it is not your business at all but God’s. God said, as it were, ‘I am sending My Son into the world that He might give the Spirit’. There are no cut-and-dried ideas presented in the Scriptures as to the reception of the Spirit. There are hardly ever two cases alike. The instances in Scripture are most diverse. God gives the Spirit as soon as ever He can. His great object is that He might give the Spirit. “If thou knewest the gift of God”. Is that the God I know? Yes, thank God. The love concentrated at Calvary is diffused now in this day of Pentecost. It is not what I get (although I get everything) but the first thing is what God gets, His harvest. There must be something commensurate with the actings of two divine Persons: the love of God and the death of Christ. The only possible thing to correspond with that is another divine Person. It is a threefold cord, the blessedness of God. No one else, none less than the Spirit of God, could shed abroad the love of God in a human heart. It liberates your heart and makes you feel blessedly free, counting all the time from the resurrection of Christ. Nothing could put sin away but death and nothing could put away death but resurrection. Start from the resurrection of Christ and make spiritual progress — “seven weeks”.
What a “seven weeks” for the disciples! They had the Passover and they had the Sheaf of first-fruits and the Priest of the wave sheaf amongst them (John 20), and they began to count. “Forty days” in companionship with a risen Man — what an experience!
Ques “When ye come into the land that I give unto you, and ye reap the harvest thereof”. What does that speak of?
CAC It would speak to us of the purpose of His love, a rich foretaste of what the Spirit would be. During the forty days, all He said to them was by the Spirit (Acts 1: 2).
Ques “Speaking of the things which concern the kingdom of God”. Would you say something about that?
CAC The kingdom of God is this new order where God is supreme. He opened their understandings, Luke tells us. Then after forty days of assembling with them and [p. 138] speaking to them by the Holy Spirit, He goes up, and for ten days they are in the light of an ascended Christ and find themselves in an “upper room”. How could you live on the ground floor after that? They abode there, in the “dwellings” from which the wave-loaves come (Leviticus 23: 17). What an experience!
Then the day of Pentecost came and the Spirit came and sat upon each one of them. God’s harvest is secured in the power of the Holy Spirit. Then the two wave-loaves come out “baked with leaven”; they had been in the oven. Peter had not been there in Luke 22: 33 when he said, “Lord, with thee I am ready to go both to prison and to death”. But he had been there between then and Acts 2. Peter was inflated in Luke 22. He had never been ‘baked’ before the Lord died. We get ‘baked’ in the death of Christ, where all has come under the judgment of God. That is the fire where you are baked and the activity of the leaven is killed. Peter is an unleavened man in Acts 2; he is speaking of divine Persons, not of himself. My father used to say that there was not much difference between high Calvinists and low Arminians because the former had bad self before them and the latter had good self before them, but neither of them had Christ before them.
The two wave-loaves of wheaten flour are of the order of Christ. The corn of wheat fell into the ground and died, and believers are the “much fruit” come out for the pleasure of God, as having the Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Suppose I have the Spirit of Christ, I have something in me characteristically Christ. “If any one has not the Spirit of Christ he is not of Him; but if Christ be in you ...”. There is something there as first-fruits for God, Christ in the saints by the Spirit now, in the day of Pentecost. But perhaps you will say, ‘There is not much of Christ in some Christians’. The question is, have you the right kind of eyes or spectacles? If your eyes are anointed with eye-salve you will be able to see something of Christ in Christians all the world over.
Ques As to the “one loaf” and the “two loaves”, what would be the difference?
CAC The “one loaf” would set forth unity, and the “two loaves” ability to be here in testimony, as adequate witnesses of Christ in this world, constituted such by the Holy Spirit. “Ye will receive power, the Holy Spirit having come upon you, and ye shall be my witnesses” (Acts 1: 8). There has never been a moment since the beginning of the day of Pentecost in Acts 2 till now, when there has not been a company on earth indwelt by the Spirit and constituted competent to witness to Jesus as “Lord and Christ”. God is maintaining His testimony, and He did so all through the dark ages.
Rem They loved what was of God.
CAC They had the Morning Star. They looked for the coming of Christ.
Rem They were looking for the day.
CAC They had the Morning Star. The hymn wrongly says, ‘The Star’s in the sky’ (194:1). Peter says it is “in your hearts” (2 Peter 1: 19).
Rem As having the Holy Spirit, there is ability to walk in self-judgment before God that Christ may be expressed in us.
CAC As there is self-judgment, there is appreciation of Christ. My appreciation of Christ is measured by my self-judgment. Grace reigns through righteousness, in self-judgment, and thus we are carried through to eternal life.
Ques Is the Holy Spirit given in answer to desire?
CAC It is a great pleasure to God when there is a desire, because God desires to give. I prayed for the Spirit after I had received the Spirit (I did not know it at the time) but my prayer was not displeasing to God.
Ques What would you say about the “continual prayer” of the disciples during the “ten days” of Acts 1?
CAC They were praying for the fulfilment of the promise (Acts 1: 4). It is a great pleasure to God when we are [p. 140] exercised about the Holy Spirit. Obedience and dependence are the lines on which we get the good of the Spirit.
Ques Can believers be like an ark?
CAC The ark is the peculiar glory of Christ as Son of God. We can be the tabernacle (the true tabernacle) and temple of God; “The temple of God is holy, and such are ye” (1 Corinthians 3: 16, 17). And our bodies are “the members of the Christ” and “the temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6: 15 - 20). We ought to be careful what we do with our bodies. What am I doing with my body as a “member” and a “temple”? If I think my body is my own, I do anything I like with it, but if I realise that I am not my own, I must take care. The real power of holiness is in recognising the presence of the Spirit. When we recognise the Spirit, we begin to use the Spirit. When I recognise His presence I begin to use the Spirit. “Do ye not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have of God?” Have you not recognised it? Many Christians have not.
Ques Would not “the fruit of the Spirit” be a great “harvest” for God?
CAC Yes, in Galatians 5: 22 we have a beautiful cluster of divine and heavenly fruit produced in believers — God’s harvest. We have to learn to distinguish between what is of the flesh and what is of the Spirit and to cultivate what is of the Spirit.
Ques Is the Spirit here as a witness?
CAC The Spirit comes to witness to certain blessed things. He is the seal to God’s blessed testimony of grace, and He glorifies Christ in my affections, so that I have the blessed assurance that I am in the current line of the Spirit.
Rem Rebecca rode on the camel and followed the man.
Ques Will you tell us something about the “seven lambs” (Leviticus 23: 18)?
CAC What is the result of the two wave-loaves? Offerings, and every one speaking of Christ, not about me. The theme of contemplation and delight and that which is presented to God is Christ. The Lord, when walking with the [p. 141] two disciples on the way to Emmaus, “interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself”. Then it was that their hearts burned (Luke 24: 32). We are in ‘Doubting Castle’ if self is before us but we are soon on the ‘Delectable Mountains’ if Christ is before us.