Good evening, dear brothers and sisters. It is just a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful blessing to be here among you.
I’m waiting for translation. Not very often do I get a chance to speak without translation. But it is a joy beyond my ability to describe, being here tonight and looking out and seeing all your beautiful faces. Some of them I have known for many, many years; some I have just seen this weekend. There is a wonderful joy in being here.
I do have pictures. You can see them later. I promise I will not show slides.
But you know what I am about to say is absolutely true: our Lord is utterly, utterly faithful. He cannot fail us. It is impossible. If He ever failed in the slightest little thing, the whole universe would collapse. So we can trust Him completely.
I feel like, after the hymns that we have sung tonight, I do not have anything else to say. I feel like they basically have sung what is in my heart. So you will just have to bear with me going over the hymns that we have just sung.
So, if you would turn with me, please, to the Gospel of John, Chapter 7. We will just read three verses to begin with.
Now on the last day, the great day of the feast,
Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty,
let him come to Me and drink.
He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said,
from his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.”
But this He spoke of the Spirit,
Whom those who believed in Him were to receive;
for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
Lord, we thank You for Your continued mercies in our lives, the abundance of Your grace that we experience day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. We do want to declare tonight and give You thanks that You have never been unfaithful to us. You have always demonstrated faithfulness and mercy in all of Your dealings with us.
Thank You for what You have already spoken to us and done in our lives this day. Thank You, Lord, as we come here, we can also bring before You the prayers that have already been prayed, so that, Lord, You can be free to work among us tonight.
Lord, it is wonderful to know, on one hand, that You know everything about us; and yet, on the other hand, it causes us to have fear. But we are so grateful that You are the One Who is full of grace. And so we can trust You to see all that is in us and see what it is that You desire to do.
Now, we believe that from before the foundation of the world, You knew about our meeting tonight, and a rich, abundant provision has been made. May every one of us come under that anointing of Your Holy Spirit. Lord, we want You to accomplish what was in Your heart when You brought this meeting together.
We confess to You that without You, we can do nothing. And so we come and cast ourselves totally upon You, dependent upon You for the accomplishment of Your purpose here tonight. Lord, be glorified among us and in us, and we ask it in Your name. Amen.
You notice that Verse 37 begins by calling attention to the fact that there was a great feast in Jerusalem. This feast, as I understand it, was the Feast of Booths, the time when the children of Israel would either come to Jerusalem—or, if they lived in Jerusalem, leave their homes and build temporary shelters out of limbs from trees—to remember how the Lord had been with His people during their wilderness wanderings, and how He daily provided for them: food from heaven and water that gushed from a rock. This is what they were celebrating.
Now, there are those who have studied this carefully, and the information we received from them was that at this time the Jewish people would celebrate this feast by going down to the Pool of Siloam. A priest would lead the procession, and he would take a golden pitcher. He would take water from the Pool of Siloam, and once again they would head back up to the temple, to the altar area.
With much celebration, much joy, trumpets blowing, maybe even cymbals being clanged, but much joy—probably dancing as well—they celebrated as a way of remembering what the Lord had done in the past.
So I want you to get the picture of what is happening when we see what John tells us our Lord Jesus did. I want you to get the picture of all this that is going on.
And Jesus, it says, stood up. Now, what I have in my mind is that He found an elevated place to stand on. I want you again to get the picture. All of this is going on. The priest is now taking the water, pouring it out on the east and on the west, and the people are witnessing this.
And the Lord Jesus stands up and says, “Is anyone thirsty?” With a loud voice, He cried out. Now, you can believe He had their attention. But He said, “If there is anyone thirsty, let him come unto Me and drink. For he who believes in Me, as the Scripture says, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.”
Then John goes on to explain to us that our Lord Jesus had reference to what would take place after His crucifixion, after His resurrection, and after His ascension—after He was glorified, when He sat down at the right hand of Majesty on high. Then the Lord Jesus would do something that would make it possible for this which He promised to become a reality.
So when He stood up that day, He was not planning to fulfill His promise to them there. But He said, “If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.”
Now, those who have a knowledge of the Greek language have suggested that our Lord used the kind of language that would have said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him keep coming to Me and keep drinking.” It is not a once-for-all thing. It is something that we have to do on an ongoing basis—continuous, active action; something in the present active tense; something that is continuing to happen.
Now, my dear brothers and sisters, I think that this may be the place where some of us get stuck in this matter, because some of us would like to believe that all I need to do is come one time and drink once, and that is all that I need to do. But I think the secret is in this matter of learning the necessity of coming and drinking.
Now, I, like my brother Dana, have felt that tonight we want to focus on the individual experiencing spiritual fullness, and, the Lord willing, tomorrow evening to focus on the church experiencing spiritual fullness.
So here tonight we have this wonderful, wonderful statement of our Lord Jesus—a promise. And you know it is a wonderful promise because it is to anyone: “If anyone is thirsty.” Now, it is not without condition. There are conditions. But if the person is willing to meet the conditions, then we can be absolutely sure that our Lord will fulfill what He says.
That is why we emphasized in the beginning that He is utterly, utterly faithful. He cannot make a promise like this and then not fulfill it. He cannot. And therefore, we can be totally convinced: if the conditions are met, then we can experience what our Lord is talking about here.
Now, probably in the minds of those who were there—matter of fact, it has been suggested that probably they sang part of Isaiah 12:3. Let us look at Isaiah Chapter 12.
Therefore you will joyously draw water
from the springs of salvation.
One translation I read says that you will, with joy, bring up buckets full of water from the well of salvation. And so probably this was one of the songs that they were singing as our Lord Jesus stood and made this declaration.
Now, some of you have had to put up with me in the past, and you know that I like to do things in somewhat of an organized way. I praise God for those dear brothers who can just stand up and speak, and they do not have to say point one, two, three. But, brothers and sisters, I ain’t that way. I like to give you my points.
Last Sunday, for those who were in Queens—how many were there? Eight? Okay. Tonight you get a break: only six. Okay?
Now, we are focusing on spiritual fullness. First, I want us to consider together the goal, the purpose, for spiritual fullness. Secondly, the source of this spiritual fullness. Thirdly, the agent of spiritual fullness. Fourth, the vessel of spiritual fullness. Fifth, the conditions for spiritual fullness. And finally, number six, the results of spiritual fullness.
So, are you ready to go till twelve? Well, at least you know what my intentions are. Whether I ever get them finished or not is another issue. But I hope you see, brothers and sisters, that there are some things here that we need to consider together. We need to fellowship. We need to meditate together, as our brother said this morning, about this matter of spiritual fullness.
I am in one hundred percent agreement that it is the mercy of God that we are here on this occasion fellowshipping about this matter of spiritual fullness.
So let us first of all consider a few things about the goal, the purpose, the objective of spiritual fullness. Now, I understand—I think I do—that ultimately God’s purpose is fullness. We will fellowship tomorrow night, the Lord willing, that His purpose is to fill the whole universe with the glories of His Son.
So ultimately He is concerned about fullness. But in terms of us, I think there is another goal that He wants to produce, to bring about, by having us experience spiritual fullness.
Now, it is true—I agree one hundred percent—that the final product is that God and man will be beautifully, wonderfully, completely blended together. Now, we will never become God. Let us get that clear. God created us men and women, human beings, and for all of eternity we are only going to be human beings. We are not going to be angels; we are going to be human beings. But we are going to be a lot different than we are now. Praise God. Amen. Much different.
We are going to have a spiritual body, and a lot of other wonderful things are going to take place. But let us think, first of all, in terms of what it is that God is seeking to accomplish in our lives now through this matter of spiritual fullness.
Let us look in Colossians Chapter 1. Colossians Chapter 1—the last verse. Listen carefully to what our brother Paul has to say. I am sorry, Verse 28.
We proclaim Him, that is, the Lord Jesus Christ,
admonishing every man
and teaching every man with all wisdom,
so that we might present every man complete in Christ.
Now, this is what I think God’s objective in our lives is: to bring us to a place of completeness, to where our being—who we are—comes to the place where God Himself is satisfied.
Now, I want to remind you of what you already know: our God is a perfectionist. And you know what, dear brothers and sisters? He is not going to rest until you and I arrive at that place of perfection. Now, I am not suggesting for one second that during this earthly life we will ever attain to that, but this is God’s objective. And I think it is one of the reasons why He wants us to experience spiritual fullness.
Now, maybe another way of saying this is this wonderful statement of Paul in Romans Chapter 8. I know that some of the brothers and sisters who have had to listen to me in recent years have gotten a little tired of me repeating myself. Maybe they think I have got a couple of screws loose. I do not know. But, brothers and sisters, there are just a few verses in these last few years that have seemed to wrap themselves around my heart, and I cannot get free from them.
And what Paul says in Romans 8:29 will not let me go.
Those whom He foreknew,
He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son,
that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Dear, dear brothers and sisters, I have difficulty believing that. I know it is true, but when I look at me, I do not see how it is possible: conformed to the image of the Son of God.
So, brothers and sisters, the reason the Lord wants us to experience spiritual fullness is so the Holy Spirit is free to move in us and work in us to transform us to be like our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the purpose.
It is not so that you and I can have spiritual goosebumps, although there is nothing wrong with having some goosebumps once in a while. There is nothing wrong with having a spiritual experience, like Paul talked about in 2 Corinthians as well: “I was lifted up into the third heaven, and I saw things that I should not mention and talk about.” Well, some of us need some experiences like this along the way.
But, brothers and sisters, please keep in mind that regardless of what our experience is, if it is really from the Lord—not some counterfeit, but a real experience from the Lord—then the Lord is using that to accomplish something impossible in your life: that is, to conform you and me to the image of His Son.
Can you believe it, brothers and sisters? Now, I know that love is blind, and I know some people do not believe that, but for many of us love is blind, and that means we do not see ourselves as we really are. Because we love ourselves too much, we refuse to look at the things that are so wrong, so unlike our Lord Jesus.
And, brothers and sisters, if we were able to see it, we would probably go into a pretty deep depression, because we see the impossibility of it in ourselves. But we have a heavenly Father Who, through His Son and by His Spirit, is able to do exceedingly, abundantly beyond.
You know, when Paul was trying to describe this or declare this, he had to keep adding, “Exceedingly, abundantly beyond all that you can think or ask.” So do not look at yourself. If you do, you will get discouraged, because you see how impossible it is.
Now, my dear brothers and sisters, what we are talking about is taking the Lord Jesus and putting Him here, and with our understanding of Him, of our seeing of Him, standing Him here, and then you stand alongside of Him. Oh, my dear brothers and sisters, impossible—humanly speaking.
But this is why the Lord wants us to experience spiritual fullness: so that this job, this work, will be accomplished. And the end product will be that you and I will be transformed into being like our Lord Jesus Christ, where God can look at us and see us as holy and without blame. He can look at us and be just as pleased with us as He is with His own Son.
As I shared with the brothers and sisters on Sunday, if you and I lived a thousand lifetimes and spent twenty hours a day seeking to make yourself like Jesus, you know what your accomplishment would be after the thousand years? You would be a total failure. You cannot make yourself one whit like Him.
But this is what God is after. And, brothers and sisters, there ought to be a joy that wells up within us that God is not going to leave us the way He found us. We are talking about eternity, brothers and sisters, and God does not want us to be this way for eternity.
And should I say this to you? I do not want you to be the way you are for eternity, and I do not want to be the way I am for eternity, because you have to live with me, and I have to live with you. And sometimes we do not make it easy for each other.
You know, there is also this issue of the kingdom of God. When our Lord Jesus came here, His forerunner John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus Himself—their message was, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.”
My brothers and sisters, I think what God wants us to do is so cooperate with the Holy Spirit, to be so under the influence, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, that the kingdom of God here and now is something that we are experiencing—not just something that we are going to enter into.
I know—well, I do not think I understand—there is coming a time when the Lord Jesus is going to set up His kingdom here on this earth and reign here for a thousand years. But the kingdom is already here.
And so the Lord wants us to know how, here and now, to live in the reality of that kingdom under God’s government: citizens of the kingdom of God, living in it, obeying the rules and the principles of the kingdom here and now. And so this should be true in us individually.
A number of years ago, our brother Dana helped me very much with this matter of the kingdom. He simplified it for me. He said, “Wherever Jesus is Lord, there is a kingdom.”
So you see that this matter of the Holy Spirit invading our lives is to bring us to a place where the Lord Jesus Christ is genuinely, really, practically our Lord—not just something we sing in a song, but something we experience day after day. We are living in His government.
And so the Holy Spirit, if He is free to work in us, if we are experiencing His fullness, then He will always bring us to the place where we are bowing our knee and obeying our Lord Jesus Christ.
What is the difference, brothers and sisters, between being led by the Spirit of God and following Jesus as a disciple? What is the difference? There is no difference. To be led by the Spirit is to be a faithful disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. And being a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ means you are being taught how to live in the kingdom of God here and now.
Another way of looking at this is that the Lord wants us to be overcomers. Our dear brother this morning pointed out to us the situation that we are presently living in. And, brothers and sisters, I wish I could say tonight that the Lord has made it clear to me things are going to get better. But I do not think they are going to get better, brothers and sisters. I do not think they are going to be any easier next year, if the Lord tarries, than they are today. I think things are going to intensify even more.
And it is God’s heart that every one of us in this room—yea, every one of His dear children—would find the Lord Jesus Christ in such a way that in their daily lives they would be overcomers. They would overcome the situation.
Dear saints of God, our God is not in the least honored or glorified when you and I are overcome by the circumstances and situations in our lives. It means, my dear brothers and sisters, we have not discovered the Lord Jesus in the way that we should have. He is the Overcomer, and He wants us to be overcomers. And there are special promises in Revelation 2 and 3 to those who overcome.
And so what the Holy Spirit wants to do in invading our lives, of bringing in the fullness, is to enable us to overcome, to be victors—not to be taken in, but to overcome these things that we encounter in our lives.
Another thing I think we need to see is that, as our Lord Jesus said in John 15, “I am the true vine. My Father is the husbandman. I am the vine, and you are the branches.” Now, what is the issue our Lord wants us to see? The issue is fruit: fruit, more fruit, much fruit, and fruit that remains.
So what does this mean? It means that you and I need to find a way, by the grace of God and by the working of the Holy Spirit, to stay firmly attached to our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, dear brothers and sisters, let us not let this be just language that we use, or even a doctrine that we teach, but let us know this experientially—discovering day after day that being attached to Him is the thing that produces the fruit that our heavenly Father is pleased with.
So maybe these will just give you a general idea of what I think is the goal: why we need to have spiritual fullness.
Secondly, the source. Now, it is very clear, brothers. I do not have to say too much about this, because the Lord Jesus said, “If any man is thirsty,” where does he need to go? Huh?
Isn’t it wonderful? He makes it so simple. You do not have to go running around all different places. One place: you can find it all in the Lord Jesus Christ.
This, to me, is a manifestation of mercy. It is not something—it is not a religion. It is a relationship with a living Person. He is alive, brothers and sisters. I know we cannot see Him with these eyes, but He is more alive than we are.
He is seated there at His Father’s right hand. He is both Son of God and Son of Man, wonderfully blended together, seated there at the Father’s right hand. He says, “If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.”
So I do not think you can make it any simpler than that, brothers and sisters. Nothing confusing about that. I did not say it was easy; I am just saying He makes it so simple for us.
It is like John says in 1 John 5: “The life is in the Son. If you have the Son, you have the life. If you do not have the Son, you do not have the life.” You just have one place to go to.
And it is to Someone Who loves us with a love that you and I, I do not think, will ever be able to fully appreciate. Oh, we can appreciate it, but, brothers and sisters, I do not know. I do not know what the Lord has planned.
If He is going to somehow give us an instant replay of our whole life and show us how, here at this point, when you did not even know there was such a Person as the Lord Jesus Christ, He in His love sovereignly caused something to happen and redirected you, and finally you ended up coming into a living knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ—I do not know how He is going to do it all.
But, brothers and sisters, He loves you. He does not want anything but the absolute best for you. He will not take anything away from your life. He will not ask you to throw anything away that has any value at all.
But you know the problem, brothers? You know what Paul said in Romans 7: “I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, there is no good thing.” So what does that mean? It all has to go.
But He is not going to leave us in a vacuum. He is not going to leave us empty. He is going to fill us with something so precious, indescribable, that is going to have eternal ramifications.
So I do not know what some of you think about our Lord Jesus, what your experience of Him has been. But I hope what your experience has been lines up with what we find in the Word of God: that He is a living Lord Who loves you with an everlasting love, Who loves you with a love from which no one can separate you.
You cannot even separate yourself. You can shut the door. You can put a lock on it. But that is not going to stop Him from loving you. You know who is going to win in the end? So why not give up now? Kick down that door, unlock it, open it up wide, and ask Him to come in and flood your life with this life-transforming love.
The Lord Jesus says, “Come to Me.” Now, He had said this also in Matthew 11, but here the issue is coming and drinking, and having rivers of living water flowing out of your life.
You know, in the beginning of John’s Gospel, John was given the responsibility of identifying our Lord Jesus. And John identifies Him in two primary ways.
One day, some of the disciples of John were there, and John sees the Lord Jesus coming. Remember, he said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world.” So he identified Him first as the Lamb of God. But he did not stop there.
He tells us that the One Who had sent him told him that the One upon Whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining is the One Who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. So John identifies Him both as the Lamb of God and as a Baptizer in the Holy Spirit.
So the Lord Jesus here now is inviting us to come to Him because the anointing of the Holy Spirit has already come upon Him. He has received the Spirit without measure—no limit.
Now, the Holy Spirit had to work in a limited way in the people and saints of the Old Testament, and in most of God’s people today He still has to work in a limited way—not because there is not a rich supply, but because of the vessel. But with the Lord Jesus there was no hindrance. There was no reason to measure out the amount.
So He received the Holy Spirit without measure, and at this point He becomes the Anointed of God. He becomes the Christ.
Now, you know, sometimes, brothers and sisters, we get ourselves in a difficult place by not taking time to stop and consider some of the things the Word of God has to say. But, you know, for some people—even believers—they think that Christ is Jesus’ last name. Jesus is His first name, and Christ is His last name. Yes, brothers and sisters, I know, because I have asked people.
But this is not true. He is Jesus the Christ, or Christ Jesus. The Greek word is Christos, but the word in the Old Testament was Messiah. What do these words mean? The Anointed One of God—the One upon Whom God was going to pour out His Spirit without measure, and He was going to fulfill all of the promises that God had made.
And so our Lord Jesus Christ is the Anointed One. And now, because He is the Anointed One, He is in a position of anointing others, of baptizing them in the Holy Spirit, because He is the Baptizer.
Now, we will fellowship quickly about this tomorrow night, but basically the Holy Spirit was poured out. The Lord Jesus did the baptizing on the day of Pentecost. But we can all have our individual experience of what happened on that occasion.
So our Lord Jesus is the Baptizer in the Holy Spirit. Now let us just back off for a moment and go over what we just mentioned a moment ago.
Our Lord Jesus is the eternal Son of God. Now again, in the minds of some believers, He had His beginning when He was born in Bethlehem. It is not true, brothers and sisters. He is the eternal Son of God. He has always been throughout eternity. There has never been—you cannot even talk in terms of time—but there has never been a time when He has not been the Son of God.
He has always been. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and They are all three equally God. So in your mind, do not put the Father here, the Son here, and the Spirit here. If you do, you are wrong, because They are all equally God in the fullest sense of the word.
Everything that is true about the Father is true about the Son and the Spirit. Everything that is true about the Son is true of the Spirit and the Father. They are equally God. And our Lord Jesus Christ has always been the Son of God.
But in Bethlehem, two thousand years ago, He became the Son of Man. He became a human being. He was incarnated. He came into a human body like we have, except it had been conceived by the Holy Spirit, and therefore it was not tainted by the sin of the Adamic nature.
So He came. He lived an absolutely perfect life. At His baptism, the Holy Spirit came upon Him, and He began to fulfill the ministry of demonstrating and proclaiming the kingdom of God. And then, ultimately, He was crucified. He was buried, He was raised from the dead, and forty days later He ascended back to the right hand of the Father. And He has been there for these two thousand years.
But my way of stating it is this: His first official act, if we can put it that way, as a sovereign ruler—as God and man blended together—His first official act was to pour out the Holy Spirit, to baptize one hundred and twenty people in the city of Jerusalem with the Holy Spirit.
So I want us to see that the source is in our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. It is the Father and the Son working in perfect concert, sending the Holy Spirit.
During this period of time, after the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ until He comes back again, it is the Holy Spirit Who is here on earth, Who is the One Who makes all the things of God a reality to us. All the things of Christ can only be ours experientially through the Holy Spirit.
And so our Lord Jesus Christ alone is the source. He is the Baptizer. Now, we can argue about what all of this means, and we will not get anywhere. But we can come and see, dear brothers and sisters, that our faithful Lord is in this position, and He desires—it is His heart—to pour out and bring us into an experience of spiritual fullness.
Not through some impersonal thing, some impersonal influence, but through a Person: the Holy Spirit.
The Lord Jesus refers to Him as the Paraclete, the Comforter. The American Standard Version translates it “Helper.” It is a word that is not easy to translate into English. The word Paraclete means one who has been called alongside.
In 1 John, it is used to talk about an advocate: “We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” The same word, Paraclete. We have Someone here from the Lord Jesus Christ, from the Father, as our Advocate, to be with us in every situation and to help us—to be our Helper in practical ways.
He is here to lead us into this experience of spiritual fullness. As a matter of fact, He is the One who brings about the spiritual fullness. Being full of the Holy Spirit and experiencing spiritual fullness, in my understanding, is one and the same thing.
So that brings us to this point: the agent of spiritual fullness. It is the Holy Spirit.
Now, please do not forget: He is one hundred percent God, the same way that the Son is one hundred percent God and the Father is one hundred percent God. So please do not somehow, in your understanding, lower Him to a level or depersonalize Him, feel like He is some kind of influence. He is a real Person, and He can be grieved, He can be offended, He can be disobeyed.
But He is here to take—listen to me, brothers—He is here to take that fullness that we heard about this morning in our Lord Jesus Christ and make it available to us. It is the only way. You can memorize the whole Bible and pray twenty hours a day, and it will not produce it in itself.
The Holy Spirit, when we meet the conditions, is prepared to bring us into the experience—not just doctrinal understanding. That is important, but to bring us into the experience of what it means to come into spiritual fullness.
I have a very small library in Brazil by comparison to some of these other brothers, but I recently decided I was going to try to find the books that I do have on the Holy Spirit. And I discovered I had more than thirty books on the Holy Spirit. And so I have begun to read them.
Many people have many different interpretations about the ministry—not so much about the Person—of the Holy Spirit, but the ministry and the results of the Holy Spirit working in our lives. And how do you experience the Holy Spirit?
Do you experience all of the Holy Spirit when you are born again? Well, I have one stack of books that says yes. Do you have a crisis experience afterwards and have an additional experience of the Holy Spirit? Another stack of books says yes.
So we are caught in this situation where sometimes we can get so caught up in the yeses and the nos that we miss what it is that the Lord wants us to see. But if we can remember that it is the Holy Spirit’s God-given responsibility—the Father and the Son have sent Him here on a mission—and it is to take all that was accomplished by our Lord Jesus Christ and all the riches that are in Him, and make them available experientially for us here and now as His people.
Now, there is no question that the Holy Spirit was very much with our Lord when He was here. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit. He was anointed by the Holy Spirit. He was filled with the Holy Spirit. He was led by the Holy Spirit. So we can say that His life was a life lived under the direction of the Holy Spirit.
And now He has been sent in a special way, after the ascension of our Lord Jesus, to help us come into an experience of spiritual fullness.
And, as you will discover if you have not already discovered, our God does not like assembly lines. You notice, if tonight we had opportunity for many of you brothers and sisters to give your testimony of how you came to know the Lord Jesus Christ, we would be wonderfully blessed by hearing the multitude of different ways.
Because the Lord treats us as an individual, as a person. He does not ignore who we are, and therefore He takes these things into consideration. The same thing is true in our coming into an experience with the Holy Spirit.
Even though the offer of spiritual fullness is available, sometimes we have to come into it in our own individual way.
Now, you know it is not a very good practice to give personal illustrations, to give examples out of your own life, but I feel safe in doing this because, dear brothers and sisters, I was totally oblivious to what was happening. So I cannot take the least amount of credit for what I am going to share with you.
I shared with some of the young brothers and sisters last week about my own experience of coming to know the Lord. And for me, you know, it was beyond words. But I had a real experience with the Lord, to where, in the depth of my being, no one could have convinced me that there was not a living God. So I came to know Him.
And then, a few months later—I am just telling you what happened to me; you do not have to believe it if you do not want to. I know it happened, but it is okay—I was driving my car. I was in Pensacola, Florida, and I was driving my car down a road next to the Gulf of Mexico in Pensacola.
And the only way I can explain it, brothers and sisters, is that the Lord’s presence came into my car. Now, here I am. I was a believer six months. I never had a Bible in my life. I never read the Bible. And after I became a believer, someone gave me a Bible, but I knew nothing. I had never read about all of these things.
So that is why I can say to you, you know, it is all Him. But anyhow, let me ask you a question: if you are driving down the road one day in your car by yourself, and the Lord’s presence comes into the car, what are you going to do?
And you have no idea what is happening. You do not know that it is the Lord. You just have this sense that He is there. And even though I had come to know Him, I was a believer six months.
So I did not know what to do. Like Peter, he did not know what to do, so he talked a lot. Well, I did not know what to do. So I had a 1950 Mercury, a nice-looking car, and it had big floorboards in the front. And I laid down on the front of those floorboards.
And when I was laying there, I sensed the Lord saying to me, “Ernie, I want you to give your life to Me.”
Now, what He had done for me, I had no choice but to say yes. Well, I mean, I had a choice, but you know what I am saying. I did not have a choice, because I was in love with Him. I would have done anything. But I did not understand. I did not understand what was happening except this encounter.
So a week or so later, I went to the pastor where I came to know the Lord, and I shared with him my experience. You know what he told me? “The Lord has called you to be a Baptist preacher.”
Yes. So what did I know? I planned to go to college and seminary and end up being a Baptist preacher.
But during my days in college, in the Baptist church, after you give your life in this way, they license you to be a preacher. That means you can conduct funerals and weddings. And then later they ordained me. I am not really sure what that all meant, but anyhow, it meant that I could become a pastor of a Baptist church.
Here I am in Alabama, and I am going to school. I am working at night from five o’clock till two or three o’clock in the morning. Saturday night, Sunday morning, I am pastoring a church seventy-five miles away. My wife and my son get up, we get up, and we travel up seventy-five miles.
I preach Sunday morning because, just like Dana says, you have to preach three times a week: Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. Well, fortunately I did not have to go Wednesday night, but I had to preach Sunday morning and Sunday night.
Now, I am going to school, working a full-time job. I have been up until three o’clock on Saturday night, and then I get up early and drive seventy-five miles. I preach on Sunday morning, and then I am required to go out and have dinner with somebody, go to their home, and then visit two people who are sick in the afternoon. Then we have another meeting that night.
And I can remember again and again and again sitting there, waiting for my time to get up and speak, and feeling like I did not even have enough energy to stand up, let alone speak.
But I am here to testify to you: the Lord is able. Something happened when I stood up. A strength came into me that was not my own, and He enabled me to try to minister His Word.
Now, some of you knew my first wife, Zola. And after that long day, and feeling like I was a total failure as a preacher anyhow, every Sunday night I would say to Zola, “Zola, no more. I quit. I give up. No more.”
Well, after a year of that, she finally just learned to turn it all off and knew I was not serious about it. But what I am trying to say is, the Holy Spirit is to be there to be for us and to us what we have in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, at this point in my life, I knew nothing about the Holy Spirit in terms of what the Scriptures teach. But I have recently been reading a book that helped me. And he pointed out that in the Book of Acts, their understanding of the Holy Spirit did not come from reading the Bible and studying the Scriptures. You know how it came? From experience.
Now, I am not saying we should not study the Word of God. Praise God, we have the Word of God to check us out. But what I am saying is, they hammered this thing out. And I am encouraging us tonight to find how real the Lord wants to be to us through the ministry of the Holy Spirit in every situation.
He knows everything about everything. It does not mean we do not have to do something, but sometimes He enables us. Something happens that goes beyond the natural, and something of the spiritual dimension comes into our experience.
What am I saying? I am saying, brothers and sisters, certainly you need to give yourself one hundred percent to the Lord. Well, I do not mind saying to you: you need to do what I did that day. I did not know what I was doing, but you need to do the same thing. You need to give yourself one hundred percent to Him. Consecrate your life to Him. Say, “My life is Yours, and I want to learn how to obey You.”
Then, brothers and sisters, we need to learn the lessons that the Holy Spirit wants to teach us.
Now, what is the vessel? We have seen the goal, the source, the agent. What is the vessel? Where is it that we experience spiritual fullness?
Now, brothers and sisters, again, I do not know how much some of you have meditated and read in the Word of God, but you see, before God ever created man, He designed him. He is not like some of us. I used to do some woodworking, but I never drew a plan. I just started cutting wood, and you can imagine some of the messes that I made.
But you see, the Lord never does it that way. And since He does everything perfectly, His design was perfect. And He designed man in such a way that the fullness of God could come and abide in him. And then that fullness would influence the rest of his being.
And this is what was being offered, I understand, to Adam in the garden: the Tree of Life, the tree that Adam never got a chance to eat from. God was saying to man, “If you come to this tree and eat of this tree, then you will begin to experience the fullness, the spiritual fullness, that I designed and created you for.”
Now, you remember in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, Paul’s prayer for these believers in Thessalonica:
May the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely;
and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete,
without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is very, very important, if we are going to live in the reality of spiritual fullness, that you have an understanding of how God has created you. So that you know that your spirit is to be the master of your life.
Your decisions about your life are not to be made on the basis of how you think, how you feel, what you desire, or what your body wants. Now, all of that has to be taken into consideration, but this is not the control center. The control center of our life is to be our spirit.
And when Adam ate of that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, something very tragic happened: he died. He did not die physically, and he did not die psychologically, but he did die spiritually. His spirit went into a comatose state, and there was no communication between God and man.
And so, as the Scripture says in Ephesians 2, we are dead in trespasses—dead toward God. We cannot do the will of God. We cannot know God. We may have information about Him, but you cannot know Him because your spirit is dead.
But you know what happened? It is what the Lord Jesus talked to Nicodemus about. “Nicodemus, you must be born again. You must be born.” It is not optional. If you are going to see the kingdom, if you are going to enter the kingdom, you must be born again.
And what happens is that the Holy Spirit takes the life of our Lord Jesus Christ and puts it inside of our spirit—spirit to spirit. We are then born of the Spirit, and the life of Christ begins to emerge in our spirit.
And then, hopefully, that life, which is the spiritual fullness, will begin to influence everything else that happens in our life, if things go the way the Lord wants them to go.
So first of all, let me say: you have been designed by God to live in spiritual fullness. You have been created by God to live in spiritual fullness. But something went wrong. But you have been redeemed. Hallelujah, brothers. You have been redeemed. You have been saved. You have been delivered.
And now, as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, your spirit is alive. You know God. That is why I said to you, that day when it happened to me, I knew that I knew that I knew that I knew, and no one had to tell me. Why? Because I had come to know the living God. He came to indwell me.
I did not understand it. I could not have explained it to anybody. I am not sure I can explain it today. But anyhow, brothers and sisters, this is the miracle: God takes His own uncreated, eternal resurrection life that is in Christ and puts it inside of us.
And this radical transformation begins, so that our spirit becomes the control center. It does not mean we do not think. It does not mean we do not have feelings. It does not mean I do not have to make choices. It does not mean I do not need to be concerned about my physical body.
But before, brothers and sisters, our situation was that the soul and the body had joined in a conspiracy against the spirit. And so this has to be overcome. The Holy Spirit comes as the Indweller to bring us into an experience of spiritual fullness.
Now, I heard what our brother Dana said this afternoon, and I agree with you. But in the beginning of our Christian life, our capacity for the Lord Jesus Christ is limited. It does not mean that it is going to stay that way. It is going to grow.
I do not have a good illustration for this, but let us think about a power plant. How much electricity can a power plant produce? How do they measure it? Anybody know? Megawatts. In the power plant are all these megawatts, but it depends on the wires that transmit it. Nothing wrong with the power plant.
And this also depends upon the receiving of electricity. Sometimes the wires are too small. They cannot carry so many megawatts; they can only carry a few. That is what I think we are like in the beginning. There is a limited capacity for the life of Christ to flow through us.
But, brothers and sisters, it is the role of the Holy Spirit to increase that capacity in us. And so we become—our spirit becomes—a shrine, as we sang in one of our hymns, a temple, a place for God to take up His presence, His residence within us.
Now, I know that many of us live day after day after day after day sometimes and are totally oblivious to the reality. If you are a genuine believer in the Lord Jesus Christ—and I did not say if you are religious, I did not say if you read your Bible—I said if you have had an encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ, you have come to believe in Him, and the Holy Spirit has caused you to be born again, then, brothers and sisters, He is going to go on to do some work.
But it is the beginning. It is the beginning. That is why Paul says his goal was to present every man perfect, complete, conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Think about this matter of being conformed. How does it take place? My understanding is that the Holy Spirit brings the life, puts it inside the deepest part of our being. Remember what the Lord Jesus says: “From your innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.” Well, that life is there, but He wants that life to influence everything about us, including how we think.
Oh, brothers and sisters, what a problem this is. Some of us need to have the salvation of our minds.
You want me to illustrate? Let us suppose, if it were possible—I think I shared this one other time here—but let us suppose it were possible to take a camcorder, drill a hole in your head, and take a picture of all the thoughts that you had today. Put them on a video, and then we show them up here. Anybody willing to volunteer?
I do not think so, brothers. So what does this prove? It proves that there is a work that still needs to be done.
The Lord wants us to learn, by the Spirit of God, that the influence of this spiritual fullness, this spiritual life, can change the way we think. We can become spiritually minded. We can have our minds set on the Spirit rather than upon the flesh.
You know, some of the thoughts that you have have nothing to do with the Spirit of God. It does not have to remain that way. This is salvation.
So the Holy Spirit, in His great love for us, puts us under discipline. Oh, we do not like that, but there is no other way, brothers and sisters. If you want to be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, there is no other way. There are no shortcuts. This is it: life plus discipline equals character.
And if you are trying to avoid the discipline, the Holy Spirit does not have another way. You are just postponing it. Maybe it might make it more difficult for you, because if somehow you are seeking to cooperate with the Holy Spirit and He puts you in a place and you are trying to get out of that place, I guarantee you He will create another one just like it, or maybe even worse.
I remember a number of years ago, the Lord gave me this picture. I do not have patience, but He gave me this picture of the cross here. And I saw the cross, but I dug a hole down underneath the cross to try to avoid it and come out the other side. Guess what was there? Another cross.
Yes, brothers, there is no other way. No other way, Brian. Do not try it. Do not try. You are only postponing it. And the Lord has His own designed ways of producing the character of Christ in you. Do not look at other people.
So our hearts are the vessels, and they become the control center. Do not think for a moment that the Lord wants to destroy your self. He just wants to deliver it from that tyrannical power of the old Adamic nature and from our self-life.
We mentioned earlier about the kingdom of God. It seems to me, brothers and sisters, there are three kingdoms that you and I need to be concerned about.
First of all, the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of this world, over which Satan—God’s arch-enemy and our arch-enemy—is the ruler. He is the king, if we can put it that way, over this world system.
Then there is the kingdom of our God and His Christ. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the King in this kingdom.
But there is another rival king. You know where it is? The kingdom of self.
A number of years ago, I was thinking about this whole matter, and I decided to go to Webster’s Dictionary and look up this word self. Anybody have any ideas how many times the word self is used in the Webster’s Dictionary? Anybody want to hazard a guess? Nobody? Over four hundred.
Now, what does this mean? It means, brothers and sisters, that this is an issue to be looked at.
Because here is what happened. You remember in Isaiah Chapter 14, when Isaiah is talking about the king of Babylon, and it is actually speaking about Satan and his encounter with God in prehistoric times. Five times he says, “I will. I will. I will. I will. I will become like the Most High God.”
Now, brothers and sisters, I do not mean to put any of us into a depression, but, dear brothers and sisters, the same poison that got into Satan has found its way into us. And our I, our ego, our self-life, sometimes is the biggest hindrance to us experiencing spiritual fullness.
So when the Lord Jesus came and began to make disciples, right from the outset the first thing He said was, “If any man wants to be My disciple, he must do what? Deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.”
Now, what does it mean to deny yourself? Have you ever tried to say no to yourself? Does yourself listen? Does it want to cooperate? As I heard our brother Stephen say one time, he is a petty tyrant. He wants his own way at all costs.
And the Lord’s solution for him is for us to learn to say no to him, to deny him—to deny him access to our being, to control us, to influence us.
You know, dear brothers and sisters, as our brother Dana shared this afternoon from that passage in Philippians 2, it says about our Lord Jesus that He emptied Himself. Now, I know it means He emptied Himself of all of His rights, but what I think may help us to understand what that means is that He always said no to Himself.
Now, His self-life was not influenced the way ours is, but He still had a self-life. Remember when He said in John’s Gospel, “I only do what I see My Father doing. I do nothing of My own initiative. I only say what I hear My Father say.” Now, that is the denying of the self. That is saying no to the self and yes to the will of God.
So, brothers and sisters, we need to learn how to do this so that our self-life does not become that hindrance to spiritual fullness that the Lord wants us to have.
Well, our time is gone. Let me just quickly mention a couple of things in terms of the conditions for fullness. The Lord Jesus says that we must come to Him and drink, and to believe in Him. It is faith, brothers and sisters.
It is faith that would cause you to find a time and a place to get alone with the Lord and settle some of these issues. First of all, does your life belong to Him?
Are you thirsty? See, this is another issue. Are you thirsty?
And I have to say, dear brothers and sisters, we do things in such a way among us as God’s people sometimes that people are not thirsty. They are satisfied. They may be drinking from the wrong vessel or the wrong thing, but somehow they find a false sense of satisfaction.
Please forgive me. I am greatly concerned about this megachurch movement in the United States. Why? Because people are being satisfied with something other than the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, I could be wrong, and if I am, I want to stand corrected, and please forgive me. But, dear brothers and sisters, it is possible for us to be drinking from the wrong fountain and have a false sense of satisfaction.
And so we need to learn to come to Him and to drink, to believe in Him—to believe in Him in the fullest sense of all the Scriptures that reveal Him to be, to be for Him to be the Lord.
Do not call Him, “Lord, Lord,” and then not do what He says. It is a contradiction. It is a lie. It is an insult to Him to call Him Lord and then continue to do your own thing.
So there are conditions, and it has to do with our hearts, my brothers: broken, contrite, poor in spirit. These are the conditions that we need to have.
If we have some sense of pride that we have arrived someplace, that we have been in this way for so long, or “I have read my Bible,” or whatever else you want to do—like Paul did in Philippians 3, he made his list—you may have your list. But that list may prevent you from actually entering into the experience of spiritual fullness.
Well, the last thing: the results.
And out of your innermost being
shall flow rivers
of living water.
Now, you need to go through the Scripture sometime and consider this whole matter of rivers, beginning in Genesis, in Ezekiel, in Isaiah, and Revelation.
But listen to this wonderful promise. I wish I had a better vocabulary, but what word would we use to describe such a promise: that out of your innermost being shall flow—not just one—but rivers of living water?
Some of you know I live in Brazil. And you know what river there is in Brazil, right? What big river is there in Brazil? The Amazon.
You know what I just heard someone tell me this week? Do you know how wide the Amazon is when it flows into the ocean? Anybody have any ideas? I was totally ignorant of this: two hundred miles wide—from here to Washington, D.C.
Maybe you and I are satisfied with a smaller river. But the Lord—brothers and sisters—we need to find a practical way of taking the Lord up on His offer.
If we come and drink and believe in Him, then He says, “Out of our innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.” Now, what can we expect in these rivers? What is flowing out through these rivers?
Well, I think the number one thing is the love of God. He has flooded our hearts with the love of God. And as we sang in one of the hymns tonight—I wish I could remember it—but anyhow, dear brothers and sisters, the Lord wants to channel through us an endless, measureless love.
What other words can we use to describe the love of God? There is no end to it. I have forgotten the words, but you know what I am trying to say. There is an unlimited, measureless supply, bigger than the Amazon, that God wants to cause to flow out through us.
And, oh, my dear, dear brothers and sisters, where we need to cause this river to flow is among us, first of all. We have not loved one another the way we should. You know what I am talking about.
And so this needs to become very practical: a river of life into our meetings. As our brother Dana said, if we come having spent time seriously before the Lord about the meeting, and when we come to the meeting, we come with a river flowing of life to other brothers and sisters.
So where can we go? All the rivers that can flow, He has to decide. But He has His own wonderful way of producing these rivers in us.
Sometimes it seems to me He uses a kind of natural means to create the river. But then sometimes He uses a crisis.
And I was thinking this afternoon about the difference between the Panama Canal and the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River. The Panama Canal was created by man, the natural thing. Well, what about the Colorado River that flows through the Grand Canyon? How was that one created? Through a crisis, huh?
Do you think maybe, brothers and sisters, that it is in a crisis that God produces a channel for His life and love and light to flow through us?
Brothers and sisters, I do not know what to say. I mean, I have tried to wrestle with these words of our Lord, and the only place I can come to is this: these were not just empty words, and they were not just for them.
It was after He was ascended that this was to take place. And my understanding is that it is available to us all the way until He returns.
And the choice is ours. Are you thirsty? Are you willing to come? Are you willing to pay the price to drink and just throw away the other things that you are becoming satisfied with? Get free from this external kingdom of the world, and try to find a way, by the grace of God, to get free from the tyrant inside who always wants his way.
And we can discover in experience what a wonderful thing it would be if every one of us in this place tonight had a testimony to give next year, or next week, or next month: “The Lord began to produce a river in me,” and it is flowing out.
Well, you have to, my brothers and sisters. I share it as best I know how. But I believe this is what God, the Lord, wants for every one of His dear ones. This is part of your birthright. It is available to you, not just a few.
Well, let us pray. Thanks for your patience.
Gracious Father, in the name of Your dear Son, we want to thank You for Your Word. Thank You for Your Holy Spirit, Who makes it a living Word, Who really takes it and uses it to speak to our hearts.
Lord, I ask You to give my brothers and sisters discernment tonight, to discern what was Your voice. And Lord, having discerned, give us all grace. By Your Holy Spirit, help us to believe You and to come to You and keep on drinking.
So that, Lord, for Your glory, for the fulfillment of Your purpose, rivers would begin to flow out of our lives. And we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.