John 7:39

THE PROGRESSIVE WORK OF THE SPIRIT

‘The Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.’

John 7:39

‘The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.’

Genesis 1:2

I. At the very opening of the sacred record, we have a most suggestive statement made.—The language must not be treated with a base literalism. When it is said that ‘the Spirit of the Lord moved over the face of the waters,’ we must banish from our minds any physical or material conception, and rather take the passage as expressing the energising and formative working of the Divine Spirit in bringing order out of chaos and light out of darkness. The fact which is stated is sufficiently suggestive and glorious, for we are told that all natural order is of God. So are we taught that even in this dull earth, and in what may appear to our eye but the mechanical movements of blind force, we are to see a higher power; for that all are manifestations of creative, formative intelligence, even the moving of the Holy Spirit of God.

II. In perfect harmony with these conceptions of the spiritual underlying the material in the external world, we have in the word of God a magnificent vindication of the Divine in those gifts of human genius which modern religionism has been accustomed to relegate to the category of things belonging to the ‘natural man.’ With a boldness which puts to shame our grudging and feeble apprehension of the breadth and grandeur of the Divine influence in common things, the Old Testament recognises that the skill of architect, musician, and artist is the gift of God’s Holy Spirit. The valour of Joshua, the great captain, and the bravery and physical strength of David, are equally ascribed to Divine influence, while such matters as prudence in council or generosity in making offerings, instead of being classified as merely natural, worldly, or secular qualities, are traced to the working of the same Holy Ghost.

These things are mentioned in Scripture not that we should regard them as exceptions, but rather to reveal to us principles that are universal, and to teach us, with new emphasis, how ‘every good and perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of Lights.’ We should do wrong to the Bible were we to confine the working of God’s Holy Spirit only to those persons and to those matters which are peculiarly spiritual. It would surely be a misunderstanding of John if we supposed him to mean that the Holy Ghost had never worked among men till Christ was glorified. It would be to make him contradict the clear statements of other passages of Scripture, and to make him banish God from His own world, and to deny His dealings with the minds and consciences of the great and good through countless generations. But while we thankfully acknowledge the work of the Divine Spirit as manifested in the development of creation and in the progress of humanity, yet

III. We ought to recognise the greatness of the advance when we pass from the lower stages to the highest—even to the outpouring of the Holy Ghost upon the Church, and to His work of converting and sanctifying human souls. This was not a mere development out of the past. It was not a mere natural outgrowth of previous education. It was sudden, abrupt, and all-mastering. It was new in kind as well as in intensity and force. It was verily a new spiritual creation, a new spiritual order, fulfilling and interpreting all that had been best in the past, but lifting all on to a new range of progression. The life bestowed on St. Peter or St. Paul was of a new kind. That life we are called to possess. That life we may and ought to possess.

Illustration

‘The Holy Ghost was not yet with men in such fullness of influence on their minds, hearts, and understandings, as the Spirit of adoption and revelation, as He was after our Lord ascended up into heaven. It is clear as daylight, from our Lord’s language about the Spirit, in John 14:16; John 14:26; John 15:26; John 16:7, that believers were meant to receive a far more full and complete outpouring of the Holy Spirit after His Ascension than they had received before. It is a simple matter of fact, indeed, that after the Ascension the Apostles were quite different men from what they had been before. They both saw, and spoke, and acted like men grown up, while before the Ascension they had been like children. It was this increased light and knowledge and decision that made them such a blessing to the world, far more than any miraculous gifts. The possession of the gifts of the Spirit, it is evident, in the early Church was quite compatible with an ungodly heart. A man might speak with tongues and yet be like salt that had lost its savour. The possession of the fullness of the graces of the Spirit, on the contrary, was that which made any man a blessing to the world.’