He Was In The Second Sentence

He keeps a note in the front of each Bible with the date he finished it, and there are eleven dates.

Not a boast. He would be uncomfortable if you made it one. It is a habit he started at nineteen because a man he admired did it, and he has kept it the way a person keeps any habit, which is mostly without thinking about it.

Eleven times, cover to cover, over about thirty-five years.

And on Tuesday afternoon, with the books stacked at the end of the table and the tea going cold beside him, he was starting the twelfth. First page. And he read the second sentence of the whole book the way you read a sentence you have read eleven times, which is to say he did not read it at all, and then something made him go back.

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.Genesis 1:2

The Spirit of God.

Second sentence. Before light. Before anything is made. Before there is a person, a nation, a covenant, a temple, a prophet or a promise.

He sat there for a long time.

Because here is what he has believed, functionally, without ever once stating it, for thirty-five years: that the Holy Spirit arrives in Acts chapter two.

He would have denied it if you put it to him. He knows the Old Testament references and could list them for you: Bezalel filled with the Spirit for the craftsmanship of the tabernacle, the Spirit on the seventy elders, David asking that He not be taken away, the promise in Joel that Peter quotes on the day itself.

He knows all of that. He has taught some of it.

And underneath the knowledge there has been a picture, and the picture had Him arriving late, as a development, as the thing that happens after the resurrection when the story needs a new engine.

He has read the book eleven times and met a Person he thought was a chapter thirty-nine arrival, and He is in sentence two.

And that is you with your own tea going cold, or you would have closed this by now.

A Person with a history, not a development in the plot

Let me put the shape of it in front of you, because the shape is the message and you are a man who thinks in shapes.

Start where you started on Tuesday. Genesis 1:2, hovering over the water before there is anything to hover over anything for.

Then the tabernacle: I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship (Exodus 31:3), said about a man cutting stones and working gold, which is to say the first person in Scripture explicitly filled with the Spirit was an artisan and not a prophet.

Then the wilderness, and the seventy elders, and Moses saying the thing nobody expects him to say: would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord would put his Spirit on them (Numbers 11:29).

Then David, at the worst moment of his life, asking not to be sent away from His presence.

Then Ezekiel, who is told what is coming, and the promise is that God puts His Spirit within His people (Ezekiel 36:27).

You have been walking with Someone who has a history that runs the whole length of the book. It is written that the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:2), which is the second sentence of the whole account. The Holy Spirit is not a development in the plot and He did not arrive when the story needed a new engine.

Now the thing that matters more than the survey, and it is why I am giving it to you rather than a lecture.

A person with a history is a person you can know.

That is how it works with everybody. You cannot get anywhere with somebody who begins on the day you met them. The moment you learn that a friend spent four years somewhere you did not know about, they stop being a function in your life and start being a person in their own right, with a past that did not need you in it.

You are in company with Someone who was working before the world had a shape, and He is not a new arrangement made recently for your benefit. It is written, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the Spirit of God was hovering (Genesis 1:1-2), so He was there for the first thing that ever happened. The Holy Spirit was over that water long before He was in your front room, and He is the same One.

And here is where I want to be careful with you, because a reading man will turn this into a project by Thursday.

You are not behind and there is nothing here to catch up on. It is written that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), and eleven honest readings of Scripture have never once been counted against a man. The Holy Spirit is not disappointed with the eleven and He is not waiting for the twelfth to be better.

You do not need a twelfth reading with a new highlighter system. You need one breath before you start it.