Thank you, Kim. And thank you all for the confidence that you expressed to me this morning in the vote. It's a very humbling thing, and I am somewhat overwhelmed as I think about it. I never dreamed, never dreamed, never longed for being the coordinator of ARBCA. I trust that the Lord will help me, and I know that you will pray for me as I assume these responsibilities. Bob has bigger shoes than I can ever fill. All I can say is I'm Gordon Taylor. I'm not Bob Sell. I also want to thank you for so many of you who have come to me and have expressed the fact that you've been praying for me and also for Raina. Thank you so much. And many of you have expressed that to Reina. And I appreciate that. I know she appreciates that so much. We appreciate your prayers. And the concern that you have shown in these expressions are very near and very dear to us as we think about them. And one other thing I want to say, and that is that I'm very thankful to the Lord for the Administrative Council. During our all-day meeting on Monday, at one point during the meeting, as on the agenda was about the transition, someone asked, in behalf of all, now how are you doing? And how is Raina doing? And I said, expand on that. Talk to us about it. And I appreciate that, man. I appreciate that very much. All of us can be thankful as an association of churches that we have men that are representing our churches and are really representative of what all of our church, our family of churches feel. And that is a real care and concern for one another. And what a blessing that is. And I thank God for that. And it is that which Gives me some hope that with the Lord's help, I can serve you, knowing your care and concern and our common goal of bringing glory to Christ as an association of churches laboring together for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Blessed be his name. Well, tonight I have the happy privilege of preaching to you about the Holy Spirit and evangelism. My text, I have two texts. Actually, I have a lot of texts. We're going to be looking at a lot of texts and a lot of these texts are in the books of Luke and Acts. And as you know, Luke wrote both of them. I want to have you turn with me to Luke chapter 24. We've already had Acts chapter 1 verse 8 read in our hearing Luke chapter 24 and I want to read verses 46 through 49 so that you can see that this man Luke, the beloved physician. had a real emphasis and a real heart and a real concern to communicate to us the need that we have of the Holy Spirit in the work of the gospel. Listen to verse 46. Then he, that is, Jesus said to them, Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sin should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these things. Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you. But Terry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high. And then Luke records the words of our Lord Jesus in Acts 1.8, But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the world. Last night, we heard a stirring sermon from our brother Earl Blackburn on the Great Commission. As he opened up to us this wonderful commission, which was given to the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, but I want you to think with me for just a moment, what if you would have been there when you heard these words of Jesus and think about it for a moment? What would you have thought when you heard this? being one of the original disciples. Think about the eleven. The commission comes to them. And they are told, preach the Gospel to every creature. They are told, preach the Gospel in Jerusalem. Okay, in Jerusalem. These were the people who led in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. There was no one that was more opposed to the Gospel and to the name of Jesus Christ than the people in Jerusalem. And then preach the gospel in Judea, Judea. That was the place where Jesus avoided going until the very end and then preach the gospel in Samaria. Oh, sure. Preach the gospel in Samaria. Jesus came down to Judea and there was one city in Samaria who wouldn't even give him overnight lodging because he was going to Jerusalem and then preach the gospel to the uttermost part of the earth. Gentiles? Why, I think if I'd have been there, I would have said something like this. Impossible. Utterly impossible to do that kind of thing. Unthinkable to preach the gospel to these people. Now, I don't know what they thought. I hope they had better thoughts than I think I might have had. And I think maybe they did have better thoughts. Because by this time they were convinced that there was a resurrected Christ. They had seen him. Many infallible proofs had shown them that he was alive. And perhaps they remembered verses like we have just read the words of the Lord Jesus about power coming upon them. Perhaps they remembered words of the Lord Jesus, like John 15, 5, when he said, I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him. He shall bear much fruit. And without me you can do nothing." That means with me you can do everything. Maybe they remembered a verse like John 16, 33. These things I have spoken to you that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. I hope they remembered these kinds of texts. I hope they remembered the words of the Lord Jesus, that they would be endued with power from on high. I wonder if they had reached the level of maturity of the Apostle Paul who said, I can do all things through Christ who strengthened me. This much we do know. They did obey the Lord Jesus. They did go back to Jerusalem. They did wait. They did pray until on that day of Pentecost, there was a mighty, rushing wind that shook the whole place, interrupted their prayer meeting. Down came the cloven tongues. Out of their mouth came the praises of God. And in came a rushing multitude to see what was happening. And from that moment to this very hour, the gospel has spread mightily throughout the entire world, just like Jesus Christ commanded these disciples to preach. I want us to think about the order of the messages that have been laid out for us here in this General Assembly. The first message that we heard was the need for the whole church to evangelize. And then the next message was the Great Commission and evangelism. And now this evening, the Holy Spirit and evangelism. And I suggest to you that's the order it ought to be. We hear the Great Commission. We see what our duty is. And the question that ought to come to our minds is how are we going to be able to do this? How are we going to be able to do it? And the answer is. With power from on high, that is how we're able to do it, and that's the only way that we're going to be able to do it. I want to address this theme of evangelism in the local church tonight by by asking four questions. First of all, why is this theme so important? Secondly, Who needs the Holy Spirit for evangelism? Thirdly, what are the marks of the Spirit's power in evangelism? And fourthly, how does the Church of Jesus Christ regularly access the power of the Holy Spirit for evangelism? Well, let's look, first of all, is why is this theme so important? And there's two basic reasons. There's a biblical answer and there's an historical answer. But the biblical answer now I'm going to overlook the Old Testament, not because the Old Testament is important. We could go to Ezekiel, where Ezekiel says in eleven five that the Spirit was falling upon him and he spoke with the power of the Spirit of God. And as you know, Ezekiel has much about the Spirit of God. Or we could go to the book of Judges, where the Spirit of God fell upon these judges. And these judges did mighty works in delivering the people of God from bondage. Or we could go to the books of Moses and see how it was that The Spirit of God was taken from Moses and put on these seventy men, and there were two men who were even outside that didn't come to Moses, and they prophesied. And he had a young assistant who said, Lord, don't let him do that. And Moses said, oh, that the Spirit would come upon everyone. But we'll skip the Old Testament. And just think, first of all, about the ministry of the of our Lord Jesus Christ. Why is this theme so important? Well, first of all, because Jesus Christ himself depended upon the Holy Spirit for his ministry. And again, it is Luke that makes this abundantly clear. Turn with me back to Luke, chapter four, Luke, chapter four. And verse 14. Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee and news of him went throughout all the surrounding region. Luke doesn't just say he returned. He says he returned in the power of the Spirit. What's he telling us? He's telling us that the ministry of Jesus Christ was a ministry which was dependent upon the work of the Spirit of God in his life. Jesus himself emphasized this. Look at Luke chapter 4 again in verses 18 and 19 when he went to Nazareth. He opened the scroll of Isaiah and he opens to Isaiah 61. He says, The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable word of the Lord. Then he closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, sat down, and the eyes of all were in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. He says, I am the one. on whom the Spirit of the Lord rests. And I'm proclaiming to you the good news. The Spirit of the Lord is the one who empowers me to do that. And the entire ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ was a ministry with the power of the Holy Spirit. He cast out demons by the Holy Spirit. His adversary suggested he was casting out demons by Beelzebub, the prince of demons. And you know how he refuted them. The scriptures are teaching us in the example in the life of Jesus Christ that he was dependent upon the Holy Spirit. For his preaching, his entire ministry, and then think of the apostles themselves, the apostles depended upon the Holy Spirit. When Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, it says the Holy Spirit fell upon the 120. And Peter specifically and especially attributes what was happening that day to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Turn to the book of Acts, chapter 2. Acts, chapter 2, verses 17 and 18. Acts Chapter 2, 17 and 18. In verses 14 and 15, Peter assures these people, the listeners, he says, these people aren't drunk. Verse 15, it's only the third hour of the day, but this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel. And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. And then he goes on to explain that Pentecost is only explained by the power of the Spirit of God that fell upon these people. And Peter was repeatedly filled with the Spirit. Look at Acts chapter four and verse seven. Acts chapter four and verse seven. Here he is addressing the Sanhedrin and says, And when they had set them in their midst, they asked, By what power or by what name have you done this? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, Rulers of the people and elders of Israel. And then he goes on to explain. But he did this as he was filled with the Holy Spirit. Look at Acts chapter 4 and verse 31. After they'd been commanded not to preach in the name of Jesus, then they went back and had a prayer meeting. And verse 31 says, And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness. If we are to be evangelists, we must have a feeling of the Spirit of God. We must be endued with power. We must we must depend upon the Holy Spirit. And the Apostle Paul is the same way. When Paul was baptized, what does the Bible say about him? Look at chapter nine and verse 17 of Acts, chapter nine and verse 17. And Ananias went his way and entered the house and laying his hands on him, he said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you came, has sent me that you may receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. And immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales and he received his sight at once and he was arose and was baptized. So when he had received food, he was strengthened. Then Saul spent some days with the disciples of Damascus. Verse 20, immediately he preached the Christ in the synagogues that he was the son of God, filled with the spirit. Then he preached the Christ. Now, here's my argument. Men and women, boys and girls, if Jesus Christ needed the Holy Spirit, to perform his ministry. If Peter needed the Holy Spirit to perform his ministry, if the Apostle Paul needed the Holy Spirit to perform his ministry, if Jesus depended on the Spirit, if Peter depended on the Spirit, if Paul depended on the Spirit, do we need the Spirit of God for evangelism, for the work of the Lord? We need the blessed Holy Spirit and his endowment and his help for. Preaching. Sharing. And teaching the gospel. Now, let's look at a historical some historical answer. The history of the church and the progress of the gospel shows the importance of the Holy Spirit in evangelism. One of the books I read over the course of the past number of months was a very fascinating and interesting book. I think he carries his point too far, but he has a point. It's Bohr's book on Pentecostal missions. And he asked this basic question. His basic question is, what was the primary reason for the spread of the gospel in the early church? And he tries. Well, this is perhaps not being fair to him. But in some sense, he puts the Great Commission and the endowment of power as though they are butting heads. And he's trying to figure out which is the most important. But he makes this observation. Well, this is my observation in all that he says. This is my illustration to illustrate what he says, you can read the book and you see if I'm right. But basically, as I understood the book, he's saying, was there a Congress on evangelism in Jerusalem to strategize how it was they were going to reach the world for Christ? And his point is, no. And of course, there wasn't. How is it that the world was reached for Christ? Well. The world was reached for Christ. As The Spirit of God, through the God's providence, drove people out of Jerusalem by persecution. And eventually the gospel went to Antioch, and then the Spirit said, send forth Paul and Barnabas to the work to which I called them. And that it was God in his providence that sent these men forth. Now, the conclusion that we could draw incorrectly would say, well, we should never strategize. That's not the point. The point is that the reason the reason for the spread of the gospel in the early church was the direct ministry of the Spirit of God upon the church and God's providence and sending people forth. He's saying there was not a conscious. A conscious sitting back and saying, I must evangelize, but that they were so filled with the Spirit and so in love with Christ that wherever they went, they spoke the gospel. And that is how the gospel spread. I read an interesting paragraph in Dargan's book on the history of preaching about John Calvin. I believe this paragraph gives us some indication as to the power of the Spirit upon Calvin's preaching in his life. Dargan says, and so, though the highest qualities of oratory found no place in Calvin's preaching, the power of his thought, the force of his will, the excellence of his style, and above all, now listen to this, above all, the earnestness with which he made the truth of God shine forth in his words, made him a great preacher and deeply impressed on his hearers the great verities of the Christian faith. Now, I thought, where did he get this earnestness with which the truth of God did shine forth in his preaching? And I think I know. It was the Spirit of God carrying him along with a burden and the earnestness to preach the truth of God. It wasn't, Dargan says, his great oratorical skills. That wasn't it. It was the earnestness that he had. And I suggest to you that that earnestness is the earnestness which comes from the Holy Spirit himself. The Puritans recognized their complete and entire dependence upon the Holy Spirit. Gurnall said, God never laid it upon thee to convert those he sends thee to. No, to publish the gospel is thy duty. Thomas Watson said, ministers knock at the door of men's heart. The spirit comes with a key and opens the door. Think of Whitefield and a brainer. It set a brainer that whenever there was a great work, he'd spent much more time in prayer as a spirit came and carried him along and many were saved. That's why this theme is important. We need help. We have an impossible task and we need the help of the spirit. Now, I grew up on a farm, so I tried to think of some farm illustration to do this. And here's what I think. My father would tell me that when I got home from school, he said, Gordon, go out and disc the West 40. Now, do you know what it was like to disc the West 40? I couldn't do that unless there were some power. Fortunately, we had a tractor that could pull the disc. And one time I went out to disc the West 40, it started sprinkling. I thought it was going to rain. So I came in. He said, now, why did you come in? I said, it looks like it's going to rain. He says, can you still work the ground? I said, go back out there and work the ground. But you see, I needed power, the power of a tractor to pull that disc, to prepare the field for plowing. Now, farming's changed so much today, they don't do it that way anymore, but that's the way it was, well, 45 years ago. the way it was then. But you see, and the same thing is true in evangelism. We can go out and witness, sure. But we need power. We need help. We just simply need help. And that's why this theme is so important. My dear friends, we need help. We need help from heaven. Well, a second question. Who needs the Holy Spirit for evangelism? Well, certainly pastors need His help for evangelism. Pastors are to do the work of an evangelist. Pastors are to stand in the pulpit and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. There must be a dependence upon the Holy Spirit. I cannot imagine a pastor coming to a pulpit at any time and not crying to the God of heaven for the help of heaven to preach the Word of God. But all the saints of God need the Holy Spirit. Who received the Spirit of God on the day of Pentecost? Was it just Peter? Was it just Peter and the other eleven? Well, let's see. Look at Acts chapter 2. Acts chapter 2. There were one hundred and twenty in that upper room in verse two. One says in the day of Pentecost to fully come. They were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came the sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them divided tongues as a fire and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Finally, the prayer of Moses is answered. Oh, Lord, that all of your people would have the Holy Spirit. And now they do. And now they do. And they spoke the word of God with boldness. Peter was their spokesman to the multitudes. But before the multitudes gathered to hear one man, there were multitudes that heard 120 men and women speaking the wonders and the praises of God. Acts chapter eight in verses three and four has been referred to in both of the previous messages. I want you to look at these two verses again with me tonight. Very significant verses, I think, and we note the words and the language of these verses. Verse three, as for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house and dragging off men and women and committing them to prison. Therefore, Those who were scattered went everywhere, preaching the word, as our brother Earl said last night. That's not the same word as we find in verse five when it says, Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ to them. It's the same English word, but it's a different word in the text. Let's look at the word in verse five first. He preached the word. That's a word which means public proclamation of someone who has been officially designated and set aside and authorized by an authority to proclaim truth. That's what Philip did. Now the word in verse 4 is sometimes used of those who have been officially and publicly authorized, but not always. And here is one instance where it's not. Therefore they were scattered when everywhere sharing, speaking the good news. It was on their lips because it was in their hearts and because their hearts were filled with Christ, filled with the knowledge of forgiveness of sins, filled with the love for Jesus. Wherever they went, they shared the good news of the gospel. Why? They love Christ. Why did they love Christ? Because Christ had died for them. How was all this brought to such a high level of experience in their hearts? They had the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit is the one who gives light and life and seals truth to our hearts. They were sharing the word of God. They all shared the word of God. So I say to you, who needs the Holy Spirit for evangelism? We all do. Men and women, everyone who professes the name of Jesus Christ. Now, the way that we do our evangelism is different. Not everyone is going to stand in a pulpit and preach the word of God. God doesn't intend that. Christ doesn't gift everyone to do that, nor should everyone even necessarily desire that. But there should be a passion in every single Christian's heart, and that is that their sons and daughters know Jesus. And fathers, when you gather your family around for family worship, I pray that you are an evangelist and that you ask for the Spirit of God to help you to be able to to teach the Scriptures to the hearts of your children. Sometimes you do that in solemn tones. Sometimes you'll read the Bible story and have them acted out in a play. that all the legitimate means that you use in mothers praying for your children and teaching your children. And then with your neighbors, O Lord God, give me the boldness to speak to my neighbors who know not Christ. And please use my words. Our neighbors will die. As I had a dear neighbor die just this last spring. I wish he would have received my witness. I fear he did not. But we need the help of the Spirit of God. And it is the Spirit of God who enables us and gives us the power and the passion to speak to men and women and boys and girls about the Lord Jesus. Do you have a vacation Bible school? What do you do for a vacation Bible school? I hope you pray. And I hope that everyone who is involved prays for the enduement of power from on high to be able to reach boys and girls with the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have a couple of young ladies in our church who came to the elders here several months ago. They had a great burden for abused women in the women's shelter. And we said, go for it. They went down there and it's been a wide open door. No church had ever done anything like this before, they said. And they go down a couple of times a month. And the result has been that almost every Sunday since they've gone down, we have women from that shelter coming to the worship service as they share Christ with them. What do these women need? They need the spirit of God. As we all do, in whatever areas of evangelism in which we are involved, they need the Spirit of God. Who needs the Spirit of God? Every Christian needs the Spirit of God. To have a passion for souls and the power that is needed to tell people of Christ, I can't do it by myself and neither can you. But the Spirit of God is able to help us. Well, I want to move quickly on to a third question, what are the marks of the Spirit's power? Well, you know, there are extraordinary marks of the Spirit's power, and then we must acknowledge that there are very ordinary marks of the Spirit's power. There are extraordinary marks of the Spirit's power. We have plenty of scriptural warrants in what we've read already tonight to demonstrate that. We don't often see extraordinary marks of the Spirit's power. I mean, how many of us have had the experience of Peter going to Cornelius's house and preaching the gospel? While we are preaching, the Spirit of God falls upon people and it becomes obvious that they become Christians. How many have had that experience? I haven't. How many of us have ever had the experience of preaching the gospel with such power that somebody rises up and says, what must I do to be saved? Tell me, tell me, tell me. Well, occasionally there are extraordinary marks of the Spirit's power, and there certainly were in the early church. I was thinking this afternoon and as I was preparing this message about an unusual experience that we had in our church back in 1995, never had anything like it before a similar thing last summer, but ninety five stands out. We had a group of weak Christian young people who met for prayer every week, and I met with them. And their prayer was weak and feeble, and they asked the Lord that they might have bold to be able to speak for Christ in our Christian school, because they were in a minority at that particular time in history. And there was a night in our home when we had the youth over and we were listening to the account of some revivals that were occurring on some Christian college campuses. And the spirit of God met with us. And there was a solemnity that fell upon that There are a couple of Navy guys that were there with the young people, and they both confessed sin in a general way. And the meeting ended, and I said, my Reina was out in the kitchen, so it's time to come out and eat. And not a single young person would leave their seat. They didn't come out to eat. That is unusual. And the fruit of that is still seen in our church today. Some of these 20 somethings that you see running around here can tell you about it. Extraordinary. Wonderful occurrence. But then there are the ordinary marks of the Spirit's power. Paul preached at Antioch In Acts 13, 48, it says, Now, when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord, and as many has been appointed to eternal life, believed and the word of the Lord was being spread throughout the region. That's just the ordinary marks of God's power. The word of God is preached and people believe. I've read in some of your letters that we had a number of young people who were saved and we heard their testimony was just the regular, ordinary ministry of the church that they were brought to Christ. Nothing, no firecrackers, no great movements such as I just described. Just the ordinary means that are used with dads with their children and mothers with their children and Sunday school teachers and the preaching and And others in the church who talk to these ones about Jesus Christ and God saves them. The ordinary means are just as precious and important to us as the extraordinary. I remember once, years and years ago, I went to a couple's house. They had visited the church that I pastored. This was up in Iowa. And I asked them. I asked this lady what would happen to her if she died that night, whether or not she'd go to heaven. And some of you know where I got that. And I could tell that she bristled and I took it no further. And I left and I felt it was entirely, entirely a failure in sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with this woman. Two years later, I found out what happened. She got so mad at me. that she couldn't sleep that night. And she told her husband how mad she was at me. And he told her, he says, well, maybe you ought to be able to answer that question. So the next day she came in town to find me because she was so under conviction of sin and she figured I lived next to the church, which I didn't. Nobody home. She couldn't find me. And she stayed in town most of the day, still couldn't find me. She went home and her husband was milking the cows. You could guess he was a farmer then. And she said, what am I going to do? He says, I don't know. He says, all I know when I got saved, I just I just knelt down and asked the Lord to save me. And she became a Christian. I didn't think I had the Holy Spirit at all when I talked to her. The Holy Spirit works whether we think we have him or not. He works. And two years later, I had the privilege of baptizing him and heard the story. So the ordinary marks the Spirit. When people are being saved, the Spirit of God is working. Whether or not we have any great feelings and emotions and experiences, That may be the case, but not always is it the case. Remember that Pentecost was unique. The spirit of God was given. And every single one of God's people has the Holy Spirit. We must depend on him. Which leads me to my fourth question, which is how does the church regularly access the power of the Holy Spirit for evangelism? I have four directives. First. Evangelize with conscious dependence upon the Holy Spirit. Whether it's vacation Bible school, the pulpit ministry, nursing homes, the mission acts of mercy, We must consciously be dependent upon the Holy Spirit. Not just assume that he will help us, but consciously dependent upon him. Listen to what the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1, 8 and 9. He says, For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble, which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead. We do not trust in ourselves. We trust in the God who raises the dead. And he has promised to give us the Holy Spirit. See how weak the apostle was. But we see how powerful he was. No, it wasn't him. It was the Spirit of God working in him. For pastors, John Piper in his book, The Supremacy of God in Preaching, has a stirring and convicting paragraph in the chapter, The Gift of Preaching, The Power of the Holy Spirit, He says how utterly dependent we are on the Holy Spirit in the work of preaching. All genuine preaching is rooted in a feeling of desperation. You wake up on Sunday morning and you can smell the smoke of hell on one side and feel the crisp breezes of heaven on the other. You go to your study and look down at your pitiful manuscript And you kneel down and cry, God, this is so weak. Who do I think I am? What audacity to think that in three hours my words will be the odor of death to death and the fragrance of life to life. 2 Corinthians 2.16. My God. Who is sufficient for these things? And that must always be our heart and our attitude. Who is sufficient for these things? Whether we are in the pulpit, whether we are in our Sunday school class, whether we are at the women's shelter, whether we are at the nursing home, whether we are going to our neighbor to give them a loaf of bread to have an entrance for the gospel. a feeling of desperation. Who is sufficient for these things? We are not. We must access the power of the Spirit of God and we must evangelize with dependence upon the Holy Spirit for all our church evangelism. A second directive. We must pray for the power and the help of the Spirit in church evangelism. Again, in the Gospel of Luke, chapter Luke, verse 13, verses 9 and following, Jesus said, Ask, and it shall be given unto you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. And then in verse 13, Jesus says, If you, then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? One of the reasons I'm so thankful for the reformed faith is it delivered me from having to overlook this particular verse in the Bible, because I was taught that I had the Holy Spirit and you have all the Holy Spirit. You have all of him that you need and you never pray for the Holy Spirit. And I kept reading that Jesus said, ask and he'll give you the Holy Spirit. How does that fit? Well, once I got out of the tradition in which I was brought up and came to understand the reformed faith, I can pray for the Holy Spirit. I need the Holy Spirit. I can pray for him. I must seek him. What do we do when our church is barren? What do we do when there aren't conversions? What do we do when our young people are going astray? What are we doing? It looks like life is falling apart in the church. We need the Spirit of God. We need help from heaven. And so we pray. Perhaps declare days of prayer and fasting. The first day of prayer and fasting that was ever declared a Sycamore Baptist Church, at least in my ministry, was We didn't even know what we wanted. We just knew we needed help from heaven as we begin our reformation. And we prayed and the Lord answered. A whole bunch of people left and then a whole bunch of more people left and a whole bunch of more people left. But over the years, a whole bunch of people came in and a whole bunch of people came in and a whole bunch of people came in. We need help. We need to pray for the Holy Spirit. Thirdly, we need to labor in faith. We must avoid the Elijah syndrome which says, I only am left. Oh no, we're not. Therefore, my beloved brethren, Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. Success is promised. Labor in faith. I know it's hard. I know from experience it's hard. I know what it feels like to want to give up. I don't want to tell you how many times I wanted to get away from Sycamore Baptist Church. But I don't want to get away now, and I am leaving. There is no such thing as a vain labor for the Lord. Labor in faith. And a fourth directive. Practice giving all praise, glory, and honor to our triune God. Practice that. When success comes, when a soul is saved, give praise to God. A dear brother over in a country far, far away, after midnight, one night, taught me a very important lesson. He says, your ministry here is going to be greatly appreciated. It's good if you will say something like this when they thank you. Just respond by saying, thank the Lord. Give praise to God. The apostle says, but by the grace of God, I am what I am and His grace toward me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God that was in me. Whatever we do, Give glory to God and give thanks to God. Let us never grieve the spirit by tooting our own horn. But give glory to God. Dear brethren, we need the power of the spirit of God. He is with us. He dwells with us. He is sanctifying us. Let us plead. For help in all of these areas and let us plead for his help. in the matter of evangelism. Some of you are probably too young to remember a great pianist who is still living. I believe he's 73 years of age now by the name of Van Cliburn. He hit the world scene in 1958. Khrushchev, a wonderful friend from Russia. decided that he wanted to show that Russia was not only technologically advanced and way beyond the United States, because they had put the Sputnik in space the year before. And some of us remember watching black and white television sets in school when that happened. And so he had a Tchaikovsky concert and inviting pianists from all over the world. Van Cliburn, at 23 years of age, participated. It was a foregone conclusion that this particular Russian classical pianist would win the contest. However, this young man, Van Cliburn, was taking the crowds by storm. And it finally came to the last concert, the last piece that had to be played. They had to play several pieces, and the concert hall was literally jam-packed with people over there in Moscow. Van Cliburn played. And after he got done playing, the people rose and gave him an eight-minute ovation. Eight minutes. And up until that time, the judges had been trying to adjust the scores, but a couple of judges noted what was happening. They adjusted the scores by giving 25 was the high score. They give them, you know, like a 15 or 16. And then the Russian buddies, they give them 17 or 18. A couple of the judges found this. So they started giving Van Cliburn 25 and the other zero. But they knew, the head judge knew, that Khrushchev had already determined who was going to win. But after that last piece, which Van Cliburn played, the head judge went to Nikita Khrushchev and he said to him, what are we to do? And Khrushchev said, who is the best pianist? He said, it's Van Cliburn. Give him the prize, he said. And so Van Cliburn got the prize. He came back to New York City to a ticker tape parade. The only classical pianist who has ever been given a ticker tape parade down Madison Avenue in New York City. He recorded that concert. He eventually went triple platinum. Now I tell you all that to say this, what if tomorrow afternoon Van Cliburn were to come to this building? And what if many of us were gathered around this beautiful piano, for which we are so thankful? It's only just a few weeks old. It's actually 10 years old, but it's a few weeks old to us. And what if someone of us who couldn't play very well, which would be me, and I was sitting there playing C chords. And Van Cliburn came and sat down. And we didn't recognize him. And then he left. And someone said, did you know that that was Van Cliburn? We say, oh, no, why didn't we ask him to play this beautiful instrument? Now, you see the point I'm making? We can evangelize. We can pass out tracks. We can preach from our pulpits. We can have our vacation Bible studies. But we've got a greater than Van Cliburn that is available to us. We have the power of heaven, the Holy Spirit. And if we don't ask our great and gracious God for that power to be endued upon us from on high, we will be as silly as listening to someone making beautiful C chords We have the greatest living pianist in our midst, and don't ask him to play. Let us not be guilty of that. You shall receive power. Pray for power. Plead with God for power. Will he not give it? Will he give us a scorpion? Will he give us a stone? Will he not give us the Holy Spirit? Let us pray. Our Father. It is our prayer that you would grant us that power from on high. Oh, Lord God, we confess our weakness, we confess our sin and not pleading with you as we are. And not depending upon the Spirit of God as we are. Of doing all too much in the flesh. Help us, we pray. to have the Spirit of God grant us that power, that we would not only be committed to the Great Commission, but that we would be able, by Your grace, through Your Spirit, to preach the gospel in our churches. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord and Savior. Amen.