Christian conversion is more than a change of religion or joining a church; it is a spiritual awakening brought about by the Holy Spirit. This awakening involves a conviction of sin, a turning to Christ as Saviour, and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. The process of conversion is often contested by Satan, but Christ intercedes on our behalf. True conversion results in a transformed life, described in Scripture as being ‘snatched from the burning’. The need for genuine conversion applies not only to individuals but also to entire communities and nations.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] Now the Bible reading we had which was from Zechariah it’s not often that we get to delve into the depths of some of the Old Testament passages and some of them are straightforward and some of them are mysterious. And you can see there’s meanings there that aren’t always quite so easy to fathom. And this one in Chapter three of Zechariah is like that, and it refers first of all to a personage who was a man of history. He was a priest and his name was Joshua. He was actually one of the priests back in Jerusalem after the children of Israel had been brought back from their captivity in Babylon and he was someone that was alive at the time, I think, when Nehemiah came along, and was busy chartered and charged by God to build the wall, but it was also necessary for there to be a rebuilding of the faith of the Israelite

[00:00:58] people and trusting God in this new era, and this man had not always done everything correctly and yet God was coming to him to help him get right with God. In this passage, because it is an Old Testament passage, it will talk about what we would call someone’s conversion, someone’s turning back to God. And many of the prophets of the Old Testament would come and call upon the people to return — to return to God, or they’d use a word that meant to turn from their sins. And that idea of turning from your sins or returning to God is at the heart of what is actually a doctrine of the Bible to speak on both Old Testament and New. And in the New Testament it’s really the teaching of the conversion of the soul to become a Christian. And so conversion and what it is what this morning I am wanting to talk about. If you’re a person who’s a Christian these

[00:02:06] days, it means that there has been a time when you have been converted. Now, we had church, different congregations. At one stage we had a Korean congregation, I think we’ve had Chinese congregations and African congregations but when we had the Korean congregation the pastor came to me one day and said you’ve having some baptisms in your church and we were having a not a run but a fair and a number every now and then of people being baptized and he said, I’ve got some people in my church who want to be baptized too. And so I was very glad to say, let’s have a service where we have some of both, some of your people

[00:02:53] and some of our people who are baptized. The thing is, I did say to him that our habit is that when people are baptized, we give them an opportunity if they choose to give their testimony and to tell of how they have been converted. And the word converted is talking about the time when you come to Christ and you’re getting the door we’ve got. It’s the time when you find the forgiveness that Jesus put for you on the cross.

[00:03:20] It’s a moment when you make a decision to follow Christ. And not everybody comes to that moment the same way and the story line that is told is sometimes different. But in the service that followed where we had both some of the people that were from our fellowship, that we were all a part of give their testimony. And then we followed by some of those who were the Koreans to be baptized. There was something that alarmed me particularly and some of the members of the leaders of our church. Because when we listened into their testimonies, they were talking about something different

[00:04:04] on what he understood as conversion. Now I had to do some investigation behind the scenes in terms of the cultural differences between life in Korea and life in Australia, there’s actually an explanation for how they understood the moment to be baptised. And in Korea, that was understood to be the moment you ceased to be some other religion and became in the Christian group. And it was a very big moment because sometimes persecution could follow or sometimes problems within families could follow. And so the moment of flying the flag

[00:04:48] that you now in the Christian group rather than what was your previous religion was the moment that the baptism signaled. Now, that was very meaningful for them but we didn’t understand it and it’s actually not the biblical doctrine of conversion that today I’m talking of, because the biblical doctrine of conversion has to do with the soul getting converted from being a sinner going to hell to someone who is under God’s grace. And that is a different happening than just the fact that you decided to change religion. I understood, in the cultural setting, why that was something they didn’t understand

[00:05:37] the same way that we did. It was we had to go through the experience of having to work all that out to really come to that understanding. I’m talking about conversion and when we’re looking in the Old Testament, it’s more like in the Korean sense that they had that it’s a time of religion being changed or formalized, whereas in the New Testament conversion is a moment when you do business with Christ and you get in the door with Him. And the reality is that there are lots of people, maybe not majority, but there are numbers of people in Christian churches who put down their being present to either they are brought up as Christian Christians or to the fact they just decided to be a Christian rather than to be an outside

[00:06:33] person that didn’t go to church. They took that moment of turning to be a churchgoer, to be their conversion. And then what happens is, especially if you’re visitingcking preachers, I’ve been most of my life, and you go along the places, and you give a call for people to come to Christ, where you have people who had thought they were Christians, who turned up in your counselling room saying they’re not sure, but they have realised that they weren’t. When I first went to have a crusade at the little town of Sheffield in Tasmania, the first Sunday morning there was quite a nice-sized flock of people who

[00:07:17] responded and I took them we had a counselling room just like we have one over there I took them to the one in the same sort of position to the sanctuary to council with them and I asked them the question you know what have you come forward to be counseled about? And to my surprise what came out was that most of them were in the pastor’s course that he was preparing them for baptism, but they said they had learned this morning that they needed to come to Christ. They would have been people baptized and entered into the church without actually having been converted. I had the joy of leading them in a prayer to come to Jesus and to be converted spiritually. What is this word conversion? It’s having a turning away from one path in order to establish a different way. So that’s in general sense what is visible, but spiritually it’s turning

[00:08:27] away from sin. It’s coming to Christ in a moment of faith. That spiritual side of conversion is one that really counts. When there comes a moment where people pass away, whether or not they’ve actually come and done business with Christ and found Him as Saviour and being converted spiritually, is what counts on the other side of death. I can tell you, who we had the announcement about Don Dwyer, that he was a person in the Church here who, at one stage, came into a deeper knowledge of Christ. Looking back, he is a person that came to fulfilment of spiritual conversion, but it may have been after the fact of him joining the church and being here with us and that brings to us the question everyone of us. Are you someone who’s actually been converted spiritually?

[00:09:33] I understand this issue from my own background because as a little boy where my parents are always going off to conventions and things, my Dad being a speaker, the kids were put into what was there for the children. One keen young man who later ended up in the ministry and being a theological teacher, but he was a young man, teenager at the time, was looking after us. And he took it upon himself to tell us that we needed to be Christians and make a decision and put your hand up if you want to, and I put mine up.

[00:10:10] And nothing happened. I was just a kid and I did what was asked. In the car going back with my parents, my big brother told my parents Jimmy had put his hand up or something, but did anything happen? At the time, I didn’t know the difference, but subsequently when there came the Billy Graham Crusade in West Australia, there was a moment on the final Sunday afternoon when God spoke to me. I had a call to do business with Jesus about my sins. I’d never actually come to Jesus as a saviour. He knew.

[00:10:50] Jesus knew. He called me to come as a sinner and that’s when I got converted. I remember going back to the same convention like the one they had when someone had us put our hands up. And I remember they taught us a song, which I’ve loved to this day, a song that’s talking about the reality of Christian conversion having happened to you. Things are different now. Something’s happened to me since I gave my heart to Jesus. Things I loved before have passed away. Things I love far more have come to stay.

[00:11:29] Things are different now since I gave my heart to Him.” And I can remember singing this song that was outside the hours of the meetings, I was out on the footpath, I was skipping along, I felt like I was a foot off the ground. My feet must have been hitting the ground to do the running, but I was running along, One was a different person, that there had been a turning to Christ, which made it different. That’s what Christian conversion is. Here in the Old Testament scene of this priest, his name is Joshua, it’s rather significant how God worked in him when he was recorded in the Scriptures because there is meaning in the name Joshua, in the Hebrew. Anyways, one of the Old Testament languages.

[00:12:26] But it’s the same name. If you said it in Greek, you’d say Jesus, and if you said it in English, you’d say he’s actually the Lord’s name and he’s the priest and he’s in the system of religion but because of what happened with the captivity and happened in the politics when they all came back and there’s all sorts of terrible things that happened then this man was soiled and not fit to be a priest and a part Part of what is going on here is his conversion as far as the Old Covenant is concerned. It’s not like a New Testament meeting Jesus had been converted, but it is nonetheless a turning to God for the erasure of sins. If you read through about Joshua the priest, you’ll see that he had a real struggle because

[00:13:23] it got contested by the devil. Here you see in the verse that’s highlighted—there’s a highlighted on your screen—behold I have taken your iniquity away from you and I’ll clothe you with pure vestiments. The actual word in the Old Testament language of Hebrew for iniquity is filthiness, and The implication is usually filthiness by excrement, someone who’s pooed all over their trousers when you get really… Let’s not talk about that. It isn’t just a little stain or you poured the milk over your coat.

[00:14:10] It’s a lot more filthy. And he’s a priest and he’s in the system, but he needs to have it dealt with in order for there to be an outliving of the plan of God for the people of Israel, as was prophesied. And that’s what’s happening to this man Joshua. Now I told you that the name Joshua, which means a leader,

[00:14:40] it means a winner of battles, it means someone who is a deliverer and it’s the same name as Jesus. Jesus means Yahweh saves us from our sins. And he needed to be made clean of his iniquities in order that he could do the role. And in the case of Jesus, I don’t know whether you’ve ever thought that through on the details, but Jesus, without sin, qualified to be the sacrifice for sin,

[00:15:12] but when he went to the cross And God laid on him all our sins. Why did Jesus shrink from this and pray in the Garden of Gethsemane? Lord, if is it all possible, take this cup from me, this cup of suffering.” Why did he cry to the Father in terror of what was to happen in the hour of darkness? because he on the cross became filthy with your sins. He on the cross took the wrath of the Father for the sins that were ours. What was laid on him was the iniquity of us all, as the Old Testament, Isaiah 53, says. Jesus became the Savior by becoming filthy with your sins. And God then allowed him to go to Hades, not for more suffering. The suffering time was over. Jesus, paying for our sins, was

[00:16:24] finished on the cross. Oh, you say, how do you know that? Because Jesus said, it is finished. Jesus said, about your sins they’re paid for. And the very language, often this is said in sermons, TetalesUMP that Jesus said it is finished, was the same thing that would be written or stamped on the bill when at last the last payment came in, and there was nothing left to be paid. About your sins. It is finished! And Jesus did it on the cross. And this happening with Joshua the priest back then is like a prophetic moment picturing. He’s not paying for the sin of the world, he’s paying for his own guiltiness in all the politics and the guiltiness of the people that he represented. There’s another connection with the name Joshua or Jesus.

[00:17:25] And you’d be surprised at this, but it is the name of the city, Jerusalem. And the word Jerusalem, it has a little extra part, it’s the city of the king or the city of the Savior. And Jerusalem is something that had been punished along with the children of Israel in the Old Testament because of all their failures and that’s why the captivity had happen, that’s why Jerusalem had been in ruins, and a part of what God had to do in order for Joshua to take this role of helping for the rebuilding of the city and the reconstitution of the people as God’s people when they came back pretty filthy was Jerusalem too, needed to be cleansed

[00:18:14] And there was something very prophetic that what was happening to Joshua was going to happen to Jerusalem. Now I can’t do it this morning, it’ll be too big a task to tie it up to make it easily understood just in one message, but for the Jewish people and their capital city to become new again needs for there to be cleansing from the sin. And so that’s a part of what this storyline is about, and about how the priest and what happens to him, he is represented by being High Priest of Jerusalem. And it is what is behind the scenes or behind the storyline, a better way to say, of what we are reading here in Zechariah Chapter 3. Now, in our preaching through the Scriptures it started in Matthew and I’m still meant

[00:19:15] to be in Matthew but part of what we came across there was the idea that there was a working of the Spirit of God to bring grace to God’s people. There is a working of the Spirit of God to bring grace to individual people that they might be converted. Getting converted is something that is always an act of grace on God’s part. One of our homegroups, which has been going through the Gospel of John, came across through the Gospel of John two places where it’s very apparent that there is a dealing of grace by God that is what is needed for all of us. was in chapter 7 where Jesus speaks to the Jewish scene where they’re pouring water over the altar and it’s a sign of how there’ll be grace of God blessing them, know the experience

[00:20:14] of God with them. Jesus stands up and gives a comment that is only a comment to say that it’s going to happen when he’s done what’s necessary. He said, if any person thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.’ And then the comment of the evangelists verse 39 you can see it on the screen now this he said about the spirit whom Little believed in him were to receive, for as yet at that point of time in the temple when Jesus said this, the Spirit had not yet been given. Not that he wasn’t around, not that some individuals had special dealings with the Holy Spirit, but that the availability of the Holy Spirit to fill the hearts of those who believe is actually something that Jesus had to do something first, because Jesus was not yet glorified. How was he glorified in

[00:21:19] and he’s dying on the cross. He’s rising again and this last Friday we were looking at in the same home group on the Friday night. We’re looking at how Jesus’ resurrection and him defeating death and him coming up the other side of death was one way that he was glorified. The Bible also teaches that when Jesus ascended to heaven and the Father allowed him to be authority of the highest name. That language is hard to understand but his name is Jesus given of his birth as a baby, his human name when he incarnates. But this God-man, human, risen to heaven, the Father allowed to have his name to have the highest authority. These things had happened to Jesus. He had to be glorified before it’d be possible that the promise of conversion there would be

[00:22:13] more than just turning back and returning to God, as happened in the Old Testament, but are turning to have your soul changed. The conversion of the soul is a New Testament doctrine. The availability of that needed, first, for Jesus to go through things that he had to achieve—and then the things that we can experience will be possible. Often in church life you meet people who have confused two things. What they’ve confused is that the Bible does teach us that there are certain necessities Jesus had to do. And sometimes we misunderstand when we’re taught them in church. Sometimes, if we just stay at Sunday School level, which

[00:22:57] is ripe for Sunday School. But if we never get any further to understand that the certain steps that Jesus had to take needed him to be glorified before He could allow for there to be a real conversion, which was more than just to turning back to God and being in His people. No, the conversion that get you spiritually converted needs for there to be some steps that you take and where the confusion is that sometimes we mix up what I call the salvation history of Jesus and the steps that people take to get converted. salvation history are things that Jesus had to go through and they were that he came and lived a perfect life, he obeyed the law, he qualified, he died on the

[00:23:48] cross for our sins, he rose again from the dead, he showed himself alive across 40 days, he went back to heaven and then the Father crowned him as King of kings and Lord of Lords, gave to him to be the one who would send the Holy Spirit to come and then dwell the people who are getting converted – which is why all the Jewish people who were there the day of Pentecost, who although they would be saved in a sense of go to heaven when they die, are not yet saved as far as knowing when it is to be converted in a spiritual sense. They heard the first gospel message that if they would trust the Jesus who died for him upon the cross, and they come to him in repentance, that they would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And til if you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, you ain’t been

[00:24:39] converted yet. You might be someone who’s changed religion. You might be somebody who’s joined the church. You may be somebody who’s become a theist because you believed in God and you’ve done so from a long time back. None of which is your Christian conversion. For conversion is, that moment where the turning to God. The turning from sin and the placing faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior and trust in Him allows him to send his Holy Spirit to change your heart. If any person be in Christ like that, says the Bible, that one becomes a brand new person. That one becomes someone who is new. The old has passed, the new has come. And Christian conversion is a spiritual event, not just a cultural change or a human step, a good step though it might be. And I’m asking you the question this morning,

[00:25:53] Have you been converted to Christ and received the Holy Spirit? Become a spiritual person as Jesus had offered the possibility of the future if any person believes in me, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water. It’s a spiritual happening and you become all together different, and you know you are. There’s something marvellous about the assurance the Holy Spirit brings to the human heart that you indeed have been converted. That’s what I’m preaching on this morning, and from Zechariah we notice how important it was for the Jewish people to turn back to God. What’s interesting here is in the passage you know that I’ve been talking about, and using a term, which is there being an awakening of the human soul. And I was in the middle of saying that there’s two passages in John, where it talks about what is that awakening. The first is what has to happen to Jesus.

[00:27:09] to be glorified. The second passage is how it happens to us and we’ll turn to that now because it is John 16 verses 5 to 11. Now this is after Jesus has finished all his work on earth and he’s died on the cross and he’s risen again. And I think I’ve got the order of things right. And he’s beginning to tell his disciples that he’s going to go back to heaven. It’s a fascinating passage. If you were Jesus and you’d been through a life

[00:27:51] that he went through of all of the persecutions the Jewish people did, of all the difficulties that he faced, and then that terrible death on the cross, and being risen from the dead. I don’t know if I wear his shoes, I’d be looking forward to going back to heaven. But something in the passage catches your eye, but now I’m going to him who sent me. And none of you ask me, where are you going? But because I have said these things to you,

[00:28:28] sorrow has filled your heart. Well they don’t want to lose him. Nevertheless I tell you the truth it is for your advantage that I go away. Now I’ll tell you what I would have expected he says I’m looking forward to going home I’m looking forward to being back with the father I’m looking forward to this mission on Earth that was given for me be so difficult that I finished, I’m going to relax. He doesn’t say, I tell you the truth, it is for my advantage I go away, as much as that may have been true. He says, I tell you the truth, it is for your advantage. What is that advantage?

[00:29:21] and he’s concerned, for them. For if I do not go away, the Helper. Now this is the word that Helper is somewhat of a translation. Councillor, other translations put. Comforter, the old versions used to use here, the comforter will not come to you. But I go, because I go, I will send him to you. This is not Jesus in the last, in the upper room, breathing on them and saying, receive you the Spirit. This is Jesus separated back in heaven so he will send the Holy Spirit to them. It’s the Day of Pentecost. And when he comes, he will convince, he will convict, the world concerning sin and concerning righteousness and judgment.

[00:30:20] Concerning sin because they don’t believe in Me. And when we understand about this term that’s often used in revival times of there being an awakening, whether it an awakening in an individual’s heart because previously they thought themselves pretty good but suddenly the Holy Spirit came and they find themselves in tears asking God’s forgiveness. They find themselves needing to be washed and made righteous. They find themselves in need of what the Holy Spirit brings an awakening is when there comes on you a conviction of Sin You Really Need Christ and Awakening is what we need in churches filled with people who think they’re Christians because they simply have decided to be like Christian living and well they think they are because they’re better than the other people down the street or they think they are because they were born into a

[00:31:21] Good home that taught them good things and they enjoying the benefit of a people who think they’re Christians, but have never been converted An awakening is when the Holy Spirit comes on people and suddenly there is this awareness that you need to come to Jesus as a Saviour, not count on you being such a good Christian as you. That’s how I did. I thought I was one. I had all my little reasons at the age of 9 when I was doing pretty good. God came to me and awakened me that I needed Jesus as a Saviour. That’s an awakening that leads to your Christian conversion. The term was used in Scotland where there were times of spiritual renewal and revival and the term was used either about the individual who had thought they were doing fine. The good Scottish person went to church back in those days. Most people who are in a Christian country had some religion, and they were pretty good living better than we are today, in my opinion.

[00:32:30] But they would come a time when the Holy Spirit fell on them, and they realised they were sinners, because what happens when the Holy Spirit comes? The first awakening you have the awakening that you need a savior … that you’re a sinner and Jesus said … it’s convenient for me that for you when I go away with the Holy Spirit comes. He will convict the world of sin. If you’re a person who’s not sure you’ve ever been converted, go and pray to Jesus to convict you of sin. His Holy Spirit will be very pleased … so to do. Like if you read stories even in the Old Testament, old covenant times of people like David who sinned and didn’t think much about it. But when the Holy Spirit came to him, he wrote Psalm 51, have mercy upon me, O God. He writes in that Psalm and he speaks about the needing to be made clean

[00:33:31] in the deepest part of wrong in him. That’s what happens in an awakening that you become aware of your sin. The second aspect of how the Scottish people use the term of awakening was that they talked about it as happening to a district, because somehow or other, and I can’t explain all the details of this, but it’s true in history, that there would come an area where someone riding a horse into the area suddenly came under conviction of sin as they rode into the area. The whole area became under an awakening because they’ve gotta awaken to the fact the true Christianity is not just your going and along the church, not just your being a member, not just your with all the things that you do, but being an awakened is when you become convicted of your need of the Saviour and you cry out to him.

[00:34:22] The great awakening in America under Jonathan Edwards was because, across the nation there swept his understanding that you need to come and be converted. Do you know it is one of the hallmarks of being an evangelical? You not only believe in the deity of Jesus, and you not only believe in the facts of the Bible, but you believe in the depths of human sin. You don’t make excuses. It is a conviction. And that’s what this later passage in John talks about, is convenient or it’s good for you, I go away, because when he comes he will convince or convict the world of sin. And if we were to get any way out of the direction this nation Australia is heading, where the

[00:35:19] people who get in charge of Parliament, the lefties and their lifestyles, that they want to push as normal, that there comes on them an awareness of their sin. And that would be a great awakening. That’s what I pray might happen to our nation. And I pray it will happen with us, that will become awakened to our sin. Now you know, it’s a dangerous thing to be present in awakening. Some of the language that’s used here in Zechariah, we put back the Zechariah in verses 1 and 2nd Corinthians chapter 3, verses 1 I’m following. The bed he says in verse 2 at the end of verse 2, I think, he says, well first of all I want to point out, notice that where there is the possibility of an awakening,

[00:36:22] that it’s spiritually contested and that the devil gets to be present. And I had at college my college years as a student learning, and there was a class of evangelism. And the man who led was a state evangelist for us Baptists, and he was a very effective evangelist. He wasn’t someone with great flair and style. He used to be a logger before he went into World War II. And when he got demobbed, he became a preacher. And when he preached, I used to giggle to myself, because he looked like he had a foot on the log

[00:36:59] and he was just chatting to the men. But he had a power, and he taught us in the evangelism class where the power came from. He came from him in prayer, and he found the verse in the Old Testament where the prophet is praying to the Lord, please teach my hands how to make war. Metaphorically, I guess, that meant. And he prayed to God, teach me to know what to say. And he learned somehow when he got

[00:37:30] to the end of his message, to call people, to come and get converted, to say little things like, you know the devil will come and whisper to you. He’ll whisper to you that you don’t have to do it today. Or he’ll whisper to you, you’re better than any of these other people. He’ll whisper to you, you’re too far gone. Your sins, you’ll never get over them. Look, you’ve tried to turn away from those besetting sins.

[00:37:59] And you’re back in them, aren’t you? You can’t make this.” And he somehow got taught of God, this evangelist, to say things that would counteract what the devil was saying. I remember listening to that and wondering at it. But when I read this passage, what My notice is that where there’s a moment of awakening happening for Joshua the High Priest, there’s a devil. The devil’s there. And the devil’s standing at God’s right side to criticise and to say things so you won’t decide yes. I’m here this morning. I don’t know all our

[00:38:47] hearts. There could only be one person here today who’s never actually been converted though you’ve thought you were. And the devil says to your gyms being emotional again, or the devil says you can think about that another time. Or the devil says haven’t you been serving Lord when you’ve been helping out at the church. What about those times where you clean up the backyard? The Bible pictures Satan right there in the very moment of the awakening of this man, Joshua. And he’s giving reasons why not to say yes. And our evangelist man that was lecturing me had learned how to counteract some

[00:39:48] of those things that pop into people’s minds as a part of what he said. He always seemed to get a lot of responses of people coming to Christ, because he was learning how to counteract the fact that the devil is interested in your not getting converted when the conviction of sin comes. The second thing I better say just out of completeness is though the devil is always criticising and pouring out the cold water on the whole deal.

[00:40:23] Jesus isn’t. And he’s the one that goes on pleading on your behalf. And that’s what it means for him to be the one who is, He’s like your lawyer that pleads for you, he’s taken your side and can do that because of the evidence he has in the success of how he took your sins on the cross. I met people, the thing that stops them from really getting converted is that they can never forgive themselves and because they think it’s impossible to get past the thing that went wrong. but Jesus can do that for you and he’s the one who’s on your side and in this passage the devil rebukes, is rebuked by Jesus. Finally I’ll finish up with this that in verse 2 it finishes up by saying that Jerusalem, the city of the

[00:41:29] king, likewise will be renewed and there is a future for the Jews in Jerusalem and he says it’s like a brand snatched from the burning. Now we don’t have that many bonfires, some people have the room in the backyard to have a good bonfire, but what does it mean to be snatched from the burning? It means first of all something is getting pretty scorched already and there are people who get converted who really have had their lives marred by sin, but it doesn’t mean they can’t be converted. They get snatched from the burning and they might have lots of burns on them, but they still can get in the door with God. But the question is if you come under the awakening movement of the Holy Spirit, if you give up and don’t You can stay and burn and that is the picture of judgement.

[00:42:42] But to be snatched from the burning is that it’s never too late when Jesus is the One who’s on your side and He can snatch you out. And sometimes the people who make strongBen Franklin… bit of time in there getting strong. But it is because of their awareness that they have been snatched from the burning. I think there’s a subtle difference between being snatched out of the fire than left in it, and fire as the biblical image of judgment. you at and if the Holy Spirit is using this message to bring to you a conviction of sin. Then Jesus words to the disciples is expedient for you, I go away, for if I did not go the Holy Spirit would not come and but He’s going to convict the world of sin. Being convicted of sin is what an awakening is,

[00:43:51] but it’s a dangerous moment because you could listen to the devil and it not happen as it really could. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father I thank you for this passage of Zechariah. There’s a lot of mystery in it for me to understand as you go on reading. Thank you that that priest man, Joshua, although he had filthy garments that you were able to cleanse his garments and a part of what happens in an awakening is that people get clear of their sins. Lord may your Holy Spirit come on us please. May He help us to have a taste of what it is of the Holy Spirit giving us an awakening to what is the spiritual dimension of Christian conversion. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.