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Love In Action
A
PREPARATION FOR CHRIST’S COMING
NOTES OF BIBLE TEACHING
GIVEN BY PASTOR O. STOCKMAYER, AT DOVER, APRIL, 1895.
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VI
Giving Christ His Place
“Repent ye, and be baptized
everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of
your sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”
“Repent ye therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted
out, that so there may come seasons of refreshing from the presence
of the Lord and He may send the Christ who hath been appointed for
you, even Jesus.”—Acts 2:38; 4:19, 20 (Tischendorf)
Perhaps some of you have no idea that the Holy
Spirit is grieved when yon ask God that you may be enabled to trust
His grace. When you pray, “Help me to trust,” you are not trusting.
Do you think I could stand before you and speak to you, withstanding
all the powers of darkness, if I could not trust my Lord and His
grace? And do you not see, —one day you will see.—what a difference
it makes whether you pray, “Help me to trust,” or say, “I do trust
Thee”? It brings another tone, a fresh keynote into the prayer
meeting, Bible reading, or other meeting of God’s children. Your
Father in heaven might ask, “What can I do more for thee than I have
done? And dost thou ask Me for trust? Canst thou not trust Me?”
Do you know that the Father expects, and has a right to claim
our trust, —that His Holy Spirit may cease to work in us, if He
cannot find us trusting Him, ready to follow Him?
What is trust? To expect everything from God and nothing from self.
Has the Holy Spirit taken the place of Christ, that He may draw
every man to Himself, or does He lift up Christ that He may draw us
all to the cross? If you have understood in these days the lifting
up of Christ, then you cannot but trust Him. You will not find your
way to the cross through struggling, but through trusting Him to
identify you with the Crucified through simple faith, that you may
be truly free. We must remain nailed to the cross, that we may
remain seated with Christ in heavenly places: the crucified sit with
Him.
So often when anyone speaks of trust and grace, one hears such
prayers as: “O Lord, fill me with Thy Spirit, that I may trust
Thee.” You expect some new manifestation of the Spirit in yourself;
but you will not keep in the lines of the Spirit who points you to
Christ, and takes the things of Christ to show them to you (John
16:14). You expect something to take place in you first, and then
you will trust, although your Lord has done everything for you, my
brother and Sister, that yon may trust Him, His Person and
His blood. As long as you are not occupied with Christ, His blood is
veiled; the Holy Spirit is unable to work because His central
object is to show you Christ.
The Apostles were directed not to depart from Jerusalem, but to “wait”
[literally, sit] for the coming of the Holy Ghost (Luke
24:49), and it is significant that Peter “stood up” (Acts
1:15) before Pentecost to arrange for a successor to Judas, instead
of sitting down; working instead of waiting. God, in His own time,
found out His vessel, the Apostle Paul, who, like every other
Apostle, had to be called directly by Christ. Ananias must lay hands
on him, that he might receive not only his sight but also the Holy
Ghost. And so on through all the ages there have been special times
in the Church; for instance, when God raised up Wesley and Finney,
they received the Holy Ghost in a special and visible way.
But, my brethren, do not make a system out of such special
experiences, and remember that if creative days have their peculiar
characteristics, there are other days in which God works in a silent
way more in accordance with the true character of the New Covenant,
The deepest ways of God are silent. A moment should come in our
Christian life when the Holy Ghost works in our deepest
consciousness, far deeper than the region of emotion; then we learn
to walk with God, not feeling but knowing that we are filled with
the Holy Ghost for time and for eternity. The nearer we get to God
the easier it will be to listen to the voice of the Holy Ghost, who
magnifies Jesus Christ alone. The Holy Ghost will be satisfied when
He has made us one with Himself in desiring the glory of Christ.
In the last chapter of the Bible appears a person, the Bride of the
Lamb, who is no longer moved by the Holy Spirit, but is one with the
Spirit, saying, “Come” (Rev. 22:17). Oh, what a different atmosphere
there is in a meeting when all are looking to Christ, and the Holy
Spirit is free to turn all the attention from Himself to Christ, to
whom everything under the Old Dispensation pointed. Through all the
Old Dispensation the Father pointed to the Son; all the institutions
in the tabernacle and all the prophets point to Christ, just as
everything in creation pointed to the first Adam. When the Son came
into the world His life pointed to the Father. He came to obey the
Father’s will ; It was His meat; and He prepared the way for the
Holy Ghost. Thus He said to His disciples, “ It is expedient for you
that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come
unto you” (John 16:7). The Holy Spirit does not speak of Himself: He
takes of the things of Christ and of the Father, and shows them to
us.
One reason for the shortcoming of Christian life has been this:—
that the expectation of the Coming of Christ has not been real and
true. It has not had its full place in heart and life. We shall see
what a place it occupies in Scripture. When any truth of the Holy
Bible is left out of your life, you are induced to seek elsewhere to
fill up the lack. Are you looking for a manifestation of the Holy
Ghost in you, instead of looking for the Coming of Christ?
Let us compare Peter’s first and second sermons when the Christian
Church was created. The first is in Acts 2, when only one hundred
and twenty had received the Spirit. He sums up his sermon by saying
to those who were broken, “pricked in their hearts:” “Repent ye, and
be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the
remission of your sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy
Ghost. For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all
that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call unto
Him” (vers. 38, 39). “They then that received His word were
baptized: and there were added unto them in that day about three
thousand souls” (ver. 41). They were baptized, not as those in
Samaria without receiving the Holy Ghost (Acts 8:15, 16), but these
received the Holy Ghost, and constituted a Church in which He was
free to work. No wonder they continued steadfast. The hundred and
twenty had received the Spirit; and as many as received Him now were
added to them. The Church’s constitution is now permanently defined:
“Repent, and be baptized for the remission of sins, and you shall be
added to the Church through receiving the Holy Ghost.” There is no
real membership of the Church but through receiving the Holy Ghost.
And when the Apostle preaches his second sermon, he repeats: “Repent
ye therefore”—that is the conclusion of every true Gospel
sermon—“and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that so
there may come seasons; “—What seasons? New Pentecosts? The Lord may
send refreshings of this kind, and has done so often in revival
times; but that is not what the Apostle says, though he said it in
his first sermon. Now he goes further: that there may be “seasons of
refreshing from the presence of the Lord and He [Tischendorf's
version] may send the Christ who hath been appointed for you, even
Jesus: whom the heaven must receive until the times of the
restoration of all things, whereof God spake by the mouth of His
holy prophets, which have been since the world began.
Paul, again, appeals to the Galatians: “Received ye the Spirit by
the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? “ (Gal.
3:2): just in the ordinary way in which, on the very day of
Pentecost, the multitudes received the Holy Ghost by receiving the
Word of God, and were added to the Church. Then (ver. 5): “He
therefore that supplieth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles
among you, doeth He it by the works of the law or by the hearing of
faith?” and (ver, 14): “That upon the Gentiles might come the
blessing of Abraham in Christ Jesus; that we might receive the
promise of the Spirit through faith.” Through faith the Spirit is
inseparably bound to the Word of God, and whenever the Word of God
is preached in truth and reality, not in human wisdom but in Divine
power, the Holy Ghost, is ready to fall upon each one that, repents.
The preparatory work of the Holy Ghost is to convince of sin, and
that is the true summing up of Peter’s first sermon in Acts 2:36:
“Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God hath
made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified.” That
is what breaks [Gr. Pierces] their hearts. The Holy Ghost’s first
work is to show them that the Christ; whom they had lifted up to the
cross, was lifted up by their God to the highest place at His right
hand, and He had been made by the same God both Lord and Christ;
they had crucified their Messiah, and that breaks them down.
What have you done with Christ? The Holy Ghost will have done a
practical work in you when you see your wickedness in having failed
to give Christ His true place in your life and heart. The Holy Ghost
“shall convince the world;” and you are a worldly Christian so long
as you have not given Christ His right place, but have magnified
yourself and rejoiced in yourself. That is wickedness. It is the
central ministry of the Holy Ghost to prepare a Bride for the Lamb.
The woman is the glory of the man, and the Bride is the glory of
Christ: she is for Him. If you are not right in the fundamental
point of repentance for having failed to give Christ His place; if
instead of being lifted up to the cross, you are putting Him aside
and exalting yourself, you would, as a member of the Bride, bring
exaltation and ambition into the holiest. A flaw in the foundation
would ruin the building; self-satisfaction would corrupt even the
deepest things of God. It cannot, it must not be! Be one with the
Holy Ghost in giving Jesus His right place; let the great figure of
the Lamb cover every other object; let every other thing disappear
from the horizon: then the Holy Ghost will be at home in you. When
you are one mind with Him, you come into the highest and deepest
position, a member of the Bride of Christ.
When God created man He created Him in His divine image; fallen Adam
begat sons in his fallen image. Fallen Christians, i.e.,
Christians who do not live up to the full standard of Pentecostal
life, beget Christians on their own level; if your conversion has
been incomplete, the only thing to do is to repent with tears. Break
down, and believe there is mercy and grace for the broken heart
which says: “What have I done with Christ! I have crucified Him and
God has exalted Him. I must be on God’s side!” |