There is one true foundation for Christian life: the Gospel that brings both forgiveness and transformation. The same message that saves also sanctifies, for the Holy Spirit received through faith in Christ continues the work begun at conversion. Evangelical faith centres on the Gospel as the power of God unto salvation, shaping believers into obedient disciples who surrender wholly to Him. True spirituality is never a second experience apart from the cross but the ongoing renewal of the mind, as the Spirit deepens our walk with Christ and displays His life within us.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] I’ve realised that I’ve had an advantage over most of you here tonight, simply because the major years of my life are in the last century. And some of you, your major years are now. But there was quite an event in the second half of the 1900s, which has been written up as the time of evangelicalism coming of age. Evangelicalism is that side of Christianity that emphasises the evangel. That’s just the Greek word, euangelios is the Greek word for gospel. And evangelicalism is where one has the gospel at the centre of what one believes, the interpretive agent, if you like, that helps you to bring your theology into good shape. And so evangelicalism and the rise of evangelicalism to a place of prominence in our cultures, particularly in the Western world,

[00:01:04] has been the phenomenon of the second half of the last century, continuing still today, but there being other forces happening in our society. There is a fellow who was known as an expert about evangelicalism, not the only one, and lots of people argued with him, but this particular scholar wrote a book. The title of it was The Coming of Age of the Holy Spirit, The Coming of Age of the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church. And he wrote that in that period of time, which is at the end of last century, the one which my young years were in, and which was a great time of resurgence, of evangelical push, and in many churches. And some of the more formal denominations had really been taken over by their formalism, where, when you went along, sometimes it wasn’t clear exactly what made you a Christian,

[00:02:09] rather than their emphasis on sacraments. So much so that sacramental theology is where the trust is in the doing and receiving of the sacraments to make you a Christian, whereas the heart of evangelicalism is that its response to the Gospel, personally, as led by the Holy Spirit, that is what makes you an evangelical Christian. the difference being one that believes in the centrality of the gospel and its effect in bringing you to Christ and also the ongoing effect of the teaching of the gospel into making you into a disciple and if you haven’t picked it up along the way part of my own personal the book that I’m writing is on the lost application of the gospel because the gospel is not only that which introduces us to being a Christian but it is the force that propagates our sanctification

[00:03:05] and the chief evidence of that, of course, twofold. One, the book of Romans, which thesis is central that I’m just articulating to you. And secondly, the fact that the four Gospels, as named in the Scriptures in the New Testament, the four Gospels begin the New Testament, they have long lists of chapters and the chapters aren’t only to bring you to Christ but also to teach you to go deep in Christ. And so in following someone up who’s become a Christian, discipleship properly is done by taking them deeper into understanding the Gospel. That’s the thesis of the book I’m writing. And that Gospel understood at depth continues the work that it began by bringing you to Christ. It helps you to go strong in Christ. And the classic book of the New Testament that makes this clear is, of course, the book of Romans

[00:04:00] It starts off with chapter 1 talking about the fact that Paul is not ashamed of the gospel, it is the power of God unto salvation. But his delineation of how that message helps you handle the question of ongoing sin. And in chapter 12 he talks about the fact that it is that call to surrender to God that the gospel brings according to his gospel he says. To surrender your body is a living sacrifice and that’s how true spirituality comes about. And so the gospel has a part to play not only in bringing you to Christ but also in taking you deeper in Christ. And those two things together are what constitute discipleship. The actual word in the Greek which means to turn someone into a disciple when it was first noticed in the Greek and translations were made, for example the King James Bible that you have.

[00:04:55] The King James Bible translates the Great Commission and the one in Matthew’s gospel translated is going into all the world to teach all nations because they didn’t know what the word that we now know means turn people into disciples. They didn’t know really what it meant and the only instances they had brought to light the fact in the middle of the make-up of the word is the word disciple and the word disciple means someone learning. So if you’re getting people to be learners, then you’re teaching them. An assumption they made, but as more references came to light and also in literature beyond the scope of the Bible itself, of the instances of this word, to make disciples, then they recognize that its meaning is to turn someone into a disciple. The application in the Great Commission,

[00:05:44] it is by propagating the Gospel that you turn people into disciples. Now this is a bit of a hobby horse of mine, so I’m not going to keep elaborating on it directly now except to continue the theme about the coming of age of the evangelicalism, coming of age of the era of the Holy Spirit in the Church. Now to understand this you need first of all to have a bit of a lecture or talk coming just as I have been just doing about the meaning of the Greek words and the meaning of the passages that are called gospels and why they call themselves gospels. one is a biblical thing to do that will show you the truth that if you doubt some of the things I’m saying I will give you to the study of the New Testament and it will tell you the exact truth best. Believe the Bible rather than me

[00:06:37] but hopefully you’ll discover that I have got it fairly clear. At least I believe so anyway. But believing the scriptures, being committed to that task is actually a part of the heritage of what it is to be an evangelical where it’s more important to have the scriptures taught in church sermon after sermon than it is to have such a wonderful happening in the church that you all feel good or to have a way of including everybody to accept persons of all ideas. There are some churches who say we want to be a broad church. It’s an Anglican thing to do because they have high church and low church. And the reason why there’s high church and low church in Great Britain and in Australia is because when the Reformation happened, which was a renewal of understanding of the truth of the evangel by Martin Luther,

[00:07:33] justification by faith right at the heart of the gospel, Martin Luther brought back an emphasis that really is renewal, getting back to the evangel, to evangelicalism. to the gospel is what makes you a Christian. When Martin Luther did that, there were people who took on board that and they went across into England. The ones that did this were not so much the hoi polloi types who had big positions over there in Europe, or the ones who were the uppity uppity in the classes, but they were the common people who’d come to an evangelical experience. And many of them floated across that little bit of water between Europe and Britain, and they brought this evangelicalism to Britain. And the influence particularly on the church of England was called Low Church.

[00:08:26] If you know people and they say they go to an Anglican church and you ask them what type and they say Low Church, they may not even know it, but the reason for the wording Low Church is because it’s the Reformation that happened in Europe being applied to the church in Britain from the bottom up by all these people and little boats coming across. It’s not very big, you know, the British Canal. But they came across and they influenced the Church of England from the bottom up. An evangelical in the Anglican churches is something that you see more in the people than you do in the hierarchy and in the history of the place. And someone caught in the middle of that, of course, was the Queen, whom I greatly admired. She’s passed away now, but had a marvellous time of giving leadership to be godly.

[00:09:13] And a partway through her journey of that is discovering a slightly more evangelical approach. If you watch that series, Crown, they do it pretty good by keeping everybody happy. But it’s actually part of the episodes show the Queen getting to call Billy Graham to come for a talk, for her to work out what to do with some of her relatives who’ve been just the opposite of being evangelicals and the opposite of doing what the Church of England were normally good at. And that was asking everybody to do what the Bible says. I won’t elaborate on that film, but it’s a very good film and it’s worth watching and to see someone having to work out in the position she was in how to be true to the Scriptures. It’s a really interesting tale, that entire series.

[00:10:00] However, to talk about evangelicalism and to talk about it is what my agenda is tonight. And to talk about the fact that if you want to understand what it is to be an evangelical, you not only have the task of digging deep into the Bible and securing your beliefs to what the Bible teaches and ferreting out its exact meaning, not just taking your particular denomination to teach you everything and just accept that. We Baptists do that as well. And our cost is not so much going off on a wrong tangent like some other denominations do, but it is to take on what we do take on shallowly. That’s the problem of us Baptists. We don’t go deep enough. We need to get into the depth of the Scriptures. And that’s as a consequence of being shallow.

[00:10:49] Often you’ll find people who, if you ask them what it means to be involved with the Holy Spirit, they’ve got a very simple and inadequate doctrine of the Holy Spirit. And I think it’s something that we need to attend to to see that we know the teaching of the Scriptures about the Holy Spirit. And what I’ve started to talk about tonight is the fact that that understanding is not something that’s been static. the scriptures themselves gradually have and I’ve been emphasizing this in recent weeks a progressive revelation and the progressive revelation means God hasn’t given out he’s used all these ammunition straight at once he hasn’t told all that he has to tell but we have the revelation of God in an Old Testament package which is then superseded or added to is probably a better way to say the New Testament

[00:11:39] the very meaning is I’ve said several times of the wording New Testament means that it is like a new, what do you call them, a convention? No, it’s what you do with the promises of God is that you have a testament, but there’s another word called covenant. And the old covenant was what the Old Testament is built around and the law given by Moses. But as if you were here in the morning, you would have heard a message that had to do with Jesus correcting where people got up to through the Old Testament, the old covenant, and saying something that is purely Jesus in the new covenant. It was where Jesus addressed the woman who was caught in adultery and his people who wanted to catch, the people of the day wanted to catch him out, disagreeing with Moses. But Jesus actually made a correction to Moses

[00:12:30] because he said to the woman who was caught in adultery, go and sin no more. He said to her, neither do I condemn you. go and sin no more and Jesus outlined that the New Testament is is somehow taken a step forward in the offer of forgiveness of sins which is precisely because all that Jesus did by coming into the world and going to the cross and rising again and eventually going to heaven to take the evidence of his death for our sins before the father that there could be a turning of the heart of the father away from the anger at us because of our sin to be one of love and offering to take us into his covenant and the New Testament is about God’s call for people to respond to what Jesus did on the cross and through his take bearing away of our sins and inviting us to come and be right with

[00:13:22] God through what he has done and he offers forgiveness and he offers the gift of the Holy Spirit as a part of the package and that’s a part of where we come to as we try and track down all this gradual increase in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. If you do it biblically across the records that we have from the beginning you see that there’s a growth of the revelation that God gives us to about this topic of the Holy Spirit and I’m trying to say that there’s two things that will affect your getting to know the truth for us about the Holy Spirit and about for us to know spirituality. One is the progress of revelation through the scriptures. Don’t stay in the Old Testament. Those truths are good but Jesus is added to them and so it is the progress that

[00:14:09] God himself has made in progressive revelation is one half of the thing we’ve got to notice. The other half is that the Christian church which were the recipients of the new covenant which were recipients of getting in with God through the new covenant whereas previously in the old covenant the Jews alone were the ones that got in and to get in for we we we had to become a Jew to get in we had to bow our knee to the sacrifices of the temple or whatever of in the Jewish system but the new covenant is God letting people in simply on the basis of you coming and accepting what Jesus did in the cross and he’s still dealing with all of the rebellion of the world and everything and when you come to Jesus because of his sacrifice then you get in on the ground floor with God and that’s what a Christian is

[00:14:58] you no longer even have to become a Jew you’ve actually joined the Jewish New Covenant that doesn’t make well makes you a new Jew but doesn’t make you the old style Jew just makes you a Christian because that has come over the top of what it was to be a Jew to be a Christian is more a deeper place to be than just to be Jewish but anyway that is a part of what the New Testament shows that there is not only development of the doctrine as God has revealed it gradually but there’s also been across that first moment of the day of Pentecost when Peter announced all these things to the folk and first formed the church. Jesus started the church you know this. The church might be as the word for church in Greek is ecclesia it just means assembly.

[00:15:45] They had assemblies back there. In fact some thoughts in the Old Testament they say the assembly of the assembly because they’re getting across the fact that it’s all God’s people back then coming together so they’ve got the ones who might be called assembly by being God’s people and those ones are all assembled but the thing is that Jesus when he talked about assembly and he used the word in its technical sense to talk about what he was going to create the church he said I will build my church future to Jesus statement and future to how he by his death on the cross provided the ultimate atonement for sins. And by his going to heaven to demonstrate the efficiency of his blood to effect this, Jesus made the way for the beginning of the church and the beginning of it was that day of Pentecost

[00:16:32] when Peter told all of these things and called on them to repent and be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit by his so saying, Jesus linked the availability of the Spirit to the Gospel message, and one of the things that’s happened in this era where there’s been a coming of age of the whole doctrine of the Holy Spirit is that there have been people who’ve gone off on what I would call tangents that are incorrect, and one of them is to separate that which gets us the Holy Spirit from that which gets us right with God. That which gets us right with God is the Gospel, and that which underpins that Gospel is Jesus’ ministry, his death on the cross, the atonement that he made once and for all, the once and all death of Jesus,

[00:17:24] that as he died, the curtain of the temple that kept people out from the holiness of God was torn from top to bottom. It was a very thick, big curtain that would be very hard to tear. It wouldn’t be a whole lot of soldiers and the bottom pulling, very hard to try and get it, but this got torn from top to bottom because it’s God who did it because when Jesus died, There was no more keeping us, anybody out from his presence who did not come, who were willing to come by that which he atoned for our sin, Jesus, when he died for our sins. And the atonement opened up the very presence of God for all who’d come to the Jesus who died. And they could come right in, be at peace with God, which is what the gospel message offers. The book of Romans so beautifully makes it clear

[00:18:12] that by Jesus’ death and resurrection, his ascension into heaven and his being handed the Holy Spirit by the Father and his sending the Holy Spirit the day of Pentecost to all who would come, confessing Christ as Saviour and believing in him. And they’re also joining the church, which is the Ecclesia. So there’s a redefinition of what’s the Ecclesia by that action of Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension, his being handed by the Father to be the one or the Father and Jesus together sent the Holy Spirit on the believing disciples and by the Holy Spirit coming to them they were constituted members of the church. That’s also what happens when we preach the gospel today and someone hears this lovely message of how Jesus has made the door open and they come to him.

[00:19:02] We tell them you’ve become a part of the church. We invite them to be members of our little local church but it’s not that that does anything but make them members on our role but when they come to Jesus and accept him as saviour they’re members on heaven’s role that’s why we as Baptists don’t really make big deal about the ceremony I mean we have a little ceremony when someone becomes a member and we shake their hands some of the language we use I don’t always remember to do it properly but is that we welcome them into the fellowship of the church and we actually have a wording sometimes I use it is that we offer you the right hand of fellowship But I know that none of my language does the job. It’s just a communication of what’s going on. I know that they’re becoming members of our local churches

[00:19:48] and what make them a part of the church. It was their conversion. When anybody comes to Christ, if there’s been a moment in your life when you sealed the issue between you and God by confessing Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour, whether you did it in a gradual way of gradually raising a flag socially somehow, whether you did it in a statement that you gave in your testimony or whether you did it the way the Bible suggests that we do, which is by being baptised. Either way, it doesn’t matter. But when you raise the flag for Jesus that He’s your Saviour, you get into the church and you’re in the church and if we put you on our roll, that’s an extra blessing. I hope I’m doing justice to our proper Baptist position, but we don’t make people a part of the church. We only recognise that they are

[00:20:39] and when they’re prepared to be working that out in this local gathering then we put them on our membership roll. By the way there are some of you who probably don’t even know that much about this and you should think it through and go and see Joey, he’s our secretary and say I think I should be a member and he’ll work on it so that you are regarded as such because you are spiritually already. Why do I say that, spiritually already? because Jesus said about what he was going to do, he said, I will, future, build my church. And Jesus knew that he had to go through the death and the cross. He knew he had to die and be dead in Hades. He knew he would have to be risen from the dead and go back to heaven. In order for him to make the church set up, he built the church by his wonderful mission.

[00:21:34] And then at the successful so doing, he made the Holy Spirit available to all who had come, repent, confess Christ, be baptised in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, is how he worded it in the day of Pentecost. And you will not only be forgiven, but you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And that connection of the Holy Spirit being received is what the Gospel does. It’s why the book of Romans is full of all about the Holy Spirit and learning to walk with him. It’s why the book of Galatians is about learning to walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh. Because if you’ve come to Jesus, he has made you a part of the church. And it’s a bit of a learning exercise as a young churchy person to learn how to walk after the Spirit. It’s why the book of Romans not only has that first chapter

[00:22:24] that says, I am not ashamed of the Gospel, it’s the power of God, the salvation, but it has the final chapter where he talks about, I beseech you therefore, brothers, brothers in the church, that you surrender your bodies as a living sacrifice. Hey, it’s up on the screen. I appeal to you therefore brothers, by the mercies of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is the spiritual thing to do, your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world. There needs to be a standing against the pressures of the world, but to be conformed, transformed, this next bit, by the renewal of your mind. And the more you give yourself to study the Gospel, the more you give yourself to worship the Saviour and to walk with Him, the more you give yourself

[00:23:09] to let the Holy Spirit help you in learning how to walk after the Spirit. You have lots of ups and downs, but gradually as a Christian, you can learn to walk a bit better after the Spirit. And as you do that, there’s a renewal of your mind that will show when it says the testing the next little bit is it will make demonstrated so that you can discern what is the will of God you can have it become clear to you as you walk after the spirit and then you see what is good and what is acceptable and what is perfect that’s Romans 12 that’s the end of the gospel of Romans I could call it or it’s the letter of Paul to the Romans in the literature but it’s really the gospel taught at depth One of the best ways you can disciple someone is to take them through the book of Romans. In chapter 1, you can get them converted.

[00:23:58] But in chapter 12, you can get them to see, to need, to hand over everything to the Lord and trust in him and let that full surrender allow his Holy Spirit to do a deep thing in you and making you transformed in the renewal of your mind. And so this is what it is to be an evangelical. Now, I’ve got a whole lot of stuff I thought I might say and I’ll pick a few of them parts rather than carry on too much. But listen, normal Christianity has been interrupted back in history of various people trying to get it straight but not quite succeeding. And there has come about in what might be the history of the doctrine of the Spirit some overemphasis or going off the track emphases. Now, you know that the charismatic movement is that which has come of age, according to Harold Linssell,

[00:24:55] who wrote a book on that in the second half of last century, come of age and continues so to be today, although there are other isms that are veying for to change and modify the world, humanist sort of visions and very human-centred ways that are actually competing with the Christian influence right at this time in the 21st century. Well, anyway, normal Christianity is that which the Day of Pentecost is putting on display and the Book of Romans talks about. But there are some movements that have happened in that second half of last century and the ongoing movement all surrendering around the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. This doctrine has come on centre stage in these last periods of time, the end of last century and the beginning of this one. And people are talking about the Holy Spirit

[00:25:55] and there’s variations of how they understand things. but definitely the Holy Spirit has come onto center stage in our times. And that center stage that comes, comes with some things that are slightly different but are still good and some things which not only are slightly different but are damaging. The biggest thing that will make a damage is if you separate the availability of the Holy Spirit away from the work of Jesus. there’s only one way toward getting to know the ministry of the Holy Spirit it’s through the mission of Jesus he’s the one by what he did that has brought an entire difference in how God has a stance God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit because when our human race sinned we got kicked out of the Garden of Eden now you don’t need to have a bigger happening

[00:26:51] I don’t know whether you’re a person that’s been to high school and did so many bad things they made you expels that’s just out of the high school but how bad would it have to be to be in the Garden of Eden and have God kick you out not only you but your entire progeny afterwards we the entire race not only us but everything that we affect including the whole animal kingdom including the way the world runs has all been affected by human sin in fact the Bible tells us that all of creation groans waiting for God to fix it up with these sinful humans that they might have relief and so when we the human race got kicked out of the garden God is set against us and so the Old Testament which talks of people who are seeking to walk with God in those times is talking about there being an angry God it’s not because God is

[00:27:52] the father is angry, there are some people whose teaching is that the father is the angry one and the son is the nice one and the son goes and please come on daddy don’t be so angry that’s a total wrong picture no all that God is, is angry at humanity and is getting ready for the judgement of humanity but God is also a God of love it’s not that he’s half anger and half love but he’s both and the anger is an anger at sin and rebellion, but the love wants to put us away from where the anger will get us and where his love and grace can restore us. And so Jesus comes into the world with his mission to achieve that. And at the success of his mission of having died for our sins, having by his taking our punishment, he has averted the wrath of God. The wrath of God could averted means steered not

[00:28:48] to the land where it was previously aimed. Where did Jesus steer the wrath of God to land instead? On him. He bore the wrath of God for all our sins. In him, the Bible says, on the tree, another word for cross, on the cross, Jesus bore the wrath of God for the human sin, for all the wreckage that’s done to the creation for everything. Jesus Christ bore the punishment of that in him. He suffered so badly that he, I was going to say wince, but no, he said to the Father, if it’s possible that I could bypass this, please. That’s what he was saying. But there wasn’t any way that he could and then he says, Father, not my will, but yours be done. Jesus didn’t easily go to the cross. I better get this little task done to fix up humanity. It wasn’t any little task. It was something his whole soul dreaded doing

[00:29:45] and he went there by the greatest sacrifice of love for your sins and mine and for the entire world and by what he did he took the consequences he took the results of it to heaven before the father and sat down at the right hand of the father and now he is our representative he’s now become our ambassador he’s now become the one who’s on our side previously he would have been he’d been aware of the wrath of God against all of us but now he’s the one in heaven who argues for us to be forgiven. He’s the one who makes the case that his blood is sufficient for the forgiveness of your sins. And as he makes that, he also sends the Holy Spirit to those who have come in repentance and he gives a spiritual side. The whole era of evangelicalism is because of the success of Jesus’ ministry and what he did in the cross

[00:30:39] and how God the Father accepted that sacrifice. Oh, I’m thinking of a whole host of things I could say here but we’ll be going for hours. I should speed ahead. The Holy Spirit is given as God’s love gift to those whom he now embraces to belong to him. And so that Pentecost moment had a message given by Peter that if you’ll repent of your sins, if you’ll confess your love of the Saviour, if you’ll confess coming to Jesus, if you put your trust in him, he’ll not only forgive you but he’ll give you the gift of the Holy Spirit. And evangelicalism rests on the ministry of Jesus, the success of Jesus’ ministry on the cross. And the offer of the Holy Spirit is on the basis of never leaving aside what he’s done on the cross. So if you meet a type of spirituality that says,

[00:31:36] will you come and be a Christian by what Jesus did on the cross? but over here you have this experience which is the second blessing or whatever come and do that and you’ll get all these extras don’t believe it there is nothing extra to what Jesus has arranged for you through what he did on the cross through what he and the father did by raising him from the dead there is no such thing if you mean by second blessing the one that you’ve already got you got because of Jesus’ sacrifice but the second one is because of a special thing that you can get in the Holy Spirit. There is nothing outside the blessing of Jesus and his sacrifice that the Spirit brings to deliver to us the gift of God that that sacrifice has made possible. And the church, which Jesus promised, he said,

[00:32:27] I will build my church, started at the day of Pentecost when the Apostle Peter preached basically the message I’m giving you tonight by what Jesus has done. You can come and be forgiven. There’s not two blessings. There’s the one blessing of coming to Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit that belongs to it. It is true that once we have received the Holy Spirit that there’s an ongoing process of learning to allow him to be operative in our life. It is true that there are things like being filled with the Spirit where the Holy Spirit comes and takes over us and does things. But nonetheless, the very wording of Spirit and being filled with the Spirit and whatever that lands behind the whole idea of an evangelicalism. That wording clearly is this. Let me explain it to you.

[00:33:16] That’s the idea of the Holy Spirit as a gift is tied to the gospel and the gift of forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit are tied together. So you can’t get forgiven by Jesus’ death and resurrection and still be without the Holy Spirit. He is given to you as the first love moment. There are times when you can have the Holy Spirit come on you and do things and take you deeper, but they are not a second blessing. They’re an application of the first blessing. And many people do have experiences of learning to walk. The book of Ephesians talks about the fact that it actually takes your inner person to be strengthened by the Holy Spirit for you to catch the indwelling of Jesus in your heart. So if you were led to Christ by a simple prayer in Sunday school

[00:34:08] that just says, oh, if you ask Jesus into your heart, you become a Christian, which might be appropriate to little kids who can’t understand very much, but it’s such a minimalisation of what the gospel actually is that it leaves you open to think there’s another blessing to do with receiving the Holy Spirit. Let me tell you, there’s no having Jesus come to your heart, but that the Holy Spirit isn’t the one that gets in you when you come to Jesus as Saviour. and when he comes into your life he makes it possible for you to catch the power and the impact and the moral enormity of the explosion of Jesus’ presence in you that’s what the book of Ephesians talks about that when the Holy Spirit is needed to make you capable of receiving the internal residence of Jesus

[00:34:58] that’s all something that starts at your conversion there is an experience of being controlled by the Spirit which can happen at different moments along and it can happen at a time which is subsequent to your conversion moment can happen again and again and again and just being filled with the Spirit at one moment doesn’t mean that you won’t need to be filled with the Spirit at other moments and sometimes they’re so dramatic that things happen they say, well, isn’t that amazing and wonderful but it’s not you getting the Spirit more it’s him taking over more and the teaching of the book of Romans to end up as a Dazon about how you need to make a full surrender of yourself to Christ so that you can actually see happen what the Holy Spirit can do, that you can have it happening for you.

[00:35:44] That’s because he’s already in your life because you’ve come to Christ. And already being in your life because you came to Christ means that when he takes over in you lots of good things will happen. And so there is spiritual experiences that you can have subsequent to the moment of conversion but you’re not getting the Holy Spirit a second time or an extra time or whatever. You’re giving the opportunity for him to do something in you. In fact, to that end, the book of Galatians is full of the advice of how if you walk after the Spirit, you won’t fulfil the desires of the sinful flesh but you won’t come out with a bag list of things done but you’ll come out with the likeness of Jesus and with the good things the Holy Spirit can do. so what it means then to have the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit

[00:36:35] is certainly connected to your letting Jesus have full control in your life but it’s not a second blessing it’s you letting the first one get to you and you putting your trust in the presence of the Holy Spirit who came to your life that day you surrendered to Christ there are some people who do make a semi-prayer to come to Jesus and they’re trying to get in the door that somehow have to see more deeply what the commitment is and the faith is who then find it happening later after a second attempt to be spiritual. But it’s only that Christ and coming to him as Saviour is only one blessing through one person, through Jesus, and he’s the secret to your having the power of the Holy Spirit. When you let him take control of you, you’ll be filled or controlled. The word filled means to be controlled.

[00:37:30] And if you let that radically keep on happening, it’ll change your character so you’ll become a person who’s characterised by the Holy Spirit working in you. And these are all things that have their development after the moment of your first prayer. But there’s only one blessing, and it’s through Jesus because of his sacrifice and by his presence in your life and his spirit transforming you to make it work. Let’s have a moment of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you in Jesus’ name. We praise you for the facts that you know how your church is built, Lord Jesus. They’re built by coming to you as Saviour. They’re built by that confession of your Saviour as they get baptised and recognise themselves as in your church. Father, we thank you for how the Holy Spirit is able to help us to grow

[00:38:23] and how the book of Galatians encourages us to walk after the Spirit and so show the fruits of the Spirit. We thank you, Father, for that walking after the Spirit that helps us too, to not fall to the temptations of the flesh. We thank you for the help that we get through Jesus as he seeks to bless us. And we praise you for the gifts of the Spirit, those gifts that come because we have the Spirit and how they help us to bless others. What a wonderful thing that is. We pray that you might advance a spiritual movement amongst us, that we will be they who can display all that the Spirit has to give that comes because of Jesus. We pray this in his name. Amen.