For the next few blogs, we’re posting a sermon from the book No Little People by Francis Schaeffer published in 1974. The heart of this message is about how we learn not to depend on ourselves, but to depend on God’s Spirit to do his work in his way.
THE LORD’S WORK IN THE LORD’S WAY – 1
– Francis Schaeffer
For a number of years the theological school from which I graduated sang at its commencement exercises “Give Tongues of Fire.” The first verse reads like this:
From ivied walls above the town
The prophet’s school is looking down.
And listening to the human din
From marts and streets and homes of men:
As Jesus viewed with yearning deep,
Jerusalem from Olive’s steep,
O, crucified and risen Lord,
Give tongues of fire to preach thy Word.
This verse pictures Jesus standing on Olivet, looking over Jerusalem, crying for its lostness. As students go out from studying at Farel House here in Switzerland, it is our desire that they will look down over the world, be filled with compassion, and speak with tongues of fire into the world’s needs.
Because the world is hard, confronting it without God’s power is an overwhelming prospect. But tongues of fire are not to be had simply for the asking. The New Testament teaches that certain conditions must exist. In short, they come down to this: we must do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way.
JESUS’ POWER
Speaking to His disciples and to the church at large, after His resurrection and before His ascension, Jesus said:
All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. (Matt. 28:18-20)
There is no source of power for God’s people—for preaching or teaching or anything else—except Christ Himself. Apart from Christ, anything which seems to be spiritual power is actually the power of the flesh.
Luke’s record of Jesus’ pre-ascension statements has exactly the same emphasis: “But ye shall receive power after the Holy Spirit is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The force of the Greek is, “ye shall receive power; then ye shall be witnesses.” A specific order is involved: after having the Holy Spirit come upon them, the disciples were to witness.
Though we today are immediately indwelt by the Holy Spirit when we accept Christ as Savior, being indwelt is not the same as having the fullness of the power of the Holy Spirit. The disciples had to wait to receive the Spirit at Pentecost. Christians today are to follow the same order: to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit at salvation and to know something of the reality of the power of Christ through the agency of the Holy Spirit—and then to work and witness. The order cannot be reversed. There are to be many “fillings.”
Doing the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way is not a matter of being saved and then simply working hard. After Jesus ascended, the disciples waited quietly in prayer for the coming of His Spirit. Their first motion was not toward activism—Christ has risen, now let us be busy. Though they looked at the world with Christ’s compassion, they obeyed His clear command to wait before they witnessed. If we who are Christians and therefore indwelt by the Spirit are to preach to our generation with tongues of fire, we also must have something more than an activism which men can easily duplicate. We must know something of the power of the Holy Spirit.
RECOGNIZING OUR NEED
How do we receive something of the power of the Holy Spirit? Though there are great differences between justification and sanctification, we can almost always learn important facets about the latter by considering the former. For example, the story of the Pharisee and the publican who was at the point of conversion is instructive. Before a man is ready to have Christ as his Savior (that is, be justified), he must cry out like the publican (with at least some comprehension of what he is saying), “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” A person cannot be a Christian without first recognizing his need of Christ. And as Christians, we too must comprehend something of our need for spiritual power. If we think we can operate on our own, if we do not comprehend the need for a power beyond our own, we will never get started. If we think the power of our own cleverness is enough, we will be at a standstill.
Teaching about the Holy Spirit and His indwelling must never be solely a theological concept. Having the proper concept—that we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit when we are saved—we must press on, so that the Spirit’s indwelling can bring forth results in our lives. If we want tongues of fire, our first step is not only to stand by, complacently thinking the right theological thoughts. We must have a genuine feeling of need.
Furthermore, this feeling of need is not to be once and for all. A Christian can never say, “I knew the power of the Holy Spirit yesterday, so today I can be at rest.” It is one of the existential realities of the Christian life to stand before God consciously recognizing our need.
The publican illustrates that justification requires humbling. Christians must humble themselves to know the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit. To the extent that we do not humble ourselves, there will be no power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The Lord’s work in the Lord’s way is the Lord’s work in the power of the Holy Spirit and not in the power of the flesh.