Nine - This Day Is That Day
Nine
This Day Is That Day
And in that day you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you (John 16:23).
Unperplexed Realization
"That day” extends from Pentecost to the day of our Lord’s return. Our Lord had just been telling His disciples that He is going to His Father, and explaining to them what this meant. As far as He was concerned it meant that He would be omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. The disciples had questioned Jesus up till then, but Jesus said, “In that day ye shall ask me no question.” The day our Lord was referring to was the Day of Pentecost, that is, the Day of the Spirit of God. What a wonderful day to live in!
Unquestioned Revelation
After the Resurrection our Lord breathed on these questioning, perplexed, confused, loyal disciples, and said, “Receive ye the Holy Spirit.” When we read the accounts in John and Luke we find that their eyes were opened and they knew Him. Their understandings were opened and they knew the Scriptures. Their inner consciences were opened and they knew that they had received from their risen Lord the very Spirit that ruled Him.
Is it possible to sit down unperplexed while lives are being lost in so many ways right in our midst? Does it mean that we are to sit with folded hands and ask no questions? No, it means something much more sublime and practical than that. It means that in the profound regions of our lives we know that God is at work, the Holy Spirit has revealed Him, and He is taking us slowly into His counsels. “Whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come” (John 16:13).
Undeflected Reflection
This does not mean that the soul who has received the Holy Spirit can demand that God tell him His secrets. It means that he is lifted to the privilege of entering into God’s counsels with Christ Jesus. Great darkness, exasperating providences, but the inner secret of the Lord is with those who have His Spirit.
We know from reading John 16:2 that our Lord did not mean life would be free from external perplexities, because He says, “They will put you out of the synagogues; yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service.” Through it all comes the unquestioning revelation that Christ, as He knew His Father’s mind and heart, can lift any soul into the heavenly places with Him so that the counsel and understanding of God’s mind might be revealed.
If we have been going on with Jesus Christ we have come to the day of unquestioning revelation; that is, we know what John meant when he said, “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things” (1 John 2:20) and “the same anointing teaches you concerning all things” (v. 27). The meaning of that is very practical and sane—test all you hear, all you read, by this inner anointing, by the indwelling Spirit. He will test all the truth of God.
Undisturbed Relation
Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name . . . .
“That day” is not only a day of unquestioning revelation, but a day of undisturbed relationship between God and ourselves. Just as Jesus stood unsullied in the presence of His Father, so by the mighty efficacy of the indwelling Holy Spirit we can be lifted up into the same relationship. “That they may be one, even as we are one.” “Whatever you ask the Father in My name”—that is, in My nature—“he will give you.”
When we are born of the Holy Spirit, when we are related to God and bear the same family likeness to God that Jesus bore—which we may do by the wonderful atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ—we too can have this undisturbed relation to God.
Undisguised Recognition
He will give you.
Jesus said that God will recognize our prayers. What a challenge! Had Jesus any right to say it? Have we faced it for one moment? Is it possible that the Lord Jesus Christ means that by His resurrection power, by His ascension power, by the power of the sent-down Holy Spirit, that He can lift us into such a relationship with God that we are at one with the perfect sovereign will of God by our free choice as Jesus was? Does He mean what He says?
“Until now you have asked nothing in My name.” How could they ask anything in His name when He had not yet sent forth that marvelous Holy Spirit? “Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” Now we begin to understand why Jesus said, “You will ask Me nothing,” because the Holy Spirit in that day glorified Jesus and revealed Him to them, and brought back to their memory His words and led them into their meaning.
When clouds are around the saints, know they are but the dust of the Father’s feet. And when the shadows are dark and terrible and they are afraid as they enter the cloud, they find “no one anymore, but only Jesus with themselves” (Mark 9:8) In that wonderful position, placed there at this moment, we can pray to God in the nature of Jesus Christ, gifted to us by the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ’s sovereign character is tested by His own statement, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name, He will give you” (italics added).
O Lord, You are God, Holy and Almighty, and You do all things well. Show Yourself to us this day, Lord, for myself I desire to see You. Draw me near to You that I may know You and have rare communion with You.
Lord, I praise and thank You, for my lying fallow to Your grace; for the many prayers that have surrounded me like an atmosphere of heaven.
O Lord, save us from the murmuring spirit which with the majority of us is merely skin deep, but it is harmful, hurting the bloom of spiritual communion. Keep our life hidden with Christ in God.