In the sermon, the preacher explores the significant role of glorifying God in experiencing His presence, drawing parallels between Old Testament practices and New Testament teachings. Focused on the manifestation of God's presence through unified worship, as seen in the Old Testament with the temple dedication, the sermon connects these events to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as described in John 7. Emphasising that glorification of God and Jesus enables believers to experience the Holy Spirit's power today, the preacher expounds on how this spiritual understanding can transform personal faith and communal worship. This sermon encourages believers to recognize and participate in the life-giving presence of the Holy Spirit, inspired by a genuine acknowledgment of God’s glory.

Automatically Generated Transcript

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In the Morning Service we were looking at the work of the Holy Spirit and looking at the idea of being spiritual people and looking at the connection to worship. We were particularly looking at an Old Testament passage that's talked about when the temple was finished and being dedicated. The bible records that the people who were the singers and the people who were the leaders of that moment. Were all together and praising God, and when they praised God a cloud came down and I was telling a congregation about a seminar I once had shared with someone from Hillsong, who had enlightened me as to the purpose of them calling it had to do with the temple being set on the hill in the Old Testament and how there was a song the people gave when they worshiped God and then the

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cloud came and my fellow person who was helping lead the seminar had a cloud machine and he would switch it on and the cloud would come and I got really quite surprised at some his contribution to how you did worship necessitated the Church having a cloud machine and we did have a members meeting this morning and we discussed about air conditioning and that was passed unanimously that we're going to air condition the Church for the hot days and but we didn't talk about getting a cloud provider. I'm glad because I didn't really believe it back then in the seminar and I don't think when the Bible talks about the Cloud coming, it represented the presence of God and he produced the Cloud and we don't have to have a cloud machine, but

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it is true. So when God's people were unified in praise and thanks and when they particularly recognized that the benefit that they had was all God's doing, they came out with a song which was a unified presentation of giving the Glory to God and that was when in their thanksgiving, God came at his presence felt by a cloud. That is true today though it isn't by a physical cloud, by that very sense of the presence of God that can happen when we worship him and particularly when we recognise that he's the one who's made the difference. And that was what we're on about and I said I would continue tonight by talking about the Holy Spirit and particularly needing to bring out the difference as to why in

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the mention of the Holy Spirit there's a difference that's made by about the timing of that availability of the Holy Spirit and exactly what God does by his Spirit, which is something that needed something some setting in the timing of it for it to happen. So we relied on this morning the verse in John 7. John 7 verses 37 to 39, as you've got on the screen there, is when Jesus was participating in one of the Jewish feasts. This is in Reit and the New Testament record of Jesus participating in a Jewish feasts, and here he chose the moment when it was being sort of dramatized of water being poured out over the altar to symbolise the availability of the Holy Spirit.

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But it was all just a symbol. All just a ceremony. The same ceremony every year. And people I'm sure were getting a bit bored of just going along and the religious things being just a ceremony. But at that moment, Christ stood up tall, and he shouted with a shout, and he said, Anyone thirsts.' Many of them were, I'm sure, let him come to me and drink, whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of Living water.' Then the final explanatory verse, I think this is John the Evangelist adding, not Jesus continuing to talk.

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Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. So the feature of the cloud happening in the Old Testament record of when they dedicated the Temple, and they were singing praises to God, was that they were glorifying God for what he had done, they were praising him about the Lord being good, and all the things that he does. And in that recognition of the role God has to bless, and how good our God is, and giving him the credit and the praise, in that moment God made his presence felt and there was a cloud... And similarly, it is right happening here that that's a bit of a precedent for us

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to understand this occasion as Jesus promised the giving of the Holy Spirit to be like rivers of living water. But then it says, in the Scriptures, that Jesus was not yet glorified which is why that Spirit was not yet given. So the necessity of glorifying Jesus was just the same as the necessity of glorifying God in general for his Providing of the Temple in the Old Testament and when they gave God the glory then his presence was felt, revealed. And so it is also the case that when the availability of the Spirit comes is when Jesus is fully glorified, and it happened in history in terms of Jesus came, he lived under the old covenant because he had to die under its requests. He had to pay the price for our sins under

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the old covenant that he might buy us out from under the old covenant that he might pay the price for our forgiveness and that he might give us the gift of the Holy Spirit. And when finally that moment comes we'll see that's precisely what happens, the availability community of the Holy Spirit. Now, if we talk about the Holy Spirit there's a lot of different things that he does, the Holy Spirit comes sometimes, and causes people to speak in other languages, the Holy Spirit comes and he does all sorts of things, but the chief major two events that occur, due to the presence of the Holy Spirit, I suppose the ones that most are written up in the scriptures is that he can fill the lives of the people who so are affected and cause them to have the consequence of being filled. I'm going to explain that in a minute. And the second

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one, the first one is the filling of the Spirit but the second one is that he is said to baptize us in the Spirit. If you want a third, some of the language says that you can receive the Spirit. So if I were to take these three things, being filled with the spirit, receiving the spirit, and being baptised in or by the Spirit, then I can explain to you the things that the Spirit does. But the thing that you need to add to that explanation is to understand about the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, and also to understand the condition. The condition is, when Christ is glorified, or when God is glorified, then that's when these things happen. Now let's take each of one sin turn and Toka will go

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to Psalm 51. In Psalm 51 we have David who's talking about his experience of walking with God. You know some people think that the Old Testament they just walked around doing righteous things or bad things or going to the temple and it was not very spiritual but the New Testament mentions more about the Holy his spirit than the Old Testament does. And so some people think the New Testament is spiritual, but the Old Testament's not. That's actually not true because there is a lot of spirituality in the Old Testament and particularly how God called on people to follow his Word and to have a relationship with him. There is spirituality in the Old Testament and somebody who exemplified that was King

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David. though he had his failures. And when he had his failures, he came in repentance, and if ever you want something to help you in your spirituality, can I tell you memorize Psalm 51. This Psalm of repentance, this Psalm of wanting to come back close to God by David is a fantastic one to help you to have a model of how to get back to a spiritual position with God. But here in verses 10 and 11, a part of His Prayer of Repentance He says,

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''Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. You see, this is someone searching to go back to being spiritual — renew a right spirit within me. And if ever you feel as though you're someone who's drifted away from being spiritual, you've found yourself being fleshly of you found yourself just being purely human and not really having much help from the spirit of God and other people might have pointed out to you that you've not been very spiritual recently. I don't know what happens to you. But in our family, I have at times to experience Michelle saying,

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Jim, you've not been very spiritual and she, if I walk after the flesh and don't don't exemplify the things of the Spirit, He tells me... We have a promise, which should do to each other. And so it is quite possible for you to be a New Testament Christian and yet not to have learned. That you can drift off from your spiritual reality. And David is an Old Testament example of it —he is in the Old Covenant time. But he says, cult me not away from my presence. Now that's one of the distinguishing marks between the Old Covenant and the New, so For in the Old Covenant, people could have the spirit and only some of them knew that

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benefit anyway. Largely the prophets, the priests and the kings or people doing special jobs building the temple would have the spirit give them some special abilities. People doing special things for God often exemplified having the spirit, like King Saul did, and he was said to be amongst the ones that were charismatics or ones that had a us. 5 But then he sinned against God, and God took His Spirit away from him. 6 King David, who followed him, was very well aware of what happened to King Saul. 7 In this prayer of repentance, he is afraid of God taking His presence away

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from him. 8dua Not cast me away from your presence, And take not your Holy Spirit from me. I've got an assurance for us tonight that that's an Old Testament possibility that happened to Saul, not David when he prayed this prayer of repentance, but I want to tell you that in the New Testament, in the New Covenant, God has promised that he won't do that and he won't take his spirit away from being present with you. You may cause his spirit to be grieved and to withdraw from you, and you may find less of his influence, but he would not take the person of the Holy Spirit out of your being in the new covenant time. It was an old covenant possibility that King David prayed,

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Take not your Holy Spirit from me. If you fall into sin, or if something has happened along the way, and you haven't walked with God as you once thought so to do, and you Do you wonder whether God has taken His presence from you? Let me tell you He may remove the feeling of his presence, He may discipline you by you finding it hard to find Him in your prayers. I've had some very great people tell me how difficult it was when they went through a time. I think they'd fallen into some sin and it seemed like their prayers never got heard by God anymore. God

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hadn't taken any of his presence away from Innocence from God team of young people and we were going around Queensland taking missions and doing things. We had a team of 26 who used to go along, and we went back up to Rockhampton. I say back because one of them was from there and had arranged the meetings for us, and one of these people who were really being very spiritual on our team and doing marvelous things, had something go wrong in terms of a personal sin, and really felt that God had left and we encouraged that one to remain attempting, went and tried a new church and found a church where they could try really hard and for six months it was like God wasn't doing any

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business with them, and we encouraged him just to keep going and suddenly God saw the reality of their repentance and he came when his sense of his presence returned, and his walking with him became strong. But the promise is, in the New Covenant, that he will not take his presence from you, though he may discipline you if you stepped out of line. And this is a difference between the Covenants. All of this, of course, is because in the question of the Covenants there is the matter of not only your personal life glorifying God, which was the case sometimes in people's lives, but also was the case of not only how we live the right way in bringing glory to God, but also because of what Jesus was trying to accomplish in his mission on Earth.

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And that mission of his had a very definite set of time steps of him being born. He was born of the Spirit. of Him being anointed of the Spirit, they saw the Holy Spirit descend on Him as a dove comes and descends, of Him having the power of the Spirit and doing miracles, of Him actually going to the cross and the Bible teaches us that He died by the power of the Spirit, enabling Him to offer Himself a sacrifice, all of these things were by the Spirit's doing but it It was by the Spirit's presence coming to the dead body of Jesus and the tomb that he was raised from the dead by the Spirit. And then later on he ascended by the power of the Spirit, and once in heaven, God the Father took him to be the one whose very name Jesus, given in his humanity, born the boy

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Jesus. He was begotten of God because he took on humanity, but the Eternal Son was always with God. God, man, was then lifted to heaven, and with the name which he gained in his humanity, Jesus he is the one who was crowned King of kings and Lord of lords, and he is the one whose name was given to him. All of what we have to tell now is much more fantastic John 7 and verses 37-39, we have an explanation about the difference between the availability of the Spirit and the Covenants. You can be filled with the Spirit in the Old Covenant, though you have never received Him

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in the sense of permanently in your life, like the New Covenant offers. Like becoming a Christian has happened, but in the Old Testament the Spirit could be with Saul and then leave him. And David's afraid the same thing to happen to him, but if you look in John chapter 7 and verses 37 to 39, you'll find that there it is that Jesus is promising about the Holy Spirit. And it's actually at one of the Jewish feasts, and this Jewish feast that he was turning up at was a feast that gave the promise of the things of the Spirit, all the people used to get water, filling them up in these big pitchers and carrying them up all the steps that came from, I think it was the Pool of Siloam or one of those pools, up to the temple

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court area, and there where the altar was, the people were all watching, they had all sorts of things to do and the celebration, but it included pouring out the water on the altar. A picture of how they would come a time when God would satisfy the thirsty hearts of people by His Holy Spirit, and that's what the picture promised, but of course the Old Covenant could not deliver that, it didn't get people to the place where they could permanently receive the Spirit the Jesus was prophesying about that moment. And so on the last day of the feast, that great day Jesus stood up and cried out, If anyone thirsts! And I imagine those poor Jewish people having to watch that ceremony every year,

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watching water poured out but still not really getting what it talked of. they would get really thirsty watching that I bet. And Jesus understood the hearts of people that were crying out for that deep satisfaction only the Spirit of God can bring. Whoever believes in me he said No no Let me start if anyone thirsts let him come to me and drink for Jesus is The source of the permanent giving of the Holy Spirit to live in your heart To fill that empty void that all of us feel to give us that sense of the life of God within us

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To know that we know all the truths of the gospel about when you come to Jesus you will know the truth and the truth will set you free God! Come unto me, all you who labor and have been laid, and I will give you rest. 48 The rest that you get is when you come to Jesus, and he gives you of his Spirit. In your heart he lifts and helps you. The Christian life becomes real to you. 50 Whoever believes in him as the morality of the word of God says, out of his heart flow rivers of living water. He says about the Spirit, Look at this, whom those who believed in him were to receive.

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for as yet the Spirit had not been given. Why? Because Jesus was not yet glorified. How was he going to be glorified? One, by his successful death for our sins. Two, by his being raised from the dead out of the grave. That was God's act to say what Jesus did on the cross was successful that great cry he made on the cross it It is finished, that cry that came means paid in full. It means the debt is paid. It means the action, all prepared through the centuries of the Greek Jewish system, had come to it, it's fulfillment as to what it was picturing. That there be a moment when sins were atoned for, not by all the blood of good bulls and goats and all the birds and the rest,

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but by the one great sacrifice. Once and for all the Bible says. he died for our sins and then he could say it is finished when he paid for them on the cross and he gave his soul into the hands of the father father into your hands I commend my spirit and he was dead and so when the resurrection moment came it was God through the Holy Spirit who raised him from the dead to say to the world of humanity to the entire cosmos of this human seen on earth to say that Jesus' sacrifice has been accepted,

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to say that your sins have been atoned. 2 The once and for all sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. 3 And as result of him so doing Jesus is raised from the dead and Jesus is then lifted up at his ascension and to be in heaven. And then the Father makes his name Jesus, to be the name above every name, as a consequence of the coronation of Jesus. Jesus was not yet glorified at the moment of the pouring out of the water in the Jewish feast. When Jesus got to heaven and was crowned king of kings, he was glorified as the one on whose head metaphorically speaking. I don't know whether they bothered with a real crown, but

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when Jesus was crowned, it means that he was made to be Lord. In the highest sense of that word, Lord, it means God. He always was God. He always will be God. But now he's crowned. Crowned as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And you know what he does next Next is the he and the father with him. He sent the Holy Spirit, sent the Holy Spirit upon his believing disciples. It is the event of the Day of Pentecost and all those who had watched what was happening, they heard Peter pronounce that this had happened to Jesus, and the consequence that was available for them, that they could know the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. and Peter gave the call, To as many as the Lord our God shall call, he says, If you come you'll be forgiven your sins and you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."

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There's that wording received. I didn't know how many, there's quite a lot, there's another one anointing, I didn't know how many of these little wordings I should bring up in one sermon, but I'll just picked on three, that most often, but to receive the Spirit means The Spirit of God literally comes into your human being. To receive the Spirit means you become Holy Spirit indwelt. And in the New Covenant periods, it's permanent. In the Old Covenant time, like the David experience, sometimes God took his Spirit away. If those ones like prophets, kings or priests didn't follow directions,

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and didn't follow the leading that the Spirit was giving, then God would take the Spirit away. And that happened to the Kings Hall. Because of that happen to the Kings Hall, David said take not your Holy Spirit from me. But there would come a moment when the giving of the Spirit, the receiving of the Spirit that we do, When you become a Christian, when you bow in prayer and take Jesus as your Savior God not only forgives your sins, once and for all forgiveness, he not only forgives your sins but he gives you the gift of the Holy Spirit and you can be said to have received the Spirit. If you've done business with Jesus as a Savior, if you've been prepared to recognise him as your Lord and Savior, Why do we say that sort of two parts of it?

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Lord, because he was crowned King of kings. Savior, because he died for your sins on the cross. He is the one that has affected your possible forgiveness. So when you come to do business with Jesus it doesn't matter how you word it or what you say in a prayer. As you come in, your heart say Jesus I want you. You can have me. doesn't matter how you wurde but if you say to Him you want him to be your Lord you're submitting to his leadership and recognizing his ownership that's what Lord means. Saviour means you're accepting the forgiveness that he on the

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cross has worked. You're under His forgiveness and in fact you don't have to worry about all your failures or even your future failures because the thing is when you come to Jesus he gives you a righteousness as His righteousness. He lets you into the acceptance of the Father that the Father said of Him when Jesus was baptized. The Father said, this is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. Jesus is the apple of the Father's eye, Jesus is the one that the Father loves and Jesus is the one who offers to share his acceptance that he has with the Father with you. The Bible says we get accepted within the beloved by coming to Christ and when you come to Jesus and and he causes you to have the same smile on you that the father gave on him what a joy you don't worry anymore about your sins I mean you might worry in the sense of let me see if

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I can kick them but nonetheless you're not walking around with a guilt anymore you're forgiven that's what it means the forgiveness of sins it's not just God putting him in a no-look basket. It's not just God saying, well, I'll give you this one off, but don't do it again. Forgiveness of sins is God giving you His righteousness that's in Jesus and dressing you in His righteousness so when He looks at you He sees the righteousness of Jesus and He says, you are My beloved son and whom I am well pleased. What a fantastic thing it is to have a spirituality that's actually built on you having the sense that God looks at you like Jesus. Deny that you don't have to perform and run around trying to prove to other people or to God that you're worthy to be a Christian.

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You don't have to pretend about the times you've had failures. You just know you've been accepted within the Beloved. There is such a joy and relaxation about being a Christian. No more performance! Any performance you do is because you love Him and you want to do your best, but not the performance of, I better try harder and get in the door. Maybe I'm not as good as those other Christians I see in the church. Luckily, you don't get the angel's viewpoint of those other Christians because we all have got our faults too. you are forgiven the forgiveness that what's being talked about it's just a

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sense of total relaxation and acceptance because you believed in him that's what you trust him to do you trust him to forgive your sins and you trust him that he'll give you the gift to the Holy Spirit and that presence of the Holy Spirit it tells you from inside every now and then first sometimes you don't know much about it but as you progress as a Christian there is this strong strong developing awareness of the spirit within. Sometimes you go to do something and it's not quite according to what God wants you to do, it might be to take a job that he doesn't want you to have, and suddenly where did that sense, that's the wrong thing that God doesn't want me to do. You know, it's a fantastic thing even when you're wanting to do something

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and you have a sense no god doesn't want me to i've had times when i was rather annoyed that he didn't want me to do but there was a joy in knowing he's helping you know what to do here and to do that there sometimes you can be going somewhere and the lord says stop don't do that We have the capacity not to listen or sometimes we think, that's just my feelings or just my emotions. It's like Billy Graham when he had the crusade first in 1954 in London and it was a such a powerful thing he was due to go up to

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I think Scotland so one of the northern places and he got on the train to go and he knew in his heart he shouldn't but he couldn't bear to disappoint all the people had done the organizing so he went anyway but always knew, felt that he should have stayed in the one that he was doing in London. It's amazing how God can work and he doesn't do it in a way that makes your robot and the spirit makes your arm do this and the spirit makes you say that and, no it's not quite like that at all. He operates through your personality and there is some tremendous accompaniment that is your experience with a Holy Spirit in your life it can be a growing thing because

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when you're first a Christian you're not really aware of these things and if people who followed you up haven't told you enough about it they might not have developed, but it is a wonderful a wonderful growing awareness. The Bible in John's Gospel calls him the Comforter, it's an unusual word in the original language that we can't capture just in one English word another translation in my book that he's more like a counsellor. Another one has that he's someone who's driving you on. So there is actually an existence in England, I don't know where it is, but there's a picture of Oliver Cromwell.

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And on the bottom it says Oliver Cromwell comforts his troops. I was curious about that. Well, how was he comforting his troops? Well, they were being wanted to go over the top of a cliff or something, and he was there with a pitchpork, he was sticking it in their backsides, Oliver Cromwell comforts his troops, because the word does mean someone that comes alongside you and sponsors you to go on and to do. And every now and then something happens in the Christian life where the Holy Spirit wants

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you to do something and you get scared, you think, oh I couldn't do that. But there is some person that's with you. I'm not a person that, I'm an actually introvert. I want to tell you but when it was over thousand teenagers and I had to come onto the stage and speak and I think it was the occasion where they surprised me because I was in charge of the prayer and I thought I was getting up to give an announcement about where the prayer meetings were and as I got up on the stage,

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him and my guitar had my guitar And he said to the crowds, Jim is gonna sing for you. And Jim sometimes can sing well when no one else is listening but I picked, I was a stupid person, I picked the most complicated song I knew of all sorts of chords and I started it, and then my singing got out of step with with this, with that. And it got a big mess. I just had to stop and walk off with my guitar. I've never been more embarrassed. But if that's happened, I can't remember what was the previous

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one or two times but in two nights and then I had to go and speak, how do you feel before the same crowd of people and they were all looking at each other and what's he gonna do tonight? And, you know what I do? Becoming aware that there is another person with me. I picture myself leaning back into him. And I say to myself, I might not be able but you can. There's a faith element where you trust him. And you'd be amazed at times where God has done things and He worked in ways and you know where the power is.

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It's a rather humbling thing to happen to you because then it delivers you from thinking you've done good things. You know who is the doer. Jesus is the doer of living the Christ-like life. He's the one who can get it done and every time you have some sort of failure and of course in the Christian walk you have lots of failures get up again and say Jesus and so I just proved that I can't but you can, it's like Peter out of the boat Jesus is said come to me walk in the water. Peter walks in the water I wonder Whether he got a big head at that moment, he said, gee whiz, this is going to be told a good story of what I did.

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I don't know what happened to him, but he lost that confidence mighty quick. I'm only guessing now, but I wonder whether of the crest of a wave and the storm got picked up and splashed across his face. Or did he turn around, that he saw the frightened faces of the other disciples. Nothing more to take away your confidence in Jesus and the frightened faces of the other ones who were too scared to try.

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I don't know what made him but he began to doubt and then he began to sink. And he did the right thing. He cried out to Jesus, Jesus save me. And the Lord reached, the Bible says immediately, and lifted him up, helped him back to the boat. What a testimony that would be if that happened to you, eh? But in all sorts of little ways. That's just what happens to us as Christians and to have a testimony every

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now and then of something he helped you do. It'll be different for different people. Some people they're natural extroverts, they have no trouble with conversations, and there's others for whom that's the most difficult thing to talk about witnessing and they have a real headache of getting themselves to have a try, but they trust Jesus and something happens when you hear it. And they'll come along and tell you of how the Lord blessed them, or something altogether different in their life that's not, you know, a problem to everybody, but a problem that they found Jesus helped them in. That's why he's called the Comforter.

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But it's only after he's been glorified in Heaven. And particularly if we, as a gathering of communities — this is what, this morning I was on about — if we get unified, if we then praise him, don't look at it what we have done, like we're doing about the beautiful toilets, now I'm not fancy talking about beautiful toilets but I do, I walk by it often during the day and I have a little rejoicing to myself at the toilets because now I've been here getting on towards 17 years and there's been wrecks of toilets in this place and I've had, it's one of the worked advertisements we give our newcomers when they go around and see what is our

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you know and now we have these beautiful toilets, they are because they are enabled by God leading some people to do what previously we hadn't been able to do and now this members meeting we had this morning we're going to put air conditioning in the place and we had a wonderful members meeting this morning after the service and God's working in this church. It's not because we're doing wonderful things, it's because we're teaming up with God and he's the one and the presence of the Holy Spirit with you is a new covenant permanent offering that you should learn to get in step with, which is how Galatians in chapter four, I think it is the verse which talks about Walk After the Spirit but which one scholar has worded it in his translation which he put in the title of

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his book John O'Packer, he said, Keep in step with the Spirit, recognise you need him, recognise you are to follow the lead he delivers to you from the Lord Jesus. Keep in step with the Spirit, trust in his power, learn to relax in his power like Like I've told us before about D. L. Moody who got into his carriage after, it was successful evangelistic event, but an old man with a bent finger like that came up outside his carriage window and he said Honor the Holy Spirit, I don't know whether D. L. Moody was looking at the bent figure, but he heard the words. Honor the Holy Spirit and D. L. Moody rode away, determined so to do and his ministry he took a mighty leap into a far bigger effectiveness. Because he relied on the power of the Spirit of God with him.

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That is the New Covenant blessing of the Spirit. Are you in the walk with it? Are you experiencing it? Do you need to go home tonight and say, Lord, show me how I can honour the Holy Spirit in in my life by believing in his presence, trusting in his power, obeying his experiment with learning how to discern what he's leading you to do. You may make some mistakes and you might think he's telling you

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to go and witness to the neighbor and that might've just been your conscience, I know the subjectivity. It gets at you that short, it would get to me. My spiritual journey as a teenager was when we had this African guy come to our college to study at the University and then he went and witnessed everybody over the back fence. There's a young man there who got his license at 16, had a motor scooter, went for a ride around the block and got killed and his body or he before he become a body was taken into the hospital and another university student living in another room in the college was the one who was there to see him die and came back and

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reported it and that African guy was soaked it up. He said to us I only have one opportunity to witness to him and he's gone and I took note I'd never talked to the fellow who is about my age, cross the back fence, not one conversation, none of the other students, theological students trying to blast us, they hadn't either. Jason came from Africa the African and it already had one good talk, but was lamenting that he didn't get another one in. You have no idea how big an impact that caused on me, that I should start raising the flag which I did at my school. Sometimes the work of the Holy Spirit is to give you a jolt, because He wants you to realize you may not be capable of anything better, but teamed up with Him. The Bible tells us, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, and Christ the

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Exalted Lord does that by His Holy Spirit leading you. Get into the action of keeping in step with the Spirit and you have no idea where that will lead you and what will happen. That is what it is, to be spiritual in the New Covenant sense. I haven't done what I was planning to do again, but it happens to be a lot when I'm preaching. And thankfully, I get rescued by the Lord many of those times, and I think I've said enough. Let's have a word of prayer. Oh Lord, I thank you for the comforter, the counsellor. This one who comes alongside, another word is paraclete. I think that's a Greek word, but it means called alongside. Sort of like a coach.

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And that you have given us the Holy Spirit. And Father, there's folk listening to me who have that Holy Spirit because they've come to Jesus when they first came and took Jesus as a personal Lord and Saviour, you gave them not only forgiveness of sins but you gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit. Lord, they're yet to learn how to be spiritual in the New Testament sense. Lord, we can be spiritual in the Old Testament sense

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which is good. It's wonderful to read the Word of God and put your trust in it. But I am asking for folk here to learn how to be spiritual in the New Testament, New Covenant I mean, sense, of seeking to keep in touch with the Holy Spirit, to keep in step. I think it was Galatians 4 that Jayapaka used that translation idea. Keep in step with the Spirit and I pray that from tonight there will be people who will so do in a new and deliberate way and who knows where that's going to go. We thank you in Jesus name. Amen.