In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of the new birth and the transformation it brings to a person's life. The sermon is based on the Gospel of Luke, specifically chapter 3, verse 21, and chapter 4, verse 17. The speaker highlights that the new birth brings a sense of purpose and direction, as well as a responsibility to live according to God's will. The sermon also emphasizes the significance of living a dignified and orderly life as a testimony to the Lord. Overall, the sermon encourages believers to recognize the transformative power of receiving Christ into their lives and to live in alignment with their new identity in Christ.

I'll bring you back again to the words in the Gospel by Luke, chapter 3, at verse 21. Now it came to pass, when all the people were baptized, Jesus also having been baptized and praying, the heaven was opened, the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form as a dove upon him. Voice came out of heaven, thou art my beloved son, in thee I am well pleased. Chapter 4, at verse 17, and he opened the book and found the place where it was written, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me. I'm going to stop there, what follows will occupy us later. I just want to add to that a word from the second letter to the Corinthians, chapter 1, at verse 21. Now he that establisheth us with you into Christ and anointed us is God, who also sealed us and gave us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts. In pursuing our reconsideration of this great and important matter of the anointing with the Holy Spirit. This afternoon we are going to focus our attention upon one, perhaps the most important feature of this matter. That is that the anointing always relates to one thing, and that one thing is vocation. Anointing came upon the Lord Jesus, as we have read, and then he himself declares why the anointing has come upon him. Because the Lord hath anointed me to preach. The anointing of the Holy Spirit concerns vocation. If you like to change the word to ministry, you can. But ministry is too often limited in our conception of it. But vocation, perhaps, is a more comprehensive term. Now, may I point out here again that the scriptures that we have read, to which many others could be added, make it quite clear that what was true of the Lord Jesus in this respect is true of the Church. I take it that Paul's message was to the Corinthians on a message to the Church. While it was the Church in Corinth, it covers the whole Church. Because in between his own personal anointing of the Jordan and this passage in 2 Corinthians, we do have the day of Pentecost. The day of the anointing of the Church for its great mission in Christ. That is quite simple and self-evident. But I do want that you should grasp this thing, not as something said, but with realization. Now, there's a lot of difference between knowing a thing in a way and realizing that you have got or you know that thing. You have a lot of things without realizing exactly what you have and the value of what you have. And it's this realization, beyond the statement of the truth, that I trust will come to you. You, dear friends, and I, if we are in Christ, as this word in Corinthians says, are supposed to have the anointing in Christ. He which establishes us with you into Christ and anointed us in Christ. We are all supposed to be anointed people. It isn't what you feel like at the moment. It is the divine fact. Are you in Christ? Can you give an affirmative answer to that? Very well then, if that is true, you have been brought into the anointing which is on Christ. You inherit that anointing which came on him after his death. You are an anointed person. As we have said earlier, there is nothing greater of which we can conceive than that we should be people anointed with the Holy Spirit if only we knew what that means. However, here is the truth. Then, if that is true, the anointing which is upon us in Christ is with vocation in view. The great governing factor of the anointing is vocation. It brings us into divine purpose. It means that every one of us is in Christ for a purpose. There should be no person in Christ without a purpose in life by the Holy Spirit. You may need instruction and enlightenment as to what it is. But I am for the moment taking pains to underline and emphasize the fact that if you are not aware of the fact altogether without the explanation and the interpretation, then you should raise the question of no lesser thing than your place in Christ, the meaning of being in Christ. And this is not so difficult as it may sound as I see it. If when you came to the Lord, or having come to the Lord, you have not had begotten in you a sense that life has taken on a new meaning, that there has come into your consciousness a meaningfulness in life, just as a sense, just as something that you realize has happened, then there is something wrong about your new birth. For this goes with your union with Christ. That could be put in various ways. Now there is something for which to live. Now you are under constraint to do something. Now there is a goal toward which you have to move. See, it can be put in many ways, but they all amount to this. It started on a line which has a meaning, and that is the very spirit of vocation. You'll do something. You'll aim at something. You'll have an objective in life. Find that you're under some constraint. So the very presence of the Holy Spirit as the spirit of the anointing carries with it this very thing, inseparable from it, vocation. I have commenced with the individual fact. It's important to begin there, but we make a personal matter of this. We are not passengers in this matter. We are not things to be carried along by some machine, institution, organization. We may be very small cogs in the hole, in all the works, but the whole thing would be thrown out if we didn't fulfill our function. We've got to realize that. I think there are far too many who have not this sense of being under the Holy Spirit's urge unto something. But I want to carry that beyond the personal and the individual, because we as individuals only receive it in a larger setting, really. If we come to the New Testament, for instance, a whole lot of individuals were involved, but really they came into their personal sense of divine initiative and drive and urge and motive, because the Church came into a mighty compulsion and propulsion by the Holy Spirit. First of all, the Church was taken up in this matter, and it is very difficult not to see that tremendous sense of commission and vocation came with the Holy Spirit. On that day and from that day, the Church is a thing with a purpose and a motive, tremendous driving force, and all the individuals derive their own personal sense of meaning from that hope. And we've got to come back to that presently. But now in between that, here is a word. What is the essential, the indispensable justification for the existence of Churches, local expressions of the whole? Why should the people of God be gathered together in smaller or larger numbers and companies in any given place? What is it that justifies their existence? What is it that really is the basis of their being there at all? Is it just to meet together, have nice fellowship, help one another along, be some nice little thing in that place, happily going on or miserably going on, occupied with themselves, ministering to one another, nursing one another? Is that it? Well, those things may come into it. My dear friends, the local companies are after all only parts of the one Church universal, and the purpose and nature and justification of the Church universal, which passes to the Church local, is vocation. There'll be no doubt about this. And any local company that is not really fulfilling a vocation is not there with an anointed vocation that is not justifying its existence. The Lord brings these into being, not to be something in themselves, not to be an end in themselves, and not just to look after themselves, but with a vocation in the world that is around them. And they must be there with this sense of responsibility beyond themselves, this sense of a mission beyond themselves, this sense of vocation. Now, the whole Bible could be taken to show that that is true. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because, because. What follows is a purpose. Because the Lord hath anointed me to something. Well, having said that, we have to come to this vocation under the anointing. And I'm loath to depart from that without making quite sure that you have really got your hand upon this matter. If your life, dear friends, is really under the government of the Holy Spirit, it will not be a dead end. If any company of the Lord's people is under the government of the Holy Spirit, it will not be a dead end. If you are where you are because the Lord has led you there, and that's how it ought to be, you're there with a vocation, a divine vocation for the fulfillment of which you can count upon the anointing. In your profession, in your business, in your home, and in your assembly as a part of it, this is the law, that there is something more than the thing itself. You are called into a vocation if you have received the Holy Spirit. And that can give meaning to life. We take ourselves out of the hands of the Holy Spirit and choose our own way and go where we think we should go, make our own decisions, and these things very often we get into a backwater. We're just out of the way. There's nothing coming of it. We ought to be very, very sure that we seek first the kingdom of God. There is only another way of saying that we move by the Spirit in what we do, or we might find ourselves just out there with no more meaning than what we are doing day by day for time. This is the meaning of the anointing. But what about this anointing? What is it? The Bible falls quite naturally into three aspects of the anointing. These three aspects are, in the divine conception, inherent in the very creation of man. Adam was created to be the vessel, vehicle, and instrument of divine vocation. And vocation in three forms. Adam, let it go. Tragedy of Adam is lost divine vocation. There are depths of meaning here that might be even dangerous to pry and fathom. But there are hints of a tremendous thing in this matter. There was, the Bible reveals, an anointed cherub that covereth. Lucifer, son of the morning, he now known as Satan before his fall. And there are strong hints that his vocation had to do with this creation. And he forfeited it by taking it into his own hands, out of the anointing. Because if anointing means one thing, it does mean absolute dependence upon God. It means that everything comes from God and not from the person concerned. It means that God is most jealous to keep things in his own hands. That's the meaning of the anointing. Things can only be as God maintains the overall government by his Spirit. The anointing was violated in that way and that high place was forfeited. Adam was created. Adam would have come into the anointing to fulfill that great purpose if he had not failed and missed the anointing, the adoption. There's a last Adam that God brings in and anoints with that very object. And so the Bible opens out along these three lines. First, with the creation of man and the object of his creation. Then the development of a nation to be the object lesson of what the anointing means as the vocation. Failure again in all three senses. And the Christ, the Church which is his body brought in as God's success in this thing which has been inherent in the creation of man from the beginning. What is the vocation? First of all, it is dominion. If you like, it is rulership, government, or to take the Old Testament title, kingship, royalty in a divine sense. It has not been sufficiently recognized that the anointing of the Lord Jesus on the Jordan side had this threefold vocation included and involved. And the first aspect of it was government. Authority, kingship, rulership, dominion. We saw yesterday it was that the enemy was trying to undercut. Government, kingship. Well, you know that that is one of the major lines of the Old Testament. But kingship is not something official now. It is not something that is temporal, as we understand it in the temporal realm. Kingship is a spirit. Royalty is a nature. Dominion is something of a spiritual kind. I can explain that. But first of all, you do recognize that the Old Testament naturally opens up along that line. One of its three lines. It begins with Adam. Thou madest him to have dominion. Thou madest him to have dominion. Then you find that before the thing assumes the form of official position, it has already existed in a spiritual and moral way. It is tremendously impressive. Abraham, as we have seen, is spoken of as one of the Lord's anointed. In Psalm 105, the Lord's anointed. Very well. Abraham stands in the presence of kings of this earth. And Abraham is superior. Absolutely superior. These kings of the earth are cringing before Abraham. Are bowing to Abraham morally and spiritually. He is, so to speak, head and shoulders above them. He really, in the presence of these men, is the king. Spiritual reality. Like that. Israel. Well, what is Israel? Naturally, from the standpoint of this world looking on, we know quite well what the nations thought of Israel. Naturally. What about Balaam being hired by Balak, thinking that this people would be just completely subjugated, brought under despise. But Israel, there and then, with all that they were or were not naturally, all their weaknesses and imperfections and faults, they rise to commend the statue at that very point. He has not beheld iniquity in Jacob. The shout of a king is among them. Israel rises to spiritual and moral standard in the midst of the nations. Embodying the principle of the anointed. Dominion. Kingship. It's there. Before there's anything official, it's moral and spiritual. So we could go on. How true it was of the Lord Jesus. All the rulers, completely baffled and nonplussed and defeated in his presence. They cannot handle this man. They cannot humiliate this man, spiritually and morally, whatever they do. He's over them all the time. That's true of the church. When moving under the anointing, it's like that. Now, that's all objective. What about you? What about any believer? Is this not true, dear friends, that when a man or a woman comes to Christ, receives Christ into the life, which is but one way, speaking of receiving the Spirit, is it not true that immediately that happens, without any reasoning or calculation or thinking about it at all, a new spirit of elevation begins to work in that life? You've seen it? I've seen it. Poor fellow in utter rags, never having worn a decent collar at all. Poor fellow in utter rags, never having worn a decent collar at all. Miserable, wretched creature dragging himself about his home, couldn't be called a home, a hovel. Wife and children in the most deplorable state. Poverty and misery because of his sin. I've seen that man born again. Born again. Ah, yes, truly born again. And within a week, coming to the meeting, first step, a nice, clean, white bit of scarf tied round his neck. And his clothes brushed down a bit. And I've seen that go on until he got a decent collar and suit and shoes to wear. And his home beginning to change and his children, his wife, no one ever said anything to him. Not a word, no one would have done. It's happened. It's happened. It's happened from within. And I want to say that that's the spirit of royalty at work. The spirit of heavenly aristocracy at work, in the heart. The spirit of glory. For that's what belongs to kings. It's glory. And the Holy Spirit is called the spirit of glory. The Holy Spirit in the light, now that may be an extreme illustration, but it's a very true one. It happens again and again. It's what does happen. A sense of shame comes in and blushing because of certain things, perhaps ways of speaking, old habits and so on, which are slow to fall off. But a sense of shame and blushing coming in that was never there before, never conscious that the thing was wrong or doubtful. It's come in. What is true in such extreme cases, you see, is a principle and a law of the spirit-governed life. That you cannot, if you are governed by the spirit, if you're under the anointing, you cannot be slovenly. You cannot be careless in your life and habits and dress. You cannot have an untidy home, a disorderly state of things for which you're responsible. It just cannot be. And you ought not to need anybody to point out that that is wrong and that is not right. The spirit himself says, John, dwelling in you, teacheth you. You have no need that anyone teach you. The anointing teacheth you all things, and this is one of the things that the anointing teaches. It makes of a disorderly life an orderly thing, and that's what you expect to find in kings' households. It makes of a disreputable life a reputable thing. It tidies up life all round, does the Holy Spirit. It's the spirit of kings, of princes. It's a spiritual and moral thing, you see. The point is that the anointing means elevation. It means elevation, and it always does work that way. A higher level of life. It lifts. It ennobles. It refines. It makes, for God's gentlemen, this is the spirit of kingship. And this is the law of spiritual government and ascendancy. You see, it's far better to have it like this than to have the office and the title, and for the conditions to be just a contradiction. No princes in Israel are, first of all, spiritual and moral people before they are official. The anointing means that. It means that. Just amazing how Jesus could fit into any situation. Could fit into any situation. Poor and rich. Ignorant and loud. He fitted right in. But it was the anointing. Have I said enough of this matter? Now, you see, his anointing was for kingship. But first of all, first of all in this dispensation, the kingship of Jesus is a spiritual and a moral thing. It's the mighty power of elevating people. Taking them from the downhill and setting them among princes. That. So, the anointing should mean for us a growing refinement. An increasing sensitiveness to what is fitting. What is becoming. What belongs to the palace. We are children of the King. Sons of God. Well, that can be viewed in two ways. It can make you feel uncomfortable and seem to be a legal imposition against going to make life difficult. Well, if you take it like that, of course, you've missed the whole point. The law of the Word of God is always positive. Walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. That is, if you live by the Spirit, it will happen. This is what will happen. Mark two. What happens or what does not happen just shows how much we are being governed by the Spirit. So, for kingship with all its wonderful meaning of not self-importance, not making an impression by our own effort, but just being. Being different. Being different. Are you anticipating the other aspects of the anointing? The vocation? Have you grasped the point that what I have been saying is a vocation? It's a ministry. It's a service. It's something that really is ministry. I believe you know that it's far, far more effective in this world to be a person of spiritual dignity and character like this than it is to go around with your Bible preaching and taking meetings. If you're a person like this, walking in the Spirit with this character, this character, personal character, personal, person of spiritual strength that will not descend to a mean thing, will not contemplate anything that is petty and morally above it, like Nehemiah, or should such a one as I cling. See, that's the spirit of the king. If you are such a person as that, and this dignity is found in your home, your home is a dignified place. Wherever you have any influence or power at all, that is shown in the orderliness and the refinement of character. That's a tremendous testimony to the Lord. Put it the other way round and see how the Lord is let down when it's not like that. What the Lord loses. This is vocation to be. To be. You recognize, I'm speaking very largely to responsible people, you recognize that the law of the Word of God is always in all matters that the person has got to be the thing before they get the name and the title and the office. You've got to be an elder before you can be made an elder. You've got to be a prince before you can be called a prince. That's the law of the Word of God. You've got to be this. It's the anointing which makes for reality. We can pass quite easily to the second aspect of this vocation, which is that of the priesthood. Just as the kings were anointed and were kings by the anointing, so the priests were priests by the anointing. Another thing, right from the beginning, inherent in God's thought concerning man, priesthood. Before ever there was a necessity for blood sacrifice, for atonement. Before ever the sin question came in, requiring certain aspects of priesthood. The whole matter of standing between God and His creation, mediatorially, intercessory, was there. Man was created to be a priest. In the sense that here is God, and here is His creation, and there must be one between to communicate from the one to the other, stand for the one to the other. Both ways. Both ways. Adam was intended to be that. A king and a priest, in the spiritual sense. And so the Old Testament again unfolds along the line of priesthood. Anointed priesthood. True, there has now come in this whole sin matter, calling in the whole system of blood sacrifices. But the principle remains that the anointing, the anointing means that there is that between God and others by which He makes Himself known, communicates Himself, commits Himself, and which brings that into knowledge of God. Priesthood, as you know, first of all means mediation, that is, standing between. And then standing between to minister for God to man, from man to God. And then to teach. The priest's deep lips must keep wisdom, must teach knowledge. The suffering aspect has come in now into priesthood. The real element of priesthood, suffering, suffering, is that with which the priest has to do. But when you have said all these things about it, the Church is called into the place of Israel. In this whole universe, where Adam failed, where Israel failed, Christ has come in, brought His Church into being, to be a kingdom and priest unto His God. He had made us, He had made us a kingdom and priest unto His God. It's not our title, it's not our office. Are you young Christian, old Christian, whoever you are, are you taking this home to you? That as truly, as truly and surely as ever, Aaron and his sons, and his long line of sons, and the firstborn in all households of Israel, were the priests in Israel, standing in this holy, sacred position. As truly as that, you are that in the thought of God. You are that. When you come to a meeting for prayer, you are coming on the ground of your priesthood, and may function under the anointing in intercession, standing there in your holy vocation, to minister from God to others, and bring others and their needs to God. A mediation. It's a priesthood. And what is true in prayer, intercession in that way, which is the great vocation of the Church, is true in many other ways. That we are here, tremendous vocation, that the individual, the local company standing there, not as an end in itself, but there between high heaven and almighty God, and that city, and that neighborhood, to minister God, to meet need out from God. Oh, what we can do if only we recognize our anointing, the meaning of our anointing. I must leave that there and pass quickly to the third and last of these aspects of the great vocation of the anointing, that is, that of the prophet. Again, the Bible opens up quite naturally along that third line. These are the three great unfoldings of the Bible. The prophet, anointed, anointed. Jesus was anointed king first, then he was anointed priest, under and by that anointing that he went forward, in a daily sack unto the great consummate sack of the great priest, offering himself for his true, true of his kingship and his royalty, his dominion, true of his priesthood as mediator between God and man, true in this third aspect, the prophet, he was anointed as the prophet of the Lord, gathered up into himself the Old Testament line of prophetic meaning. A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you as he raised me up, said Moses. They were all the way through, not only seeing and hearing their prophets, but waiting for the prophet. When Jesus came and he asked, who do men say that I am? Some said, the prophet. That one of whom Moses spoke, a prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you. This is the prophet. Ah, but he was more so than they thought, far more so. By the anointing he was that, but what is the function of the prophet? It is to recall and to recover all that has been lost, which is of God for his people, to recall to it, to recall the people to that which necessitates seeing what it is that God wants, and to recover that which was lost and bring it back. Tremendous vocation. But dear friend, all that you would realize that you in your local company, whether it be here in this place or in the other places from which you come, this is what you are supposed to be there for, to recall and to recover. It means that as a company you must know what it is that God ever meant, and that the people of God have lost. And this must with you be as it was with the prophets, a travail to get it back and to get them back. That's a vocation. A vocation to proclaim and to enunciate the whole counsel of God. That's the prophetic function. And if we are to take Jeremiah as any kind of indication to pluck up and to plow, that's perhaps the most difficult aspect of prophetic work to have to root up. Every plant which my father had not planted shall be rooted up. Look at Jesus doing the uprooting. My word, he was uprooting false things that had not been planted of his father. He was uprooting it. Difficult work to do, but there you are. There is a destructive aspect of the prophetic ministry that will not tolerate that which man has put in the place of God. Those things which have been put by man in the place of God's things have got to be rooted up. On the other hand, it's not all destructive. There's planting, planting, planting to be done. We are here for this, and we are or should be in any place. It is for this that we are anointed. It requires the anointing, but all this is implicit in the anointing. It's a big thing to be in the anointing of Christ. It is no lesser thing than the fulfillment of the whole divine revelation of the scriptures from Adam to the end. Anointed for that. But this is what will happen, and this is what makes it simple. If it sounds complex and difficult, this will simplify it. This is exactly what will spontaneously happen if we are moving under the anointing. These things will happen. They will come about. They will be the very nature of our being where we are, how it will work out. There will be a vetoing and a nullifying and a rooting out of things that are not of the Lord. There will be a planting of what is of God. These things will all happen. I haven't got to set myself to try to bring all these things about and do them. What you and I have to do is to live in the power of the anointing, and they will happen. Oh, then for more anointed individuals, or more living in the power of the anointing, more local companies like that, with these things happening. Perhaps the Lord is just saying these things to us to remind us, to pull us up over this whole matter, to show us we are not here just to drag out a painful existence and try to keep going to the end. The anointing means something more than that. It does. It means spiritual and moral ascendancy. It means being God's vehicle of supply. It means recall and recovery as to all that God ever meant for His people.