Pentecost was the introduction of the "Day of the Lord" on the GRACE side of His sovereignty, and in the Apocalypse it is the JUDGMENT side of His sovereignty - ONE DAY, but in two halves; and as surely as the Lord Jesus has commenced His reign in grace, so surely He will take the rod of iron to smash the nations in judgment who resist and reject His reign in grace.
The DAY of the Lord is in our hearts now, He is SOVEREIGN LORD; and so He is offered to the nations in grace, but also we have a message of authority, and if there is refusal of His grace, there must be an acknowledgement of that sovereignty in judgment; for everything shall confess Jesus Christ IS LORD.
"Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name ... and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Phil. 2:9, 11).
In another part of the same record the link is with David and Solomon. With David and Solomon you have introduced a revelation of grace, glory and wonder; it needs the two persons to illustrate the reign and work of the Lord Jesus; and you come into Pentecost where it has its fulfillment and spiritual realization.
David and Solomon are types of the Person of the Lord Jesus, in His work and reign He is David and He is Solomon, but He transcends them both; He takes up all that is typical in them and fulfills it in His own Person; Pentecost is the climax to the Old Testament Scriptures concerning Christ.
Now as to the Person, life and teaching of the Lord Jesus in the days of His flesh.
PENTECOST WAS A RECOGNITION AND A PROOF OF ALL CHRIST CAME TO BE, AND ALL HE TAUGHT, AND ALL HE DID.
All the spiritual value of that comes by Pentecost into its full vindication.
His claim to sovereignty is established by the moral and spiritual results of the Holy Spirit coming into the life of a child of God and transforming it, by causing it to know in experience (not by intellectual argument) the life of His sovereign triumph, that inward reigning in life by Christ Jesus. All that the Lord Jesus taught and did is vindicated by the Holy Spirit inworking into the life of the believer the victory of that resurrection life of the Lord Jesus.
The Lord Jesus was vindicated by a mighty experience of the Holy Spirit! It is the spiritual and moral value of the Person, and the bringing of the fruits of that by the Holy Spirit into the life; it is the change the Holy Spirit makes in the moral life that is the vindication of the Lord Jesus. You cannot divorce moral responsibility and spiritual experience, there is no vindication thus, but chaos and contradiction. Pentecost is the climax to the Person, work, and teaching of the Lord Jesus in the days of His flesh, as it gives spiritual and moral value to those in whom He dwells; i.e., proved in experience by the Holy Spirit.
Why did the Holy Spirit come? To make experimental in the life, by the same Holy Spirit, all that Jesus is for the believer. This is the progressive and constructive work of the Holy Spirit, the transforming of men and women.
PENTECOST WAS A CLIMAX IN RELATION TO THE TRAINING AND PREPARATION OF AN INSTRUMENT.
The first chapter ends with the presentation of that instrument; the completion of the Apostolate with the inclusion of Matthias. An instrument had been trained and prepared for the continued work of the enthroned Lord. This preparation is in three parts:
1. In the days of His flesh;
2. The forty days after His resurrection;
3. The ten days after His ascension.
The First Part of the Training - In the Days of His Flesh
One year after He started His public ministry, He called and had in training for about two years those whom He chose. What were the chief features of that period of training? First, a seeing and a hearing without understanding; a very real thing. As we read the Gospels we see it was a time of laying in of a subconscious store of not understood deeds and words. Oh! but did not the Holy Spirit work on that afterwards? What does the Holy Spirit coming into our life mean? An explaining of who Jesus is; "He shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you," and until He comes words have not that potent force; "the Spirit giveth LIFE."
Second, being allowed to participate in the works and supernatural powers, and being given flashes of spiritual revelation; "flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." Only flashes, immediately passing, but a knowing something of "the powers of the age to come."
Do get the principle of this. Very often the Lord antedates things for us, and then we find them go down into death; but this is training; and has to be in order to get us, our flesh-hold out of it; it is a principle of training, and so the Lord brings us into spiritual cooperation with what He is doing.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 3)
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