In this sermon, the speaker reflects on the disciples' experience of living with Jesus for 40 days after his resurrection. The disciples were filled with wonder and confusion, not fully understanding the victory of the cross. God chose simple and uneducated men to be his disciples, as their faith could not be reduced to mere doctrine or teaching. The disciples' lives were transformed when they looked into the face of Jesus and saw the matchless Son of God. They were changed, delivered, and forgiven by simply looking at him. The speaker also ponders what the disciples must have been thinking during those 40 days and what would happen next.

I have a particular word that I want to lay in our midst tonight. It's a word that is in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 17. You don't need to turn to it. It is, he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. And in that phrase there are riches and depths contained we can only guess at. But he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. And if you turn now to Acts chapter 2 and the day of Pentecost, this conference is about first principles. And when we talk about first principles I suppose that inevitably we must go to the days of the cross, the resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And if you turn to Acts chapter 2 I read a couple of verses here from Peter on the day of Pentecost. We won't read the whole sermon that he gave so called, but we'll just read a couple of verses. We'll read verse 23. Jesus, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain, whom God has raised up having loosed the pains of death because it was not possible that he should be holden of it. And then verse 36, Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom you have crucified, both Lord and Christ. And then verse 38, the proclamation of the gospel. The first time it was proclaimed in this form, repent, verse 38, repent, be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. And so we have those simple words of Peter on the day of Pentecost. Great words. And what makes them remarkable is that Peter was talking about something that no man had ever spoken about before and about which he'd never heard anybody speak. He'd heard the scriptures read of the Old Testament, he'd heard of the types, the figures, but this was the first time that a man stood and proclaimed what had happened on Calvary. And if you study the Gospels and the Acts and you compare the two together, one of the Bible studies that I love to make is the comparison or to compare what's changed in those apostles from the time of the Gospels to the time of Acts. It is perhaps the most important study we can ever make to think what changed in those men on that day of Pentecost and here we have the great day when this man changed. He was the forerunner, if you like, in that way of many who would be changed in the like manner and he proclaimed what had happened to him. And so he declared what happened on that day when in verse 2 it says, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave the mutterance. Peter sat down in his chair and was baptised with the Holy Spirit. He simply sat and continued speaking in tongues, languages that were understood. Something happening deep in his heart, something happening in his conscious being, something that he would later try and express, try and describe. Later on he said, when he described it he said, he cleansed, he purified our hearts by faith. That's what he described later on as he described the day of Pentecost. Our hearts were purified by faith. And here on the day of Pentecost the power of God went through Peter. The power of God went through his life. Something so powerful, so mighty, it was not information that was imparted to him, not an explanation, not a reason or a Bible study was given to him. What was given to him was power in his very spirit. He was baptised with the Holy Spirit and he entered into a realm of power. He entered into a realm of, where he could only describe what he'd come into through words of glory and of power that were imparting to him moral powers, powers into his spirit, into his moral nature. He'd become a new man. He was the first in that line, if you look in the comparison, he was the first man in whom the Spirit of God dwelt in this form since the Spirit of God left the human race when it left Adam. When the Spirit of God departed from Adam and man fell into sin, this was the reversal of it. It was the most dramatic, most wonderful day in the history of the world. It changed the history of the world. And so, when I ask myself what changed in them between the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, there are many things you can look at. You can look at the way they dealt with each other. You can look at the way they spoke to each other as disciples. You can look at various things. But there's one very key thing in which they changed. And it's a very simple thing, but it's very fundamental. It's revealed at different points. You can read it in Luke's Gospel, chapter 18. And this is the thing I want to major on, this thing that changed in them. It's in Luke's Gospel, chapter 18, verse 31, Jesus took unto Him the twelve and said to them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished. For He shall be delivered to the Gentiles. He shall be mocked. He shall be spitefully entreated and spitted on. They shall scourge Him and put Him to death. And the third day He shall rise again. And so He told them the very simple facts accompanied with the knowledge that all things written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished. And verse 34, it tells us this, They understood none of these things. And this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken. If you turn over again Matthew, chapter 16, a famous event. When here, verse 21, From that time forth began Jesus to show to His disciples how that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised again the third day. Peter took Him and began to rebuke Him saying, Be it far from Thee, Lord, this shall not be to Thee. But Jesus turned and said to Him, Get Thee behind Me, Satan, for Thou art an offence to Me, for Thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of man. And then said Jesus to His disciples, If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me. And so the simple fact here that changed in their lives was that it was in their understanding of the cross. That was the thing that is perhaps the most fundamental thing, that their understanding of the cross changed. Before the day of Pentecost, they didn't understand the cross at all. Even though it was explained from the lips of Jesus in some small measure. He just said a few words about the cross and their reaction was, it must not happen. He would not have spoken of the cross negatively. He spoke positively about the cross even here concerning the resurrection. He shall rise the third day. Peter, completely missing the resurrection said, No, you mustn't. I don't know whether he meant don't rise the third day. But no, he only heard the negative. And as you look through the Gospels, you can find many other things in which their lives were empty, their lives were lacking, all kinds of things. But this fundamental thing that they could not grasp was simply that they could not understand why Jesus should die. And then we can turn to, we don't need to turn to it, but you can turn to the events surrounding the cross. And then you come to this strange fact that none of the apostles except John, only John was a witness to the crucifixion. None of the other apostles, that's eleven of them or ten of them particularly, were not witnesses of the crucifixion of Jesus. They were not witnesses. So, what they wrote or what they spoke was what they heard from the women, from others, from John. But they were not witnesses of the cross itself. They were hiding. One of the strange things about this is that while they were hiding, they were doubtless deep in grief and sorrow about the cross. Deep in grief, not just about the death of Jesus, but about their utter failure to at all keep up with Him in any sense or way. They felt that this was the climax of their failure. They could not see beyond it. They saw no hope beyond it. They saw darkness and gloom, the end of everything. And they locked themselves up in misery. And when they fled from Jesus, when Peter denied Him, and there was his failure staring Him in the face, when all this happened and they fled to their room and the sky grew dark and there was darkness over the face of the earth, they knew what was happening. Maybe they followed it asking people what was happening now or various things. Maybe they heard the reports of what Jesus had said. Maybe they heard quickly. Maybe they heard later. But one thing is clear that at no point during the whole process of the crucifixion did they ever feel in their spirits that Calvary was a victory. They felt it was a disaster. Prior to the day of Pentecost, their whole understanding of the cross was a failure, an end. It was their failure. It was the end of their hopes. It was a disappointment. And then on the day of resurrection when Jesus rose from the dead and this tremendous miracle, this earthquake took place even literally. The graves were opened and the bodies of the saints came out of the graves whatever that means and we can only guess at it. Whatever happened on the day was so mighty, so powerful. And yet in their spirits they never felt anything. They didn't feel an earthquake in their spirits. They didn't feel a victory in their spirits. They felt the tremendous gloom that was over them. They continued to feel it. It was there all the time. And then when the women came from the grave to say, we've been to the grave of Jesus and we've seen the tomb is empty and there were angels and they reported to the apostles the wonder of the resurrection just with a few words. The apostles remained in their darkened state and didn't understand it a bit. Prior to the day of Pentecost, there was no understanding of the victory of the cross. There were other witnesses of the cross. Some of those who were standing by the cross had a tremendous sense of someone wonderful who had died there. I love to think of Simon of Cyrene and wonder when he was converted. I guess and believe that Simon of Cyrene was converted on that day when he followed Jesus Christ up that road. When he came out of the countryside, it says, they happened to meet. He happened to be walking past and looking or something and then the soldier, the centurion perhaps, pointed to him and said, you, come and carry the cross. And whether he resisted or what happened, he accepted and followed Jesus up that hill to Calvary. And as he followed up, I guess and we can only guess what happened. Something in him was changing. Something in his spirit was changing as he followed Jesus Christ. As he heard him say things, certain things he said, spoke to the women who were weeping. Later on when he was crucified, things that he said and as he spoke and as this man followed and watched, at some point, I just guess it, I don't know, but I believe it was that day that Simon of Cyrene yielded his heart. And he looked at Jesus and he realized he was in the presence of someone and something that was greater than he had ever seen or heard before. The Bible tells us his sons were Christians in the New Testament church. And I believe he went home that day and he must have looked different when he got home. And his sons must have said, well, that's what's happened, Dad. Where have you been? And I think he would have told them about what had happened on that hill, Calvary's hill, as he'd seen Jesus Christ crucified and died. And I guess he said to them, I've seen the most wonderful sight and the most awful sight a man can ever see. I've seen the most wonderful man you can ever imagine. I've seen something so glorious, so powerful in a human being, so mighty. Whether he said it was God, I don't know. But one person who did say it was God was the centurion. And the centurion as a witness of the cross is one of the most remarkable witnesses because he was a hardened man. And he was the one who conducted the whole thing, directed Jesus out of the city and walked up that hill with him. He was the one who called Simon and Cyrene. He was the one who observed every step of the way. He was the one who ordered the soldiers under him to crucify Jesus. He was the one who supervised the actual placing of Jesus on that cross, the actual nailing of Jesus to the cross. He was the one. And at some point, we don't know again at what point it happened, but as he observed, I think that man must have become very quiet in his spirit. Realized he was in, as he observed, he had never seen anyone in this form, this shape. You must remember one thing, that many people in the New Testament were converted, not by the preaching of Jesus, but by the sight of Jesus. People saw him and yielded to him. The woman in Luke 7, the woman who anointed his feet, we don't read that she ever heard him, but something she saw in him. The gathering demoniac only saw him from afar off. Matthew, Levi, when he was sitting at the receipt of custom and Jesus came to him and spoke to him those simple words, follow me. All he had was two words and the sight of the Son of God. And when they looked into the face of Jesus and they saw the matchless Son of God, the loveliness of Christ. And as they looked and they looked into his face and they looked directly into him. They didn't look aside to him or askance. They looked at him. They were changed. They were delivered. They were released. They were forgiven. They knew that they were reconciled with God by looking at the face of Jesus Christ. And when Matthew said to, when Matthew heard the words follow me, those two words were looking at the face of Jesus. He heard those two words and something he saw in Jesus Christ was the sum total of every ambition in his heart he ever wanted to be. This was it. And when Jesus said follow me, something in him examined everything he was doing. Everything he was engaged in. Everything that was wrong about his life. All the lies surrounding him. All the cheating and the money and the worldly ambitions. And how long he'd been in them we don't know. But there he was sitting there with his life in front of him weighing on him and he saw the Son of God. And he heard the words follow me. And he threw everything aside and rose up and followed him. The wonder of the power of Jesus Christ to those who will look at him. You know that the whole center of salvation is that we shall only lift our eyes and see the Son of God. And the wondrous thing is that the Son of God is made manifest now. And to those who have received salvation he is not only available, he is constantly presenting himself to their hearts vision as the means of supporting their spiritual life. As the means of keeping our lives in the love of God. We look at Jesus the power of the Son of God. And when that centurion watched Jesus for those hours on the cross, he watched him, gazed on him and saw the way he died. At some point he made a declaration. When Jesus had died he breathed his last and then the centurion declared something. I don't know how loud he declared. I don't know with what voice. But I guess he wanted people to know what he thought. He was a changed man there looking at Jesus. And he stood and he said this was a righteous man. And then he said this was the Son of God. I'm in the presence of God. But he didn't understand it. Maybe he thought at that point this was the greatest shame of the whole human race and he would have been right in that way. Maybe he thought it was the worst and darkest day of human history. Would have been right in one way. But like the apostles he wouldn't have seen beyond. He wouldn't have seen within. He only saw this man die and realized he was in the presence of the righteous, sinless holy Son of God. And then things moved on. The body was taken and everything moved on. And the apostles wept. The apostles mourned and wept. And then in the resurrection even when they were told about the resurrection even when they witnessed the resurrection even with all that they saw they still did not grasp all that was all that was contained there in that wonderful death and resurrection. Then in Acts chapter 1 we're getting right further on to close to this day of Pentecost here just a few days before they saw the Son of God being taken up in a cloud and they didn't see Him sit down on the right hand of the majesty on high. They just saw Him go up in a cloud. That's all they saw, the ascension. When they witnessed these things, when they witnessed the wonderful miraculous that was all the time around Jesus I guess their faith knew no limit. They realised this was the presence of the supernatural in a dimension they could only guess at. When you see a man raised from the dead, a man appearing in your midst and talking to you and sharing with you and the wonders of it, all the miracles you've seen and all the powers. And now you're living in the presence for forty days of a man raised from the dead. What happens to your faith? What happens to you? What happened to them as they were living with Jesus for forty days? And He came and He went and He came and He went and I think their minds began to think, well what is next? What is the next thing? They, you know that if you could imagine just being there He was speaking to them by the Holy Ghost giving them infallible proofs of His resurrection. The beginning the hesitation. Some doubted but then over the days the infallible proofs and then the angels and then the attention and there's Jesus going up in the sky. I mean we read these things and I think sometimes we read them rather glibly as if you know it happens every day. I happened to see one of the elders the other day and he was called up into heaven and you know we talk about the ascension of Jesus as if it was just an everyday event. Or the appearing of Jesus to the apostles and you know He disappeared. Oh yes, goodbye, see you later. But it was the, it would have been the the wonder, the the power, the expectation something going through their minds and their hearts of the wonder of what is happening? Where are we? What's taking place? And yet all the time still not understanding the victory of the cross. Still not understanding. Is this simple fact that everything that they were taught God chose these men before the day of Pentecost. Everything that they were taught went somewhere into their conscious minds and it was stored away and they couldn't understand it and they brought it out occasionally and they began to think about things. God chose simple men. Unlearned, uneducated men. Men who would not reduce it all to simple logic or arguments. He chose men who it would be obvious to all that mere doctrine, mere teaching would never bring these men into a new dimension. We have to see it that if we're to enter a new dimension it's not by mere understanding. The great tragedy of the churches through the ages is that very quickly the baptism with the Holy Spirit was explained as our inheritance not experience. And these men would never have accepted an explanation. There are men who when they hear the explanations they say, yes, but you know if the gifts of the Spirit stopped with the apostles, did salvation stop with the apostles? If these things all ended in Acts chapter 1 does that mean I tear out this section of my New Testament and put it aside? But the whole point of Acts chapter 2 is that it was an experience. It wasn't a bible study. It was an experience. And on that day in Acts chapter 2 they were waiting. They didn't understand. They'd seen the cross or they'd been there while the cross was taking place in their rooms high. They hadn't felt any power. They hadn't felt the power of the resurrection. It was just something that had happened and was terrible. And now here they were having seen the risen Jesus, having seen him ascend and still not understanding, still not able to preach, still not able to explain. You read the questions they asked. Are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Are we going to have a great new king? Is this the great time of the restoration of the kingdom? Is this the time? And Jesus said, no, no. I wonder sometimes, you know that you can easily put a cynical view of Jesus. Oh no, no, not that, not now. But Jesus with his patience and his knowledge that soon they would understand. But not now, not that, no. You're thinking in terms and in ways that the natural man understands. No, no, not yet. And then in Acts chapter 2 as they waited for that day of Pentecost, they'd made their mistakes, they'd made their, all that had gone wrong in their denials and all their betrayals, all the things that they'd felt, they'd all been healed by the presence of Jesus. And now they were sitting, waiting with hope. And the day of Pentecost came. They hadn't understood one tiny bit about the cross before that day. And that's fundamental because it means that no man does understand the cross until he receives the Holy Spirit. And then on that day as the Holy Spirit flooded their beings, one key thing there, don't overlook it, they felt the Holy Spirit. They felt the Holy Spirit. When you say they felt the Holy Spirit, when I say that of course people say, oh, what do you mean they felt the Holy Spirit? In their feelings, of course it's a dangerous word to use. They didn't literally feel tingling. They might have been, it doesn't say that. But I'm talking about the feeling that they were capable of and every man is capable of in his spirit. I'm talking about the dimension when a man's spirit is invaded by the Spirit of God. Because the Bible talks about it. We heard it on that first night down there when a man said, I know what I know. And then we heard it again this morning when a man described how he was baptized with the Holy Spirit. And he knew. He knew in himself, he knew it was done. Wonderful things we've heard already in this conference. But there's a simple testimony, a man who says, I knew. How did you know? I can't explain it. Was it an explanation? Was it an argument? Was it something that satisfied you? No. Someone said, a man who has an experience is not at the mercy of a man who has an argument. And it's true that when we have, if we have no experience of God, we are at the mercy of arguments. We can be tripped up. Satan can trip us up. But once we have an experience, once we know in our spirits that Christ died for us, once we know in our spirits that our sins are forgiven, you see every work of the cross is only explained to us by the inner working of the Holy Spirit. Because although all those witnesses, all the apostles, all of them were hiding their heads, there's a reason for it. God did not cause the cross to be explained by the apostles by what they saw, because God made sure they weren't there. And there's another apostle who by no means was there. He wasn't converted at that time. Who knows if he was in Jerusalem at that time? I doubt it. For the apostle Paul was nowhere around it. He was far away in his spirit, darkened, not interested, wherever he was. But these men were not understanding, not entering into the cross. They were far from it. But here on this day, God caused them to hear a witness of the cross who explained to them the cross from a position, from an angle, which only God could give to them, and that witness was the Holy Ghost. Because God's witness of the cross is the Holy Spirit. Because the great witness of the cross is the Spirit of God who explains the cross to us, not now from outward pointing and words, although those things are shown to us because they were real. The cross was not just in spirit. It was in flesh and blood. It happened there on that place. But the great power and victory of it was in the Spirit. And the Holy Spirit was witness to it. He saw what happened. He saw that Jesus Christ was made sin. He saw that Jesus Christ was the sacrifice that was offered to the Father for sin. He saw and witnessed how the Father received the sacrifice for sin. He saw what happened in the hearts of man by what Jesus did on that cross. He saw it. He saw sin's power broken. He saw sicknesses utterly obliterated. He saw the power of self crucified. He saw man's heart freed. He saw. He witnessed. And he didn't witness it in some vague way or some uncertain way. He saw with all the light that God could shine on this event. And there is another witness to the cross. The one who died there. He who was made sin. He who in the darkness of being made sin felt the agony and the pain and the separation. He who was made sin for us on that cross. Though not one human being was looking on him with understanding or with faith. And every person who looked at him was weeping and agonizing. And the women were crying and despairing. And everybody he could see in his spirit that this was the victory that the Father wanted. And he declared overthrowing everything that came on him, overthrowing all the powers of darkness. He was the one who witnessed first of all, to every power and every principality the forgiveness of sins. There from the cross, the glorious Word. It's finished. And he witnessed it and declared it. And when he declared that Word, it is finished as the powers looked on, as angels looked on, as demons looked on, as powers looked on that cross. And Jesus spoke. And Jesus loved. And Jesus overcame. And Jesus vanquished every power of darkness as he did it. There would be a trembling in the hosts of darkness. There would be a fleeing. There'd be a rejoicing in the angels. There'd be a song. There'd be an awe. There'd be a wonder. There'd be all these things. It's a strange fact that there in the Spirit took place this tremendous victory. And baffling as it was, I think the angels would look and think, can't they see it? Look at the human heart. Why are they weeping? They said it later. Why do you weep? What is it? But not one human being sensed the victory. Nobody did. Nobody shouted. Nobody danced. Nobody was beside themselves. Nobody entered into it. Nobody saw it. Even on the day of resurrection. I think that the angels would have leapt in their spirits and rejoiced. And men still mourned and wept. The understanding slow to catch up. Even the very bare facts of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, if deeply received in the human heart, they should cause us to wonder. But I guess the truth is we can't understand them until the Holy Spirit comes and shows them. And then on this day of Pentecost here's Peter wondering what's going to happen. What's going to happen this day? What is it you're going to show? What is it going to happen? And as he's waiting there and the Holy Spirit invades his heart and brings into him on the day of Pentecost the thing that came into Peter by the power of the Holy Spirit. The thing that came into his heart. It was a matter of just a small movement. It was the Holy Spirit had been with him. Jesus said He is with you but He shall be in you. And there in that moment as the Holy Spirit invades that part of His being that was still independent from God. Invaded the part of Him that still was living for Himself no matter how much His good intentions. He couldn't get free from Himself no matter what happened. But there on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit entered into Him and applied to Him the power of the cross of Jesus Christ and Peter entered in to Calvary and became one with God through baptism into the death of Jesus Christ in a moment. He was made one with God. Something changed in Him in His spirit. He must have felt like a great door of darkness closing forever. Light was flooding His being and now He could see. He couldn't explain where He could see it but in Himself He could see that now truly His darkness was finished. Truly He was now in a different world. Now He was in a different realm. Suddenly this man on that day of Pentecost was transported into another world and it's very simple. It was the world of God Himself. It wasn't the world of power from God. It was the world of God. Peter was made one with God. Peter's spirit was united with God. Peter had let his heart go. He longed for Jesus and now in this moment suddenly sin, power was broken and in its place within Him He saw Jesus. He could see Jesus now not from the outside but He could see Jesus from the inside and a staggering understanding came. I wonder how quickly everything was clicking into place. Everything suddenly said, yes it's the victory, I see it. And He could see that all that had happened in the death and resurrection of Jesus and the verses we read in Acts chapter 2 we could read again but just look at this one verse where it says in Acts chapter 2 it says this He saw in verse 36 something that He had probably guessed up at now He knew it with all His spirit. He knew it by unity with the Son of God. He knew it because His life was now swallowed up and lost in the wonderful presence and power of Jesus with whom He was now one. He now said, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom you have crucified both Lord and Christ. And Peter saw in His spirit that now something had happened on the throne of God that had never happened before. It wasn't that Jesus had suddenly become something new in His eternal spirit, no but Jesus the man had been exalted to the highest throne and had been placed on that throne as a man as the Son of Man, the Son of God and had been given all authority and all power and He saw it, He saw the Lordship of Christ through the Holy Spirit. He saw the exaltation. He saw the enthronement. He saw that in this moment, in everything He could see in His spirit, Jesus Christ was reigning over every power, every spirit, every life, over all the multitudes that He could see in His spirit before Him, unborn yet in the future of everything. Jesus Christ was made Lord and Christ and He declared it. He declared it. The wonder of this baptism is that by power, by supernatural power, by reality, by the reality of the Spirit of God, the Spirit of God invades the heart of a man and makes him one with God and that's the baptism with the Holy Spirit. When you, when you go over now a few years and Paul has been saved and Paul has caused a stir here and there and Paul is preaching the gospel to the Gentiles and there's all kinds of questions and now he comes to Jerusalem and Barnabas with him and they meet and there's a meeting arranged and Paul is a bit uncertain. He's been preaching so many things. Paul had been in the deserts of Arabia. He'd been there for quite some time. He'd been waiting on God. Immediately after His conversion, he'd waited on God. As he'd waited on God, he saw things that had happened to him. I guess he could hardly believe them. And now he's come to Jerusalem. He's introduced to the great apostles Peter, James and John and he's ushered in and maybe, I don't know who's most nervous Paul or Peter, James and John. We don't know but we can see this. This meeting is a great meeting in Jerusalem and Paul comes in and they begin to share. And Paul says, I don't know whether, he was a little bit nervous but he said, look, I've been preaching these things, some of these things, I need to check them out with you. He said, I've been preaching them, I've not really heard anybody else say them before. I wonder if you could just listen to me for a moment. Peter would say, yes brother, tell us, what have you been preaching? And he would say something, well, this is what I've been preaching, that I was crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. But it's not I who live. It's Christ who lives in me. And I am dead. And my life is hid with Christ in God. And he would say all these things and Christ is my life. Christ is not my ideal, He's my life, He's in me. And I think when Peter heard these words, he'd say, yes brother, yes brother, yes brother, yes, that's wonderful brother. I've never heard anybody say them either. And I think Peter would have said, brother, they're wonderful. I've never heard anyone say them. And I think Peter would have had tears in his eyes. And he'd say, Peter, Peter Paul, he'd say, what you've said, you've said what I've always known in my spirit. What the spirit has been saying in my heart, that I am crucified with Christ. I've known it. But to put it as boldly and as clearly as you've said it. And they gave to Paul the right hand of fellowship and I guess they said to him, preach it brother, preach it. Preach it with all your heart. We're going to preach it now. We're going to preach your sermon Paul. And the most wonderful truth you'll ever hear is that you were made one with God when Jesus died. The most wonderful experience you'll ever have is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Now I guess that many of you here will say, yes, we agree with that. That's what we stand for. You know that the tragedy would be to stand for it and not to know it. The tragedy would be to agree with it and say, well, I, that's all that I believe, but not to know it. Because it isn't a doctrine. Not primarily. Above all things, before it was ever written in any epistle form or anything like that. Before the apostles could work it all out. It had flooded their hearts and they knew that they were one with God. They knew that their lives were one with Christ. They were one with God. There was such a joy in their hearts. I, I'm, Paul said, if we're beside ourselves it's for God. I can see the apostles so beside themselves they were, they were, didn't know where to put themselves. I've just been to Tanzania and the Congo. And I went with a Cypriot brother, Miltos. Some of you know Miltos. And the Cypriots I'm sure are more warm blooded than the English. And we went to a refugee camp and we were singing and we were dancing and he, this brother Miltos, he was dancing and he was, he couldn't stop himself. He, he, he went down among the people and he danced like, he just was beside himself with a joy. And then he did a very naughty thing. He came and took me. And he, he took me down there too. Anyway, and he did that several times. But you know, this is a man beside himself with joy of salvation. You know, you've just heard the most staggering, most wonderful words a man will ever hear. You've heard them. And I guess one of the tragedies, it may be too familiar to you. You may not realize that this is the, this is the, this is the declaration to you that there is a door of release from the misery of self and darkness into the joy of salvation that you can be beside yourself with joy. You can be so liberated in your being you can not know yourself. You can so throw off the old life. You can throw off the old man. You can so take all the things you've lived under for all your life. Whether you've lived under them for 10 years or 20 years or 30, you can just throw it off because Jesus died. Because the baptism in the Spirit is a declaration to our hearts that Jesus has taken everything we are and has crucified it out of the way and applied it to us, not with nails and a piece of wood, but by the mighty, glorious invasion of our lives by the Spirit of God. Now crucifixion with Christ is a joyful, wonderful experience to be released from self should make any man dance. But if a man only knows it in his head and doesn't know it in his heart, he will not dance. He will not rejoice. He'll live under the domination of the old man. And I guess the tragedy of our generation and maybe several generations is that there is a true baptism in the Holy Spirit which liberates a man to know God in himself, liberates him to know the wonder of the person of Jesus in himself, that he could look in himself and see that Christ is in him. We're going to look at the gifts of the Spirit this week but one of the things I shall say in that study and one of the main things I shall want to emphasize is this that through the death of Jesus and through the baptism with the Spirit there is now a continuation of the incarnation that Christ is being formed in His Church which is His fullness, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all. The Church is not His shame, His weakness it is the fullness of Him that filleth all in all. It is not a moaning weak, dark, hiding group of people. It is a people liberated unto life, unto life in Christ, unto life in His Spirit, unto the victories of the cross. Something in you, whatever it is that makes you resist and hold back and discount. One of the things that you can see is a very simple thing, is that when people looked at Jesus, many looked at Him and looked away, and looked back and looked away, and looked back but very few looked at Him and had the courage and the desire and the joy to look and look until their lives were completely different. But through the death of Jesus, through the resurrection, through the coming of the Holy Spirit there is a window in Heaven opened. There is a light. There is a place to look. There is a you can look not just on the face of Jesus. That's why so few people do see the face of Jesus in that outward. We look on the Spirit of Christ. We look on the inner form of the Son of God. Our eyes are open to see Him in a way that those apostles never saw Him until they were baptized with the Holy Spirit. When Paul came into the baptism in the Spirit he's a declaration to us that there is no difference between the generation that comes after than our generation. We are equal to them to receive the same power, the same glory. It's ours. A door open, a door of power, a door of might invading our spirits to make us one with God. That a man should let go of his own life with whatever struggles, whatever battles, he lets go his own life and releases his life into the hands of Jesus and He's made new. All our time is gone and it's time for us to pray. It's time for us to lift up our eyes and look right into the heart of Jesus. Look right into the cross. Look right into what is declared there from that day of Pentecost. Declared through the Apostles. Something that took place that if we'll look and receive and let go our lives we shall know the power of it. The same power because there's no dilution of this. There's no difference in degree. There is one Holy Spirit. There's one baptism in the Holy Spirit. There's one way forward. There's only one salvation and this is it. There's only one forgiveness of sins and it's witnessed to by the power of the Holy Spirit into our hearts. Well let's receive. Let's pray. Let's turn to the Lord. We're going to pray a very short time. So you pray with all your heart. Don't hesitate. Don't look to the right or the left. Look straight into the heart of Jesus. Look to that cross. Look to the victory of it. Look to the power of it and receive. Receive from God. Union with God. Unity with Christ. He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit. You can be joined. You can be joined right now. Amen. Amen. Praise God. Father.