the Voice part 10
Some truths are so massive they require direct revelation through God’s voice from Heaven. Are you in ‘receiving’ mode?
There are some believers who appear to have a ministry of asking awkward questions! They often approach me at the end of a preaching session and their whole demeanour takes on a rather threatening character and I know I’m in for a tough time!.
Mind you, I am not averse to asking a congregation questions myself if I think it will help them relate to the matter in hand. For instance, I will sometimes say, “How much have you changed since I was here last time?”The response is usually a nervous chuckle as if to say, “CHANGE? You cannot be serious!” But, of course, I am. It’s a vital matter. No change implies no discipleship.
When speaking of the gifts of the Holy Spirit I will sometimes ask a person, “Do you speak in tongues?”Their reply is often revealing: “Yes, I can!” But that was not what I asked! “Do you?”is a world away from “Can you?”Rafael Nadal, the famous tennis player, takes a cold shower before every match. Good for him! I also am ableto take a cold shower every morning: but I never do it. But doing it is doingit! You see what I mean?
Following the Master
The Hebrew and Greek words for “Disciple”(Talmid and Mathetes) may be seen as meaning “Apprentice”; one who, through emulating the life and practice of the Master Craftsman, is recognisable as having been his Apprentice. To be a disciple of Jesus means to follow Him, learn from Himand ultimately become like Him. The highest accolade a disciple can receive is to be told, “When I’m with you, you remind me of Jesus and when I see you operating it’s like seeing Jesus at work.” So I am not really interested in becoming or doing anything except what I see in Jesus and His ministry. It really is a case of, Follow the Leader!
I was thinking about that and realised that it applies to the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and its consequences. In this matter too, if I follow the Lord Jesus Christ, His life should be the blueprint for mine.
A problem phrase?
The first mention of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit came through the thundering voice of John the Baptist. He announced that Jesus would baptise in the Holy Spirit (Jn 1:33), but John’s authority for saying this was none other than God the Father Himself. It was revelation straight from Heaven with no intermediary. Some say that the phrase “Baptism in the Holy Spirit” is not a biblical phrase and that it is misleading. I beg to disagree! I find it used by John the Baptist (Matt 3:11 and parallels); Peter (Acts 11:16); Paul (1 Cor 12:13); our Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 1:5) and God the Father Himself (Jn 1:33). That’s a pretty convincing line- up, don’t you think!
There are other New Testament instances when our Father spoke directly concerning the Lord Jesus. Take, for example, the response of Peter to our Lord’s question, “Who do you say that I am?” We read in Matt 16:16, “Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!’” Our Lord’s immediate response elevates those words hugely and says it all: “… this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in Heaven.”
Some truths are so massive they require direct revelation through God’s Voice from Heaven with no intermediary. In the case of John the Baptist, our Father was revealing through him that Jesus would baptise in the Holy Spirit.
Learning from the Master
Our Lord Jesus Christ is 100% man as well as 100% God. In His humanity He needed everything we need in order to minister to people. It seems incredible, but the fact is that although He is the perfect Son of God, He needed the Holy Spiritto come down on Him and to fill Him in order for Him to exercise His power-filled work and warfare (Lk 3:2-23; 4:1-14). That’s because He is a man as well as God. We note that the Holy Spirit came downon our Lord (3:22) and also filledHim (4:1). He was the perfect and divine Son before this happened and after it happened, but the immediate effect of this experience was victory over temptation (Lk 4:1-13) and power to minister (Lk 4:14-19). In other words, our Lord was enabled to resist the attack of the devil and to plunder the devil’s territory.We could say, with Luke (see 3:23), that the ministry of the Lord Jesus did not begin until, as the Son of Man, He had been baptised in the Holy Spirit!
The experience of the Disciples
When He spoke to Peterabout the Church that He would build (Matt 16:18), our Lord said, “I will build My Church and the gates of hell will not overcome it (or be able to resist it)”. Greek scholars confirm that both are meant. So here is the Lord Jesus in battle mode. His Church is intended by Him to resist the attack of the devil and to plunder the devil’s territory. Both defense and attack. So the mission of the Church is precisely the same as the mission of our Lord Jesus Christ!
The experience of the apostles mirrors the experience of the Lord. He instructed them notto attempt ministry untilthe Holy Spirit had come upon them. That moment would trigger their witness to the world (Acts 1:8). But the Lord’s warning that they must wait for the Holy Spirit was very serious. No baptism in the Holy Spirit, no power to minister!
The disciple is not above his Lord: if the human Jesus needed the Baptism in the Holy Spirit in order to express the power of God over satan and his forces, we need it too!
Linguistically there is a remarkable parallel between the experience of the Lord and that of His disciples. In Luke 3, we are told that the Holy Spirit came down upon Jesus at the Jordan, while in 4:1 we are told Jesus was filledby the Holy Spirit. Two aspects of the same event. This exact description fits the arrival of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost! Acts 2:4 says the disciples were “filled with the Holy Spirit”while the Joel prophecy quoted by Peter says, “In the last days, God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all people … Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days” (2:17-18).
It would be hard to avoid the obvious conclusion that in this great matter, the disciples followed Jesus. It’s what disciples do! In order to reproduce His glorious ministry, they needed everything Jesus needed. Once baptised in the Holy Spirit, they were launched on the world with glorious consequences. It is all too easy to draw obvious and depressing comparisons between us and the biblical Church. We cannot avoid the conclusion that by their standards we are mostly in a terrible state.
But introspection never helped anybody and it is high time we shook off our self doubt and self pity and returned to the Lord’s ways of doing things. After all that is precisely what apprentices do: they follow their Master in all he does. But they cannot do it without being taught how. They cannot do it without the right tools. Those tools are the gifts of the Holy Spirit!
Our Lord Jesus Christ at work
Jesus, the Master Craftsman, used the gifts of the Holy Spirit perfectly and prepared His apprentices to do the same. He spent three years training them by example for the day when they would be fully qualified and receive their own kit of tools precisely like His! Interestingly He normally exercised His ministry in the alleyways of the city, the roads and byways of the countryside and in peoples’ homes.Only occasionally in religious buildings. People were our Lord’s business. Wherever there were people, there you found Jesus: and wherever Jesus went, there you found people!
Engagement with people, ministering to their needs and revealing God’s glory to them, was the chosen work of the Master.
There by the well at Sychar, He used the Word of Knowledge to open the life of the Samaritan woman (Jn 4:17-18). She was shaken rigid when it happened. When confronted by Pharisees and Herodians He used a Word of Wisdom concerning the payment of taxes (Matt 22:15-22). They were amazed by it.
The Word of Prophecy occurs when a person speaks out Scripture under the immediate anointing of the Holy Spirit. We see our Lord exercising this prophetic gift in passages like Matt 22:29-33, where in answer to the Sadducees’trick question concerning marriage in heaven He immediately refers them to Scripture to deal with the question. This extraordinary prophetic awareness is supremely seen in Lk 24:27 and 44, where our Lord goes through all sections of the Hebrew Scriptures and shows the disciples many passages that pertain to Himself!
It goes without saying that everywhere He went our Lord exercised gifts of Healingand Deliverance. We may even include Raising the Deadas the ultimate expression of healing ministry. Each area of ministry required the exercise of one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit to make it effective. So the disciples had ample opportunity to see Jesus at work, to ask Him questions and to learn how to handle the tools of ministry. Small wonder, then, that after they had been baptised in the Holy Spirit themselves they reproduced our Lord’s ministry through their own.
What about tongues?
Why did Jesus never speak to His Father in tongues? The obvious reason is that He did not need to! The fact that He became man did not reduce or compromise His Godhood and so when it came to communicating with His Father He was in perfect communion with Him at all times. The gift of Tongues is to aid us in our weakness in communicating with God. Our Saviour had no such problem!
Disciples are followers and learners: the Body of Christ is the corporate Jesus let loose in the world where no Roman, fanatical Jew or anybody else can stop Him! Come on, Church, let’s get on with it!
… to be continued!