The Holy Spirit is presented as the divine agent of God's power and will, operating in diverse ways throughout history and in the lives of believers. The sermon explores the "seven spirits" as representing the perfect and manifold activities of the Spirit, from creative energy in Genesis to the Spirit of restraint before the flood, and the Spirit of prophecy in inspiring Scripture. It further details the Spirit of holiness in Christ's resurrection and future resurrection of believers, the Spirit of grace in the current age of salvation, and the Spirit's role in judgment and the coming glorious millennium. The ultimate application is an urgent call to accept the Spirit's offer of salvation through Christ, emphasizing that salvation is a divine creation, not human effort.
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Thank you, Mac. We'll return in our Bibles to Acts chapter two, please. Acts chapter two. And verse one. And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.
They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. That's all we'll read on this chapter. There's much more in this passage we'll be dealing with. In the meetings ahead, we'd like to be speaking on the subject of the tongues next Lord's Day. There seems to be a lot of interest in this subject, and just how much are we obligated to obey the gift of tongues today? Is there such a thing as a real intelligent use of tongues? Are there guidelines as to the use of tongues?
Well, we'll take all this up, Lord willing, possibly next Sunday night at the evening meeting. But we'll continue on with our messages on the Holy Spirit. You know, it's very interesting to read four times in your Bible about the seven spirits of God. Now, you find that four times, and we'll mention those four occasions. In other words, doesn't mean to say that there are seven personalities. No, there's just one Spirit according to the Scriptures. There's the triune God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And there's just one body, one Spirit, one baptism, one God, one Lord Jesus Christ we read in Ephesians.
So there's just one Spirit. But we forget there are various activities of that one spirit, and the very use of the word seven spirits of God, seven is the number of perfection, seven is the number of completion, and here you have the prerogative of the activities and offices of the Holy Spirit. Now, John speaks in the tenth verse of chapter one of Revelation. He said, I was in the Spirit. He didn't say, I was in the Spirit. And also at the close of Revelation, the Spirit and the bride say come.
He doesn't say the Spirit and the bride. He's speaking there in the singular. But the reason we find the plural, the seven spirits of God is because we have already mentioned the perfect expression of the throne of God in the first case, and is manifested in seven ways. The plurality of the officers of the Holy Spirit. For instance, one man could be a doctor, he could be a lawyer, he could be a teacher, he could be a soldier, he could be a husband, he could be a father, he could be a president. Here is one man, and yet he has all these seven offices or functions, activities, yet one man.
And so it is with the Holy Spirit of God. There is one spirit, but he has many offices and many activities. The one over in Revelation one and four where you read the seven spirits before the fold. Here is the very throne of God, and before him are seven spirits. one spirit there in all its plurality and perfection, for seven is the number of perfection. Why do we find the number seven here? Here we have the various demands of the throne of God, and God is going to exercise the demands of that throne, the requirements of His holy character.
And the seven spirits of God there stand ready to obey, ready to execute the righteous requirements and the judgments and demands of that throne. And that's why he speaks of the seven spirits of God before the throne, their obedience, ready to carry out the mind and will of God as seen in that mighty throne in chapter four of verse one of chapter one and verse four of Revelation then you also read in Revelation three one the seven spirits of God but here's a connection with the churches in chapters two and three you have the seven churches of Asia and here you have the spirits of the spirit of God in his work among the churches first of all the spirit of God Relative to the churches, he is the revealer of the Father.
He reveals the mind, the will, the word, and the ways of God to God's people in the churches. And again, he's the teacher in the churches. Furthermore, he's the leader of God's people. And he's also the comforter of God's people. He's the intercessor of God's people. He's the energizer of God's people. And he's the protector of God's people. There you have seven offices again, all related to the Holy Spirit of God. He's the protector of God's people for when the enemy shall come in like the flood. The Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against them, those enemies.
Here he is protecting God's people. And you have The seven-fold work of the Spirit of God relative to displaying or manifesting the demands of the throne of God. Also, a seven-fold offices and activities relative to the church, as we've already mentioned. Then you have the seven lamps of fire, which are the seven spirits of God in Revelation four and five. Now, this has to do with the judgment of God. administering the fullness of the power of that throne in judgment. All you have to do is read Revelation chapter six on to chapter nineteen, and there you see the Spirit of God, that mighty energy, that power, directing, the outpouring of those judgments, the seven seals, the seven compass, and the seven vials of God given us in that portion of Revelation.
Here you see the Spirit of God acted in judgment. His power was in judgment. Then you read again in Revelation five, six. The land with seven horns, seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. Here again the number seven is used three times. Seven horns, seven eyes. and the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. It means the perfect administration of God over the whole earth. His power seen in the seven horns. Whenever you see that word, horn in the Scripture, it refers to power.
Here is a bull that weighs a ton. Two thousand pounds. And that bull has horns. Now he can charge. he can concentrate all his power and muscles into that form of those two horns he has. This very momentum only aggravates the situation and multiplies his power. And so it is. God has power, and he's going to manifest that power through his spirit in the days of judgment which are to come. And the seven eyes speak of perception. The eye is what you use to perceive or to see things.
And the seven eyes speak of perfect understanding, perfect knowledge, perfect penetration, perfect perception. He perceives, he knows all things. And how is this world going to cope with a God like this? with all this power and all this wisdom and knowledge vested in one man energized by the Spirit of the living God. In judgment in those days that are to come, and then eventually in blessing as we see before, we conclude. We hope we'll have the time.
Now there are seven aspects of the Spirit as to dispensational truth. What I mean by dispensation is a certain period of time. Thus far, in about five thousand years, a history of man upon the earth, as far as we know, leaving out all these fancy dreams of the evolutionists and so on, but as far as Bible recording is concerned, we can go back clearly about five thousand years. or almost six thousand years now. Something remarkable happened at the end of the first two thousand years.
That's the flood. And something remarkably happened, remarkable happened at the end of the next two thousand years. And that was the coming of Christ, his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. And something amazing and remarkable is going to happen at the end of the next two thousand years. And we're just about at it. And that's the coming again of the Lord Jesus Christ, the judgment upon the earth. Then after that there'll be one thousand years of Christ's reign upon the earth. There you have seven thousand years, comparing to the seven days of creation. And God rested on the seven days.
And that's exactly what he's going to do for a thousand years, when we'll have the first, final, most successful creation. administration this world has ever known under the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now the Spirit of God works in different ways and different dispensations. There's the dispensation of innocence, there's the dispensation of conscience, there's the dispensation of the law, the dispensation of grace, and so on. We are in the dispensation or the period, the age of grace. When you start to think of the dispensation or the interpretation of the Spirit's activities during these various dispensations.
We will take them up just briefly. The first one you'll find the Spirit of creative energy. We didn't use that word creative in our act because we didn't have room. Here you have the Spirit of creative energy. In Genesis one, too, the Spirit of God moves. or the face of the deep. And it's very interesting to note that the Spirit gives effect to the Word of God. God said, and the Spirit acted. God said, and the Spirit acted. And so you have the Spirit of God connected with creative energy.
We have that in the New Testament. And these two go together, the Word of God and the Spirit of God, you can't divorce them. For instance, we read in John three that we're born of the Spirit, threatened by the Spirit of God as His creative energy, because the work of each generation is creation. Your Bible makes that very plain, created in Christ Jesus, unto good works. A lot of people think that their good works save them. No, they don't. If you do the best you can, then you'll be saved. It's just the reverse in the Bible.
You're saved first, then you engage in good works. And you cannot perform good works to the glory of God until you've first evolved and saved. We are created in Christ Jesus unto good works. You know, the Spirit in created energy, when the soul gets saved, is marvelous. We have created anew. They that are in Christ are a new creation. Oh, things are passed away, fast away, and all things that become new. We are created in knowledge after the image of Him that created us. Salvation is creation.
Cevaluation is not trying to be good, joining the church, getting baptized, seeking to live a good life, trying to serve the Lord. That's not creation. Creation is a calling into existence of something that did not exist previously. That's what creation is. God spoke the word and called the world into existence. He created the planets and the suns and the stars and the heavenly bodies, and he hath them off his fingertips and placed them in their very orbits in the heavens. God created it.
Now man can make something. You know there's a lot of talk today about man creating life. He never will. There may be a possibility he may make life in the laboratory, and that'll stop in the world. But I want to show you the difference between creation and made. When God created man, he made it out of the dust of the earth. Certain components, when you reduce man, after he dies, he's put in the coffin and down on the ground, If you'd open that coffin after a few months or years, you'd find dust and ashes.
In other words, man may come up with the formula. The certain number of vitamins, the certain number of minerals, the right combination, and if he does, and he produces life, he's only taking the very things that God used to make life. Man can create it. Only God can create. Now when man or some man could speak up and say, I'm going to create a human being, and he speaks the word, and there he stands. That's creation.
That's what God did. God got the formula together. He composed it, then he spoke the word, and man came into existence. God spoke the word. Now, wherever man is going to get the power, once he gets all the ingredients and the components together of what the human body is composed of, and they can do that, they can do it in the laboratory, and when they get all that together, who's going to speak the trickling word? Will it be that some or other man and his genius will be able to cause all those things to function and bring about life, that we've got to see.
But if man were to do it, he had to use something to begin with that God had called him to exist. And so when a person is saved, he's a new creature in Christ Jesus. You can no more save your soul than you can create a new son or a new star. or a new moon, or a new planet. You can't do that. No man can create anything, and you can't save your soul. It's just as impossible for you to create a planet the size of ours and turn it out in space.
You can't do it. It's absolutely impossible. You don't have the power. No more can you save yourself. Salvation is a creation. It's the creation of a new life in your heart by the Holy Spirit of God. Here is the creative energy of the Holy Spirit. Created in Christ Jesus. That's what your Bible says. Created in Christ Jesus unto good works. And they that are in Christ are a new creation. And we are created in the knowledge of Him who created us. Then again you've got the spirit of restraint in your Bible.
This had been going on. The civilization had been going on for about fifteen hundred years. The earth was filled with violence, the Bible says. All you're going to do is read chapter six of Genesis. The earth was filled with violence, filled with wickedness. That's been going on for fifteen hundred years in the entrance of Satan. an end had to come. God says the end of all flesh has come before me. I'm going to add unto man a hundred and twenty more years. I'm going to add unto man this period.
And I'm going to give him that opportunity to return to me and know you build an ark. And it took him a hundred and twenty years to do so. And during that hundred and twenty years the Spirit of God stepped up his activities, and he moved upon the human race at that time. The Spirit of God was at work, just like he was in creation of the material universe. So now he's moving upon human hearts during the time that Noah was building the ark and preaching. He was trying to reach the hearts of those wicked men and women of those wicked days.
For God says I've got to bring an end to this wicked ungodly trend. And let me tell you, friend, there's got to be an end to the present civilization. It can continue. It's running by the hour. It's becoming crucial. And all you've got to do is see what's going on. in the world, and then you can multiply that by about ten, and you'll find out what's going on in the underworld, that which you don't see, but God sees. God says there's going to be an end to the situation. And God's Spirit says, strove with men.
But he also added this, My Spirit shall not always strive with men. There's going to be an end. There must be their will be. And at the end of the hundred and twenty years, you find God saying to Noah, Noah, come down all thy house into the ark. The time has come for me to judge this wicked antediluvian age. And I want you to come into the ark, and you know there was only eight within, and the rest were destroyed. Here you have the Spirit of God. and his restraint, trying to restrain them back in those days from their sinful ways, trying to restrain them, trying to bring them to a knowledge of the living God, trying to constrain them to get into that ark.
For once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah while the ark was preparing, preparing, And for a hundred and twenty years, Noah was a preacher of righteousness, the Bible said. And here is God, through human voice, trying to restrain them from their wickedness and constrain them to get into that ark and escape the judgment that is going to come. And I believe the same Spirit of God is in the world today doing exactly this, trying to restrain men and women. For only he who now hither hindereth or restraineth will restrain.
And that's the Spirit of God until he be taken out of the way. Then shall that wicked one, the coming antichrist, feel to be. The Spirit of God is here to try and restrain through the church the rising tide of evil. The time is coming when he no longer restrain. He no longer constrained men and women to come to Christ. God says this. At an end, the church will be complete and caught to heaven. And then the mighty judgments of revelation will pour upon the earth.
You also read about the spirit of prophecy or the spirit of inspiration. After those two thousand years of human history, the spirit of God began to write. The Bible says, beginning at Moses. Now the Spirit of God, after the flood, he's beginning to write. And he's using man to do it. And the Lord Jesus says in Luke twenty-four, beginning at Moses and the prophets. And the Spirit of God began using these men as his pen to give us the reveal will of God.
And Moses gave us the Pentateuch, the first five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Some say that Job lived before Moses, and that he wrote his book first. Well, the Lord Jesus didn't say that. He didn't say a beginning at Job. He says beginning at Moses. Job undoubtedly was a contemporary of Moses. but Christ attributes Moses as the first inspired writer of the Bible. And so there were Moses and others even through Enoch. Enoch was used by the Spirit of God to prophesy a way back in his days.
He was the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying he didn't write a book. But what he said then is recorded for us by the Spirit of God in the book of Jude. For instance, listen to what he says. Enoch was a servant from Adam. He prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, saying, To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them, of all that ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
Here is the Spirit of God writing about conditions that existed and how God dealt with the human race because of those conditions. Then you have the Spirit of God in inspiration and in prophecy in First Peter, one, eleven, twelve, searching what to what manner of time the Spirit of Christ, notice that, which was in them did signify when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow, unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves but unto us they have administered the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven which things the angels desire to look into.
Here you have the Spirit of God inspiring men and women to write and to preach. the Holy Spirit of prophecy and inspiration and testimony. And also you have this in Second Peter one, two. Second Peter one, twenty one. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, or carried along like a ship of sea by wind. So the Spirit of God moved these men. He carried along with his influence to write things that God wanted us to know in this holiday.
In fact, in verse sixteen of chapter one, men and brethren, this scripture must needs have been fulfilled with the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David's spake before concerning Judah. There you have the Spirit of God using David's mouth. And so you have the Spirit of God, the creative energy, the Spirit of God in restraint, and the Spirit of God in prophecy and inspiration in giving us the Bible. Then the Spirit of God, or the Spirit of holiness, he's called. And this is linked up with the resurrection of Jesus Christ, according to Romans one and four.
According to the Spirit of holiness, Christ Jesus, was declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from among the dead. And so here you see the activity of the Spirit of holiness, simply meaning he could not have raised the Lord Jesus from the dead unless everything Christ had done was perfect. satisfying the righteous requirements of God's character and the demands of his throne. And unless everything was done according to the holy will of God, the Spirit of God would not have had anything to do with the resurrection of Jesus Christ, for he was the Spirit of holiness that raised up Christ from the dead.
And not only that resurrection, Christ's resurrection, which is the first root, But there are other resurrections that were brought about by the Holy Spirit, even through Christ when Lazarus was raised from the dead, and the widow's son and the little girl all fell. Well, this is what you read. Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and show John again these things, which ye do here and see. The blind receive their sight. And the lame walk, and the lepers are cleansed, and the dead here, the dead are raised, and the poor have the gospel preached unto them.
And so here you have the spirit of holiness, declaring the gospel, and accompanying that gospel there were miracles before in the beginning of this age. But remember, our bodies too were going to be raised. Not only Christ's body and the bodies of others during the time of his earthly ministry, all by the power of the Spirit, but our bodies are going to be raised. And the Spirit of God is going to have a lot to do with it. Listen to this verse. In John five, for as the Father raises up the Son and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.
And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies which dwelleth in you. Showing how the Spirit of holiness operated righteously in raising Christ from the dead, and also raising others from the dead. He was his own divine prerogative, and he will raise us from the dead, those of us who were saved by great divine.
I heard a preacher not too long ago right here in Albany say that God was true with our bodies. He had no more interest in our bodies. He was going to give us a new body like unto the body of our Lord Jesus Christ. When he said that, If God came into my mind, what's God going to raise then? It definitely says God's going to raise up our bodies. So God still has an interest in the body of a Christian, and in the body of every Christian that has come out of dust and ashes. In that very dust there is the germ of divine life, and God will pick and was left of that body into the likeness of Jesus Christ.
We are told lately we're going to be raised from the dead. Well, if there's nothing in the grave, nothing left of our bodies of any interest are gone, why is he going to raise? The Spirit is coming with him. The soul is coming with him. Our bodies for the power of the Spirit are going to be quickened and changed, and our Our new bodies, fashioned in the likeness of Jesus Christ, will then be the inhabitant of that spirit and soul which is sinless and eternal. And thus in the likeness of Jesus Christ, we shall be forever and forever.
Here you have also the spirit of grace in Hebrews ten and twenty-nine. For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more conscience nor sacrifice of sin, but a certain looking-for of judgment and righteous indignation which shall devour the adversary, of how much, he says here, and he that despised Moses' law, died without mercy unto two or three witnesses, of how much sorrow upon him, Suppose ye shall he be thought worthy, who hath fallen underfoot the blood of the Son of God, and come to the blood of the covenant an unholy thing, and have done despite unto the Spirit of grace.
Here is despite unto the Spirit of grace in Hebrews ten and twenty-nine. Yes, thank God there is the Spirit of grace. And this is the age in which we live. The Age of Drinks, where we read this, concerning the Spirit of Grace, and all these things I mentioned in these verses have to do with apostates, those who have heard the Gospel and rejected it. They've trodden underfoot the blood of the Son of God, and God says there's no more sacrifice for sin. They've done despite unto the Spirit of Grace.
But for those who are not apostates, there is yet hope. And God will save you this morning by his sovereign race, unless you have shut the door in God's face, fully and finally. And you become an apostate. You've turned from life into darkness. As the Lord said in the book of Jude in the second chapter of Second Timothy, about apostates. Now the work of the Spirit of Grace is buried, and we have, I think, about seven of those that we have time, principal ways in which the Spirit is active, this Spirit of Grace in our days.
First of all, the preaching of the Gospel, as you have in I Peter one twelve, unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves but unto us, they'd administer the thing which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven. Yes, he came down on the day of Pentecost, as we'll see further getting into those verses. He came down not only to indwell and seal, we'll take this up tonight, the inauguration of the church, but to enable God's service to preach the message of the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit.
And without the Holy Spirit's preaching, all preaching today is just futile and fruitless. And I think that's exactly what's gone wrong today. There's so much talk, and talk is cheap. Words upon words, whistles or words, errant words, educated words. Yes. But where's the power? Where's the power? I would sooner have an ounce of power than a coward with no energy. Paul and Gord de Corm, he said, I am going to come to Corm.
And I know not the words of them that trouble me, but to power. They preach not with the power of the Holy Spirit. I know how to handle them. They're just sheep and wolves clothed. One of the marks that should accompany the preaching of the old-fashioned gospel of the grace of God is the power that reaches the consciences of men and of women. And then the next thing is the begetting of new of a soul who believes the gospel, as I already have mentioned, the trickling you read all in Ephesians two, one, you have been trickling to work dead in trespasses and in sins, and this trickling is done by the Holy Spirit of God.
And we become the partakers of the divine nature by the implantation of the life of God in our souls the moment we trust Christ and the Spirit does this work. Then there's the compelling to come to Christ by the Spirit. The third thing that accompanies today's preaching, a compelling force to come to Christ. All things are ready to come, you read in Luke chapter four, King. And the Spirit and the bride say come. Or the Spirit in the church has but one message, that is, will you come? Will you come to Christ?
Not will you turn over a new lead. Not will you start to do better. Not will you get baptized, just join the church, become a member, like you would the Civitan or some other organization. But will you really come to Christ? Trust Him with your soul. Jesus, I will trust me. Trust me with my soul. I'm guilty. I'm lost, I'm helpless. Thou can't make me whole. And again, the Spirit of God is one who beareth witness. And you know there are two things that the Spirit of God bears witness to, and I hope you get this.
When a person is saved, there are two things he knows. He knows his sins are forgiven, and he knows he has everlasting life. That's what the Spirit will witness to and impart to the one who's really born again. Well, I'll give you a scripture for us. It tells us over in First John five, or over in the fifth being first, in John, whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us, for after that he had said before, this is the covenant that I will make with him after those days of the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, And in their minds will I write them, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.
Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. That's over in Hebrews chapter ten. Remission of sins. No more conscience of sin. Isn't it wonderful? When the Spirit of God witnesses to your Spirit that all your sins are forgiven, every one of And God says, I'll remember them no more. God doesn't forget our sins. That's a weakness in human nature to forget something. And the more human nature declines, the more you forget. So one of these days I'm going to concede I'm getting old because I forget something.
That's an infirmity of the human nature. But this could not be said of Christ or of God. God does something. He creates an act of oblivion, and the past is forgotten as to your sins. And he said, I remember them no more. And so the Spirit of God will give you this knowledge when you trust Christ with your sins and your victories are gone. They're gone forever. And then over in the passage, I referred to but didn't read in first John five that they might have eternal life now listen for there are three that bear record in heaven the Father the Word and the Holy Spirit and these three are one and there are three that bear witness in earth the Spirit and the water and the blood of the water there definitely has reference to the word of God because He speaks, so we are born again by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.
So the three were there witness on earth, the spirit, the word, and the blood. And he says, these three agree in one. If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater, for this is the witness of God, which he hath testified of his Son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath a witness in himself. And he that believeth not God hath made him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave his son. And this is the record that God hath given concerning his son, that he that hath the son hath life, and he that hath not the son of God hath not life. These things have I written unto you that believe in the name of the son of God that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that this life is in his son.
So when a person is saved, he knows two things by the witness of the Spirit. His sins are all forgiven, and he has here and now, and will never lose, ever lasting life. And by the Spirit the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts. You read that over in Romans. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, which is given unto us. I think it's about verse five of Romans five. Now we come to something else. Before we do, I want you to know something remarkable about the Spirit empowering for service. And this has to do with the Lord Jesus.
And when I thought of it yesterday, I thought that's amazing. Now listen to what the Lord Jesus is saying in Luke chapter four. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty then that are proved, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he began to say unto them, This day of this Scripture fulfilled me in your ear. to think that the Lord Jesus needed the anointing of the Holy Spirit to preach as he did.
He did. And he tells you right here in this passage that he did. The Spirit of God was upon him, and he says, This is fulfilled in your ears today. So there you have the anointing of the Spirit for the preaching of the gospel and hardly applying for the others the Spirit of God in coming judgment. They're all fully detailed, and this refers to the, not so much the judgment of God and the great wife's home, but the judgment that's coming upon the earth. For we read in Isaiah what is at Micah three and eight, and for truly I am full of the power of the Spirit of the Lord and of judgment and of might to declare unto Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin.
And he says here this I pray you. ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that afford judgment and pervert iniquity. They build up Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity. The heads thereof judged for reward, and the priests therefore teach for hire, and the prophets therefore preach for money or pay. Yet will they lean upon the Lord, or say we are trusting the Lord? is not the Lord among us, they say. None evil can come upon us. This is what God says. Therefore shall Zion, for your sake, be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become peace, and the mountains of the house, and the high places of the poor.
God says, I am going to judge your religious leaders. They are laboring for pain. They are working for harm. They are harming your enemy without money. That's the wrong thing. And yet they've got the nerve to say, we're leaning on the Lord. They're not. They're leaning on the same way they did. That's what they're leading on. God says, I'll judge this whole thing in that coming day of judgment. And then finally, the glorious millennium, when we see the Spirit of God fully poured out, and I hope we've got to this earlier this morning, because of the Spirit being poured out upon all flesh, in this second chapter.
Now, that has never happened. The Spirit of God was not poured out upon all flesh at the time of Pentecost. It was poured out upon Jews, as we'll prove, that day is coming when the Spirit of God will be poured out upon all flesh. And when will that day be? Listen. Isaiah sixty-one, three in the millennium. the spirit of joy, praise, and testimony, to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise, for the spirit of heaviness, whom the spirit is poured out, or when the spirit is poured out upon all flesh, and ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, that have done wondrously with you, And my people shall never be ashamed.
You read that in Joel chapter two. He's referring to the millennium at the beginning of the millennium. After those dark days have passed, then the Spirit will be poured out, a Spirit of joy and praise, and testimony during those coming glorious days of heaven upon the earth. First of all, comes the time of judgment. When a man wants to paint a gate or something, made of metal, you'll take the torch, or some harsh means, and you'll burn off that old pig. And after he's burned off that old pig and sanded it down, then he'll make a new application of new things.
God's going to burn this earth, and he'll burn it like a dish. because he's going to rid out of his kingdom all things that are painful. The word burn doesn't mean the lack of little fire in this case because God uses that metaphor. It means it's going to be such a complete destruction. You think it's like a piece of earth. The fire that swept and nothing was left. God says, I am going to do that. So this world, and I'll tell you, when you think of the wicked people in this world, and the few are really born again, it will be a visible destruction.
Saints will be caught up. Then God is going to turn his attention directly to his ancient people Israel, and for those dark days they'll witness for him during the reign of the Antichrist, then the time comes when Christ will be on together. He will do his strange work for the judgment. This will precede the stepping up of the kingdom of Jesus Christ here, upon the earth. And so I ask you this morning, in the light of the work of the Holy Spirit, what about you? My appeal is clear, loving, and I trust urgent. The language of the crucified, risen, ascended, and glorified Savior is simply this.
Him that cometh unto me. I will in no wise come up.Castor, mother, father, wife, husband. He says, come unto me. Sherman, for whosoever will, that grand word, whosoever, whosoever will let him come unto me. And he says, I will not cast you up. I'll save you. I guarantee I'll do it. And he will. not your works, but God's pain that saves. It's not what you do for Christ. It's what Christ has done for you. Not what these hands have done can ease this weight of sin.
Thy blood alone, O Lamb of God, can give me peace with it. It's not Christ. It's not the church. Rather, it's Christ. It's not water baptism. It's Jesus' blood. Will you come? Will you come now? Will you say, yes, I will. And you'll know the joy of the Spirit, dwelling nestled within your heart, and you'll have the assurance of sins forgiven and the possession of everlasting life, shall we pray. Our Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus, we come before thee.
We ask thy blessing upon thy word. Grant that souls may come to know the Savior this morning, wireless time before the door is shut, blessed by beloved people. May they be built up and edified as a result of thy precious word that thou hast given to us. In Jesus' name, amen. Let us sing a couple of verses of two hundred and eleven. Two hundred and eleven. Almost persuaded now to believe, almost persuaded Christ to receive.
Seems now some soul to say, Go spirit, go thy way. Some more convenient day, on thee I'll call, ponder those words that we sing. Are you saying to the Spirit of God this morning some more convenient day, not today? When I have a convenient season, said, Philippa, Dipper, I will call to you. Now is the time. I trust you'll come as we stand and sing this.