...is particularly the Spirit of Christ, the Old
Dispensation, Spirit of God, in the more general
sense.
You have only to turn over the pages
of your New Testament to see how often
that association, connection, is noted.
Because we are sons, God has sent
forth the Spirit of His Son into our
hearts.
The Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of the
Christ.
He, the Holy Spirit, was given to the
Son for His mission in and throughout this
dispensation.
Jesus was anointed of the Holy Spirit for
the particular work that He had been chosen
by the Father to do, and especially in
this dispensation.
That work, that mission, did not end when
He left this earth.
There is a very true sense in which
it only began when He left this earth.
Not altogether, but in a fuller way, a
much fuller way, He began His real mission
when He ascended to the right hand of
the Majesty in the heavens.
It's an impressive thing to note how the
Holy Spirit is always related to Jesus.
The preaching at the beginning was undoubtedly in
the power of the Holy Spirit.
They were filled with the Spirit and then
immediately they preached.
There's no doubt about it that they preached
by the Holy Spirit.
It was the Holy Spirit who was inspiring
them to preach.
Inspiring the preaching.
What did they preach?
It was all about the Lord Jesus.
Preaching about Him, the Holy Spirit inspired them
to preach the Lord Jesus.
The Holy Spirit was in those acts which
are strewn throughout the early record.
The acts were truly the acts of the
Holy Spirit.
Many, many forms of His activity, not only
in the miracles that were performed, but an
apostle ascended to take his way in a
certain direction.
The record says the Spirit of Jesus suffered
them not.
The Spirit of Jesus suffered them not.
The same apostle writing to a church said
that he trusted through their prayers and the
supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
The supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
And that supply was for the accomplishment of
his mission.
The Holy Spirit was in and behind all
the teaching, fulfilling the promise of the Lord
Jesus.
When He, the Spirit of truth, would come,
He would guide into all the truth.
The truth that we have in the New
Testament is Holy Spirit provided truth.
But it all relates to the Lord Jesus
and the conformity of believers to the image
of the Son of God is the work
of the Holy Spirit.
He is the transforming and conforming Spirit, but
His model is Christ.
The Holy Spirit is wholly and utterly committed
to the Lord Jesus.
We may say that the inclusive, and many
-sided, but the inclusive work of the Holy
Spirit is firstly to secure the place of
the Lord Jesus wherever He can.
We must remember that.
We must not put it in other ways.
We must not think of it in other
terms.
The Holy Spirit will do this and that.
Yes, He will do this and that.
And perhaps a hundred or a thousand things
and aspects are all related to one thing.
They are not things in themselves.
We must emphasize this here very, very strongly.
Holy Spirit may give light.
Holy Spirit may give leading.
Holy Spirit may do quite a lot of
things.
But do remember that everything that the Holy
Spirit does is included in one object.
It is all to one end, and that
in the first place is to secure Christ's
place in this universe, in men, in this
world, to secure the place of the Lord
Jesus.
Our way of speaking may mislead us very
often.
We would say the work of the Holy
Spirit is to save souls.
Yes, quite right.
Why?
Just to have them saved?
No.
That the Lord Jesus shall have His place.
Those souls are to be the residences of
the Lord Jesus.
The Holy Spirit may instruct believers and build
them up.
What for?
Just that they shall be mature Christians?
Not at all.
But that the Lord Jesus shall have a
larger place.
No matter what the Holy Spirit does, He
has but one all-inclusive object, and in
the glorifying of the Lord Jesus.
That is, the giving of the Lord Jesus
His place.
And then, filling all things with Christ.
Filling all things with Christ.
Do not think of being filled with the
Spirit, of the fullness of the Spirit, in
any other way than this.
That the Holy Spirit's filling is intended to
be filling all things with Christ.
You can get these ideas.
Oh, be filled with the Spirit.
Then, what will happen?
Well, we'll have such a good time.
We'll have ecstasy.
We'll have enjoyment.
There will be power in our life.
And see, all those things.
Think about being filled with the Spirit.
Oh, that's a wonderful idea.
But do remember, dear friends, that the filling
with the Spirit is in line with that
eternal purpose of God.
That eternal thought that He, the Son, shall
fill all things.
And you can have these experiences, and these
ecstasies, and these emotions, and all these things,
and yet, and yet, be sadly lacking in
the Lord Jesus.
Have all the teachings, the truth, and yet,
and yet, the measure of the Lord Jesus
to be so small, so small.
It's terribly sad to go about the world
and meet Christians who would lay down their
life for the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
I believe in the Holy Ghost, the person
of the Holy Spirit, and so on.
And yet, you don't meet the Lord.
You meet them.
You come up against something that is themselves.
You are hurt by them.
Yes, it can be like that.
No, simply, but essentially, the Holy Spirit is
committed to one end, one end only, to
fill all things with Christ.
And if you want to know what it
means here, they were filled with the Holy
Spirit, You see, by the effect, they simply
talked about the Lord Jesus, preached Christ.
Everywhere they went, it was Christ.
They were bringing Christ with them wherever they
went, and as far as they were allowed
to, as far as consent was given and
openness of heart was provided, they, so to
speak, filled people with Christ, and filled places
with Christ, filled companies with Christ.
That was the work of the Holy Spirit.
And unto that, the Holy Spirit is always
seeking a transformation in believers, because we naturally
are not a bit like Christ, and naturally,
we don't give very much place to Christ.
The work of the Holy Spirit is to
transform us into the image of Christ.
It is Christ, only Christ, the beginning and
the end.
Now, in that connection, the great governing truth
is that the nature of Christ is the
foundation of the work of Christ.
The character of Christ is the foundation of
the work of Christ, of the work of
the Holy Spirit.
The measure of Christ is the measure of
the Spirit.
You cannot have more of the Holy Spirit
than you have of Christ, and it is
the character of Christ.
These two things are so painfully overlooked, the
detaching of the Holy Spirit from Christly character,
and thinking of it as something in itself,
the Holy Spirit, the work of the Holy
Spirit, the power of the Spirit, the works
of the Spirit, working for the Lord.
They are things in themselves so often, in
the thoughtless, thoughtless mentality of so many.
But the Holy Spirit is not thoughtless about
this.
He's not a bit thoughtless about this.
The Holy Spirit only commits himself to the
Christ.
Make no mistake about that.
He will not commit himself to you or
to me, or to any institution or thing.
He only commits himself to Christ, and it
is according to the degree of Christ that
the Holy Spirit commits himself.
And when we say the degree of Christ,
we mean the character of Christ.
You see, the whole Bible comes down powerfully
and mightily upon that truth.
All the types and the figures of the
Old Testament about the Holy Spirit, the anointing
oil and so on, you look more closely,
you will find that a certain provision is
always prescribed by God for that symbol.
If you take the oil alone, that oil
shall not come upon man's flesh.
The anointing requires garments that cover man's flesh,
requires certain provisions and prescriptions of God before
that anointing oil dare be applied.
We could extend the symbolism further afield, but
there it is.
And when you understand, you see, that that
prescription of God, whether it be the garments
or whatever it may be as the basis
required by God for the oil to come
upon that person, you will find that that
prescription is something relating to the character of
Christ.
The character of Christ.
And it is therefore foreshown that the Holy
Spirit is only given to the Lord Jesus.
He will only be given to you and
to me as the Lord Jesus has his
place and in proportion to the measure in
which he has his place.
More of the Spirit, more of the Spirit,
a greater fullness of the Spirit, very well,
you're asking for the Holy Spirit to displace
you and all that is of you, and
you're going to have a bad time.
You're going to have a wonderful, marvelous time
of ecstasy if only you get filled with
the Spirit.
Don't make any mistake about it.
That may be one side of it, but
it may be that you'll have to be
taken through the fire and through the mill
to come there.
It depends on how much resistance there is
to Christ.
The clearer the way, the more selfless the
motive, the quicker it can be done.
But the principle, the principle is that these
two things go together, the work of the
Spirit and the character of Christ.
Don't get away from that.
Character of Christ is the foundation of the
work of the Holy Spirit.
That, of course, brings us face to face
with the fact that Christ is an altogether
different creation from what we are.
He's a different creation.
When he was here, he was a stranger
in this world.
He was a stranger.
It is written the world knew him not.
And while, of course, that applies specifically to
his deity, it also applies to his unique,
unique humanity.
The world did not know him in the
sense that it could not understand his mentality,
his difference, his way, his candor, and understand
that by which his course and conduct would
govern.
The world doesn't do it like that.
For one thing, the world does not act
on principle.
The world acts on policy.
Jesus absolutely refused from beginning to end to
be governed by policy.
What is policy?
It's a strange person from another world who
doesn't do that in some way or other.
No, the world knew him not.
He's a special and different kind of person,
a different creation from what we are.
That was the real explanation of what a
difficult time he had in this world.
He was differently constituted.
You see, he was a Holy Spirit-constituted
being.
He was begotten of the Holy Ghost.
He was Holy Spirit-constituted by birth and
by anointing in his mission, and being so
different in his constitution, upon that basis he
was tested and perfected in a contrary world.
You can get a hold of the significance
of that.
It will explain a lot.
See, when you and I are born anew,
we are born of the Holy Spirit, begotten
of God, born of the Holy Spirit, and
in the deepest reality of our being, there's
a difference of constitution.
If that is not true, if anybody who
bears the name of Christian, they are not
a Christian.
A Christian born anew has, in the innermost
part of their being, another constitution introduced.
Maybe in its elementary form as of babyhood,
but it's something different, altogether different.
It's the difference, the crisis from all other
people.
Now then, the whole of our life under
the Holy Spirit is the testing and the
trying of that other constitution in a contrary
world.
We are in a world now as born
-anew believers, which is contrary to our nature,
contrary to our constitution.
And that constitutes our difficulty, our suffering, our
trial, our testing, and the basis of our
perfection.
You know quite well that anything, anything in
creation that does not become subjected to adverse
forces never becomes anything with any stamina or
endurance in it.
Is that true?
Hothouse plants can't stand up to anything.
You've got to nurse them all the time.
Anything that you protect from adversity will suffer,
suffer terribly, come really to nothing that abides,
can stand up to anything.
The law, the law of God is that
stamina, endurance, strength, maturity, the abiding comes out
of test, trying, and adversity.
May explain a lot why the Lord allows
the winds to blow so cold and fiercely
against his Church and his people.
But there it is.
What is the Lord doing?
Well, here is his own son in this
world with another constitution being tested, tried, and
perfected by the very difference of the world
in which he was placed, the difference to
his own constitution.
He was made perfect through suffering, and the
suffering was of this kind, conflict of two
constitutions, the one in the world and the
one in himself.
You and I are supposed to have this
heavenly constitution, and it's an awful thing to
live in this world with a heavenly constitution.
It ought to become more and more awful.
You can settle down and become a dean,
comfortable and happy in this world.
You've abandoned the very constitution of heaven.
If it is true that more and more
it is difficult for you to endure this
world as being what it is, then that's
a good sign.
It's a good sign.
Now that's exactly what happened to Lord Jesus.
He was of a different order, and his
suffering came along the line of testing and
trying by reason of another constitution in the
midst of which he had to live.
And this heavenly constitution had to triumph.
It had to triumph over the other that
was all about him pressing upon him.
And thus he was made perfect through suffering.
There is no other way for you and
for me.
Flames are lost.
In the end, in the end, if we
abide faithful, if we do not cast away
our confidence, if our faith does not give
way, it's because of the difficulty, the hardness
of this spiritual conflict.
We do not let go.
We shall emerge a full-grown man, spiritual,
whose stature will increase unto the stature of
Christ.
Well, that's the history of the Church, and
that's the history of believers.
Now, where's the Holy Spirit coming in this?
Well, you see, the Holy Spirit came from
heaven when that question had been fully answered
in the Lord Jesus.
I put it in this way, whether it
sounds doctrinal or not, I don't know, but
there was a question all the time through
the earthly life of the Lord Jesus.
Really, there was no doubt, but there was
a question.
A battle was going on, and when there's
a battle, there's always a question as to
the issue whether this heavenly thing was going
to gain the ascendancy or whether this earthly
thing, under Satan's power, was going to gain
the ascendancy.
It was a big battle on this one
question.
Heavenly kingdom here opposed to an earthly kingdom,
the kingdom of God opposed to the kingdom
of Satan, and the other way, this conflict,
and it all focused upon and centered in
the soul of this one man.
The battle rages right to the end, right
to the end, to the last moment of
the cross.
Who is going to prevail?
Which side is going to win?
The whole thing is, is the heavenly nature
going to triumph over this diabolical nature?
When that question was fully and finally answered,
Mark you, it was answered when he reached
heaven.
He is being received.
That's the right way to talk about the
ascension.
Being received, getting a reception in heaven means
that the question is finally asked.
The heavenly man has triumphed in his constitution
in a world, in a world so utterly
different than its constitution.
The question is answered.
The whole thing is settled.
When that is settled, the Holy Spirit comes.
And what does he come to do?
He comes to bring the heavenly nature of
that man into believers.
And then the battle starts up again.
And that's the battle that you and I
are in.
After all, it is not a battle of
outward things, it's a battle of spiritual things.
That's the way it comes to it.
Battle may take up many forms, many things,
people, situations, circumstances, but after all it focuses
upon our spirit, upon our heavenly life, upon
our heavenly constitution.
That's the center of it all.
That's the battle.
Are we going to yield to the devil
and his constitution going to get the other
hand in that eligibility, in that bad temper,
in that loss of good faith and all
that?
Is it going to, or is this other?
Faith in God, the love of the Spirit,
the patience of Jesus Christ.
Is this going to triumph?
That's the form of the battle.
The Holy Spirit has come to bring into
us another constitution.
And then so to work as to completely
develop us according to that new constitution until
we too are perfected in Christ.
This comes back, doesn't it, all the time
as a matter of the measure of Christ.
There is no, I said this afternoon, there
is no substitute for the Holy Spirit.
No substitute for the Holy Spirit.
That opens the door at once to that
whole terrible change which came about so early
after the apostles, even before they had gone
again, after they had gone.
The substitute for the Holy Spirit, there they
are, the crystallization of Christianity into an earthly
man-made system.
The composing of creeds, of Christian doctrines to
become the legal form of government.
The forms, vestments, and orders, clericalism and what
not, all came in so early.
Organization, yes.
All substitutes for the Holy Spirit.
Moving away from the spiritual to the ecclesiastical,
the sacramental results, the
world triumphed and the devil lost and initiated
the emasculated church, a changed Christianity which
cannot stand up to the forces that are
at work in this universe.
Well now, let's come to one thing.
We're talking about what the Holy Spirit is
and He is inclusively, we have said, the
Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of the Christ.
And we have further said that that means
the character of Christ.
And He is inclusively, we have said, the
Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of the Christ.
And we have further said that that means
the character of Christ.
We just look at one thing this evening
about the character of Christ as taken up
by the Holy Spirit in His own nature
and therefore in His own words.
The Holy Spirit was called by the Lord
Jesus the Spirit of Truth.
The Spirit of Truth.
Now there's a very large plate given by
God to Truth.
He is the God of Truth.
He is very jealous over the truth.
He desires truth in the inward path.
He holds lines in abomination.
He has confined all liars to the lake
of fire.
He excludes from the New Jerusalem everything that
makes a lie.
Jesus called Himself the Truth.
I am the Truth.
And He is called the faithful and true
witness.
On the other hand, Satan is called the
liar and the father of lies.
Now note, the whole structure of creation collapsed
when the lie entered in.
Satan injected a lie into man.
Man accepted it, received it.
The result, the whole structure of creation collapsed.
The man himself became and remains a
falsehood.
He is not the man that God made
him or intended him to be.
He is a deceived creature.
There is a lie in the very constitution
and nature of man as he is.
He is not the true man that God
intended.
He is a misrepresentation of the man that
God spoke of when He said, Let us
make man in our own image and after
our own likeness.
There is a lie in the work of
man.
And in all his work, he hopes and
believes and works and strives and it comes
to vanish in the end.
It is in vain.
Disappointing, a wasteland at the end of all
his strivings and all his work.
He thinks and argues that he is free,
but he is a prisoner.
He thinks and believes that he knows.
He proves to be a fool.
He thinks that he can do and he
does many, many great, seemingly wonderful things.
But all his doings lead to greater problems
to be solved.
And the greatest problem of all is satisfaction,
is rest, is joy.
See?
No, man is building not on rock, but
on sand.
His world is run by lies.
No, this is a terrible thing to say.
How rare downright honesty is in this world.
What a lot of misrepresentation and deception and
pretense and mixture and exaggeration and appearance has
to be drawn into the running of this
world.
It's true.
Many a well-meaning man who in his
own soul revolts against it will tell you
that it's not possible to be successful in
a world like this, if you're going to
be honest, absolutely honest.
And the lie has got into religion.
The indictment of our Lord, of the Pharisees
and the scribes was hypocrisy, pretending.
Because this is true, that this creation is
shot through and through with a lying deception,
man cannot stand.
A false world is bound to collapse if
there is anything that is not absolutely true
according to God in Christianity.
It will go to pieces.
Anything, anything that has in it an element
of untruth has in it the seeds of
its own ruin.
The Holy Spirit, therefore, is called the Spirit
of Truth.
Jesus is the eternal values.
The values which are eternal are those which
are absolutely true according to the standards of
God.
The value of the gospel is that it
is the truth of the gospel.
The truth of it.
The eternal certainty of Christ is that he
is the truth.
Now this is a very challenging thing.
It separates and discriminates between not the black
lie always and the transparent truth but between
the beautiful lie, the soulish lie, the sentimental
lie, the formal lie, the religious lie.
John the Baptist said about the Lord Jesus
that he would lay the axe to the
roof and his hand was in his hand.
He would thoroughly purge his writings.
What's the axe?
What's the winnowing stand?
It's the truth.
And so he looked on the temple in
Jerusalem and he looked on the temple at
Mount Gerizim in Samaria and then to the
woman who thought that one or the other,
especially this one, which he was, sat in
Samaria was the truest thing.
He said, believe me, woman, we are coming
when the true worship is to worship God
in spirit, in truth.
God is a spirit.
They that worship him must worship him in
spirit and in truth.
We are coming when neither in this mountain
nor in Jerusalem shall men worship God.
He's discriminating between the formal, the traditional, the
historical, the symbolic, if you like, at best,
and the real.
It's the truth.
And he said, only that which is spiritual
after the very essence of the divine nature
is truth.
Therefore this temple and that temple will collapse.
Not one stone will be left upon another.
It's not the truth, it's false.
It's false.
The Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth.
It is, dear friends, very, very important, solemnly
important that our position is a true position.
You and I have got continually to look
at our position.
Is my position a true one?
Is it secondhand?
What is it?
The position in which I stand, how did
I come to this position?
What is it that puts me in this
position?
Is it, to me, so true as to
be absolutely a matter of life or death?
If it's like that, true like that, you
can't resign from it.
You can't give it up.
You can't withdraw from it.
It's your very self.
To do so would be to commit spiritual
suicide.
It's so true.
That's the Lord Jesus.
He goes through his life again and here
he is.
Oh, this man is not just come to
perform something and to give some teaching and
that sort of thing objectively.
This man is this thing.
He's going to that cross to shed the
last drop of his blood because it's so
real, so true.
The vision is that it can help.
Our position must be true or we'll not
stand, we'll collapse, we'll go to pieces.
If there's a lie, we will disintegrate as
the creation did when the lie entered in.
Our life must be true.
Our conduct must be true.
Our walk before others must be true.
Our walk before God must be true.
Our life must be true.
It's going to be an agony, mark you,
for it to be so.
It's got to be true.
Our testimony and our teaching must be true.
Is it true?
Our fellowship must be true.
No faint love.
No pretension of fellowship.
No trying to make believe.
No merely outward thing.
Our fellowship must be true.
The Holy Ghost will be satisfied with nothing
less than being true in the matter of
fellowship.
He'll say, look here, look here, you are
trying to make believe in that matter of
fellowship with that person.
You're trying to bolster up something.
You're trying not to let something collapse.
But it's not true.
He'll take you down deep until it is
true.
Our church must be true.
Must be the true church.
Say much about that, didn't we?
Our business must be true.
Oh, do, do take this matter of the
Holy Spirit into your business.
Is your business really true?
Is your manner of business really true?
When you are going to pay for something,
are you quite sure that you are paying
all that you are to pay for that?
That you're not getting it to your own
advantage and someone's going to suffer in this
transaction?
Is that true?
You see, even John the Baptist raised questions
like that at the Jordan.
About exacting more than should be.
Yes, in business, we must be true.
You can't have one order of things in
Christianity and another one in the world.
True in business?
Our spirit must be.
Well, we must never be less than we
profess.
God help us.
We must never be more than we profess.
God help us.
He is the Spirit of truth.
That, you see, is the character of the
Lord Jesus.
To be filled with the Spirit.
It's a very, very exact thing to do.
An anointing of fire, trying to steal a
march on the Holy Spirit.
No, no, he's not being taken advantage of
like that.
He cannot hoodwink the Holy Spirit.
He cannot.
Now, these are very solemn.
But what do you think of me when
you talk about being filled with the Spirit?
You all want to be filled with the
Spirit.
We all do.
We hear the command, be filled with the
Spirit.
We want to be filled with the Spirit.
But understand that the Spirit is the character
of Jesus Christ.
He's the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
And in this one respect, he is the
Spirit of truth.
To be filled with the Spirit means that
everything's got to be true.
Exact.
Right.
Real.
No lies.
No falsehood.
No hypocrisy.
No make-believe.
No pretend.
No exaggeration.
No imitation.
Everything.
True.
Then, oh God, make us like his Son
in heaven.
And then the Holy Spirit will do things.
The Holy Spirit will do things in a
church like that, to a people like that,
and to lives like that.
He will.
You will not have to try and get
it done.
He'll do it.
See, that brings us right back to the
point of this afternoon.
Why?
Things change.
When at the beginning they were so spontaneous,
so spontaneous, so mighty, so wonderful, he was
present with the Spirit of truth, and when
he came up against something that was untrue,
it was dealt with.
It was dealt with and not tolerated.
It's fierce, Sir Peter, I know, but he's
jealous of the jealousy of the Holy Spirit
for the truth.
He sees that the church can be wrecked
and ruined if there's a lie getting in.
Satan is seeking to bring it in.
Why has Satan filled my heart?
Well, I don't want you to go away
oppressed, heavy.
But we started off by saying we are
concerned about this matter of a life of
fullness and a powerful witness in the world,
and troubled because that impact upon the world
is not as it was in the beginning.
See, it ought to be.
The Holy Spirit has not changed.
God has not changed.
If Christ is the same, then fine.
If it is true that the Holy Spirit
commits himself to the Lord Jesus, then once
more the answer is we need more of
the Lord Jesus.
And when we say that, we need him
in his character.
We only begin with this matter of the
truth.
Character is much more than that, but truth
is the foundation of everything.