We have a couple of questions that we
don't want to miss.
I see there are more here than I
knew about, so we might leave some for
tomorrow.
Here's a question.
Does contemporary Christian music grieve the Holy Spirit?
I've asked Brother Jeff if he would speak
to this.
I value his judgment on it, and I
think you will too.
So Jeff, do you want to handle that?
Luckily, he told me about this at lunch,
so I was thinking about it.
Let me very quickly and incompletely try to
address that question.
First of all, you've got to ask, what
does it mean to grieve the Holy Spirit?
Well, I'll tell you, it doesn't mean that
you just don't like it, because there's a
difference between man's spirit and God's spirit, and
the spirit we're grieving is God's spirit, not
our own.
So if you just don't like it for
one reason or the other, that's not grieving
the Holy Spirit.
That's maybe grieving your spirit.
In view of that, I think you all
should examine your motives for rejecting certain kinds
of music.
Maybe it's bias.
That's something just to think about.
I could go into that.
Now, the Holy Spirit is grieved by people,
not by things.
Music is a thing, if I can call
it that.
It's an art form, but it's not a
person.
The Holy Spirit is grieved by individual Christians
making improper choices in their Christian life.
That's what grieves the Holy Spirit.
And the place it's mentioned in Scripture is
Ephesians 4, verse 30.
Verse 29 says, Let no unwholesome word proceed
from your mouth, but only such a word
as is good for edification according to the
need of the moment, that it may give
grace to those who hear.
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of
God, by whom you were sealed for the
day of redemption.
Let all bitterness and wrath, etc.
So there it mentions unwholesome words as things
that grieve the Holy Spirit.
And I'm sure there are many other things
as well, wouldn't there be, that grieve the
Holy Spirit?
So music doesn't grieve the Holy Spirit, but
Christians listening to the wrong types of music
grieve the Holy Spirit.
That make sense?
There's a distinction there I think we need
to make.
Okay, now the next question you'd have to
ask is whether certain musical styles are inherently
evil and hence should never be listened to.
That question is tossed around all over the
place.
I'm not going to answer it because I
don't think you can back any answer scripturally.
I don't feel that it's mentioned.
So I have a tendency to lean towards
the area where certain are only because they
were written for certain purposes.
Like I was talking to Brother McDonald about
jitterbug music.
Well you couldn't take a jitterbug music, put
Christian lyrics to it because it's still jitterbug
music.
You know I'm speaking maybe to...
I don't even know what jitterbug music is.
But any kind of music that is associated
with some secular something, whatever it might be.
So there are many things like that.
So I don't think styles are inherently evil,
although some through association might be off limits
for Christian adaptations, if that makes sense.
So I think what you need to look
at is lyrics, because you can't really come
up with any conclusion from music.
So lyrics are the heart of the matter.
And I think a lyric which is not
true or which treats God and his work
lightly or irreverently, have you ever heard any?
I think those, if a Christian who is
trying to walk with God would listen to
those types of music, he would grieve the
Holy Spirit.
Why?
Because the Holy Spirit wants truth in the
innermost being.
He wants us to walk uprightly and as
a witness to the world.
Those types of music would grieve the Holy
Spirit, I think so.
And for instance, just to bring it home,
there's a group that's very popular by the
name of Striper, a heavy metal Christian band,
a very popular band.
And there's a lyric in one of their
songs that says, no matter how we look,
we'll always praise his name.
If you can hear it.
You really have to listen for a while
to get it.
No matter how we look, we'll always praise
his name.
And of course, they dress up in striped
outfits and have the garb and the look
of any secular heavy metal band.
Well, that sounds real good with freedom and
all of that.
But in the Bible, it says, Paul writing
to Timothy says, let no one look down
on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct,
love, faith and purity, show yourself an example
to those who believe.
So it does matter how you look, doesn't
it?
So that verse is untrue.
You need to look a certain way, no
matter how we look, we'll always praise his
name.
It's false.
If you're listening to that music, you may
be grieving the Holy Spirit.
I hope that helps answer the question.
There's another question here, actually twofold.
What about praying in tongues in the privacy
of your own home?
Well, I feel what happens in the privacy
of man's home is really none of my
business.
And I think that there are constitutional guarantees
of his life.
Jim just grimaced.
But says in the laying on of hands
to receive the fullness of the spirit.
What about the laying on of hands to
receive the fullness of the spirit?
Well, I try to emphasize in a previous
meeting that the fullness of the spirit is
a command to be obeyed.
And there are conditions to be met.
It isn't something that you get by the
laying on of hands or even by praying
for it.
Although you don't hurt yourself by praying.
But you remember we said that you wanted
to be filled with the word of Christ.
If you wanted to be filled with the
spirit, you want to know the fullness of
the spirit.
You had to be, had to keep short
accounts with God, confessing and forsaking sin.
Had to live in a state of yieldingness
to the Lord.
The fullness of the spirit is a moment
by moment walk with the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's not something you get by the laying
on of hands or even by praying for
it.
Well, there are a couple of more questions,
but I think we'll leave them for tomorrow.
We're not trying to avoid them, but just
thinking of the time.
I'd like to review the material I went
over on healing this morning.
This is the last part of our discussion
on gifts of the spirit.
We'll be finishing gifts of the spirit and
moving on to other ministries of the Holy
Spirit.
A balanced biblical view on healing.
We mentioned that in a general way, all
sickness in the world is the result of
sin coming into the world.
We mentioned that there would be no sickness
in the world if sin had never entered.
We're not quite ready for that yet.
Thanks.
Sometimes, number two, sometimes sickness is a direct
result of sin in a person's life.
We mentioned the passage in 1 Corinthians 1130,
where people coming to the Lord suffer with
unjudged sin in their lives are subject to
the discipline of God.
We mentioned that alcoholism produces disease, smoking, sexual
immorality, and even emotional stress.
Worry.
Worry is a sin.
Did you know that?
A mother up in Lake Geneva said, I
say to my family, why don't you share
the worrying with me?
I have to do it all myself.
Worry is a sin.
It denies the love of God.
It says he doesn't care.
It denies the wisdom of God.
It says he doesn't know what he's doing.
It denies the power of God.
It says he's not able to deliver him
from the thing that causes him to worry.
You will never get delivered from worry should
you get down on your knees and confess
it as sin.
And worry affects you physically.
It doesn't solve problems, but it sure creates
them.
British Medical Journal said once that there's not
a tissue in the human body wholly removed
from the spirit.
Think of that.
There's not a tissue in the human body
wholly removed from the spirit.
What affects your spirit?
What affects your soul?
Affects your body as well.
Has to do with your general healthfulness.
So sometimes sickness is a direct result of
sin in a person's life.
But not all sickness is.
And we gave six examples from the scripture
where sickness was not a result of sin.
The woman who had the curvature of the
spine, it was attributed to Satan, bowed down
to Satan by Satan all these 18 years.
Paul's thorn in the flesh was certainly not
the result of his sin.
It was the messenger of Satan to buffet
him.
Job's illness.
If ever there's a man whose illness was
not the result of sin, it was Job
testified by God to be the most righteous
man on the earth at that time.
The blind man, the man born blind.
It wasn't because of his sin that he
was born blind.
Couldn't have sinned before he was born.
The Jews didn't believe in a previous incarnation.
Epaphroditus, he was critically ill, nigh unto death.
Why?
For the work of the ministry.
Pouring himself out in the work of the
ministry.
And Gaius in 3 John 2, spiritually healthy
but not physically.
Then we mentioned that God heals.
God can and does heal.
And all true healing is of God.
Notice I say, all true healing is of
God.
There is demonic healing.
There is Satanic healing.
I remember Trifon Caliogou coming back from France
and telling us that more people go to
spiritist healers in France than go to medical
doctors.
And a mother went to one of these
spirit healers one time and he noticed a
spot on the child's eye.
On the child's eye.
And he said to her, your boy has
a spot on his eye.
And she said, I know.
He said, would you like me to remove
it?
She said, okay.
He removed it.
He went through his incantations, whatever he did,
and the spot disappeared.
A little while later, the little fellow developed
cancer of the eye.
The cancer was out in the back of
the eye.
He went to a doctor this time and
he said, did you go to a spiritist
healer?
And she said, yes.
Well, he said he didn't heal it.
The spot went around to the back of
his eye and became a cancer and there's
nothing he can do.
So there is such a thing as Satanic
healing in the world today.
If you don't believe it, go to France.
But all true healing is by God.
Sometimes he heals by natural bodily processes.
The body itself has marvelous recuperative powers.
Sometimes he heals through physicians, medicine, and surgery.
Some of you have experienced that this week
here at the camp.
And sometimes he heals miraculously.
And there are illustrations and instances of this
going on all the time.
But it's not always God's will to heal.
We mentioned that Paul left Prophemus at Miletus
sick.
God didn't remove Paul's thorn in the flesh.
And even today, if he healed all the
time, some people would never die.
But everybody dies sooner or later if the
Lord doesn't come.
Healing is not something we can demand from
God.
We are entitled to go before him and
ask him to heal.
But it must be in his will.
While it is true that healing was in
the atonement, not all the benefits of the
atonement are ours yet.
The glorified body isn't ours.
And complete bodily healing is not ours yet
either.
It's not fair to say that when we
fail to get healed that it's because of
our lack of faith.
I should just pause to say this.
People don't understand.
People think if you just believe a thing
strong enough, it'll come to pass.
There's no biblical basis for that.
Faith must be founded upon some word of
God, some promise of God, some revelation of
God.
I don't know how I can emphasize that
strongly enough.
Faith isn't just believing on your own that
something is going to happen without having some
word from God to rest on.
Faith demands the surest evidence and finds it
in the word of God.
In a particular situation, God may convey a
promise to you maybe that a loved one
is going to get well.
If God really conveys it, the loved one
will get well.
And you can have faith, but you can't
have faith in every case and think that
if you just believe hard enough, it will
come to pass.
We mentioned the passage in James chapter 5
where the prayer of faith saves the sick.
The prayer of faith there is based upon
the promise of God that if the man
confesses his sin to the elders, they anoint
him with oil and pray over him, he
will get well.
That's the prayer of faith.
It's based upon a promise of God.
We close this morning by asking the question,
are the modern faith healing campaigns scriptural?
Let me point out six differences between New
Testament experience and the modern faith healing campaign.
First of all, the Lord Jesus healed all
that were brought to him.
Matthew chapter 8, verse 16, Matthew chapter 8,
verse 16, when even was come, they brought
unto him many that were possessed with demons,
and he cast out the spirit for the
word and healed all that were sick.
My, that's wonderful, isn't it?
Just think of the Lord Jesus coming into
a district and sickness in that district was
abolished while he was there.
And on one occasion in the book of
Acts, Acts chapter 5, verse 16, the apostles
healed all that were brought to them.
Acts chapter 5, verse 16, there came also
a multitude out of the cities round unto
Jerusalem, bringing sick folks, and them that were
vexed with unclean spirit, and they healed every
one.
Marvelous, isn't it?
Say, that's the first thing.
Secondly, Christ's cures were instantaneous, not gradual, in
all but one case.
In one case of the healing of the
blind man, it was gradual.
But generally speaking, Christ's cures were instantaneous, not
gradual.
They were complete, not partial, and they were
permanent, not temporary.
There was a real cure.
Three, when the Lord Jesus sent forth his
disciples, he asked them to heal freely.
Freely ye have received, freely give.
There was no dollar sign in his healing
campaign, or in the disciples' healing campaign.
One of the curses of the modern evangelical
world is the terrible scramble for money.
One faith healer was recently exposed on television.
The man who exposed him was asked, how
much does he get?
The answer was, 11 million a year, and
most of it tax exempt.
It doesn't read like the New Testament to
me.
I often say this, it would be interesting
to see how much Christian work would go
on tomorrow if the dollar could somehow be
taken out of it.
It would be very interesting.
It's really bringing reproach in the name of
the Lord Jesus.
You hear the world say, all the church
wants is your money.
And they've got every right in the world
to say it, don't they?
Because the church certainly gives that impression to
the world today.
Jesus said, freely ye have received, freely give,
Matthew 10, 8.
Faith healers do not live longer on the
average than any other people.
They wear eyeglasses, dentures, and even hearing aids.
I don't know how many of you watched
on television recently when a faith healer was
exposed.
First of all, you saw him in a
meeting, and he said, as much as I
have a revelation from the Lord, there's a
man named Harry here tonight.
Harry, are you here, Harry?
Harry's here.
He says, Harry, you live at 3644 Foothill
Boulevard, don't you?
And Mrs. Harry starts to weep at this
marvelous revelation, you know.
How did you know where they live?
And he says, you have eye trouble, and
your wife has eye trouble, too.
So the dear couple come, and he puts
his hands on their eyes and pushes them
down into a chair.
I do not know the significance of the
latter part, but it was actually a push.
He pushed them down into the chair.
Heal, supposedly.
Then the expose.
The man exposing them had gone to visit
this man privately, and noticed he had a
hearing aid in his ear.
Well, that's funny for a healer to be
deaf.
Why does he have a hearing aid in
his ear?
And then they bring it all out on
TV.
Before the meeting, Mrs. Faith Healer goes throughout
the audience, and she meets the man, and
she says, did you come here for healings
yet?
What is your name?
My name is Harry.
Please fill out this card for me.
Card asks for his name and address, and
other details.
What's the trouble with this?
She goes through the audience and gets all
this information.
When the meeting starts, Mrs. Faith Healer is
behind the scenes, broadcasting on 38 megahertz, and
who's picking it up in the earphone?
In the ear hearing aid.
And she says, the next man is Harry,
and he says, there's a man here tonight
named Harry.
And she says, he lives at 3644 Foothill,
and he says, you live at 3644 Foothill,
don't you?
And the whole thing is exposed as a
fake, and it's all done in the name
of Jesus.
Bringing reproach on the name of the Lord.
Is that what you read in the New
Testament?
It's not what I read.
In the New Testament.
Another difference, Faith Healers call for the sick
to come.
In James 5.14, the sick person is
to call for the elders, very often.
And finally, more is demanded from the patient
today, and less from the healer than in
the days of the Lord.
Incidentally, the Lord was always saying to the
disciples, to those around, oh ye of little
faith, of little faith.
So we might ask the question, is there
any harm in the modern healing campaign?
And I just told you the harm, on
the same program it told about an Australian
healer.
And he had a van, and he carried
around in the van 50 wheelchairs.
They would go to this great healing campaign,
and here's a man coming in with a
cane.
And they take his cane and tell him
to sit in a wheelchair, and they wheel
him in the wheelchair.
Another lady comes in and she's on crutches,
and they take away her crutches and put
her in a wheelchair and wheel her in.
When the healing starts, he says to the
man who had the cane, stand up on
your feet.
And the man stands up on his feet.
He was standing on his feet when he
came in, before they sat him down in
a wheelchair.
He carried 50 wheelchairs around in his own
van.
But if a mechanized wheelchair comes in, they
don't touch it.
If a person comes in with a mechanized
wheelchair, with a very serious case, they don't
do anything with him.
Reproach brought on the name of the Lord.
Of course, some who've been told to throw
away their crutches and medicines have suffered irreparable
injury, and in some cases have died, leading
to million-dollar lawsuits.
And thousands who go to be healed and
don't get healed judge the Lord by that
failure and their turn from the faith.
Is all healing divine?
And the answer is no, not all healing
is divine.
There is satanic healing.
One of Satan's deceptions is to imitate the
work of God, and he has power to
heal and to perform other miracles.
Notice Matthew 7, 21 to 23.
Matthew 7, 21 says, Not everyone that saith
to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the
kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the
will of my Father which is in heaven.
Many will say to me in that day,
Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy
name, and in thy name have cast out
devils, and in thy name done many wonderful
works?
Notice.
And then will I profess unto them, I
never knew you.
Depart from me, depart from me that work
iniquity.
In other words, these people have performed miracles
in the name of Jesus, but not by
the power of Jesus.
They have done it by satanic power, and
he says to me, depart from me, I
never knew you.
So much for healing.
Let's go on to some of the other
ministries of the Lord Jesus.
He not only gives gifts, he produces the
fruit of holiness, the Holy Spirit.
He produces the fruit of holiness.
Galatians chapter 5.
Galatians chapter 5, verses 22 to 23 says,
But the fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace, wrong suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, temperance.
Against such there is no law.
This is the fruit of the Spirit.
Do you know what it is?
It's a Christlike character.
This is a ministry of the Holy Spirit
to produce a Christlike character in the believer.
Somebody has said, God is so pleased with
the Lord Jesus, he wants to fill heaven
with people just like him.
That's true.
And that's the work of the Spirit of
God in this connection.
Now, I would like to mention to you
that all of these things in this list
are not natural.
They're supernatural.
It's easier to read them and think of
somebody who was born with a placid disposition
and think, well, he has the fruit of
the Spirit.
It's not necessarily so.
All of these things are supernatural.
For instance, love.
It's not a natural love.
Any parent loves his child, loves her child.
It doesn't take divine light to love your
child.
This is the kind of love where you
love your enemy.
And only by the power of the Spirit
of God can anybody do that.
I don't know if the last time I
was here I told you the story about
the Japanese man who led the attack on
Pearl Harbor.
His name was Mitsuo Fushida.
And, of course, he was really exulting the
day of that successful attack.
He had dealt a crippling blow to the
United States fleet.
But, of course, as the tides of war
changed, the United States was on the upper
side, and, as you know, Japan suffered a
defeat.
And Mitsuo Fushida was so curious that his
country had been defeated that he decided to
spend the rest of his life taking the
United States before a world tribunal to try
it for war crimes.
In order to do that, he had to
get witnesses.
So he started interviewing men who had been
held in this country as prisoners of war.
He wanted to get stories of atrocity, of
cruelty, of how they had been tortured.
And as he interviewed these men, he heard
a story kept recurring about a dear lady
who used to come and visit the prisoners.
She used to bring them cookies.
She gave them a little book that was
called the New Testament.
She showed them all kinds of kindness.
And they would say to her, look, we're
your enemies.
Why do you show kindness to us like
this?
And she said, it was because of a
prayer that my parents prayed before they were
killed.
Her parents had been missionaries in the Philippines.
And they had been executed by the Japanese.
And she'd say that every time.
The reason I'm showing you this, love, is
because of a prayer my parents prayed before
they were executed.
She never told them what the prayer was.
Well, this wasn't the kind of evidence that
Mitsuo Fushida wanted to get.
He wanted to get atrocities.
He wanted to get cruelties.
He wanted to get tortured.
And here he's getting the story of this
woman.
In the providence of God in time, a
New Testament came into his hands.
And he started to read it.
He read the Gospel of Matthew, but it
didn't do anything for him.
He read the Gospel of Mark, and he
became interested.
He read the Gospel of Luke.
And when he came to the story of
the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus, he came
to these words.
Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do.
And without anybody telling him, he knew the
prayer those missionaries had prayed before they had
been put to death.
He bowed the knee, received the Lord Jesus
as his Lord and Savior, and he spent
the rest of his life traveling throughout the
world, preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ.
That was the man who led the attack
on Pearl Harbor.
Listen, that was love, that woman going and
visiting.
And love conquers.
That's the love which is the fruit of
the Spirit.
Joy, a supernatural joy.
The scaffolding can be crumbling down around you,
and you can still have a joy in
the Lord.
This is a joy that's independent of earthly
circumstances.
Have you ever known it?
When everything was adverse, and yet the joy
of the Lord was your strength.
Peace, again, a supernatural peace.
Yesterday, Brother Henrich was telling that story of
a dear woman in the East who had
three crushing tragedies in her family in a
short space of time.
And she stood at the grave of a
loved one, and she said, Stewart, we know
that all things work together for good for
those who love God.
That's peace.
The peace that passes all understanding.
Long-suffering.
What is long-suffering?
Daring up under the trials and difficulties and
afflictions of life.
I love that story of a dear Corrie
Ten Boom and her sister in the concentration
camp.
Really suffering.
Oh, the treatment that they endured.
Corrie and Betsy.
At one day, Betsy said to Corrie, she
said, Corrie, when we get out of here,
we've got to do something for these people.
And Corrie naturally thought she meant the other
prisoners like themselves.
She didn't mean that at all.
She meant their Nazi overlords.
We've got to do something.
Corrie said, then I wondered what kind of
a sister I had, the sister of mine.
Here she was walking in fellowship with the
Lord on a high plane, and I was
trudging along on the earthly level.
Long-suffering.
Be in a concentration camp and act like
that.
Gentleness means kindness.
Kindness.
To say just kindness?
No, supernatural kindness.
It means like showing a kindness when somebody
has shown you a discourtesy.
Turning the other cheek.
Going the second mile.
That's what it means.
And we shouldn't be satisfied with anything less.
Goodness.
I think goodness is associated with the word
God.
Like God.
Doing, responding, reacting in the situations of life
the way the Lord would.
Faith means faithfulness.
Once again, a supernatural faithfulness to all of
the indigencies of life.
Meekness.
Jesus said, I am meek and lowly in
heart.
Follow me and you'll find rest unto your
soul.
And temperance means self-control.
That might seem like a contradiction.
Self-control, spirit control.
But it means self-control by the power
of the spirit.
Self-control under the spirit's control.
When you put all of those words together,
you have a full-length portrait of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
And you have a description of what he
wants us to be like.
The spirit of God produces the fruit of
holiness in our lives.
Next, he glorifies Christ.
He glorifies Christ.
John chapter 16 verse 14.
John chapter 16 and verse 14.
He shall glorify me, for he shall take
of mine and shall show it unto you.
One of the great ministries of the Holy
Spirit of God is to glorify the Savior.
Not self, not ourselves, but to glorify him.
In his book, Keep in Step with the
Spirit, J.
I.
Packer tells a lovely story.
One night he was going to go to
a meeting and he was going to speak
on that verse, John 16, 14.
And as he came up to the church
building, it was floodlit.
He couldn't see the floodlights.
They were behind the bushes.
But he could see the church illuminated.
And he said, I have my message.
That's the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
He glorifies Christ.
You don't see the Holy Spirit, but he
glorifies Christ.
Or he changes the figure.
Picture yourself standing here, facing the Lord Jesus
here, and the Holy Spirit back of you,
shining on the Savior.
He glorifies the Lord Jesus.
Now, is this what we hear in the
evangelical world today?
If you'll stop and think, you'll find that
most of the emphasis on ministry, on radio,
in books today, is on self, not on
Jesus.
One day when I was feeling a little
more naughty than on other days, I went
into our local Christian bookstore and I had
my little pad and paper with me.
And I wrote down some of the titles
on the best-selling list.
Here they are.
Love Yourself.
I said, okay, but it won't be easy.
The Art of Learning to Love Yourself.
I learned that art from Adam.
I'm okay, you're okay.
To which I said, no way, Jose.
I'm okay, you're so-so.
Another one.
Who Says I'm Okay?
I don't know, I sure didn't.
A True View of You.
I'm serious.
These are titles of books.
A True View of You.
True View of You.
I'm afraid that would be a little bit
yucky.
Make Friends with Your Shadow.
Boy, am I that hard up for friends?
The Art of Understanding Yourself.
I can only stand so much for myself.
Understanding Your Past, the Key to Your Future.
If I understood my past, I wouldn't be
in the mess I'm in.
My Beautiful Feeling.
Get it?
All self.
My Beautiful Feeling.
At the moment, my beautiful feeling is nausea.
You Can Feel Good About Yourself.
I can.
30 Days to a Less Stressful You.
Don't take away my stress, that's what's holding
me together.
Here's another one.
You're Someone Special.
I wanted six copies of that one.
Here's another one.
Do I Have to Be Me?
Or the subtitle was, Living with Yourself and
Liking It.
Well, you don't have to be you, but
who else would you be?
Look Out for Number One.
How to Be Your Own Best Friend.
Some of you are getting weary, I don't
blame you.
Self-Esteem, the New Reformation.
Did you notice how many times Jesus' name
was used?
How many?
None.
All about Self.
Dear Friends, that's what Christians are being fed
today.
That's not the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
If you want Holy Spirit ministry, you go
where Jesus is exalted.
I was brought up under the teaching of
men who said, Huh, a sanctified self is
a poor substitute for a glorified Christ.
I never forgot it.
A sanctified self is a poor substitute for
a glorified Christ.
When you think you need to know more
about yourself, what you really need to know
more about is Jesus.
It's just as easy as that.
I think that's one of the most precious
ministries of the Holy Spirit of God.
We love to exalt the Lord Jesus, to
make him precious in the eyes of his
people, and to put down self.
Dear Friends, you can't be filled with the
Holy Spirit and be filled with self.
You've got to be emptied of self to
be filled with the Spirit.
We'll go on tomorrow, Lord willing.
Shall we pray?
Father, we thank you for the clarity with
which your word speaks.
We thank you that it's so very up
to date, speaking to us here in the
20th century.
And oh Lord, we pray that you will
take our eyes off self and fix them
on the Lord Jesus.
We might look full in his wonderful face
so that the things of earth will grow
strangely dim in the light of his glory
and grace.
We ask it in his worthy name and
for his sake.
Amen.