Holy Spirit No.1 The Holy Spirit and The Church

Moses, you recall, recoiled against such an invitation, indeed such a command from the Lord. And you can understand Moses' reluctance. Here was a very fearful task in view.

That wilderness, it boasted many, many an obstacle. And what was more, the Israelite people were notorious because they were quarrelsome and disobedient. And Moses appreciated that to get that rubble back to the promised land would be a task that, well, it was beyond his own ability.

And unless God stepped in in a remarkable fashion and empowered him, well, he was not equal to it. And so we found him in the 33rd chapter of Exodus saying to the Lord, unless you go with me, unless there is a great manifestation of your presence, then I'm just incapable of going on. You remember that, don't you? And I made one or two deductions as a result of that.

I suggested to you that you had to bear in mind that Moses' knowledge of God didn't stem from the 33rd chapter of Exodus. Rather, decades ago in Midian, he'd had that remarkable encounter with the Lord when the bush burned and was not consumed and God gave Moses an indication of his name and told Moses that he'd be with him and so forth. But here in the 33rd chapter of Exodus, you've got Moses who has already known God and the empowering of God's Spirit upon him coming to the Lord for something else, something extra.

And as I say, I made certain deductions as a result of that and dangled them in front of you for your attention and indeed for your reaction. And some of you did respond in our time of corporate prayer later on. Well then, with that in mind, let me put a question to you.

When do you argue the church of God was born? When did the church begin its life? At Pentecost, somebody cautiously whispers down here. No need to be cautious, you've got quite a lot of Bible commentators who would agree. It's a popular opinion.

The church began at Pentecost. Acts chapter 2 records it, that mighty outpouring of the Spirit and 120 are filled with this extraordinary power. There's nothing particularly tidy about Pentecost.

The folk who are gathered together, they see what happens as a result of this outpouring of the Spirit and they even accuse the men and the women who have received the experience as being drunk, drunk with new wine. And the notion goes that the church was born on the day of Pentecost. Well, that's all very good.

Apart from this one problematic fact that I bring to your attention, nowhere in the New Testament, let alone in the Acts of the Apostles, is it argued that the church was born on the day of Pentecost. It's a popular opinion and there are quite a lot of books that you could read that make these conclusions. But I'm asking you to reconsider the whole issue again.

When does one become a Christian? Well, that's an easy question to answer, isn't it? Paul tells us in Romans, if any man has not the Spirit of Christ, he is not of his. In other words, it is impossible to be a Christian without knowing something of the ministry of the Holy Spirit within your heart and life. Well, when, first of all, did the disciples have an experience, a personal experience, of the Holy Spirit? And my answer is this, before the day of Pentecost.

Certainly, directly after the resurrection, possibly even before. The latter is up for dispute. The former suggestion is not.

I mean, here we discover our Lord, don't we? In John 20, he's appearing to the disciples. This little snippet of a reading that I've just brought to your attention. He appears to the disciples.

They're behind closed doors for fear of the Jews. And what does the Lord do? Well, he speaks to them. And in the way that our Saviour often introduced a new bout of conversation, he wishes them peace.

The end of verse 19. Peace be with you. And then he shows them who he is.

He demonstrates the genuineness of his claim to be the Lord because he bears in his hands and in his body the marks from the crucifixion. And then what does he do? Well, the disciples, having been overjoyed at the thought that Jesus is now back, they listen to him once more, giving to them his peace. Verse 21.

And then he grants them a commission. Earlier, he has said in the high priestly prayer in John 17, Father, as you have sent me into the world, so I am sending them. You remember the reference? You can backtrack and read it later on.

Now, here in John 20 and 21 is the fulfillment of what he has predicted in John 17. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. Then what does he do? Well, verse 22 answers.

And with that, he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. Now, you see, you're in trouble. If you say that the first indication that the disciples had of the indwelling of the Spirit was on the day of Pentecost, what do you make of John 20 and verse 22? Now, the usual answer is this, that it is prophetic.

Our Lord is, in effect, peering into the future, the near future, and he is predicting what is going to happen. Well, that's all right, but it gives more prizes to your ingenuity of thought than what it does with the actual rendering of Scripture here, because the tense of the verb has got nothing whatsoever to do with the future. Rather, our Lord says, there and then to the disciples, receive the Holy Spirit.

What is more, he doesn't just tell them to receive the Holy Spirit, but he breathes on them the Holy Spirit. Now, can you remember another occasion way back at the beginning of the Bible, the book of Genesis, when reference is made to God breathing on someone? Adam. When Adam was formed from the dust of the earth, we read that God breathed on Adam, and he became a living soul.

So, right at the beginning of time, the beginning of the creation of the world, when God brings into being the highest piece of creative work in which He engaged, He breathes into Adam, and Adam becomes a living spirit. Adam will partake of the nature of God. Let us make man in our own image.

Now, doesn't it seem reasonable to you that when the Lord Jesus Christ is here depicted in the authorised version and the NIV version of Scripture, as telling the disciples to receive the Holy Spirit, and the older versions indicate that He breathed on them the Holy Ghost, that He is doing something that has a very, very interesting parallel with what was done at the beginning of creation. He breathed, God breathed on Adam, and he becomes a living spirit. The Lord Jesus Christ breathes on His disciples, and as a result, well, they are able to do something that they've not had the ability to do before.

Verse 23 will tell you this, but I'm going a little too quickly. Do you remember going back to Ezekiel and chapter 37, references made there to a rather remarkable vision that the prophet had. Ezekiel chapter 37.

The hand of the Lord was upon me. He brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley. It was full of bones.

He led me to and fro among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, son of man, can these bones live? I said, oh sovereign Lord, you alone know. Then he said to me, prophesy to these bones and say to them, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

This is what the sovereign Lord says to these bones. I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you, and make flesh come upon you, and cover you with skin.

I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone.

I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them, and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to it, this is what the sovereign Lord says, come from the four winds, oh breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live. And the rest, without reading the remainder of that incident, you know.

The prophet preaches, the prophet breathes, and as a result of the mighty outpouring of the Spirit on that particular scene, something phenomenal occurs. A dead army comes to life. That which was just a semblance of skeletal frames, takes upon it flesh, and blood, and sinew, and muscle, and so forth.

And there's a mighty army, and the army is the direct result of the breathing upon those in the valley of death. Now I'm just making this suggestion to you, that as in Genesis, as in Ezekiel, as in the authorized version of the John chapter 20, you come across the use of the word breath and breathing. So it's highly significant that the disciples are said to receive the Holy Spirit sometime before Pentecost.

Then a charge is given to the disciples. I come back to where I left off some three or four minutes ago. If you forgive anyone his sins, this is verse 23, if you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven.

If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven. Now wouldn't you say that that is in effect a prior rendering of the verse that you find at the end of Matthew's gospel, the 28th chapter, where our Lord gives the great commission to the disciples again before Pentecost, as he takes his leave from them. In other words, the ascension.

Matthew 28 and verse 18, then Jesus came to them and said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I will be with you always to the very end of the age.

Now how could he be with them always to the end of the age, apart from the impartation of the Holy Spirit? I will go from you, and yet I will come to you. You remember our Lord's promise, his warning, and his prediction, as recorded in John's gospel. The scene was of course the upper room.

So what am I trying to, what am I trying to establish? Well simply this, that it is arguable, if not conclusive, that the church in embryo, the church in essence, was in existence before the day of Pentecost. I would say that if you have to pinpoint when the church came into existence, you must at least commence with John 20. Or if you don't commence with John 20, then it's arguable that you can go back some way before then.

You can't even, as the reasoning sometimes goes, argue that the disciples were somehow unified on the day of Pentecost. You see, here they are, they're such a desperately peopled group of individuals, and they need to be forged together into a unity, not just the disciples but 120, because you remember others are included and embraced in the number is Mary the mother of Jesus. And the reasoning goes, well it was Pentecost, the manifestation, the outpouring of the Spirit that brings this group of differing individuals together, and it forges them together as a mighty army.

Well I'm not in any way suggesting that what happened on the day of Pentecost did not help towards that end, but what I'm arguing against is this, that that was not the direct cause of the unity that there was amongst the followers of our Lord, those who went into the upper room. What I'm suggesting to you is that that unity existed before they were baptised in the Holy Spirit. I've only to direct you to the first verse of chapter two of the Acts of the Apostles, and I could have taken you into the first chapter also of the same book, but here we are.

This will do, because time's at a premium. When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. You see, there's the unity, there is the accord, even then.

And you get reference to it, as I've said, in the earlier chapter, in the first chapter as well, the disciples being in one mind. They come and they wait before the Lord, and that unity which they had prior to Pentecost, of course, is made even more solid as a result of the mighty outpouring of the Holy Ghost. Now you say, well what, first of all, has this got to do with Moses? And perhaps even more particularly, what has it got to do with me? And thirdly, you might ask, why are you preaching this? Well let's take the last question and answer that.

And the direct answer is this, I didn't prepare to preach it. I haven't prepared a series. I came very much with open mind and open heart to this meeting last Wednesday, and I took you to the book of Exodus not knowing that I was going to go there at the beginning of the meeting.

And I indicated that at the close of the meeting last, at least the close of my part of the meeting last Wednesday, that I bring you back, and that's what I'm doing. I'm bringing you back, however, having answered the third question, I'm bringing you back to Exodus because, you see, this business of Moses being confronted with a task that is singularly difficult, strikes me as important. For this reason, he had, as I mentioned before, encountered God decades earlier in his life.

And yet here he is, you remember the point on Mount Sinai, and he's saying, Lord, I want to know you, but Moses, you already know me. Lord, I want your presence, but Moses, you've already had my presence. But Lord, I need to know more of you, because unless I know more of you, I don't face tomorrow.

Now, isn't that a fair summary of what Moses was saying? And the Lord, he attends to the earnest request of his servant. He realizes that Moses means business, that Moses is making these strong demands. Lord, show me your glory.

The goodness of God passes by, and Moses hides himself in the cleft of the rock, and there occurs one of those remarkable things in Old Testament scriptures, and we don't have a full description because, well, the Hebrew language, the Greek language, the English language can never convey fully, adequately. Words cannot bear the imagery of what is meant by God revealing himself, even partially, to a man in the cleft of the rock. But such was Moses' experience, and when he came down from the mountain, you remember I took you to the next chapter and to the final few verses, there's something different about Moses.

The Israelites say they cover their eyes, and ultimately Moses has to drop a veil on his face. Why? Well, he's been in the presence of God. There is something that is notable about this man.

It was there perhaps in degree before, but it's never been as absolutely evident to others. And even the Apostle Paul, when he's writing to the Corinthians, makes reference of this great glory that fell upon Moses. You recall that, don't you, at the end of, is it the second chapter or the end of the fourth chapter? And the Apostle uses it.

He plunders the imagery, and he speaks about the glory of God, now no longer in terms of Moses and the Old Dispensation, but his inter-New Testament times, and he speaks about we beholding the glory of God as in a mirror. And ultimately he gives the idea that the glory of God can transform us, it can rub off to us, so that men can see that we're being changed in the poetry of Wesley, changed from glory unto glory, till in heaven we take our place. Ah, but Wesley didn't say that you'll be changed only in heaven.

He was a much better theologian than that. He believed that the process of transformation was on earth, and of course you've got New Testament evidence of this, have you not? Even in a visible fashion. I put a question to you last week, and you gave me the answer, Stephen.

Stephen was a man whose face was irradiated, illuminated with a power, with the presence of God. Now my second question, which you've probably forgotten, and by the grace of God I haven't, was this, what has this got to do with the acts of the apostles? Well, I've almost answered the question. You see, here are the disciples, and before Pentecost they received the Holy Spirit.

Of that there can be no doubt. They received the Spirit, and I took you to the older versions that speak of our Lord breathing the Spirit. Now the tenses are such that you cannot but admit that something occurred then, and yet on the day of Pentecost they knew a mighty endowment of power.

They were embraced with the dynamic of the third person of the Trinity. Why? Well you see, they're back with the same predicament as Moses, aren't they? They've got something to do that is utterly impossible. I mean for Moses it was difficult, but for the disciples the obstacles are insurmountable.

Here they are, 120 of them, and they're faced with the bastion of Rome and Judaism as their sworn enemies. How will 120 men and women make an impact for God on the streets of Jerusalem? How will they spread out into Judea, to Samaria, to the uttermost parts of the earth? And the answer is they won't, unless they know that drenching in the power of the Holy Ghost, unless they have flowing, pulsating through them, the very power that fell on the Lord Jesus Christ when He is publicly acknowledged as Messiah, as His baptism, and when He goes into the wilderness, you remember how Mark puts it, full of the Holy Ghost. Now let me try and draw one or two conclusions at this stage.

I was once struck by a phrase that I read in a book, I believe it was by A. W. Tozer, who said this, that the man who has known the overwhelming or the baptism of the Holy Spirit never has to be logically convinced that that's been his experience. It's not just an assurance that comes through Scripture by a deduction of texts, that was the first assurance I taught you about last week. It's not just a question of him liking the company of the brothers and responding to those who preach Jesus Christ as Lord, the second test I brought to your attention last week from John's epistle.

It's this outpouring to which Paul makes reference in Romans 8 and which you find on subsequent occasions throughout the Acts of the Apostles, this mighty overwhelming, this mighty drenching. Now my own theologizing of the experimental work of the Spirit has always been strained. I've never been able, clearly, to put it in watertight compartments, my understanding of the doctrine.

That doesn't really worry me too much, because I think sometimes we attempt to be more systematic in our understanding of the Bible than the Bible would allow us to be. And I don't think that it's necessary for any preacher, in fact he would be wise to avoid this, suggesting that everyone receives the blessings of God in such a way as he has received blessings from God. We don't all go through the same hoop.

God respects our individuality. But what I do believe, not for everybody here, for many of you have had greater experiences of God's grace and power than I have known, and I seek for the ones that you have had. But I think many of us here are longing for a greater manifestation of the power of the Spirit of God in our own lives.

And I suggest to you, I advise you, I implore you, go on in your pursuit. I will not let you go unless you bless me. Lord, put me in the cleft of the rock, because the task in front of me is too difficult, and Moses meant business.

He put his life on the line at that stage. When a man is desperate, when he knocks on the door as a man at night will knock on his neighbor's door because a friend has pitched up and he doesn't have the food to satisfy the friend's hunger. When a man will knock, when a man will seek, when a man will find, or then a man will find.

And that's what the Scripture says. So here we are. We're back again to my starting point of last week.

Seeking after the power of the Spirit of God, not for emotional experiences. You know, I get a little concerned about folks who are so trigger-happy with shooting their criticism of emotion and emotionalism at the evangelical church. Pentecost, my friend, was not exactly devoid of emotion.

They thought that the pubs were open and the men had been there and they were drunk. They were singing and praising God in such a fashion that secular minds were looking for an illustration to describe the phenomenon that they were beholding, and they were seeing men who had been emotionally moved. And you can't know the power of God in your life without having your emotions aroused.

So do be a little careful. Some of us who tend to be more sophisticated or so we think in the way that we shoot our criticisms. The great revivals of the past, they affected the mind, but they surpassed the mind.

They overwhelmed the mind and they affected the whole emotion as people were caught up in praise to the living God and then they were sent out in service to do what God wanted them to do. So my time is through. I bring you back to my comment at the beginning, my question.

When did the disciples receive the Holy Spirit? I argue exegetically that you must put it before Pentecost. So what happened on the day of Pentecost? Well, the disciples were baptized with the Spirit so that they had the power to be able to go throughout the world to proclaim the gospel of the blessed Lord Jesus Christ. Let us come before our God for that self-same power and anointing or a renewal of it in our lives.

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