You'll find an authorized version of the Holy
Scriptures in the English tongue before you, the
pure.
Pick up that Bible and turn with me
to the last book but one in the
Old Testament, the Book of the Prophecy of
Zechariah, and we're reading at chapter four of
that chapter.
Zechariah chapter four, reading at verse one.
It's page nine hundred and thirty-two in
that Bible that you've taken up from the
pure.
We read together, taking your time from me,
please.
And the angel that talked with me came
again and wakened me as a man that
is wakened out of his sleep, and said
unto me, What seest thou?
And I said, I have looked, and behold
a candlestick all of gold, with a bowl
upon the top of it, and the seven
lamps thereon, and seven pipes to the seven
lamps which are upon the top thereon.
And two olive trees by it, one upon
the right side of the bowl, and the
other upon the left side thereon.
So I answered and spake to the angel
that talked with me, saying, What are these,
my Lord?
Then the angel that talked with me answered
and said unto me, Knowest not what these
be?
And I said, No, my Lord.
Then he answered and spake unto me, saying,
This is the word of the Lord unto
Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power,
but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of
hosts.
Who art thou, O great mountain?
Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain, and
he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with
shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it.
Moreover the word of the Lord came unto
me, saying, The hands of Zerubbabel have laid
the foundation of this house.
His hands shall also finish it, and thou
shalt know that the Lord of hosts hath
sent thee unto you.
For who hath despised the day of small
things?
For they shall rejoice, and shall see the
plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those
seven.
They are the eyes of the Lord, which
run to and fro through the whole earth.
Then answered I, and said unto him, What
are these two olive trees upon the right
hand of the candlestick, and upon the left
side of the rock?
And I answered again, and said unto him,
What be these two olive branches, which through
the two golden pipes enter the golden oil
out of themselves?
And he answered me, and said, Knowest thou
not what these be?
And I said, Knowest thou not what these
be?
Then said he, These are the two anointed
ones that stand by the Lord of the
whole earth.
Ending our reading at verse 18, and God
shall stamp this reading from His infallible Word.
Amen and Amen.
Turn with me in your Bible to this
fourth chapter of Zechariah.
And we are reading at the verse 6.
Not by might, nor by power, but by
my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
Zechariah chapter 4 and verse 6.
The Word of God is the final of
all finalities.
God cannot and will not go back upon
His own most precious and holy Word.
The Word of God refuses to go back
on God's revealed laws and declarations.
The Word of God declares to those who
read it, who are the friends of God
and who are the enemies of God.
God's Word refuses to compromise with sin.
It never accommodates the world.
It knows no alteration to what God has
revealed.
We remember what Pilate wrote above Christ's cross.
And he said, What I have written, I
have written.
But long before Pilate was ever heard of,
God said, What I have written, I have
written.
What God has written is forevermore.
It changes not.
Joseph, when he was in Egypt, refused to
make a league with any kind of evil.
God's Word long before Joseph declared that with
evil there can be no truck or no
alliance.
When the Ark of God was exiled in
Philistine country, it was more than a match
for all the false gods and for all
the false armies of the uncircumcised Philistines.
So the Word of God makes stumps of
all God's enemies.
Just the same way as the Ark of
God made a stump of the Philistines greatest
of all gods.
The Word of God is more than a
match for the devil and all his united
hordes.
It is the sword of the Spirit.
It causes the devil to tremble.
Every friend of the world is stumped before
it.
I was thinking this week that the Book
of God, the Word of God, is a
book of double begetting.
It was begotten in God's heart from all
eternity.
And then it was begotten in the writers'
hearts on earth when the Spirit of God
revealed it to them and gave them the
very words to speak.
For does not this Scripture tell us, Holy
Man of God, speak as they were moved
by the Holy Spirit of God.
What a word this Book of God is.
It ends all controversies.
It triumphs over all enemies.
The heavens and earth will have their time
and one day disappear.
But God's Word is as eternal as His
everlasting person.
And it shall never, never pass away.
Heaven and earth said the Lord Jesus will
pass away.
But My Word shall never pass away.
The Word of God cannot be outmoded, cannot
be outmarched, cannot be outmatched.
It stands unchanging and unchangeable forevermore.
Remember, the Spirit of God who brought it
into the world is in the world today.
He continues to use His Word and make
it living and powerful.
The Word of God is alive.
The Word of God giveth life.
The Word of God is powerful.
It slays all its enemies.
So it's not by might, nor by power,
but by My Spirit, saith the Lord.
The other night I awoke very suddenly.
And I awoke with these words ringing in
my ears.
It's not by might, nor by power, but
by My Spirit.
And like a flash, seven points came into
my mind.
I switched on the light.
I took a sheet of paper and I
wrote them down.
Because I knew in the morning I would
have forgotten every one of them.
And I wanted to keep them.
I saw, first of all, that this verse
does not put emphasis on natural power or
natural might, but by My Spirit, saith the
Lord.
So it's not by natural power or natural
might.
It's by God's Spirit, saith the Lord of
hosts.
It is the Holy Spirit Himself.
The third person of the Trinity.
It's not the Spirit's manifestation of His power.
It's not the Spirit's operation of His power.
It is the Spirit's power in His person.
The emphasis of this text is on the
person of the Holy Ghost.
It is not the manifestation of His majesty.
It is the manifestation of Himself.
It's not the manifestation of the strength that
He creates in the heart of the child
of God.
But it is the power of His uncreators.
He came and He abides.
Forevermore the same.
The Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
All blessed is His name.
No change does the Holy Spirit ever know.
He abides forevermore in the hearts of all
the people washed in the Savior's blood.
Now all the attributes of God are common
to each member of the Trinity.
The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
He, the Holy Spirit, is like the Father
and like the Son, like the Holy Father
and the Holy Son.
He is infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His
wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.
So remember, the emphasis is not on His
operation.
The emphasis is upon Him, Himself.
Secondly, I noted that it was not by
might of accumulated wisdom or the power of
multiplied knowledge, but it was by the Spirit
of wisdom Himself.
The Holy Spirit Himself is the Spirit of
all wisdom.
It is not in one of His attributes
that His might and power rests.
It's in His entire person.
It has been well said that if you
want to teach a child the meaning of
sweetness, words will be of no avail.
So the best thing to do is give
the child a teaspoonful of honey and that
child will always remember what sweetness is.
He will have learned what sweetness tastes like.
You might tell your child about the wonder
of the Alps, which in their loftiness seem
to pierce the clouds with their snow-capped
peaks.
But he will not understand.
But take that child to the foot of
one great mountain in the range and tell
him to look at it.
And that look will make him understand forever
the wonder of those mountains.
So it is with the Spirit of God.
The Spirit of God sheds abroad in our
hearts.
He causes us to taste of the wisdom
of God, the wisdom of might, the might
of God, the wisdom of power, the power
of God.
He does not read us a lecture of
the wisdom of God.
But in our heart, He teaches us the
secrets of the wisdom of God.
Thirdly, I noted that it was not by
the might of human cleverness, nor by the
power of human craft, but it was by
my Spirit set.
The wisest king in all the world was
Solomon.
You should read his books.
And do not forget to read the book
of Ecclesiastes, where the king turns preacher and
preaches great sermons.
And he says in that book, This wisdom
have I seen under the sun, and it
seemed great unto me.
There was a little city, and few men
were in it, and there came a great
king against it.
And he besieged that city, and built great
bulwarks against it.
Now there was found in it a poor
wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered
the city.
Yet no man remembered the poor wise man.
Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength.
Nevertheless, the poor man's wisdom is despised, and
his words are not heard.
The words of wise men are heard and
quiet more than the cry of him that
ruleth among fools.
Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but
one sinner destroyeth much good.
Ecclesiastes chapter 9, verses 14 to 18.
That history of the poor wise man is
worth pondering, and it's worth remembering.
It was Gernot the great curate and writer
who said, None are so blind and so
ignorant whose eyes his spirit cannot open.
He who by his incubation upon the waters
of the creation hatched that rude mass into
the beautiful form we now see, and out
of that dark chaos made the glorious heavens,
garnished them with so many stars, he alone
can move upon your dark soul and enlighten
it, though now it be as void of
knowledge as the beginning of the world's first
day was of light.
Sometimes the schoolmaster sends home the child and
bids the child's father to put it to
another trade, because not able with all his
heart can he make a scholar of that
child.
But if the Spirit of God be the
master, Gernot says, you shall learn though you
start as a dunce.
How true it is.
A man starts with no knowledge of God,
he plunges into life a life of sin
and misery.
But one day the Holy Spirit opens his
eyes, and he that was a fool becomes
a wise man, and he that sought the
pathway of folly now seeks the pathway of
everlasting life.
Why?
Because he has been taught of the Holy
Ghost.
All the strength of nature is impotent compared
to the strength of the person of the
Spirit of God.
His is the might and His is the
power that always brings the victory.
Away with the might and cleverness of nature.
Away with the power of the craft of
evil man.
Give me instead the wisdom of that poor
wise man who delivered this of me.
He was powerless by the standards of the
world.
He was wise, but God had given him
the inward wisdom of the Spirit of God.
By the Spirit's help he became more than
a conqueror.
Fourthly, I know that it is not by
the might of human energy, nor by the
power of human effort, but it is by
the omniscient energy and omnipotent effort of the
Spirit of God and the Spirit of God
alone.
To quote another Puritan, Richard Sibbes, he says,
the Holy Ghost is our guide.
Who will displease this guide?
A sweet and comfortable guide He is.
He leads us through the wilderness of the
world as a cloud before the Israelites by
day and a pillar of fire by night.
He conducts us to the heavenly kingdom.
If we grieve our guide, He leaves us
to ourselves and how miserable we are and
become.
The Israelites could not go a step farther
until God by His angel went before them.
It is mean for us to move toward
heaven without this blessed guide.
What you need, my friend, is not by
might nor by power, but by my Spirit,
saith the Lord of hosts.
O Spirit of God, come down, reveal the
things of God, and make to us salvation
known, and witness with the blind.
No man can truly say that Jesus is
the Lord unless thou take the veil away
and breathe the living word.
Then only then we feel our interest in
His blood and cry with joy unspeakable, Thou
art my Lord, my God.
Sixthly, let us note it is not by
the might of any human intervention nor by
the power of any human force, but it
is by the intervention and power of the
Holy Spirit alone.
Sinful man always gets in the way of
God.
Man's pride, man's knowledge, man's strength, man's ideas,
man's experience, man's wisdom are not helps, they
are hindrances.
The flesh of man must be kneeled to
the cross of Christ.
Man must be crucified with Christ before he
can rise in resurrection power.
The way to Pentecost was via the cross.
If we want to know the Pentecostal power,
we need to know the death of the
cross.
Our cry needs to be the cry of
the great Apostle, that I might know Him
and the power of His resurrection and the
fellowship of His sufferings being made conformable unto
His death, if by any means I might
attain unto the resurrection of the dead.
Not as though I had already attained, either
were already perfect, but I follow after, that
I may apprehend that for which also I
am apprehended of Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended,
but this one thing I do, forgetting those
things that are behind, and reaching forth to
those things that are before, I press towards
the mark for the high calling of God
in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3, 10-14 We need a monitor
to stir us up in diligence, watchfulness, and
earnest endeavors.
The old prophet wrote the words, And thine
ears shall hear a word behind thee saying,
This is the way, walk ye in it.
When ye turn to the right hand and
when ye turn to the left, the cares
and business of this world so often thrive
a sense of beauty from our minds.
One great end of God's Spirit is to
put us in remembrance, to revive within our
hearts the truth as we have learned it.
Our ship may never be so well rigged,
but we need a pilot.
We need a pilot to put us in
mind of our journey.
That pilot must be God, the Holy Ghost.
And seventhly, I note it, that it is
not the might of our maximum dedication, nor
by the power of our total commitment, it
is only by abandoning ourselves, body, soul, and
spirit to the Holy Ghost of God.
Mr. Spurgeon, in one of his great sermons
said, In early days, when people sold land,
the owner cut a turn from the green
sword, and he put it into the cap
of the purchaser as a token that this
land was his.
Or he tore off the branch of a
tree and put it into the new owner's
hand to show that he was entitled to
all the products of the soil.
And when the purchaser of a house received
possession, the key of the door or a
bundle of thatch plucked from the roof signified
that the building now was his.
The God of all grace has given to
his people all the perfections of heaven to
be their heritage forever.
And the earnest of his spirit is to
them the blessed token that all things are
theirs.
The Spirit's work of comfort and sanctification is
a part of heaven's covenant blessing.
It is a turn from the soil of
Canaan, a twig from the tree of life.
It's the key to the mansion in the
skies.
If we possess the earnest of the Spirit,
doubtless we shall possess heaven itself.
If you're a child of God, you have
the earnest of the Spirit.
You know what we need to do?
We need to pray now that we have
got the earnest, that we might have the
fullness of the Holy Ghost.
The need of the hour among the people
of God is that they should be filled
with the Spirit of God.
It is not by might.
It is not by power.
It's by my Spirit, saith the Lord of
hosts.
Oh, that the Spirit of God may come
upon us all, and that the Spirit of
God may fill us all with His power
for Jesus' sake.