Part 2
Why, here is a peculiar thing: on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended and baptized a hundred and twenty immediately into one body. After this, persecution arises and the Church is scattered from Jerusalem. One of the evangelists, Philip, goes to Samaria, a distance of perhaps thirty miles from Jerusalem, and starts to preach the gospel and many get saved. Why don’t they get the Holy Spirit the way those at Jerusalem did on the day of Pentecost? There must be a reason; there was a reason.
God, from the very beginning, had been very jealous that there should be no schism or division in this Church which had been established here to the honor and glory of Christ. Read a verse in 1 Corinthians 12:2525That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. (1 Corinthians 12:25),
“That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another.”
That is God’s ideal, and all the splendid energy of the Spirit of God is directed towards maintaining the unity of that testimony here below.
Why was not the Holy Spirit given immediately after these believers accepted Christ? Because hundreds of years before there had come in an estrangement between Samaria and Jerusalem. That is brought out in the 4th of John’s gospel when the woman is surprised that the Lord Jesus being a Jew, will have any dealings with her. It was an age-old feud, a bitter one too.
Suppose Philip had gone down to Samaria and preached and they had received the Holy Spirit totally independent of the work begun in Jerusalem; how natural it would have been for them to have risen up and said, “We now have a Samaritan Church; you at Jerusalem have a Jewish Church.” The old feud, the old time bitterness would still be there. No; the Spirit of God is going to see to that. You can see how careful the Spirit of God was from the very beginning, to guard against division. That should be instructive to us in seeking to maintain the unity of the Spirit in this day of confusion that exists in the house of God.
So Peter and John go down from Jerusalem and lend their sanction to the work of God. They lay their hands on those believers and in response to that, they receive the Holy Ghost, and the moment they received the Holy Ghost they were just as much members of the one body as the one hundred and twenty that received Him on the glorious day of Pentecost. They were not second-rate. They had all the dignity and privileges of that original group. Was there now a Samaritan Church and a Jerusalem Church? No; they are all related; bound together by that same bond; baptized into one body by the Spirit of God.
If, afterward, there should arise a time when the Samaritans would seek to establish their independence, and say, God gave us the Holy Spirit the same as He did Jerusalem, they would have to acknowledge that God didn’t give them the Holy Spirit until the apostles from Jerusalem came down and laid their hands on them.
Supposing the Church in Jerusalem should arise in its dignity and should attempt to disown this Samaritan Church because of the old feud that existed, those prejudices that were so deep-rooted? They couldn’t do that, because Peter and John could say, “No, you can’t disown them, because when we put our hands on them, immediately God put His sanction on them in filling them with the Holy Ghost.” All that antagonism was gone and gone forever; what a unity to swallow up an old hatred, an old feud that had been ripening down through the ages. In one moment it was all gone, and wiped out by the indwelling power of the Spirit of God.
In the next chapter we find a chosen instrument, the apostle Paul is converted—is brought to God. When presenting his apostleship in Galatians, he says,
“For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
So he had, yet there is one thing Paul could never say, and that is that he got into fellowship of the Church of God independent of all human instrumentality. Though greatest of all apostles, and greatest of all the servants that God had in the dispensation, in the ways of God, he had to come into fellowship of the Church of God on earth just like any other believer. Through the humble ministry of a simple child of God, he had to be introduced into that which already existed before he was ever converted. We see that in the following,
“And there was a certain disciple in Damascus, named Ananias; and to him said the Lord in a vision, Ananias. And he said, Behold, I am here, Lord. And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul, of Tarsus: for, behold, he prayeth, and hath seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in, and putting his hand on him, that he might receive his sight.”
“And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house; and putting his hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost. And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized. And when he had received meat, he was strengthened. Then was Saul certain days with the disciples which were at Damascus.” Chapter 9:10-12, 17-19.
Why did not God give Saul of Tarsus the Holy Spirit the moment Christ struck him down on the way to Damascus? He appeared to him in that marvelous glory cloud, smiting him to the earth and converting his dark heart and letting the light stream in, showing him his condition and causing him to own the Lordship of Christ. Why didn’t God finish the work? God has His own ways. God was mindful of the fact that this man, though he was to be the greatest of all servants, needed to have brought home to his own soul in a practical way the unity of the Church of God here on earth.
We are to endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit. God was giving what we might call laboratory lessons; demonstrations of what the unity of the Spirit is. Saul must learn that others were there before him, and he is linked with what already existed through the ministry of a simple humble disciple of whom we know nothing, other than the fact that God picked him up and used him to introduce Saul of Tarsus.
Having thus come into what already existed, he finds himself in fellowship with the disciples of that place. He identifies himself with what God had previously done by His Spirit in that city of Damascus.
(To be continued)