The Holy Spirit 05 Annointing of the Spirit — Svend Christensen

Thank you so very much, I hope you enjoyed that sing-song and that mail. It's excellent anyway, I enjoyed it, so did the choir last night too. I'm just thinking one of the most important things I believe as believers is a good attitude and a teachable attitude.

A Teachable Attitude Before God

Teach me thy way. If we know it all, we can't say, well, learn anything else, can we? But if we are in a humble attitude and let's ask that through the mouthpiece may be, but we may ask the Lord to speak to us through his servants, Lord can bless us.

So much in how we look at things and feel about things, in our attitude, we can learn from anyone if we're teachable. May God help us to be a teachable people. Now tonight we announce that we will speak on the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

The Biblical Witness to the Spirit's Anointing

Again we turn to 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians chapter 1, and then we're going to turn to 1 John chapter 2. These are the two main passages in the New Testament that particularly deal with the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

And as we emphasize, I believe there's a great need for us to have teaching on the Holy Spirit, to have a balance, not to overemphasize the truth any more than the Word of God does, and not to neglect it, the truth.

The Spirit of God is very prominent through the Word of God, and he's the author of the Word of God, because his great purpose was to exalt the Lord Jesus, to glorify him. But it's wonderful to think that he came to earth, to dwell in us.

Now verse 21 of chapter 1 of 2 Corinthians, Now he which establisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God, who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our heart. Verse 21 again.

Now he which establisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God. 1 John chapter 2, verse 20. But ye have an anointing, and this is, by the way, the same word as the anointing in the original.

Ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things. Verse 27. But the anointing which ye have received of him abided in you. And ye need not that any man teach you, for that the same anointing teaches you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie.

And even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him. May the Lord add his blessing to the reading of his holy word. It's been a very quick moving week. There's only one day left. It's hard to realize how fast the time goes.

Redeeming the Brief Gift of Time

That's how we get gray hair and loose old hair, and time goes on, isn't it? Time is very, very brief. As the old hymn used to say, it's like the binding of the sheep. Be in time. Life and time waited for no man.

Someone said time is the stuff that life is made of, so we need to be careful how we use it. But Paul says redeeming, or buying up, is the opportunity vested for the Lord. I've been speaking on the Holy Spirit in the evening.

The New Birth and the Divine Nature

We spoke about the new birth on Sunday morning. How that as every believer, in order to be a believer, you have to be born into the family of God, to hear the word of God and the Spirit of God operating through the word of God.

You're regenerated. You become a partaker of the divine nature. That in itself is a wonderful thing. You see, with our present natural nature, we just couldn't enjoy heaven. We couldn't enjoy the Lord.

We couldn't enjoy, you can't even enjoy the fellowship of Christians down here. When a person is not saved and does not love the Lord, he's like a fish out of water. So when he gets among Christians, he's out of his proper atmosphere.

But when you get saved, you're born in the Spirit, you get the divine nature, then you feel right at home with the Lord's people. Isn't that a wonderful thing? You can meet people you have never met before, and in a matter of a moment, you just know each other like you've known each other all your lives.

Why? Because of the blessed Holy Spirit, that divine nature that's in us. And that new nature loves the things of God. It loves the Lord Jesus. It loves one another in Christ. So every believer has been born of the Spirit, and thank God the Comforter has come, and He indwells every believer.

He dwells in our hearts. And we gave you many, many scriptures tonight. We spoke on that to show that we have the Spirit of God. He dwells in us. You don't have to ask for Him. If you're saved, you're born of the Spirit, and you're indwelled.

Even the carnal Corinthian folk said, No, you're not, that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Then we spoke about how every believer has been baptized by the Spirit into the Body of Christ.

That's true of every believer. And it's certainly true of every believer, too, that we have the earnest. I haven't had time to speak about that, but every believer has the earnest. It's something like an engagement ring that you give a girl, and this is the promise they know of what's going to come.

It was illustrated like this one time that a man bought a flock of sheep, and he said to his hired men, Now, John, you go out in the clover field, and you get an armful for the sheep, and give it to them, and in the morning we'll let them out into the field.

That armful that he took in to give them was the earnest. So God has given to us the earnest of the Spirit. Last night we spoke about that we've been sealed. What a grand thing that is. Sealed by God the Holy Spirit.

God the Spirit Himself is the seal, and it's for eternity. He's sealed us in Mark's ownership. In Mark's wonderful things that we mentioned last night. Now, tonight we want to go on with the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

Anointing in the Old Testament

Now, to anoint in the Old Testament, it usually meant that it was to designate someone for a specific position or work, or the tabernacle set apart for a holy purpose. To anoint someone. So it's the anointing, as we'll see as we go on, of the high priest.

They anointed him with oil. So it's the anointing of the tabernacle, setting it apart for God. So it's the anointing of the kings. They were anointed, and then they began to act like kings from then on.

The prophet Elijah was told to go and anoint Elisha in his room and his stead. They were designated, set apart for particular things. Now, he that had anointed us, says the word of God here, is God. Isn't that a tremendous thing?

God has anointed us, the believer, and we have been anointed. So the anointer, the one who anoints us, is God, and the anointing is the Holy Spirit of God in us. Look again at verse 27, at 1 John, chapter 2.

For the anointing which ye have received of him abided in you. So the anointing is in the believer, and it's at the time of birth. He has anointed us. You notice in these verses the earnest, the anointing, and the sealing all there together.

Each one is a distinct teaching, but all took place at the same time. Let me repeat that all these that we mention, including the witness of the Holy Spirit, all these are true of every Christian, with the exception of the filling that we want to speak about tomorrow night, that is the command.

That's the only command. All the others are true of every believer, but it's certainly not true all believers are filled with the Holy Spirit. And that's why God says, don't you be drunk with wine when it's in excess, but be filled or be controlled by the Holy Spirit that God commands to us.

Now, it's a wonderful thing that from the lowest to the highest, that these Corinthian Christians, they were certainly not very, very spiritual, they were carnal, they were immature, and yet they were anointed by the Spirit of God.

The Gospel Picture of Anointing in Ezekiel 16

It's a wonderful thing when we get saved. I think there's a nice picture of that back in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 16. It's spoken in sort of a beautiful way of figurative language, where the Lord refers to Israel in Ezekiel, chapter 16.

And there's a real gospel message in this portion. Of course, I can't say very, very little time on this tonight. He says, And that's the Word of God. The Word of God moves. Then the Spirit of God moves.

The Word of God says, The message of the gospel of the time of the Lord's love. Down to verse 9, There it is. I'll tell you, friend, when we were just poor, lost, undecidable, wretched sinners, God looked upon us.

He spoke to us, We responded to the glorious message, and God, at the same time as clothing us and fitting us up with the perfection, perfect righteousness of Christ, He also anointed us. Yet, from the very lowest, we've all been anointed by the Spirit of God.

It's marvelous, the great truth, that we have been anointed. Now, I'd like to talk a little about some of the various reasons or the purposes of being anointed. Maybe we could think about John chapter 9 and verse 6, when the Lord Jesus came by, and was this man born blind from his birth, you remember.

And when Jesus had spoken to this man, and he sat on the ground, verse 6, and he made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with clay. You remember what happened? His eyes were opened, and he could see.

Anointing for Spiritual Sight and Discernment

Now, one of the reasons for the anointing is that we may be able to see. You have the same truth in the book of Revelation, chapter 3, in the connection with the church of Lazarus. But it wasn't very...

He didn't have very good eyesight for the spiritual things. He was getting sidetracked. He was becoming worldly and carnal and lukewarm. And what does the Lord say in verse 18? And I comfort thee that by me gold cried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich, rich in the true sense.

And white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, that the shame of the nakedness do not appear. And anoint thine eyes with eyes that thou mayest see. The Spirit of God has been sent that we might have a right perspective, that we may have a single eye for God's glory, that your eyes may be sacred like the Lord Jesus said, that we may really count for eternity.

Oh, how many a light or soul that fades, and yet how many a light that's wasted because they're blinded by the daffle of this world, the illuminance of riches. The word of God has been choked through the deceitfulness of riches.

God says, I have sent, I have anointed thee, that your eyes will be opened, that you behold the things of eternity. The things of the temple, those are the things you see, but the things which are unseen, they're the eternal things.

The things which are not seen, they're eternal. And the Spirit of God has anointed us that we might truly see things in God's perspective. And you know, the older we get, the more we should realize that, how loosely we should hold on to the things of time, to have our eyes anointed, that we may truly see things in their true perspective and live with eternity's values in view.

Now, this is similar that we have here in, back and forth, John again, to see, to anoint it, to see, that we may understand, to know, to discern. Verse 27, that same anointing, what it's to do is to teach you those errors, false teaching has come in.

Now he says, you don't need to have any man teach you, you have the Holy Spirit, you can detect it. You're not very old in the faith. I remember when I was first saved and you go to hear someone, you didn't know, or didn't know anything about, you know, real truth.

Then when you're first saved and you're going, we were in the Air Force, we're going to, where you see a nice X-out or sometimes a thrust, you go to hear a man that had a lot of letters behind his name.

And I'll tell you this, that new divine nature in you, whenever that person got up to pray and he put God of a great distance, you detect it right away. You can discern. And the Spirit of God has been given to us so we can discern.

Once you hear somebody coming into God's presence, I remember the late Theodore Epp one night, I was listening to the radio and he came on the radio and I was driving in the car and he took me right into the presence of God.

Others will put God of a great distance, you know, they don't know him. But the Spirit of God has been given to us so we understand. We have the anointing that we can understand and have discernment, spiritual insight.

We might be able to detect error. John's Gospel is full of, I know that you may know, that you may know, that you may know. And the Spirit of God has been given so we can see and understand. Then another purpose for the anointing is that we could minister and worship.

Anointing for Worship and Priestly Ministry

Maybe I should put it the other way, to worship and to minister. The priest in the Old Testament, they were anointed to the high priest with oil so he could go into the Holy of Holies too to fit him for that service that he was to render as well.

Paul says in Philippians 3 verse 3,. For we are the circumcision which worship God in the Spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. We are those that can worship God in the Spirit.

I just want to briefly mention we. You remember the priests were anointed in the Old Testament. For we are a priesthood. Israel had a priesthood. The church is the priesthood. We need to get that very, very clearly.

Every believer is anointed a priest. How did you become a priest? By the new birth. How did you become a priest in the Old Testament? By being born into the right tribe. You had to be born in the family of Aaron or you couldn't be a priest.

And in the New Testament, we are born by the Spirit of God into the true family. The veil in the temple was rent and the Lord Jesus died there from the cross. And we can now enter into that rent veil.

We enter into the Holies by the blood of Jesus. And it's a tremendous privilege that every believer is a priest. And first the Holy Priest, that's where we worship. We're anointed so we can worship him.

The highest occupation of a Christian is worship. And real worship is many times misunderstood. You know, Thanksgiving is a wonderful thing, but it's not worship. Giving a little word of ministry to help worship is good too, but it's not worship.

Worship is the overflow of a redeemed heart that has no request to make. The overflow of one that really loves the Lord, that's loyal and loves to him. Worship. The Father seeketh worshipers, those that are worshiped in spirit and in truth.

And the Spirit has anointed us so we can worship. May I just suggest to you that if you will be a worshiper, you spend time through the week meditating on him in the Word. So when you come together, what we call our worship service, you'll have something to give back to him.

The overflow of the heavenly believer is the priest, the holy priest. And then we're also, of course, a royal priesthood, a royal priesthood. And that speaks more of our service towards man. The high priest, he first went in to the holiest of holies, they offer up into God's presence as the holy priest.

But then he came out and he blessed the people. And if we really have been in the presence of God, then we can come out and be a blessing to people. And unless we know something about spending time in God's presence, we'll never be much blessing to anyone.

That's the secret. And we're the royal priesthood. Peter says we're a royal priesthood, that we should show forth the praises of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. It's a sad thing that in Christendom that many of these great privileges of God's people have been robbed of the knowledge of them.

If you tell a Christian, are you a saint? Oh no, not me. Of course, yes you are. If you tell a Christian you're a priest, oh no, no, I've never been to school, I've never been ordained. That's the way they look at it.

And it's that thing that Christians fail to know because they haven't fully understood what the anointing all means. Yes, and more than that. There's so much, I just can't finish it tonight, but there's something else, but I'm on the priesthood and so on.

Anointing to Reign with Christ

You know, we've been anointed to reign too. Kings were anointed to reign. David, Saul, and those men, they were anointed to reign. Let me read you a couple of scriptures. In connection with Saul in 1 Samuel 10 .1, Samuel took a vial of oil and poured it upon his head and kissed him and said, is it not because the Lord had anointed thee to be captain over his inheritance?

And he did the same with David. He did the same with Solomon. Solomon was reigned, not Samuel, but Solomon was also anointed by the prophet Sadok, the priest, or the priest rather, took a horn of oil out of the tabernacle and anointed Solomon.

And they blew the trumpet, and all the people said, God save King Solomon. They were anointed to reign. And, friends, we are also to reign in this life. In this sense, Roman 5 .17 says, for by one man's offense death reigned by one.

Much more, they which receive abundance of grace and the gifts of righteousness shall reign in life by one Jesus Christ. Paul says we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. We are to be the victors.

This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. And as Christians, we can be conquerors. We can be victors. We are to reign. And that's right here in this life. But not only that. Paul says in 2 Timothy, there's other conditions too, if we suffer, we shall also reign with him.

In a measure, we're willing to suffer with him. This is the day of his rejection. This is the day of privilege when we can stand for him and suffer with him like the great men of David that were with him in his rejection.

For when David reigned, they came into prominence then. And so it will be today. If we are willing to suffer with him, we shall also reign with him. In the great future, Revelation 5 .10, it says, and he had made us unto a God, kings and priests, and we shall reign on the earth.

We'll be made kings and priests. Revelation 20 .6, Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection such that second death hath no power, for they shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall reign with him a thousand years.

And then a wonderful verse in the 22nd chapter of Revelation, There shall be no night there. They need no candle, neither light of the tongue. For the Lord God giveth them light, and they shall reign how long?

Forever and ever. If we anoint it to reign forever and forever. Wonderful, wonderful truth. The Lord has brought us into that. And we spoke to, that we're not only anointed to reign. I'll take up a couple more because of the time.

We want to stop in time. But in 2 Corinthians, chapter 1 again, it says there that, Now he which establishes us with you is Christ and hath anointed us with God. We're anointed to be established. You know, many of the times people think, Well, I could say that that's all that's necessary.

Anointing to Be Established and to Do Good

I just want to go to heaven. God has anointed us so that we might put our roots downward and our life may grow strong upward, that we may be strong in the Lord and established in the faith. There's so many weak Christians, weak knees.

God has anointed us to establish us to be solid, dependable, reliable, growing Christians. In any work, my friends, you need Christians that will know how to stand for God and to stand for the truth. We're anointed to, like the Lord Jesus was, to do good.

It tells us that in Acts 10, 38, God had anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power who went about doing good. If anybody ought to be a person that's doing good, it's a Christian. We have the resources.

Can you think of anything better to do for a man than to share the glorious gospel with him? Because sometimes it's necessary to do other things for him in order to get his attention, to show him kindness and love and so on, that we might reach him with the gospel.

But we're left here behind, and we're anointed to do good. Remember, before the Lord Jesus died, he was there anointed by Mary of Bethany to die. Is there a spiritual lesson here for us? I believe there is.

Anointing to Die to Self

One of the things that we find many times is immature Christians that have their feelings on their sleeve. They're so easily offended that they touch it. And the other reason? They haven't died. They're anointed to die.

Accept the corn of wheat fall into the ground and die in a bite of the Lord. You know what all the truth of baptism teaches? What do we confess when we're baptized? When I was baptized, I confessed Sven Christensen died.

I've been crucified with Christ this fall. What do you do with dead people? You bury them. You don't want to see that old fellow around anymore. His language or his behavior and all that. He died. And I'm raised to walk in newness of life.

The Lord Jesus has anointed us with the spirit that we might be dead to self. Oh, it's a very, very important truth. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. That life I live needs to be the life of the Lord Jesus lived through and in and through me by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And if we're truly dead to self and all this, we'll be very easy to get along with. We'll never cause any trouble. We'll never hurt or feelings hurt. You can kick a dead man. He'll never kick you back.

Hit him in the face, and he'll never hit you back. You can insult him. He'll never talk back. Remember the words, what Peter said when you were exposed, right? The Lord says, I'll repay. Don't you pay back.

You commit it to me. Commit it to him who judges righteously. You leave the rest to me. We are anointed to die. There's one other wonderful thing that I think we should just bring before you. You can see it here on my notes, and that is we're anointed to receive.

Anointing to Receive Spiritual Blessings

The priest in the Old Testament, it was in Numbers 18. Just a very brief moment. Turn to Numbers 18. Numbers 18. And it's beautiful when you get the picture here. The Lord speaks unto Aaron, verse 8, the anointed to be speaking to, and he's speaking about the hallowed things.

He says, I've given them by reason of the anointing. Then he goes on to list the meat offering, the sin offering, most other things. Verse 11, and this is thine, the heap offering of their gifts, with all the weight offering of the children of Israel, I have given them unto thee, and to thy sons and to thy daughters with thee, by a statute forever to want.

The best of the oil, verse 12, the best of the wine, and of the wheat and the first fruit. All this because of the anointing. You know, coming down to the spiritual application of this, all things are yours, saith the word of God.

Whether Paul or Paulus ceases, or the world or life or death, or think present or think to come, all are yours, and you are Christ's. God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavens against Christ.

We're seated in the heavens. Oh, friends, the things that God has brought us into. Think of the eternal and the spiritual blessings that are ours. You try to count them up sometimes. We say sometimes, count your blessings, name them one by one.

Well, because of the anointing, God has brought us into a wealth of spiritual and eternal blessings. We are a rich people tonight, anointed by the blessed Spirit of God who's in us. The anointing which is in you, saith John.

The anointing that has made us his masters to his own so we can understand. You know, before I was saved, I tried to read this old book many times. It was dry as dust. After I got saved, I just couldn't get out.

Every moment I had when I was in the Air Force, I'd be sitting there studying, reading those words. I was hungry! Starving! Great thing to be born with a good appetite, isn't it? What made the difference?

The anointing. The Spirit of God. To be anointed. To be his. To have all this great blessing. To be fervent for a holy purpose. So we can understand, so we can see that to be anointed as priests and a royal priest should decide as kings and priests.

Anointed to receive great blessing. God has fitted us, given us the capacity to take this in now because we're born of God. The anointing has fitted us to receive all these marvelous blessings. There's many, many things I didn't get to say tonight.

Loving Christ Through the Spirit's Ministry

Oh, but we can only take it in and realize the Spirit of God. God dwells in all our hearts. He's always present. May we give him full control and may he minister Christ to our souls, so we'll love him more and more.

Oh, we fall more and more in love with the Lord Jesus. What a wonderful Savior he is. How I love him. Oh, that we might love him more. The Father loves him. The Spirit of God wants us to love him more and more.

He wants to wean us from this world so we enjoy the things of life. He wants us to have our vision opened so we can see the things of the eternal, the things of value, of lasting value. That quote our Father gave, he's no fool to give up after he's kind of keep the game, after he's kind of lose.

What a statement. Tremendous. That's our prayer. Loving Father, we thank thee for the rich grace of thine to think that we poor sinners of the Gentiles should be anointed kings and priests unto God, to have our eyes opened so we can behold the wonders and wonders of thy law, and behold one day that king and his beauty, when we shall see him and delight him and with him forever, blessed Lord, we thank thee for the rich portion thou poured upon us.

Help us to appreciate and live to show that appreciation by the way we act in everyday living and the way we talk. We commend this word to thee. Speak to our hearts. Dismiss us now thy blessings. We pray in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen.