In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of presenting our bodies to the Lord and being filled with His fullness. He explains that every crisis in the Christian life is preceded and followed by a process of preparation and fulfillment. The speaker also highlights the responsibility of sharing the Word of God with the unsaved and the need for individuals to act upon what they know. The sermon further discusses the concept of reckoning, comparing it to the commitment made in marriage, where every calculation is based on the fact of being married.

Now, this morning we were dealing with John 14, 15, and 16. There, I see you relax a little. The seven statements by our Lord Jesus concerning the person and work of the Holy Spirit when he should come. And I'd like to have you see them again, just in a moment of review. Not that I shall go through all seven of them, but I would like to have you notice the thirteenth and fourteenth verses of John 16. We pointed out to you that the fifth thing that our Lord Jesus said the Spirit of God would do when he came, would be to guide us into all truth, saying he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak. This, then, is the ministry of the Spirit of God now, to guide us into the truth concerning himself. Our Lord gave the statements, they are here. John was the instrument by whom they came to us, but we realize that the one who will illuminate this truth to our hearts and cause it to become vital living reality is the Spirit of God himself. Now, he did not say that there should not be words or truth given by the Holy Spirit concerning himself, but that he shouldn't speak, as it were, from himself, merely in his own regard. Thus, the Spirit of God always ministers to the exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ, but the Lord Jesus Christ will be exalted as the Christian is filled with the Spirit. Therefore, it is the work of the Spirit of God to reveal to you the relationship which you must bear to him if you are to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, we need to remind ourselves again that the Lord has made it clear to us that the flesh, the energy of the flesh, the activity of the flesh, does not glorify God. In 1 Corinthians 13, I have pointed out to you repeatedly, we have the three areas of the activity that engage most of our time set forth. There, in the first words of that thirteenth chapter, we read, Though I speak with the tongue of men and of angels, and have not love, I am a banging gong and a clanging cymbal. And again, we find that though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and fathom all secret lore, and have not love, it counts for nothing. And still again, though I give my goods to feed the poor, and my body to be burned, and have faith to move mountains, and have not love, I make nothing of it. Though he is not glorified by what we say, or what we know, or by what we do. This that can flow from our own intelligence and our own personality does not have in it the kind of nature that will glorify him. How can something that man, that God has made, glorify the God who made him, if it's produced in his own energy and from his own personality? Now he is to be glorified through us nonetheless, but the source of the power is not from our personality, but from the personality of the Holy Spirit. Thus we find that what I have done in the past for so many years of my life, fourteen of ministry at least, which had its genesis in me, in brain, in training, in muscle effort, in personality, expenditure, though it may have someone else, cannot glorify God, because the source is wrong. It comes out of me, therefore it can't glorify him. What I do, what you do, in what you were, with that which you were before you came to Christ, just cannot glorify the Lord. But we notice that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to glorify Christ. He shall glorify me. Now how will he do that? He will do it by first bringing us to rightly understand what we can't do, then bringing us to understand how God wanted to do his work through us, and then having illumined our minds, he moves upon our hearts to act in faith, then he does the work through us. He does the speaking and the learning and the working, and what he does through us glorifies the Lord. Now this is the proposition. I want you to see it in detail. I think in order for this principle to become clear, how you can be filled with the Holy Spirit, and how this one whom the Lord Jesus said would come and perform these wondrous needed ministries will come to you, you must turn to Romans chapter 6. There are two reasons for asking you to turn. First, there is a primary truth here that we will be looking at, but there is also a principle which is to be applied not only to this basic truth, but to all truths of the Scripture. Notice the first word in the sixth verse. Knowing. And the second, this. Knowing this. This is the first principle. Now go down to the eleventh verse, and there you find another which must follow it in likewise reckon. Now we're not considering at the moment what it is we're to know or that which we're to reckon, as much as the order. If before any truth can become experientially real to you, you must know it. That is, your intelligence must have been able in some measure to have conceived of that which is set forth in the truth. You must first know it. You must know it in its historical setting. You must know it in this case, for we're dealing with the things of the Lord, in its theological setting, before you can by faith appropriate it and experience it. Let us come to the truth that we're involved with here. Before anyone can be born again, before anyone will ever know the joy of sins forgiven, he must know certain things concerning Jesus Christ. First, he must know that there was born in Bethlehem a babe whose name was Emmanuel, God come in the flesh, that this babe was none other than Jehovah Shua, the Lord, our Savior, our salvation, and that the man Jesus Christ was God who had come in this form in order that he might redeem us. Now, we must know that there was this babe, and he became this man, and we must know that he died on the cross in the place of sinners. We must know that God accepted his death for sinners, that he was buried, and that he was raised again from the dead. Now, we must know this before we'll ever know forgiveness of sins. You see, it's by the gospel, and the gospel is the good news that Christ died for our sins according to the Scripture, and that he was buried, and that he was raised again the third day according to the Scriptures. Now, this we know. We know that at a given place in history, a given time in history, the man Christ Jesus died, and was buried, and was raised again. This becomes the foundation truth. Knowing this, therefore, that God the Father accepted the death of God the Son for sinners, what do we do? Knowing this, we likewise reckon that he died for us individually and personally. You come to the cross knowing that at a given point, a given place, something happened, and then knowing this, and only because you know it, and only when you know it, can you reckon. Until you know, you cannot reckon. You cannot reckon that your sins are forgiven until you know that God accepted the death of Jesus Christ in your place, and in your stead, and that his blood was shed for the remission of your sins. But this is the fact, that that day, that history notes, and that song commemorates, and theologians explain, that day, God's law was vindicated and satisfied, and Jesus Christ died the just for the unjust to bring us to God. Now, sinner friend, whether you ever do anything about it or not, the fact is that if you have reasonable intelligence and have paid any measure of attention, you have had at least a first presentation of the fact to you, if it's never come before, which is doubtful to any, that Jesus Christ has already paid the price of your sins. Now, if you go to hell by virtue of your refusal to reckon and submit, you will go with the knowledge added to your guilt, that on a given day, in a given place, in history, your sins were paid for. Now, when you come to Christ, you come, of course, realizing the nature of your sin, and obviously you're going to have some desire to be delivered from the continuance of it, or else you can't come in good faith, and you come, therefore, knowing that he died, and you reckon, you count, you figure upon, you base your calculations for the future upon the fact that Christ died for you. Now, everyone that's ever been saved has had this order in his experience. First, he learned something. First, he knew something. Now, the reason that I feel that so the prospects of a general, a spontaneous move of God in gathering of the lost to himself is remote from our point in time, is because the people don't know. They don't know. Perhaps there's some little knowledge, some superficial knowledge, but that truth whereby they learn not only about the historicity of Christ, but about their own sins, has been pretty well withheld. In even a land such as ours, there's a famine of the hearing of the word of God, and therefore we have a responsibility to the unsaved around us that they should know, that they should know. But when they do know, the individual must therefore act upon what he knows. He must reckon. And when the sinner comes to the cross, taking sides with God against himself, consenting to the justice of God's judgment upon him, accepting the fact that because of his crime of being God in his own life, he deserves the death that God pronounced upon him, and he indicates that he's through with his course, and that he is prepared to receive Jesus Christ as he's presented as Lord and Savior, I say upon these facts he reckons, and this reckoning is faith in action, and the result of faith in action is that he is born again. Now everything in the Christian life must come on identically the same basis. Just as you begun, so you must continue. And the process of the Christian life, and remember it is a process, is a process of having truth progressively revealed to your mind by the Spirit of God, which truth you perceive with your intellect, and in some way, some measure, grasp with your intelligence and embrace with your minds. Then, upon that truth that you have intellectually perceived, you must by faith act. You must reckon. For instance, when the Spirit of God, through the Word of God, speaks to you as a Christian, that there is in your life some relationship with another person, some attitude toward another person or toward yourself or God, some deed that you have committed or a word that you have spoken that is in God's parlance called sin, as soon as you know this, you have another fact that you associate with it, and that is, yes, here I am, I have sinned in this attitude or word as God reveals it, but my purpose was fixed at salvation not to sin, therefore in this sin I have done something I don't want to do, and because I have a new heart, I no longer want to continue in sin. You know this, this is part of the fabric of your knowing, began back there when you were born again, your purpose to please God. Now you have been drawn by your appetites or your interests or something else into a state where you have sinned against the Lord. Now you know that, that's one fact. Second fact is, you know that the only grounds of cleansing is the blood of Christ. You know that Christ died for sinners, shed his blood. You know that his word is, if you judge yourself you will not be judged, but if you don't judge yourself you will be chastened, that you shouldn't be condemned to the world. And you know, this is a fact now, part of the fabric of your knowing, that if you confess your sin, he is faithful and just to forgive your sin. Now you know all of this, but you are not yet forgiven because you know it. What happens? You must reckon. You must reckon. And what is your reckoning? Your reckoning is breaking before the Lord. Your reckoning is confession to the person that may be involved. Your reckoning is a humble coming to the Lord in naming your sin and asking for his cleansing blood to wash it away. This is your reckoning. There is the process. At any time in your Christian pilgrimage when you grieve God, you know, but you must reckon. It's always this way. Always is this procedure followed. It's like the right foot and the left. You walk with both. You know and you reckon. You know and you reckon. It must follow in this fashion. Now, the word reckon may be a little difficult. It's not used too frequently. It's an accounting term. It's a figure wherein you account something to be in a certain situation or relationship. For instance, if you were to have five dollars in your pocket this evening and you were figuring up your accounts, you know you have five dollars. Therefore, when you come and you know you can't put down on your account book seven dollars, you see, you can only reckon what you know you have. That's the way it has to be. And therefore, you must be acquainted with the truth of God. It isn't reckoning. It's just fooling yourself if you keep a fraudulent set of spiritual books. Just as much as you endanger, jeopardize your happiness, if you keep a fraudulent set of financial books, when the income tax people come around, they're going to be able to test whether or not you have actually been honest with yourself or not. Therefore, if you have five dollars in your pocket and you need seven, you change nothing by writing down seven. You can only reckon on what you know. You can only account what's there. And you can account, dear sinner friend, that your sins have been washed in the blood of Jesus Christ and there's forgiveness with him when you come, because God's account book has stated it clearly, and you know the facts that Christ died for sinners. And if you are a sinner and you come into the right attitude and way that he's prescribed, then you can reckon upon what God has deposited, you see. It's there when you come as a Christian. Now there's no hope of forgiveness if the attitude that is evil continues. For instance, you say, now Lord, forgive me for saying that to her, but your attitude is still one of belligerence with an intention to hurt. There's no possibility of forgiveness. You see, God forgives the contrite and the broken heart. The broken and the contrite heart he'll not despise, but he will despise the person that would mock him. The only thing that he has put on deposit for his child is forgiveness for the one who comes in contrition and in brokenness. And therefore, if you are a child of God and you have come to him with that which has grieved him, you know that there is forgiveness and cleansing for you as a Christian when you break in humility before him. But there isn't any for that person that would come with an intention to continue in his misdemeanor. No provision is made for such. It's the broken heart, the contrite heart, that he will not despise. Now let us come to this truth, and ultimately out here in just a few moments we're coming to the truth of the fullness of the Spirit of God. But I'm beginning in the progress of the Christian life with meeting Christ at the cross and then dealing with that sin which occurs. Now, my dear, if you have not been born again, you can't be filled with the Spirit. Impossible. Because this is for the children of God. And if you're a child of God, there's no possibility of your being filled with the Spirit while there's unconfessed, unforgiven sin in your life. My heart is rather grieved when I hear people describing confession of sin in terms of a group meeting as we've had in some of our American colleges and elsewhere as the ultimate in God's purpose in revival. In fact, I'm rather perturbed about the word revival because I find that it has such a myriad of definitions. I think I've accumulated 96 definitions for the word revival. I rather feel now that I must try and discipline myself to use the word the normal Christian life because I think that it is a far more explicit and expressive term than the word revival. It's actually what we're moving toward. But we've had situations when there's been a time, not here but elsewhere, where people have arisen one after another and have come in confession. There have been long extended periods of confession. Now, as good as this may be, if it's the end, it hasn't met any lasting purpose. I've had some of the students on our American campuses that have experienced these times. Some of them have gone on to meet God, but they said that many of those that in great contrition came forward and explained in detail their sin were committing the same thing just a matter of days, even weeks later. And that they hadn't actually had anything other than just a brief sort of spiritual bath and that they'd gone right back into the same dusty place and were soon soiled again. Now, this is not the ultimate. This isn't God's purpose. This is God's provision for you, child of God. This is his provision for you when there does come into your life that which grieves God, that when in brokenness and confession you come to him, reckoning upon the sufficiency of Christ's death, you will be cleansed and forgiven. But, but, now this is the important thing. There will be no more spiritual progress for you, child of God, unless you do break before the Lord. Now, I talked with a man yesterday who heard me say yesterday morning with the students up at Packard Mance at Stoughton that there is no spiritual progress in the life that has unconfessed, unforgiven sin in it. That at that point where you knowingly sin and know you've sinned, at that point is where all light, all progress in your Christian development stops until the sin is dealt with. Now, I'm firmly convinced of this. And he looked at me as we were together and he said, You know, I'm sure you're right. Twenty years ago, I sinned against the Lord. It wasn't a great sin, but I've known it, I've put it away, I've tried to forget about it. But, said he, two weeks ago, as I was hungry for God and waiting before him for his anointing for my new ministry, the Spirit of God brought that thing up. And I have had to write a letter within the last two weeks to rectify something of twenty years standing, and I do not feel that I have made any spiritual progress in these twenty years. He had been marking time in the same place. Now, the reason that I entreat you to submit to the Word as the mirror and entreat you to deal with every abscess that may have developed in your heart and deal with every sin that may be covered and all estrangement and broken fellowship that may be there, is that I know, I am personally convinced, there can be no spiritual progress as long as there's unconfessed sin in the life. Now, I believe that confession and brokenness, dealing with the Lord, getting all of the past out and under the plug, is not the end, but it is an indispensable means to the end. Do you see the significance of it? Now, you know there's cleansing for you. You know it, but you must reckon upon it, act upon it in faith before you will know cleansing. This man knew for all these twenty years that if he would confess his sin in humility and contrition, he would be forgiven by the Lord and by the individual that was involved back in his past. But he didn't reckon on it until two weeks ago. You see, the reckoning was a step of obedience. You only believe when you obey, and conversely, you only obey when you believe. And the two are so closely joined together that you can never separate them. You say, well, I believe. Well, my friend, you only believe when you obey. You do not indeed believe unless you obey. You say, well, I believe in what you're saying, but have you broken? Have you dealt with that? Have you brought your life to? You say, well, I don't know. Ah, but has there been progress? Have you had progress? Have you moved on in what you've heard? If you haven't been moving, then there is reason to be suspicious that there might be something amiss. And the wise thing to do is to come to the Lord saying, Lord, search my heart by thy word, by thy spirit, and deal with that which is there. Now let us move on. You have, or you will, I trust, if you haven't, and some of you have, actually, I'm sure, from what I know of your life and testimony, done this. Now we've come to another truth that's engaged us for a great time, and that is our identification with Christ, our union with Christ. I mentioned it this morning, and rarely does the Lord's day go that it doesn't figure somewhere in the message, because we believe that it is part of our great deliverance purchased for us in Christ. That God, in thy Calvary, not only purposed to save you from the penalty of what you have done, but to save you from yourself. One of the illustrations that I like so, from the book, The Normal Christian Life, and if you don't have it, please get it, the book written by Watchman Nee of China, this little book that's been the means of such tremendous blessing to countless American Christians. How many of you do have it? I'd love to see. Well, how many of you read it? Thank you, that's fine. Now the rest of you get it. The Normal Christian Life, by Watchman Nee, and not only get it, but read it. Read it and meditate upon it. But one of the things which I have felt from the reading of this book, incidentally, I had the embryo, a developed embryo, for a book entitled The Normal Christian Life about three years before this came out, so I don't know if mine will ever be written. His is so wonderful that I don't think anything else needs to be said for a time at least on the subject. It was just a delightful thing and so refreshing, and I do trust that you will secure it. But, and I'm almost afraid that I've forgotten a particular point that I started to make when I began referring to the book, but even so, if you read it, you'll have the point come back to you again. Let us move on. Here we have this truth that we are crucified with Christ, that the Lord Jesus Christ not only died for us, in the sense in which he was there bearing our penalty, bearing our sin, he died that he might not only save us from the consequences of what we have done, but save us from what we were. The illustration from Watchman Nee's book was this. Imagine someone that is determined to rid his country of the scourge and curse of alcohol. And so the effect that he has is this, of getting laws passed and instrumentalities arranged to break every bottle of whiskey and beer and wine in the country. Every single barrel is smashed and bottles broken and containers emptied. But at the same time that he's dealt with the bottles and the barrels, he's let the breweries go on producing at full speed ahead. Now, wouldn't it seem to you that if anyone were seriously trying to rid the country of the curse of alcohol, that he would perhaps begin with the breweries and stop the source of supply? Isn't it unthinkable that God, who's infinitely wiser than the wisest of men, dealing with this awful scourge of sin, would be content to deal simply with the penalty of what we have done and let us go on unaffected, still producing it by the case and by the barrel? You see, this just isn't wise. And God is infinite wisdom. And therefore in his provision, he not only arranged to deal with the effects of what you have done, but he also made a provision to deal with you. He wanted to stop the source of supply. And he wanted to cut it off. And so he not only bore in his body the penalty of what you have done, but he took you there as the source of supply. It was in your spirit that was brewed the selfishness and sin that cursed you and hurt others. And so in his great love, he arranged to make the possible expiation for your sin, covering for your sin, but he also made it possible to deal with the you that was causing all the trouble. Now a lot of people do not know there's cleansing and they're plunged into despair. And it's a message of deliverance to tell them that if they will confess their sin, God is faithful and just to forgive their sin and cleanse them from all unrighteousness. But I am sure there are a great many other Christians that are in despair because they say, yes, I know there's cleansing, but I don't want to go on grieving God. I don't want to go on with this ugly disposition, this sarcastic tongue, this bitter mind, this lascivious imagination. I don't want to go on daily grieving God. I want victory over myself. Well, that desire that you feel was given to you by the Lord. That's deep calling unto deep. I was told the other day that when cattle in the field are in areas that do not have sufficient phosphorus, that they will eat anything, anything that's there in the hopes of securing it. They'll take old rotten stumps. They'll eat the bark off of trees. They'll eat everything that a well-nourished cow would never think of eating simply because there's a need within them that's calling out for something and they're going to try and get it. I remember reading about a baby, two years old, that was eating rubber, rubber racers, rubber off of the handlebars of the brother's bike, just rubber everywhere, any place. And they took the baby under clinical care and discovered that he had a deep sulfur deficiency in his body, a mineral deficiency. And when they gave him proper treatment, the thing stopped. Now, I don't know where you've been going or what you've been doing, but I know that many of you have cried out over and over again saying, Oh, Lord, help me live the Christian life. Help me have victory over my temper. Help me have victory over this. And God hasn't done it. Why? Wasn't his purpose to help you have victory over your temper? Wasn't his purpose? You say, Lord, if you'll just give me strength not to say these unkind things. No, God can't answer that prayer. That's not his plan. He didn't intend to give you strength to help so you wouldn't say unkind things. He intended you to see that all that's in you is unkindness. That's what you are. You're an unkind person. You're an unloving person. Oh, I know we usually try to put a veneer over us. The unkinder we are in heart, often the sweeter we are outwardly. But it doesn't take long for the peel to, doesn't cover the banana, you know. It just won't stretch far enough. And sooner or later, they'll find what's underneath. They'll discover it. And then we say, Now, Lord, I prayed for six years that you'd give me victory over this temper and I still haven't had victory. No, of course you haven't. Because it wasn't God's purpose to give you strength so that you wouldn't say those unkind things. His purpose was for you to discover that you were unkind. By nature you're unkind. And dishonest and lascivious. You just name it. You get a good picture of yourself when you read the scripture. There you are. And he wanted you to see it. You see, he saw it. And he has a plan. He dealt with you. He took you outside of the city of Jerusalem and there on that day he nailed you to a cross and slew you. Now, it doesn't make any difference whether you're prepared to act upon it or not. If you're a child of God, you have already died. You see, this is the fact. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Christ. Some people are waiting to die. They're hoping to die. They're praying to die. They're saying, Lord, I'm not dead yet. But oh, my dear friend, the fact is you have died. This is the fact. This is the fact. When Christ died for you, you died with him. You say, well, I don't feel dead. Well, that isn't the point. But there's nothing in the Scripture to indicate that you will feel dead. Well, I don't have any witness that I'm dead. No, and there's nothing in the Scripture to indicate you'll ever have a witness that you're dead. This is a fact. This is a historical fact that is just as true as the fact that Christ died for you. Now, if you doubt that you died with Christ, you have every reason to doubt that Christ died for you because they're tied together. They're tied together. They're sides of the same coin. You can't split them and have one or the other. When Jesus Christ died for you in the mind of God, in the will of God, in the plan of God, in the purpose of God, you die. You are as dead as you can ever be in the will of God because you died. Now, this is the fact. Just as Christ died for the sinner and there's no other death, so you died with Christ and there's no other death. You died. This is history. This is fact. You say, well, I don't feel at all dead. If you knew that temper, if you knew the way I get after my husband, if you knew the way I take after the people that cross me, you'd know. Well, now I'm not talking about that at all. I know that Jesus Christ died for me for years before I had ever reckoned upon it. But his death had been just as much for me before I had received him in faith as it was at the time I received him in faith. And when I received him in faith, he made a transforming reality in my life as he did in yours. Now, the fact is that when Christ died, you died knowing this. Knowing this. You must see it. You must understand it. That this is history. That you are as in the mind and will of God as dead as you will ever be. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Christ. Now, what do you do? How does it become yours? Just the same way that you were regenerated so you enter into the victory of your identification with Christ. That's why you read in the 11th verse, likewise, reckon yourself to be dead. God put to your account the fact that you died. This is a historical reality. This is fixed and settled in the economy of God. This is a fact. It's on deposit for you. You died. Now you reckon on it. Now, what is this going to involve? Well, it's going to have somewhat the same effect as marriage does. There comes a point when a young man and young woman stand before a congregation or a company of people and pledge their love and declare that they shall regard one another as wife and as husband. And from that day on, if they live honorably toward each other, they reckon upon it. They may not feel particularly married. They may not have any particular sensations about marriage. They may be separated as many have been for extended periods of time. But every calculation that they make is based upon the fact that they're married. Do you understand? If people only were honorably behaved toward one another when they felt married, I'm sure that you'd discover a great deal of deviation. For there are many times that they simply feel weary and fatigued. Dishes, diapers, dusting. Why, if that is any great, exciting, exhilarating thing, well, they don't feel particularly married at the time. They just feel tired, that's all. But they still reckon upon it. They base their calculations upon it. They base their calculations upon it, that they're married. And so it is that when you come to this realization, knowing this, that when Christ died, you died. You base your calculations upon the fact that you are dead. Now what happens if doing this, you don't have a release in your life? There isn't victory. There's only one thing that's wrong. That is that somehow you have ceased your reckoning properly. Now this reckoning isn't something that you have to do as a sort of a mental discipline. I've had people tell me, you know, well, I've reckoned and reckoned and reckoned and reckoned and nothing happened. Yes, but you see, the trouble is that they reckon before they knew. They put the cart before the horse. You must first know that when Christ died, you died, before your reckoning is effective. You see, sometimes people try to reckon hoping that when they do, they will know. They will be sure of it because of the fact that something's happened in them. You know, if people could feel saved before they believed we'd find multitudes of sinners coming to Christ, they want to feel that they're saved before they trust him. And if people could just feel dead and feel victory before they reckon, before they know, oh, there'd be so many walking in victory, but it isn't that way. You know it. God's word says it. God's contract declares it. God's truth sets it forth. Here it is. When Christ died, you died. This is just as much a fact as that he died. Now knowing this, knowing this, you reckon. On this basis, the second thing, the next step happens. Not until then can you do that which is involved. For you read in Romans 12, 1, present your body a living sacrifice. You know that he made you. You know that he bought you with his blood. And you know from his word that he asked you to present your body. And you know that when you do present it, he will take it. This is the knowing aspect of it. This is the fact that's there. This is the contract that you have. This is what God has said. It's written. It's framed. It's signed. It's sealed. Present your body a living sacrifice. But you see, you're not free to do that until you know that you're crucified with Christ and have based your calculations upon the fact of this death. You've begun to reckon upon it. For until that time that death has done its work, your body is very much the instrument of your own will. You use your lips to say what you want to say and your brain to think what you want to think, and then after you've done it you say, oh Lord, forgive me for saying and thinking. But it's very much the tool of your own whim and your own fancy. Now you're not in a position to present it. You're not in a position to present it until you're prepared to take the attitude that he intended you to take towards yourself, knowing this, that you're crucified, and then to base your future calculations upon it and substantiate it, or fill it in, as it were, by your thinking. For instance, you say, well I want to give you a new car. It's a lovely suggestion. I want to give you a new car, and we'll bring it around here, and then you say, well get in now, and you're still behind the wheel. And I'm presenting this to you, and then you drive off. Impossible. The only way you can do it is simply to get out, turn the keys and the card over, and say, here, there it is. And you say, well Lord, I want to present my body. But you're still behind the wheel. You still have plans. You still have ambitions. You still have purpose. You still have a schedule to fill and activities to keep. Lord, I'm presenting my body to you. But you still have your own mind and your own attitude. How can you do that? How can he move in while you still have firm grip on the wheel? Therefore, it's imperative that you should know that you're crucified, and then reckoning upon it, you say, well there's no need for me to have this vehicle of my body and personality any longer. Lord, I'm presenting it to you. Presenting it to you. Knowing, knowing that you are to present it brings you to the place where you must reckon. This is an act of your faith. This is substantiating the truth. This is filling it in. This is causing it to become operative. And so, you are brought to that place where this must become your attitude. I don't need my body for my purpose, for I haven't any purpose. I don't need my brain to think my thoughts, for there's no thoughts that I'm really interested in thinking any longer. And I don't need my lips to speak because they're just nothing I care about saying anymore. Lord Jesus, I have found that my natural habitat, the place you want me is here, crucified with you, and I'm just going to abide there. Now here I'm presenting to you my brain, my eyes, my ears, my whole personality, my whole body. See, you know you should, then you reckon upon it. You just do it. It's a quitclaim deed, it's a transaction. You have substantiated it now by presenting it to him. Then there's something else. And this is the point to which we come. And you only come to this point by this process. Now what I've said can take five minutes or take five years, but there has to come the place where you have these two elements operating, knowing and reckoning in respect to all of this that we've considered. Now you come to the person of the Holy Spirit. Here is God, the third person of the Trinity, who by the passion of Christ was allowed or permitted to come into every believer and make his abode there and empower that believer's life. You are a believer. The promise is clear. Peter said it. Repent and be baptized that you may receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, for the promise is to you, to your children, to them that are far off, to as many as the Lord our God shall call. And again, if you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall the Heavenly Father give the Holy Ghost to them that ask him? Everywhere in the Scripture it's clear that the fact is that by virtue of his being crucified and buried and raised and then ascended into heaven, it was now possible for the Spirit of God to completely possess and fill the believer's life. These seven things of which we've spoken was that which was prophesied and promised of the Holy Spirit. You are in desperate need of his ministry. But here you are, perhaps you've known these truths for many years, but you'll say in all honesty, I know I've been born of the Spirit. I have the witness of the Spirit to his regenerating power in my life. I know I'm a child of God. In that sense, I'm indwelt by him. But I have never been filled with the Spirit. And yet you know the Scripture teaches the fullness of the Spirit. You know it's on the basis of the ascension of Christ that he was poured forth and released to fill believers. You know you're a believer. You know you need to be filled with the Spirit. You have the commandment, be filled with the Spirit. And yet according to your own testimony, many have not been filled with the Spirit. Now why? Well, we come right back to our same proposition. First, it's knowing. Knowing. Knowing. Knowing what? Knowing that he has made it possible and indicated it's his purpose. He's provided everything that's necessary. Well, why haven't I been filled with the Spirit, is the question. And it rises right out of this. Have you first been born again? If you have, have you broken before him? Have you reckoned yourself on the basis of the fact that you did die if you reckoned yourself dead? Have you? Have you presented your body? Now we can't skip those and detour around them, and many have tried to do that. There's just no way. We must go with the Lord step by step. Everything in the Christian life that ever issues in a crisis is preceded by a process and followed by a process. The crisis is here. There's a process of preparation and a process of fulfillment. Always this is the case. Now, knowing what? Knowing that it is the desire of the Lord Jesus that you be filled with his fullness. Knowing that he's praying that he may fill you, that he may possess every room of your life. What are you to do? First, you understand the Scripture. You see it. You must see it. That it is that when you came to Jesus Christ, you took Christ. You took him as Lord and as Savior. And in taking Christ, unknown to you, certainly not in response to your faith, the Holy Spirit regenerated you. But you did not have your faith directed toward the Holy Spirit. Your faith was directed toward Christ as Lord and Savior. And you took him. This word receive, unto as many as have received him, is an active verb. And we use it in a passive sense. Have you received the Holy... I received the Holy Spirit when I was saved. Well, now, if you're using that in a passive sense, it's true. But the Scripture uses it in an active sense. The Scripture uses it in the sense of a commandment. Take. Receive the Lord Jesus Christ. Take him to be Lord. Take him to be Savior. But by the same token, the night of the resurrection, our Lord Jesus came to the disciples and he said, take the Holy Spirit. Now he's issuing a commandment in respect to the Spirit of God. He is to be taken. He is to be taken just as the Lord Jesus was taken. Now you took Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior on the basis of scriptural facts. You took him as Savior on the basis of the fact that he died and was buried and raised from the dead. You take the Holy Spirit on the basis of this fact, that Jesus Christ ascended into heaven and by his glorification, the Spirit of God was released to fill believers, and that now you are acting upon the fact and taking him to be the Lord of your life, to fill you, to possess you, to control you, to live in you and through you his own life. You take. You take. You take him. Now we're not talking about geographical concepts here because they're erroneous. They aren't helpful. We're talking about attitude. We're talking about what you must do in respect to the Spirit of God. Now then the tendency is to say, well, I don't feel that I'm filled with the Spirit. I don't feel. I don't feel that I am, I haven't had what some people talk about and others write about. But wait a minute. Did you base your salvation on that? Didn't you know something to be a fact and then reckon upon it? And on the basis of your reckoning, he made it real? So in respect to the Holy Spirit, you know something. Knowing this, knowing this, that the Spirit of God was given by the risen head of the church for every member of his body, knowing that it is his purpose to fill every believer, knowing that I am a believer, and then on the basis of your having met these preliminary steps of which we've spoken, knowing this, therefore, I reckon, I take, I take, I take the Spirit of God as the person of the Godhead that's going to make real in my heart the presence of Jesus Christ to be my wisdom, to be my patience, my power, to be everything I need, I take him. Now what happens? You reckon. You reckon. And on the basis of your reckoning, he makes real in your life his presence. If I say this to you, if you seek an experience in respect to the fullness of Christ, the chances are you will never know reality. If you look for some experience, some ecstatic experience, you will never, I say, quite frankly, far as I'm concerned, never know reality. But if you come knowing and reckoning, then he will, on the basis of this, make real his presence in your life, and in that day you will know that you are in him, and Christ, he is in you. You will know. It's taking. This is your reckoning. You take. What do you mean take? I take him to be my wisdom. I haven't any. I take him to be all that is needed for power to produce fruit in my life, and to sustain and enable me for service. I simply know that in me I have nothing, but in Christ I have everything, and I take the Holy Spirit to be, to reveal in me the presence of Christ, the reality of his presence. And taking him is your reckoning. Then on this fact, this knowing that what you have done, what he has done, then you reckon. You approach each day not on the basis of trying to say, now Lord, this has happened when it hasn't, but on the basis of I know what is mine in Christ. I know what is mine in God's purpose. And herein is the manner in which you will enter into the fullness of Christ. You take, just as you took Christ to be Savior and Lord, you take the Holy Spirit to be life and to be power for fruit and for service. You take him. This is what you know. And then you reckon. You proceed each day on the basis of this wondrous truth. And as you wait before him, as you worship him, he will make real his presence. He will make real his presence to you. But you see, we can't bypass anything. I can't cut you in out here. I can't say, well now we'll bypass brokenness and bypass the cross and bypass the presenting of your body and we'll just bring you in here to the fullness of the Spirit. Impossible. We're going to have to come God's way. We're going to have to come his way. But it doesn't take long, you see. This isn't a long process. Oh, the wondrous joy of seeing some little babe in Christ that gives such wondrous evidence of having been filled with the fullness of God. So sweet, so simple. And just as, well Lord, you died to redeem me. You washed me in your blood. Now I just want you to live your life in me. I can't do it. Now Lord, I'm just taking you to be my power and to live your life in me. And to see God so wondrously, sweetly manifest his presence, possessing that life, even as he said he wished to in that high priestly prayer where he said, Father, I want to live in them the way you lived in me. Here it is. All this is for you to be filled with all of the fullness of God. You say you've made it awfully hard? No. You have to be fair with me. I've been just as fair as I know how to be. And you've come up to that place where the preparation is complete. Then, then, you take, you know, and he, and as you reckon, he reveals himself to you. Oh, dear heart, how I long for you to become a normal Christian. We together, filled with the fullness of God, going on from victory to victory, can be an assembly of believers here that love him. Now, you say, well, what happens then? Are you all finished? No. No, no, no. The longer you walk with him, said Samuel Rutherford, the more you know how nothing in yourself, everything in Christ, and the more you hunger for it. So, here we are. Have you, remember what Paul said to the Ephesian believers when he went to Ephesus? Have you taken, that's what the word received is, have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed? It wasn't that. He said, have you taken the Holy Ghost? Have you taken him since you believed? To be the life of Christ manifest in you, to fill you, to possess you, to control you. Let us pray. Somewhere we found you tonight. You're somewhere in this pilgrimage of truth. Perhaps you've never been born again. We sought to make clear to you at the outset where you are and what you need. Perhaps you're a child of God and there's been no progress for months or weeks or years because of unconfessed sin. Oh, break before him, dear one. Perhaps you're here and you've been trying to reckon yourself dead, but you haven't realized that you died. You've been wanting to feel dead, have some witness to it, and you haven't. Oh, won't you see that the order is that this is a fact, that you died. It's already finished. Reckon upon it. Won't you see that it's a fact that he's already given the Holy Spirit?