NIV
靈修
新聞
貼圖
為教會
To understand the work of the Holy Spirit, and truly to experience it, one must try to grasp the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the Lord Jesus. Our Lord said definitely, before His departure, that the Spirit would come as a Comforter to the dis¬ciples. The Spirit would reveal Him in their hearts in heavenly glory. The disciples were full of the thought. They would not miss their Lord, but have Him with them always. This made them pray earnestly for the Holy Spirit, for they longed to have Jesus with them always. This was the promise of the Master: the Spirit should reveal Him to them.This is the meaning of our text—"The Spirit shall glorify Me": even as I am in the glory of heaven, He will make Me known. "He shall take of Mine"—My love, My Joy, My Peace, and all My life—"and reveal it unto you." Where there is an earnest desire for the glory of Jesus in the heart of the believer, the Holy Spirit will preserve the holy Presence of Jesus in our hearts all the day. We must not weary ourselves with striving after Gods Presence. We must quietly endeavor to abide in fellow¬ship with Christ always, to love Him and keep His commandments, and to do anything, in word and deed, in the Name of Jesus. Then shall we be able to count upon the secret but powerful working of the Spirit within us.
We see again the value of remembering and meditating on the text in Gal. v. 22. If our thoughts are always occupied with the Lord Jesus, His love, His joy, His peace—then the Holy Spirit will graciously bring these fruits to ripeness within us.
The great desire of the Holy Spirit and of the Father is that Christ may be glorified in and through us. Let it be the earnest desire and prayer of our lives too!
Jesus has made the life of believers in Him as certain as His own. As sure as the Head lives the members live also. If Jesus has not risen from the dead, then are we dead in our sins; but since He has risen, all believers are risen in Him. His death has put away our transgressions and loosed the bonds which held us under the death sentence. His resurrection proves our justification: we are absolved, and mercy saith, "The LORD hath put away thy sin, thou shalt not die."
In these words the believer is invited to a holy nearness to Jesus. “Come and dine,” implies the same table, the same meat; aye, and sometimes it means to sit side by side, and lean our head upon the Saviours bosom. It is being brought into the banqueting-house, where waves the banner of redeeming love. “Come and dine,” gives us a vision of union with Jesus, because the only food that we can feast upon when we dine with Jesus is himself. Oh, what union is this! It is a depth which reason cannot fathom, that we thus feed upon Jesus. “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.” It is also an invitation to enjoy fellowship with the saints. Christians may differ on a variety of points, but they have all one spiritual appetite; and if we cannot all feel alike, we can all feed alike on the bread of life sent down from heaven. At the table of fellowship with Jesus we are one bread and one cup. As the loving cup goes round we pledge one another heartily therein. Get nearer to Jesus, and you will find yourself linked more and more in spirit to all who are like yourself, supported by the same heavenly manna. If we were more near to Jesus we should be more near to one another. We likewise see in these words the source of strength for every Christian. To look at Christ is to live, but for strength to serve him you must “come and dine.” We labour under much unnecessary weakness on account of neglecting this percept of the Master. We none of us need to put ourselves on low diet; on the contrary, we should fatten on the marrow and fatness of the gospel that we may accumulate strength therein, and urge every power to its full tension in the Masters service. Thus, then, if you would realize nearness to Jesus, union with Jesus, love to his people and strength from Jesus, “come and dine” with him by faith.
There are times in our spiritual experience when human counsel or sympathy, or religious ordinances, fail to comfort or help us. Why does our gracious God permit this? Perhaps it is because we have been living too much without him, and he therefore takes away everything upon which we have been in the habit of depending, that he may drive us to himself. It is a blessed thing to live at the fountain head. While our skin- bottles are full, we are content, like Hagar and Ishmael, to go into the wilderness; but when those are dry, nothing will serve us but “Thou God seest me.” We are like the prodigal, we love the swine-troughs and forget our Fathers house. Remember, we can make swine-troughs and husks even out of the forms of religion; they are blessed things, but we may put them in Gods place, and then they are of no value. Anything becomes an idol when it keeps us away from God: even the brazen serpent is to be despised as “Nehushtan,” if we worship it instead of God. The prodigal was never safer than when he was driven to his fathers bosom, because he could find sustenance nowhere else. Our Lord favours us with a famine in the land that it may make us seek after himself the more. The best position for a Christian is living wholly and directly on Gods grace—still abiding where he stood at first—“Having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” Let us never for a moment think that our standing is in our sanctification, our mortification, our graces, or our feelings, but know that because Christ offered a full atonement, therefore we are saved; for we are complete in him. Having nothing of our own to trust to, but resting upon the merits of Jesus—his passion and holy life furnish us with the only sure ground of confidence. Beloved, when we are brought to a thirsting condition, we are sure to turn to the fountain of life with eagerness.
There are weights which are not sins in themselves, but which become distractions and stumbling blocks in our Christian progress. One of the worst of these is despondency. The heavy heart is indeed a weight that will surely drag us down in our holiness and usefulness.
The experience of Noah teaches us the meaning of offering. Having endured judgement by flood, Noah disembarked from the ark, built an altar and made offering. The Lord smelled the soothing aroma and engaged in the offering. He promised to ‘never again curse the ground on account of man’. He likewise guaranteed the continuance of seedtime and harvest until the end.
Generations later, Daniel offered up the incense of prayer and the Lord responded accordingly. When we present ourselves as living sacrifices, the will of God is active and proven among us. As it was for Noah, the Lord engages our offering with a word of promise. As we present ourselves through offering, we will prove ‘what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect’. We are reminded that the will of God has two facets. It is firstly the sovereign and pre-ordained will of God. And secondly, it is our individual predestination by which we participate in that same will. It is God who is at work in us to ‘will and to do according to His good pleasure’ and desire.
The necessity of offering is evident to those who make offering. When we, in unbelief, fail to offer, we will suffer lack and confirm to ourselves that we have nothing to give. The miracle of offering enables us to give because the Lord multiplies our capacity to give. The Lord desires to make us fruitful and to multiply us. This promise has continued from the very beginning right to our day. As the early church was growing and the people were giving and bringing offerings, the word itself grew (was fruitful) and multiplied.
It must not escape our attention that Paul described himself as a ‘Hebrew of Hebrews’. His world view was based completely in the Scriptures and their national heritage as God’s chosen people. In Jewish culture, there was no civil law apart from the Scriptures and the traditions that sprang forth from them. Consequently, any mention of a ‘lamb’ would have drawn their attention immediately to the Passover or the morning and evening
sacrifice. With this in view, they should have recognised the Lord Jesus
as the Lamb of God. However, in many cases, their rich heritage was their greatest stumbling block. Before his conversion, Paul was both extremely zealous for his ancestral traditions and a persecutor of the church.
In his first encounter with the Lord on the Damascus road, Paul was
appointed a light to the Gentiles. The ‘Light of the knowledge of the glory of God’ broke in upon him. Some years later when he was caught up to the third heaven, the same thing occurred. It is likely that this revelation occurred shortly before he and Barnabas were commended to the work of their apostleship. It was Paul’s tradition, upon entering a new city, to go to the synagogue and proclaim to the Jews. He preached nothing
other than ‘Jesus Christ and Him crucified’; the fulfilment of all offering,
priesthood, and tabernacle service. There was no middle ground. Either they received this testimony or they judged themselves unworthy of eternal life. In many cases, this gospel proved to be a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. Paul referred to this testimony as ‘God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory’.
It is quite salient that in His first sermon, Jesus addressed the issue of anxiety and worry. He began with the Beatitudes, talking about when we give, when we pray, and when we fast; and the need to not let our left hand know what our right hand is doing. He then moved to another core issue of life. ‘Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in. Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven ... For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’ Jesus was setting the stage to speak to those present about anxiety. Of course, laying up treasures on earth is the practical expression of anxiety. What will happen to them? Moth and rust will destroy them. Thieves will break in and steal. Jesus spoke about the need to have a single eye and then He went right for the point. ‘No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.’ And then in parenthesis, He said, ‘You cannot serve God and money’. Jesus was not just talking about money. However, it is true that monetary provision is a significant contributor to the anxieties that we feel. Some of us are yet in a season of restriction because of the global financial crisis. Others have had health problems and some have had accidents. For most of us, the issue is that we are worried about ‘many things’. Jesus has a very specific answer for you and for me. We must be vigilant to serve one master only. When our eyes are no longer single and we begin to see the ‘many things’, that’s when we become distracted to another master.
In the Scriptures, people living apart from God are often referred to as ‘the sons of men’. Sons of men are people, male and female, who are living in the ways that Paul spoke about to Timothy. People like this are constantly seeking power to live the life that they choose for themselves. Yet, for all their seeking, they cannot find it. Jesus said to the Jews, ‘You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.’ Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.’ In contrast to sons of men, sons of God are people who hear the word of God, believe it and obey it. They believe unto righteousness and make confession unto salvation. They call upon the name of the Lord and are saved. The Scriptures tell us that the Lord is over all people and He is rich to all who call upon Him, for whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. ‘Being saved’ is receiving power to live. ‘God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.’
