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.
you