The Dynamite of God
“Ye shall receive power (dynamite) after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto Me,” Acts i:8.
OUR word “dynamite,” which represents one of the most powerful substances known to modern science, is derived and practically transferred with scarcely a change of sound or spelling, from the Greek word used for “power” in this and many other texts in the New Testament. The Holy Spirit is the mightiest dynamic force of the spiritual world. Indeed, He is the One supreme spiritual Force, and He is promised to the believer and the Church as the Source of their spiritual power.
There is nothing we need more than power. M’an, once the lord of nature, is now one of the weakest of all earthly beings. The human babe is more helpless than the infant progeny of any living creature, and often requires almost quarter of a lifetime to grow strong enough to be able tO’ take care of himself. Your little child is feebler than the tiger’s cub, and you yourself are impotent before the lightning, the wind, the flame, the plague, and the wild beasts of the wilderness. Still more weak is man, morally and spiritually. His own nature is hopelessly broken down by the love and power of sin; his own tendencies are wrong; and spiritual forces of evil around him on every side tend to draw him away from the path of right and safety.
The salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ, therefore, comes to us with the promise of divine power, and the instrument of this power is the H’oly Spirit.
The power which the Holy Spirit brings to us is first of all power to be, and then power to do and suflfer. Our personal character and our moral and spiritual victories are of more importance than our testimony and work. No man can successfully lead others to a higher plane of Christian living who is not himself overcoming temptation and living a pure and heavenly life. Even Gibbon, the infidel historian, confessed that the chief secret of the early triumph of Christianity was the pure and victorious lives of the early Christians. There is no argument against a good life. Our first need, therefore, is power to overcome sin and manifest the virtues and attractions of goodness, love, patience, and self-sacrifice.
The power of the Holy Spirit is also specially manifest in inspiring us with Christian fortitude and strengthening us “unto all long suflfering with joyfulness,” To be able to endure injustice, reproach and wrong without resentment and even with sweetness and benignity is not a human virtue and requires the very power of God in the Christian. The mightiest triumphs of the Holy Spirit’s power are still found along these lines of passive endurance and patient suffering.
The writer remembers a quiet, practical woman who a few years ago, in a special religious meeting, received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The change in her life that followed was not one marked by any great public demonstration or active ministry, but it made her a better wife and mother and a sweeter influence in her large home circle. At last there came to her the greatest of earthly trials and the writer was summoned to visit her as a broken-hearted widow, suddenly bereaved of the husband and companion of fifty happy years. He expected to find her in the depths of sorrow. Instead she met him with a beaming and triumphant face and as she clasped his hand she asked, ‘’Am I wrong to be so happy? My children tell me that I should be weeping like them, but my heart is so full of the joy of the Lord that I cannot shed a tear.” The Comforter had come and the power of God had carried her above the waves of sorrow.
Hut the power of the Spirit is given to us, finally, not only to be and to sufifer, but to do. There is work for us to accomplish for the Master and the world. There are words to be spoken in His name. There are souls to be sought and won. There are lives to be transformed and consecrated to His service. There is only One who can give us ‘’power with God and with men,’’ the blessed Holy Spirit. It is His province to kindle our hearts with love, to inspire our souls with faith, to clothe our words with holy unction, so that men shall not hear us, but Him; shall not see us, but their own sinfulness and the Saviour’s grace; shall not praise us but shall turn to God and “bring forth fruits meet for repentance.” “He shall convict the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment.” We may interest the world, we may attract the world, but He only can convict the world. The ministry needed to-day is a ministry of spiritual power.
Beloved, the Lord Jesus did not attempt to begin His ministry until He had received this power. Have we been endued with “power from on high”?