Join us for a thought-provoking discussion on the role of the Holy Spirit within our personal and collective spiritual lives. The speaker draws insightful parallels between biblical narratives and contemporary faith challenges. Learn how true spiritual empowerment is aligned with divine timing and how our choices impact the presence and potency of the Spirit in our lives, encouraging a deeper connection with God.
SPEAKER 01 :
From time to time, I’ve had reason to ask myself why it was that the early church was so much more effective than we are. In the first sermon, I think, that I ever gave to this church, I pointed out how that in the years gone by in our previous association, in I think 17 years, that we had baptized 3,000 people. And we had taken a certain amount of pleasure, a certain amount of satisfaction in that, and certainly I think we should. I mean, the fact that 3,000 people were baptized into God, into Christ, who had their sins forgiven and are headed to the kingdom of God is something to rejoice in very much. But I couldn’t help noting you know, along with that, that the early church baptized 3,000 people in one day. And so for rather than pat ourselves on the back for having accomplished that, I thought maybe we ought to think a little bit about why that took place. Well, after the sermon, someone made the comment to me, well, yeah, but they had the power of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. And I said, yeah, exactly. And I wonder sometimes if that doesn’t underline more where our problem may lie than we give credit or perhaps give thought. I don’t have any question that we have the Holy Spirit. I don’t have any question that, you know, having repented of our sins and been baptized, that God would fulfill his promise of the Holy Spirit. But it seems that there is such a thing as having the Holy Spirit and having the Holy Spirit, if you know what I mean, having the power of the Holy Spirit. The life-changing power, the healing power, and all the things that go with that. There is a difference. And I wondered a little bit what that difference was, what made that difference, and why it might be that we might lack that power. I thought a logical place to start in discussing this would be the first chapter of Acts. Because Luke is the man who sits down to record the early history of the church. He’s the one that tells us about this 3,000 people being baptized on this one day. In the first chapter of Luke, in verse 1, he says, The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and to teach. The former treatise, by the way, is the book of Luke. Until the day in which he was taken up, after which that he, through the Holy Spirit, had given commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen. to whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them for forty days, and speaking of the things concerning or pertaining to the kingdom of God. And being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which saith he, You have heard of me.” Now he had already spoken to them and told them that God was going to give them the Holy Spirit. And he said, I want you to stay at Jerusalem and wait. They still had some days to wait before this event would actually take place. For John truly baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. Now I can’t help but wonder what they thought that meant. You should be baptized with the Holy Spirit. And I don’t think that any of them in their wildest imaginations could have conjured up a vision of what was actually going to happen to them when that particular occasion came. Now the question is, what did they have to do to make this happen? Well, actually, there was nothing they could do to make this happen. The truth is that they couldn’t make it happen one day earlier by anything they did. They were praying down Pentecost. They were praying away in Jerusalem. And I don’t think that by more prayer they could have made it happen earlier or by a little less prayer it would have happened a day later. That does not seem to have been in the timing here. When they were come together, they asked Jesus in verse 6 saying, Well, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in his own power. And that’s something I think we have to understand. God does have times and seasons. There is a time for everything to take place, and he has a plan, and that plan is a plan that he is working out. And so consequently, the Holy Spirit was going to come on time in that plan and empower these men in the way that he said it would happen. And I have sometimes thought as we look down toward the end time, there is a preoccupation among us with the importance of doing a great work for God. And that’s very commendable, very admirable. And we tend to think, well, maybe if we could get everybody all back together again. And our church, which has been smitten with division and schism over the last several years and has been scattered in ways we’ve talked about, The question is, well, you know, can we get everybody back together or can we get a critical mass of us back together so that somehow we will have the power to do a great work? Now, there’s a logic in all of that. But at the same time, you’ve got to stop for just a moment and say, now, wait a minute. Is putting together an organization going to be the source of the great power that we will need to do a great work for God? Or are we looking in the wrong direction? And is there a question, of course, of the times and of the seasons? For I have to think, as we come down to the very end time, that the powerful witness that will be done at the time of the end, which is indicated in the prophets, will not be accomplished because we have slowly grown over time into a large, organized, powerful institution whose voice must be listened to. If you read your Bible carefully, you’re going to have an instinctive awareness that that’s not right. You should instinctively know that that’s not right. Instinctively, intuitively, you should be able to think, no, no, that’s not the way it works in the Bible. The way it works in the Bible is God starts to move and he empowers those whom he is using. If you recall in Revelation 11, I won’t turn there today, but there are these two witnesses that come on the scene. There’s been a lot of speculation about the two witnesses. People wonder who they are. Are they alive today? Where are they? Who might they be? Maybe you don’t realize this, but the passage doesn’t say that God’s going to create two witnesses or bring two witnesses into existence. He said he is going to empower his two witnesses. No way of knowing who they are prior to that time. But whoever they are, they are witnesses of God. And at a point in time, they are empowered. And that empowerment takes place apparently three and a half years prior to the return of Christ. A whole lot of stuff happens three and a half years prior to the return of Christ. So again, there is an empowerment of the Holy Spirit at key times in history to do the things that God intends to do. It’s not done by our creating an organization or creating a system or accumulating the power or getting centralized and somehow managing to have the power to do these things. He says in verse 8, you shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you shall be witnesses to me both in Jerusalem and in Judea and in Samaria and under the uttermost part of the earth. Now, was there anything they could do to prevent this from happening? Yes, they could have left Jerusalem. They could have gone away. They could have been doing something else, another place. They could have fallen out of accord. And this would not have happened because if you read in Acts 2 verse 1, when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all together with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven like a rushing mighty wind and it filled the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them like it was distributed tongues of fire and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now, I have heard people speak of praying down another Pentecost. Well, I want you to understand the disciples did not pray this one down. This was God’s time, God’s circumstance. He was moving. It was His power. It was not theirs. Now, that, I think, is a very important consideration. But, having said all that… Does this mean that there is nothing we can do to receive the power of the Holy Spirit? And that, folks, does not follow. It does not follow that there’s nothing we can do. It does not follow that we cannot have any power of God’s Spirit until the time that he pours out power upon his two witnesses. That doesn’t follow at all. Later, in verse 38 of chapter 2, Peter will say this to the men who were assembled around him after he’s given a long sermon. And after they were pricked in their hearts and said, Men and brethren, what shall we do? He said this, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. So consequently, if you have repented, I mean really repented of your sins, and if you have been baptized, then you have the Spirit of God. You have a promise of that. And I know there are times when we may wonder whether we have much of God’s Spirit or not. There are times we feel distant from God. There are times when we think, you know, I don’t know if God’s with me. I don’t even know if I’m converted. A lot of us have felt that way at one time or another in our lives. But you come to it, if you pray about this long enough and you think about it, study your scriptures and come to God with it, you’re going to come to realize that there’s a certain amount of faith involved. If you know that you repented and if you know you were baptized, you have a promise that God would give you his Holy Spirit. And he has done that. And that spirit is there. The question is, is there any power with it? Have you been in any way empowered by that spirit? Now power comes from a source. Any of us know that. And we also know, I think, by any analogy of power with which we’re familiar, The power is fluid. It’s movable. It moves. It’s not static. It doesn’t stay in one place. So that whenever you flip the switch on the wall back there, the power is off of these lights. They go out. They do not continue to burn. All of the electronics in here will stop whenever you flip the switch and turn the power off or pull the plug. We understand by analogies that power requires a source and that you must be connected to that source. And so consequently, our awareness of God, our closeness to God, our communication with God, our being plugged into the source, has an enormous amount to do with whether or not there is any power in our lives. That the Spirit is there is a given, that’s a promise. But like a seed can lie dormant in dry ground for years until water is put on it, the Holy Spirit can lie dormant in our lives, and go into remission, as it were, can become quiet, as it were, and do nothing for a very long period of time. I was really struck. I had the opportunity, along with Raymond Cole, Wayne Cole, I’m sorry, to start two churches in Little Rock in Memphis years and years ago. And these churches were formed, they were running about 150 to 100 to 150 in each church. I forget the exact attendances at that time. Now, these people were out there. They had been baptized by baptismal tours in years going by. They had heard the radio broadcast. They had studied the literature, studied the correspondence course they’d written in. Yeah, send a baptizing tour by us. And these boys had gone by and baptized them, and there were 250 people in those two churches over that period of time who had in previous years been baptized, but no church anywhere around them. Well, when we came into the area and began to visit them, We were really struck, I know Wayne Cole was, Ali and I were, as we talked about these people when we visited them. It was almost as though these people from the day that they had been baptized until the time that church got started had not grown at all. There was an exception. The people who had regularly gone to the Feast of Tabernacles did show signs of growth. The people who had not done that showed no signs of growth at all. They were very, you know, backward as far as their faith was concerned. And once we established the churches, and once these people began to attend church, and some of them would drive 50, some 100 miles to be at church, it was like pouring water on seeds that are in dry ground. They began to flourish, they began to grow, and they began to develop. And it was really fascinating to me. I was only there for, oh, what was it, around six months before I moved on. But I came back years later, and I was so struck by With the development of all these people and how much they had grown in the faith over the years, once a church was established, once they had the motivation to study their Bibles more, once the preaching was there, once the conviction that was laid on their hearts by the preaching was there, they began to develop. It was as though they had gotten plugged in. It was as though seed and dry ground had been watered and fertilized, and now they were beginning, at long last, to move again. Now, we all know this, but it’s hard for us to understand that we walk in the midst of a spirit world. We are unaware of all the electronic waves that go through this room at this time. If we had a television set here with an antenna on it, we could turn it on. We could turn the antenna just right, turn the right channel, and we could pick up a picture because of the waves that are in this room at all times. Now, we come to be knowledgeable of that, although not aware of it most of the time, by studies and by people explaining things to us. But what we may not understand is that we also move in a spiritual environment at the same time, of which we remain almost entirely unaware, because we have no manifestations of it like we do with electricity or television or radio and the like to make us aware of it from time to time. But we actually move in that kind of an environment. In the second chapter of Ephesians, Paul gives us some insight, I think, into this particular point in a way that I really think we need to consider. In Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 1, he says this, You has he quickened. who were dead in trespasses and sin. Whereas in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience. Now what Paul has said here is very revealing and I think it’s very important. It says that there is a spirit that has to do with the prince of the power of the air. And it says that the spirit works in And it says it works in us if we are classified as children of disobedience. And that’s not really that hard to figure. If you really start paying attention to the world, you start paying attention to the influence that the world has on your life, on the choices that you make, on the values that you hold, you’ll have to admit that at some level, in some degree, this Spirit does work even in those of us who have God’s Spirit. Now, if that Spirit can work… And I don’t know why we should have any question, because with all the movies we see, and here was a new one that’s come out just this past week of a kid who saw these particular movies, I forget the name of them right now, and then kills his mother. And tries to imitate the movie in the process. The spirit is at work in society, and we are influenced by it day in and day out. Now, if that Spirit can work in us, why should it be strange for us to think that the Spirit of God can work in us? And I would presume that a lot of the ways in which that work takes place is the same as the other one. In other words, we live and move in an evil society. And we are bombarded constantly by the symbols and the signs of that evil society. And it gets inside of us and it works and it affects our minds. And so that on the other hand, if we live and move and work within the church… If we maintain contact among God’s people, if we maintain contact with God, if we study the scriptures on a regular basis and familiarize ourselves with what God has done in the past, why he has done it, how he has done it, if we fill our minds with that, presumably that spirit can work in us as well. So it shouldn’t be that hard for us to realize that choices that we make have to do with with the presence of the Holy Spirit in us, and whether that presence of the Holy Spirit in us has any power or not. It’s a question of what is it we are plugged into. Are we plugged into the world, or are we plugged into God? Now, granted, you can’t say, stop the world and let me off. And it’s very hard to get yourself completely separated from this world and the influences of it. But you should try. And at the same time you’re trying, you should also be very, very careful about where you are plugged in spiritually, that you are connected to God, that you are touching God, that you are talking to God, that God is talking to you through the pages of his word. Because this is where the renewal of the Holy Spirit comes from. It’s through contact with God. Where else would it come from? By osmosis, you know, you sit out in the air, and frankly, just sitting out and taking what’s in an environment is going to get you in a lot of trouble. It’s only the question of staying in contact with God that any chance of having that power is going to come around. It’s the spirit of the power of the air that works in the children of disobedience, among also whom we had our conduct in times past. in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. And we’re by nature the children of wrath, even as others. And so it is in the spirit that works in the children of disobedience seems to have to do with the flesh, the lusts of the flesh, the desires of the flesh, and in turn our catering to the desires of the flesh instead of our attending to matters of the spirit. And you have that choice. This is not a choice that’s withheld from you. It’s not too far away from you. It’s not too high that you can’t reach it. It’s not too deep that you can’t get down to it. It’s right there. It’s a choice. And you will make that choice this afternoon. You’ll make it this evening. You’ll make it tomorrow in different aspects of how you live your life. There’s a very powerful section in Galatians that deals with this also. Back in the fifth chapter of Galatians 6. And I’d like to call your attention to it, beginning in about verse 13 of Galatians 5. In Galatians, Paul says, Now I should tell you that the Apostle Paul, when he talks about liberty, is not talking about liberty from the law. He is talking about a liberty from human administrations of the law, which put handcuffs and shackles on people and prevent them, actually, from living freely before God. Paul says you’ve been called to liberty. You’ve been set free from shackles, the shackles of human domination, the shackles of the contemporary religious organization and structure. But don’t use this liberty… He said, as an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word in this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, you’d better be careful that you’re not consumed one of another. So on the one hand, we have this question of spiteful conduct, of biting and devouring one another, arguing and bickering. On the other hand, he says, I say then, walk in the spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary one to the other so that you cannot do the things you really want to do. But if you are led of the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now, what in the world does he mean by that? Well, it’s very plain from Romans that Paul never tries to tell us that the law is done away with or that we have no obligation to be obedient to God. What he is saying when he says, if you are led by the Spirit, you’re not going to come under the condemnation of the law. Because the Spirit will lead you in the right way. Now the question is, who’s leading? Now the works of the flesh are manifest. Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, jealousy, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and the such like. As I tell you before, I’ve told you in the past that they which do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now what’s interesting about this is that every single one of these things he mentions there grows out of, sprouts from the fundamental law of God. You know, adultery is in there. That’s the seventh commandment. You know, the idea of variance or hatred is in there. That’s a violation of thou shalt not kill. All these things are extrapolations of the fundamental law that God gave to Israel on Mount Sinai, and that it existed long before that, was known long before that. So all these things, he said, these are the works of the flesh, and these things are the kind of things that work in us that keep us from having the power of the Holy Spirit. What that means is, we said earlier, well, the disciples couldn’t make that come down, but there were things they could have done that would have led to it not coming down. And so these is a great list of things, that if these things are in our lives, it should be clear that there is no way that we could have the power of the Holy Spirit. It would be impossible if we’re being dominated by this type of attitude. Now he goes on then to say, having said that, The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. There’s no law against these things, folks, he says. Now, I think that’s an interesting list. Now, we can, of course, test ourselves by this. These are the fruits of the Spirit. Are they in our lives? Are they not? But… I think the question is a little more important than that. When I asked the question earlier, is there anything you can do that would have to do with whether or not you have the power of the Spirit in your life, these are things really, if you stop and think about them for a moment, there is room in here for you to be responsive to these things. For example, long-suffering has to do with just patience, just suffering long with someone or something or some circumstance that is annoying to you or troublesome to you. And that’s something you can do. It’s a choice that you can make. You can choose to cut it off. You can choose to walk away from it. Or you can choose to be patient and to be long-suffering in your response to it. You can choose to love. Oh, I know, most of the time we think about love as though it were an emotion, a sentiment, as it were. And you can say, I don’t feel love here. I don’t know, what can I do about my feelings? I can’t help my feelings. Well, I think everybody’s beginning to understand more and more as we talk about this, that love is not a feeling. Love is a behavior. And when you think about that, you realize that it is within your grasp to love. It has to do with the things you do. It is easily within the grasp of the choice of every person in this room to love the other people who are in this room. It has to do with how we treat one another. And if you want to go back up to the earlier list up here, jealousy, anger, strife, strifes or bickerings and arguments, you can just stop it. Because there’s no lie in this. It takes at least two to make an argument. And if you’re frustrated by someone else who wants to argue all the time, well, then how do you know that? Unless you are involved, unless you are there, unless you are responsive, unless you’re making a part of it. Walk away. Leave it alone. That’s within your power, isn’t it, at any time? So here we have a list of contrasting behaviors. And even the ones that may seem to be conditions or attitudes are manifested by behaviors. And you can take the one list of behaviors, and you can set it opposite the other list of behaviors, and you can ask yourself the question, do these behaviors have anything at all to do with the presence of the Spirit, with the power of the Spirit, the extent to which I am motivated, led by, involved with, and empowered by the Spirit of God? For it is the power of the Spirit that is going to make the difference in our lives, not the mere presence. For the mere presence of the Spirit of God in your life accomplishes little. I won’t say it accomplishes nothing, because it does prepare you. But it will not begin to move. You know, I’ve used this analogy having to do with blessings, that a blessing of God is a multiplier. Now, a lot of you got a piece of paper there. You can try this out. You can write down 1 times 0, and you know your mathematical tables that you get 0, right? Well, what’s 13 times 0? Or 12 times zero, it’s still zero. So if God blesses you 12 times over, and you have done nothing, then the end result is nothing. The Holy Spirit works in the same way. That unless there is something that you present, unless there is some response on your part, unless there is some action on your part, the Holy Spirit, it’s power. It’s not the doer. Do you understand? You can’t actually get the movie projector working without plugging it into the wall. The power is there. But again, somewhere, somehow, somebody’s got to turn it on. The analogy isn’t a real strong one, but you understand the point. That you have to somehow do something in order for the power of God in your life to move, to accomplish, for you to grow, for you to affect the lives of people around you, for your church to become powerful. All of you have got to begin to respond in this way. And Paul wrote to us when he said not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. He told us to stir one another up to love and to good works. And that means we talk to one another and we do these things. And we take someone else by the arm and we drag them to where it needs to be done and we do it together. Because unless we, you know, the whole idea of a church is, is positive reinforcement, that we reinforce the good behaviors among us, that we encourage one another, that we provoke one another unto love and to good works, that we do these things. That’s what churches are for, is that we can do good works. It isn’t merely, I mean, a very important part of church is teaching. It’s exhortation. It’s what I’m doing right here, right now. But unless somehow that gets translated into work, nothing has happened. You can listen, you can take all the notes you want to, you can read your Bible, but unless somewhere or other your actions begin to respond to the Word of God, nothing happens. There is no power, there is no growth, nothing happens. I think it’s important for us to kind of get our minds around this a little bit, because it may have a lot more to do with the lack, perhaps, of the power of the Spirit among us than we might think. And he goes on to say in verse 24… They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and the lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory and provoking one another and envying one another. Yeah, pride. Pride has so much to do with all this stuff. But you know, as I read this, there is something that comes to mind that I think is really important for us. If we expect to have the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we are going to have to become more aware of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And that awareness comes from this word, if you live in the Spirit, let us walk in the Spirit. Now, whenever they talk about walking a certain way, they’re talking in the Bible about the choices that you and I are going to make about the things that we do, right? This is not something that somebody else is going to do for us. When it says walk in the Spirit, that’s what we have to do. What does it mean? Well, it basically means to walk inside of the will of the Spirit, inside the direction of the Spirit, inside the purposes of the Spirit, which means somehow we have got to become aware of the Spirit. For unless we think to ourselves, this is the Spirit of God leading me in this direction, how can we ever come to any conclusion that God’s leading me here or God’s leading me there? Now, I will give you a caution at this point. It’s awfully easy for us to find our own feelings getting involved in this and thinking that our own feelings are the leading of God’s Holy Spirit. Well, you know, you pray about something and it comes to your mind and you say, oh, well, that’s what God has revealed to me that I ought to do this. That’s why the Bible says try the spirits. And that’s why we have a Bible. because you need to test those things against the Scriptures and against the traditions of the church. Not that the traditions of the church are always right, but they should always be considered whenever you’re considering the leadership of the Holy Spirit. But to walk in the Spirit means to be aware of the Spirit of God, to look to God for leadership in your life, and to try to be responsive to the leadership of that Spirit in your life according to what you know. There are two ways of responding to any situation. The human way and the godly way. The way of man and the way of the spirit. And there are two ways of the spirit. The dark way and the way of light. Now, I think it’s important also to understand that there are barriers to empowerment that have to be overcome. To whatever extent we are trusting our own power, we cannot be empowered. In other words, if we’re thinking in terms of, if we’re being manipulative, if we’re sitting around thinking about how can we work things out to accomplish this end. Now, there’s a fine line in this. Because there is a need for planning. There is a need for giving some thought to our actions and planning for our things we’re going to do. But if in the process we start thinking in terms of what we can accomplish… Instead of what God can accomplish through us, we are not on the road toward empowerment by God’s Spirit. We’re looking to ourselves and what we can do. We can be trusting in method instead of in the Spirit of God. There’s an interesting story in the Old Testament about a time when David numbered Israel. And there’s really not enough explanation in the Old Testament about that. There’s a lot I’d like to know about it that we aren’t told. But my impression of it as I read it is that the message is that David, numbering Israel, was for the purpose really of determining how many men of war we can actually put on the field to fight our battles. It was not a matter of just knowing how many people there are for idle purposes. It was a matter of power. And so when David set out to number Israel, God was sorely displeased because what he saw in it was that David was starting to rely in the number of men he could put on the battlefield and not relying on God, which was inconsistent with David up until this time. It is very easy when you have been successful again and again to begin to think about the methods, to think about the numbers. And it’s terribly tempting when you’re in a work like we’re in. like Christian educational ministries, to look at the numbers, to be concerned about the numbers responding to a radio program, to be concerned about the dollars that are going to come in. It’s hard not to be because the dollars that come in are the things that actually make it possible for you to do anything. And yet at the same time, here we’re sitting, our budget this year is going to be something around $750,000, and I’m not sure where that came from. Because what happened to us initially was we started. We just started. And out of nowhere, money starts coming in. Checks start coming in. And it’s easy, very easy, to forget that lesson. And to realize that if you will walk according to the Spirit, if you will do the work, if you will do the things that the Bible says you’re supposed to do, if you will take the gifts that God has given you and you will use them, God will take care of the rest. that the empowerment has to come from somewhere else. I have some kind of a vision that all of a sudden we’re going to get our act together, and because of the way in which we do these things, we’re going to suddenly have lots more money and be able to do lots more work. I have a sneaking suspicion that you’re hanging on the ragged edge of numbering Israel when you do something like that, and that it’s important not so much that we do that kind of planning as it is that we hit our knees saying, And we take these matters to God, and then we proceed to do the things that we know we’re supposed to do and trust God to take care of the rest of it. And I will tell you, I’ll confess to you, that’s not easy to do when you’re in a situation like Christian Educational Ministries is in. But we have to do it, and we have to do it that way, and so do you. That as your local church here is growing, as you’re hoping to get ahead, and you’re hoping to be able to serve God in this community, you really need to give serious thought not to how you are going to grow, but how you can do the things that you’re supposed to do to one another, to the community, to your neighbor. And to live the life, to walk in the Spirit, to look to the Spirit’s leadership, to look for the power of God to do things and not for our own ability to work things out. You know, one of the keys to congregational church government is this. It is not that we have a majority rule situation. We have a God-rule situation, and it is all of us together who pray and, if necessary, fast to try to understand what God wants this church to do. That’s what you need to give your attention to. Through prayer, like I said, through fasting, if necessary, depending on the severity of the decisions you face, that God will show us collectively what he wants us to do. Because when all of us begin to see it together, we will know that God’s Spirit is leading us, and we will know that He is blessing us and sending us in the right direction. I was talking to someone recently who’s a member of a Baptist church, and they were talking about how someone in their church had been trying to propose a building program, a very expensive, very expansive building program, which a lot of the people, the older and more experienced members, didn’t think they needed and didn’t think they ought to have. But they had a business meeting in the church. in which the committee that had done this came before the church, and the leader of that committee talked a great deal. Well, the Spirit of God was in our meeting, and the Spirit was really moving there, and we could actually tell that God was in the room and gave them this song and dance about this. I say song and dance, now you know how I feel about what he did. But he sold the church by name-dropping, which is essentially what he was doing, that they ought to build this building. And they started the program, and this guy moved away to another church area. He’s not there to see it through. And I was telling the person I was talking to, when people do that, you should immediately discount everything they say. For if the entire church is going to have to carry this out, the entire church should be convicted of the moving of the Holy Spirit, not a committee. You follow me? Because the whole church had to pay for it. The whole church had to carry that obligation. This guy didn’t because he was going to move away. Never forget that lesson. And never let anybody stampede you because they’re name-dropping. They’re saying, well, God led me to see this. There were kids in college, guys in college that took a girl out to dinner and said, you know, God has shown me that you should be my wife, which I thought was a rather novel way of proposing. And I hope the girl said, well, God hadn’t shown me any such thing. In fact, he’s shown me you shouldn’t be my husband. So we have a dilemma here. And I think that, you know, we do need, as a group, to be looking to God for his leadership, praying daily, asking God to bless, not only to bless what we are doing, but to show us what he wants us to do. And then we get together, we’ll talk it over, and in the process of time, a consensus will grow out of this church about what God wants us to do. And we’ll be doing it because we believe God wants us to do it, not because we believe the majority want to do it. And there’s an enormous difference between those two concepts. And I don’t think, you know, our churches do not have much of a democratic tradition. We don’t have much experience in this, and so we make mistakes and we put our foot in it, and we oftentimes have to do some apologizing and backing down. That’s okay. It’s okay. What’s important is that we learn from that. and that we look to God, that we learn that it is not what we don’t want to do, what the majority of our group wants to do. What we want to know is what does God want us to do, and have we as a church been able to arrive at a consensus about that and about how we’re going to be doing it. You know, in some ways, it has to do with a change in vocabulary and syntax. It has to do with a simple thing of forcing ourselves to stop speaking about what we want, and to start speaking about what God wants. Now, you can still get confused and think, well, we’re talking about what God wants, and what we really mean is what we want. But at least if we can get the words right, and at least if we can begin to try to follow what we are saying, I think we might be on the road to something very important for us and something that we can learn. Because the biggest things that we as a church have got to come to is that we are here to serve God, We are here to carry out his will. We are here to be a light in this community. We are here to minister to our neighbors, to our community, and our people around here. We are not here for our own purposes. And we can learn that. We can really get those things nailed down in our hearts and in our minds. We will be so much stronger as a church and as God’s people. There is a balance between being good stewards on the one hand abandoning methods that don’t work on the one hand and then trusting our own methods on the other. It is like in our case, if we have a radio station that just nobody apparently is listening to, as good stewards of God’s money, we’ve got to cut it off. There is a line, though, between that, as I said, on that on the one hand, and then trusting our own methodology and manipulation on the other. Faith is an essential element in anything we’re going to do for God. Because many, many times you are called upon to persevere when you don’t see the results. And are there any? Yeah, that’s up to God, isn’t it? For if in every step of the way we are seeking God’s will, we are asking for his leadership, and we’re trying to do what he wants, whether you or I see the results is not important. That is where faith comes into the picture. Receiving the power of God is, in a way, a matter of submission. It’s a matter of abandoning one’s own power and one’s own will and submitting that will to the will of God and looking to him for his leadership in the things that we are here to do. 2 Corinthians 2, Paul said, In verse 1, I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellency of speech or wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. He didn’t come in the style of a great orator. He said, I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of men’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. And why did I do this? That your faith would not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. In fact, Paul seems to say that God afflicted him and kept him in many ways from being physically effective. You know, he couldn’t see very well apparently, and he considered his own speech methodology to be rather poor. And that’s hard to believe, looking at the way he writes, but who am I to argue with him? I mean, he should know. But the fact of the matter is, he said it is so important. And just before this, in chapter 1, verse 26, he said, You see your calling, brethren, how not many wise men after the flesh, not many noble are called. God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound those that are mighty. But you see, if we’re the foolish and if we’re the weak, then we really have got to trust in his power, don’t we? We are going to have to have something outside of ourselves to produce results, for it isn’t going to come through us. He’s chosen base things of the world, things which are despised as God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are. Why? That no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him are you in Christ Jesus, who of God has made to us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. That according as it is written, he that glories, let him glory in the Lord. And once you get down to it, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? is who is actually going to do this? And when it is done, are we going to pat ourselves on the back? Are we going to congratulate ourselves for all of our hard work and perseverance and diligence in getting it done? Or are we going to give the glory for what is done to God? If you turn back to 2 Timothy, 2 Timothy. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my dearly beloved son, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with a pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of you in my prayers night and day. greatly desiring to see you, being mindful of your tears that I may be filled with joy, when I call to remembrance the unpretended faith that’s in you, which dwelt at first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded in you also. Wherefore, I put you in remembrance that you stir up the gift of God which is in you by the putting on of my hands. Now, the gift is there. The Holy Spirit is there, but it has to be stirred up. Has to be used, has to be developed, has to be worked with. Otherwise, nothing ever happens. You understand what I’m saying? You have choices to make. You make the one set of choices and you will just marinate forever and never accomplish anything. You make the other set of choices and the power of the Holy Spirit is available for you. In your life and the lives of the people that you meet and that you know. God has not given us the spirit of fear, but a spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind. What a wonderful thing to know that God has that for us. You know, I was reading this morning, and I won’t go back to it. I’ll refer you to 1 Samuel 10, 2 Samuel 10, I believe, and the story of the ordination or the anointing of Saul and his subsequent ministries. One of the things that I’m so struck by by Samuel’s comments to Saul was he says, you know, when you were little in your own eyes, God anointed you to be king over Israel. When you were little in your own eyes. The problem was that this man who was little in his own eyes, although his head and shoulders above all the people, a strong man, a warrior, a fighting man who really did lead Israel into battle and was very effective, just couldn’t keep himself out of the way. He just could not, you know, keep from looking at himself. He could not keep from considering his own abilities and what he himself was able to do. And he goes out and usurps the office of a priest on one occasion. And then when he gets explicit instruction from Samuel as to what to do regarding the destruction of a whole nation of people and their king, what does he do? He goes in there and preserves all the best of the cattle, keeps the king alive, and brings them all back. And when he’s confronted by Samuel for it, he begins to make excuses. And Samuel said, because you’ve rejected the word of God, he has rejected you from being king over Israel. It is so tempting when things are going your way to assume that it will always be that way no matter what you do. That’s wrong. Because Saul, when he ceased to do what was right in God’s eyes, God rejected him from being king over Israel. And not only that, a little later it tells us that the Holy Spirit departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord came to trouble him. Saul, for the rest of his life, was really out of his mind. He was insane. It’s hard to realize, isn’t it? But you know, when you think about it, a person who has really had the Spirit of God and has had that Spirit filling up a giant hole in his life, who loses it, well, the New Testament writers tell us that the if you never had the Spirit in the first place. Now, I don’t present this in the sermon to scare you, but to caution you and make you realize that this is not all automatic. You know, we’re not just, you know, a switch has been flipped and we’re on our way to the kingdom of God. You receive the Holy Spirit of God, you can lose it. Saul did. And the New Testament writers warn us that we can, which is a frightening prospect. Why do I tell you this? Because The choices that you are going to make with the rest of this day and tomorrow and next week and from here on out have everything in the world to do with whether you grow, whether you are an effective servant of God, whether you stagnate, or whether you lose the Spirit of God altogether. And I don’t think I would be very kind to you if I didn’t let you know those possibilities were there. So we… have to consider one another, I think, to love one another and to provoke one another and to good works, because that’s why we are together. That’s why we assemble together. That’s why we do the things we do. And if we really ever expect to have anything important happen around us, it’s going to have to be not because of our might or because of our power, but because we have submitted ourselves to the power of God, and that power moves in our lives.
