- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
THE PROMISE OF THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH.
By Mrs Jesse Penn-Lewis
“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to help you and be with you forever - the Spirit of Truth” (John 14 v16-17). Take the words into your hearts and ask that He may be made known to you. It is good to have knowledge, but knowledge does not satisfy the heart. The greatest thing that is needed in the world today is the knowledge of a Comforter who will make known the unseen Saviour. “He will be with you forever”, the Spirit of Truth.
This is His own special Name because He always tells the truth. But He is One who the world cannot accept. Poor empty world, there is no Advocate or Comforter. They do not have any anchor to hold onto in the storms of life. They have troubles like God’s children also have but they do not have comfort. They can be happy in all sorts of ways when days are bright but when they come to the hard facts of life they have no comfort. “The world cannot accept Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, for He lives with you and will be in you” (John 14 v17).
Verse 17 reads "you know Him”. Do you know the Comforter, or are you just like the world when you are in trouble? Do you know the Holy Spirit who was given on the Day of Pentecost, or only a historical Christ? Do you think of Him as one who influences you, or do you speak of Him as “it"? The Lord Jesus says "He" and “Him”, because He is a person. Do you know the Person of Holy Spirit? Historical faith in Christ is very little comfort without relationship with the Lord. There are many people who profess to be Christians, but they do not know Christ. They have opinions, ideas, theories, and even theologies, but they do not know Him. He is the living Christ. If you do not know Him, it means that you do not know the Holy Spirit, for His work is to reveal Christ. Do you know Him, or do you say, I think, I believe, I hope, I have this view or that opinion?
THE WAY TO KNOW HIM
How can we know Him? John clearly says, ”He lives with you” (v17). We get to know people if we live with them. Putting it another way, this is how He is known, “For He lives with you and will be in you”. You know Him by experience, not by theory, nor by mental knowledge. Anything you know in that way can soon be forgotten, but something that you have proved, and you know from experience, no human being in this world can take from you. This is how martyrs live through their sufferings. God puts a living faith and knowledge of Himself into His people, and even death cannot remove this from them. Martyrdom can take away a person’s life but it cannot take away a relationship which has been created by knowledge and experience. This is what God wants to do for us. He wants the Holy Spirit to be a real Person in us to make Christ real in our life, so that we cannot help living in the Living One. It is not what you believe or think, but it is what you are, what is in you and part of you, for He is greater than all you can see. “You know Him, for He lives with you”.
HE WILL BE IN YOU
There is a wonderful phrase in Dr Elder Cummings' book on the Holy Spirit, about the sentence "He will be in you”, in which he says that it means the Holy Spirit enters in, and clothes Himself with you just like Gideon. Your body becomes clothing and the Holy Spirit now lives within your heart. The Holy Spirit wants to reach people, but He is Spirit, and they are flesh. How can flesh be reached by Spirit when there is no way of contact between them? This means the world goes on its way with its theories and views, yet without any knowledge of God. We could even set up an altar in Christianity like Paul saw in Athens, "to an unknown God” (Acts 17 v23). They know about Him, but the majority do not know Him.
The Holy Spirit wants to enter, and to clothe Himself with you, like a coat made for Him, so that through your thoughts and your life He will reach the world. He will clothe Himself with you like the Spirit of the Lord clothed Himself with Gideon, so that a weak, trembling Gideon went in the strength of God, and the whole of Israel followed him.
Is your heart now saying, "Lord, make me know Him"? I do not want to meet your intellect, nor your feelings. I hope to separate you from all these, and to ask you, “do you know the Holy Spirit, and through Him do you know the Lord Jesus?”
THE DAY THEY WOULD KNOW
The Lord, in His talk with His disciples said, "in that day you will realise” (John 14 v20). He spoke about a day when He would pray to the Father, and He would give the Comforter. That day would not come until He had gone to the Cross and after the grave had gone back to the Father. He spoke to them the evening before the Cross, and yet He was speaking as if He was going to be alive. Think of the Lord nearing His time of death, talking about going to the Father to receive the Comforter for His orphaned disciples. There would be little in all that He was saying if He was not going to rise again. The Day He referred to was the Day of Pentecost. Between the day He spoke those words, and the day of the Holy Spirit's coming, the Lord Jesus went to the Cross. After speaking like this to them, He went to the Garden of Gethsemane, to think about the cruel Cross that was before Him.
On the path to the Cross, after the anguish of the Garden, do you realise that the Lord Jesus walked seven miles that terrible night, from Pilate to Herod and back, from one person to another, beaten by the soldiers and mocked by the crowds. These tiring miles were travelled in patience. He never grumbled or said, “I cannot bear it”, and did not turn away from His torturers. He was God, and it was by the Holy Spirit that He was strengthened to endure everything. Step by step He went to that Cross, and there on Calvary for the atonement of the world’s sin, He died for you and for me. Now we can say, “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross” (1 Peter 2 v24) for your sins and mine.
“Not one of all the Lord’s good promises to Israel failed; every one was fulfilled” (Joshua 21 v45)