Holy Spirit No.2 The Outpouring of the Spirit

Let's have a reading together, Luke 11. Well, here is the account of our Lord teaching the disciples how to pray. The opening verses, setting down the Lord's Prayer.

It doesn't complete the Lord's Prayer, not as we now know it, but it gives the first chunk. And then he goes on from verse five. Now, if you've got the NIV, join me and we'll go down as far as verse 12 inclusive.

That's right to the end of the paragraph marking. Okay, let's go. Then he said to them, suppose one of you has a friend and he goes to him at midnight and says, friend lend me three loaves of bread because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me and I have nothing to set before him.

Then the one inside answers, don't bother me. The door is already locked and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.

I tell you though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of a man's persistence, he will get up and give him as much as he needs. So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you for everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds and to him who knocks the door will be opened. Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, we'll give him a snake instead or if he asks for an egg, we'll give him a scorpion.

If you then though you're evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? Well, we'll return to that reading in a moment or two, but only for passing comment. Let me remind you that what has caused me to embark on this particular line of reasoning at the human level at any rate was quite accidental. Just two weeks ago, I felt impressed to bring to your attention the dilemma of Moses as we found him in Exodus 30 or thereabouts confronted with an enormous task to take the children of Israel back to the promised land.

And Moses indicates by prayer that he has a desire for something that seems to be a little bit absurd. He asks, Lord, I want to know you. And we've already made the conclusion that Moses knew God a long time before the experience on Sinai.

He knew him by the burning bush. He had a most remarkable, almost unique encounter of the living God. And that drove me to make at least some tentative conclusion from the Old Testament that is well endorsed by A.W. Tozer in his most famous book, The Pursuit of God.

And that is that having known God once, you are not to be satisfied. It's like knowledge of God, pursuing the knowledge of God, like being in love. It's like marriage.

You may feel that you know all that there is to know about a relationship when you slip the ring on the finger, having presumably got an affirmative answer to the question, will you marry me? But there's an awful amount to discover as the years go by. Some of us say that with great enthusiasm, some with great depression. There's an awful amount to discover.

Well, in one sense, although you can take it in the first way that I made my analogy of marriage there, there's a great deal to discover about the Lord. Though in a very real way, the moment that one is converted, all the blessings of God are at our disposal, it doesn't mean to say that we've inherited or entered into the fullness of our inheritance. Let's just take a few verses of Scripture at random for a moment.

Let's scoot to that unmentionable epistle that John has reckoned is well endorsed used in the tabernacle by the name of Ephesians. I got to it. Ephesians in chapter one verse three tells us something tremendous.

Let's read it together. Ephesians one and verse three, okay? Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Now, that seems to button the whole thing up, doesn't it? The Lord Jesus has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

But can you understand the difference between actual and potential? I mean, you could be potentially well-equipped in terms of your lifestyle. Shall we say, if you inherited Arundel Castle. Now, there you are.

You wake up one day and you realize that fortune has done well for you. You have become the owner of Arundel Castle. But prior to that, you used to live on Shakespeare Road.

And you're only used to a couple of rooms downstairs and they're interlocked because it's a through dining and lounge and a kitchen. And so you go to Arundel Castle, this tremendous mansion, this ancient monument, with presumably, I've never been in it, but presumably masses and masses of rooms. Now, simply because you're a claustrophobic fellow who used to live, as I say, here in Worthing, you only live in the same number of rooms in Arundel Castle as you did in your previous place of residence.

Now, it would be very true for you to say that Arundel Castle is your address. There's nothing wrong about that. It's a perfectly factual statement.

But in as much as you're just cooped up in three or four rooms, you've never really entered into the fullness of your inheritance. In other words, the potential is there. There's nobody who's stopping you because you've got the keys, the whole lot.

They dangle by your waist. And you can enter into any room. You can live at any point that you want to in the castle.

But no, the actual, in your experience, is this, that you're only just sort of taking up residence. You haven't gone fully into all that is yours. Now, it seems to me that that's a very reasonable way to approach Ephesians 1.3. Potentially, everything in Christ, every blessing that the Lord can pour down on his church belongs to her.

But the members of his church could well be like the illustration that I gave you of a new incumbent in Arundel Castle. Much, much more to enter into, much more room to be possessed, but at this moment, a failure to make the potential actual. So what I'm trying to do in bringing this to your attention along with other scriptures, without trying to give you any dogmatic theology with regard to the experience of the Holy Spirit, is at least to encourage you, at least the majority of us, that there is far more for us to know than we have up to this point of time.

Far more for us to experience of the grace of God. That's why I took you last week to John's gospel, you remember, and the 20th chapter. And I argued, and no one has convincingly taken me to task to disprove what I brought to you, that the church was not so much born on the day of Pentecost as empowered on the day of Pentecost.

Rather, the church was in embryo, at any rate, in the beginnings of formation prior to Acts chapter two. Here you remember in John 20 and verse 19 and onwards those three or four verses right down to the 23rd from the 19th verse, the Lord Jesus is depicted as appearing to the disciples and he gives them his peace, as he always does on first encounter after there's been a lapse of time, peace be with you, last part of verse 19. And then he demonstrates who he is, and then they're overjoyed because of what they have seen, the Lord is risen, and then verse 21, I suggest to you is a very pivotal, a very important statement in scripture.

The Lord Jesus says, again, peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I'm sending you. And with that, he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit.

Now, I'm not going into the arguments from last time, you were able to pick them up from notes and news on Sunday if you weren't present last Wednesday evening, but my conclusion from that is that the church to all intents and purposes was formed prior to the day of Pentecost. But on the day of Pentecost, we discover as we move to Acts chapter two, those men on whom the Spirit had already been breathed went through another very significant experience. Verse two of chapter two, suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.

They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. And so you get the church empowered, moving into the streets of Jerusalem, the gospel is proclaimed.

Ere long, as a result of persecution, the church is scattered. She moves into Judea, into Samaria, to the uttermost parts of the world and phenomenal things happen. Now this is my argument.

Are we seeing the same sort of expansion of the church today as we did in the Acts of the Apostles? Now the answer to that question, as I feel that I ought to submit some sort of suggestion at any rate, is both yes and no. No in regard to the United Kingdom. You can't say, at least I think you would be a very bold person if you endeavored to reason thus, that the church in this country is back in measure to apostolic times in terms of reproduction, in terms of expansion, in terms of influence.

But there are areas in our world where there is that which approximates to the Acts of the Apostles taking place in the 1980s. Of that there can be absolutely no argument. I go further.

There have been many occasions, particularly during the last three centuries, in various parts of the world where you have had virtually a reenactment of the Acts of the Apostles. The year 1904, what does that bring to your mind? Well, many of you who have some knowledge of at least of recent church history in the United Kingdom will immediately say the Welsh Revival. And indeed you would be right.

But 1904, if you were to mention that year, say out in the Indian subcontinent, would not bring to the mind of the knowledgeable Christian the Welsh Revival. Wales obviously being so displaced from India and the lands that border India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. What 1904, however, might do to the old Christian who lives in Pakistan is to bring back what happened in Pakistan in that year.

When you had something that corresponded in Pakistan to what happened in the Acts of the Apostles. Indeed, the history of the church in Pakistan, the history of denominations that exist to this day, alas, not knowing the same power as they did then, is traceable back to 1904 when there was a most unusual outpouring of the Holy Spirit and a great penetration was made of what was largely an Islamic community. Well, you say, oh, this is very interesting, but what does it have to do with me and what does it have to do with my theology of the Holy Spirit? Well, I think it has a lot to do with you and it has a lot to do with your theology of the Spirit.

But let me make this daring statement. I'm not really too concerned about the way that you theologize your experiences of the Spirit. In other words, I'm not really that concerned.

Maybe I'll have to qualify this later on because I'm still a learner as I study Scripture myself, but I'm not awfully bothered about where you put the term the baptism in the Spirit. What I am bothered about for you and even more particularly if I may say so for myself is to answer the question, do I know in my life, do we know in our church that which in any way resembles what was experienced during the days of the Acts of the Apostles? Now, I think it's possible for some believers within a community to know this, to have this empowering and not for the total community. In other words, I believe that it's possible to have a sort of solo revival.

I think I could quote you examples of that here and certainly amongst people that I know in various parts of the country. What defines a sort of corporate revival? Well, I've almost given the answer in the use of the word corporate is when many, many people together come to a fresh understanding and experience of the overwhelming power of God within their lives. Now, an individual can be transformed.

There's no doubt about that. He can be going along in his Christian life at this level and then suddenly he's heightened. He's taken to areas that he's never, never known before very often because he's seeking for this.

Sometimes because God in his great grace decides to elevate this man, this woman. They never get spiritually conceited. That's one of the characteristics that indicates the difference between a genuine experience and invalid experience.

Someone who comes along and makes everyone else feel utterly uncomfortable because they're at Everest heights as opposed to the others is immediately indicating that his spirituality is a very carnal claim that really lacks all credibility. There are those and maybe you've met them. Maybe you can humbly say your hand over your heart that it applies to you.

And there is something about them that seems to indicate that the very rivers that flowed through the early church, the well from which the church drank have flown through this brother, this sister. They've been at this well and they've slaked their thirst and there's something about them that is different. Well, let's proceed a little further.

Not too much time this evening but let's take this quite leisurely. What could you say were the characteristics of the early church? I can't list them all. That is beyond my brief but I want to give you some illustrations.

This group of people on the day of Pentecost and subsequent groups of people who are referred to throughout the story of the Acts of the Apostles, what were the characteristics that marked them? You see, if you can identify those then perhaps you can contrast them with yourself as an individual, with our church as a corporate group and determine to what degree you are near the Acts of the Apostles. And incidentally, don't say that the Acts of the Apostles is just transitional and therefore what is experienced here is unique. It's not for the rest of the church.

I defy anyone. I give you 500 pounds if you could find me a scripture to demonstrate that. My money is safe.

My money is safe. I would not make such a rash statement from this pulpit because some courageous Christian would come and bankrupt the pastor. May the Lord forgive anyone in that category.

Well, what did characterize these Christians? I think that one of the obvious things is discovered at the end of the second chapter. Let's turn there, shall we? Verse 46, we could take it earlier on but we'll go from verse 46. Every day, this is Acts 2, every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.

They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of the people. So here are folk who really do love the company of one another and who have an insatiable desire for the company of their fellow brother and sister and they are at a daily attendance of the Lord's table. In other words, there's a great enthusiasm, isn't there? And you've got to ask yourself, well, where do you discover this sort of enthusiasm? I'm not saying it's not here.

That's not my brief. I'm not trying to suggest that we are so much down here and the Acts of the Apostles is so much up here. Not at all.

I'm not trying to dispirit you. I'm not trying to depress you. I'm just trying to isolate these characteristics of the Acts of the Apostles or the children of the Lord in the Acts of the Apostles.

Let's go to the fourth chapter. Time doesn't allow for the context but most of you wouldn't be here this evening if you weren't familiar with Bible study and you've got some knowledge of the Acts. In the fourth chapter, in the 13th verse, you've got reference to Peter and John.

They've been on trial for their faith and the net reaction of the jury, the next net reaction of the judges to Peter and John is that they don't understand these men. Why not? Well, when they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that they'd been with Jesus. The reason for their astonishment was this.

They had a sort of eloquence, not in the form of a polished oratory. There was something that came upon them that gave them an ability to argue in a very convincing and a very powerful fashion the truths of the gospel. Now, you've got to ask yourself this question.

To what degree do I have this authority when I'm witnessing? I'm not saying you haven't got it. Again, I keep repeating this because I am concerned for you to appreciate that it's not my aim to suggest that we're all spiritual dwarfs at all. But I'm asking you to test yourself in your ability to handle scripture.

See, I remember a very dear lady, she's now in heaven, and I loved her very much indeed, astonishing me by saying after she'd sat at the feet of some of the greatest Bible teachers of this century that she found it very, very difficult to tell anyone else about the gospel. I thought that was very, very upsetting. Well, why was this? Well, she obviously was not back in an Acts chapter four condition, was she? Let's go on to something else, shall we? That's a characteristic.

Let's go to the, we'll stay with the fourth chapter, and let's go to the 24th verse. Here is the church at worship. Now, I agree that you've got a summary.

You haven't got a sort of detailed description of every church meeting, so you've got to, with a spiritually enlightened imagination, just fan out the context. But verse 24 seems to indicate that there was a great spontaneity amongst the people. When they heard this, this is a release of Peter and John, when they heard this, what did the believers do? Well, they raised their voices together in prayer to God, and they started in a peon of praise to worship the Lord.

A great liveliness characterized their worship. To what degree? Would you say that that's obvious here in the tab? I'll leave you to answer the question. Let's go to the, still the same chapter, the 32nd verse.

All the believers were in one heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had with great power, and so forth. They continued to testify to the resurrection.

Here is a magnificently generous spirit. You see, they have been delivered from the acquisitiveness of the world. The idea that to gain and to get is the greatest objective.

No, they want to share and to distribute. There's a generosity, it's a singular thing. It's part of the character of God to be generous.

I think many of us here have discovered that over the years. And it's certainly a New Testament characteristic of the people of God. Let's go on and just take maybe one or two more.

Let's go to the end of the sixth chapter, shall we? There's Stephen, he's been on trial. And he's in trouble for preaching the gospel. And when he starts to, well, when he's almost completed his address, we're told that something has happened.

Something has changed him. The 15th verse of Acts six. All who were sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at Stephen.

And they saw that his face was like the face of an angel. Something different about the man. There was a glow, a radiance.

Acts six, 15, for those who are still fumbling around trying to get it. Sorry to give you so many references. There's a radiance about this man.

Now, you can't sort of single Stephen out and suggest, well, he's unique. Nothing like this has ever happened to anyone else. I mean, I can demonstrate historically that this is not the case.

And I think I can also experimentally, not as far as I'm concerned, but what I have read and seen amongst other godly children of his in the 20th century. Take a man, he didn't live in the 20th century a little before. Take a man like Murray MacShane.

Now, Murray MacShane was a great preacher in Scotland. He died, if memory serves me right, on his 32nd or his 33rd year. So he wasn't an old man.

But they say the people who remember Murray MacShane when they put down his memoirs, in fact, I think it was Boner who actually wrote the biography of Murray MacShane, another great Scottish preacher, that when folks came into MacShane's church, they looked up into the pulpit and there was something about the face of that man. There was a glory. There was a glory.

I believe I have seen the glory of God in the face of people in this country. And one particular man that I met on the streets of Karachi a few years ago whose life was solely dedicated to the Lord. Now, do you know anything about this glory? That sometimes changes your face? I don't mean the sort of cosmetic beauty.

You know, you go to the beauty salon and you sit there and after a while, with the aid of cosmetics or even more drastically facial surgery, they sort of improve you and give you a superficial youthful appearance. I'm not referring to that at all. I'm referring to a joy that creases across the face.

Not a grin, sort of evangelical grin. I must be happy because the preacher has been so rude to me as to suggest that I must smile. No, something that causes you as the Spirit of God falls upon you, as you're singing your hymns for your face to change.

As the quip is, which I've quoted before, if your heart is so happy, why keep it a secret from your face? Well, Stephen radiated the joy of the Lord. It was there on his face. Something was distinguishable.

Let me just give you one more characteristic and then I must stop and I'll continue with this next week. Let's go to one Peter. I could have taken you further into Acts, but it's significantly pointed out for us in one Peter.

And having said that, I can't find it. I want joy unspeakable and full of glory. If you get there before I do.

Thank you, brother. Chapter one and verse eight. Though you have not seen him, you love him.

And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy. Now, take that at face value and ask yourself, do you? And praise God if you have had this experience. Do you know what it is to be filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy? One of the Puritan writers says that this is heaven on earth.

You know, it's impossible for the man who has known this experience, this encounter with the Lord, to take his hymn book and sing in a very solemn and a very morose fashion or to be wandering all over the place with his eyes as others are singing. You see, the man who's got this joy, the woman who's got this joy, there's so much in tune with the Lord in corporate worship that, well, that they've forgotten about everybody else. Now, don't misunderstand me.

I'm not arguing for emotionalism. I'm not arguing for fanaticism. I'd run away from fanaticism.

It frightens me. But I am arguing against a conservative rigidity that allows us sometimes to sing experimental hymns as though the experience is ours when it's obviously not by the way that we conduct ourselves, some of us, by the perhaps anemic fashion with which we endeavor to praise the Lord. All I'm saying, and I think I'll rest my case here this evening, is that when you come to the Acts of the Apostles and indeed any of the other statements experimental statements in the epistles that Paul and Peter and John and James and Jude and so forth write, ask yourself, to what extent do I know this myself? Now, I'm not into the controversial area of tongues and so on and so forth.

Maybe on some occasion we'll touch on this. I'm just talking about the one relationship, the I-you relationship to the living God. Do you know him to your heart's content? Do you know him in such a fashion that you could, yes, say if the whole of Worthing got up and said that God does not exist, you would believe, why? Because God has poured his Spirit into your heart in such a fashion that involuntarily you cry, Abba, Father.

That's the greatest assurance, as I was trying to argue some while ago from Romans 8. What are we to do to know our God more? Well, to seek for him, to strive after him. As the heart pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after you, O God. The friend who knocks at the door at midnight.

How about you say, I got it all when I was converted. Well, if you've got it all when you were converted, then how do you understand the Lord, in Luke chapter 11, that we were reading a few moments ago, 25 minutes ago, how do you understand the Lord saying, your heavenly Father, so the person who's making the request for the Holy Spirit or for a greater experience of the Spirit, is also always already in a one-to-one relationship with God, your heavenly Father. You can't call him heavenly Father unless you are related to him in some way.

So the Lord says, you as God's own children can come to the heavenly Father and ask him for Holy Spirit in a way that you haven't experienced before, but you do it in a determined fashion, like the friend knocking at the door of his neighbor at midnight until the neighbor answers and satisfies him with a loaf of bread. Well, more of that next week. Let's sing together, as the deer pants after the water brooks, my soul pants after you.

That may be the revised version because my memory's not so good. As the deer pants for the water, and he lives there with my soul, my soul longs after you. You alone are my heart's desire, and I long to worship you.

Stand and sing this. ♪ Oh, as the deer pants for the water, my soul longs after you. You alone are my heart's desire, and I long to worship you.

You alone are my heart's desire, and I long to worship you. If you know this by heart, let's sing it with your eyes closed and believe that as you're singing this, the Lord can meet with you in a way that you've not known before. George Whitefield talks about the time when he knew the fullness of the Holy Spirit in such a fashion that he could date it in his diary.

John Wesley, exactly the same. These great men of God, they had encounters with the living Lord that kept them going throughout their ministry, and that's what many of us are pleading to the Lord for. So let's sing this, believing that even now he can fall upon us by his spirit.

♪ Oh, as the deer pants for the water, my soul longs after you. You alone are my heart's desire, and I long to worship you. You alone are my heart's desire, and I long to worship you.

You alone are my heart's desire, and I long to worship you.