Supernatural Power for World Missions, Ephesians 5, verses 18-21. Let's hear the word of the Living God. And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord. giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of God. This is the Word of God. We are commanded to be filled with the Spirit, to be being filled with the Spirit, to go on being filled with the Holy Spirit. It is in the imperative tense, it is a command. It is in the passive tense, we must let ourselves be filled. It is in the present continuous tense, we are to continually go on letting ourselves be filled with the Spirit. We must be being filled with the Spirit. The emphasis here in the Greek is so clear. For a Christian not to be Spirit-filled is actually a downright sin. If we are not filled with the Holy Spirit, then we are living in sin. God commands us, be filled with the Holy Spirit. And if you do not obey, then you sin by neglect. There are not only sins of commission, there are sins of omission. James 4 verse 17 says, to know the good that we ought to do and to fail to do it, that is sin. By indifference to the Word of God, by apathy to His commands, by spiritual laziness and spiritual carelessness, by a sluggish and lukewarm response to God's great command to be filled with this Holy Spirit. The Church has been filled, not by the Spirit, but by the world. The Church has been filled by the flesh and by the devil, with sinful, half-hearted, lukewarm, semi-saved, half-saved, pseudo-saved, even unsaved, poor imitations of the real thing. As Christians, we are involved in a full-scale war. It's a world war of worldviews. It's a clash of civilizations. It's a battle for the heart and the mind. It's a battle for the family. It's a battle for the future, for our faith. And yet, the Church in general doesn't seem to be doing much fighting. The Church is being attacked by the powers of darkness. Deception, sin and worldliness are crippling, undermining church outreaches. And worse still, most Christians do not even seem to be aware that we are in a war. Yes, a war requires conscription, rationing, sacrifice. All of us have friends and family members under the attack of the evil one. We have family members chained by the devil. where family members trapped in addictions and sinful habits and the church as sheep who have been carried away, captured by the false prophets and the filthy demons of hell. Satanists and occultists are undermining church leaders and the work of the church by incantations, hexes and subtle spiritual warfare. Secular humanists are deceiving, distracting and deluding so many of the church leaders. And yet, by tempting and blinding and deceiving and distracting and deluding Christians, many have been deceived into engaging in false priorities, embracing false doctrines, adopting false agendas, employing human solutions and becoming ensnared in sinful habits and addictions. By keeping Christians from the Bible, by hindering us from prayer, the devil has rendered whole congregations and denominations ineffective. Many have accepted a false god, a false gospel and a false mission. That's one of the main points in the agenda twofold, that the average churches today have a false god, not the biblical god. And they've got a false gospel and a false mission. They've completely been sidetracked from the Great Commission and from loving God with all of our heart, soul, strength and mind into the world's agenda, rendering vast amounts of the Church ineffective in fulfilling the Great Commission. The devil is waging an all-out war against the forces of Jesus Christ and many seem to be confined to barracks, tamely singing choruses and having fun in fellowship. eat meat and retreat. Terrible thing to call a church camp a retreat. You're not meant to retreat, you're meant to be advancing. Napoleon once said as he looked out over the vast expanse of China on the map, there lies a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for if she wakes she will shake the world. If Napoleon could have said that 200 years ago about China, how much more could the devil be saying that about the Church today? If China was a sleeping giant 200 years ago, the Church today is an even greater sleeping giant. The power and influence and potential of the Christian Church, 2 billion people who claim to believe in Jesus Christ as the resurrected Son of God, what a sleeping giant! If the Church wakes, who would shape the world. We can liberate the world for Christ. We can reach every tribe, tongue, race and nation on earth for Christ in this generation. Christianity without Christ's mighty Holy Spirit is inept, dry, dull, powerless, ineffective. But Christianity and the power of the Holy Spirit, such as we read about in the Book of Acts, Christianity, as we read about in the time of the Reformation, and the Puritans, and the Revivals, and the great evangelical awakening, and Christianity during the greatest century of missions, that was dynamic, and fresh, and powerful, and spiritual, and invincible, earth-shaking, and history-making, winning whole tribes and nations, and even the cannibals to Christ. The greatest power in the universe is the power of God's Holy Spirit. There is no limit to what God can do in you and with you and through you if he is not quenched. Hench not the Holy Spirit, we are told. Resist not the Holy Spirit. We are not to lie to the Holy Spirit. We are not to resist the Holy Spirit. We are not to quench the Holy Spirit. We are rather to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We are to pray in the Spirit. We are to walk in the Spirit. It is said of the Christians of the first century, these people who have turned the world upside down have come here also. What a great description of church, the people who have turned the world upside down and have come here too. And that's exactly what true Christianity, the power of the Holy Spirit always accomplishes. Read through the book of Acts. And you can see the incredible impact of Spirit-filled believers as they came to every community. What an impact their lifestyle and their message had on the Roman Empire. Whenever the Gospel was proclaimed in the power of God's Holy Spirit, there was either a revival or there was a riot. But apathy and indifference was absolutely not an option. To such a radical message, such an invincible power, people either revolted in a riot or there was revival and they fell to the knees in repentance, brought their occultic books and burned them up, saying, I'm burning my bridges, no turning back, I've decided to follow Jesus, no turning back. Are you dissatisfied with your present personal spiritual experience? Are you frustrated by the inroads that the world, the flesh and the devil have made on the church and into our societies and countries? Do you long to see Christians making a greater impact on society? Is it the burden of your heart that the evangelization and discipleship of the whole world in this generation becomes a reality? If you determine to stop quenching the Holy Spirit, if you determine to humble yourself and pray and seek His face and turn from your wicked ways, to seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, if we Do this with a thirsty heart. If anyone thirsts, let him come unto me, Jesus said, and out of his innermost being will flow rivers of living water. And this he spoke about the Holy Spirit. As we ask, as we seek, as we knock, God promises to fill us. Ask, seek, knock. God promises to fill us with supernatural power from above. Tarry in the city until a power from above has come upon you, Jesus said. There is a vibrant vitality and life that comes from being filled with the Holy Spirit. God promises, He assures us, whoever asks will receive, whoever seeks will find, whoever knocks the door will be opened unto him. If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in Heaven give good gifts to those who seek Him? What father, when asked for a fish, will give his child a serpent? And so if you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more does He have me, Father, know how to give good gifts to those who ask Him? We must ask, we must seek, we must know. God stakes the honor of His name on the biblical promises. If we fulfill the simple conditions, He will work miracles and endure us with power from on high. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. So what then do we need to do in order to turn this world upside down, right side up, back to God? What is needed for us to reclaim the nations for Christ? Well, firstly, we need dedicated Christian disciples wholeheartedly committed to Christ. And we need to be freed from the chains of sin and selfishness and worldliness. The Hebrews could not be much servants to God while they were in chains to Pharaoh in Egypt. They need to be freed. They need to survive the Passover. They need to come across the Red Sea. They need to survive in the wilderness and come across the Jordan into the Promised Land and be trained and capable to fight to reclaim the land. And we need nothing less. We need Christians filled with the Holy Spirit. Secondly, we need these Christians able to be led by the Holy Spirit. into God's will, to do and to say the right things at the right time to the right people. God gives the very best to those who leave the choice to Him. And for God's master strategy of freeing this world from Satan and turning it to Christ, we need Christians master controlled, so as to know the most appropriate word or action to do or to say to the most prepared person at the most opportune time for the greatest results. We need Christians led by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit made me go, you read in the book of Acts. So we need to be fully committed to Christ, we need to be led by the Holy Spirit, and we need to know what it is to pray in the power of the Holy Spirit. Jude 20 speaks about praying in the Spirit. God acts in answer to prayer, and if we do not pray, we cannot expect God to act. Prayer releases the power of God. The only foundation for spiritual work is prayer. Now, prayer is not an alternative to obedience. Some people try to use prayer as an excuse for inactivity and disobedience. I'll pray about it often means I don't want to do it. But prayer is the foundation for obedient action. It's not an excuse for disobedience and inaction. Prayer releases the power of God. The only foundation for spiritual work is prayer. Prayer is our priority. A prayerless life is a powerless life. A prayerful life is a powerful life. Nothing lies beyond the reach of prayer except that which is beyond the will of God. When we pray in the Spirit, then we are releasing the greatest power in the universe. The Church needs Christians who will pray in the Spirit. Fourthly, we need Christians endued with supernatural power to win the spiritual war that is raging There are far too many of our friends and family members and churches that have been undermined, chained and crippled by the forces of evil. Deception, distraction, delusion are pervasive. The time has come to rise up and go out in the power of God's Holy Spirit to annihilate the forces of wickedness and worldliness. We must set prisoners free. That's a lot of what Christians are meant to do. Set the captives free. We must win the victory. And we can be more than conquerors through Christ Jesus who loved us. Greater is He who is in us than whom is in the world. Submit to God. Resist the devil. He will flee from us. If the devil is not fleeing from us then either we're not submitting to God or we're not resisting the devil or both. We must win a world for Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We must prevail. We shall prevail. We will prevail. In order to set the captives free, the prisoners of sin and Satan, the Lord has given believers power to bind evil. And wherever two or three are gathered in God's name, whatever we agree on can be done. What we bind on earth will be bound in heaven. What we loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. We can restrict, limit and oppose the files of rebellion and doubt and unbelief and sin and perversion and slavery and deception and hatred. We have the power to overcome the gates of hell, to storm the gates of hell, the very strongholds of evil. When the Lord said he is building his church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Many people see this as we're in our trenches, we're being attacked but we'll survive till the rapture comes. That's the wrong understanding. Gates don't attack, gates defend. The gates of hell shall not prevail against the church means the church is doing the attacking. The gates are doing the defending and falling. Satan can spend generations, millenniums, chaining and deceiving entire nations and cultures in superstition and false religion. But the gospel of Christ has the ability to come in a generation, in a lifetime or less, and smash those chains and set those captives free. Jesus himself said, I've given you authority so that you can walk on snakes and scorpions and overcome all the power of the enemy and nothing will harm you. Luke 10, 27. And so we are to announce liberty to the captives, to set free the prisoners. Even the demons must obey when a command is given to them by a Christian in Jesus' name. This is because when we place ourselves in submission to Almighty God, we're able to resist the lesser power of the only. Greater is Christ in us than Him in the world. The Church of Jesus Christ needs dedicated Christians who are Bible-based, Christ-centered, Spirit-led, prayerful Christians, endued with God's supernatural power and order to win the spiritual world and turn people to Christ. John Wesley famously said, give me 100 men who love God with all their hearts, who fear no one and nothing but God, and who hate nothing but sin, and I will change the world. We need Christians who will love God with all their hearts. We need Christians who will fear no one but God. We need Christians who will hate sin. And Christians who will make an impact on this world. And this is what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. To be filled with God's Holy Spirit is to be filled with the very nature of God, which is to be filled with Christ, which is to be filled with love and wisdom and knowledge. These are inseparable. To be filled with God's powers, to be filled with His love, knowledge and wisdom. And the power of God and the wisdom of God's Holy Spirit shows itself in dynamic action. Action that moves the world back to God. The mark of a Christian is love and the mark of love is action. True love is not just words and talk, it shows itself in action. And He is able to do far more abundantly above what we ask or think, or dream of by the power of His love working within us. We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. So how do we receive the fullness of God's Holy Spirit in our lives? The Spirit of God is received through the Word of God. As we expose ourselves to the Word of God, as we submit to the authority of the Word of God, God's Word above all things was what Bishop Stephen Bradley had over his churches. God's Word above all things. Sad that that's being taken down from the outside of St. James, because that used to be the theme. The Spirit of God is received through the Word of God, and as we expose ourselves to the Word of God and submit to its authority, we open ourselves to the powerful working of God's Holy Spirit, who works through the Word of God. You are cleansed by my Word, Jesus said. We are renewed, our minds are renewed, by the washing of the Word of God. It is the Gospel that is the power of God for the salvation of all who believe. Faith comes from hearing and hearing by the Word of God. So as we submit ourselves to the Word of God, we open ourselves up to the work of God's Spirit. The Bible teaches us that the Holy Spirit fills clean vessels in response to surrender and faith, and it is the Word of God that cleanses us. The Word of God imparts and builds up faith within us. Faith comes from hearing, hearing from the Word of God. The Word of God accomplishes the purpose of God. It never returns void. That is why we are taught that God is at work in them who believe and receive God's Word and faith. 1 Thessalonians 2.13. So as we surrender to the Son of God, we receive faith from the Word of God. We find the more we get into the Word of God, the more the God of the Word gets into us. It's like a blacksmith who puts his iron in a fire long enough for the fire to be on the iron. We need to be so immersed in the Word of God that the Spirit of God is in us. So as we accept and believe and submit to the Word of God, and as we receive simultaneously the cleansing of the Word, the infilling of faith, and the fullness of God's Holy Spirit. It all comes together. That is why the Protestant Reformers put the Bible, the open Bible, in the center. The pulpit, the teaching of God's Word, became central. The Mass, which had been central in Catholic churches throughout the Middle Ages, was moved to the side, or demolished, and replaced with a table or pulpit with an open Bible. because God's will is achieved through the preaching and teaching of the Word of God, the renewing of minds as we, by our very thoughts and minds, get conformed to the will of God. It is very telling that many churches today speak about the praise and worship as the singing part, and now that the praise and worship is over and the children can all leave, now we'll get to sermon. But the sermons may be a key part of worship because Having our minds renewed by the washing of the Word is a key part of worship. It is not just that God is worshipped by our singing. That's a vital part. We're a singing faith. But that the very thoughts and meditations of our hearts, not just what is sung, but what is said, and by how we respond to it, and how we have the meditations of our hearts being acceptable worship in the sight. So the more we are filled with the Word of God, The more we come under the influence of the Word of God, the more we come under the control of and apply the Lordship of Christ to all areas of life, the more we are filled with the Holy Spirit. The more we come under His influence and His control and we are able to be led by the Spirit, be filled by the Spirit, pray in the Spirit. Now this infilling is both a process and it is a crisis. You are responsible for the process of being continually filled with God's Spirit by being continually filled with His Word, by receiving His Word, by meditating on His Word, by applying His Word, by obeying His Word. Psalm 1 lays this out, But His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law He meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by rivers of water that brings forth its fruits in season, whose leaf shall not wither. Whatever he does shall prosper. Psalm 1 summarizes it. It is that we've put down our roots right down into the soil of the Word of God, which is nourished by the living waters of the Holy Spirit. God will respond at times to the crisis, where you may have a spiritual encounter and experience with God's Holy Spirit, either preparing you for some work or some hardship, or some task, or some responsibility, but doing a work within you, renewing your mind. That was a major emphasis of R.C. Sproul's ministry, so much so that he kept calling it Renewing Your Mind. And James Kendi had his program called Truths That Transform. And this gets to the heart of it. The truth of God's Word is what transforms us. Our mind needs to be renewed. Most people don't like this because this sounds too much like discipline and hard work. It's so much nicer if you can just have an aggregate abber. It's nicer if a Mary Poppins can come to your house and just click the fingers and everything jumps into their place. And so many people would prefer this idea of having health and wealth and having a miracle a day keeps the devil away and a whole lot of mumbo-jumbo magic, and most people want magic, they don't want the biblical faith. The biblical faith requires work and discipline and dedication and consistency, and that is not quite as exciting for our shallow, superficial, sensational, me generation, instant coffee, instant everything, microwave messages, let's just go straight to turn it up max and make it pop out of the oven like some popcorn that you put into the microwave. That is not the way we get biblical fruit. It's a process. Fruit is produced by months of nourishment, which includes nutrients in the soil, probably being cared for, and in our spiritual life it requires nothing more. We want to be more than popcorn and candy floss. We've got to have more nourishment and depth. We need the fruits of the spirit, not just the fruits of this world. And so we need inner healing. We need to be prepared ministry endowed with gifts and the Holy Spirit gives gifts to every member of the church. We need his empowerment for witness. You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth. It's the Holy Spirit that anoints us for worship. It's the Holy Spirit who empowers us to pray. It's the Holy Spirit who calls us to ministry. It's the Holy Spirit who led the church in Antioch to set upon Paul and Barnabas for the ministry to which they were called, which was to take the Gospel to Europe. All of these could be called the overflowing of God's Holy Spirit. When we are faithful to the process of being filled with the Word of God, then we'll find time and again when the Holy Spirit overflows from within us. There's been a lot of argument in the Church about the baptism in the Spirit and the filling of the Holy Spirit. Some will say you're filled by the Spirit, or you're filled with the Spirit, or you're filled, baptized in the Spirit. Well, actually, the word in, with, and by, which theologians have argued over for a long time, it's the same word in Greek, in, with, and by. So, whether you're filled with the Spirit, in the Spirit, by the Spirit, it becomes the same thing. It's the same word in the Greek. In a sense, we must be baptized by the Holy Spirit, into the Holy Spirit, filled with the Holy Spirit, overflowing with the Holy Spirit. It suggests being not just immersed in the Spirit, but the Holy Spirit being from within us. As Jesus said in John 7, rivers of living water flowing out from your innermost beings. So it's not just like in physical believers' baptism by immersion, where the person goes into the water. This is rivers of living water flowing from out of us. You must be filled with the Holy Spirit. It's not just being washed over by the Spirit, but it's the Holy Spirit coming within us, and that comes from the Word of God. And what is the fruit of the Spirit? What is the evidence of the Holy Spirit's work in a person's life? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The evidence of The fullness of the Holy Spirit is seen in any life surrendered to God. It is real love, overflowing joy, deep peace of heart and mind, exceptional patience, real kindness, true goodness, invincible faithfulness, genuine humility and great self-control. Jesus said you'll know a person by his fruit and he said we should be judging teachers and preachers by their fruit. The Spirit shows His presence through love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. This is the fruit of the Spirit. If you think of the fruit trees, the fruit tree's fruit is not for the tree's benefit, it's for the benefit of everyone passing by. the shade and the nutrients come for the benefit of others. In a Christian's life, in many ways, we exist to bless and benefit others, to be service to God's creatures. Many today, in many churches, would prefer us to be Christmas trees, which are all about the gifts. The gifts are important, but the fruits are also important. Martin Luther said that the decorations on the tree symbolize the fruit of the Spirit. The gifts on the tree symbolize the gifts of the Spirit. The decorations of the tree are also important. The fruit is in fact more important than the gifts of the Spirit in many ways. It is the fruit of the Spirit that produces the actions that make an impact on lives and change our world and accomplish God's will. A Christian filled with God's Holy Spirit is filled with faith and with power and love. And such a Christian is able to be directed and guided by God into his perfect world to accomplish his mighty purposes, fulfilling the Great Commission, reaching the nations for Christ, winning the world. Such a believer who is filled with God's Word will find that as he prays sincerely from his heart, according to the Scriptures that have been cherished and stored up in his mind, he has vital contact with and union in Christ. John 15 verse 7 is a key verse here. If you abide in me and if my words abide in you, then you will ask what you desire and it will be given to you. So as the will of God as revealed in the Word of God, and the desires of the Christian as transformed by the God of the Word meet and harmonize together they make combined impact with God's pre-answering power and his purposes are accomplished not by might nor by power but by my Spirit says the Lord this is spiritual dynamite actually that doesn't even come close this is spiritual nitroglycerin and it releases the power of God that is needed to transform lives and change the world. Three of the greatest natural forces in the world are fire, wind and water. And these three forces reveal something of the power of the Creator. On the day of Pentecost, the fire of God and the wind of the Holy Spirit and the living waters of Christ moved in great power and the church was born on the first day of the week, the day of Pentecost. Do you know what it's like to have the fire of God burn within you? Do you know what it is to have the wind of the Holy Spirit lead and guide you? Do the living waters of Christ flow from your life refreshing others? Power for living. Power for guidance. Power for prayer. Power for conquest. Power for missions. Your church needs this power. Your world needs this power. You need this power. Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom and teaching and admonishing, one other than psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. Be filled with the Spirit. Pray without ceasing. Go ye therefore. Let us pray. Lord God, we thank you and praise you for the power of your Holy Spirit. We praise you, Lord God, for the power of your Word. We pray, Lord God, that you'd deepen our faith, that you'd deepen our understanding of your word, that you'd transform our lives, that you'd renew our minds, that your truths would truly transform us. We pray, Lord God, that you'd increase our vision, our world vision, to fulfill your great commission in our generation. We pray this in Jesus' precious and holy name. Amen.