“The Kingdom of God: Part 1: Import of Spirit’s Move”

Our text tonight is in 1 Sam 10:6-7: ‘...And the Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man.

And let it be, when these signs shall come upon thee, do as the occasion requires: for God is with thee.’

v 9: ‘...God gave him [Saul] a changed heart.’

Starting with this passage, I would like to focus, first, briefly, on a broad level, and then, next week, on the personal plane, of the Holy Spirit’s moving in salvation history.  

Just as the Spirit of God ‘moved [‘brooded’ or ‘hovered over’] the face of the waters’ in the act of the divine creative process, so He hovers over God’s divine plan to bring it to its fullest splendor of glory.

The evidences of His moving in the earth toward this end are recorded from the very first Scriptures.
    
And, here, once again, in this evening’s text found in First Samuel, there is the record in which the divine purpose is brought to a point of being propelled into a change - into a unique place. 

Saul was about to be anointed by the prophet, Samuel, to become king over Israel.

The people wanted to be as other nations so they pleaded for an earthly ruler. 

Thus, by the authority from God, issuing directly from God’s heart, came the message that Samuel voiced: ‘Yes! God will give you a king!’ ‘He is going to oblige you!’

But - please - do not think for one moment that what was happening here was a stepping aside from God’s plan to continue on in His salvation design!

Yes - the times for those people were about to change! 

But that was not so unusual!

Things had changed from the first day of time. Nothing  stayed the same.  

And - we are all well aware of the many, many changes in our world today - a change every day we live, it seems!

And - staying in the spiritual realm, the realm that pertains to we Christians, there are at least two notions, if not more, swirling about us in this great arena of changes. 

The first is that God - and everything about God, including the fact of Christ and His atoning work - is out of date or a figment of men’s imaginations and ought to be eliminated from every sane-thinking mind.

Of course, God has already given the answer to that notion, when He said: ‘The fool hath said in his heart, ‘There is no God’!’

God has never changed! The disclosure of Himself to His people and the Holy Spirit’s brooding over that revelation is ever the same!

The second notion, quite the opposite, is that the revelation of God, the very truth of His Person, is not yet known and requires a constant probing to get to the depth of it. 

‘It is a lifelong search’, they say. “No one will ever reach it but just keep researching for that is the intellectual thing to do.’

To that, the Lord has said loudly and clearly “Nonsense!’

No matter how men try to circumvent the obvious truth of God - God, even before the foundations of the world, had already set into motion the very core, the very sum and substance of Truth so that man could see it clearly. 

It is so plain - so clear - so uncomplicated!

Christ is God’s trumpet call that reveals the whole revelation of Himself to man - Truth, in its fullest sense!

And His Spirit is still actively engaged in preserving that fact.

But, before Christ came, what did God do to bring the request of these Israelites for a king into alignment to work toward this end of God’s revelation of Himself in Christ?

Here, once again, God granted the people their request and anointed Saul with His Holy Spirit for this turn of events. 

The people thought it involved only themselves.

But the broad, extensive, massive pattern was far beyond their immediate intent. 

On this broader level of salvation history, it clearly showed how the Holy Spirit was brooding over God’s plan to bring it to its crescendo. 

God sent Him to the earth once again to protect it and to prepare for the advent of His Kingdom when Saul was anointed.

How was this generated?

First of all, for the Israelites at that time, the known anointing among God’s people was upon the priests, upon the prophets, and upon God’s dwelling place. 

The priests had been consecrated. That, in itself, was a significant thing! 

Their consecration by anointing meant they were conduits, the divinely-sanctioned means through which God’s ethical blessings of divine grace were poured out upon the people.

And, now, in the institution of a civil government, the Lord was extending those means to the national system of administration. 

Thus, Saul’s anointing was a consecration as their king who represented God to them.

His consecration meant he, too, was to become the means through whom God would continue to rain His blessings of divine grace upon His people.     

And it was through this that we know the Lord would, from this time on, bestow upon His people the gift of the Holy Spirit for service in God’s Kingdom.

And that ‘Gift’ included His hovering over the testimony of Jesus to sustain the building up and continuance of that kingdom.

And, to add to this, let me say: God does not waste one measure of divine thought to carrying out His purpose.

The brooding of His Spirit over it moved on for it was through the start of this kingly rule that the Davidic line was established to bring forth Christ.

When David became king, he was the ‘light’ through whom God’s favor for the well-being of His people would carry on.

His people did not allow him to continue on in battle for they said: ‘Thou shalt go no more out with us to battle, that thou quench not the light of Israel.’ (2 Sam 21:17)

That is how important the anointing of the Holy Spirit upon David was when he also became king. And his people seemed to have recognized it.

God’s thought to bring Christ forth through the Davidic line was not going to be quenched: His Spirit saw to that! 

And, then, moving rapidly through to Mt 1:18, there is the news of the Holy Spirit bringing the Messiah to earth in the form of a child.

And, Simeon, a devout and just man, was constantly looking for this Messiah to come.

His heart so ached - so pined - for God to send Him, that the Holy Spirit touched earth once again to give this man a special revelation of the coming Christ.

Think about that: one person with a heart so tuned to what the Holy Spirit’s heart was set upon that he was visited by the divine Spirit!

Later, in Mt 3:16, the Spirit of God once again touched the earth when He descended like a dove and rested upon Jesus.

In that scene, John was blessed threefold: seeing the Divine Son being supported by the Divine Spirit and hearing the Divine Father acknowledging His Son!

Could a person ask for anything more than that? 

All during Jesus’ earthly ministry, it was the Holy Spirit Who led Jesus as He kept careful watch.

He hovered over Him with His power and anointed and consecrated Him ‘to preach the Good News to the poor, to tell the captives of sin that they were free, to give new eyes to the blind and to set the shattered free.’ (Lu 4:18)

Then, shortly after Jesus cried out on the cross, ‘It is finished’, and died, the Holy Spirit Who - in the realm of power, vindication, and life - was sent again to quicken Him from the dead. (1 Pet 3:18; Rom 8:11; 1 Tim 3:16)    

Following that, He was sent to testify of that finished work (Acts 2:4) and to fulfill Joel’s prophecy in these last days. (Joel 2:28)

From this time onward, the movements of the Spirit’s hovering over God’s plan carries us over to Revelation, the scene we all will witness in the final day.

It will be when the ‘voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all’ in the earth.

In the divine presence, there is no need for that preserve of the Spirit’s hovering.

He has seen to it that the fullness of God’s plan has happened! It has been reached! 

Do you know what that means? We are on the winning side!

Why can we be so confident about this?

All through salvation history, the Spirit has dedicated Himself to protecting this divine design in Christ.

He has, never once, failed in the ministry of watching over God’s divine revelation to His people. 

He has been bearing witness of the truth of Christ.

In all things, He has always been testifying of Jesus - always involved in the groundwork to call forth life in the Kingdom of God.

He has been separating, cutting away, quickening, drawing.

He has even been warning that, in these last days, ‘many will abandon and revolt against the faith, but rather pay attention to misleading spirits...’. (1 Tim 4:1)

He has done, and is doing, all these things because He is backing up the plan God has fixed since eternity past with a constant hovering over it to bring it to the final day.   

What, then, is the conclusion of this whole matter of the Spirit’s continual, faithful ‘hovering’?

The direction in behalf of humanity has never been changed, nor will it ever change, in God’s mind.

And the Holy Spirit is ‘dead serious’ in bringing God’s plan to fruition right down to the last day!

He does this because He knows that Jesus was the only Righteous One Who could ‘stand in’ for all sinners.

He knows that Jesus was the only One Whose love was 
mighty enough to bear the weight of all sin of mankind.

He knows that Jesus is the only One Who could carry us so near to God as to even seat us at His right hand.

So, I ask you: with such an intense centering of the Divine Mind on the entire plan of salvation, ought it not make us realize that the Triune God is not playing games with His salvation design?

When God sent His Spirit as the overseeing Agent of His plan in Christ, it was an unspeakably gigantic Divine move!

Thus, taking the thoughts from Heb 2:1-4, I say: ‘If we neglect a salvation that is so great - a salvation which was originally proclaimed by the Lord Himself - and had its truth made sure to us by those who heard Him - God also bearing witness to it...by giving the Holy Spirit as He wanted to give Him, then - we ought to pay close attention to the things we have heard...’. 

Do we?      
 
I leave these thoughts with you tonight as we close.

Ponder them seriously before the Lord, for so great a salvation under the Spirit’s care and custody is NO SMALL THING!

May the Lord bless you with a week filled with His glory and the wonder of Christ as the Holy Spirit leads you further into Christ! 

Amen!   

Let us pray!