Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3134
“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Genesis 1:2.
[See Sermons #660, Volume 11—LIGHT, NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL and #1252, Volume 21—THE FIRST DAY OF CREATION.]
WE cannot tell how the Spirit of God brooded over that vast watery mass. It is a mystery, but it is also a fact. And it is here revealed as having happened at the very commencement of the Creation, even before God had said, “Let there be light.” The first Divine act in fitting up this planet for the habitation of man was for the Spirit of God to move upon the face of the waters. Till that time all was formless, empty, out of order and in confusion. In a word, it was chaos. And to make it into that thing of beauty which the world is at the present moment, even though it is a fallen world, it was necessary that the movement of the Spirit of God should take place upon it. How the Spirit works upon matter, we do not know, but we do know that God, who is a Spirit, created matter, fashioned matter and sustained matter—and that He will yet deliver matter from the stain of sin which is upon it. We shall see new heavens and a new earth in which materialism itself shall be lifted up from its present state of ruin and shall glorify God! But without the Spirit of God, the materialism of this world would have remained forever in chaos. Only as the Spirit came, did the work of Creation begin.
That fact I intend to use this evening, spiritualizing it. It is a literal fact and we are not to regard this Chapter of Genesis or any other part of Genesis as being a mere parable. But having said so, we think we may now say that these real facts may illustrate the work of God in the new creation and our main thought, just now, is that the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul of man is comparable to His work in Creation. As in various books by the same author you can trace the writer’s idioms and as in many paintings by one great artist there are certain touches which betray the same hand, so in the great book of Nature we see traces of the same hand as in the book of Grace! And in this great picture of material beauty we may see the handiwork of that same Master Artist who has drawn lines and curves of spiritual beauty upon the souls of the redeemed!
I. I am going, first, to try to draw A PARALLEL BETWEEN THE SPIRIT’S WORK IN THE OLD AND NEW CREATION.
And first I want to remind you that as the movement of the Holy Spirit upon the waters was the first act in the six days work, so the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul is the first work of Grace in that soul. There may have been a thousand sermons heard, but there has been no effectual work within the soul until the Spirit of God comes there! Sabbaths may have passed over the man’s head for 50 years and during every one of those Sabbaths that man may have been a regular attendant at the House of God—but there has been nothing savingly done for him unless the Spirit of God has entered into him and begun to work upon his soul. He may have been baptized and joined the Church and partaken of the Lord’s Supper—but, for all that, his heart is still without any sort of form or fashion which God would have it to bear. It is void—there is no life of God within it, no faith in Christ, no true hope for the future. It is emptiness, itself, notwithstanding all that has been done, if the Spirit of God has not been at work in it!
It is a very humbling Truth of God, but a Truth, notwithstanding its humiliating form, that the best man that mere morality ever produced is still “without form and void” if the Spirit of God has not come upon him. All the efforts of men which they make by nature, when stirred up by the example of others or by godly precepts, produce nothing but
chaos in another shape! Some of the mountains may have been leveled, but valleys have been elevated into other mountains. Some vices have been discarded, but only to be replaced by other vices that are, perhaps, even worse. Or certain transgressions have been forsaken for a while, only to be followed by a return to the same sins, so that it has happened unto them, as Peter writes, “according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.” Unless the Spirit of God has been at work within him, the man is still, in the sight of God, “without form and void” as to everything which God can look upon with pleasure. What? Is it so when a man has made great efforts and has really done his best? Yes, for, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh.” Even when the flesh does its best, its fairest offspring is still only flesh! Water will naturally rise as high as its own source, but without extraneous pressure, it will never rise any higher. And humanity may rise as high as humanity can rise, but it can never get any higher until the Spirit of God imparts a supernatural force to it. “Except a man be born-again (born from above), he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” The very first act in the great work of the new creation is that the Spirit of God moves upon the soul as He moved upon the face of the waters.