Co-operation With The Holy Spirit - Part 2

Sermon preached at the 2002 Revival Camp of Gospel Light Christian Church
by Evangelist John R Van Gelderen
on 05 June 2002 morning service

Text: 2 Corinthians 13:14b

The communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all.

We are dealing with the progression of truth this week.  Let me just review quickly.  We began Sunday by looking at the key that unlocks really many, many things - that matter of faith, that simple choice to depend on the reality of the words of God, though yet unseen.  And then we began to just unfold this pathway, this aspect of the Spirit-filled life.  We looked on Monday night at the flesh-filled life and the evidence is of the works of the flesh and the engine of the sins of the flesh; both are unrighteousness, the sins of the flesh and self-righteousness, the power of the flesh.  All of it is unbelief, all of it simply the flesh-filled life, all of it grieving the Spirit of God.

Then, on Tuesday morning, we looked at the reality of the Spirit-filled life.  In other words, we went from the problem of sin to the provision of Christ, that based on that finished work, not only is it possible for us to be free from the penalty of sin (which is hell), but also there is the possibility to be delivered from the power of sin right now for the glorious truth that we can live -and yet not us but Christ actually living in us and through us - that literally we are the body of Christ, that we are the channels of the presence of Christ to a lost and dying world around us.  We used the illustration of the hot air balloon that teaches the principle of counter-action that as we depend on the Spirit, the counter-action overcomes the flesh.  As we depend on Him, He counteracts and overcomes the body of sin.  And what a glorious reality that is as we depend on Him.

Well, how do we stay in the basket?  We noted last night the need for absolute surrender - that presentation and practice of surrendering faith - and so last night we looked at that subject by looking at the phraseology, Co-operation with the Holy Spirit.  We began last night by looking at the heavenly partner and we are going to continue this this morning.  So let’s pray and ask the Spirit of God to quicken us and make this time profitable.

Lord, we look to you to once again meet with us. I thank you for this dear people.  And Lord I pray that you will strengthen each one, and most of all spiritually in their inner man that Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith.  Lord help us to depend on that reality right now.  And Lord I pray that you will strengthen physically and mentally as well, that our faculties might be ready to receive.  Open our eyes, the eyes of our hearts to understand.  And Lord open our hearts to receive truth.  And Lord would you use this today and Blessed Spirit I pray that you bring us into a close communion with you.  Oh would you do what man cannot do?  And would you show us the promise in John 16?  Show us the Lord Jesus Christ that we might truly honour and adore Him as we ought.  Lord I pray that you will open our eyes to the realities before us in the Word of God.  So we thank you now in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Walter Wilson 

Walter Wilson, I mentioned last night, was the man that God greatly used in the last century to point hundreds of people to Jesus Christ.  He was a medical doctor God called to preach.  There was a certain event that took place in his life that literally changed the course of his impact.  He describes it this way, that one day a man of God came across his path and asked him the question - I referred to it last night, the question is – “What is the Holy Spirit to you?”  To which Walter Wilson probably replied, “He is the third Person of the Godhead”.  And the man said, “What you said is true, but you didn’t answer my question.  I asked, “What is the Holy Spirit to you?  What does the Holy Spirit mean to you?”   And Walter Wilson said, as he just thought about that, he was dumbfounded and finally had to respond, “Well, He is nothing to me at all.  I know who He is, but I have no personal relationship with Him”.  And the man of God went on to point out that that was the reason why Walter Wilson’s life at that time was barren and fruitless, which was the case.  And Walter Wilson said he had to admit that more or less he has been looking at the Holy Spirit as a servant of his, to come and help him and at his beck and call as if he was in charge. 

Well, the confrontation that day produced a longing, a thirsting in the heart of Walter Wilson.  And as he began to seek the face of God in this area, he heard James Imgraine from Chicago preached a message on Romans 12:1.  May I remind us of those great words:  I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice holy, acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service.  And after preaching the sermon on that day, James Imgraine leaned over the pulpit and said: “It is the Holy Spirit to whom you are to give your body.  Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and you are requested in this passage to give it to Him for full possession.  Will you do this tonight?” 

Walter Wilson went home that night, deeply impressed, with no doubt that this was the answer to the deep need in his life.  He went into his study.  He opened his bible on Romans 12:1.  He literally laid out flat on the floor and placed his finger on Romans 12:1 and addressing the Holy Spirit, he said these words and I quote:

Never before have I come to You with myself.  I do so now.  You may have my body, my lips, my feet, my brain, my hands and all that I am and have, my  body   is Yours for You to live within and do as you please.  Just now, I make You my Lord and I receive You as my own personal God.  I shall see Your wonderful work in my life and I will know that You will make Christ very real to my heart.  I thank You for accepting me, for You said the gift is acceptable.  I thank you for this gracious meeting with Yourself tonight.  

O, what a prayer!  Obviously Walter Wilson already understood that the Spirit lived within him but there was a transaction taking place.  The next morning, he got up and he said to his wife,  “This would be a wonderful day.  Last evening, I received the Holy Spirit into my life as my Lord and I gave Him my body to use for His glory and the honour of the Lord Jesus”.  He said, “I know He will do it.  He will use me without a doubt”.  And his wife excitedly said,  “Well, if something unusual happens today, then call me.  I want to know about it”.  And he said just a few hours later, by 11 o’clock that morning, he had the privilege of phoning home to his wife and testifying to her that the Spirit of God had spoken through his lips; the Gospel message convinced two ladies in his office of their need of Christ, and both of them were born again.  My friend, it didn’t stop there.  That began a life of abundant fruitfulness in the life of Walter Wilson.  You see, it began a life of absolute surrender, or we can say it this way, it began a life of co-operating with the Holy Spirit.  And so, let’s continue on with this theme today of Co-operation with the Holy Spirit. 

Human responsibilities in the partnership

Our text, our prayer of 2 Corinthians 13:14, The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all.  Amen.  Ah, there it is, the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all.  Amen.  The premise that we are looking at - we began last night - is that the communion of the Holy Spirit is the co-operation of a partnership with the Holy Spirit.  Last night, we looked at the heavenly partner.  We noted that He is a spiritual person.  He is a person and He is God.  We noted that He is the senior partner.  He is the leader in this partnership and we noted that He is supernatural power, so that as we yield to Him as senior partner, and depend on Him as supernatural power, He both leads us into the will of God and empowers us to actually do that which He leads us to do.  What a glorious plan of God! 

That brings us now to the human partner -the believer.  What is our responsibility in a more specific sense in this partnership with the Holy Spirit?  And I want us to see this morning that the New Testament gives us 5 commands directed to the believer where the Holy Spirit is the direct object of the command.  There are only 5 of them in the New Testament and we will look at all 5 this morning. 

And as we do, I want to point out that there are certain aspects of the grammar that literally peeled back and outlined for us.  To begin with, we want to note that out of these 5 commands, one of them is an event-oriented command of reception.  The other 4 are process-oriented commands of relationship.  Okay.  One of them is the aorist tense, that is event-oriented, i.e. the fact of an action, and it deals with reception.  The other is the present tense that is continuous action, i.e. the process-orientation of relationship.  So, let’s begin with the first command and that’s event-oriented.  It’s a command of reception.  I like you to turn to your Bible to John 20.  I think this morning I just have you actually look at each one of these so that you can see with your own eyes. 

Command # 1 – Receive ye [the] Holy Spirit

John chapter 20 – Here it is the first command and it is a command of reception.  John chapter 20 is Resurrection Day.  Christ has arisen from the dead and the verse that we are going to read is Christ talking to his disciples on the evening of the day he rose again.  Alright, so that’s significant, this is Resurrection Day.  It’s now the evening of that day and let’s pick it up from verse 21: Then said Jesus unto them again, Peace be unto you; as my Father hath sent me even so send I you.  Alright, that’s the first articulation of the Great Commission.  But notice verse 22:  And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and saith unto them - here’s the command - receive ye the Holy Spirit.  Now notice, He breathed on them, - that’s significant or inspiration, we know it when it is put in the Word of God - and then He commands them to receive the Holy Spirit.  Now, there’s only one other place in the entire Word of God where the Scripture records God breathing on man.  And it was Genesis 2:7 and we learned that God created Adam and breathed into Adam the breath of life, and man became a living soul. 

Now this is the only other time where the Scripture records God breathing on man.  Something is taking place here.  Something monumental is taking place here.  Christ is breathing on his disciples and just as in Genesis Adam became a living soul, here in the Gospel of John, these disciples became a living spirit.  I believe that when He breathed on them, they were indwelt by the Spirit.  That the Spirit moved in and thus the spirit was regenerated in that sense.  Obviously they were all already saved, but the indwelling aspect of the Spirit did not take place until here.  There are men who argue on this, that’s fine, I don’t mind the argument but let’s not miss the point that something happened.  He breathed on them and then He said this:  Receive ye the Holy Spirit. 

Now wait a second.  If He had already moved in when He breathed on them, why did He say: Receive ye the Holy Spirit?  Ah, the word “the”, the definite article is absent and as we’ve already noted this week, when that’s the case in the original language, the emphasis is not on the person, but on the power.  You see the person of the Spirit moved in when he breathed on them, and now He says:  Receive ye Holy Spirit, that is Receive ye the power of the person that has just moved in.  In other words, we are responsible for that reception.  The word receive here is in the aorist tense that deals with the fact of an action, it is event-oriented and so we are to receive the Holy Spirit.  Now, sometimes people say, “Well you know, this is the Gospel of John, this is the day before the Pentecost”.  I don’t know. Alright.  So that there is no argument at all, turn with me to Galatians 3. 

We’ll go to the epistles because this will nail it down as bedrock truth.  Galatians 3.  The epistles clarify what is happening here.  And I want you to notice in verse 2 it says, This only would I learn of you, Received (that’s our word Received) ye the Spirit (the definite article is present in the text here), Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?  And the answer to that question is what?  Alright, is anybody awake?  The answer to the question is what?  The hearing of faith!  That was really weak.  I’ll tell you what, I don’t know but let’s go ahead and move on here.  Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?  And the answer is, the hearing of faith.  The point is this, when you got saved, you received the person of the Holy Spirit.  In other words, the definite article is present here when you got saved, the person of the Holy Spirit moved in.  We can call that the factual reception.  When you believe on Christ to save you, whether you knew it or not, the Spirit of Christ moved into your spirit, you were born again, you were born of the Spirit.  The moment you believed on Christ, at that moment factually, you received the indwelling Spirit - that is positional truth. 

But I want you to notice verses 13 and 14.  Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us:  for it is written, cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.  Why did He redeem us?  That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ.  What’s that?  According to verse 8 and following, it is justification by faith.  Okay, so why did Jesus redeem us?  Why did He purchase us? And the answer is that we might be justified by faith.  But did you notice that the verse doesn’t stop there?  It goes on to say “that”.  In other words, there’s another “in order that” here, that we might, and notice it’s might, it’s not automatic but that we might receive – there’s our word “receive” - the promise of the Spirit through faith.  Again, it’s not automatic - it’s received through faith.  Now, if we already received the Spirit when we got saved, why is it talking about this?  Well, notice, it’s not talking about the person of the Spirit, it’s talking about the promise of the Spirit and I won’t take time to go into the details of it, but if we compare Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:4-5, we learned that the promise of the Spirit is a promise of power.  Well, Jesus says I’m going to send to you the promise - and here’s how you know when it will come - and it will be endued with the power from on high (Luke 24:49), and you will be baptized with Holy Spirit power (Acts 1:5). 

Alright, so the promise of the Spirit it is the promise of the power that let us know that the factual reception of the Spirit of His person is when you got saved (verse 2) but the functional reception of the Spirit is when you received His power.  You say, “How do you received His power?”  Well, let me ask you this,  “How do you receive Christ?”  By faith!  Remember John 1:12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.  So the way you received Christ is by believing, by depending on Him to save you.  So, we are not talking about anything weird.  The way you received the promise (or the power of the Spirit) is simply by depending on the Spirit.  And the point is that there has to be a starting point for that.  That’s this event.  Now it’s possible, depending on the person’s knowledge, that that could happen simultaneous with salvation.  For most, however, they don’t have any idea what’s all happening.  They get filled with themselves and began to fall flat on their face even though they are a child of God and God has opened their eyes to self-dependence, flesh-dependence and they recognize, “Oh, wait a second, I not only need to receive Christ as my savior, I need to receive the power of the Holy Spirit to live the Christian life”.  That is what we are talking about.  This is as simple as the concepts articulated in Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore brethren, let me ask you, is it talking to saved people or unsaved people?  Saved people.  He says I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present, that word present is in the same aorist tense, fact of an action event, and is used with the infinity there meaning to offer on a certain occasion so that you present, you yield, you offer your body, it says as a living sacrifice.  Now the verb tense switches, the word living is present tense, continuous action.  So there’s a presentation where it starts, and there’s a practice where it continues.  That’s what we are talking about.  There’s an initial surrender and then there’s a continuous surrender - and we’ll come to that when we come to the last 4 commands – to God. 

Well think about it. The Spirit moved in, He moved into your spirit but He doesn’t necessarily possess all of you.  You see when you got saved, you got all of the Holy Spirit you ever going to get.  But He did not necessarily get all of you.  And so we need to present our bodies so that He who lives in our spirit can now possess all of us and reign as senior partner and supernatural power.  That’s what we are talking about.  Is it not possible in the market place world for us to purchase a product to take the title deed in hand, we own it and yet not have the product delivered for several weeks?  Think about it.  When you got saved, Jesus who purchased you took the title deed of your life in hand, He owns you, you are not your own.  He bought you, Romans 12:1 is simply delivering to Him what He already owns for hands-on possession.  That’s what we are talking about.  And so we see, His first command is the command of reception. 

C L Culpepper 

C L Culpepper was a missionary from the United States who went to China in the early part of the last century.  And while he was there, there was another missionary lady from Sweden, if I remember right, by the name of Marie Monsen.  And one day, I won’t go over the details of what led up to this, but one day, Marie Monsen asked C L Culpepper this question, “Have you been filled with the Holy Spirit?”   And C L Culpepper stammered out something less than a definite reply.  And she, recognizing his hesitancy and uncertainty about it, carefully related the experience that she had 15 years earlier when she had prayed for and received the promise of the Spirit by faith as recorded in Galatians 3:14.  God took that confrontation that day to produce a hunger in the heart of C L Culpepper.  He began to search the Scripture and the day came when he transferred his dependence to the Spirit and thus received the Spirit’s power.  And God used him later in the mighty outpouring of the Spirit of God known today as the Shantung Revival lasting from 1933 to 1947, 15 years.  Glorious, but it began with absolute surrender; it began with a reception of the Holy Spirit, not His person - he already got the factual reception when he got saved - but the functional reception of now depending on the Holy Spirit for the power to live the Christian life or the spirit-filled life. 

That brings us to the last 4 commands. These are not event-oriented commands of reception.  Rather they are process-oriented commands of relationship.  In other words, the reception is the presentation.  When you present your body, when you transferred your dependence to God for everything, you just are now depending on Him; you received Him then as Lord and life.  Okay, there is that parallel.  Now, we’re talking about the living sacrifice.  Now, we’re talking about the practice that flows out of that presentation - the relationship that should flow out of the reception, of transferring your dependence to the power of the Holy Spirit.  Now, again, let the grammar help us to decipher these 4 commands.  All 4 of these are in the present tense, which means continuous action, so that’s the relationship or practice or process-orientation of them.  However, the verb has that thing called voice and one of these commands is in the passive voice, the other 3 commands are in the active voice.  So let’s say it stated this way.  At the active voice you do it, at the passive voice, you allow it to be done.  Now, first of all, let’s look at the first command, which is the command of allowance.  And then we look at the last 3 commands, which is the command of action. 

Command # 2 – Be filled with [the] Spirit

Flip a page or two over from Galatians into Ephesians, just head to the right.  And you will come across Ephesians and then Chapter 5.  Not an unfamiliar command but let’s look at it.  We now look at the Second Command.

Ephesians 5:18   And be not drunk with wine, wherein in excess  (that is debauchery) but be filled with the Spirit.  Now, it is present tense, it is continuous, it is perpetual and it is plural - this is for every believer.  But it is dealing with the power of the Holy Spirit.  Notice this, it says keep on being filled with the Spirit; the word “the” is actually absent.  So, it is be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.  The word filled deals with the aspect of control.  Peter confronted Ananias, Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?  Why did you yield to the control of Satan?  Okay, so we’re dealing now with yielding to the control of the Spirit and depending on His power, but this is passive.  So, it is not keep on being filled with the Spirit, it is keep on allowing yourself to be filled with the Spirit.  Keep on allowing yourself to be led by and empowered by the Holy Spirit.  That’s the command.  Now wait a second.  If it is a command of allowance, how do we do that?  If we’re not the ones to do it, how do we obey the command that keep on allowing yourself to be filled, to be led, to be empowered with the Holy Spirit?  And the answer is by obeying the next 3 commands of action.  And when you obey the commands of action, you then are allowing yourself to be filled with the Spirit.  So now, let’s look at the 3 commands of action.  Again, let the grammar decipher this.  One of them is a command where the Holy Spirit does not have a definite article in front of it, therefore emphasizing His power.  The other 2 commands do have a definite article in front of His name, emphasizing His person.  Let’s move to the one that deals with His power, it’s Galatians 5.  So back a page or two to the left to Galatians 5.  We’ve all already looked at this in this very week.  But it’s one of the commands, so let’s look at it again. 

Command # 3 – Walk in [the] Spirit

Galatians 5:16 Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.  Definite article is absent.  Walk in the power of the Holy Spirit.  We’ve already noticed that walking is reiterated steps, walking in the Spirit is reiterated steps in the Spirit.  We learned from Colossians 2:6 As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord (which was by faith) so walk ye in Him.  So how do we walk in Him?  By faith!  Alright.  So the command here Walk in the Spirit is the command to depend on the power of the Holy Spirit.  And my friend, it is not enough for us to talk about the Spirit-filled life.  It is not enough for us to talk about being filled with the Spirit.  It is not enough for us to talk about walking in the Spirit.  We must start depending on the Holy Spirit for everything. 

Now, I want you to consider with me.  An unsaved person does not believe in Jesus until he transferred their dependence to Jesus to save Him.  In other words, it is not enough to believe about Jesus.  A man is not saved until He depends on Jesus, until He believes in Jesus.  Now think about it in the same way.  It is not enough to believe about the Holy Spirit.  You don’t believe in the Holy Spirit until you start depending on the Holy Spirit.  Just as an unsaved man doesn’t believe in Christ until He depends on Christ to save Him, we as God’s people do not believe in the Holy Spirit until we are depending on the Holy Spirit for the Christian life.  My friend, we must go beyond believing about Him to believing on Him, to depending on Him.  Now think about it.  Just as we say in salvation, that salvation is not a religion rather it is a relationship with Jesus Christ - you trust Him to save you - ah, my friend, in the same way, sanctification and service is not a religion.  It is a relationship with the Holy Spirit - we depend on Him to lead us as senior partner and enable us as supernatural power to follow His leading.  And so we have the command that deals with the Spirit’s power, walk in the Spirit, depend on the Holy Spirit for everything.  Now that brings us to the last 2 commands of action, commands that now emphasize the Holy Spirit as person as opposed to His power.  The next one is in Ephesians, so back to the right to Ephesians 4:30. 

Command # 4 – Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God

Ephesians 4 and here we have a command in Ephesians 4:30.  It says:  And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.  Now, the definite article is present, emphasizing His person.  You see He is a person who can be grieved.  The word grieved here is translated into sorrow in John 16.  We can sorrow the Holy Spirit.  We can cause Him grief and sorrow.  He is a person.  That is very interesting to note that the present tense command, when it’s combined with the negative, “not”, grieved not, it is the idea of the need to stop or cease an action that’s already in progress.  So the command, grieve not the Holy Spirit, more technically is stop grieving the Holy Spirit.  You see, evidently the Ephesians were grieving Him and the command is: “Here, look stop! Stop grieving the Holy Spirit”.  It’s very interesting to note that that command comes in a context that is dealing with all sorts of sins.  After you go through the glorious truths of the old man being put off and the new man being put on, then you look up in verse 25 and it says, wherefore putting away lying.  You see, my friend, if we are not honest, we are grieving the Holy Spirit - stop grieving the Holy Spirit!  And it says, Speak every man truth with his neighbour, for we are members one of another.  Verse 26:  Be ye angry and sin not.  It’s possible to have a sinless anger.  Christ had it when he went to, and cleanses the temple.  But if we are not careful, ours is not sinless anger, it is carnal anger.  And we must be very careful on that, because if we’re carnal about it, we’re grieving the Holy Spirit.  Let not the sun go down on your wrath.   Verse 27: Neither give place to the devil.  Friend, have you given place to the devil, have you allow sins to get in, little works of the flesh to get in, like getting angry carnally?  And you’ve given place to that and you’ve given him ground.  Stop that!  That’s the command here.  Let him that stole steal no more, verse 28.  Verse 29:  Let no corrupt communication proceed out from your mouth but that which is good to the use of edifying.  Wow!  That will knock a lot of conversations that is not good to the use of edifying - but rather it’s corrupt.  God says don’t do that.  And then He says, grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.  In other words, it’s in the context of dealing with sin and after that, in verse 31, it says:  let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil-speaking be put away from you, with all malice. 

Alright, so in the context of all these sins, the Bible says STOP grieving the Holy Spirit.  In other words, deal with your sin, get right with God, stop excusing that sin that has grieved the Spirit of God away - and you wondered why you don’t have His power!  Stop rationalizing, stop embracing deception, embrace truth, deal with sin, confess it and stop grieving the Holy Spirit.  The way we deal with sin is to confess it, to agree with God about it - 1John 1:9 - I mean to say the same thing about it that God says.  And I hear that when people do sometimes with sin and say:  “Okay, well, yeah, yeah, I lose my temper but you know, you don’t understand, it’s just of those Asian tempers”.  And they say in Europe, “Oh it’s just of those European tempers”.  You know, say wherever.  Can’t blame it on your nationality.  It’s called sin.  Alright, so what we have to do is to get honest and say: “God, it is dirty, rotten sin”.  See, that’s confession, it’s agreeing with God about it.  When we do, we’re dealing with sin and we are obeying the command to stop grieving the Holy Spirit.  Deal with sin.  You see, He is the Spirit of wisdom, the Scripture says.  And my friend, when we depend on man’s wisdom, when we depend on man’s reasoning, and man’s way of thinking rather than God’s way of thinking, we are grieving the Spirit of wisdom.  He is the Spirit of the fear of the Lord, Isaiah 11:2.  And my friend, when you and I fear man, when we are more concerned about saving face, and so we make choices because we fear man.  We have grieved the Spirit of the fear of the Lord.  You see, He is the Spirit of justice, Isaiah 28:6.  And when we are unjust in our dealings, we have grieved the Holy Spirit.  He is the Spirit of grace, Zechariah 12:10, Hebrews 10:29.  Grace is supernatural enablement through the Holy Spirit to do God’s will and my friend, when we don’t depend on that enablement, when we depend on the flesh, we are grieving the Spirit of grace.  He is called the Spirit of supplication, Zechariah 12:10 and my friend, when we do not pray, when we are prayerless, it indicates we are grieving the Holy Spirit.  Why?  He is the Spirit of supplication.  If you are right with your relationship with Him, it will flow out.  You see, He is the Spirit of truth, John 14 through 16, three times we are told that.  And my friend, when we are dishonest, when we are not forthright and honest in our obligations, when we don’t pay our bills on time, and on and on we can go, we are grieving the Spirit of truth.  He is called the Spirit of holiness, Romans 1:4.  And my friend, when we are worldly, when we interact with the media, and watch things that we ought not watch, when we interact with the music that is sensual and has that sound that is clearly a sound that the world claims that which is wicked and wrong, we are grieving the Spirit of holiness.  When we embrace fashions and lifestyles and all of that, that clearly is that which the world moves, it is sensual, worldly, we are grieving the Spirit of holiness.  And the command is STOP IT!  Stop grieving the Holy Spirit.  He is the Spirit of love and when we are unloving, we grieve Him.  He is the Spirit of a sound mind and when we do not have a sound mind because of yielding to the ways of the flesh, we are grieving the Holy Spirit.  He is the Spirit of glory.  And my friend, when we walk in the flesh, we block the glory of God.  He is the Spirit of life and when we are dead, we are grieving Him.  You see, we need to stop grieving the Holy Spirit. 

C H Spurgeon

C.H. Spurgeon was one day crossing the street in London and there, in the middle of a very busy road he stopped, and it is said that he tipped his head forward and kind of tipped his head downward, and then after pausing, he looked back up and he continued to cross the road.  Well someone who knew him, came running over as he came across the street to meet him and said:  “Mr. Spurgeon, Mr. Spurgeon, why did you stop in the middle of a busy road?  You could have been hit” (I supposed by horse and buggy).  And C.H. Spurgeon replied: “ Ah, for a moment, a cloud came between me and my Saviour and I had to stop and deal with it”.  He was obeying this command: Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God. 

Ah, my friend, what about us?  Is there any known sin in your life that you have not dealt with, that you have not confessed to a holy, righteous God?  If right now you know of an area in your life, whether it is bitterness, whether it is irritability, whether it is resentment, whether it is a grudge, whether it is dishonesty or whatever it is, if there is a known sin in your life, then you, this moment, are grieving the Holy Spirit.  And you need to deal with your sin.  You need to stop grieving the Holy Spirit.  Have you dealt with every known sin in your life?  How about doubtful things?  Here’s what people say today:  “Hey, well, this is one of those gray areas, you know, it might be right, it might be wrong, so hey, it’s just a matter of preference”.  Wait a second!  You use that argument to go out and do what you want to, whom are you giving the benefit of a doubt - God or Satan?  Satan!  My friend, when we give Satan the benefit of a doubt, we are grieving the Holy Spirit.  If there is a doubtful area in your life, and you’re not sure if you should or if you shouldn’t, whether it is right or whether it is wrong, deal away with it.  Search the Scriptures till you are convinced what’s right or wrong because when it is doubtful and we go ahead and do it, we’re sinning against our conscience.  And we are grieving the Holy Spirit.

So, have you dealt with every doubtful thing?  Are you reconciled to everyone that you ought to be reconciled to?  When God deals with his people, there is wrong when you’ve wronged another brother and they know it.  Not generally speaking.  Private sin demands private confession and you get right with God.  But personal sin, sin against a brother, according to Matthew 5, you’ve got to leave your gift at the altar and go first and be reconciled to your brother, then come back and you can make the living offering a sacrifice.  You see, the point is simply this.  There are some people that we’ve wronged and we know that they know we’ve wronged them.  When that’s the case, my friend, you are not going to be right with God until you get right with man.  And I’ll tell you what.  There have been times when God has brought something to my mind and oh my goodness, I’ve got to make that phone call.  I’ve got to write that letter, I’ve got to go see that person and I tell you what.  You trust the Spirit for the power to do that.  That’s walking in the Spirit and you go deal with that and then you stopped grieving the Spirit and guess what happens?  The joy of the Lord overflows. 

I remembered being in a meeting where I dealt with some of these things.  And a middle-aged lady came by where I was standing after the service and the next night she says:  “Today I had to go talk to someone and apologize for wronging them”.  She said, “I really didn’t want to do it, I didn’t know if I could but God gave me the grace,” and she said, “I am rejoicing, my heart is overflowing”.  That’s what we are talking about.  And if it’s been to more than one, then it’s more of a public thing; it needs to be dealt with publicly.  Ah yes, we need to deal with our sins.  We need to stop grieving the Holy Spirit.  I know of a church where God was so moving just last January that at the end of the meeting, the Pastor says, “Alright, many of you people have gotten right with God this week, that’s good.  But some of you need to get right with others and some of you need to get right with this church because you have wronged this church publicly”.  He said, “The front rows are open and you can come up right now and we will let you apologize to the congregation”.  And you know what?  Because God was so moved and they started coming up to the front, person after person after person after person until finally they just started popping up in different places.  That service lasted until 11 o’clock that night.  That just took place last January in the state of Florida.  You see, that’s dealing with sin.  May we obey the command to grieve not the Holy Spirit of God! 

Command # 5 – Quench not the Spirit

That brings us to one final command.  And that is 1 Thessalonians 5.  So if we just turn there, we are almost through.  1Thessalonians 5, this one says in verse 19: Quench not the Spirit.  Again, it is a present tense command but it is with that negative not indicating the cessation of an activity that is already in progress.  Stop quenching the Spirit.  You said what is the difference between grieve not the Spirit and quench not the Spirit?  Grieve not the Spirit is deal with your sin.  Quench not the Spirit means always say yes.  In other words, once you know it is the Spirit - now you need to test the Spirit, 1John 4:1 to see whether or not they are of God; and anytime something is so pressing on you that you can’t test the Spirit, you know it is a counterfeit, because the Bible says to test the Spirit; but when there is that growing convincement and you know it is the Spirit - the point is, OBEY.  And if you don’t obey, you’re quenching the Spirit.  So the command is STOP quenching the spirit. 

Charlie Cathrow

Charlie Cathrow is an older preacher in the city of Indianapolis in the state of Indiana.  He the closest thing to George Muller that I’ve ever met.  He is anxious to pray daily and I mean,   remarkable prayers.  He can get you to name a thing and he just spin out a whole series of stories, testifying the grace and glory of God, of God answering prayers.  Well, this man is the epitome of someone who co-operates with the Holy Spirit.  When the Holy Spirit leads him, he obeys.  Let me give you an illustration.  He had a relative, a cousin, a lady who is not saved.  He witnessed to her before and she rejected Christ.  She lived in the state of Philadelphia.  That would be a number of hours away from a driving standpoint.  And yet the Spirit of God just was convincing him: “Now is the time, go talk to your cousin”.  And he couldn’t get away from it.  He realized that this was the Spirit convincing him, bearing witness with his spirit: “It is time to go once again and witness to your cousin”.  And so he said to his wife:  “The Spirit of God is convincing me, we are supposed to go witness to my cousin.  She must be ready”.  So they got into the car and they drove.  Probably half a day it would take, maybe actually more than that to get to Philadelphia.  They did not tell their cousin that they were coming.  She had no idea.  They just showed up.  Now that’s faith. 

And in the first day of their conversation, the cousin said to Charlie Cathrow.  She said: “Charlie, can you explain to me what John 3 is talking about - the new birth chapter?”  And before they left, 2 or 3 days later, that dear cousin was born again.  Now, here’s my question.  What would have happened if Charlie Cathrow had quenched the Spirit by not going?  My friend, had there not been times when the Spirit of God has prompted you to witness to somebody and you knew it?  My friend, if we quench the Holy Spirit, who knows whether or not that person will ever have the opportunity the very fact that the fields are white unto harvest indicates?  If we don’t obey, then the harvest is lost - it will rot.  May we learn to always obey and quench not the Holy Spirit? 

So how does this work?  We depend on the Holy Spirit (that’s walking in the Spirit), to deal with our sin (that’s grieve not the Spirit), to always obey (that’s quench not the Spirit) and when you do that - those are the 3 commands of action - you are allowing yourself to be filled with the Holy Spirit.  Do you see it?  The relationship then revolves around the fact that we must constantly be depending on the Spirit of God to deal with sin, to always say yes so that He is empowering us, He is leading us, He is enabling us and as we depend on Him, we are allowing ourselves be filled with the leadership and power of the Holy Spirit.  And thus He reigns as senior partner and as supernatural power.  You see how it works?  There is an initial surrender (that’s the event-oriented command) where we received the Holy Spirit.  We let him know we are depending on Him, we are giving Him our bodies to possess all of us but it doesn’t stop there.  There’s the continual surrender - the practice - the relationship where daily, step by step, we depend upon the Holy Spirit to deal with sin when that comes up and always say yes and thus allow ourselves to be filled with His leadership as senior partner and filled with His power as supernatural power to enable us to follow His leadership.  You see the communion of the Holy Spirit is the co-operation of a partnership with the Holy Spirit.  My friend, we need to make sure we’re not resisting the Holy Spirit.  The church that I referred to in the state of Florida, there’s something else I need to tell you that led up to all that was happening there. 

Two years ago that pastor came to a holiness conference.  Your pastor, Pastor Choo preached at the most recent holiness conference that we had at Preach the Word Ministry, and two years ago, this pastor from Florida came.  I had been with him a month before at his church, and in a local service, I had preached on the ministry of the Holy Spirit.  It was a good meeting, but it was nothing extraordinary.  But evidently God was working in the preacher’s heart.  He told me, in fact he called me the next Sunday after I left him; I had been in this church in a meeting and that was about 1½ years ago.  Though the meeting was okay, nothing extraordinary.  He called me the next Sunday and say:  “Look”, he said, “I’ve been chewing on things.” And he said, “I preached Sunday morning on Acts 1 & 2 that the power of God is still for today.  And I apologized to my congregation for neglecting the Holy Spirit”.  And he said that at the end of the service, I told the people, “Look, I’m going to be the first one to be on my knees because I, as your pastor and your leader, have not done right in this,” and he said, “perhaps you have neglected the Holy Spirit too.  And that maybe you need to follow.” Well, this is one of those churches that hardly anybody comes forward - you know what I mean, it wasn’t like where everybody comes type of thing, it wasn’t their mentality.  But he said when he got on his knees a whole host of people came and join them - thirty some odd people.  God began to work in that congregation.  When he came to that holiness conference a year and a half ago, he said:  “John, we’re seeing miracles every week”.  He started telling me stories.  Well, he came again to this holiness conference just last February.  And I said:  “How is it going?”  He said:  “I’ve got to tell you something that is going on”.  I discovered that he preached a series on presentations Romans 12:1.  God bless that and a number of people presented their bodies to the Holy Spirit - just tremendous blessing that way.  But he said:  “Then in the latter part of the year I began to preach on the ministry of the Holy Spirit”.  And he says, “It’s interesting, to the end of the year, there is a certain man in my church that has been there for years, who started conflicting with me.” Theologically, the man was coming from a totally different grid and so there was conflict that way but more than that, he was just kind of shooting at the pastor, criticizing the pastor.  And he was one of the leaders; he was a deacon in the church.  And it came a time for them to do their annual budget and this man was just being cantankerous and accusing the pastor for all sorts of things.  So the pastor said, “I will walk out of the meeting. You talk freely as you want to, I’ve nothing to fear”.  They talked and he came back.  They were still arguing, bickering and he said:  “Look, we have to table till it after Christmas”.  They picked it up in January, just this last January.  And they got together in a meeting to look at the budget.  And the man started accusing that pastor.  “Look at all these things on our budget.  You’re causing us to be a terrible testimony in this community”.  And the pastor looked at him in the eyes and said:  “Alright, let’s go line by line.  You tell me where we are bad testimony and we’ll correct it right now”.  And he looked over at that man, and the man dropped dead.  No gasp, no sighs as if it there was a heart attack, he just dropped dead.  That happened last January.  And my friend, I don’t know all the details but it would not surprise me that was not an Ananias type situation.  Here’s a church that is finally trying to seek to follow God and let Jesus Christ reign as Lord through the Spirit of Christ and letting the Holy Spirit administer that church and yet, here’s a man who’s constantly get in the way, constantly accusing the leader, constantly making up things, creating things that were not true.  My friend, he’s dead.  And I believe if we get back to apostolical living, we get back to apostolical miracles.  In other words, we’ll see God working in some mighty ways and shape things up. 

And my friend, C L Culpepper, whom I mentioned earlier involved in a 15-year revival, had many people criticized and said all sorts of things.  He said:  “You know, I used to think the reason people kind of resists and rejects in whatever teaching on the Holy Spirit is because of the Charismatic Movement and they are afraid of those excesses and so you know, that’s why they reject this proper teaching on the Holy Spirit”.  But he said, “You know, the more I think about it, the more I really believe that the bottomline problem is, we do always resist the Holy Spirit”.  O, may that not be true of us, may we rather cast our dependence on Him, may we rather truly depend on Him for each step to lead us with power to follow His leadership.  May we have a relationship with the Spirit of God to experience Christ with the life of Christ to a lost and dying world.  Oh, may we commune with the Holy Spirit.  The communion of the Holy Spirit is simply the co-operation of the partnership with the Holy Spirit.  Shall we pray?

Father we rejoice with your truth.  Lord, may your reality be our supreme and daily experience. Oh blessed Spirit, show us where we grieve you, that we might deal with that sin.  Let us know your voice apart from the voice of the evil one.  May we learn the word of the truth that we may depend on You to lead us and to follow Your leadership.  Lord I pray for some who really need you today, that they will do the transaction with You today, inviting You to come and reign as Lord in every area of their lives.  Lord for others that have already taken place, oh help us to make certain that we are not grieving, not quenching You. Lord we depend on You for every moment of our lives to help us, to lead us, to empower us, that Christ might be exalted once again in this day and age which we live.  We thank You for it.  We thank you for what You are doing. Lord teach us.  We thank you in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Appendix – Book Recommendations

I want to mention to you a number of books that are going to be available for the remainder of this camp week.  It will be out in the back lobby, I believe here and I appreciated the words of Elder Leong earlier today.  He talked about the importance of words.

It is significant that when God chose to communicate with man, he gave us, as was mentioned His word.  Think about it, God could have used whatever method he wanted to.  He could have given us the Bible on video.  That would be interesting watching Moses and various ones of the Old Testament.  God could have done that but he didn’t.  He certainly could have given it to us on audio but he didn’t do that.  He gave it to us in an inscripturated form and because of that, I have a very special place in my heart for that printed page. 

Back in 1992, my father and I founded what is called the Preach The Word Ministry.  It’s for the cause of revival and evangelism and we have a number of different things that we do but one arm is the method of publications and the distributing of books that are for the cause of revival and evangelism and so, some of the services that we have remaining, I’ll take the opportunity to give you some of the idea of what is on that table.  Today, I’m going to mention the books that are dealing with a Spirit-filled life and then perhaps tonight we’ll talk about some of the books that are biographical that illustrate that and then tomorrow, some books that deal with revival and evangelism.  But Spirit-filled life books, there is a classic, I think some of you already have this one called Victory in Christ by Charles Trumbull.  Trumbull, I mentioned earlier and I mentioned that famous sermon that he wrote that Rosalind Goforth read and God used it to open her eyes, that is chapter 2 in this book and that chapter, God has used to bless, who knows, how many but literally, thousands of people over the last 100 years.  This is an excellent book, I suppose it’s one of the simplest and clearest articulations of the basics of the Spirit-filled life that you read.  I also want to point out that the last chapter is entitled Perils Of The Victorious Life and the truth is as long as we are not filled with Spirit, Satan can care less about us and we are not a threat to his turf at all.  But you start getting close with the Spirit of the living God and he’ll take notice and there’ll be some attacks, there will be some perils but we are not ignored of his devices.  We need not fear him, we need to fear God.  And this last chapter goes into 14 different perils that we often face and points you to the Word of God to how to deal with those perils.  It is extremely helpful. If you have already been pursuing the Spirit-filled life and when you read that kind of chapter, I mean the lights just go on:  Ah! That’s why I lost it, that’s why I got off-track here or off-track there, very, very helpful. 

And then I want to mention as well, a classic by R.A. Torrey on The Person and work of the Holy Spirit.  The chapter here on the personality of the Holy Spirit is outstanding.  And this is just the classic work dealing with the person of the Holy Spirit.  Sometimes people quibble with Torrey on terminology but if we just simply recognize we’re dealing with the power of God that we so desperately need, it is an immensely helpful book.  It’s been a blessing again to thousands over the last century.

And then here several books by Andrew Murray, one of my favourite authors.  This one is entitled Absolute Surrender.  I read this book in early 1992 and God used it to shake me off the position where I was.  It just put a fracture on where I was in my whole realm of not being absolutely surrendered.  And it just kind of opened the door for me that began the pilgrimage that has not stopped.  And I thank the Lord for this book.  And then another book by Andrew Murray that was an immense blessing to me.  It’s called The True Vine.  God used this book to open my eyes to what it means when Jesus says:  Abide in me and I in you.  Immensely helpful.  And then here’s another classic by Andrew Murray entitled Abide in Christ.  Murray was involved in a major revival in 1860 in South Africa.  He was a young man.  He wrote this book based on what the Spirit of God taught him during revival.  And this has been an immense help to many on the Spirit-filled life of abiding. 

And then there is one that is not nearly as profitable as some of the others but nonetheless, it’s called The Engine Truths.  Some of you are familiar with this, I wrote this book and this deals with just some of the basics, the idea of faith.  We talked Sunday morning about the mustard seed faith, that’s Chapter One in this book.  By the way what’s in the book is much, much longer.  You need to know that message could have taken a whole lot longer but nonetheless, it has that in printed form.  That’s Chapter Two that deals with Mega Grace.  Those are your two Basic Engine Truths and then the other four chapters seek to apply that.  There is a book that written by James A. Steward, an evangelist from Scotland, who went home with the Lord in 1975.  Saw revival powerfully in Eastern Europe before World War II.  But this book is entitled Heaven’s Throne Gift.  Remember Christ was exalted to the right hand of the Father, received the promise of the Spirit and sent the Spirit (Acts 2).  That is heaven’s throne gift.  So, he’s dealing with the ministry of the Holy Spirit.  Pastor Mike gave me this book a few years back when I was headed for India.  And I read it while I was there and I mean it was one of those books I could hardly put down and there were certain times when God was dealing with me and opened my eyes to what we have in our birthright and our inheritance and I got so excited.  I was literally bouncing on my bed.  But nonetheless, a tremendously helpful book in showing us the glorious throne gift that we have and the Holy Spirit who lives in our hearts. 

I referred the other day to Evan Harkins and he was used of God to open the eyes of Jay Elder Cummin and he wrote a book called The Lord of Liberty in a Sprit-filled Life.  He wrote this in the mid 1880s.  In 1881, Harkins’ church saw revival.  It’s interesting that this man - that writing some of these books are men that were touched with the fires of revival - not only did he experience revival before he wrote this book, this book and the teaching influenced the ministry of Evan Harkins who has been the bottom of many other revivals. Reese Haus intercessor, if you ever read the biography, you find out that God touched Reese Haus early through the life and ministry of Evan Harkins.  Haus saw revival in South Africa ten thousand shades.  The Welsh Revival in 1904 was heavenly influenced in 1902 by some key leaders as they went to hear Evan Harkins and F.B. Myer preached.  Then God used that truth to spur them to faith to pray for the outpouring of the Spirit, which ultimately culminated in the powerful 1904 Welsh Revival.  So this is an immensely helpful book.  This takes you a little deeper than some of the other books I have mentioned thus far.  This goes a little bit further, I’ll read the other kind first before you read Harkins but when certain truths are in place, Harkins would take you much, much deeper and it’s interesting, Griffith Thomas, the commentator, said a 100 years ago that this book at that time, was the most helpful book written on holiness, in other words, sanctification.  The Spirit-filled life applied to being what we ought to be. 

And then if you would want to go deeper, there is another book by Jessie Penn- Lewis entitled The Centrality of the Cross.  You see, we must constantly be taking new things we face to the Cross and allow the power of the Cross to be applied and she beautifully explains what that’s about.  And this book is the kind of book that I have to read more than once and I am reading it again presently.  And it’s just been a glorious help on the power of the Cross and its crucial centrality involved in the Spirit-filled life.  And there’s another book by Andrew Murray that will take you deeper yet, called The Spirit of Christ.  R.A. Torrey said that he recommended three books that every Christian reads and one of the titles that he recommended was Andrew Murray’s - that’s fascinating - on The Spirit of Christ, because Murray was a contemporary.  But this is the kind of book that you can’t read fast.  I’ll tell you, I’ll be honest with you, I picked up a Murray book one time when I was in college and I thought, you know this is so deep it’s worthless.  I didn’t realize that I was so shallow I was worthless.   But when certain other truths opened up, this one would take you deeper, tremendously helpful.  And then, I want to mention that there’s a new book coming out from the press.  This is just a mock-up of it and the Lord willing, it would be available in the upcoming weeks but this is the book that I have written called The Wind of the Spirit in Personal and Corporate Revival.  Fourteen chapters in this book.  The messages that we are dealing with this week are in this book in printed form but has more than that, there’s fourteen different chapters dealing with personal and corporate revival.  And so this is available as well.  By the way, I only have one copy of each of these just because of the hassle with getting everything here so you can go ahead and order the books this week and then we will have to arrange to have them all shipped here. 

But I’ve got to mention to you another brand new book that is coming off the press.  This is just a mock-up of it but I’m very, very excited about it.  It’s entitled Pathway to Power by Evangelist Michael A. Redick and I, honestly, I am thrilled that the Lord has allowed Pastor Mike to write this and that it’s in the process of getting published.  This is a progression of truth on the Spirit-filled life.  There’s a sub-title here that says Discovering Practical Holiness and Powerful Service as a Natural Outflow of the Spirit-filled Life.  And as you know, you have been blessed with the ministry of Mike Redick and this would take you even further because with the printed page, you can stop but in a sermon, you can’t stop.  It just keeps rolling but you can stop with the printed page, chew on it, meditate on it, and so forth and so on and God uses it.  And I’m sure the Lord is going to use this book to touch many lives and the years to come.  I’m thrilled about it and I trust that you will pray with me that God will open people’s eyes and use the printed preaching of his word to speak to the hearts of his people around the world. Are you impressed with my neat stack here on the stage, so much for organization!