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THE PLEASURE OF GOD IN WHAT IS FILLED

It is manifest in the scriptures, that God desires that every sphere that belongs to Him should be filled. God does not find pleasure in what is empty. At the beginning, at least the beginning as it stands related to man, it says “the earth was without form and void”, or waste and empty. What transpired we are not told, but God found no pleasure in an empty earth, so the Spirit of God began to operate, to fill the earth according to the mind of God. The dry land appeared, then God caused to grow out of the earth grass, the herb yielding seed and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, in order that the earth should be filled with life, not one tree here and one tree there, but God’s intention was to have the earth filled with life. The abundance of seed that is provided in the herb and the trees, showing that God intends things to multiply innumerably. Then God said that living creatures were to swarm in the seas, swarm, and fill the seas, so that the Psalmist tells us that in the seas there are moving things innumerable. The multitude of life in the sea exceeds man’s power to even contemplate, the quantity, the abundance of the seas, and that is according to the mind of God, the living creatures were to swarm in the seas. Then God said that the fowl were to multiply in the earth and then He made man and said, “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.”

God wanted the earth filled with men and women who in their spirits had contact with God, who had to do with God, “the God”, it says, “of the spirits of all flesh”, and He would fill the earth with men and women every one of them having to do with Him, every one of them according to the divine mind, able to walk with Him wherever He might appoint, every one of them to be like Him. You know what it says of Abraham “the friend of God”. God said, “I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore”. God would multiply the seed of a man who was His friend, like the stars and the sand of the sea shore.

Luke indicates that God’s house must be filled, where God lives, where God abides; He says “Go out ... and compel them to come in that my house may be filled”. God will not have an empty house. It is a divine requirement that His house must be filled, so when the Spirit of God came He filled the house, the sound came from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the house. No other sound in the house but the sound from heaven, not a word from the universities, not a word from the scientist, no, but the house filled with the sound from heaven, the mighty operations of the Spirit of God.

We are in a very dangerous position if we are empty. The Lord speaks of a house that was possessed but the demon had been put out and the house was swept, garnished and empty. The demon coming, and finding it thus, it says he takes to himself seven demons worse than himself and occupies the house. What a serious thing it is to have an empty house! That is what Christendom is becoming rapidly, an empty house. There has been a certain amount of cleansing and garnishing and outward deliverance from the demon but the house is empty. What place has Christ got in the eyes of the world? I ask all of us, any who may be in it, what place has He there? You know what the mind of God is about Christ, that He should fill all things in heaven and earth. He has gone far above all heavens that He might fill all things. If the house is empty that demon will come back with seven demons worse than himself, and he is coming back, Spiritualism, Christian Science and all these satanic agencies, are coming back worse than ever to take possession of an empty house. So, as believers, we do not want to be empty.. It says “none shall appear before me empty”. God does not want one of His people coming up empty, not one. He does not want them to be lean and empty. It says “they shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house”. He wants the ears full, He does not want ears without grain, lean and empty.

So I wanted just to speak of Stephen, for he is a man that is full of the Holy Spirit, he is a great example of what marks a man that is full, so it says they were to look out seven men full of the Holy Spirit, full of it. Seven of them. I believe some of us sometimes think that being full of the Holy Spirit is something marvellous that nobody can understand, that it is quite out of the reach of ordinary persons. At the beginning it was not so, for when the apostles wanted someone to handle the money, the collections and to see that the widows were properly cared for and in no wise neglected, they said “look ye out among you seven men full of the Holy Ghost.” Does this mean that this was a most exceptional condition? What does it mean? It means that they were men who judged the flesh. Men who could be trusted when they had the money, they would not steal it or misuse it. Unless a man is full of the Spirit you never can trust him, you never know what he will do. You can only trust a man who has the Spirit and is full. He judges the flesh in its various forms and he is not dominated by the earth.

Two great elements that hinder men and women being full of the Holy Spirit are, that the flesh is allowed secretly, or the earth has got into the wells. The water cannot spring up unless the earth is removed. “The princes digged the well, the nobles ... with their staves.” They got the earth out. How much we need that, do we not? The earth is there the things of this life. Now Stephen was neither governed by the flesh or the earth, there was room made for the Spirit of God. He was full of wisdom, full of faith, full of grace, full of power, these are the things that are seen in Stephen, the characteristics of a man who was full of the Holy Spirit. Now you can see clearly, in that man who is full of Holy Spirit, the normal features of the Spirit of God. First of all you can see in Stephen, that he is a man in touch with heaven, one who can look up into heaven; he knows what is going on up in heaven. It says, “he saw the heavens opened”, he looked up into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus. That is what the Spirit is here for, to maintain in our hearts a link with heaven, those who gnashed on him with their teeth were the ones who had refused the Spirit, but Stephen had a link with heaven by the Spirit. Then you see how he corresponds with the mighty wind, he is in power, irresistible power, so that they could not resist the wisdom, the power, by which he spake; it was the power of the Holy Spirit that was irresistible in that man because he was full of the Holy Spirit.

Then the cloven tongue, how it is in evidence in Stephen, what words they were! He says, “Men, brethren, and fathers, hearken.” He goes over Abraham’s history with wonderful discrimination, then how, in process of time, Joseph appeared and how his brethren envied him and sold him into Egypt, and how when Moses, who was a prophet from God was raised up they said, “Who made thee a prince and a judge over us?” They refused Moses, and when he brought them out of Egypt they would not obey him and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt. Then Stephen goes on to David and Solomon and to Christ, and makes clear that they have always resisted the Holy Spirit. What a tongue! Bringing it home in conviction to their consciences and hearts. Then the fire was there. Why could Stephen be trusted? His heart was naturally the same kind of heart as Adam’s and there was not much difference between Stephen’s heart naturally and the robbers’ on the cross.

Adam is the beginning, and those robbers are the end, of man’s responsible history. What had happened that made Stephen to be trusted? What had happened that when men gnashed on him with their teeth, and ran upon him and stoned him, there was not a bit of malice in his heart. Not one trace of malice is evident in Stephen’s heart at the end of his life. The apostle Peter says “laying aside all malice.” He recognises that it is there naturally. It is there and we know it is, it is in every heart. We must not deceive ourselves, for as sinners, it is natural to bear malice and to be robbers. Yet there was no malice with Stephen. Why? Because the mighty power of the Spirit of God as fire was operating at the moment, the fire was there. Then every other feature of the Holy Spirit is there, the living water that the Lord speaks of in the gospel of John when He says, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink”, and “out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” This He spake of the Spirit.

Think of Stephen at the end of his days, a perfectly satisfied man, a heart that never thirsts for ever. Why is he not thirsty? Because he has the living water in his heart, he has in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. He got it from Jesus. At the end of his life he is full of the Holy Spirit, he looked up into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus. He saw clearly, by the power of the Spirit, an object that satisfied his heart even at that moment, just as he is going out of the world. There was nothing wanting. He did not ask for anything except grace for his murderers. He saw the glory of God and Jesus. That is what the Spirit of God does, you know. The living water is the Spirit of God coming into the heart and filling it with a blessed Person, that is Jesus. “The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”

Stephen has the Spirit in correspondence with the sound from heaven, he has the Spirit as connected with the rushing mighty wind, the mighty movements on the part of the Spirit, he has it as a cloven tongue, enabling him to speak, he has the Spirit as the fire to enable him to judge the flesh in every form,

he has the Spirit in connection with the living water, to fill his heart and satisfy him for ever by bringing Jesus, the glory of God and Jesus, before the vision of his soul, he has the Spirit as the anointing, the oil that makes his face to shine.

Another characteristic of the Spirit of God is that it is the oil, the anointing oil that God puts upon His own, so that their faces shine with the dignity that is heavenly, that is what the anointing is, to put dignity upon man, dignity according to God. If God anoints, it is to dignify. It says “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth”, the despised One, living in a town that nobody ever expected anything good to come out of. “Despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and we hid, as it were, our faces from him: he was despised and we esteemed him not.” But God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power. What a dignity! God’s Anointed. God puts upon men a dignity that belongs to heaven. The dignity of the world God hates. But God loves people who are dignified by the anointing. So Stephen is dignified and he stands before his accusers and his face shone as the face of an angel. What made it shine? He was full of the Holy Spirit, he was not allowing the flesh, and without attempting anything at all, without trying to shine, his face simply shone and like an angel’s with the dignity of heaven.

Stephen is a man in the liberty, the devotedness, the intelligence, and character of one who has the breath of Christ. So that you look at him and he reminds you of the Lord, without trying to be anything on the line of effort. He is the very expression of love and of the character of Christ. Able to look up into heaven, just like the Lord as it says in John 17, “Jesus lifted up his eyes to heaven,” — not a cloud between heaven and Jesus — His blessed eyes could look right up into heaven and he said, “Father, the hour is come”. Stephen could look up into heaven, no cloud between. Jesus, here as a dependent Man prays. Stephen like Him, kneels down and prays. He is not trying to do it, he is doing it because he has in his soul the breath of Christ. The Lord makes clear the result of having His breath. He says, “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them”. The Lord’s whole life was on the line of remitting, remitting everything that was personal to Himself. When He breathed on His disciples He said “Whose soever sins ye remit”. You could not remit without that breath, it is not natural for us to forgive, we may let the things go, but the grievance is still in the heart, it will crop up when we are not watching. How often we see the things that were supposed settled five, ten, twenty years ago, are not really settled because they are not remitted, because the gain of the breathing of the Holy Spirit is not practically effective in our souls. So Stephen as he prays says, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”. He says as far as I am concerned it is remitted”, and this whilst they were gnashing on him with their teeth, having dragged him out of the city and stoning him. Stephen is full of the Holy Spirit. Now don’t let us think that is exceptional. In one sense it is, but God does not intend that it is to be exceptional. These cases in scripture are set forth as patterns of what is in the mind of God. Stephen was not even an apostle, he was a deacon, he was just a man who attended to the material side of the welfare of the saints in the first instance, but he made room in his soul for the Spirit of God by self-judgment, he did not allow the flesh. When it came to his home, or his business or his family, and the things of this life, he did not let it fill the wells.

What happens so often is that we let the things of this life fill the wells, the earth is there. Stephen did not allow that, but the Spirit of God took complete possession of him.

I believe that is how the present dispensation is going to end. When the Spirit came at Pentecost it says it filled them all. The previous dispensation ended like that. Zacharias when John was born was full of the Holy Spirit. So that is the feature that will be at the end. Of the aged Simeon, it says, it was revealed to him by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God had brought a sound from heaven to Simeon’s heart that he should not taste death until he had seen the Lord’s Christ. Then it says, “he came in the Spirit into the temple”. That is the way to come into the temple. As judging the flesh he came in the Spirit into the temple and he saw Jesus and recognised Him. When he saw that little Babe he knew at once who He was, and took Him up in his arms and said, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace ... for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people. A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel”. Why don’t people see? Because they are allowing the flesh, and they are not coming into the temple in the Spirit, people who come in the Spirit come in subject. They come to learn, to enquire of God, people who enquire are instructed. So Simeon sees this little Babe and takes Him in his arms, recognising Him. Anna seeing Him gives thanks. Think of the Spirit in that dear woman, full of wisdom spiritually, she gives thanks and speaks of Him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem. How did she know? She did not walk in self-will, but in subjection, that is how she knew. If we judge ourselves the whole thing becomes as clear as noon-day. “He that is spiritual discerneth all things.”

May the Lord encourage us to see what is available to us, and help us to recognise and make room for the Spirit of God, for His name’s sake.

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