Well, again, it's a great privilege
to be with you here today, especially in light of the the message that
we've just heard. It is. It is always so spectacular
to have Christ publicly portrayed. Pastor, if you truly want your
people to serve him, then present Christ before them as crucified
and as raised from the dead on their behalf. Explain to them
the inner workings of the cross. It is the mystery of all true
godliness. It is the very catalyst of true
piety. Truly converted people, they
do not need to be driven with a whip. They just need to know
the love of God in the person of Jesus Christ. You know, I
preached last night. On the sufferings of Christ and
the forsakenness of Christ. Brother Whitney preached. on
the forsakenness of Christ and the sufferings of Christ. And
I told Dr. Beeky, you know, every minister who got up here, every
one of them could have taken the same text, preached on the
same thing, and it would not have been old to any of us that
know him. As a matter of fact, we all could
have taken the same manuscript and read it. And for those who
are truly converted, each time it would have been beautiful
and each time there would have been something different manifested. And for me. I have to tell you
something, it's there are many of you here and many of the preachers
I've preached with here before who know the cross so much, far
more than I do, and you preach on it so faithfully. But I have
to tell you something in God's providence. In God's providence,
not it not because of anyone's fault. That's the first time
in all the years of my life. That I have been preaching and
I have listened to another man. In a pulpit. Talk about Christ
being crushed under the wrath of God. And it's not because. There are preachers here who
are unfaithful in preaching it. There are faithful men here.
But in God's providence, it's the first time I ever saw someone
else do that. And I learned something. I saw
the power of preaching. Because I've read Spurgeon. And
who portrays the cross better than Spurgeon or Edwards or Flavel?
I've read them. But I can say that today, hearing
it expounded, it had more power than when I read it in a book.
That that excites me. Men, the cross, get to know the
Christ of the cross. Therein lies the power of everything,
the mystery of true godliness. And any time you stray away from
that. And you put anything before the
gospel, it's doctrines of demons. If it's drawing you away from
the cross. Well, one other thing I want to say before I get to
my message, and I want you to know that flattery is not only
an offense to God, but it's an offense to the man that you're
flattering. But I have to say something.
Almost everywhere I go in the United States, anytime I talk
about prayer, Or devotion. Some seminary student comes up
to me, I can't tell you how many times, and when I get done teaching,
they say, Do you know Don Whitney? And I go, Yeah, why? Well, sort
I met him once. Why? He taught me to pray. He taught me about devotion.
I mean, I was learning so many big thoughts and big things,
but I had gotten away from my time alone with God. And when
I took his class, God showed me that all that other stuff,
although it is so important, if I don't meet with him, it's
meaningless. And I want you to know in this rise of expository
preaching, there are two things that I would like to see along
with it. First of all, Like I said last night, if exposit if they
walk away from your church talking about your expository preaching
or your handling of the text, I'm sorry. That's idolatry. Expository preaching only has
value to the degree that it directs the faces of God's people to
God and to Christ. So I want and not just expository
preaching, but Christ centered spirit empowered expository preaching. Other than that, you're just
giving people history lessons or moral lessons. The other thing
I would like to see an elevation of prayer. Because it is even
though their intellect was expansive, the Puritans, and it's hard at
times to follow them and and I don't. Hey, I love the Puritans,
but let me throw the early Baptist in there also. There are a lot
of godly men out there. And it is easier to follow their
intellect than it is to imitate their piety. Never forget talking
about the theology of David Brainerd, it was the theology of David
Brainerd that drove him to his knees in the snow. Until icicles
are basically hanging from his face as he weeps over the Indians
of New England. And prayer. Now, I'm going to
I'm going to talk about I'm going to go to several different places
and just because prayer deserves a conference in itself. But I
want you to go to Matthew five because I want to lay a foundation
and I'm going to be moving quickly and this probably won't be the. The best of methodology of preaching
or whatever, but I want to communicate several things to you today.
Before I start, though, let me say this. I want people to pray
as I want to pray more, but I also do not want to drive good men
and good women. I do not want to heap condemnation
upon them. We should all be able to communicate
truth through the scripture, but not every one of us is a
Dr. Lawson. We should all give and tithe,
but not all of us have the gift of giving. We should all evangelize,
but not all of us are Ray Comfort. In the same way, we should all
pray. But I also believe that there
are people specifically gifted who can go farther in this in
prayer. It's a grace that God has given
them. I don't want you to try to imitate someone else. I want
you to go to Christ. I want you to abide in Him. I
want you to rest in Him. And I do want you to pray, but
I don't want some other man to be your standard. That's false. Secondly, I want you to know
this. I have discovered in my own life, I've discovered also
in the lives of other men, and my wife is always reminding me
this. There are times and seasons of
greater prayer. According to the now we need
to pray every day, but there are also times and seasons of
prayer. My wife will remind me, you know,
I'll say to her, you know, I'm not praying as I was before.
And she says, yes, but you're studying now more than you were.
There are times it seems when God will lead me into a season
of prayer when it's Prayer, prayer, prayer, and in the end, I always
see the reason for it. And even though I must pray every
day, there are also times when there's more time given to either
public ministry or more time given to to the study of scripture,
the administration of the mission. And so I also don't want you
to be comparing different stages of your life. That is extremely
dangerous. Now, one other thing that I want
to share about prayer. There was a time in my life.
When prayer and I'm just going to say this because it's true,
prayer was as easy as breathing. And it was it was no problem
whatsoever for me to go hours and hours a day in prayer. Now,
I wondered why everyone else didn't pray that way. Well, God answered my question.
Then I came to a time when I couldn't pray like that, and I have to
be honest with you, I've never been able to duplicate those
few years of prayer again in my life. Now, again, let's not
make an excuse for prayerlessness, but I do not want condemnation
to be heaped upon you. What the Lord showed me was he
in his providence, he wanted me to pray like that. And he
gave me the will and he empowered me to do so. Do you see what
I'm saying? And for all my discipline and
everything else, I have never been able to duplicate that.
There have been a few times right before something was going to
happen, either the mission or the mission field, when the Lord
again enabled me to pray like that. But what I learned was
this, those times of exceptional prayer did not come from exceptional
piety. It was the providence of God,
mysterious working of His grace that gave the will and the power
to do so. Do you see? So I always see Christians
walking around just full of condemnation and all sorts of things about
what they're not in their prayer life. And I don't want to add
to that. I want to admonish you to pray. but within your callings,
within your giftings, and within the providence of God in your
life, okay? Now, let's look at Matthew 5.
Look at verse 13 because we're kind of talking about missions
also. You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has become
tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer
good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot
by men. Now, we hear this verse all the time and it's usually
used in order to build up or support a militant type of Christianity. You know, let's have Jesus marches,
let's go out into the street, let's do this and do that because
we're the salt. Let's get the salt out of the
salt shaker onto the meat. And we hear all these wonderful
sermons on this. Well, the problem is, is this
as we've been taught this verse, there's some other verses around
this verse. And they really help us, I think, to understand something
that I rarely hear about this text. Now, first of all, what
I believe he's saying is this. Salt has certain properties,
certain elements to salt, certain distinctive characteristics.
Now, you take those characteristics away, you no longer have salt. You take those characteristics
away and you even put good characteristics in their place. And guess what?
You still no longer have salt. So Jesus is saying there are
certain elements or characteristics to true discipleship that will
impact the world, that will impact the world. Now, what are they? Blessed are the poor in spirit,
blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the gentle, blessed
are those who hunger and thirst. for righteousness, blessed are
the merciful, blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are the
peacemakers, blessed are those who have been persecuted. Do
you want to know what will advance the kingdom of God? Do you know
what will make you a true disciple? It's not your militant activity. It's not some program that worked
in another church. It's the people of God. Growing
in Christ likeness and in growing like Christ likeness, they actually
become these Beatitudes. That is power, character, virtue
is power. After all, the world's heard
a lot of noise from the church. Leonard Ravenhill used to say,
everybody wants to give Christianity a new definition. What the world
is waiting for is a new demonstration of Christianity. Now, why do
I say that? Well, because at the top of this
list is blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those. Who recognize their absolute
dependence upon God. And this is where I'm very afraid. I really am. Even for this seeming
renewal and reformation, especially young guys, listen to me. This reform truth is not just
about soteriology, and it's mostly most certainly not just about
Calvinism. It is about a high view of God. A mighty, magnificent God, who
now you're going to say amen, but some of you aren't going
to know what you're amening when you say amen. Who doesn't need
all your cleverness. who doesn't need your contextualization,
who doesn't need your relevancy, who doesn't need all the things
you think you need to reach certain groups of people, when in fact
a church plant should never seek to reach a certain group of people
because the beauty of the church is that the local church is not
made up of just rich people or just poor people or just young
people. The beauty and power of the church
is all these different people who normally wouldn't get along
are all together. So actually, in all your cleverness,
you're fighting against God and you're making his church look
deformed. Now, you know why I preach in
a lot of places once, but I will continue saying this, my friend,
don't talk to me about a high view of God if you are going
to trust in the arm of the flesh. The more you cut yourself off
from the arm of the flesh, the more you will see the power of
God. It is Gideon's cull. And so many people that are experts
in so many things do not even understand a simple Bible story.
The Gideon's cull. Gideon, mighty, mighty warrior. Can you imagine? He's hiding. Go get an army. Your army is
too big. It's still too big. Why is it
too big? Because if you have a big army. Then after you get this victory,
you'll write a book and it'll come out in life way. And you'll be telling everybody
how you did it. No, he's jealous for his glory. That's why give me one preacher.
One preacher. With an open Bible. who sees
himself absolutely dependent upon God and refuses to look
for another aid other than proclamation of the word, intercessory prayer
and sacrificial love. Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Now, let me just what does this have to do with prayer? Everything.
Everything. Weakness. You looking in and seeing poverty
is not an obstacle to effectiveness. It's not an obstacle, it is the
catalyst. The problem is we don't see our
weakness. You say, oh, I know. No, no,
no. Listen to me. Seeing your weakness is also a work subject
to sanctification. When you're a brand new believer,
you say Jesus is your all in all. Thirty years later, it means
a lot more. It's the same way I can do nothing
apart from him. John 15 is clear even to the
new believer. But what must happen? Years and
years and years of the providence of God faithfully working to
weaken you. To show you you really do not
understand the text. And God is constantly working.
This is the reason for trials. This is the reason for failures.
This is the reason for obstacles that you cannot overcome in the
flesh. God constantly throwing them
before us. Why? To weaken us. To show us
we cannot. So that we will do what? So that
we will cling to Him as a person. So that we will cling to His
Word for direction. So that we will live a life of
prayer. so that we will live a life of prayer. Now, the problem is I counseled
several people last night that I saw was all of them talking
about their weakness and even talking about their failure and
their sins, sincere believers struggling in these areas. But
what I always notice is whenever weakness is revealed, even in
the form of our own sin, weakness is revealed. that the devil enters
in. And he tells us, he lies to us
that that weakness should drive us from Christ. That we should
get away from him, that we should go to the penalty box, that we're
no longer worthy or useful or all these things. And it causes
us to distract ourselves. It causes us to remove ourselves
from Christ. But what you need to see is that
every weakness revealed to you And even your own moral failure,
when it happens, when you sin, it should be the catalyst that
drives you straight to Christ. That's why Paul is constantly
having his weakness revealed to him. He's constantly badgered. Why? He had received so much
from God, so many graces, so much knowledge, so much usefulness. It was necessary. It was necessary. And so I want you to know that
when you invite, especially Jowett is very good at this in the book
School of Calvary, when you when when you decide that you want
to be used of God. You say, God, I want to be for
you and I want to be used by you. You must understand that
if you are sincere, if God answers that prayer, then you will enter
the rest of your life into the school of Calvary. It is the
school of suffering. And to the degree that God uses
a man or a woman, there will be suffering. I'm sorry, but
that's the way it is. It really is. You may look at
some man who's who you think is mightily used of God that
seems to be carried or this or that, but behind the scenes,
you don't know what he suffers. But I can tell you this, he suffers
something. Because we must be constantly
made aware of our weakness so that we constantly cling to God. I hope that most of you young
men going out to plant churches with with all sorts of ideas
of culture and relevancy and programs and plans and this and
that. I hope that God will crush everything
you do. Everything I sincerely do, not
because I'm trying to be angry or I'm old school or this or
that. No. I want you at the end of your
days leaning on your staff. When someone asks you from where
did the effectiveness come, you raise your right hand to heaven
and say with Jonah, salvation is of the Lord. Now, let's let's look at, like
I said, there's a thousand sermons right there, but let's let's
go now just to mark really quick chapter one. Mark chapter one. I want you to know that if you
read Mark, I had a New Testament professor tell me this, and I
agree with it, if you read Mark correctly, you will be breathing
heavy. Really, because I mean, just
in the first chapter, you know, immediately, immediately, immediately,
the transition word is immediately. It's like snapshots of Jesus,
so fast, so quick. I mean, it is amazing the amount
of ministry going on here. And something that I want you
to know, especially you young men, if you are ministering in your
giftedness, in the power of the Holy Spirit, virtue will go out
from you. It'll drain a man. It will drain
a man. It truly will. And that applies
to us also. It will drain us. But I want
you to look at something. If you look in Mark chapter one
and again, I would love to read the whole text, but we just simply
do not have time. If you look in verse twenty nine
of chapter one, you see that Jesus is healing people. He's doing all sorts of things.
And then immediately he goes from one place to another. He's
in the mother in law's. He's in Simon's mother in law's
house. He's healing her. He's doing all sorts of things.
And then we get to verse thirty two when evening came after the
sun had set. They began bringing to him all
those who were ill and those who were demon possessed. And
the whole city was gathered at the door. And he healed many
who were ill with various diseases and cast out many demons. And
he was not permitting the demons to speak because they knew who
he was. Now, let me give you an idea of what's going on here.
I've seen something like this. I remember one time up in the
mountains of Ayia Baca in Peru. We were having a Bible conference,
some of the poorest mountain people you've ever seen. But
there was a great work of God because of it, of an indigenous
pastor by the name of Angel Comenades. It left in its wake something
like 500 churches. And I mean real churches, not
Bible studies. Talking about churches with pastors.
And and so there were about eleven hundred mountain men gathered
up on this mountain and their wives and everything, and they're
singing and sleeping in the dirt. And I had come there, but I had
brought a friend with me who was a doctor. And I'm not kidding
you, the people found out that my friend was a doctor. Now,
he had not brought any instruments. He didn't have much medicine,
except some salve and things like that. But they found out
he was a doctor for three days. They stood in line. Relentlessly. He could not get out of the little
mud hut if he tried to get out to go to the bathroom, he was
followed. These were desperate people,
no doctor for the first time in 20, 30 years, some of them
had a chance to see a doctor. They wore him out. He was absolutely, totally exhausted. I was his translator. It was
it was just it was unbelievable, almost to the point of good people
becoming violent. Because this was their only hope.
Now, this is something of what we've got going on here. I mean,
virtue. Remember, when one person was
healed from Christ, it said virtue went out from him. Now, look
what he's doing. He's taking on Satan's kingdom. He's casting out demons. He's
healing people. All sorts of things are going
on. The whole city had gathered there. And then, look what it
says in verse 35. In the early morning, while it
was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went away
to a secluded place and was praying there. Now, again, I want to
say this. Ministers need sleep. They do. And this does not mean Jesus
spent three years without sleep. And so again, I don't want us
to take this, and I don't want, especially a lot of young Christians,
to heap condemnation on themselves, but I do want to make some very
important points here. First of all, remember that although
Jesus was God, and I said this last night, we have spent so
much time in evangelicalism and all throughout the history of
Christianity defending the deity of Christ that sometimes we forget
what it meant for Him to be a man. And I want you to know, There's
a wonderful book called Power Without Measure, written by some
brothers in the United Brother in the United Kingdom. And he
talks about Christ as the man and that what he did, he did
in the power of the Holy Spirit. And that's why we can identify
with him. It just wasn't easy because he was God. He did this
as a man. He is tired. He is afflicted. Unlike so many people think when
he took a body, when he took our flesh and blood, he was not
a Superman. Although he was without sin,
his body was a body that wasn't pre fall Adam. It was a body
that was subject to all the maladies, although he was pure, all the
maladies that afflict us physically. But look what he does in this
case, it says early in the morning while it was still dark. So,
all right, he's ministering while it's dark. Now, while it is still
dark, he gets up. And he went away to a secluded
place and was praying there. Now, if you look at some things
that are very important, verse 36, Simon and his companions
searched for him, they found him and said to him, everyone's
looking for you. Now, let's just look at that
for a moment. I don't know if this was the
attitude of Simon, but he says everyone's looking for you and
it's almost like he's saying, don't you care? I mean, there's
ministry to be done. There's there's people that are
hurting and you've gone off to a secluded place. That reminds me of me, that reminds
you of you, or at least reminds me of you. There's so much to do. And there's
so many hurting people and the devil even, you know, it's like
the pastor decides he's going to take a vacation, goes out
on the beach, picks up a shell and wants to listen to the sea.
And when he puts it to his ear, he hears the voice. What kind
of pastor are you running around the beach when your flock suffering?
You know, and the devil, the devil will even when you decide
I need to separate myself, I need to spend time in the word of
God. I need to pray. I need to seek
God. Virtue has gone out of me. I
need to be strengthened. And I'll be a voice saying, but
there are people calling. There are people who need you.
Listen to me. My wife's greatest need. Is to
have a husband who spends time in the presence of God. I mean,
she can't do anything with me. But she knows God can't. The
greatest need of the people to whom I minister is that I spend
time in the presence of God. If you're here with your elder
or pastor, you need to know something and you need to stand behind
this. If you really want your children to hear from God out
of that man. If you want biblical counseling
coming out of his mouth, then here's what you're going to have
to do. You're going to have to convince the entire church he needs to
be alone with God. Martin Lloyd Jones said it was
just so sad. That a man will become effective
and powerful in preaching and in ministry and in pastoring,
and then that man will abandon. The very things that made him
effective and powerful, which is alone with God in his word,
alone with God in prayer. Now here, because I can't get
to a lot of other texts that I want to teach, let me tell
you something about at least for me. There is prayer with
my boots on. And there is prayer with my boots
off. And if I do not keep it personally
for me, if I do not keep those two things separate, I'm in a
lot of trouble. First of all, you say, what is
this? OK, prayer with my boots on when I'm going to go to work. I'm going to go feed cattle or
whatever. I'm going to put my boots on, that's what I'm referring
to, you're going to go cut wood, split lumber, you can put your
boots on. There is prayer that is work. And to learn this is
very, very helpful because a lot of people will tell me, you know,
I just don't have the gift of intercession because it's hard. And I go, yes, it's hard. It's
work. You're going to get on your knees. You're going to pray. You're
going to fight the kingdom of Satan. You're going to lift men
up to God. You're going to wrestle with
deity. Yes, it's hard. There are nations without the
gospel. It's not going to come down because because you just,
you know, send somebody over there with a new mission program.
Those walls come down through prayer. It's hard. It's horrible. It is work. It
will exhaust you. And personally, I really don't
like to do it that much. It's hard. It's wrestling. Now, if that's all your prayer
life is, you're going to be in trouble after a while. Then there's
prayer with my boots off. What's that? It's me just sitting
there. Communing with God. Speaking
to God. God speaking to me. I love to
take walks just to be alone with him, walk out in the woods, just
just walk. Talk to him. Get a cup of coffee,
get up early in the morning when no one has gotten up out of bed. Just sit there with God, talk
to him, watch snow, talk to him. I mean, just talk to him about
everything. Commune with him, fellowship with him so that eventually
this communion breaks out of the boundaries of a specific
time. And what happens is you are practicing
the presence of God. And he becomes. In your mind. You become conscious of God more
than any person that you can see with your own eyes. Now,
I am prone to experimental and superlative, my wife tells me,
you know, I've never it's the best food I've ever eaten. It's
the biggest deer I ever saw. It's all these things. OK, and
I have to be aware of that even in my preaching. But listen to
me, I'm not kidding you. There's more than just me claiming
a verse that God is here because he said he would be here. There's
a sense and awareness of God. From being in the scriptures,
from meditating in the scriptures, from practicing the presence
of God, from praying. And I want you to see that your
people need a Godward man. They do. Now, that's going to
manifest itself in so many different ways and some manifest itself
and maybe powerful preaching and others wisdom and others
just a gentle Christ like spirit. I mean, it's it manifests itself
in so many ways and we shouldn't compare ourselves. But everybody,
this world, your wife, the congregation, your children, they all need
a man with something of Christ on his face. And that comes from
spending time with Christ. I mean, even under the limited
old covenant, the face of Moses was glowing. You know, it's so
sad to me when I have young men walk up to me and they'll go,
Brother Paul, man, I wish I lived under the old covenant. I said,
really? Yeah, when you could actually
know God. But honestly, they learn that from us, don't they? We're in the new covenant, you
know, those promises in Jeremiah, they will all know me. Don't
ever separate positional righteousness from a practiced righteousness.
OK, don't ever separate when you talk about gnosis, when you
talk about knowledge, please never separate intellectual or
propositional truth, knowledge of that from experience. From intimacy, from a personal
relationship, don't ever do that personal relationship, I shouldn't
use that word because it's become a meaningless cliche. What I'm
trying to say is you can know God, we. I don't want to please
understand the context in which I'm saying this, the word of
God is exalted with his name. But my dear friend, you have
more than a book. You have a living God. And one of the saddest things
is because of the heresy of so many radical charismatic groups
and everything else, it seems that we've just thrown out our
heritage. I refuse to do that. Jehovah Witness comes to my house,
knocks on door. I said, who are you? They said,
Jehovah Witnesses. I said, come on in. So am I. Now, listen to him for about
five minutes and I go, sir, you lied to me. You're not a witness
for Jehovah. I'm a witness for Jehovah. Now,
just sit down. Let me tell you what Jehovah
wants you to know. You see. Our charismatic, I'm charismatic,
me too. Let me tell you something, if
you're not charismatic, you're lost. We have received the Holy
Spirit and I'm not going to let someone else take my heritage
and I'm not going to be afraid of really staunchy, proud reform
guys that I spook when I talk like this. I'm not going to do
it. You're not going to take my freedom
from me. And anyways, I'm a Baptist, so
everyone knows we read slow anyway, so it really doesn't matter. There's so much more out there,
brothers and sisters, than what I know and you know. There's
some men here that know more than us, but there's so much
more out there of the knowledge and presence, communion with
God than even they know. There's so much more than what
we're going for, and I want you to know I love propositional
truth, I love theology and all these things, but I want to tell
you something, that's not my delight. Christ. Walking with him, knowing
him, a sense of his love, his peace, the love of God shed abroad
in my heart, and I want to tell you something, that's something
you experience. Now, let's go on. Let's go to gosh, there's
so many places. Let's go for a minute to the
book of John and chapter 15. I just want to show you something
here. This, as you know, chapter 15, if we had time to go through
the context of the whole thing, you know, this is extremely important.
These are some of the last words of Jesus to his people. I mean,
before his death, before his resurrection, I mean, he is really
He is really teaching some things. I mean, fundamental things to
his people. And here's some of the things
that I want you to see that are so extremely important. When
we get to Matthew 15, he's saying, look, you can't do anything apart
from me. Period. Period. Now, in this desire to define
our position in Christ, which needs to be done, and that is
the foundation of everything, sometimes in our desire to talk
about our positional standing before Christ and our positional
union with him and everything else, we stop there. And what
it does is it leads us to presumption. Well, I'm I'm united with Christ.
I mean, I'm in Christ. I know that. But Jesus talks
about within that standing, not presuming upon anything, but
asking, asking, asking. Look what he says in verse seven.
If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you
wish and it will be done for you. You know, sometimes if we'd
spend more time believing this instead of trying to explain
it away. If with childlike faith we believed this more, we would
see more of the glory of God. And then go on. Look down there
at verse 16. You did not choose me, but I
chose you and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit.
Now, this is absolutely amazing. And he says, and that your fruit
would remain so that whatever you ask of the father in my name,
he may give to you. You see, again, all throughout
this text, fruitfulness is aligned with abiding in Christ, his word
abiding in us, but it is aligned with prayer. Sometimes when I'm teaching on
prayer, someone will come up and ask me, What about the decrees
of God? I said, I love the Westminster
Confession. Is that what you're talking about?
I love it. Well, do you believe that God,
before the foundation of the world, decreed and all these?
Absolutely. Do you believe then we need to
pray, though? Yeah, absolutely. I believe he decreed everything
before the foundation of the world. I believe you have not
because you ask not. And yeah, I could sit here for
the next two hours. I have read some theology books on the providence
of God, and I could talk to you about all the different nuances
of what that could mean. But I don't really want to waste
my time on that. I'm just wanting to do this. I just want to believe
what God says. It's not so important I put it
all together as it is that I just believe it. I stand on the firm
foundation of an absolute sovereign God. And I know that I have not
because I ask not. I know that he has he has dug
out the paths of righteousness in which I am and you are and
the church is supposed to walk and will walk. And yet I cannot
presume upon this. One of the means is prayer. And
he gets great glory in answering prayer. It abounds in thankfulness
when God does something that he is petitioned to do by his
people. What I want you to see is that
it's not Expository preaching, expository preaching, and OK,
and you need to pray, too. Of course, everybody knows that.
That's not the way Jesus looked at it. Oh, I can't say more than
than should be said about expository preaching. But I've I've heard some expository
preaching that was deader than a doornail. It was perfect. And it was dead because it wasn't
bathed in prayer. Don't presume upon God. We are called upon to pray if
we want to bear bear fruit, we are to pray, to pray, to pray,
to give ourselves to prayer, but not, you know. Not in some
sort of monastic anguish in which we think that somehow we're going
to wrench something out of the hands of God. Absolutely not.
We pray joyfully, expecting great things from God. To step out
and believe him, to walk upon the water, to call on his name,
to live a life of risk is the only way to live. It is the only
way to live, my brothers. The harbor is safe. But the three
sides of that harbor can become so common. So dull, cast out,
cast out. Believe your God. Believe him,
he is faithful. But he is faithful if in believing
you cut yourself off. From Saul's armor. And go only
out with a sling and the smooth stones of the gospel. Some of you who are thinking
about planting churches, you need to stop where you're at,
you need to take off Saul's armor. And I don't care who put it on
you, whether it's some huge church or the Southern Baptist Convention,
take it off. And go out with smooth stones of the gospel and
sling your sling, sow your seed. Whatever happened to just going
out and preaching the gospel, knocking on doors, visit people
in the marketplace and praying and praying and praying, whatever
happened to that? I'll tell you what happened with
it's not clever, it's not slick, it's scandalous and people will
make fun of you. But it is in the scandal. It is in the scandal that the
power is revealed. Now, again, I wish I could just
spend a day on each one of these, but I just want to jump over.
I want to touch on just a few things. I want us to go to Luke
for just a moment. I want you to be encouraged at
how much you can believe him. Let me give you a recommendation
to read. Now, my dear friend Mac Tomlinson has done the huge
volume on George Mueller, and it's a wonderful work. But there's
also a little one about this big, the autobiography of George
Mueller. And and I've got it on my desk.
I got it when I was 22 years old. It sits on my desk. The
pages are torn. They're yellow and everything.
But that man has been, apart from the Apostle Paul, the greatest
influence in my life. You can trust God. You can trust
God. Now, let's go to Luke chapter
11 just quickly. Verse one, it happened that while
Jesus was praying in a certain place after he had finished,
one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray,
just as John also taught his disciples. Now. This is one of
those truths that is so overlooked. I mean, you really, you and I
should be amazed. I mean, really amazed. Let's
just look at the context of this. Jesus cast out demons. Now that
is a demonstration of power. Jesus walked on water. Jesus
raised the dead. And we do not have an account
anywhere in the Gospels where the disciples say, teach me to
cast out demons. I'm so impressed with this. Teach
me to walk on water. Teach me how to raise the dead. But they come to Jesus and they
say, teach us to pray. That tells me that maybe, maybe
the most impressive, awe-inspiring, thing that Jesus did in his earthly
ministry was pray. Could you imagine? Could you
always hear people say, I'd love if I could see anything, I would
want to see Paul preaching on Mars Hill if I could see anything. First of all, I'd want to have
the gift of the interpretation tongue so I could understand
him, but I would want to see Jesus praying. Now, I'm going to say this to
myself and I'm saying it to you, and I don't want to hurt me and
I don't want to hurt you, but I just want to say it so we'll
both learn. Has anyone ever come up to us and said, Pastor, teach
me to pray the way you pray? Now, that's not to be depressed
about if no one ever has, but it is something to think about,
isn't it? It's something to think about. Ravenhill used to talk about
a man. Who was so given to prayer that Ravenhill one time, the
story goes, I think, walked in on him and he was praying. And
it so took Ravenhill back that he said he walked out the door.
But he said he didn't turn around, he just backed out of the room
and someone said, why did you back out of the room? And he
said, because you don't turn your back on on royalty. A lot of people say, Brother
Paul, just name someone that's been a big influence in your
life. I go, OK, Vailard Zuki. Who's Vailard Zuki? He runs a
gravel pit in Iowa. Really? What what church is he? All right. Don't get upset. He's Wesleyan holiness. A dear man that discipled me
for many, many years still does watches over me. He always talked
to me about this man that had such an impact on his life. And
so one day I realized I was going to get to meet him and I was
like, really reserved, because again, I know what superlatives
are like. You know, everything's bigger
than life. And I sit in there in the church and the man got
up in the pulpit. He glowed. Now, he wasn't that,
you know, he wasn't a preacher, he wasn't anything. They just
asked him to pray. And I saw him just bow his face a little
bit. And he said, oh, Jesus. And you just see the tears running
down his face, it wasn't an act, it wasn't drama, it wasn't emotionalism. And you just begin to weep. This
was a man who spent a great portion of his life in the presence of
Jesus. And I went up to him and I just
it's like whenever I see something that I see a man that God has
done something to and in, I just want to grab them. I want to
get close to them because in some ways things aren't so much
taught as they are caught. I said, oh, brother, sit with
me, sir, please sit with me for a while. Bless me, pray with
me. The presence of Christ, it can't
be fabricated. You can fake a lot of things.
But you can't fake that. And what's wonderful, my dear
brothers and sisters, not all of us are gifted the same way,
not all of us have the same intellect and all these other things. But
we all have. Wide access to the throne of
God in Christ, that scepter has been extended to us, so we have
no fear like Esther. It will never be retracted. You
can go there, you can, but you say, Brother Paul, I'm the weakest
then. Then you're given first seat. So I just want you to look, look
at this. This amazing text, you know,
he tells us about prayer and then he says in verse five, then
he said to them, suppose one of you as a friend and goes to
him at night and says to him, friend, lend me three loaves
for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey and I have
nothing to set before him. And from inside he answers and
says, do not bother me. The door has already been shut
and my children and I are in bed. I cannot get up and give
you anything. Verse eight, I tell you, even
though he will not get up and give him anything because he
is a friend, yet because of his persistence, he will get up and
give him as much as he needs. So I say to you, ask and it will
be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock
and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives
and he who seeks finds. And to him who knocks, it will
be open. You know, this is if you're you're
up on your scriptures, you know, Luke has a similar event going
on, a similar story, but it's about an unjust judge who does
not fear God, doesn't care about people. And we have this this
an impotent we have the poorest. most powerless person in Hebrew
social structure, this widow. It's like, get her out of here.
She can't do anything for me if I do her a favor. She's just
nothing. She has no cause to come in here.
She has no one rooting for her. There's no one on her side. I'm
not going to help her. But because of her persistence.
She wins the day. Now, don't try to protect God. He doesn't need your protection.
Don't now break into a diatribe in your mind on sovereignty.
Again, God doesn't need your protection, it's God's the one
speaking this to us. And what he's saying is. I'm
not unjust. And I'm not even your judge,
I'm your father. How much more will I do for you? I remember one time I have a
new believers manual that we've used in Latin America. And I
remember I was very young when I first wrote it and I was going
up into the mountains and I'd always take them with me to hand
them out and I'd give them to pastors and they'd go through
them. And that's the way we would train pastors. And this young guy wasn't
a pastor, just kind of a new believer. As soon as I got there,
he said, I want a manual. Dame un manual, hermano, Pablo.
just chasing me everywhere, everywhere I went, every day. I'd get up
in the morning, wake up, get up out of bed, there he'd be,
I want a manual. And I would tell him, son, you can't have
a manual. I only have a certain amount
and I've given them to the pastors and I have one left in case a
pastor comes. Another one. But I want it. At lunch, I want the manual.
At supper, I want them. Finally, take it, please, just
take it. Leave me alone. Let me ask you a question, does
this. Describe anything in your life,
are you familiar with this phrase? Wrestling with God. To rest in the sovereign decrees
is absolutely beautiful. But the same men who wrote those
poems and those hymns about resting in God's sovereignty were also
men who wrestled with God. Wrestled with God. Do you wrestle with God? You
know, years ago when I was in Peru and I was pastoring a church
there that I had planted and for somehow. A lot of different
people from different charismatic churches and stuff started coming
and they would learn new things, they would learn teaching, they
would learn the error and all this different thing. It was
really beautiful. People getting converted and all sorts of things.
But one very sincere man who was who was very charismatic
when he first came to our church, but he loved the Lord. He'd been
genuinely converted. All he needed was some good,
solid teaching. You know what he said to me one day after a
year and a half of sitting under my teaching? He said, Brother
Paul, I bless God that I've learned so much from the pulpit and I
bless God, there's so much more solidity in my life. I've learned
to rest in the sovereignty of God. Said, but also something
sad. And I said, what, brother? He
said, it seems like this kind of faith just writes off everything
to the sovereignty of God. But when I was wrong theologically,
He said, if someone told me they were sick, I went and prayed
for him. If someone told me they were in financial, I went, I'd
fight, I'd pray all night, we'd fast, we'd do all kinds of things.
And he said, Brother Paul, we saw victory after victory after
victory here. I've just learned to become passive.
Is that what I'm supposed to do? You talk about a wake up
call. Oh, my. You know, I love it when
when sovereign grace people a lot of times say sovereign, believing
in the sovereignty, God doesn't hinder evangelism. I go, yeah,
it does. For at least some of you. Believing
the sovereignty of God doesn't hinder prayer. Yes, it does.
For some of you. Be very careful, brothers. My pastor, Anthony, was here,
gave an illustration a while back about someone he was wanting
to know the the doctrine of someone and the way they practice it,
because he was unsure about one thing in their in their ministry
and in their their way of doing things. So he he went and he
heard the person speak and the person says, some people think
that we're we're all about this one thing and we emphasize this
one thing. Well, I've got an answer for you. That's not true.
And I can prove it's not true, just go look at our doctrinal
statement. But just because you've got it
in your doctrinal statement doesn't mean it's a reality in your life,
just because you say it with your mouth doesn't mean it's
a reality. There is a sense and I want to
be very careful here, but there is a sense in which a man of
God. And please, again, I'm just saying
this because I want to try to get something across to you.
And this is we see this in scripture. We see this in Luther. We see
this in so many men that men of God are kind of wild. They're
kind of crazy. You say, well, then, Brother
Paul, you definitely qualify as a man of God. But they will
wrestle with God. They will. I mean, there are times when
it's like, Lord, you brought me here. You said you would help
me in prayer. You said that you'd help me in that sermon. I got
up and I fell flat on my face. What was the problem? Lord, I'm
not going to stay here. We need to work this out because
I've got to preach tomorrow. And I really if someone would
come into my hotel room. They would bring the police. Lord, you said you should go
into all the world. We're trying to get in this one
place in India, but the door is always closed. Lord, you're
the only one that can open it. You know, you're David. You open.
They can't close it. You close it. They can't open it. Lord,
I'm going to stay here. I can't stand the fact that that door
remains closed. It shouldn't be closed because
you said the whole world, that's part of the world you need. I guess sometimes we're just too
refined, aren't we? He says, give me no rest. Give me no peace, watchmen on
the wall. Brothers, there's a tenacity,
there's a boldness in praying. I want to be. Not. Out of my mind. Eccentric. But. I don't want to die not having
believed the promises and wrestling for them. There's so much more. So much more that can be done,
but it won't fall before all your church planting gizmos. That mountain won't be cast into
the sea because you've just got some new mission methodology
written by a Ph.D. student who's never done missions. It will fall because you believe
your God in prayer. Now let's go on and I'm gonna.
I want you to look at something, verse 11, for suppose one of
you fathers is asked by his son for a fish, he will not give
him a snake instead of a fish, Willie, or if he is asked for
an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, Willie. If you then
being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much
more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those
who ask him? Now, There's a controversial
text. I mean, why didn't he say something
else, why didn't he just say answer the prayer? Let me recommend
to you men before I try to touch this just for a moment, let me
recommend to you men two books. That have been phenomenally helpful
to me. And I recommend them any time
I'm talking about the Holy Spirit. The first one is both of them
are written by the same author, by Ian Murray. The first one
is revival and revivalism, which exposes. Many of the things that
are so wrong in our country with regard to evangelicalism in our
own lives and the other companion volume to that. is what ought
to take its place in the book is written. The title is Pentecost
today, question mark. Now, again, I want you to consider
the source. This is Ian Murray. Who? Spurgeon and Martin Lloyd-Jones
are two of my most favorite preachers. Ian Murray was, of course, an
assistant to Martin Lloyd-Jones. I am I'm a student in a sense,
in a very limited way because I'm a very limited man, but of
the Welsh revivals of the Calvinistic Methodist. Of Whitfield. Of Daniel Rowlands and Hal Harris,
the beautiful works that were done in Wales by the power of
the Holy Spirit, and when when we talk about the United Kingdom.
When at times in history there has been this beautiful, Wedding. Between the intellect. And the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Revival, and I want to talk to
you about that for a moment. Please just give me the time
if I go over, then all of you can leave and I'll just stand
here and preach this anyways, but I want to talk about this. And again, Ian Murray sets it
forth far better than anything I would do, especially young
preacher. Especially read Pentecost today. It's absolutely wonderful book
now. He says here, give the Holy Spirit. What does that mean? Well, first
of all, I want us to go for just a moment to the Great Commission
in Matthew. Verse 28. Chapter 28, verse 18, And Jesus
came up and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given
to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples
of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all
that I command you. And lo, I am with you always,
even to the end of the age. That's the Great Commission.
What I want to focus on is right before it. Verse 16. But the
11 disciples proceeded to Galilee to the mountain which Jesus had
designated when they saw him. This is the 11 disciples. When
they saw him, they worshiped him. But some were doubtful. Now, I want to look at some things
and I'm actually going to try to use notes here to be clear
and hold myself in one place. First of all, before the resurrection,
before the resurrection, listen, this is a description of the
12. Jesus referred to them as men
of little faith. They argued about who among them
was the greatest in their self-righteousness and prejudice. They wanted to
call down fire from heaven upon their enemies. Once Jesus said
that they were a stumbling block to him because they had not set
their mind on God's interest, but man's at the crucifixion,
they abandoned Christ and Peter even denied him before a little
servant girl. Now, let's be honest. I've done that. The Holy Spirit prompts you to
witness to a little girl behind the counter at a hotel. and you're afraid she'll laugh. All in all, they were not great
men of value, of valor, virtue or insight, but in the very words
of Jesus, they were foolish men and slow of heart to believe
in all that the prophets had spoken. Now, that's you said,
well, brother Paul, that's prior to the resurrection. OK, but
let's look at after the resurrection. We see obedience in verse 16. They proceeded to Galilee as
they had been told. All right. We see worship. They
worshiped him. But also, what do we see? They
were doubtful. The word there in Greek is distaso.
Doubtful. It means to stand between two
things. The word is used of Peter on
the sea when he's walking, he became two stepping. One foot
in faith and the other in doubt. So here's what I want you to
see here. We have these these men who after the resurrection,
they do not seem to me to be very transformed. Not at all. But now let's look, just listen,
after Pentecost. What happens after Pentecost?
We no longer see wavering, but we see the witness of the very
thing that Jesus had promised. What was that? Let's just listen.
Luke 24, 49. And behold, I am sending forth the promise of
my father upon you, but you are to stay in the city until you
were clothed with power on high. Acts 1 8, but you will receive
power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be
my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria
and even to the remotest parts of the earth. You're going to
go from being afraid of a servant girl to taking on the entire
Jewish nation, telling that mountain to be cast into the sea and to
spreading the gospel throughout the Roman Empire. And what's the difference? Pentecost. Pentecost, now, isn't it amazing
some of you are already afraid, where am I going? Pentecost is
the difference. Now, I want to say something
really quick, he says, behold, I am or he says, behold, I am
sending forth the promise of my father upon you, but you are
to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on
high. That's a promise. That's a promise. But you shall
receive power, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes
upon you. How will you know when the Holy Spirit comes upon you?
You shall receive power. This is not just I want you to
accept something positionally by faith. I'm sorry, it's not. He said you will receive power. Power for what? Power for proclamation.
Power for what? Intercessory prayer. Power for
what? Sacrificial love. Well, let's go on. What happened on the day of Pentecost?
First of all, if we look in Acts 1 8, just go there quickly. It says. That they were clothed. Look at that. But you will receive
power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be
my witnesses, both in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and
even to the remotest parts of the earth. That's absolutely
amazing. And Luke 24, let's bring this
back into play. I am sending forth the promise
of my father upon you, but you are to stay in the city until
you are clothed with power from on high. That word clothed is
the Greek word in dual. And what it means is to be in
dude, to be clothed in, to be arrayed in power. Now, let's look at the debate. I know there's a great deal of
debate with regarding this text, but like I said, I just I kind
of here's what I don't want to do. I don't want to spend my
time up here telling you what this text does not mean. So that
you don't go charismatic on me. I want to find out what it does
mean. For me. And for my brothers and sisters
in Christ who tell me that the church in America is languishing
with so little power to be a testimony to a dark world. You know, there's
really no sense in the New Testament, in the book of Acts, you never
see a place where the church is not having an impact. Never. Now, the impact comes in two
forms. It could be the multiplication of disciples or the church is
being slaughtered. But society can't do anything
with this church. It's got to do something to it.
It's got to come to it or kill it. But we live in an age when
I fear as many people fear that the United States, the church
in the United States can come under persecution. I fear something
far worse. I fear that we're going to become
like many of the churches in Europe. That have so little impact
on the culture itself that they're just totally ignored. Now, I
don't want to talk about all the different nuances of this
text, even though I'm going to tell you what I think it means.
I just want to ask you a question. It may bring some clarity to
the issue. And I'm going to say this to myself and I'm going
to say this to you. Pastor. Believer. Would you describe your life? Now let's throw away false humility.
We're not talking about being proud or exalted. I just want
to ask you a question. Would you personally describe
your life as endued with power? Would you describe your ministry
as arrayed with power? Now, again, I'm not. I know the
objections that's coming into at least some of your heads.
Well, how dare we talk? How dare we talk this way? Because
he talked this way. He told his church, you would
be a rage, you would be endued with power. So we need to talk
this way. Now, here's the question. He
said the church would look like this. Does your church look like
this? Do you look like this? And because
I'm asking, do I look like this? And I think it's a very healthy
question. Instead of just sitting there and trying to get it all
entangled in all sorts of things, ask yourself this question. Is
there power? And not just power for ministry,
but power to live. It's such an important question
now. First of all, what does this
teach us? I want to read something from my notes here. The resurrection
was a great vindication or demonstration of Christ's claims. Yet even
this great event could not produce the needed results in the hearts
of the apostles, apart from a supernatural work of the spirit, the greatest
knowledge and the highest degree of certainty. Listen careful
to the language, the greatest knowledge and the highest degree
of certainty regarding the Christian faith is not enough to propel
a universal missionary endeavor. Do you see that? Correct doctrine and right thinking
is absolutely essential to the missionary endeavor, because
missions is not about sending missionaries, it's about sending
God's truth through missionaries. But it is not enough. They saw
him, they had absolute certainty of the resurrection, they touched
him. But they still doubted. OK, now let's look at Pentecost.
Chapter two. First of all, let me say this
again, I'm going to be reading a lot from my notes here. We
cannot build our theology by reacting against the heresies
of our day. If we do, we are committing some
of the same exegetical fallacies as the heretics. Now, one thing
about my people, I'm a Baptist, one thing about us, there's even
a book been written about being a Baptist, is we're reactionary.
In a sense, we have to be very careful that our theology is
not determined by our reaction against those who oppose us. Do you see that we're known to
do that? OK. And I think that's happened
not only to Baptists, but Presbyterians, Reformed guys all throughout,
that sometimes we come to this text. It's like I got a little,
you know, perturbed with the question the other night on unlimited
or particular atonement. Like when I do John 3, 16, I
see John 3, 16 is this beautiful, beautiful text that needs to
be preached. I mean, read Calvin on John 3,
16 if you want to be evangelistic. But people will grab that thing
and they only want to talk about Whether God loves the world or
not, I don't have time for that. You know, and it's the book of
Acts, you know, here, chapter two, let's not look and see what
this means for us sovereign grace guys or reformed guys, let's
not look at that, let's just make sure no one gets close to
this text. You can fence the Lord's table,
but don't fence the Lord's book. You don't have to protect people
from it. But it does have to be properly interpreted. So let's
not build our theology by reacting against the heresies of our day.
Next, we should not let the heretical. We should not let false teachers
steal our inheritance. I've already talked about that.
Listen to this. This is our inheritance. Brother, sister in Christ, this
is your inheritance. It will come about after this
that I will pour out my spirit on all mankind and your sons
and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams.
Your young men will see visions. Even on male and female servants,
I will pour out my spirit in those days. Now, instead of just
relishing in the outpouring of the spirit, you're scared to
death of some of those words I just used. Don't worry, I'm
going to explain it. Matthew 3 11, as for me, I baptize
you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me
is mightier than I and I am not fit to remove his sandals. He
will baptize you with the spirit and fire. Acts 1 8. But you will
receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall
be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and
even to the remotest part of the earth. Have you taken those as yours?
Now, they need to be taken properly, but have you taken those texts
as yours, yours? Or have you given them to one
day, one day in the history of the church? To the day of Pentecost. That's where it happened, that's
where it started and that's where it stopped. Or is this your inheritance? All right, now let's look at
some essential truths gleaned from Pentecost. First of all,
it was a unique event in the history of the church. We need
to realize that Pentecost was a unit. Now some of you are breathing
a little bit easier. It was a unique event in the
history of the church. It is undeniable that there are
certain aspects of Pentecost that are unique. First of all,
it is unique as a direct fulfillment of the scriptures. It was the
initial moment in which the spirit of God was poured out upon the
church, and you can have only one initial moment. It was this
great moment in history when the spirit of God is poured out
on the church. Also, it was accompanied by unique
circumstances. There were tongues of fire, there
were speaking in tongues. Which do not occur again when
we get to Acts chapter four and we as we see a similar, very
similar outpouring of the Holy Spirit. OK, that's very important. There were some unique things
that happened there now. Here's some other things that
I want to glean from this, some other truths, and I'm going I'm
going to read again to be very careful with my words. It marked
the beginning of an extraordinary work of the Spirit that was to
last throughout the entirety of the church age. It marked
the beginning of a new age of the Messiah and the Spirit. Remember, Joel talks about in
the last days. Now, if you have a correct understanding
of the last days, the last days began with the coming of the
Messiah, his death, his resurrection, his ascension to the right hand
of God. And those last days continue. So some of my dear Pentecostal
friends will come up to me and go, Brother Paul, do you think
we're in the last days? I go, oh, yes. And they go, he's one
of us. And then I say, we've been in
the last days, dear brother, for the last 2000 years. So so,
yes, but here's what I want you to think now, listen. It marked the beginning of a
new age. And not the beginning and the
end in one singular event. I want you to think about the
way we look oftentimes at this prophecy in Joel. And as a matter
of fact, it's the only new covenant promise in the Old Testament.
That we look at this way. Jeremiah talks about God will
write his laws on their heart. They will all know me from the
least of them to the greatest of them. No one will have to
teach his brother. That's a new covenant promise
for the church. We don't believe that happened
on the day of Pentecost and then stopped, do we? No. But when we look at this Joel
thing, we go, that was fulfilled, that happened there, it's done.
Well, that's not what it says. Now, it was fulfilled, it was
the initiation, it was the inaugural event. But this promise in Joel
is for us today. It is for all of us. And again,
I'm going to explain what I mean. It is wrong to think that the
prophecy of Joel is fulfilled on the day of Pentecost and then
comes to an end, or even that it was fulfilled in the first
century or that it terminated with the apostles. To think this
is to redefine the last days as the age of the apostles or
the age of the primitive church. And that's not the way it is.
Another thing, it is wrong to think that the promise is only
for the apostolic error. Why do I say that? The amazing
thing about Joel is not that the spirit would be poured out
on the leaders, the apostles, but that it would be poured out
on the least among God's people. And that is very similar to what
we have in Jeremiah 31, 34 when he says, they will know me from
the least of them to the greatest. And what I really want you to
start doing right now is drawing a parallel between all the other
new covenant promises that you so cherish. I want you to look
at Joel in light of those. And if you do, I think you'll
begin to understand what's going on and continuing to go on throughout
the life of the church. Now, There must be some degree in
which the outpouring of the spirit should be manifest throughout
the entire age of the church and not not just at its inauguration
now. Let me go on. I'm going to bring
this all together. If the outpouring of the spirit
is to mark the entire church age, then so should the results
of that outpouring mark the entire church age. Now, what does this
mean? Now is where I'm going to clarify
things. Does it mean that dreams, visions and tongues should be
the norm in our Christian experience? Absolutely not. And I'm going
to tell you why it's not because I don't believe the Bible, but
I'm going to tell you why. The error, I believe, that most
sincere believers make regarding this issue of these signs and
wonders and dreams and all these other things is that they fix
their attention on one minute and non-essential aspect of a
much greater promise. They are focusing on a particular
means of communicating the gift rather than the gift itself. What is Joel actually saying?
Is Joel as a prophet delighting in the fact that the people of
God will one day dream dreams, see visions and speak in tongues?
Was it the great joy and hope of the prophets that one day
the people of God were going to be able to experience supernatural
phenomenon? No, that's not the point. What is the point of Joel? The
point is this. When we talk in this case, in
this specific, unique case about dreams and visions and them speaking
in tongues, what are we actually talking about? We're talking
about the same thing that is in Jeremiah 31. We're talking
about revelation. And if you can stop looking at
the little means, this unique event that happened in the day
of Pentecost, dreams and dreams, and you can look at the larger
picture, you can see how the promise is for us today. The
delight of Joel as he looked forward to the future, seeing
the church. The delight of all the other
prophets. Joel is going, in the last days, God is going to pour
out his spirit on all his people, not just priests, not just prophets,
not just kings, but the least among God's people. He's going
to pour out his spirit upon them and they're all going to know
him. They're going to understand Him. And not only are they going
to know Him and understand Him, but their life is going to be
infused with power. See, you're missing the point
when you just focus on the means in which, in this particular
moment, the revelation occurred. And what you've got to see is
Joel is saying the same thing that Jeremiah is saying. Listen
to Jeremiah. They will not teach again each
man his neighbor and each man his brother saying, no, the Lord,
for they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest
of them, declares the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity
and their sin. I will remember no more. Now,
do you see that Jeremiah and Joel are saying the same thing?
Just absolutely wonderful. Look at Habakkuk, for the earth
will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters
cover the sea. So. What are we talking about? Well, let me let me set up a
foundation first at the moment of conversion. Anyone's conversion,
what happens at conversion, a person is regenerated and indwelt. With the Holy Spirit. All right,
let's get that straight. There is no such thing as two
level kind of Christianity. There is not what is properly
known as second blessing. Because there is third blessing,
fourth blessing, fifth blessing, sixth blessing, seventh blessing,
eighth blessing, ninth blessing, and I'm going to explain that
in a moment. At conversion, a person is regenerated and indwelt with
the Holy Spirit. However, our completeness in
Christ is not grounds for passivity, nor does it indicate that what
we have in Christ does not need to be appropriated. Now, I'm
going to go on. Here's some questions that I
want to ask you. And again, it's the same one I asked before,
am I endued with power, arrayed in power? Is this a reality? Is there a sense of being carried
like the wind in our sails? Is there a sense of God's help?
Is there a sense of God's presence? Is there a sense of the shedding
abroad in our hearts of the love of God? Yes, I know that there
are dark nights of the soul. I know there are times when it
seems that God totally leaves us, that he goes away. He tests
us to see if we will walk in darkness by faith instead of
creating our own lights. I know there are all these things,
but still my question. Is that do you have a sense of
a power greater than yourself working in you to live the Christian
life and a power greater than yourself working through you
in the ministry? Do you have that sense? Listen
to Colossians 129. For this purpose also I labor,
striving according to his power, which mightily works in me. If
someone now again. I know the thing about pride,
arrogance in the ministry, but I want you to think about Paul's
language. Would you say to someone, well, how's it going in the ministry?
Well, I'm striving according to his power, which works mightily
within me. So I wouldn't say that Paul did
now again, guys, I know about all the other side, but what
I'm trying to say is, look, we will exegete this. But do you
ever ask yourself if this is a reality in your own life? That's
the beginning of the battle. What does this mean? Look at
First Corinthians two, four, he says, my message and my preaching
were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in a demonstration
of the spirit and of power. Look at Charles Spurgeon, someone
asked, you know, I got news for a lot of Spurgeon biographers
and scholars, you better straighten up because you get to heaven.
Spurgeon is going to be mad at you. Because a lot of people
talk about Spurgeon's mind, his photographic memory, his abilities
and his gifts. Spurgeon would have said, when
someone said, you do the work of more than one man, he says,
I am more than one man. Christ lives within me. You can't preach like that. I
don't care how smart you are. You can't do that. That wasn't
Spurgeon. That was the power of the Holy
Spirit. Well, Calvin was just a man. And there was a great,
and I'm going to say it, a great and a unique anointing upon his
life. And if you attribute all that
to scholarship, I'm sorry. I know some really smart men.
They can't do that. First commentary I will go to
is John Calvin, his clarity, his simplicity and power and
depth all combined in one thing. I'm sorry, I'm not going to attribute
that to a man. You see, we think wrongly, it's
just like I always tell when I'm teaching this to young people,
I'll go, well, not this, but other things I'll tell them,
I'll say, I want you to just for a moment to close your eyes
and think about Samson. They think about Samson, I say,
all right, what does he look like? Basically, he looks like a kosher Arnold Schwarzenegger.
And so I'll say, well, if that was the case, why are the Philistines
running around trying to figure out where this guy's power comes
from? See, we're always thinking that we're always attributing
it to a man. I don't care how strong a man
is. He's not going to go to the gates of a city, rip them up,
throw them on his back and take them up a mountain. is the power of the living God. I want you to know my my my Presbyterian
brothers, my Baptist brothers, I want you to know. I want you
to be very careful. There were some old men. Many
of them have gone on to be with the Lord who were Calvinist when
Calvinism wasn't cool. And I found in those old sovereign
grace or some of them, I found a unique blend of something.
A belief in the sovereignty of God and a belief in this. I don't know. They were men of
God, of a different fabric. They were bold before the throne
and humble. They talked about the anointing
of the Holy Spirit upon a preacher's life. They did. I remember. I remember sitting
there even as a little boy, listen to a brother D.D. Long preaching
big old voice and they would talk any time a preacher preached
with and made some sense and seemed to help God's people.
They would say the man's anointed of the Holy Spirit. Now you say
he's smart. Think about it. Really, don't
you? You walk away going, man, that
guy's smart. You did that, didn't you, this
week? I mean, not with me, but with other guys. Smart? Smart can't cast out a
demon. Smart can't stop a storm. Smart can't knock down the walls
that devils built around the culture in the darkest part of
India. You can take all your smart Put
it in a bag and just walk away. It's useless in the kingdom of
heaven. It's the spirit of the living God. We need to get back
to using this kind of language. The man's anointed of the Holy
Spirit to preach. I want to see a young man with
God's anointing on his life and usually with my street preachers,
especially the ones in Peru, it was the dumbest. Now, I'm
not saying dumbness is a virtue, even though I wish it was, I'd
be the most virtuous man on the planet. But I want to tell you
something. I'm looking for a boy who's got
the anointing of the Holy Spirit on his life. I'll walk out there
and slap some Bible and preach. Do I resemble the ministers of
the first century? Does my church resemble the church
of the first century? Now, I know we have to caution
that question, but again, brothers and sisters, these need to be
asked. I want to read something from Ian Murray. This is what
he says, so blame this on him, OK? I have sought to argue, leaving
aside the question of miraculous gifts, we cannot suppose that
everything which marked the church at Pentecost is a permanent part
of Christian experience. The high degree of boldness,
joy, assurance, which then and later marked disciples. And notice
he's saying then and later during Pentecost and throughout periods
of time in history that Mark disciples is not duplicated in
every regenerate person today. Christian ministers may be very
deficient in the authority which mark the preachers of the early
church. But how can this be explained
if what happened to the church at Pentecost now happens to every
person when they become a Christian? And that's what we've basically
been teaching now, haven't we? You got it all at Pentecost.
There's a sense in which that's very true. We we are saved and
we are complete in Christ and we have the Holy Spirit and we're
indwelt by the Holy Spirit and we're regenerated the Holy Spirit.
We are complete in Christ at our conversion. That is true.
But we have to be careful with that statement. Can being filled
with the spirit really be the same? As being a Christian, rather,
is it not apparent that an individual may genuinely belong to Christ
and yet have little assurance and that a preacher may be orthodox
and lack unction? And unction doesn't necessarily
mean that he's flamboyant, it doesn't necessarily mean he raises
his voice, but matter of fact, you can't define unction, but
when it's there, you know it. It may be like boulders being
broken apart or it may be like a whistling wind. But when you
meet that person, you know there's unction. It is hardly convincing to say
in reply to that such Christians did possess the same Pentecostal
fullness at regeneration, but they lost it subsequently. And
then he says this after long pastoral experience, Charles
Vaughn came to a more probable conclusion, and it is this many
a truly regenerate and painfully sanctified child of God never
knows the sweet blessing of the spirit's unction. In other words,
we may be regenerate and yet not resemble the spirit feel
preachers and Christians of the apostolic era and throughout
church history. Now, What does this mean? Anyone comes
to you talking about a second blessing run away from them.
Anyone who talks in terms of really you haven't got it or
this or that run away from them. That is not my argument and it
is not Ian Murray's. What is the argument? The argument
is this. That we believers. Are part of the new covenant.
And that we are complete in Christ. And that we have, even though
I don't like that terminology, we are we have the Holy Spirit. We are regenerate. We are indwelt. Anyone has not the spirit, they're
not Christian. We have the spirit. There is
no first class and second class Christians. But what we need
to see is this. We who have the spirit of God
or let me let me let me preface this. We who. Have grown a little in
sanctification. That's the believer, right, all
of us growing some in sanctification, do we not want more sanctification?
We who have saving faith. Do we not want greater and deeper
faith? We who know repentance and we
sometimes forget, especially people that make it too hard
for other people to get saved, that repentance also is subject
to sanctification. Do we not want deeper repentance?
Of all the virtues, of all the gifts, of all the things that
we were given at the moment of our conversion, do we not want
them to excel? Do we not want more? We do. Well, will not the father give
the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? Now, before you think
I'm stepping out of line here, what I'm saying is. I'm just
I don't know, sometimes it helps to be simple. Jesus said, you will receive
power. I look at me. And I see a lack
of the power of which he speaks. So I ask him, Lord. Fill me with the Holy Spirit
to a greater degree. Give me greater unction. Work
in me in a greater way. Outpourings of the spirit upon
my church, outpourings of the spirit upon me. I remember someone asked me one
time, they said. I used to street preach after
I got saved and I was scared to death, I just knew I was supposed
to do it and I was so scared. I mean, I would just stand there
where all the bars were, and I was afraid to even go up to
anybody, just stand there with my Bible until people would notice
me. I actually had someone came up to me one time, says a question,
why are you standing there just not saying anything? And I remember coming home and
taking my Bible and putting it on the bed and going. He said
you would receive power, I don't have that, I'm Peter with the
servant girl power. And some old saints, old school
saints, I asked them men who are now have gone home to be
with the Lord. They weren't afraid. They were sovereign grace. They
were this. But they weren't afraid to say, boy, you need the power
of the Holy Spirit. They were talking about second
blessing or tongues or this or that. They were saying you need
the power of the Holy Spirit and you need to ask God to give
you unction to do this impossible ministry he's given you to do.
And son, every time in your life until you're an old man, 90 years
old, every time you see weakness, every time you see ministry that
is far beyond you, you need to get on your knees and cry out
for the power of the Holy Spirit in your life. If we've lost that
because we attribute everything now to the intellect. Oh, my dear brothers, now I'm
going to finish, although there's just so much more to say, but
I'm going to finish with some quotes. Now, these are quotes from some
of the men you'll recognize their names. They are most respectable. I have all these promises. And
I need to walk in these promises. How did Spurgeon go to the pulpit?
Any of you know he would go to the pulpit? You know, sometimes
he would throw up on Saturday night. You didn't know that he
did. He'd throw up because he would sit there and he would
fill his trash can. He would write notes, throw them,
throw them. And he'd had nothing on Sunday
morning when he would go up the pulpit. Many people don't know
that. There's a recent new documentary film on him. It's wonderful.
It shows the young life of Spurgeon. And you see him just sitting
there at his desk and then throwing it. And the whole floor is littered
with papers. And he would walk up every Sunday
to that pulpit because everyone knew he was just a country preacher.
That's what they called him. They mocked him, even the people
that lived with him when he first came. Well, they mocked him until
the first time he preached. And he would walk up to that
pulpit and this is what he would do. If you understand the words,
it's it's a wise thing to do the same. He would walk up to
the pope and he'd go, I believe in the Holy Spirit, I believe
in the Holy Spirit, I believe in the Holy Spirit. Listen to George Smeaton. Can't
get much more respectable than that. No more mischievous and
misleading theory could be propounded, nor any more dishonoring to the
Holy Spirit than the principle that because the spirit was poured
out at Pentecost, the church has no need and no warrant to
pray for effusions of the spirit of God. On the contrary, the
more the church asks for the spirit and waits for his communications,
the more she receives. Now, young men, don't you go
home and start having your church pray for the Holy Spirit if that
church is going to be all dressed up in the carnal rags of this
world that you're trying to use to attract carnal men. For the
Holy Spirit is going to pour out his effusion on your church
and your ministry, you have to get rid of Saul's army. And the church is not relevant
because it looks like the world. The church is relevant because
it does not look like the world, does not act like the world,
doesn't need to. You know what we've done, basically? We try to do everything the world
does, and we can't do it as well. So we're just a cheap version
of the world. You don't need the world's clothes.
You don't need the way it looks. You don't need the way it sounds. You don't need to act like it.
You need to act like Jesus Christ. And you need to conform your
life and your actions, everything you think, to what he has written. Listen to Jonathan Edwards, the
scriptures do not only well on George Smeaton, it was the doctrine
of the Holy Spirit, page 255. Now, Jonathan Edwards, the scriptures
do not only direct and encourage us in general to pray for the
Holy Spirit. Now, listen, above all things
else. Now, Paul Washer says that you
got cause for doubt. This is Jonathan Edwards. Now,
listen. The scriptures do not only direct and encourage us
in general to pray for the Holy Spirit above all things else,
but it is the it is the expressly revealed will of God that his
church should be very much in prayer for that glorious outpouring
of the Spirit, which is to be in the latter days and for what
shall be accomplished by it. Doesn't this just give you some
hope? Everyone running around, I just don't know why we can't
have an impact on the culture because we're using Saul's army
and we're not praying for the power of the Holy Spirit and
we're not trusting in just one simple preacher with an open
Bible in which he happens to believe. Thomas Boston. Well, Edwards was works volume
two, page 290, Thomas Boston. Wherefore, breathe, pants and
long for the spirit of Christ works. Volume 11, page 168. Listen
to that. Breathe, pants and long for the
spirit of Christ. I believe in the Holy Spirit.
I believe in the Holy Spirit. I believe in the Holy Spirit. Charles Spurgeon in a way that
only Charles Spurgeon can say it. Listen to this. Apparently,
there were some brothers that were passing through his area
teaching people they should never pray. That God might bless them
with a greater effusion of the Holy Spirit. Now, I know people
who do that today. Listen to Spurgeon. Did we not
hear some time ago from certain wise brethren that we were never
to pray for the spirit? I think I heard it said often
we have the Holy Spirit and therefore we're not to pray for him. Maybe
some of you said that. Like that other declaration from
certain men of the same brotherhood that we have pardon of sin and
are not to pray for it, just as if we were never to pray for
what we have. If we have life, we are to pray
that we have it more abundantly. If we have pardon in one respect,
we are to ask for a fuller sense of it. And if we have the Holy
Spirit so that we are quickened and saved, we do not ask him,
We do not ask for him in that capacity any longer, but we ask
for his power in other directions and for his grace in other forms.
I do not go before God now and say, Lord, I am a dead sinner.
Quicken me by thy spirit, for I trust I am quickened by his
spirit. But being quickened, I now cry,
Lord, Let not the life thou hast given me ebb down till it becomes
very feeble, but give me of thy Spirit that the life within me
may become strong and mighty and may subdue all the power
of death within my members, that I may put forth the vigor and
energy which come from thyself through the Spirit. Oh, you that
have the spirit, you are the very men to pray that you may
experience more of his matchless operations and gracious influences. And in the benign sanctity of
his indwelling may seek that yet more and more that you may
know him. You have. This is your encouragement
that God will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him. Brothers,
there's an ocean of the very energy, the very power that we
so long and so need in ministry. And in life. Regarding Luke 11, 13, this is
what John Owen writes, oh, that was Spurgeon Metropolitan Tabernacle
Pulpit Volume 16, page 620 through 21. John Owen writes this, This is
the daily work of believers. If, therefore, our life to God
or the joy of that life be considerable, that is large, in this we are
to abound, to ask Him of the Father as children do of their
parents daily bread. This is John Owen saying daily
asking for the power, for the unction, for the infusion, for
the life of the Holy Spirit as children do their daily bread.
And he's drawing directly from the context of Luke 11. Now,
Richard Sibbes. Now, listen to this quote, and
we'll close here, his complete works. Well, let's see, Owen
was works volume four, page 398, and now I'm going to quote Sibbes
from Complete Works, volume 5402. Now, listen to this, Richard,
I mean. If you've read this man. You
may be like me, not really sure how to pronounce his last name,
but if you've read this man. Listen to what he says. Take
a man. that hath the earnest of the
spirit. And you shall have him defy death,
the world, Satan and all temptations. Take a man that is negligent
in laboring to increase his earnest. You shall have him weak. Now,
let's read that again. Take a man that hath the earnest
of the spirit. And someone who is laboring also,
he's indicating here to increase in the earnest of the spirit,
take a man. See, that's what I like that
word, man. Why? Because I'm going to tell
you something. The kingdom of God does not advance
in corporate missionary agency rooms sitting around a table. It does not advance because a
bunch of people have figured out how to do evangelism to a
certain people group and they've learned to dress a certain way,
act a certain way, do all kinds of certain things, put up coffee
shops and everything else in order to win them to Christ.
The kingdom of heaven advances through a man who's so bare boned,
who sees himself as having nothing. But believes in the power of
God revealed through the power of proclaiming the word of God,
who begs heaven for greater and greater unctions of the Holy
Spirit. You take a man like that, he'll
fight hell with a water pistol. And it won't be him, but Christ
within him. Take a man that hath the earnest
of the spirit, you shall have him defy death, the world, Satan
and all temptations. But take a man that is negligent
in laboring to increase his earnest and you shall have him weak.
Brothers, are you laboring to increase that earnest? Are you
crying out daily? Are you crying out before everything
that sets its foot in your path, Lord, fill me with the Holy Spirit,
fill me with the Holy Spirit. with the Holy Spirit. A young man came to me and said,
I want so much what you're talking about, I said, OK, we use an
example and I promise I close here, I use an example. That
I heard from someone else about another endeavor, but it fits
so well, I said, son. Let me grab you by the back of
the neck. Let me drag you out into the ocean until we're about
up to here. And I'm gonna grab you and I'm
gonna hold you down. And I'm gonna hold you down with
everything I got. And I'm going to hold you down
until you're fighting me. And I'm going to hold you down
until you're nearly hysterical with fear and need for breath. I'm going to hold you down until
you know you can't go one second longer without breath or you're
going to die. You want breath. You know you
need breath more than anything. Son, at that moment, you really
want the Holy Spirit. When you can say, I want the
Holy Spirit as I need air. I need him. My ministry is nothing
without him. I need the Holy Spirit. I must
have the Holy Spirit. Get out of my way. Leave me alone. Send me off to God. What I just shared with you,
the old men talked about it daily. God bless you.