Automatically Generated Transcript

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Driving back to my home in the southern suburb of St Mary's in Adelaide, I did what I love to do, and that was to take a detour to where there was this beautiful cream bun shop. And I'd stop at the shop and buy a couple of cream buns to eat on the way back home. And those were days when I was free to eat and wasn't afraid of what that might do. And this particular day as I drove up, there was another car that just pulled in ahead of me. And this is back in the time when lots of cars had bumper stickers. Now because bumpers are not so much common these days, so also there are not as many bumper stickers. stickers, although someone here might have one on your car. Put your hand up, if you have a bumper sticker on your car, anybody? See there you go. They've gone out of vogue. Well this person had a bumper sticker that said, They shall speak with other tongues.

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Now I knew the quote from Mark's gospel near the end, chapter 16. From which that came. It really intrigued me that someone would put such a message on their car. What did they think people reading it would jump to conclusions, you know, they shall speak in other tongues? What are they trying to stress? I think they were assuming a lot of knowledge of people to the context of the Great Commission in Mark where it does say that these signs will follow the disciples. Of course it went on to say the next little thing, They shall pick up serpents. I got out of my car walking towards the shop

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came near the other person hadn't, and I can't remember whether they hadn't gotten out yet or they'd got in the cream bun quick enough to get back to the car. The window was down so I stopped and said, Have you picked up any serpents yet? And they really had a bit of a blank look not understand what I was talking about it just occurred to me how easy it is when you put a very small message, not to take part of what you believe in and

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somehow misrepresent yourself with it. So if we were to be in the business of making bumper stickers maybe we wouldn't put them on a bumper, since they don't exist as much, put it on the back window, or maybe some other place where it's public what would you put that would be communicative of the most central thing of the gospel? We're looking tonight at a passage which really gets us to the heart of what is the centre of what it is to be a Christian. What is right is the essence, not all the detail but just the very central essence of what it is to be a Christian. You realise of course if you did a two round church you'd find quite a lot of different ideas. And in fact, our generation in Christendom,

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a general word, you'd find an awful lot of variation of understanding as to what really makes a person a Christian, and that's what I'm talking about tonight. And so I've been thinking of bumper stickers or back window stickers for a car, and what occurred to me was one that came from a Bible verse, another Bible verse that I think that's a bit more representative of the Central and it is the idea from, I think it's from John, if you 've got this verse, and you would take a bit of the verse and put it up on your rear wind screen or wherever you have, somewhere.

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Whoever has the Son has life. Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. As 1 John 5.12, and it really captures the essence that it would be more communicative to put something that is to the centre of the gospel and something that the different churches have all sorts of varied opinions about whether you should speak in tongues or not, and exactly how to understand that verse. By the way, what I think I wanted to say that fellow, if he had let me start a conversation was that he continued to mention how the Mark 16 and 16 verses say it will follow those who believe, and not that we should bang them on or that we should make them central. Believing is more important, and let God worry about which signs follow!

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Now here we have that whoever has the Son has life. Food whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life", now how could we make that a bumper sticker or a rear window sticker, his mice playing around. I thought well you could take the first part and you could put and simply say, whoever has the Sun has life or you could say no KNOW. No Jesus. No life. And I reckon that's pretty good to communicate the heart of the Gospel, knowing Jesus and knowing life. And the reason why I am thinking that is that our passage tonight is Jesus reproving Philip for not really knowing who he is. 14. We have here Jesus dealing with his own disciples, because he wants for them to know the very heart of what it is to be a Christian, not just to have an idea your denomination

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pushes or to have an idea you picked up from other people who haven't really got to the the central issue of what it is to be a Christian. Philip said to Jesus, now he's been very busy, Jesus, trying to tell them about he has come from the father and who he is and how important is it. Philip said to him, Lord show us the father. That's enough for us. And Jesus replied, Jesus said to him, have I been with you so long and you still don't know me, Philip?

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Wow. Now, if you're one of Jesus' disciples and he said, that to you, I'd feel very reproved. I feel, really. He's, you know, hit a nail in the head that I've been not aware I had a hitting. I've been so long with you and you still do not know me. Now, given how we've just been talking of a good back-window sticker, no Jesus, no life, K-N-O-W.

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What would that mean about Philip? Now I want to suggest that the heart of the gospel is you're a Christian if you've come to know Christ. You're not just a Christian because you believe in God. I think believing in God is a Christian thing to do. But there are many people who do believe in God but yet have not found him. You can be taught to believe in God. You can actually be a person who is quite knowledgeable about the scriptures, you can know the Ten Commandments, you can be brought up, as I was in a Sunday school, and did very

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well at answering all sorts of quizzes and winning prizes in Sunday school that they used to have in Perth. You are looking at the top of the state for two years running, as a kid. But I was not yet a Christian. I'll tell you something rather tragic I didn't know it. Well, not tragic, it would have gone on to be tragic if there had not have been the time when they came to Perth, West Australia, the Billy Graham Crusade and my Dad being involved in it. I became enthusiastic for these big meetings that were going to be held. Not knowing when I got them Dad's working in it midnight to go every time.

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And every night when the message was given some strange conviction came over me that I had a wrong understanding about myself. I believe myself after all winning prizes. Didn't I know how to quote the Bible? Used to be the King James and all the semi-colons, whatever I had to learn off my heart. Didn't that make me a Christian? I certainly was a person who was a believer and I was an enthusiast. when the Graham team came and some of them stayed in our house I sat in the discussions if they'd leave the door open or I'd come in or they'd use lounge and I'd come and join them and they didn't kick me out.

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I was in the enthusiasm for everything assuming I was a Christian but the issue I hadn't ever confronted was whether I actually knew Christ, I knew the Bible verses. I believed, I was a believer in God. I didn't have a doubt, one little doubt, and I really feel a little bit, not ashamed, but realizing how silly I must have looked as a nine-year-old to these international visitors listening to my contributions to their conversation. Well, anyway, in the outworking of it night after night, this conviction came over me

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that I might've known about Christ, but that I didn't know him. when they talked on Jesus being the Savior that I have never come to Jesus to deal with my sin and on the final Sunday afternoon the moment came for me to take a step to come to know Christ and I have known him ever since. So for me a good back window of the car sticker now we're not talking about bumper bars. Would be to have something that said something like no Jesus or no Christ and no life. But you could make it a little bit stronger and add in another one, another part of it and that would be, if instead of just no Christ and no life, we put something like this, no Jesus no life, just take the K off and it makes a good little bumper sticker.

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So you could either have one on one side and the other on the other or you could run them together and put them in the one bumper sticker or it would be a bumper bigger sticker and I don't know whether you can do that? Yeah, you can whichever way you want to emphasize no Jesus no life but no Jesus and no life. That's what Jesus was trying to get across to Philip and in our passage looking at it in John 14 what verse it is a bit further down from from the first one to about verse 8 or 9. Jesus expresses to Philip. That when Philip asked the question he's just talking about him and the father and him having been sent

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by the father, him being one with the father. Well let me read this Philip. Philip said to him, Lord, show us the father and it's enough for us. Jesus has just being saying he that's seen me has seen the father'. And Philip didn't get the point. So Jesus said to him, have I been so long and you still do not know me Philip? Because if you suddenly realize the gospel isn't only just about being a believer in God. The gospel is about coming to know God by coming into a knowledge of his Son whom he has sent. That's why the gospel if you know the most famous verse of the Bible is one that makes the

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gospel clear. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son who whoever believes in him shall have eternal life and all through the gospel of John the point of the whole book is really on this is that when you come to know Jesus you have life and John the man that was a young man when he wrote the Gospel, youngish. But when he was an old man he wrote the little letters we have in our Bible, 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John. They are very short little epistles up the back of the Bible, just before Judean revelation. And if you read in there it is very clear the he who knows Christ knows life. Actually I have found all down, because of what happened to me, in a very powerful verse to quote to other people. And one lady who eventually became a Christian was my wife-to-be's mother while we were still meeting,

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and she was very much objecting to me being on the scene. We had a confrontation in their house, and she brought out the fact of her religion. She had a religious background. It wasn't always a happy one but she'd have one and she did have beliefs. And so she expressed her religious credentials. And out of me came this verse, "...he that has the Son has life..." It is in 1 John, "...he that does not have the Son of God does not have life." I'm asking you the question tonight, do you know Jesus? What does it mean to know him? I bet

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that must have run through Philip's mind. What exactly does it mean when Jesus said you do not know me? know me. It can actually mean two things, two possibilities. It could be that Philip was like I was before I came to know Christ. It could be that Philip was a disciple in making but he was so shallow that he still didn't have the penny and weren't dropping. I think both of those possibilities are the case that people could be in churches where have had something happen that brought them in, and unknown to them they probably have, they have been converted. Because being converted to Christ is when you first actually come to know Him. That was the difference for me because of the moment that day, the final Sunday afternoon of that set of meetings, I have

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never had any sense that I did not know Christ. They gave us a little Gospel to read and the more I read of Jesus, it was the Gospel of John, the more I knew somewhat experientially in my heart, the person being talked about and the more they talked in the book, John's Gospel, my brother and I made the same response the same afternoon, Sunday afternoon and we had read through that little Gospel of John across three days, but the The more I read of Jesus there, the more I knew in the depth of who I was that I knew him here. Now I don't mean to say that he comes into your blood pump, I'm not talking about where in you he is, but the fact that you have become someone that knows Christ. I knew and I knew that I knew ever since.

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I meet other people and talk to them about Jesus? The heart of the message that I want to represent, my challenge to them is not, do you believe this or have you had a catechism or have you been baptised or do you understand all the issues of the second coming, there's a whole host of things that are important. Are you charismatic and believe in speaking in other tongues and if you do I will ask if you picked up any serpents. They are not the big issues. What the real big issues that you should put into a bumper sticker is about knowing Jesus. A little later on, that was when I was nine, when I was about fourteen, I met an African student who used to talk to everybody about Christ. He'd been an alcoholic in the streets of Tanzania, found unconscious by other people on the road and they'd pick him up and take him somewhere. And some Christians in the city he was in found him, so took him

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back to their place and sobered him up, and eventually fed him and they told him the gospel of Christ. And what they told him was of the person Jesus, but they told him enough of who Jesus was, that he's the one that the Father had sent to come into the world, and and when the Father sends Jesus to come into the world. Look, let's look back at what Jesus says to Philip. He says, how have I been so long with you, Philip? And you don't know me? Well he says, how have I been so long with me and you don't know me, Philip? Jesus came into the world

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in order that he might be with us as a people, as humanity. Christmas is exactly that and we can go through Christmases and people celebrate all sorts of things about angels and about Christmas carols, but many never twigs on them. The message of Christmas is that God wanted to come and dwell with us, that that's corporately as a humanity. It's also true in the Communion services as Joey led us, that what the purpose of the communion is the fellowship

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that God wants to have as a group of people who've come to know Him, the Church. And communion is about Jesus wanting to recognise that He's present with us spiritually, although we will celebrate that with Him in person later when He comes back, but as a matter of fact, every time we have communion, though you might not see Him as a presence sitting in this seat or that, Jesus says He's present when two or more

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gather together in His name, He says, there am I in the midst. Another part of the Bible talks about Jesus amongst the Christian Church as he comes to speak. And one of the things that happens in churches is sometimes there grows a sense of presence. Jesus said when two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst. One of the things that happened

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to me after becoming a Christian and realizing that I knew Christ, There are also occasions, not just my conversion, but also the occasions where doing something like in church when I'd become very aware that Jesus was there. And as he says in Revelation and Chapter three when he comes to the churches he comes to speak. He that has an ear, let him listen to what I'm saying to the churches. He wants you to tune your spiritual ears

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to know about the presence of Christ In the fellowship of the church it's a fantastic thing I've had different people say to me who do come to Christian churches and they had some silly idea of what it was gonna be like a very boring old time and a group of very fuddy-duddy people who weren't very experienced in things of the world they had all sorts of different ideas but then they discovered that there was something else

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to be known about the presence of something in that church it's not a some thing, it's a some one I think, even tonight when we meet in his name, Jesus is here! I remember singing that without contemplating much about how true it was. But I have discovered since, that one of the features of Christian meetings is that every now and then Jesus sometimes decides to show himself! I don't mean that you see a visage of his face, whether his hair is long or short. I mean that Jesus somehow makes his presence known to the heart. That's exactly what that verse often argued about by people not knowing how to interpret it in Revelation 3.20, that talks and says, If I stand at the door and knock if any person

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hears my voice and opens the door I will come into and on up to him and fellowship with him, he with me. People argue about whether that's the moment of your conversion but there's actually a general truth, that where there is a church, Jesus wishes to be known amongst his church. He is a presence, but sometimes we are a bit like Philip and the other choice there is, it could be that if you, Philip didn't recognize, really know who Jesus was, or was he, didn't know him at all yet. Or it could be that his discipleship was

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in such a shallow development that he had not recognized something that was true. I believe that we get in the presence of Jesus when we come to know him at conversion. But I also think that at various events that happened during our life sometimes when we've been a bit shallow we're forced to realize that Jesus is with us and sometimes it takes a bit of a tragedy or it takes a bit of a turmoil

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storm in your life, whatever you want to say, for Jesus to come walking on your waters of life speaking metaphorically I've had a few of those. One of them was when I went overseas to be a student and was doing my master's thesis and I've got set up by the systematic theology lecturer to disprove or he told me to...right in a direction that had me go the library and find Someone who had the opposite view and then he said your task is to disprove his article He knew that there was one of the preaching professors. Who'd written an article of the up with the opposite view the name of the article the perils of persuasive preaching as someone who didn't believe in getting emotional Who didn't believe it was our job to convince people to come to Christ. You leave that to God and anyway

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I did seek to disprove from the Bible that in the Book of Acts they certainly didn't take his advice. They were about the business of being persuasive of all that they said, to bring people to Christ. And that man got wind of the fact that I was disproving his article, and he, through the academic system behind the scenes, put pressure from my thesis to be cancelled. I was about to graduate. Spent all my money. The thesis was finished. and I was given the marching orders. Now, believe me, when you've done all and you've

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spent all, and you're then kicked out, you're in a bit of a crisis. And so I was in a habit of going into the First Baptist church in Dallas, the city this is in, and praying in the night. They let me start a prayer meeting all Saturday night for the Sunday services. And at first I, I might have a few people with me, but one night after this had happened I went in there and I thought, good, no one else is here, I'll pray about my thesis. And I was in a stew, and I was really oppressed. And I want to tell you something, Jesus was เลย. A hymn book sat down in front where I was walking around it's empty it's a big church five thousand seats so and twenty thousand members so always didn't all come at once. There's three services on a Sunday. The hymn book, the American hymn book was there and I picked it up lo and behold

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the order of the hymns was different but hymn number one was Martin Luther's Him. Did we in our own strength rely that will be all our losing? Were not the right man with the capital R and capital M talking about Jesus... We're not the right man on our side... the man of God's own choosing... The emphasis of it was of the person of Christ who's the God-man, who's human. You are not a Christian until you've really come to understand that Jesus is the one that God the Father sent to take on humanity to become your mediator. And the Bible tells us this, the thing at St Timothy, it says there is one Mediator between God and man the man Christ Jesus, 1 Timothy 2 5, one mediator between God man, the man Christ Jesus. This is the heart of the Gospel. God's eternal son, deity, or didn't leave his deity behind, but he didn't come just to be a son of God, worshipped by all, everybody

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bowing down. He came to take on humanity and he humbled himself. When he walked down the streets, people didn't necessarily know he was the Son of God. He was, but his humanity was what he took on board, in his humility. In order that he, being a man, might qualify to be the one that stands as a mediator, someone who has one hand on the Father and the other hand on you, and Jesus stands between you and Father God to bring you together, and that's the Gospel for God so I loved the world that He sent His only Son. Now, whosoever believes in Him should not perish but should have eternal life and the belief that's necessary to get you the eternal life is not just to be a believer in God, you're like me. When I was a kid earlier than nine, I certainly was a believer. I don't know what God would have done if I had a been run over by a

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truck then. I think children get to go to heaven anyway by the grace of God, but I don't know for certain, but I know one thing. When I came to know Christ it was at the proclamation of how he'd come in to the world and the other part of what he did by coming and being a man was that he came to live out under the demands of the law and satisfy it. He fulfilled it by obeying it and to represent humanity sinless, he might be a sinless sacrifice to go to the cross and there take the price, the cost, the punishment for my sins and it was that message given every night at the Grand Crusade that made me suddenly realize that I had never done business with Jesus as a Savior. I used an old hymn just as I am without one plea but that my blood was shed for me

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and that thou bids me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come. And the moment of my coming to Christ was the moment I decided to go to Him. So if you're a believer in God, good step, no man can come to God unless he first believes that he exists the Book of Hebrew says, you're qualifying to come but the moment you come is when you hear that he's your Savior and you come to take him as your Savior when we say receive Christ we mean to acknowledge him as the Savior of your soul that you want you put your faith in him he that believes in me has eternal life. Jesus talking to Nicodemus about it's something that hadn't happened to Nicodemus he needed to come and believe in Jesus he doesn't actually get to do that until the end of the gospel when Jesus has died on the cross Nicodemus is

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one of those that helped you go to Pilate to ask for his body now what this means is that in Christianity or In Christendom which is a more general word of all the people who roughly are believing in God. In Christendom, there probably are a lot of people who do believe in God, have been brought up in the church and because there's so many varieties of denominations, there's quite a lot of variety as to what those people are taught. Some of the things taught are just not what the bible teaches.

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Some people are taught that if you behave well, God will reward you by a place in heaven. What the Bible actually teaches is that we, the whole human race, have become so sinful that none of us are going to heaven that way. Jesus is the only man since Adam and Eve. They sinned and fell on the whole of us as a human race with them, but it's the only person who since has obeyed all the laws of God was Jesus himself. He qualifies by keeping a law, But he did that, that he might become a sinless sacrifice for you and for me, and therefore he, that's how he became the Savior, and when we ask him to be our personal Savior, that is the moment, that is the moment that we come to know Christ." So, whether Philip was someone that didn't actually yet know him, or whether he was someone perhaps he had,

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because I've met people who have somehow become converted along the way, but didn't know exactly when. I think there are people who also have got a very shallow grasp of how it happened, but they have some awareness that they've come to be right with God. I think that, that can be another reason that the reason why Jesus would say that to Philip, is that maybe he wasn't a Daw, because he was trusting Jesus, but he was just ignorant of the content of the Gospel thus far. And so that was the reason for Jesus saying to him have I been so long with you and yet I do not know you. There's one other place, I want to say there's probably lots of them but I think when you go through persecutions and when you go through difficulties and the world is against you, Jesus has got a habit when the

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world comes up and gangs on us as Christians that he steps forward and he stands in the way and this is my daughter this is my son and he's with you and when you confess Christ is yours and then you get persecuted it is amazing the sense of strength that he comes alongside a person the Apostle Paul is someone who illustrates in the development of his coming to know Christ both the things I've already mentioned, one is that you know him at conversion conversion, and the others you know him when you get into struggles, and in my case with the theses, God had his way to answer that, I won't go into the details, but Jesus told me that he was there, and he brought about the solution to it. But in the case of the Apostle Paul, let's look at two places in his experience where

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one of them we're going to go to is his next nine, and this is at the beginning because this is showing you that he doesn't know Christ at all this is at the start but look at how it's worked now as he went on his way he's going to Damascus you know the storyline he's there going to capture Christians and have them put in jail or killed and suddenly a light from heaven shot around him and falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him is Saul, Saul, that's his non-Christian name why are you persecuting me? and he said who are you Lord. So he doesn't know Jesus, who are you Lord? And he said, I'm Jesus whom you are persecuting. So what is necessary in some cases is for people to be fronted up with, the fact that they don't actually know him. And you find that when you travel around

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in churches and you preach in churches that often some of the people who are there believe they know him. They might even be the minister. I've had and on occasions where the minister had to admit he didn't really know Christ. Take me back to his house and then give me supper after the meeting. And why is he going on talking instead of us all getting to have some sleep and eventually comes out that he doesn't know that he knows the Lord?

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You could be someone who is in a church all your life like the old lady. Who this is another church, this one's in Perth where I gave a call for the evening service and they were just young people mainly. There was one returned missionary present. And when we had young people respond, I took them to a room at the back to counsel them. And the old lady came in too. I said, oh, she's come to see

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whether I talk to them properly or what? And so we went around the room I started with the young people, what you come forward for. And they said, you know, what you were talking about, I want to do. I got to her and she says were you Tilles, what's your name? She turned out to be a returned missionary, retired, and she said, but I need to do what they're doing.

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So all of her Christian life, she was like Philip, who hadn't actually been converted and didn't know him and knew that he knew, she knew him, she came to know him that day. And Paul says, who are not you, Lord?" You see, he doesn't know the Lord, but he came to know Him that day. Let's go to the second spot for Paul. I told you there's two. I'll be finished in a minute. There's a second spot where Paul is in trouble and it's in Acts 23 and at one particular

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time when he's been witnessing to all these people, the Jewish folk got a riot going. the riot turned very violent and it says when the dissension became violent, the tribune, the Roman soldier who was overseeing capturing Paul, afraid the Paul would be torn to pieces by them, commanded the soldiers to go down and take him away from among them by force, bringing back into the barracks. Now the following night, Paul by the way,

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is going to be sent down to Rome, possibly to be executed, who knows? the following night the Lord stood by him and said, I love this verse, take courage, for as you've testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem so you must testify also in Rome. But the bit that's so encouraging to me is that the Lord came, imagine being in the cell, not knowing where your future's going to be or what your future's going to be.

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And then suddenly Jesus is there. We have a chorus that goes, Jesus, stand among us in thy risen presence. Let this time now of worship be a hallowed hour or something like that. And the third time that you sometimes can be aware of the presence of Jesus can be where there is that strong worship spirit happening. And in the worship of the church There is some joy, some reinforcement of assurance. While you're worshipping him, you know that you know him.

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Am I talking about something that you experience? Do you know him? Not just know about him. Not just have a Christian history as I did of sitting through Sunday School exams. Not just I, the father who was the principal of a Bible college and got to be in charge of counselling of the Graham crusade, I had all the things to brag about. The little nine-year-old boy could say to friends. But I didn't know him. Knowing him like the apostle Paul had to do is when you ask him to forgive you, you ask him to come into relationship with you.

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and that's the moment you actually get to be someone that could answer Jesus, yes, I do know who you are. But it does include the fact that he is the son of the Father, the Father has sent him. That he came into the world to deal with our sin, that he lived a perfect life and died a sinner sacrifice on the cross for our sins and therefore earned to be our savior and so in the coming to him you come to him and say Jesus, I want you to be my saviour. How you actually would it doesn't really matter whether

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you use language we used to use with children, I don't like to use this just with children. Lord Jesus, come into my heart. Because the receiving of him you need to do is not physically ask him into your personage. That is probably not a bad thing to do. But the idea of receiving him is to welcome him as the saviour that you need, to ask him to be the saviour of your soul and that's something that we have to make a decision to do. Sometimes that decision could be something that's just a process, that you come to a moment when that's

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what you know you want to be the case. And so there can be a prayer that you go through. When someone comes to me I get every now and then someone asking me, sometimes they ring up and say will you talk to me in the church where no one else is there and they don't want to admit that they've been a church member longer than I have that they need to receive Christ as savior and sit coming down here and sitting in some of these pews I lead them in a prayer that goes this is how it goes Oh God in heaven I know that I'm a sinner please forgive me for all of my sin please make me clean in the deepest part of wrong in me. I want Jesus to be my Savior I welcome him to do that now I'm going to trust him to come to me as he's promised to save me to belong to

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you in Jesus name I pray the wording exactly doesn't matter and it's really interesting how some people you tell them how to pray it and they go and pray to God and probably didn't say the same words but it doesn't matter because he saw their heart and that's the moment that you come to know Him. There are some of us here tonight who may not know him because you're like me and never have and others of us here perhaps who have come to know Him but getting deep into it. Being in times in worship when you're aware of Him being Being involved in prayer meetings where you sense his presence, going out and obeying him, doing whatever he leads you to do, and finding that sense of his claiming of you. Raising the flag for him, where people might not be necessarily happy that you do,

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but you find a way to befriend them and tell them in some communicative way that Jesus is the person to know. I reckon it's not a bad way to get a car sticker, or to get it on the window, or to do what I did in one particular time of evangelism here in Brisbane. It wasn't appropriate, I drove a Vespa scooter at the time, and having a sticker on up wasn't healthy and wised. They might knock me over. But I put it on my bag, it was when I went to Teacher's College at one stage, and the bag was just an avertisement for the

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crusade we have here, the grand crusade we have here in Brisbane and I put on my bag this is back in 1968 nobody commented on it but everybody knew I was a Christian and I broke the ice by that, they might have thought I was a bit unusual but that's how I started talking and people begin to come to Christ but when you raise the flag for Him him and you go deeper with him, then somehow you and him become a connection that other people see as well. That's the heart of evangelism. Let's have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for the Lord Jesus Christ and his care for Phillip and his speaking to him. Philip, have I been so long with you

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and yet you don't know me and Lord if there are people here who have never come to know you properly would you really give them heaps Lord I mean would you really challenge them make them aware that they need to come and welcome you as their personal Savior and Lord if there's some too who that has happened along the way help reassure them that they do belong to you but that you want them to come on in deeper and to be able to speak of your conversion to their conversion to other people too for them to know what it is to presence with you in the worship of the church. Lord it's a bit of an indicator I know when people find that they can't really miss coming to church without taking a toll on them. And they know that there's something that they're not attending to.

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They should. Lord it is because it is why we come, is to be with Jesus, to belong more closely to him. And that's what I think about Philip. I think he really was needing to go deeper in the understanding and to be someone who got the point that Jesus and the father are one and in the other, they are two persons but they're somehow together and Jesus is the one who shows the Father. and by knowing Jesus you know the Father or may that happen to someone tonight I pray in Jesus name. Amen.