Now, in this exciting and wonderful project of
Key 73, I thought to relate my messages
night by night to this project.
We've talked together about the Christian's responsibility to
be a light that shines for Christ.
The Christian is the only person who can
reflect the Lord Jesus to others and bring
light to bear in the darkness of this
world.
We spoke about the Christian renunciation, that he
must live in the power of the Holy
Spirit and renounce the life of self in
order that the Spirit of God may really
break through.
We spoke last night about the Christian requirement,
the Word of God, the right and wrong
use of the Bible in study.
And I must say, I think you've got
a marvelous local press here, or a press
agent.
I've never in my life had messages so
fully reported as they have been in Thailand.
And this is a wonderful means of publicity
throughout the whole city.
I think that our good friend Nelson Clyde
is very largely responsible for this and I
would like personally to thank him for it.
It means a great deal.
Now tonight I want to speak in my
final message to you about the Christian's resources
for the task.
It is not by might nor by power,
but by my Spirit.
Serve the Lord.
And I want to speak to you as
God shall help me about the Spirit-filled
life.
For it is only the Spirit-filled Christian
who confronts and can confront unashamedly the world
of today with a message of life and
power and reality.
I saw by the way in a magazine
lately that in the average Christian life of
75 years, we spend 25 years asleep, 19
years at work, 6 years traveling, 7 and
a half years dressing, 9 years watching television,
6 years eating, 4 years being sick and
6 months in devotions.
Those are pretty shocking figures.
I wonder how anybody computed them, but somehow
they hit you between the eyes.
Don't you?
Don't they?
If we live like that, do you think
we really believe in the Holy Spirit at
all?
With so many people, God the Father is
a way up there, and Jesus Christ somewhere
else, and the Holy Spirit a sort of
second cousin.
But He, the Holy Spirit, is God in
the Christian.
And this is the one and the only
one by whom we can fulfill the purpose
for which God has given us life and
breath.
Far too many Christians live on the right
side of Calvary, but the wrong side of
Pentecost.
Too many of us are on the right
side of pardon, but the wrong side of
power.
The right side of forgiveness and the wrong
side of fellowship.
And it is God's purpose in redeeming us
and saving us and coming to live in
our hearts, that we should be on the
right side of both.
You remember that the Lord Jesus, in that
wonderful conversation with the woman at the well,
said, If you knew who it is that's
speaking to you, you'd have asked of him
and he would have given you living water.
John chapter 4.
A little later on in the same conversation,
The water that I shall give you shall
be in you a fountain springing up into
everlasting life.
The Living Bible puts it, watering you daily
with eternal life.
I like that.
Fresh supplies every day from heaven of living
water.
And later in the same gospel in chapter
7, the Lord Jesus stood at the gate
of the temple and said, If any man
thirst, let him come to me and drink.
He that believeth on me out of his
innermost being shall flow.
Not a drop, not a trickle, not a
stream, not even a river, but rivers of
living water.
Now in those three texts you have life,
abundant life, and overflowing life.
Life, abundant life, and overflowing life.
In which category would you put yourself right
now?
Of course, if you're a Christian at all,
you cannot be a Christian without having the
Holy Spirit.
You cannot be a Christian without having the
Holy Spirit.
And the most important matter for us to
get settled at the start is, that we
know Jesus as Lord and Saviour, and are
born of the Spirit, and so we possess
his life indwelling our hearts.
That means forgiveness of sin by virtue of
his blood, and it is a beginning, a
wonderful beginning, but it's only the beginning.
There's a tremendous need in every one of
our lives tonight for more of God.
We don't go to the fountain to drink
often enough, and we don't stay long enough
to have our thirst quenched.
I love the books of Dr. A.
W.
Tozer.
And in his book, In Pursuit of God,
he says this, let me quote to you.
Everything is made today to center upon the
initial act of accepting Christ.
We are not expected to crave after any
further revelation of God to ourselves.
We have been snared in the coils of
a spurious logic, which insists that if we
have found him, we need no more seek
him.
This is set before us as the last
word in orthodoxy.
The hot theology of a great army of
fragrant saints is rejected in favor of a
smug interpretation of Scripture, which would have sounded
strange to Augustine, Rutherford, and David Brennan.
Oh, that the language of John Samuel Mansell
was in our hearts again.
I hunger and I thirst.
Jesus, my manna be, ye living waters burst
out of the rock for me.
For still the desert lies my thirsty soul
before.
Oh, living waters rise within me evermore.
So speaks A.
W.
Tozer, he that is dead yet speaketh.
And this rings a bell in my own
heart.
And I find a strange echo there to
all that he is saying.
Far too often in our lives, if we're
honest, instead of victory, it's defeat.
Instead of real satisfaction in Jesus, it's hunger
and dissatisfaction and frustration.
And instead of advancing in our witness, we're
losing ground.
We've lost the boldness and the courage and
the daring of the early church.
I'm not a Methodist, but I love Wesley's
hymns.
Alas, that some of his best hymns have
been conveniently, I think that would be the
word, omitted, from many of our recently published
hymn books, whose title will remain anonymous.
But do you know this hymn of Wesley's?
Do you remember it?
Jesus, thine all-victorious love, shedded my soul
abroad.
Then shall my heart no longer rove, rooted
and fixed in God.
Refining fire go through my heart, illuminate my
soul.
Scatter thy light through every part and sanctify
the whole.
O that in me the sacred fire might
now begin to glow.
Burn up the draughts of base desire and
make the mountains flow.
O thou at Pentecost, who thou at Pentecost
didst fall, do thou my sins consume.
Come, Holy Ghost, on thee I call, Spirit
of burning cup.
If a man prays like that or talks
like that or preaches like that today, he's
a wild Pentecostalist.
And we have exchanged the false fire of
fanaticism for the no fire of orthodoxy.
And we're bankrupt.
I'm terribly concerned that we should follow the
track of the word of God in dealing
with this subject tonight.
For more than any other subject in Bible,
it has been suffered from unwise handling.
The devil has seen to that.
But I'm not going to allow the fear
of the counterfeit to keep me back from
reality.
I preached on Sunday morning in a church
in Tyler, in which there were many people
with hungry hearts.
And I preached to them as a man
with a hungry heart, who's hungering for more
of God every day.
I can never exhaust all of Him until
I see Him face to face.
There's always more of Him to experience and
to know in my life.
And my life's ambition has always been not
that I might know truth, but that I
might know Him.
That's what Paul's ambition was, that I might
know Him and the power of His resurrection
and the fellowship of His suffering.
And if God has promised me something in
His word which can turn defeat into victory,
dryness into freshness, self-centeredness into Christ-centeredness,
despair sometimes into delight, not to make me
smug, but to make me vital for the
kingdom, I long for all that God has
for me in Jesus.
And isn't it a wonderful thing that He
promises in Psalm 107 verse 9, He satisfies
the longing soul and fills the hungry with
goodness, not madness, but goodness.
Now let me just clear an acre of
ground before I start, if you know what
I mean.
And of course, we're going to go through
some controversial territory tonight.
I don't enjoy that at all, because though
it may be that I love all of
you dearly, it may be by the end
of this service you won't be loving me
very much, I hope however, I hope however,
if we disagree on minor points, we'll find
the same burden, the same urge and the
same hunger at the root of our heart.
Let me therefore begin by saying that some
people teach that a spirit-filled life is
something apart from the presence of Jesus.
That the fullness of the spirit is something
different, and that the evidence of it will
be seen in ecstatic utterances, in amazing miracles,
and in outstanding success in witness.
At once of course, we come straight against
or into touch with the charismatic movement.
I think I mentioned one night this week
already, I have been in about 45 countries
preaching the word of God, and every country
I've been in, I've come across this movement.
Which majors on the gift of the spirit,
especially speaking in tongues and in healing.
Now, many people say, don't touch it.
This is all of the devil, it's so
divisive.
Hold it my friend, hold it.
Who's responsible for the division?
I believe the answer to that question is
twofold.
First, people who say, this is not for
our day.
This gift of speaking in tongues was finished
at Pentecost.
It is all of the devil, and we
must always take a stand against it.
Now people like that are the cause of
division.
For one thing, Paul himself spoke in tongues.
And he told the Corinthian church, forbid not
to speak in tongues.
He acknowledged the gift.
And in the light of his teaching in
1 Corinthians, you can't possibly say that this
gift was eliminated at Pentecost.
As a matter of fact, what happened at
Pentecost was one thing, and what happened in
Corinth was another.
At Pentecost, representatives from 15 different nations heard
the disciples preach in the gospel in their
own language.
Here God was initiating a new day, a
new dispensation.
The coming of God the Holy Spirit, and
here was the dramatic announcement of his coming,
and the word was preached, so that all
present in Jerusalem at that time could understand
it.
There was no need of an interpreter.
But in Corinth, it was an unknown tongue
in which people were speaking, and it required
interpretation.
These two things were entirely different.
You cannot, cannot biblically assert that this gift
has been withdrawn from the church.
Moreover, in these 45 countries, I have in
every one of them, no exaggeration, visited with
and spoken to literally hundreds of people who
have come into life through the exercise and
receiving of this gift.
To whom Jesus has become so wonderfully real,
and he's much more precious, and their lives
are much more real and much more vital
and much more open and much more tender
and loving than they have been before.
I've seen so much reality in this, that
I cannot possibly come down and say this
is all a devil, and I don't think
it's biblical to do so.
But, having said that, let me say this.
There are people in this charismatic movement who
say, in order to be filled with the
Spirit, you must speak in an unknown tongue.
Now hold it again.
I do not consider that is biblical.
It's a confusion in thought between the gifts
of the Spirit, which are distributed according to
the will of God, 1 Corinthians 12, and
the fullness of the Spirit, which hasn't anything
to do with gifts, but has everything to
do with character.
The major emphasis on the New Testament is
not on gifts, but on Christ-likeness, character.
If speaking in tongues was that which we
all must have to enter into fullness of
life, then may I respectfully suggest to you
it would be the major emphasis in every
one of Paul's letters, instead of which it
isn't referred to in any of them, except
one, 1 Corinthians.
And then only in two chapters, 12 and
14.
And then always with a view to keeping
it in hand, dampening it down.
Obviously, speaking in tongues was no mark of
spiritual maturity.
For the Corinthian church was the most carnal
church in the New Testament, but they had
the gift.
So when a dear lady a little while
ago came up to me and said to
me after a service, Oh, what a pity
you haven't got it.
I said to her, beg your pardon, ma
'am.
She said, what a pity you haven't got
it.
I said, what do you mean?
Oh, she said, if you'd only come to
our church, you'd get it.
All the gifts are in operation there.
You'd get it.
My dear lady, I said to her, my
dear lady, I'm not looking for it, I'm
looking for Him.
Besides, I said to her, it takes me
all my time to speak right with the
one tongue I have got without having an
unknown tongue.
Now, my dear friends at Dallas, I do
not say all that to cause offense.
I say it simply to present a balanced
view.
And if someone here speaks in tongues, God
bless you, and I trust that it has
made Jesus so wonderfully real that He fills
your heart and your life and you witness
to Him and not to your experience.
And that you don't go around insisting that
everybody else must have your gift because nobody
can.
And on the other hand, if you don't
speak in tongues and you think the whole
things of the devil don't cause division, by
that, let's learn to love each other even
though we disagree, and rejoice in every Christian
who has entered into life.
You, there are, oh, there are 431 people
here tonight, approximately.
Don't spend the rest of the evening counting
them, but I think that's about right.
Listen, there are 431 miracles, I hope.
Every one of us came a different way
to Jesus.
If you could stand up and give 431
testimonies, you'd all tell how you came, different
ways and different circumstances.
And you all came to the cross in
different ways.
And so it is that everybody comes in
different ways into fullness of life.
But you all have to come there if
you're going to witness in power.
You see, the evidence of a spirit-filled
life, as we noted, I hope, in our
reading, is not gift, but character.
Galatians 5.22 says, The fruit of the
Spirit are love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness,
faith, meekness, self-control.
Love, joy, peace, that's my relationship to God.
Longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, that's my relationship to other
people.
Faith, meekness, self-control, that's my relationship to
myself.
That's fruit.
And it's all character.
I have chosen you, said Jesus, that you
should bring forth fruit and your fruit should
remain.
Character.
Stability of a spirit-filled life.
And Ephesians chapter 5, that lovely portion that
was read to us, let me just note
it with you in the Living Bible.
It says in verse 18, Don't drink too
much wine, for many evils lie along that
path.
Be filled instead with the Holy Spirit and
controlled by Him.
Verse 19, Talk with each other much about
the Lord, quoting psalms and hymns and singing
sacred songs, making music in your hearts to
the Lord.
Always give thanks for everything to our God
and Father, in the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
Honor Christ by submitting to each other.
You could put four words, as I have
done, down my margin here.
Evidence is of a spirit-filled life.
One, vocal.
Two, joyful.
Three, thankful.
Four, humble.
And they're all character.
Vocal.
Talking with each other much about the Lord.
Of course, the spirit-filled Christian can't stop
talking.
The fountain's bubbling over.
Quoting hymns and singing sacred songs, making music
in your hearts to the Lord.
Isn't that a happy verse?
The happy, the Christian's got a joy deep,
deep down in his heart that goes far
deeper than happiness.
Happiness depends on what happens, but joy is
far, far deeper than that.
J-O-Y, Jesus, others, yourself.
That's joy.
Always giving thanks to God for everything.
Ooh, that's tough.
I can give thanks to the Lord sometimes
for something, but always giving thanks to God,
our Father in the name of Jesus Christ,
for everything.
Ooh.
That takes some doing.
I remember Paul Rees, you don't talk to
Paul Rees, do you?
World Vision lives in Minneapolis.
He told me and told several people that
there was a gentleman, a friend of his,
a Christian fellow, who was going from Birmingham,
Alabama to Chicago.
Thank you very much.
To Chicago.
And he was sitting in the bus, alone,
it was a very hot day, about 100
degrees, and he was waiting in this bus
terminal, and, ooh, it was stifling.
And presently a lady got in and sat
down beside him.
And if I may say so, she was
rather a large lady.
And she oozed onto his section of the
seat.
And presently, three of her children joined her
and sat on her knee.
And this poor little man was squashed into
the corner of this seat.
And he thought to himself, my, Chicago's an
awful long way.
This, this round me, I must leave a
lot to your imagination, but it was pretty
grim.
And just then he remembered that he'd got
a verse in the Bible that morning in
his devotion.
This verse, giving thanks to God our Father
is all things in the name of the
Lord Jesus.
And he remembered that verse.
And he said, oh God, oh Lord, what
can I be thankful to you for right
now?
And then he thought, Lord Jesus, I'm so
thankful this woman is not my wife.
Now if you don't like that story, that's
Dr. Paul Rees, not me.
But see what I mean, it's a graphic
illustration of the fact that a spirit-filled
life is a thankful life.
And you can only thank God for everything
when your faith is deeply rooted in the
sovereignty of God.
Deeply rooted in the sovereignty of God.
Then you're always thankful.
For everything.
Then let me say this again, that many
people tell us, teach us, that the fullness
of the spirit must always come as a
sudden experience.
Later than conversion, after a distinct time of
waiting on God and expectation.
Now it's perfectly true that the fullness of
the spirit in our lives produces an experience
so different from anything known before that it
seems absolutely different.
In fact, it's like being born again, again.
If I may be so untheological.
Just born again all over again.
Suddenly, truths to which I have had mental
assent and agreement come alive.
And the one thing that matters is that
I should get on the ball and begin
obeying them.
But the mistake, the mistake is made when
that which is frequent is laid down as
necessary.
There's always a risk of trouble when Christians
make their own experience the standard for other
people.
You've got to go through what I have
been through in order to be right.
And in order to be filled with the
spirit.
This is not a second blessing.
Do I believe in a second blessing?
Certainly.
I believe in a second and a third
and a fourth and a fifth and a
sixth.
A day without a blessing would be a
miserable day.
But God expects nothing from him except failure.
But God has provided him with the Holy
Spirit that he need not fail.
That's a crisis.
That takes the sweat and drudgery out of
Christian life.
And it turns it from drudgery to luxury.
You're not living at the last edge of
your resources then.
You're living at the infinite resources of Jesus
all the time.
And yet with all I must ask you
most earnestly the question that Paul asked this
Ephesian church.
Have you received the Holy Spirit since you
believed?
In that deep, powerful, transforming sense.
Now I've cleared my acre of ground.
That's only the introduction and the time is
now ten to nine.
Keep believing.
If you can't stay to the end, good
night, God bless you.
I do love you still.
It's been nice to have you.
However, if you can stay, I'll be so
grateful and so thankful.
I want to present to you four simple
propositions about the Holy Spirit based on the
word of God.
And the first one is this.
The Bible teaches there is a fullness of
the Spirit which is not identical with the
new birth.
May I repeat that?
There is a fullness of the Spirit which
is not identical with the new birth.
A man may be born again, may believe
and live, but be far from full.
Every Christian has the Holy Spirit.
Romans 8, 9.
If any man have not the Spirit of
Christ he is none of His.
1 Corinthians 12, 3.
No man can say Jesus is Lord but
by the Holy Spirit.
1 Corinthians 12, 13.
By one Spirit we have all, all these
Corinthian tragedies, little wrecks of spiritual lives.
Carnal Christians, we have all been baptized by
one Spirit into one body.
Major Thomas, a great friend of mine and
of yours I know, came to Moody Church
during my pastorate and preached a sermon entitled
Unsaved Believers.
My!
It took us about three months to get
over that.
It rocked the whole place but it was
dead right.
Everything in their heads but nothing in their
hearts.
The danger of having your doctrines and your
hearts all in a mess, devoid of life
and power.
But you can be a believer without having
the Holy Spirit but you can't be a
Christian without having the Holy Spirit.
But to have the Spirit and to be
filled with the Spirit are two different things.
You see, Egypt, for instance, always has the
Nile.
But it waits every year for the Nile
to overflow.
And having the Nile is one thing and
having the overflow is another.
That overflow changes the desert into a garden
and waste into fruitfulness, disaster into abundance and
that's exactly what the fullness of the Spirit
does for a Christian.
It turns the desert wilderness life into a
garden.
It turns disaster into abundance, abundance into victory
and waste into fruitfulness.
Now I see no reason from the Word
of God why the fullness of the Spirit
should not come at conversion.
As in the case, for example, of Cornelius
and his household in Acts chapter 10 and
verse 44.
But this seems to have been exceptional.
In John 20 verse 22 Jesus breathed on
the disciples and they received the Holy Spirit.
But in Acts 2 and verse 4 they
were filled with the Holy Spirit.
Saul, a converted man on the Damascus road
surrendered, believing, praying, wasn't filled with the Holy
Spirit till Ananias came.
Acts 9 chapter 17.
And these Christians at Ephesus, they lacked so
much evidence of reality and they were so
sort of dull and dry and sort of
uninteresting people that Paul said, Have you received
the Holy Spirit since you believed?
I wonder if he asked that question if
he was here tonight.
I wonder what he'd say about us, about
us Baptists and then there's Presbyterians and all
the rest.
What would he say?
Have you received the Holy Spirit?
You don't look any different.
You haven't got any joy.
You hear Christians saying, I've got joy, joy,
joy, joy down in my heart and I've
got faces by the mile long.
Look absolutely miserable.
There's no joy, there's no lift, there's no
enthusiasm, there's no thrill, there's no reality about
you.
Ephesians 5, 18 is written to Christians.
Be filled with the Spirit.
And if that wasn't a command for Christian
people it wouldn't appear in the Bible.
Something following conversion.
Corinthian Christians were carnal but they were born
again.
Indwelt but mastered by the self life.
And if we're honest we know the agony
of that.
Perhaps I could best illustrate what I'm getting
at by a little homey illustration.
I think you know, some of you, that
we have two daughters and one is ten
years older than the other.
The other is a sort of postscript.
And I remember one day when the older
one was a teenager and the other little
one was only I think about four.
I was in my study in London on
a Monday morning.
I had a bit of a Monday morning
feeling but I thought my sermons had been
so hopeless the previous day.
Preachers understand that I'm sure.
And I heard my wife say to the
kid run upstairs and tell daddy breakfast's ready.
So I ran upstairs and the one with
long legs got in first.
She came into my study rushed across the
floor jumped under me put my arm round
her neck and said daddy breakfast's ready.
Then postscript came about a minute afterwards.
Puffing and panting and got as far as
the door and looked inside and big sister
said something to her which wasn't very nice.
She said you needn't come any farther I've
got all the rest of daddy.
And I saw a little lip begin to
quiver.
A little tear come into her eye.
So I stuck out a spare knee and
held out my arm and said come on
darling.
And so she ran in tolled up and
jumped on my knee and I hugged her
tight.
And then she said to big sister not
in a very Christian spirit she said to
her and she was only about six inches
away she said you may have all the
rest of daddy but daddy's got all the
rest of me.
That's what it is.
That's the crisis.
When not only do I have all of
Jesus but he has all of me.
That's the crisis.
And you don't receive Jesus on the installment
plan.
When you are baptized into Christ you have
So the trouble is he hasn't got all
of you.
And he wants room to maneuver.
Room to manipulate.
Room to work.
Room to operate.
Room to be in control.
Room to go into business.
Room to go out through you to each
other.
My second proposition.
The first one if you have got notes.
There is such a thing as the fullness
of the spirit that is not identical with
the new birth.
The second.
The fullness of the spirit is not a
once and for all experience.
But an increasing habit of life.
You'll find many references in the Acts of
the Apostles where those who were filled at
Pentecost were filled again.
They were filled as they prayed Acts 4
.31. And as they suffered Acts 13.32.
Often you read of Paul filled with the
spirit.
Fullness was an increasing habit of life.
A fullness which distinguishes a man's character and
atmosphere in which he lives.
There is no such thing as a once
and for all fullness of the spirit.
It's a continuous appropriation of a continuous supply
from Jesus Christ himself.
A moment by moment faith in a moment
by moment cleansing.
At the moment I begin to believe praise
the Lord.
At that moment I begin to receive.
And as long as I go on believing
I go on receiving.
That's it.
So simple.
But hallelujah so wonderful.
See.
Go on believing.
Go on taking.
Go on claiming.
And go on being filled.
An increasing habit of life.
My third proposition.
The fullness of the spirit is not for
the hierarchy in the church or for a
favored few but for everybody.
The negative command of Ephesians 5.18 presents
no difficulty.
Don't get drunk with wine.
But this positive is no less clear.
The one is as binding as the other.
If it's a sin to be drunk it's
a sin, equally a sin not to be
filled with the spirit.
God doesn't issue a command to admire it.
He issues a command to obey it.
It's not for a few people but it's
for everybody.
Do you notice the context of Ephesians 5
.18?
Be being filled with the spirit.
Present continuous ten.
Be continuously filled with the spirit.
And then he speaks of the most precious
relationships in life.
Husband, wife, parent, child.
I know that I need His fullness every
time I preach.
I know you need your fullness the fullness
of His spirit to teach your Sunday school
class.
But I need His fullness most of all,
beloved to be a husband and a father
worthy of the Lord Jesus.
And that matters to me more than anything
in the world.
If I can't preserve openness love, fellowship, sweetness
in my home I'd rather never preach again.
Never preach again.
If I haven't got a home where people
can come and sit and talk and share
Christ with us a home where we're open
about the Lord and where we love Him
and love each other all the more because
of that.
I couldn't preach anymore.
I need the fullness of His spirit to
make my home a corner of heaven.
So do you.
Oh, that's what we need.
And that's, you know, you know that's the
focal point of Key 73.
The whole.
Not the pulpit, but the whole.
The whole.
I'm love, I'm simply thrilled with these Bible
cells and home Bible studies that have sprung
up in these last years masses of them
all over the place.
I think it's simply great to see Christianity
getting out into the homes.
Because, you see, the family is the first
unit in God's society.
That's where God started in creating a man.
And then in order that he might not
be alone he created a woman out of
the man.
Not from his head lest he should dominate
her.
Not from his feet lest she should trample
on him.
But from his heart that she might love
him.
From under his shoulder that he might protect
her.
That's God's order of a family.
A man and a woman ideal in love.
In love, desperately in love.
Loving each other with all their heart.
Because Jesus is central to their home.
Oh, what a testimony comes from a home
like that.
What healing power I mean spiritually.
What that home can do in terms of
blessing to the home next door where they're
nattering each other and biting each other's head
off and the whole thing is going to
a shambles.
Who do you think is going to witness
to them that pastor won't, the church can't,
it's impossible.
Ah, but the neighbor can.
And what a wonderful thing to take the
Lord Jesus out from a home like that.
See what I mean?
Oh, yes.
You need him.
Not to make us abnormal but to make
us normal people.
Do you ever read Oswald Chambers?
That book of his, My Utmost for His
Highest is a lovely book of daily readings
and in it he says this.
Some people think Christians are people who should
do exceptional things in extraordinary circumstances.
But that is not so.
Christians rather are people who should be exceptional
people in ordinary circumstances.
And as a father if you're bringing up
teenagers today you've got problems on your hands
and it isn't easy.
And if you're going to be saved from
worry, anxiety, a crowded face, offensive speech, bad
manner, lack of courtesy in your home, you
need Jesus.
In all his fullness.
Oh, yes.
It's not for a favored few.
I'm not speaking to you about some weird
cloud nine blessing.
I'm speaking to you about someone whom you
need right deep in your heart every moment
of every day.
The last proposition is this.
This fullness of the Spirit is not something
isolated from Jesus Christ.
We do not move on from Jesus to
the Holy Spirit.
He always works in relationship to God the
Son.
In fact, my attitude to Jesus determines the
action of the Holy Spirit to me.
For instance, if I reject Jesus the Holy
Spirit convinces of sin.
If I receive Christ the Holy Spirit comes
into my heart.
If I yield to Christ the Holy Spirit
fills me.
If I obey Christ the Holy Spirit uses
me.
But these are not two separate things.
For the Holy Spirit convicting of sin is
Jesus knocking at the door.
And the Holy Spirit entering my life is
Christ coming in by faith.
And the Holy Spirit filling my life is
Jesus coming with all the fullness of the
Godhead into my heart.
And the Holy Spirit using me is Jesus
the Lord taking His servant who is prepared
to obey Him and thrusting him out and
using him.
The two are not separate.
You don't move from Jesus to the Holy
Spirit.
The Holy Spirit comes into your life to
make Jesus real.
To magnify the Son of God.
I pray, said Paul to the Ephesian church
in chapter 3 that you might be filled
with all the fullness of God.
And in Colossians 2, 9 he says in
Him, in Jesus dwells all the fullness of
the Godhead bodily.
My dear, dear friends you can't have more
than Jesus.
You can't have more than the fullness of
God in Christ.
You don't move away from Christ to something
else, to an experience.
He is in you by His Spirit to
make Jesus real, to magnify Him.
How do you magnify something?
Well, you can use a microscope or you
can use a telescope.
A microscope makes little things big.
But Jesus is never little.
A telescope makes distant things come near.
And Jesus is often distant.
Often distant.
And it is the ministry of the Spirit
in my heart to magnify the Lord and
make Him dear and near to me.
Until I begin to sing and say Jesus,
Thou joy of loving hearts Thou fount of
life, Thou light of man Jesus, the very
thought of Thee with sweetness fills my breast.
The Holy Spirit, therefore, glorifies Christ.
And that's the difference between reality and counterfeit.
Where your experience of the Holy Spirit glorifies
the experience, it's counterfeit.
Where it glorifies Jesus, it's real.
Now, I have just one more thing to
say.
Finally, brethren.
Though I remind you that Paul wrote the
letter to the church at Philippi and at
the beginning of the third chapter when he
was only half way through he said, finally,
brethren.
He became the father of all creatures.
Let me say, I couldn't just leave you
right there.
I've been talking to you about the crisis
experience.
An experience of the fullness of the Spirit
not identical with the new birth.
Not for the favored few, but for everybody.
Not something apart from the Lord Jesus.
Not a final experience, but increasing habit of
life.
Then, if that be so, how may He
be mine?
Oh, I can't let you go without trying
to answer that question.
But then, in putting the question I am
inclined to get into a dilemma.
Because I cannot put the Holy Spirit in
a straitjacket.
The wind bloweth where it whisteth.
Thou canst not tell the sound thereof whence
it cometh or whither it goeth.
So also is he that is born of
the Spirit of God.
Jesus is sovereign.
And right now as I've been talking to
you you may have said to you in
your heart Oh Lord, that man has been
saying something exactly what I need.
Jesus, fill me now.
And probably he's done it.
If you've asked him, he will do it.
But, if I may give you a suggestion
without calling it a formula if you want
to receive His fullness you must ask Him
you must ask Him Luke 11.13 How
much more shall your Heavenly Father give the
Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?
And that, of course, is not a sort
of willy-nilly intellectual desire.
It is a deep heart longing an intense
dissatisfaction with yourself.
Do you ever feel absolutely disgusted with yourself?
Well, so do I.
And I've never been nearer the Lord than
then.
And there's nobody nearer to Christ than the
person in this crowd tonight who's absolutely at
the end of the rope.
You are disgusted with yourself.
You've tried so often and you've struggled so
hard and the things all prove to wash
out and it's hardly worth carrying on the
only thing is to quit.
Hold it, my friend, hold it.
You're at the edge of a discovery.
Yes.
Because when I come to the end of
myself I'm just at the beginning of a
miracle of touching the reality of Heaven.
I receive forgiveness from my sins by stretching
out an empty hand and saying, Nothing in
my hand I bring simply to thy cross
I cling.
And if I want to be filled with
the Spirit I stretch out another empty hand
and say, Lord, I've nothing in my hand
I take by faith your life to indwell
and fill me.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after
righteousness for they shall be filled.
If any man thirst, that's desire.
Have you ever been thirsty?
I wish Major Thomas was here because at
this point I think I know him so
well that I could ask him to stand
up and say, Ian, come here and tell
this congregation your experiences at Benghazi in North
African desert in World War II when it
was being pushed back by Rommel and when
the British forces were being shoved back in
the African desert and they hadn't a drop
of water for a week.
Tongues sticking to their mouth unable to say,
unable to swallow absolute agony.
Oh, Jesus said, If any man thirst what
a wonderful thing to have a craving for
God like that.
None but Christ can satisfy none other name
but He.
If any man thirst, let him come.
That means emptiness.
I would never come to Jesus if I
think I can do it alone.
If I keep using my do-it-yourself
kit well, I'd never come to Jesus until
I'm empty.
Let him come to me and drink.
Drink?
Oh, what is more wonderful and what is
more easy than that?
That's simply taking.
Taking what he's there to offer.
Drink!
And he that believeth in me believeth on
me out of him shall flow rivers.
Oh, my friends and I just at this
moment why the river of God could begin
to flow this way.