The Holy Spirit Came Especially for the Purpose of Creating a Spiritual Order of Things
We pass over to see the difference in the new spiritual order. What is the essential nature of that which has come in with Jesus Christ? It is a spiritual order. It is no longer a matter of natural senses. This whole new order begins at another point. Now we are keeping very close to the Letter to the Galatians. I suppose it would not be fair if I were to ask you how many have read the Letter to the Galatians right through this week. One of the advantages of knowing the Word of God is that you are able to see what is right. There are many other advantages. But in this Letter to the Galatians, the word "Spirit" occurs twelve times, and that is very largely the key to the letter. It is no longer after the flesh, it is now after the Spirit. This is essentially a spiritual dispensation that has come in.
You will remember our message on the words of the Lord Jesus to the woman of Samaria. She had said, 'Men ought to worship in this mountain, and you Jews said, men ought to worship in Jerusalem.' "Jesus said, "Woman, believe Me, the hour cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father ... God is Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.' " That is the nature of what has come in with Jesus Christ. We know from the Word of God, and I trust from our own experience, that men are not born of the flesh in relation to God: But they are born of the Spirit. Not of a man but of the Spirit, that which is born of the Spirit, said Jesus, "is SPIRIT."
In the Letter to the Hebrews, chapter twelve, the writer speaks of the Father of our spirits. He is NOT the Father of our bodies. He is NOT the Father of our natural souls. He is the Father of our spirits. We are going to come back to that later on. But what is it that happens when we are born of the Spirit? What really is the nature of the new birth? This is, of course, the very meaning of the advent of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came especially for the purpose of creating a spiritual order of things. And He begins with the individual. The word to each individual is, "You must be born again," and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. What then happens when we are born of the Spirit? When we are truly born of the Spirit, we receive a new set of spiritual senses. They correspond in purpose to the old senses. But they are spiritual and NOT physical.
We, by the Holy Spirit, receive a new faculty of sight. You know how much there is in the New Testament about having our eyes opened. Jesus pointed to this principle by opening the eyes of the blind. He was illustrating the great spiritual truth that in the new creation, we get a new faculty of sight. And every truly born again child of God ought to be able to say, "Whereas I was blind, now I see." The truth about a child of God is that their first thing is, "Now I see." They have received the faculty of spiritual sight. It goes by different names in the New Testament. Sometimes it is called spiritual perception. But whatever the name is, it means the same thing. I now see what I was never able to see before as to the true meaning of Divine things. I was born blind, but the Holy Spirit has performed the great miracle of giving me new eyes.
This spiritual faculty of sight has introduced us to a new world altogether, not the material world, but the spiritual world. Listen to what the Apostle Paul says about this, he says, "Things which eye did not see, things which ear did not hear, things which entered not into the heart of man, these things God has revealed to us by His Spirit."
The first faculty of new birth is spiritual sight. Can you see the difference between the old dispensation and the new? You see, Israel had all these things which they could see with their natural eyes. They could see the priests and the sacrifices. They could see the feasts. But they were totally blind to the meaning of those things. And because they were blind to the meaning, they crucified the One Who fulfilled them all. With all their power of natural sight, they were spiritually blind. So the first work of the Holy Spirit in new birth is to give us new spiritual eyes.
Not only is this true of seeing, they heard everything with their natural ears; but they were quite deaf to the Voice of God. It did not go any further than the drums of their ears. Now in the new order of the Spirit, we are given a new faculty of hearing. We Christians have a way of saying, "The Lord has spoken to me." We do not mean that we have heard something with our natural ears. We know what we mean, "The Lord has spoken to me. I have heard the Lord speaking in my heart;" that means we have received a new faculty. And this new dispensation is built upon this principle. When Jesus spoke His parables, He finished by saying this, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear" (Matthew 11:15). And you know that was His Own Word to the seven churches in Asia. After He had spoken to those seven churches, He repeated seven times, "He that hath an ear, let him hear with the Spirit saith' (Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22).
But you must remember that speaking to the churches was not with an audible voice. Those churches did not hear a voice from heaven with their natural ears. It was what "The Spirit saith to the churches." And spiritual speaking is spiritual. It is NOT physical. We could illustrate this in many ways. We speak of spirit to spirit speaking. We meet some other child of God, and we do not have to say much with our lips, but we know that is a child of God. Their spirit speaks to our spirit. We have a spiritual language. We know that we belong to the same family. We can discern the Spirit in one another. We have got this new faculty of spiritual hearing. It is not outward hearing, but it is inward hearing. And what is true of seeing and of hearing is true of all the other senses.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 13)
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