Episode Transcript
The 133rd Psalm.
"Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It is like the precious oil upon the head that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard that came down upon the skirt of his garments, like the dew of Hermon that cometh down upon the mountains of Zion. For there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life forevermore."
A very short psalm, but contains everything. Now, this evening, if you will turn to that hundred and thirty-third Psalm, Psalm 133, we are going to go for a little wander in the Word tonight. But we're going to start here in Psalm 133. And the first thing I want to underline, I'm going to talk about the true anointing, the true anointing tonight. And I want you to notice straight away in verse two, here we've got the principal picture, I suppose, in the Old Testament, of anointing. "It is like the precious oil upon the head that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard that came down upon the skirt of his garments." That's what the psalm is all about. It's about an anointing.
And everything else in this little psalm comes out of the anointing. And it is true in the Christian life as well. For the anointing oil speaks of the Holy Spirit. I think everyone knows that, unless you're very young in the Lord indeed, that oil in Scripture is a symbol or a type of the Holy Spirit, and particularly the anointing oil. This anointing oil was, as we shall see later on, a special mixture. You weren't allowed, it was in fact a criminal offence to use it for anything else other than the service of God and according to the mind of God. It was holy, separated unto the Lord.
And the anointing oil, of course, I think most of you know the high priest was anointed, the priests were anointed, the kings were anointed, later, the prophets were anointed. It was a picture of entering into service by the appointment and the enabling power of God. In other words, not only was this an authoritative declaration that God was setting aside this person for service, but it was also the wherewithal to serve the Lord. In other words, within the very anointing was the actual ability to serve the Lord. And I think that's very important for us to understand. So that's the first thing about this Psalm 133. We've got something about precious oil. Precious oil.
Now, I don't think there is anything in the whole of life more precious than the ministry of the Holy Spirit. For without that exceedingly precious ministry, that vital ministry of the Holy Spirit, there could be absolutely nothing at all for any of us. It is He who moved upon the face of the waters and brought order out of chaos, substance out of emptiness, light out of darkness. It was by Him that God's purpose was, as it were, watched over through the years. And it was by Him that the Lord Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. It was He who anointed the Lord Jesus when He was 30 years of age in the waters of Jordan after He came up from His baptism.
Well, we can go on and we can go on. It was the Holy Spirit who enabled the Lord Jesus to offer Himself up on the cross. And it was the Holy Spirit that raised Him from the dead. That lifeless body was raised from the dead. And of course, you all know about Pentecost. When the risen Christ ascended into glory and took His position at the right hand of God the Father, then the Holy Spirit was released in an altogether new way. He'd always been present. He'd always been ministering. But Pentecost marked an absolutely new giving, as it were, of the Holy Spirit to us all.
Well, so we could say much more at the end of the Bible, when we come to the very last verses of Revelation 22. It is the Spirit and the bride who say, "Come." So I think it is absolutely right that we speak of the precious oil. Where would we be without the gracious ministry of the Holy Spirit? There could be no repentance. There could be no faith. There could be no revelation. There could be no spiritual birth. There could be no union with Christ. There could be no changing from glory to glory, no transformation. There could be no enabling for the service of God. There could be absolutely nothing without this gracious and precious ministry of the Holy Spirit. The precious oil. That's the first thing.
The second thing I want you to notice about the psalm is this. It's the high priest. Upon whom is the oil poured? Who is anointed with the oil? Aaron. Aaron. He is anointed with the oil. Now, I think we all know that Aaron is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. Don't we all know that? Why does it say "even Aaron"? This little psalm was written probably something like a thousand years after Aaron, and yet it is "even Aaron". Why? Why didn't it mention the high priest of the writer's day? He went right back to the very beginning — to the first high priest in the economy of God, Aaron. And although we know that the Lord Jesus' ministry exceeds by far that of Aaron and is more like that of Melchizedek, and even that is only a pale shadow, yet we have here a wonderful picture.
What does Christ mean? We have altogether lost the very meaning of the word Christ. We speak of Jesus Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ. We say about Him, Christ did this or He did that. But we forget altogether even when we use the Hebrew Messiah, we still only think of it as some kind of great deliverer who's to come. But Messiah means anointed one. And Christ is the Greek form of the Hebrew “Messiah” — anointed one. The Lord Jesus is God's supremely anointed one. He is the anointed One of God upon whom the Holy Spirit came with absolute satisfaction - not because someone else had to die for His sins, not because He needed to be forgiven and made ready, but because of His own inherent and intrinsic worthiness. The Holy Spirit came upon the Lord Jesus as one who is absolutely worthy to be filled with the Holy Spirit, nay, to be the home of the Holy Spirit.
So the Lord Jesus is God's anointed one - anointed king, anointed high priest, anointed prophet. He is both king, priest and prophet to us, the people of God. He is God's anointed one. Oh, get it. There's such a lot of talk about, “Have I been anointed, will I get anointed,” and all the rest of it. Forget it for a moment. You'll never know anything about the anointing till you've got it absolutely clear first, who is the anointed one? There is no such thing with God as millions of little anointings. There's only one anointing. And the anointing is upon the head of the one who alone is worthy. No one else is worthy.
Can the Holy Spirit touch the flesh? We shall see in a moment. It is the one thing the precious oil, anointing oil, was not allowed to come upon - the flesh. If the anointing oil were to touch anyone like that, the true anointing oil, it would kill us. It would not mean life and transformation, but disintegration and destruction. That's what the writer to the Hebrews means when he says, "For our God is a consuming fire." We have lost the fear of the Lord in the 20th century altogether. We speak of God in a familiar way and think we can yank things out of Him, push Him around, shove Him about, hurl epithets at Him, as if somehow or other, the more like a salesman we are, twisting the arm of God, the more likely we are to get things out of Him. There's no fear of the Lord in that way in our eyes. And that's the whole danger, unless you and I see that there is only one anointed one actually, and that one is the Lord Jesus Christ.
And He is anointed because He is absolutely worthy. Not only was He born sinless, but He stayed sinless. Not only was He pure, that is, without sin, but He was positively holy. In other words, He went right through to the finish and proved that although He was tempted in all points, like as we are, yet He was without sin, the anointed one. Well, here we've got it. "It is like the precious oil upon the head that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard." Now, that's rather wonderful, really, because it just means simply that God has got the one who is worthy, and the one who is worthy is on the throne. The one who is absolutely worthy has come to the throne and has sat down. That's the next thing.
Now, the third thing, which is all grace, the oil on the head runs down the beard to the skirt of the garment. Now, there's great discussion about the skirt of the garment. If you've got a revised version or a modern version, you will see that there's a lot in the margin. There are variations in the margin. It says, for instance, in the American standard, "upon the skirt of his garments." And I think in other more modern ones, it puts "on the collar." The collar. And the amplified gets away with it beautifully by saying, the holy oil comes down the beard onto both the collar and the hem. And that's just what it means, because in Hebrew it is the fringes.
Now, the priestly garments had a hole, as it were, and there was no seam. There was just a hole. And it was completely bound in blue. And then the hem was bound in the same way. And so it's deliberately ambiguous. We have a deliberate ambiguity. Was it the collar? Was it the hem? It's the hem that it touches. Well, of course, what it means is this. It's the same thing. If it touches the collar, it's touched the whole.
And now you begin to see the whole glory of it. Because you see, this anointing which is upon the head of our Lord Jesus, which He alone is worthy to have received and obtained, is for us all. He has obtained the anointing for us all. The oil runs down and as it were, encloses and encompasses, involves the whole body, every single member. Now that's what this psalm is about. Have you wondered why it says "how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity?" What's that got to do with oil running down Aaron's beard and onto his collar? What's that got to do with dew on Mount Hermon and the mountains of Zion?
The whole point is that this little psalm is talking about all of us being in the body. And therefore because we're in the body, the anointing is for us all. Now whether we've received that anointing or not is another matter. Whether we've recognised it, whether we're experiencing the anointing, that is an altogether different matter. But the fact of the case is this, that the anointing is there for every blood-bought child of God. And listen to this. This is the wonder of it. It will not be given to you because you are wonderful and zealous and knowledgeable and all the rest of it. But it will be given to you because of what the Lord Jesus is. Therefore a person who is all the time, as it were, trying to be better, trying to be better, trying to be better and trusting in themselves to obtain something, will be disappointed. But the person who may be quite rotten and knows it, but sees suddenly that the anointing is there, won for them by Christ, and says, "Lord, I take it," that person gets it.
How many of our lives are explained by this? We all have deep down within us this idea that somehow or other, although we've been saved by grace, yet we've got to somehow, we've got to somehow prove that we are holy, prove that we're really rather good, you know, the idea being that just underneath it's pure gold. The dirt is just on the surface. Scratch it off and you'll find pure gold underneath. But this isn't so.
Now of course, we are not saying that there should be no zeal. We are not saying there should be no studying of the word. We're not saying there should be no discipline. We're not saying that there should be no purity. These things are right, but it's a question of whether we trust in them. And that's why you can get a decent, respectable, knowledgeable person who's an old windbag, that's all, just a windbag. There isn't a bit of life in them. They open their mouth in prayer, and it's just so many words. There's no life. And you get someone else who's pretty ropey, to put it in a slang term, pretty ropey, and yet when they open their mouth, there seems to be life there. You touch reality. It's this question of what we're trusting, who we're trusting. That's it. Now, godliness is great gain when we don't trust in it as something in itself, when it can be the work of the Holy Spirit transforming us from within, then it is something wholly of God. It's not self-manufactured Christianity, but it is Christ-produced Christianity.
The oil on the head - how wonderful that is. What that means is this, that for every single one of us there is a deep, real and progressively fuller experience of the Holy Spirit. Or if you want to put it another way, of Christ and all that God has put in Christ for us by the Holy Spirit.
So if you turn to a few scriptures we read in Acts 2:33. "Being therefore by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he hath poured forth this which ye see and hear." Who has received the promise of the Father? The Lord Jesus. Who has poured forth the Holy Spirit? The Lord Jesus. No man, no fallen man can receive that promise. It is the Lord Jesus who has received it, because He alone is worthy. And He's received it on the basis of a finished work for us, that is, within the finished work of Jesus Christ there is something for every single child of God which the Lord Jesus has received. If you like, He is the custodian. He is the steward. Or to put it in New Testament terms, He is the baptiser. He is the one who has obtained. Obtained what? Obtained the anointing oil, the precious oil. He has obtained it. His name is like ointment poured forth. Not your name, not even your new name. His name is like ointment poured forth. He has received the promise of the Father. What is the promise of the Father? The promise of the Father is, "I will give them a new heart and I will put my spirit within them." That was the old Covenant promise in Ezekiel and in Jeremiah. That's the promise that the Lord Jesus received. Now then, have you got it? Go back to Psalm 133. Who has been anointed? The Lord Jesus. Upon whose head? Whose head has received the oil? The Lord Jesus. Then see it, from Him it comes to us. Therefore every single one of us can receive more of God through the Lord Jesus alone. He is the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by Him.
Now if you turn on to Acts 10:38. Here we have it: "even Jesus of Nazareth: how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power." God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power. Now it is the Lord Jesus then, who, through His agony on the cross, has won for us this oil, this anointing of this precious oil. Therefore, there is no reason at all why every single one of us should not enter in, in an ever deeper way into all that God has for us. Why? Because it rests not upon our works, but upon His work. Not upon our worthiness, but upon His worthiness. And the one thing that stopped you and I from being joined to Christ was sin and transgression. It was this that divorced us from Him. Now, on the cross, Jesus Christ not only bore our sins, but like the scapegoat, He went out into the wilderness and carried our sin away over the horizon as far as the east is from the west. Gone, absolutely gone, blotted out. "Therefore there is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." God has put us in Christ, no more condemnation. There is no reason, therefore, why we should not receive the oil.
In other words, we may know that blessed ministry of the Holy Spirit. We may, at our birth, and some do at the very beginning, really enter into all that is theirs for them in Christ. But so often we don't. We come little by little. We possess the land, but how are we going to possess it? What is your need? What is it tonight that you need? Oh, if only God would give you faith to see that the Lord Jesus has obtained that for you. And all you have to do is to rest on His finished work and enter in.
If you turn to 1 John 2:20 and 27. "And ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things." Now, isn't that beautiful, the way it's put so simply. Ye have an anointing from the Holy One. It's from the head to the members. Ye - each one of you - has an anointing from the Holy One. Verse 27: "And as for you, the anointing which ye received of him abideth in you. You need not that anyone teach you concerning all things, but as his anointing teacheth you concerning all things. And is true, and is no lie. And even as it taught you, ye abide in him." The anointing - there it is.
Turn back to 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians 1:21 and 22. "Now he that establisheth us with you in Christ, and anointed us, is God, who also sealed us and gave us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts." Now what I want you to notice is this. "Now he that establisheth us with you in Christ and anointed us is God", he that establishes us all in Christ. And the actual word is "into" that is we’re being, as it were, built into Him, growing up into Him, is God. And He has anointed us.
Well, now go back to Psalm 133. Now we've got all that before us. This anointing, which is for every one of us, it's upon the head, comes right down to the hem of the garment. Now what is the result of this anointing? What should the result be? Whether we know the anointing in our experience or not, how can we be sure and certain that it is the true anointing, it's of God? Well, there are three things in this psalm which always infallibly are the guide to any true work of the Holy Spirit. The first is in verse one, the first two we find in verse one, and the last is in verse three. The first result is always unity, always unity. Oneness. "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." Spurgeon's comment on this was, “Yes, behold, behold and behold again, for it is the greatest rarity in the whole universe”. Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It is like the precious oil. You can always tell strange fire because it is always divisive and always produces superiority. Always. That wisdom which is from below, of the earth, is sensual, devilish, divisive. James 3:17 says, "But the wisdom which is from above is first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated," and so on.
Now this is absolutely New Testament, because when we come to Ephesians, chapter four and verse three, we read this little word, "Give diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." And then that tremendous chapter unfolds. There is one body, one Lord, one faith. And so it goes on to a sevenfold unity. And then it goes on about how He's ascended on high, has led captivity captive, has given gifts to men, and then it goes on to the building up of the body to a full grown man. And then he goes on, "From whom all the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, groweth or buildeth itself up in the love of God." Now it is the unity of the Spirit. Now let me be quite clear on this.
The Holy Spirit brings a sword when it is any unequal yoking believer or non-believer, whether it be in so-called churches or anything else, the Holy Spirit brings a sword right across it. If it is anything which is sectarian in spirit, the Holy Spirit undoubtedly brings a divine veto on it. But the Holy Spirit's ministry is always to guard jealously the oneness of Jesus Christ.
Unity, to God, is vital. This can never be overemphasised. It has been the devil's job and work down through the years to take things which are truly of God and to steer them off the rail and then to use them.
Here you've got it. "How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." Turn to 1 Corinthians, how Scriptural is this that we say? We've spoken of Ephesians 4:3. Now turn to 1 Corinthians 12:13. "For in one spirit were we all baptised into one body, whether Jew or Greek, and were all made to drink of one spirit." Now am I to believe, dear brother, dear sister, am I to believe that there are two bodies of Christ? One body of those that are inferior and one of those that are superior, one who's had some kind of experience and one who hasn't? Or is there only one Christ? And whether some are inferior and poor and infantile and poverty stricken, yet still they're in Christ. Isn't that what the apostle means when he says, I beg you to receive one another as Jesus Christ received you? How did He receive me? As a sinner, an unworthy sinner. And we are to receive one another in exactly the same way.
We may yet many of us have an experience or many experiences of the Lord ahead of us, but never let anyone get away with any idea at all that any experience of the Holy Spirit, of Christ by the Holy Spirit, ever leads to anything but the building up of the body. That's what the Apostle Paul was at such great lengths to say when he spoke about tongues, prophecy or any other gifts. He said, let everything be done to build up. If it doesn't build up, it is the surest indication that it is not of God. Now we all know that in this world there is enough that is destroying. Here then, is one of the things of the anointing. "How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It is like the precious oil."
In other words, the Holy Spirit is the one who produces our oneness. He is the one who guards our oneness. He's the one who gives victory over the things that divide us. He's the one who makes the Lord Jesus real to us when we will temperamentally collide. He's the one who keeps us together when we are opposite poles in thought. It is perfectly true, as I've said, that the Holy Spirit brings a sword at times when it's a question of unbeliever and believer, or if it's a question of something which is dividing God's people or hampering or hindering their moving on with the Lord. But let no one ever think that there is any other ground that you can divide from any believer other than this, that it is to be one with all saints.
Now, here is the second thing I'd like you to notice, which is a result of this. By the way, there is another little scripture, 1 Corinthians 6:17, which puts it all so beautifully. It says, "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit." It is unity all through. First of all, if you have any experience of the Holy Spirit, it brings you absolutely into a union with Christ. He becomes real to you. You somehow find yourself intimately bound up with Him. He becomes so livingly beautiful to you, so livingly near to you. And isn't it true that every time we have such an experience we become humble? There is a humility that comes, a grace that comes, a brokenness which comes, which is so beautiful it is ointment poured forth.
Well, now if you turn again to Psalm 133, you will see that the second thing is - the first is oneness, that is in unity. But the second thing I want you to note about is "how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." Now, it's one thing to all believe in oneness, but to dwell together, that's fellowship, isn't it? And not to allow one another to overwhelm us, to be ourselves, to be able to dwell together, not as all little Lances or big Lances, but as each one "I this, I that, I the other, I the other." But in Christ, absolutely free, ready to be corrected by the balance of the whole. Some people get so upset. Of course, the Scripture says let's all be of one accord. We are one. We're not always of one accord. But the Scripture says, let us have one mind. And do you know, it even says one soul. That's the hardest thing in the whole world for Christians to be one soul. But it says so in Philippians, one soul. Nevertheless, our basis is that we are one. Christ is our oneness. Now here comes the liberation. We are not all to try and be like one another or all try to bow just in a kind of slavish way. But we're just to be ourselves in the Lord and to give room for one another.
And so in the church, there will always be extremes, but the mind of God is in between. Some of us temperamentally can only feel like John the apostle, and others of us are temperamentally more like Paul, and others of us are more like James. Even Luther had great trouble with James and Paul and said rather rudely at once, which he must surely regret now in the glory, that the letter of James was all straw and the best thing for it was to be used for heating the stove - that he wrote in his commentary. Why? Because, you see, Luther saw so clearly what Paul was driving at when he said justified by faith alone, and he couldn't quite get hold of what James said when he said, a man is not justified by faith alone, but by works also and then went and committed the cardinal sin by giving two examples and saying, you see how a man is justified by works. It's all in the Bible, you know, all inspired.
So shall we batter James into being a Paul, or shall we batter Paul into being a James? Or shall we leave James and Paul in their respective places in the New Testament and understand that the truth is the whole and that no one, brother or sister, has got it all? Indeed, we have very little. We have very little. When we put the little that we have together, we have it all.
Now, that's fellowship. Fellowship isn't all trying to be like so and so. Then it's no longer fellowship, it's an army and that's all. It's regimentation, uniformity, regimentation. That's not the family of God. The family of God is that we all grow up in discipline, disciplined by one another, having to take responsibilities, having to accept the problems created by living together. And yet at the same time, we can all grow up originally so that the Lord in the end can lead each one of us His way and blossom and flower and fruit through us. How important I think this matter is.
Now then, this is what the Holy Spirit does. Listen, "How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It is like the precious oil upon the head that ran down upon the beard." Now then, is that New Testament? Well, let me give you a few scriptures. First of all, 2 Corinthians 13:14, "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." It's the Holy Spirit who produces fellowship.
Now then sometimes people say to me, “Well, I can't have fellowship with so and so,” Right! And I'll tell you why, if you don't mind me telling you, I'll tell you straight to the face why you can't have fellowship with so and so. Because you're trying to grind your own axe, that's why. Any other brother and sister in whom the Holy Spirit is, anyone in whom Christ is, you can have fellowship with them. It's a question of have you got one note only to strike? You've heard this story about the preacher. Two men were talking about their respective churches and preachers. One said, "Well, my preacher, he's, oh, he's only got two themes all the time. We call him the ding dong preacher. It's either ding or it's dong, but that's all. He plays between the two. Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong." So the other said, "You should think yourself lucky. We've got only one theme, and all he does, he goes ding ding, ding, ding." Now when we have only one theme we can't have fellowship with any others who are not on that wavelength.
But that's not fellowship. Supposing we were to treat our families like this. Suppose a father were to say, “Well, I'm not going to have anything to do with my 18-month-old son because he can't discuss electronics with me. He's just not on the same wavelength. Of course not. Father gets hold of his son and clucks at him and plays with him and crawls on the floor with him. He's having wonderful fellowship. And if his dignified business colleagues came and saw him crawling around, they would wonder what on earth's happening with him. He's so dignified, such a clever man. But he's having fellowship, family fellowship. That baby is his flesh and blood and he's having fellowship. He's on the same wavelength.
So now then, the more you've got of Christ, the older you are in Christ, the more wavelengths you should have. It's a sign of spiritual immaturity when you can only meet people on one level. Service is to be able to meet everyone. It doesn't matter if it's a nun or a monk if they're a Christian, to be able to get through it all to them and have real fellowship on their wavelength in Christ.
Fellowship is a tremendous thing when it's looked at like that. That's why 1 Corinthians 1:9, says, "God is faithful through whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord." We are a body, we're a fellowship. We've each got a part to play. Some are young, some are old, some are dwarfed, some are ill spiritually. We don't just shut them out and say we can't have any fellowship. We've got to get down beside them and try to talk their language and understand.
I know someone needs to say all this to me at times, but, I mean, the fact of the matter is, let's say it to all of us. It is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. And isn't it beautiful that the Apostle Paul in Philippians 2, and I think it's verse 2, says, "If any fellowship of spirit have this mind in you." He begs them. He says, “If there are any compassions, if there's any fellowship of the Spirit”. Oh, how narrow we are. How sometimes we whittle down this matter of fellowship to just our own little bee in the bonnet, our own little bit of Christ, our own little experience, as if that's the beginning and the end of everything when the family of God is so great. It was, I think, the secret of Watchman Nee's greatness as over against many others, that he could learn from the humblest saint, just to be able to come down to anyone's level and learn. How beautiful that is. I suppose the people that have been to me the most help have been the people who really have had the most to give, but at times have come down to my level. Haven't you found that? When I say down, I don't mean they've lost anything. Far from it. They've come down to me and they've prattled with me on my wavelength, and I intuitively knew that they were like eagles flying away in the heavens. That meant more to me than all the great oratory I've ever heard because it meant there was fellowship of the Spirit. It was communion of the Spirit.
Someone wanted to help me. They were prepared just to - you know what it is? It's the principle of the Incarnation. He being rich, became poor for our sakes. Have this mind in you, which was in Christ, who, being on an equality with God, thought it not a thing to be grasped at, but emptied Himself, became a man, became obedient, even unto death.
Well, there we are. Fellowship. And then, of course, the third thing about this anointing in Psalm 133 is life. Verse 3: "There the Lord commanded the blessing, even life forevermore." Eternal life. Well, now, that's always true of the anointing. The Holy Spirit, whenever He comes, He brings life. Why? Because if you read in Romans 8:2, "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death." That's what the Spirit of life does. He frees us from all these guilty fears, all this evil conscience, all this sense of condemnation, all this bondage from the past, all these things we carry over from the old life. He frees us again and again, progressively.
The law of the Spirit of Life, the principle of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus - there it is. It's the oil on the head coming down the beard flowing down to the skirts of the garment. The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. And oh, how tremendous that is when you start to think about it. Life, life, life. All the time, more life.
If the Spirit of Him that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead dwell in your mortal bodies, then He that raised Him up from the dead is able to quicken your mortal bodies, it says in the few verses after that in Romans 8. Or again in Ephesians 1:19, that you might know the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and placed Him far above all principality and power.
This is a very beautiful picture, this picture of the dew. The dew. Mount Hermon rises to some 10,000ft, and it is in the far north of Palestine. And the mountains of Zion are in the south. And when there is a cold air current sweeping down from the north, it carries the cold air from the mountains, and in the night it quietly distils into dew. Now, the mountains of Zion, I think most of you would consider hills, except perhaps the Danes. They would be hills to most of us, I think. They're not very large, not very high. Mount Zion itself is about 3,000ft, but that's all. But the miracle happens every night. The dew from Mount Hermon comes to Zion. Now, I think sometimes you and I would like something much more dramatic, much more sensational, much more noisy than that. But the work of the Holy Spirit, of the anointing, if you like, in another way, is not only so often to begin with a dramatic crisis, but then there starts this quiet, daily reviving, renewing, quickening, strengthening. In the south of Palestine, if it were not for the dew, nothing could live. So it depends upon the dew, the heavy, wet dew that comes from Hermon.
Well, now there are the three things by which we can judge the anointing, the true anointing, oneness, fellowship, life. If you turn to Exodus chapter 30:22-33, we will not read all of it. We will just read verses 32 and 33, [speaking of the anointing oil] "Upon the flesh of man shall it not be poured, neither shall ye make any like it according to the composition thereof. It is holy, and it shall be holy unto you. Whosoever compoundeth any like it, or whosoever putteth any of it upon a stranger, he shall be cut off from his people."
Now here is the law of the anointing oil. It is holy. That is this experience of the Holy Spirit, this experience of Christ is always to set us apart unto Him. It does not touch the flesh. In other words, that's why in Psalm 133 it says, the oil comes from the head, runs down the beard onto the garments, it doesn't touch the flesh. And it is a perfect picture of this law of the anointing that the oil was never ever to touch the flesh.
Now the greatest problem in any real experience of the Holy Spirit, whatever it is, initial or progressive, is the mixture between soul and human spirit - my spirit and my soul, your spirit and your soul. And it is the mixture of the two things that is the greatest problem in the work and the service of God. Now that's why it says in Hebrews 4:12 and 13, "For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two edged sword and piercing, even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart." Dividing between soul and spirit. Now will you please mark this very, very carefully - dividing between soul and spirit, not destruction of the soul. It's not the elevation of the spirit to the detriment of the soul. It is the dividing of the two things, so that one is set apart unto the Lord. Holy anointing oil shall not touch the flesh.
Our great problem (isn't it?) is always our soul. And of course we can get the idea from the word of God sometimes, and it is part of our religiousness, if you have a religious religiosity, that we have to suppress the soul. But a spiritual man is not a soulless man. A spiritual man is a man whose spirit is above his soul. You see, God's whole thought is a new man, spirit, soul and body. That's why in 1 Thessalonians, “And the Lord sanctify your spirit and soul and body blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Now, we all recognise that the body is a very important point although some Christians let it go. They consider it as very sort of not spiritual. You're not spiritual if you care too much for your appearance. Rubbish. Absolute nonsense. Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. So you must at least take a little care for it. One of the lessons I learned from Auntie Ella again and again when I used to say to her, take care. "I do. Don't you tell me. My body has been bought with a price. It’s a temple of the Holy Ghost." That's true. So wash it, keep it, look after it, dress it decently as far as within your income. Make yourself presentable and attractive. Don't ever think that spirituality is the letting go. That is mysticism. And in the same way, the soul is the means by which you and I communicate with one another. Now, as soon as you start to suppress your soul, you get artificiality and tension. Always. Our great problem is to get the origin, the seat of spiritual government, of the government of our being, out of our soul into our spirit. And that's why the soul has to go into death in order that it may come back into life in a new way. Do you understand?
The only way God can somehow get this centre, this headquarters, out of our soul - that's our will, our emotions, our mind - into our spirit is for us to know the dividing between the two. And sometimes it's a tremendous cost. The stronger the soul we have, the greater the personality we have, the more suffering there is in this matter of the soul. But don't ever get away with the idea that God wants soulless Christians. Far from it. He wants people who have souls released so for the first time they can relax. Now, the mark of a true spiritual man or woman is relaxation. Did you know that? Relaxation. They are just themselves, absolutely themselves. You can look into them and see all their faults. And you can look into them and see the Lord as well. That's because there's a dividing between soul and spirit.
Now, it's very, very rarely ever talked about, this matter, and only the cross can do this work. And only the spirit can bring the cross to us. Woe betide us if we try to take the cross to ourselves. But here it is.
No strange oil. And then, we must end, no strange oil, it says [in Exodus 30]. No one is to ever compound anything like this or use it for any other purpose than that for which God intended. And then it goes on in the next little portion, if you were to read on, to incense, and it tells you about the incense, how it is to be. And these anointed people are to offer incense upon the golden altar. And the Lord says in verse nine, “See that no strange incense is offered”. No strange oil, no strange incense.
Now people have asked me again and again to explain to them, and I've hesitated to do so - what is strange fire? They said to me, many people, “What is strange fire?” The Lord has warned us a number of times about strange fire. But what is strange fire? Shall we all just go round with a great shadow over us? No. Let every single one of us seek to know the truth of what we've sung. "O thou who camest from above the pure celestial fire to impart, kindle the sacred flame of love on the mean altar of my heart." Let's seek for that more and more. Let's seek to know the anointing. Let's seek to enter into what is ours already won for us, and which is ours in Christ. But let us be very, very careful of what is strange fire, strange incense, strange oil. The point of it, the word “strange” in Hebrew means foreign. And what God calls foreign may be something within us. In other words, anything that finds its origin in our soul instead of in Him, in our spirit. Now that may sound very complicated, but that's the root of the problem. It's the origin. Take strange fire, take God's fire. Outwardly they're the same. It's the origin. One came from God, one was produced by man. So if you finally turn to Leviticus 10, where you have this account of the strange fire, you've got Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron. They were the two elder sons of Aaron and, if anyone had the right to offer fire on the altars, the incense on the altar, they were. These two were anointed. You read that in Numbers 3:2-4. It says these two, Nadab and Abihu, were anointed as priests to offer incense unto the Lord. So then, what were they doing wrong?
Why did they offer strange fire? What happened? They were anointed. They were the eldest sons of the high priest. They were priests. What's wrong? It seems quite clear to me that they got very excited by what happened in the previous chapter, Leviticus 9, when it says verse 24. "And there came forth fire from before the Lord and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat. And when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces. And Nadab and Abihu took censers and went.” They got so excited. This is always the thing with the soul. It overreaches itself. And they went. And it was the fire of God that destroyed the strange fire. Now that's a solemn thing, but that's exactly what happens. The true fire destroys the false fire. And I have noticed again and again that strange fire always destroys. It always brings about this disintegration in the end.
Now, these men, as I've said, were anointed and so on. But do you notice in Leviticus 10 verse three, the Lord says, "I will be sanctified." That's why it happened. "I will be sanctified." In other words, here it is, I will be set apart. It's this division between soul and spirit again. The word sanctified is just divided, set apart. "I will be sanctified," saith the Lord, after these two had died, as an explanation of it. And then the second thing, you will see verse 7. The others, the other brothers were besought to hide in the house of God. Security from strange fire was to be found within the house of God, within the church.
How? We don't always like being corrected or people sort of saying, “Well, be careful”. We feel that they're just being dampers on everything. But you know, there's security in the house of God. And I have found that even the poorest saints have a witness within them to what is of God. When you hear something that's of God, even if you don't agree with it theologically, you say, “That's right”. You can't help it. Something in you just says that's right. Condemnation is always the enemy's work and whenever we have this awful feeling of condemnation, we must be very careful.
Well, there we are. There are many other things. That's strange fire. The anointing oil. It was because of the anointing oil. That's in verse seven too. And you read that. Perhaps the Lord will give you a bit more light. But let's not just think about the negative side. Let's finish on this point - that our glorified, risen, triumphant head has been anointed and the precious oil has come down to every member of the body.
Every one of us has something to possess in Him. Have we possessed? Are we possessing? Are we going on into everything that we've got? May God give every one of us help. What we need is sight, spiritual sight to see that it is ours in Him. And secondly, faith to take, to possess what is ours in Him. "Behold how good and how pleasant a thing it is when brethren dwell together in unity. It is like the precious oil upon the head that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard, that ran down to the hem of the garment, like the dew of Hermon that cometh down upon the mountains of Zion. There the Lord commandeth the blessing, even life forevermore." May every one of us rise up and take what is ours in our blessed Lord.
Shall we just bow our heads?
Lord, how we thank Thee and praise Thee for what is ours in Thee. We worship Thee that, Lord, Thou hast obtained for us so much. And Lord, we can only say before Thee how sad we are, saddened we are, when we think how little we have possessed of what Thou has so dearly bought for everyone. We pray, Lord, that we may have eyes open to see what is ours in Thee, and that we might know something of that anointing. Lord, every one of us. Thou hast said you've received an anointing from the Holy One. Lord, may we know that gracious ministry within us of Thy Holy Spirit, making real to us the things of Christ, enabling us to serve Him. Lord, we commit ourselves now to Thee. And pray, dear Lord, indeed, that that grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and that love of Thine and that fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen.
