SPIRIT OF THE LORD GOD

A person may fear being unnoticed, or worse, disappearing. We want to be seen. We imagine that to become invisible is to become powerless. We say ‘out of sight - out of mind’, and therefore forgotten, impotent, without influence. But, in the real world, there are invisible things which are irresistibly powerful. The wind cannot be seen, but we all see what it does. Electricity is invisible to us, as is gravity, but see how powerful they are. Light is itself invisible, but by it we see all things. How different, then, are the ways of God. The most powerful Person in the entire universe is invisible. He moves about unnoticed, keeping Himself out of sight. Yet, what strength and authority are His. This is the One the prophet Isaiah calls the Spirit of the Lord God. He is invisible, unseen, but as Lord He has divine authority and as God He has divine power.

When someone is anointed by the Spirit of the Lord, the scripture illustrates it by a ceremony of pouring olive oil on the skin. The olive oil is almost transparent, and when it contacts the skin it has a way of spreading and seeping into the pores of the skin so that it quickly seems to be all over the person’s body.

Our Lord’s ministry was characterized by a pervasive authority and might, Luke 4. 18-19, but He travelled about unrecognised. He is the essence of humility and self-denial. When His half-brothers were pleading with Him to ‘shew thyself to the world’, He countered with ‘My time is not yet come’, John 7. 4-6. He would perform a miracle but then say, ‘tell no man’. We often see Him alone, but like the Spirit, He was mighty in word and deed. Men marvelled at His words, ‘for he spoke as one having authority’. Who has the power and right to enrich the poor, to mend the broken, to redeem the slave, to spring open the dungeon, to carry out vengeance, to comfort mourners, to give beauty for ashes, and the oil of joy for mourning, and to clothe with the garment of praise those under the spirit of heaviness? An insurrectionist does not. Rather, the One who humbly acted by the highest authority, that of the Lord God. He had the power and right.