Life By The Spirit

Transcript

Alright thank you very much, and hello again radio friends. How in the world are you? Doing Alright today? Of course I wait for you to answer, you know that. My father used to say to me, “Boy, when you ask a question give people time to answer! Don’t be talking all the time”. Oh, he used to pound that into me. (laughs) Bless him. You know, did you ever thank God for your parents? Now, some of you have not had Christian parents. But whether or not they were Christian and whether or not they made mistakes, all of us parents make mistakes, don’t we on the way? It’s amazing that God trusts parenthood with people who know so little about it, but regardless of whether or not your parents were good, or whether they acted properly, or whether in some cases they even abused you, if you stop to think a moment there are many things that Almighty God has done for you and for me, in giving us the kinds of parents that we had. In my case of course had a praying mother and after she died, a praying father ,who prayed for his boy, a dedicated sister, who at age 11, took up the difficult, backbreaking task of making a home for her father, her widowed father and her baby brother. I’ve got a lot to be thankful for, indeed I do, and so I guess have all of us. Take time to thank God for these things, won’t you?

You and I are looking at the 23rd Psalm, and we got thinking about this anointing oil. There’s the royal anointing that makes us kings, there’s the holy anointing that makes us priests of God, there is the correcting anointing that steers us straight, there is the oil of joy that keeps us rejoicing in spite of circumstances which may be adverse or bitter. Now what? Well, I’m taking my big Bible and turning the pages over to Zechariah, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Haggai, Zephaniah and Zechariah, Alright? Back there in the Old Testament, verse 11 of chapter 4, “Then I answered and said, ‘What are these two olive trees upon the right side of the candlestick and up on the left side thereof?’ I answered again and said, ‘What be these two olive branches which through the two golden pipes empty the golden oil out of themselves’. And He said ‘Knowest thou not with these be’, and I said, ‘No, my Lord’, then said He, ‘These are the two anointed ones that stand by the Lord of the whole earth’”. The point we’re raising is, these golden pipes empty the golden oil out of themselves. Now, you know oil in the Scripture is a symbol of the blessed Holy Spirit of God. And so the lesson obviously, that you and I as New Testament believers gain by looking at a verse like this is to realize that you and I are simply channels THROUGH which the Holy Spirit of God can flow as God’s blessed golden oil. The Holy Spirit.

Now you receive the Spirit of God when you are born from above, “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His”, Paul says in Romans 8 verse 9. And then Paul wrote to the Corinthians, who were undoubtedly in a mixed up, messed up condition as a church and as individuals. They needed a lot of help and a lot of straightening out, but he said, “Know ye not, that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which ye have of God and you’re not your own for your bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit both of which belong to God”. So that is true. Then of course you, realize that the command of God is not only that the Spirit of God dwell within you and be resident, but as my good friend, Tommy Fletcher, who is now with the Lord used to say, “He wants to be president as well”, and so in Ephesians 5 you read the verse, “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be ye filled with the Spirit”, and that is in the linear sense which means keep on being filled with the Spirit. God wants to fill every room in your heart house with Himself and then keep on pouring Himself through you in a continuous phenomenon of divine miracle in your life. What a glorious prospect that is for any believer who is hungering for God today.

Oh, the golden oil, the Holy Spirit of God, flows through your life. What happens when that process begins and continues? Well, for one thing you begin to bear, what Paul calls in Galatians the fruit of the Spirit. “The works of the flesh”, said he, “are certainly perfectly clear which are these”, and then he lists all sorts of breakdowns in human nature. There is moral breakdown, and religious breakdown, and social breakdown, and theological breakdown, and all the rest, in Galatians 5:19, 20, and 21. Oh, human nature breaks down at every level without the Grace of God, but he said, “The fruit of the Spirit”. See, the Holy Spirit is a Person, not just an influence. You never speak of the Spirit of God as “it”, although, many people do I think, simply out of ignorance of the fact that He’s a blessed, wonderful Person. The third Person of the Trinity, just as much God as God the Son or God the Father, and so, “The fruit of the Spirit”, that phrase actually means the result of this wonderful Person taking control of your life, is love instead of hatred. For instance, the natural condition of the unsaved person is being full of hate. Let me turn quickly to Titus, if I may, and see what it says there for you and for me. He says, “We ourselves also”, this is Titus 3 verse 3, “we ourselves also were at one time foolish”, that means you didn’t have good sense about you, “disobedience”, (that means you are trying to do your own will,) “deceived”, (that means you didn’t have the truth you were being fooled by the tempter). “Devil is a liar and the Father of it”, Jesus said in John 8:44. “Serving different lusts and pleasures”-you were a slave, serving that’s a Greek verb, doulus, serving like a slave, “Serving like a slave your desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy”, the atmosphere of your life is malice (that means the desire to do evil.) Envy, (that means resentful of other people’s well-being.) Then look at this, “Hateful and hating of one another” Hateful means hate-filled. The essential atmosphere of an unsaved life turns out to be hatred. Now, many of you will dispute that I’m sure. You’ll say, “Now, I know a lot of people that are nice but their unsaved, but they’re nice people. They aren’t hateful”. Well now, you just strip away the veneer acculturation that they have, and you’ll find underneath an unsaved spirit, quite capable of being hate filled and hating one another. “The fruit of the Spirit”, said He, “is love”. Love, joy. We talked about joy moment ago didn’t we? The oil of joy. Peace, that’s the unruffled quality that goes deeper than the storms of life. Long-suffering, good Greek word macrosomia-large heartedness: you have room in your heart for other people as they are not as you wish they were. Long-suffering, gentleness. Oh, to be gentle. You and I have to relearn that lesson again and again, don’t we? Because oftentimes, we ride roughshod over other people’s feelings, scarcely without knowing it. Goodness and faithfulness and meekness and temperance, self-control which turns out for the believer to be God control.

Oh, do you know about that my friend? Do you know about the result of the Spirit of God controlling your life? Now, this doesn’t come overnight. There has to be a beginning somewhere. Whole denominations have been formed out of the realization that at some point or other, you and I have to begin to yield ourselves to the Holy Spirit of God consciously and let Him fill our lives. There has to be a beginning somewhere, but you don’t stop there. You don’t build your theological life upon the fact that at one point or other you said to the Spirit of God, “Come in and fill every room in my heart house”, and you did so by faith and He answered that prayer of faith. You don’t build a whole denomination on that. What you do is, you keep on yielding yourself to the Holy Spirit of God every day of your life. See, that’s Ephesians 5:18 really means, because it’s in the linear sense that that verb is used, it means keep on being filled, be ye being filled literally, with the Holy Spirit. And as a result every day, He takes up His blessed work in our lives, not only residing there as a result of our salvation but now, presiding, controlling our lives, and you begin to bear the blessed fruit of the Holy Spirit of God. You know about this? Oh, let Him fill your life, let Him control your life, let Him speak through your life in those words that God can impel from your stammering tongue, let the Spirit of God work dear friend, in your life. You be the empty channel. Channels only, blessed master, channels only. Remember that old song? We used to sing it at the Moody Bible Institute, when I was a student more than 50 years ago, “Channels only, but with all Thy wondrous power, flowing through us, working in us, every day and every hour”. Alright let it be so. Today let your prayer and my prayer be, “Oh God, let me be that empty channel through which the golden oil of God can flow, unhindered”.

23rd Psalm, the anointing oil, “Thou anointest my head with oil”. Now, Zechariah 4:6 says, “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit said the Lord of Hosts”. You see, we go to extremes. On one extreme there is the cold, pharisaical adherence to doctrine and says, “don’t get emotional”. On the other extreme there is the occasional flaring of over emphasis on the sensations, let us say, that come when the Spirit of God takes control of your life. We seem to go to extremes, either deadly cold or way out on the other side of extremism, where you might say it’s next-door to fanaticism. Why go to extremes? Why not realize that every part of all of your life from being convicted, to being converted, to being born again, to being brought into the Family of God, to being used of God greatly in His miracle power, every part of all of your life depends upon the work of the Spirit of God. Jesus said, “When He, the Spirit of Truth is come, He shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance , whatsoever I’ve said unto you”. The Spirit of God is your teacher and the Spirit of God is the Creator of divine and life and power in your life. Why not depend on Him today? You don’t have to be afraid of the Spirit of God, just stick to the Word of God.

Donald Rayburn House used to say, “Don’t be afraid of fanaticism. Fanaticism is not too much religion. it’s too little brains”, he said, “Use the brains you have and stick to the Word of God”. Pretty good idea, wouldn’t you say? Well I’ll talk to you again the next time we get together.

Dear Father today, may the Spirit of God control our lives and bear through us that blessed fruit of the Spirit, the holy anointing oil of God in our lives, we ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!