Praise the Lord.
As I was preparing for this particular study
this morning, I was thinking about and reflecting
in my life about what really was the
difference in my spiritual life over the years.
What was the one thing that I could
look back and say in times where God
was really moving in my life and I
was walking close to Him, and other times
when I seemed to be struggling, what was
the difference?
And I think the difference, unquestionably, was my
willingness to be submitted to the Holy Spirit
and to ask the Holy Spirit to come
and reside and have control over my life.
I always noticed a pattern that when I
would essentially resist the Lord keeping me filled,
I would resist the times that I knew
I needed to be in prayer, when I
would resist even when I would hear preaching
the Lord saying, I need to fill you
completely.
When I would resist those times, what I
was really saying was, Lord, I want to
be in control.
I want to do my own thing because
I always knew in my conscience that if
the Holy Spirit took up residence completely in
me and I had been filled with the
Spirit, as He had said many times, be
you filled with the Spirit, then I would
be powerless to do my own will and
could not help but do His will.
I have always noticed that when I am
full of the Holy Spirit that I desire
the things of God.
I desire to be obedient to God.
I desire to do all the things that
I'm supposed to be doing as a Christian.
And the less and less I stay full,
the less and less I want the things
of God.
And these things are proportional.
And there are things that affect how much
I want to be filled with the Spirit.
Because sometimes we want to reserve a part
of ourselves to ourselves.
And we want to say, you know, Lord,
I want this much of me.
You can't have this part of me because
I want to do things on my own.
I want some space as it were.
And when we start thinking like this, we
have opened the door to the enemy.
And we really know it because we know
that when the enemy has opportunity to come
in, he will come in.
But for some reason we think, well, it'll
be okay because if I allow, if I
don't stay filled with the Spirit and things
come along, after all, there'll be another service
where I could turn and I could get
close to God again and then work all
this out.
But you know, that is very dangerous thinking.
We need to stay filled with the Spirit.
We need to remain full of the Holy
Ghost.
I remember Brother Birch talking about so much
over the years, how important it was to
stay full of the Holy Spirit.
Because when we stay full of the Holy
Spirit, we automatically by nature just go and
do His will.
And not only do we desire it, we
have the power to do it.
And it's important for us to realize this.
Our lesson this morning, I titled The Life
That Pleases God.
The Life That Pleases God.
Our text is Romans 8, verses 5 through
8.
For they that are after the flesh do
mind, do think about, do ponder.
They have upon their minds.
They allow to be the focal point of
their thinking.
They that are after the flesh do mind
the things of the flesh.
But they that are after the Spirit, the
things of the Spirit.
For to be carnally minded is death.
But to be spiritually minded is life and
peace.
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God.
For it is not subject to the law
of God, neither indeed can be.
So then they that are in the flesh
cannot please God.
The final sentence of Romans 8, 8 is
very sobering.
So then they that are in the flesh
cannot please God.
Now when we describe the flesh, we're talking
about humanness, our humanity apart from the direction
and power of the Holy Spirit.
Man left to himself without the influence of
the Holy Ghost becomes carnal.
If the Spirit of God is not resident
in an individual, they are carnal.
Will alone or willpower alone is not enough
to cease from sin.
It's not enough just to say, I'm going
to quit doing these things.
Or it's not enough to just try with
all your might.
Dunamis, on the other hand, is a dynamic
power of the Holy Spirit to meet any
need in the life of the born again
believer that is submitted to God, a person
that is walking and living full of the
Holy Spirit that has said, Holy Spirit, I
want you to come.
I want you to take authority in my
life.
See, that is that is the fulcrum of
whether we're going to have victory or be
in defeat.
That is the very center point.
That is the decision that we make when
we decide whether we're going to have victory
over sin or not.
The decision when you reduce it down to
its lowest common denominator is this simple thing.
Lord, I want you to come in and
take up residence and authority in my life.
I'm surrendering completely to you.
And I mean, you mean that from the
very depth of your being.
But when we say, I want to hold
back part, I want to be in charge.
I'll let you come in and, you know,
after all, you can give me advice.
You can do this, but you can't have
control.
That's when we get in trouble before spiritual
gifts, before manifestations of any kind.
God is concerned about a Christian walking in
full obedience to him.
See, God wants us to walk in full
obedience to him.
Disobedience is sin.
Now the born again believer has been freed
from the dynamic power of sin.
Now, that's sin with a capital S.
We're talking about sin, that that dynamic sin,
that that infestation, as it were, that come
in and totally polluted and corrupted human nature,
not sins as in the things we do
because we're under the influence and power of
sin, but sin, the very power, that very
thing that the scripture said entered sin, entered
sin is older than Adam.
OK, there was a time when sin had
not yet entered this world.
Sin is a dynamic force that came off,
as it were, from the serpent, and it
entered into Adam and into humanity, and it's
passed on from generation to generation in what's
known technically as original sin.
The born again believer has been freed from
this dynamic power of sin and has come
under the power of the Holy Spirit.
We discussed this in last week's lesson.
If you didn't get that, that would be
very helpful.
Where once the person was governed by the
law of sin and death, now they are
ruled by the law of the spirit of
life in Christ Jesus.
See, that is the difference.
When the Holy Spirit comes in, he will
will want us.
He will give us the power to will
and do his good pleasure.
You see that?
But when the Holy Spirit is not resident
in us or we're not submitted to him
at the level that we should be, in
other words, we're not full of the Holy
Spirit, we begin to struggle.
But when you're full of the Holy Ghost,
life is totally different.
You see life differently.
All of your appetites are different.
All of your appetites foster the continuance of
being full.
You see that when the Holy Spirit is
in charge, the reason why he's saying, I
don't want you doing this, I don't want
you doing this or I do want you
doing this or directing you this way and
that way is because the major focus at
first is to keep you full of the
Holy Spirit.
He wants you full.
And the enemy is always at work to
try to bring you to a place to
where you're getting farther and farther away from
God, hardened and more hardened to the Spirit.
In other words, you're not as full, you're
emptying out as it were.
We could think of it in the metaphor.
He wants to empty you out of the
Holy Spirit.
I tell the young people, I told them
a few years ago at camp, I said,
don't let the devil put a hole in
your Dixie cup.
Because as soon as things are being poured
in, the Holy Spirit is being poured out
in your life, it's running out.
What is that?
The enemy has a stronghold or something that
you're doing in your life that you run
right back to it.
As soon as you do, it just quenches
off the influence of the Holy Ghost and
the Holy Spirit, the Spirit, as it were,
as it were, rolls out.
The law of sin and death is the
mosaic law, hopelessly attempted to be lived out
in the strength of the arm of the
flesh, which cannot be made subject to the
law of God because of the law of
sin, which is in our members.
You say, what is the law of sin?
The law of sin is that inward dynamic
that wants to rebel against everything God has
said just because he says that.
But when the Holy Spirit is in place,
that is dead in us.
Understand the law of Moses could only expose
the presence of sin in a unregenerate person
or a person who was not born again.
In regeneration, we are dead to sin through
Christ and made alive spiritually by the law
of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
See, understand that when the Holy Spirit comes,
he brings life.
He brings our ability to communicate with God.
But not only that, he gives us the
power to will and to do his good
pleasure.
Without the Holy Spirit in us, we will
fall after carnal things more and more.
They will get a foothold in our life.
This brings us again to the end of
our text.
They that are in this flesh cannot please
God.
It is impossible to please God without the
influence and the power of the Holy Spirit.
Christians who try to keep rules or laws
are not to be understood as walking in
the spirit to just simply getting rid of
some bad habits.
And now I come to church and things
like this.
That is not the same as walking in
the spirit.
Now, understand that when the Holy Ghost comes,
you will probably give up a lot of
bad habits, all of them, and you will
start coming to church.
But just coming in our own strength and
power is something completely different than walking in
the spirit.
Giving up bad habits, conforming to a code
of ethics is not the same as walking
in the spirit.
The Pharisees lived out many such laws and
traditions, but they were not walking in the
spirit.
See, they were doing these things under their
own strength and power.
They were walking according to their own code.
And this is where I think so many
Christians totally misunderstand the true essence of Christianity.
The true essence of Christianity is to be
filled with the Holy Spirit.
And through that, the Holy Spirit causes us
to walk in his ways as we know
them to be.
It's not a wrestle or a struggle.
When you're full of the Holy Ghost, it's
not a struggle.
When you start dwindling down, it becomes a
struggle.
And then you have to really just put
the willpower in and say, I'm going to
do it.
But what you really should do as soon
as you start feeling yourself, you know, I
don't really want to come to church.
I really don't want to worship God.
I would really just go rather do this
thing or that.
What you need to do seriously is find
an altar and pray through until God just
fills you with the Holy Ghost.
And when you get up on your feet
again, you'll say, wow, I can't wait till
service.
I can't wait till God is moving again.
You see, there's a difference.
You're never in your own self ever going
to want to do anything to serve the
Lord.
They were doing in their own power their
best to please God, and they continually fell
short and refused to admit it.
There's another aspect of being in the flesh
that the Pharisees taught us.
They wouldn't admit it.
So Jesus continually had to show them that
what you're doing is fleshly.
It's not the life of the spirit.
They're trying to keep the letter of the
law and the strength of the flesh when
they needed.
Watch this to fulfill the righteous requirements of
the law by walking in the spirit because
the spirit and the word agree.
Listen, the Holy Spirit will lead us into
all truth.
As we're in the word of God, he
will lead us and put in us that
desire to will and to do his good
pleasure.
Because of this, the Pharisees could never please
God.
You remember Jesus said, except your righteousness should
exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees,
you will in no wise enter in the
kingdom.
Why is that?
Because what they were doing was all fleshly
things, things in their own carnal power.
It was not the life of the spirit
being worked out through them.
Section C, the genuine Christian life cannot be
lived out in our own power.
Paul writes to the Galatians, Are you so
foolish, having begun in the spirit?
Are you now made perfect by the flesh?
These are strong words.
Amen.
It is foolish to think that a person
can simply conform to some rules and think
in themselves that they are perfect.
Only the Holy Spirit can bring us to
the place of perfection in obedience to Christ.
Now watch what this word, this particular Greek
word for perfect means.
The word perfect is the Greek word epitolio,
and it means to fulfill farther, to fulfill
farther.
It was as if Paul was saying, having
begun in the spirit, are you now going
to fulfill farther the righteousness of the law
by the flesh?
Listen, that is impossible.
Listen, the flesh, I use this little illustration.
I said the flesh is an enmity with
God.
It would almost be like you've heard the
old saying, the fox guarding the chicken house.
See, that's the flesh trying to live out
the law of God.
The flesh doesn't see it as a work
to watch the chickens.
The flesh sees opportunity to break the laws
of God when it sees the law.
The flesh, it cannot be made subject to
the law.
So apart from the Holy Spirit filling us,
we in our own power only want to
rebel against God.
And the laws of God only create all
kinds of concupiscence and all kinds of desires.
Why?
Simply because God said not to do it.
The law brings sin to life in a
person who is unregenerate.
Thus, the commandment, watch this, the commandment in
the life of a person that is not
filled with the spirit, becomes a weapon in
the hand of the flesh with which it
wars against the soul.
Think about that.
The commandment actually becomes a weapon in the
hand of the flesh to war against your
own soul.
Why?
Because the flesh seizes that opportunity to rebel
against God.
You say, well, how do we do that?
When we're filled with the spirit, the Holy
Spirit comes in and takes authority and then
the flesh is essentially dead.
Why?
Because of Christ that dwells in us.
And we're going to get in that in
the next section.
Although an unregenerate sinner has the general propensity
to do what's simple.
In other words, they continue to just want
to do naturally what's simple.
He seems to feel the most delight in
transgressing the known laws of God.
Paul said, I had not known love except
it had been said, thou shall not covet.
And as soon as God said, thou shall
not covet, the flesh rises up and sees
an opportunity to rebel against God.
This is the evidence of sin, capital F,
capital F, sin dwelling in us.
That is what entered Adam.
And when it came in, it corrupted man's
nature to where man wanted to rebel against
God, just like Satan.
If God says north, the devil says south.
You understand that?
He wants to do the opposite and rebel.
And that corruption came into humanity in the
form of sin, sin with a capital S.
So what defines being in the flesh or
being in the spirit?
Scripture says, But ye are not in the
flesh, but are in the spirit, if so
be that the spirit of God dwell in
you.
Now, any man have not the spirit of
Christ, he is none of his.
And if Christ be in you, the body
is dead because of sin.
But the life spirit, rather, is life because
of righteousness.
This is a most important truth.
Why?
Because of the fact that Christ dwells in
you by the Holy Spirit.
The body is dead.
The sinfulness of you is dead.
It's cut off.
Think about that.
It is cut off.
The body that was ruled by sin is
now dead to sin, but because Christ condemned
sin in the flesh.
You hear Brother Birch say it all the
time, and I couldn't give a better illustration.
When Jesus comes, sin, capital S, moves out
and he moves in.
You see that?
They can't both dwell in the same place.
See, when he's here, he, by virtue of
the fact that he is almighty, takes authority
over the devil, authority over the flesh, authority
over the things of this world, and you
walk in harmony with his will.
Literally, Christ took sin down into death at
the cross.
This is the finished work of the cross.
This is the thing that I mentioned in
passing last week that Jimmy Swaggart discovered.
He discovered that oftentimes what we try to
do is just resist sin and resist this
temptation and resist lust and all that when
the key to everything is just fully submitting
to God.
Fully submit so you're full of the Holy
Ghost.
You cannot resist the things of this world
unless the Holy Spirit has come in.
It's the same with the devil, and we
will touch on that again later.
Literally, Christ took sin down into death at
the cross.
Once Christ was dead, sin had lost all
opportunity to defile and corrupt him.
See, sin only had a limited opportunity.
Devil only had a limited opportunity while he
lived in the days of his flesh, and
once he died, that was it.
Sin was cut off in its power forever
in him.
So when we are in him, sin is
dead because of what he did at the
cross, and he that is dead to sin
dies no more.
Death has no dominion over him as it
is written, for in that he, Christ, died.
He died unto sin once, but in that
he liveth, he liveth unto God.
Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead
indeed to sin, but alive unto God through
Jesus Christ our Lord.
Not in your own strength, not in your
own willpower, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
How does that happen?
By remaining continuously full of the Holy Spirit.
That's the only way.
It's not enough just to say, well, I'm
yielding to the Lord and I'm trusting the
Lord.
No, we need to find a place, we
need to find an altar in our life
on a continuous basis so that we stay
filled with the power of the Holy Spirit
so we can walk in victory over sin.
This is the finished work of the cross,
working its power in us to destroy the
power of sin.
See, we can't do it in ourselves.
Christ has already done it.
All we need is to be filled with
the Spirit so that being filled with the
Spirit, we're filled with him, and the finished
work of the cross is in effect in
our lives.
In Christ, if Christ, rather, is in us
through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit,
the flesh is dead.
Period.
If you're full of the Holy Ghost, the
flesh is dead to influence your life.
So we see then, section E, that the
indwelling propensity to sin caused by the flesh
is broken.
Through the finished work of the cross of
Calvary, we have both been crucified to the
world and the world unto us, and we
are dead to the flesh.
Think of how awesome that is.
Think about the total completion of us being
redeemed from sin by just having the Holy
Spirit filling us continually.
We're crucified to the world.
We're crucified to the flesh.
And thirdly, by being in submission to God,
we resist the devil and he flees from
us.
That's total victory.
That's total victory over sin.
But again, the battle is in your will.
Your will is always going to want to
answer this one question.
Will I or will I not be filled
with the Spirit?
When you start saying, I don't want to
be full of the Holy Ghost, what you're
telling God is, I want to control this
part of my life.
That has always been the struggle in my
life.
When I look back over my life and
I wonder, why did I struggle in this
area?
Why did I struggle?
It always happened because there was a point
when God would say, you need to be
filled.
And I said, you know, not today because
you know what?
I'm going to be in control.
And when the Holy Spirit is there, your
life is totally different when you're walking in
the Spirit.
You see everything differently.
God leads you in a path that will
keep you full.
The means by which all of this happens
is the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit
that comes through the born again experience when
we are baptized into Jesus Christ.
That's that salvation.
We haven't even begun to talk about the
baptism in the Holy Ghost.
Think about how awesome this is.
This is just the general born again experience.
In verse four, we read, Therefore, we are
buried with him by baptism into death, that
like his Christ was raised up from the
dead by the glory of the Father, even
so we also should walk in newness of
life.
The presence of the Holy Spirit in our
life brings to pass all of these things
as a matter of reality and not theory.
Somebody would say, you know, well, that's real
good on paper, brother, but it's not a
reality in my life.
If it's not, it's simply because you need
to be filled.
You need to be full of the Holy
Ghost.
That is the honest reality.
Section F to summarize these passages.
We see then that the flesh or some
call it that simple principle dwelt in us
before before we were filled and its motions
were the proof of its indwelling.
In effect, sin reigned in the temple of
our body.
Now the Holy Spirit dwells in us and
the witness of the spirit is there and
the fruit of the spirit is yielded in
our lives to evidence that he being present,
he is ruling and reigning in the temple.
That's the issue.
That's the bottom line.
Adam Clark comments on Romans nine.
He said God made man a union with
himself and his heart was his temple.
Sin being committed, the temple was defiled and
God abandoned it.
You see why it's so important to walk
in obedience when we grieve the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit, as it were, begins to
distance from us.
We only become weaker and weaker and weaker.
And the less of the presence of God
that exists in our life, the less we
desire the things of God, the less that
we think that we can walk in holiness,
the less we even believe we can live
a sinless life.
But when you're filled and full of the
Holy of the Holy Ghost, you know differently.
But when the Spirit of God pulls off,
you say this is impossible.
And guess what?
You're right.
It is impossible without the fullness of the
spirit.
It is totally impossible.
The sin having entered the temple was defiled.
God abandoned it.
Jesus Christ has come by his sacrifice and
spirit to cleanse the temple and make man
again.
Listen, the habitation of God through the spirit.
There's no other religion on Earth where the
man's God comes and lives in him.
That is the essence of Christianity, not that
we keep rules, but that Christ is in
us living out our life through his life
through us.
And when the almighty spirit of the Holy
Ghost again makes the heart his residence, then
the soul is delivered.
Watch this from the moral effects of the
fall.
When you're full of the Holy Ghost, sin
has absolutely no power over you.
The world has absolutely no power over you
and neither does the devil.
And that this is absolutely necessary to our
present peace and final salvation is proved from
this, that if any man have not the
spirit of Christ, that man that was in
him produced there by the power of the
Holy Spirit, he is none of his.
He does not belong, Adam Clark says, to
the kingdom, the flock or the family of
God.
This is an awful conclusion.
He summarizes reader lay it to heart that
was written.
Think about this in the early 1800s.
He's talking about the necessity of the Holy
Spirit dwelling and living in our life.
The whole reason why the book of Galatians
was written, it was written to tell us
that you cannot live this life in the
flesh because what identifies you as a Christian
is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, not
anything else, not conforming, conforming to God, not
because you're circumcised, not because you're a child
of Abraham, none of those things.
It is only the indwelling presence of the
Holy Spirit manifested in the fruit of the
spirit in your life.
Section G.
So with this so great salvation having been
purchased on the cross of Calvary, why are
so many struggling with sin?
Is it possible to have the spirit of
God and not walk in the spirit?
Let me tell you what I believe happens,
OK?
When we start allowing the things of this
world to grab our affection, we no longer
desire to be full of the Holy Ghost.
And that right there is a statement you
could go home with today, because that is
the bottom line.
When you allow the things of this world
to steal your affection for being full of
the Holy Spirit, for Jesus Christ, and you
start going after other things, saying, no, God,
I'm not going to be full because you
know what?
Today I'm going to have a break from
you.
I'm going to have a break this morning
from you.
I'm going to break from you for about
a week.
I need a vacation from you, God.
In the world, the flesh and the devil
begin taking over and you have less and
less desire to be full and you begin
to despair, you begin to get angry, you
begin to say things like there's no way
a person can live right.
Everyone's a sinner.
You start thinking, I guarantee you that guy
is in sin.
I guarantee you that guy is in sin.
You know why you think that?
Because you're in despair.
You're in despair and you're rightly in despair
because without the fullness and the power of
the Holy Spirit in your life, there is
no way you can live right.
We have a clue in Galatians 5, 24
and 25, and they that are Christ have
crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.
If we live in the spirit, let us
also walk in the spirit.
And again, for if you live after the
flesh, you shall die.
But if you through the spirit, listen out
through the spirit, not in your own power,
not because you gritted your teeth and you
were just so disciplined.
But if you through the spirit do mortify,
destroy, make dead the deeds of the body,
you shall live.
That's the only way.
For as many as are led by the
spirit of God, they are the sons of
God.
This seems to indicate quite clearly that we
are required to walk in the spirit in
order to claim child of God status.
Or more excellently, we might say, if you
are truly born again, you will be led
of the spirit.
And the question that ultimately comes down to
is this.
Well, at what point am I lost?
I have no clue.
Only Christ could answer that.
But that's really the wrong question to ask.
The question to ask is how full can
I be and remain?
But as human beings, we always tend to
think, well, Lord, what's the minimum requirement that
I might walk as close to it as
possible?
But that's a horrible way of thinking.
And that's why I believe you can travel
the Bible from cover to cover and you
will never find that line where it seems
to indicate, well, this is the point that
I'm really right and I'm not because God
never left us with that.
That big fat question mark should cause us
to pursue the Lord with all of our
heart.
Matthew Henry, the great commentator, offers some insight
into this passage.
He writes, consider the consequences.
What will be at the end of the
way at the end of life?
Here are life and death, blessing and cursing
set before us.
If you live after the flesh, you will
die.
That is, die eternally, he says.
It is the pleasing and serving and gratifying
of the flesh that are the ruin of
the soul.
That is the second death.
Dying indeed is the soul dying.
The death of the same is but a
sleep.
But on the other hand, you shall live,
live and live happily in eternity.
That is the true life.
If you through the spirit mortify the deeds
of the body that is subdued and keep
under all fleshly lusts and affections, deny yourself
in the pleasing and humoring of the body.
And this through the spirit, we cannot do
it without the spirit working it in us.
And the spirit will not do it without
our doing our endeavor.
What an awesome statement.
I couldn't summarize it any better if I
had to.
What's our endeavor?
Our endeavor is this.
Lord, fill me with your spirit.
Take control of my life.
I mean, from the depths of your soul.
And sometimes, you know what?
Life might have to deal you some kind
of tragic circumstance just so you will release
that willingness.
Because so long as you can get by,
so long as you can just make it.
Well, I'm not killed nobody yet.
I'm still coming to church.
We're just making it.
We'll keep doing that.
But listen to what Matthew Henry is saying
here.
Ultimately, the finality of that, because it's progressive,
will eventually kill us and we must do
our endeavor.
What is that?
Submit to the Holy Ghost.
Say, God, fill me every day of your
life.
Spirit of God, fill me.
Walk and live in that fullness so that
in a word, he continues.
We are put upon this dilemma either to
displease the body or destroy the soul.
Think about that.
That's the bottom line.
We either displease the body or we destroy
the soul because you can't leave the flesh
and still live at the same time eternally.
From this, we gather that the true saints
of God will persevere in continuing to serve
Christ as evidenced by the ongoing production of
the fruit of the spirit in their life.
That is the reality.
So we return again to our text.
They that are in the flesh cannot please
God.
But who are in the flesh?
We get a clue from Romans eight and
nine.
If so, be that the spirit of God
dwell in you.
Listen, if you're full of the Holy Ghost,
you cannot be in the flesh.
That is the clear teaching of Scripture.
That is a contradiction that is schizophrenic Christianity.
It's not possible.
If a person is acting out in their
carnality, what is happening is they're not as
full of the spirit as they need to
be.
And the flesh is trying to seize control
in their life.
And they're struggling.
They're halting between two opinions.
And the only help for this is to
be refilled with the spirit.
That is a huge issue.
Those who are in the flesh are those
who have not the spirit of God.
When the Holy Spirit is present, the person
will produce fruit.
Watch this passage for when you were the
servants of sin, you were free from righteousness.
What fruit had you then in those things
where of you are now ashamed for the
end of those things, Paul says, is death.
But now being made free from sin and
become the servants of God, you have your
fruit unto holiness.
There's that word holiness in the end, everlasting
life for the wages of sin is death.
But the gift of God is eternal life
through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Notice in this passage that imputed and imparted
righteousness are both in you.
We talked about it last week.
It's not just that God transfers righteousness to
your account so that you're justified before God
and you're actually saved, declared righteous.
But he, at the same time, imparts his
genuine righteousness to you so that you will
live righteously.
These things happen together.
Both transfers take place together, OK?
Often we want just the imputed, but not
the imparted.
That's impossible.
This agrees with Ephesians 2, with Ephesians 2,
verses 8 and 9 say, for by grace
are you saved through faith, that not of
yourselves.
It is the gift of God, not of
works, lest any man should vote.
Most people stop there.
But that's just imputed righteousness.
That's just the gift of eternal life.
The second part of that, which comes along
with it, is for we are his workmanship
created in Christ Jesus under good works for
which God has before ordained that we should
walk in them.
Those scriptures have to be said together, or
only a half truth is being told.
You are the servants of sin.
You were, when you were in sin, bearing
fruit that you are now ashamed of that
was leading you to eternal death.
But the free gift of righteousness made you
a servant of God and his righteousness bearing
fruit unto holiness, which ends in eternal life.
So we're going to change gears for just
a second.
We're going to change gears because I think
that until we understand as Christians that holiness
is something that God absolutely requires, we are
never going to know the fullness of the
Spirit like we need to.
I believe that we are seeing, and it
devastates me, it keeps me awake at night,
many nights, when other people are doing other
things, thinking about other things, this one thought
is in my mind.
There is a generation that is passing away
and going on to their reward, and the
generation that is behind them do not believe
in holiness.
Do you know that the entire Pentecostal movement
was birthed from the Wesleyan holiness revival?
That was the very foundation that made it
possible for people to begin to even think
right.
People weren't thinking right.
The whole change, the whole thinking of a
generation of churchgoers had to be changed, and
this took place over the period of about
a hundred years, from about the 17, oh
probably really about the 1730s to about the
early 1900s, maybe 1901.
People come to expect that holiness was normal.
You see that?
It was normal.
Generation after generation after generation.
The generation that believed in living like they
wanted to had passed away, and the only
people that lived and existed were people that
were raised up from the time they were
a child, from the youngest to the everybody
believed holiness was normal.
But you know what's happened?
We have lost in our generation.
You know why we're losing Pentecost?
Because we're losing holiness.
Because the mind of the people is not
right.
See, the people took things too far, I
believe, in the early 1900s, and then when
the power of God wasn't there, it didn't
make sense, so they cast it all off,
and then their whole mindset changed.
They started thinking, you know, all the people
did was keep all these mean, silly rules
and all that, and then the restraints started
being cast off, and you know what?
There was no end to that casting off.
No end to it.
If you were to talk to the average
person, say, 25 years and older, has been
in church all their life about holiness, they
will look at you like you are crazy,
by and large.
You're crazy, man.
What are you talking about?
I'm staying from the world.
What do you mean that I can't go
and do all these certain things and still
be a Christian?
Oh, you might still do it and make
it by the skin of your teeth, but
you're not going to be full of the
Spirit.
You're not going to do it and walk
in the power of the Holy Ghost, and
watch this for a minute.
This is a violent, vicious circle, because when
this mindset is in place, there is no
power and authority with which to really preach,
and because of that, there's no power and
authority to convince the people that there needs
to be a change.
So now we're locked in a dilemma.
We're locked in a vicious dilemma.
So what's going to have to change?
What's going to have to happen to change
people's minds?
Listen, you cannot stay full of the Holy
Ghost and go off doing whatever things that
you want to do.
When you expose yourself to the things of
this world, when you run after the world,
you are in contradiction to your own self,
which really all it proves is that you're
not full.
That's the real proof.
So then what happens is the definition of
being full gets changed.
I spoke in tongues, so I'm full of
the Holy Ghost, and I'm classical Pentecostal.
If God spared my life every many years,
I would take that message to my generation.
Maybe that's why he raised me up, a
beggar from the dunghill, a snot-nosed little
seven-year-old kid riding the van to
the Rose of Sharon Church.
Maybe that's why I'm here.
Maybe that's why when everyone else is thinking,
Rob, just lighten up, I'm looking around at
the world and I'm thinking, we're slipping.
We're slipping bad.
We're slipping fast.
Everyone else is walking around smiling, Rob, why
do you look like that?
Why can't you sleep?
Because we're slipping.
Time's running out.
The generations that believed in living in holiness
are passing away.
And what happens in my generation?
If I'm the rare guy, I'm the guy
that looks like the religious fanatic.
I'm the nut.
Oh, you know, you know how people discount
me?
Let me tell you, Josh, how to do
it.
It's how it happens.
Oh, you know, Rob, you know how he
is.
Listen, it takes a consensus among us to
establish holiness.
One man can't do it.
People can paint religious nut on the guy
all they want.
But you know, the reality is, if we
would get a consensus in our generation of
people that believe that we need to walk
with the Lord, I'm crucified to the world.
I'm crucified to all of the things in
this world.
I want to walk and live in obedience
to God.
I don't want the world.
I don't have an appetite for the world.
Hear me.
One of the saddest stories I ever heard,
and this is crazy, was when Pompei back
around, oh, probably it's been over 2000 years
ago, charged in Jerusalem and he wanted to
run up into the holiest of holies.
So he ran through the court of women.
Then he ran through the court of the
Gentiles.
Then he ran through the court of the
holy place into the blackness of the holy
of holies.
And when he got there, he screamed out,
God isn't here.
God is not here.
But what happens in so many churches today
for a young person to get to God,
they got to run through the tennis court,
the basketball court, the volleyball court.
And when they get into the service, they
scream out like Pompei, God is not here.
And it's blackness and darkness in the house.
You hear what I'm saying?
We have measured on the miners until we
don't even have what we need to reach
a generation.
So they can paint religious nudge on me
if they want, because I'm going to declare
it in my generation.
And I believe there is a group of
young people that want to walk with God.
If you don't believe that you should have
been here Friday night.
There were so many young people here.
I've never seen in several years, at least
a youth meeting with that many teenagers, hungry
seeking God, young people here that were suicidal
on the brink of taking their own life,
but allowing God to move.
God exposed that.
And young people later said, you don't even
know.
One, one person said later, you don't even
know I was going to kill myself in
the next two days.
I would have taken the story of his
life.
He said, I'm sure he would have.
I'm sure he would have.
But you see the importance of when the
Pompei of our generation run through the courts,
they get here.
They say, Oh, God is here.
What was me?
I am undone.
I need a savior.
I need to be filled with the spirit,
but it's going to take hold in this
church.
And that's going to have to be a
serious change in our thinking.
There are so many things that I could
do and make it is just go with
the flow.
And before it was over, Pentecost would be
dead.
There'd be no movement of spirit.
Everything would be nothing but programs, programs, programs,
another book on how to build your church,
another one, another one, another one, nothing but
just one man made thing after the other,
propping things up.
I mentioned this to an older gentleman that
lives in England.
I said, brother, there are just so many
things that have come in that are just
programs that that and he reduced me.
You know what he said?
He said, brother, understand something.
Taking the programs out is not going to
put life back in the carcass.
Only the Holy Ghost can do that.
These things are there as as like a
defibrillator and like a pacemaker keeping things going.
But the reality is we need the Holy
Spirit.
We need an awesome move of God to
breathe life back into it.
And I thought, you know what?
He's right.
Don't rebuke the pacemaker until you've got breath.
Take the pacemaker off, you just check out
life support.
The life support is in place, but we
need a church to get out of the
bed, to get on its feet full of
the spirit, not propped up by any of
man's device and walk with God and show
this generation world what it is to have
a people that were set apart to him
for his name.
He must have a people in the earth
that are different.
I just want to read one little statement
to you.
Andrew Bonner, the hymn writer.
One hundred years ago made a horrifying and
sobering statement.
He said this.
I looked for the church and I found
it in the world.
I looked for the world and I found
it in the church.
And there in is our destruction, that mixture.
There must be a separation.
There must be a peculiarity.
There must be.
We are not after these things.
Our perspective is eternal, not temporal.
We have to have a higher view of
life.
We have to see things through the eyes
of eternity, not through the eyes of of
just temporal things.
And that only comes church.
Hear me.
And it's a decision that we have to
make when we just say this.
Holy Spirit, take control of my life.
Fill me through and through.
And you stay there.
You pray.
You do as one preacher did.
Draw a little circle on the floor.
You get down on the floor.
You get in that circle and you say,
God, send a Holy Ghost revival inside this
little circle.
And you stay there until you get up
under the power and the authority of God.
And you walk with him and you demonstrate
to the world what it is to be
a genuine believer.
Anybody?
Brother Birch?
Come on now.
All right.
Yes.
Ministry.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Come on now.
Yes.
Amen.
Absolutely.
Yes.
Praise God.
Yes.
Amen.
It was awesome.
Yes.
That was very awesome.
I praise God for what he's doing in
our young people.
But you have a group that are praying
today.
For those of you who may not know,
the whole district is coming together and praying
and not just Mary had a little lamb
prayer.
So I'm talking people coming and seeking the
face of God so that when you come
through the door, you can feel the ocean
of the Holy Ghost.
And now people are praying until God moves.
And it's really starting to bear fruit.
Praise God for that.
Anyone else want to share before we turn
it over?
God bless you guys.