So this is Saturday afternoon and it's a Saturday afternoon session on the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Glory. My topic this afternoon is the coming of the Spirit and we've read in part some of the passages that relate to the coming of the Spirit where Jesus spoke about the promised Holy Spirit who would come in his name from the Father's side and that that spirit would be with us forever and that that spirit would be another comforter and that this spirit when he comes would convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgement. We also remember that Jesus promised the coming of the Holy Spirit in other places Perhaps most notably in our mind might be Acts chapter 1, where Jesus giving instructions by the Holy Spirit to his disciples after his resurrection and before his ascension, commanded them to wait in Jerusalem until they would receive the Holy Spirit whom he would send to them. and that Holy Spirit would empower them to be his witnesses both in Jerusalem and Judea and to the outermost parts of the earth. So the topic is the coming of the Spirit, particularly on the day of Pentecost, and then we'll look at the coming of the Spirit to other groups of people who are not there on the day of Pentecost, the Samaritans for example and the Gentiles and Cornelius' household. But if you wanted a subtitle for today's or this afternoon's study, The Coming of the Spirit, it would be Calvary, Pentecost and the Nations. Calvary, Pentecost and the Nations. Because God's plan and purpose is not just for the church, not just for individual persons within the church, not even just for a nation in which the church may exist, But God's plan and purpose is for all of the nations. And the new creation summer school next year at Victor Harbour is on that theme. The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. And we'll be seeing today, I think this afternoon, that the point of God's plan and purpose is not simply that there would be a church, but that through that church the fullness of God's blessing would be poured out upon the nations who have taken their stand against him. The nations take their stand, the kings of the earth take their stand and they take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying let us cast their cords from us and so forth. And God says these very nations, these very nations who have expressed their rebellion and in particular have expressed that rebellion in the crucifixion of my son, These very nations are the ones who I have the purpose of blessing through the outpouring of my Holy Spirit. So the coming of the Spirit, Calvary, Pentecost and the nations. And the first point we'd make simply is this, that the cross of Jesus Christ, in some senses, is for the coming of the Spirit. To put this quite simply, you could not have Pentecost without Calvary. If you could have Pentecost and the coming of the Spirit without Calvary, then you could have a cleansing without a cross. You remember we saw last time that John the Baptizer prophesied the coming of the Holy Spirit He said, one is coming after me, he is greater than I because he has existed before me. He is one whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. But when he comes, even though I baptise you with water, with a view to repentance and forgiveness of sins. When he comes, he is going to baptise you in the Holy Spirit. So just as John was immersing people, I take it, or perhaps effusing people, pouring out water on them in the Jordan, so Jesus would come at a later time and through the ministry of Jesus, people would be immersed into or have the Spirit poured out upon them in such a way that they were drenched to the core with the Spirit instead of just water. And John then goes on to speak about that ministry of the Spirit, and he says that when he comes, when Jesus comes and when the Holy Spirit comes, he is going in some senses to be a spirit of fire and cleansing. Jesus is already here and his winnowing fork is in his hand and he is going to winnow the chaff from the grain and he's going to take his grain into his storehouse and he's going to burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. Now when we think about the ministry of the Holy Spirit, very often we think about the coming of the Spirit and the gentleness and the imagery of the dove and so forth. But the other way in which the Spirit's ministry is often spoken about in the Old Testament is as a fire, something burning, something purifying, or as a flood, a flood not simply which brings life to the barren ground but also which washes away the impurity. And when John the baptiser spoke about Jesus' ministry, he spoke about him bringing the spirit in that way which is going to be a sifting and a sorting, a cleansing, a judgement process. That when he comes, he would convict the world, we saw in John chapter 16, he would convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgement. And as the preaching of the Gospel would go out by the power of the Holy Spirit, wherever the Spirit would proclaim the Gospel of Jesus to the nations, there would be a polarising. There will be a gathering in of some and a casting out of others. There will be a reception of that word of the Gospel by some and a rejection by others. And we'd be deceived if we thought that that initial response was the final response. Very often an initial response will be a very negative and hard response for the Gospel only to be followed later on into patience and mercy of God by an even greater harvest than we could ever have imagined. And so there is this necessity to have a cleansing action of the Holy Spirit. He is the Holy Spirit. and he could not be sent on the day of Pentecost unless there had been Calvary previously. He could not come into our hearts teaching us to cry, Abba, Father, unless that Father had removed our sin from us and reconciled us to himself in the blood of his Son. He couldn't tell us or teach us to cry, Jesus is Lord, unless he had somehow dealt with the rebellion that we have against his Lordship, which is of such an order as Jesus says in the parable, here is the sun, the air, now let us kill him. And we could not say, the spirit and the bride say come, we could not bring an invitation to all of the nations to come and to drink of water without cost and to be filled with the ministry of God through his precious Holy Spirit. We could not say that unless our hearts had been turned, unless they had been cleansed of all of our rebellion and hatred of God. because in ourselves, left to ourselves, we are filled with all unrighteousness, we are filled with envy, we are filled with hatred, so that when Jesus comes to us and we crucify the Son of God, as Martin was speaking to us about that this morning, That is not the response of certain evil men who lived at an evil time. That is the response of every one of us to God our Father now manifest in His Son, so that if God were within striking distance, we'd strike Him a thousand times. Indeed, God came within striking distance and we killed Him. So deep is our hatred towards Him. Now these things that we say are not are readily recognised by the fallen human mind because we have this utter understanding that other people are evil and somehow we are okay, or at least we are not quite as evil as other people are. Some of you may know the work of Martin Niemoller, Niemoller who was a prisoner in Dachau, a prisoner of war camp. And unlike, what's the other guy? Unlike Bonhoeffer, survived the prison camp, Bonhoeffer was executed, Martin Niemoller wasn't, he survived. There's a book that you can get called Sermons from Dachau or Dachau Sermons. But apparently after the war, in a certain gathering I've heard, Niemoller stood and said, I have news for you. Hitler is still alive and living in every one of us. What we see in the horrendous evil of one or another is in fact the manifestation of human wickedness that resides in every fallen human heart. So let us not think that when Jesus came and ministered among us and walked among us and talked among us that the problem was that he came to a particularly wicked group of people and we would have responded differently. No, in essence and in effect we were there, gathered together in this holy city against thy servant Jesus, who is Herod and Pontius Pilate and all of the people of Israel and all of the Gentiles, all of the nations were there. And the nations of the earth, we there among them, took our stand and said, let us cast off their cords from us, take their stand against the Lord and against his anointed. You may remember that song that we sometimes sing, I'm sure you sing it here, about Jesus where he's on his way to the cross and there's a verse in particular that says, Behold I heard my voice cry out among the scoffers, you know that? I was preaching in a certain place on one occasion and we had sung that song And a young woman came up to me afterwards and she said, as we sang that, it was as though the whole of the room and everything faded away and I was there, I could actually see in my mind, I could see virtually physically Jesus walking past after his beating and before his crucifixion. And I was there and I cried out, I hate you! Crucify! And it was such a revelation of the sin that the grace that meets that sin is untellable. And so it is for all of us that what is so in the human heart is a manifestation of our anger and hatred and hostility towards God. So there could be no possibility that God could send the Holy Spirit without there being a cleansing action which takes account of that wickedness and hostility, which does not deal with the evil and sin and the guilt, not just of human sin in transgression of some abstract law, but deals with the actual guilt of the fact that we hate our father, that we hate the one who's made us. and that all of our sin is an affront against his personal holiness, and all of our sin is an insult of his utter purity and grace. So there's no such thing in that sense as big sins and little sins, that they all come from the same root. We never have to teach our children, have you noticed this, we've never had to teach our children to say no. And you never have to teach your children to become jealous or envious. Do you? Do you have jealousy and envy classes in your house? You never have to teach your children how to lie, to cheat, to steal, to kick their brother or sister under the table. It all just sort of comes naturally, doesn't it? Well, unnaturally, not what we're created for. And you don't have to teach a child to hate God. You just try it. You just try taking even a class of toddlers at primary school, where you think you're going to tell a nice gentle bible story and they just leap off their seats to believe it. No, don't you bet, they've got their will set against hearing that. And they're ok so long as you're telling the story, but as soon as you come to the heart of the scriptures, no, not going to have it. So Jesus has to come from the throne room of heaven with the purpose of blessing the nations and with the purpose of blessing the nations through the Spirit's ministry. But he cannot have the Spirit come to us without there being something that deals with the rebellion of the nations and the rebellion of those who are to receive the Holy Spirit. Turn with me to John chapter 15. Verse 26, When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about me. And you will testify also because you've been with me from the beginning. When the Helper comes, the Comforter, the Spirit, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about me. So what does he testify when he comes to us? When the Spirit comes to us and testifies, what does he testify about Jesus? Well he testifies that Jesus is indeed the Lamb of God. He testifies that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away not just the sin of the world, but in particular he testifies that Jesus is the Lamb who has taken away my sin. When He comes He testifies to us of the glory of the Son, of the richness of His grace, of the completeness of His sacrifice, of the finality of the propitiation that He has offered of the cross. You would not know these things except it be by the Holy Spirit testifying about all that the Son is and all that the Son has done. But if the Spirit is going to glorify the Father and the Son, And if the Spirit is going to lead us to worship the Father and the Son, then all of the acts of testifying that the Holy Spirit will do, will lead us to know the glory of which Martin was speaking earlier, the glory of the self-emptying, the glory of the pouring out, the glory of the self-ablation, the glory of the self-offering, of the humbling to the point of death, even death on the cross, Jesus could not be lifted up among us by the ministry of the Holy Spirit without the Holy Spirit preaching that cross to us in our hearts. The Father could not be revealed to us in His fullness by the Holy Spirit unless it be the Spirit revealing to us the action of the Father here in His love, not that we love God, but that He loved us. and did what? And sent his son as a propitiation for our sins. You cannot know the Father unless you come to know him through the cross of his son Jesus Christ. You cannot love the Father unless you know that he has loved you first in his cross, You cannot worship either the Father or the Son unless you come through that crucible of the cross where all of our false worship is put to death and you cannot come to know any of that unless the Holy Spirit comes and takes that which is His and reveals it to us. You cannot know any of it unless the Holy Spirit comes and testifies to us of all that the Father and the Son have accomplished. So that's why when we talk about the coming of the Spirit, you can't really separate Calvary from Pentecost. Now I think there's a tendency among us very often to want to circumvent the cross. We want to move past it, beyond the cross to something else. It's not just a problem that we face today, is it? We've got most of our New Testament letters because that very same thing was happening, that people in Galatia or Corinth or somewhere else wanted to move beyond the cross, or apart from the cross, or so have some access to the Father by some other means other than the cross, or know some other glory other than the glory of the cross. You cannot go anywhere in God, to God, except it be through and in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world was crucified to me and I to the world, says Paul. So the Holy Spirit has to take all of that work which was accomplished on the cross and bring it to us. You think, well how can that happen? How can the Holy Spirit bring all of that to us? And I believe the answer lies in what we've been seeing earlier. that He offered Himself through the Eternal Spirit without blemish to God, that that Holy Spirit who was there in Jesus Christ, who brought all of us into union with Jesus Christ, that same Holy Spirit who was there with Him on that cross enabling Him to come through all of the sufferings on that cross Because the Holy Spirit was no mere bystander in the cross, the Holy Spirit has been in the inner heart and the inner experience of the Father and the Son of the cross. Because the Holy Spirit has been right in the very crucible of Calvary enabling the Son to offer that perfect sacrifice to the Father. Because He's been the Spirit of the Father ministering to the Son in His hours of suffering on the cross. Because He's been the Spirit of the Son, crying out the Father's holiness in worship as He's been under the suffering on the cross. Because the Holy Spirit has come from the very furnace of the cross, He can take all that is there in that cross and bring it to every one of us. And He can say, this is the Father who loves you. And this is the Son who has given himself for you. And I do not speak, the Holy Spirit might say, academically as though I've read it in a book. I know these two, the Father and the Son, because I have come from them and I was with them in the very crucible of that action. So when Jesus says that the Holy Spirit is going to come, and he's going to come first in Jerusalem and then Judea and then Samaria and then to the uttermost parts of the earth, that Holy Spirit when he would come would actually empower people to preach the cross, to bear witness to Jesus, to testify to the glory of the Father and the Son and to bring honour to the holiness of God's name which is indicated in the cross. The Holy Spirit can do that because of His active presence in the crucifixion. He can do it because of His active ministry coming from the Father through the Son, poured out to us through the action of God's own grace. Now when we think about all of that, the first heading, the cross of the Son is for the Spirit's coming, that leads us to this next point. that all of that action of the Spirit is for the blessing of the nations. What was the promise that God made to Abraham? The promise that God made to Abraham was through you, descendants would come, and kings would come from them, men who would rule the earth, we have many streams to the prophecies and promises that God made to Abraham. But chief among them is this, that through your seed, all of the nations of the earth would be blessed. All of the nations of the earth would be blessed. In other words, all of the nations of the earth would have the cleansing of the cross brought to them by the power of the Holy Spirit. All of the nations of the earth would have to have their worship reorientated as Abraham's worship was. Remember Abraham was an idol worshipper in Ur of the Chaldees, and the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham, says Stephen in Acts chapter 7. And instead of being a worshipper of idols, he became a worshipper of God most high, a worshipper of the living God. So God appears to Abraham, transforms his worship, becomes a servant of the living God, and the one through whom the covenant promises are made. So the promise that is made to Abraham That all of the nations would be blessed through his seed must mean that the nations would too have their worship transformed. That they would turn from serving dumb idols to serve the living God. They would turn from walking according to the flesh and they would start walking according to the spirit. They would no longer walk according to the prince of the power of the air who is at work in the children of disobedience. but they would walk according to the Spirit, they would no longer have fellowship with demons in their worship, but they would have fellowship with Jesus, the living God, because the ministry of the Holy Spirit would transform the worship of the nations. So when Paul and the others went about preaching the Gospel, they knew that that proclamation was not just for one person here or that person there somehow that they may be saved, but that through that preaching the Gospel would be the power of God so that whole nations would be transformed, that whole communities would be turned to God from idols. That whole communities would be convicted of sin and righteousness and judgment. And that men and women would talk with one another on the street corners about the stuff that really matters, instead of the football. Boy, when that happens, will no revivals come to Australia. And when that spirit ministry comes on the day of Pentecost, as people receive the spirit promised from Jesus to his disciples, They declare the marvellous works of God. The wonder was not so much that they declared them all in these different languages, though that was marvellous enough. The wonder was that you had a group of Jews from all over the known world, now actually declaring praise and worship to God. They had been turned to worship the living God. So in Romans chapter 1 verse 5, and in various places towards the end of Romans chapter 15, verse 15 and following, and Romans chapter 16 verse 25 and following, you can look them all up later, Paul speaks about the fact that his gospel has been given so that the nations would learn the obedience of faith. Now I don't know how much we really believe that today. I think the church very much has lost hope in the gospel. We've substituted the gospel with programs which we think might attract people. But here's Paul scuttling around the known world from all intents and purposes a nobody, rejected by his own people. Many of the churches he founded didn't even want to know him after a while. And this Paul is the one who has in his heart this apostolic gospel brought to him by Christ, kept in him by the Holy Spirit, and he knows that when that word goes out, it can transform whole nations, whole communities, whole people groups can be just turned upside down and turned around. And as the church saw that, they witnessed the wonderful works of God. Remember in Acts chapter 1, Jesus said to Peter and the others, that you will receive power, the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and you will be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, the uttermost part of the earth. Now if we were to go back to the Old Testament, we would find that that statement, you will be my witnesses, is almost a direct quote from Isaiah chapter 42. And in Isaiah chapter 42, there's a prophecy about God's people coming out of their captivity in Babylon and the other places where God has scattered them. and there's a statement that God is going to bring them back and God's going to settle them in the land, and it says, when you see me do this, you will be my witnesses. In other words, you will witness what I am doing. You will see what I am doing. And if you read the accounts in the book of the Acts, it has that sense about it. That as Peter and James and John and Paul and the others preached the Gospel, They saw God bringing people out of captivity into freedom. They saw people being turned from the worship of idols to the worship of living God. They saw people being set free from demonic oppression and being released into the fullness of God's Spirit. They just saw it happen. And if you were to say to Peter or to Paul or to John, tell me, what program did you use? How did you get it to happen? They'd say, what are you talking about? God's here. God's doing it. We are witnessing what God is doing. We are not, I mean this is a phrase that has become so common in the church, church life today, but we say we are doing things for God as if dear God doesn't have much choice and unless we do things for him he is sort of hamstrung. No we don't do things in that sense for God at all. It is God who does the work And he catches us up in the process, and when we are caught up in the process, we stand back in amazement, looking and saying, oh, we are just witnessing God in action. And yes, that preaching or that teaching or whatever it is, comes through Peter's voice box or Paul's voice box. But it's not as though Peter or Paul have somehow got the magic program that all the other churches needed to copy. They were just filled with the Spirit and are living in the Gospel. And as the Gospel went out, so God worked. And if you were to say, well how did they move from place to place? What was the pattern of their proclamation? And you'd have to say it was all pretty chaotic from a human point of view. If you see a map of where Paul's journeys went, yeah they start in Antioch and they finish in Antioch, well not all of them but a couple of them did, and you say well how did that happen? Well there's shipwrecks, there's illness, there's the Spirit of the Lord not saying no, don't go in there and the Spirit of the Lord saying there and then something else happens and Titus comes from here and so they go there. You think well it's all just crazy stuff you know. They said no, we are just being blown along by the wind of the Spirit. The Spirit blows where he wills, Jesus says in John chapter 3. So it is with all of those who are born of the Spirit. From a human point of view it looks a little bit like the missionaries of journeys of Paul and some of the others were like a fly crawling into an inkwell and just trudging across the paper. But they are blown here and there by the wind of the Spirit. They were witnessing the work of God. But the general pattern is Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the outermost parts of the earth. So they were commanded to wait in Jerusalem until the Spirit came upon them. And then on that great day, how did they get all of those people together to listen to a sermon? Have you ever thought about how they gathered so many thousands together to listen to a sermon? Well it says that the other people heard the sound of the rushing wind and they came out to look what was going on and they got preached at. Like they didn't even have to assemble the people. I was reading the, or listening again to some accounts of a revival in a particular place which I first came across some 20 odd years ago and hear that in various ways it's going on. And in this particular place the revival was amongst an African people and the man telling the story at the time was saying Africans are not known for punctuality. He said if the meeting is at 2 o'clock, you might get people arriving at 3. Either that day or the next. This meeting was supposed to start at 2 o'clock. They thought they would get there early, just in case anyone came early. So they got there half an hour before the meeting started. There were some hundreds of people already assembled. Very unusual. They said, when did you come here? They said 6 o'clock this morning, we've been waiting for you. How does that happen? You put on free sausage sizzle. No, the spirit compels, the spirit drives, the spirit impels. Because here is a group of people who need to hear the apostolic word of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And as they come, they are already under the conviction of sin and righteousness and judgement. And so this whole group here, the rushing wind, and they all come out to look, and Peter and the others are just extolling the marvellous works of God, and they think, these are really strange people, they're drunk already. So great was their joy. I don't think most of us are in danger of being mistaken of being drunk most Sunday mornings in our congregations. But so great was the exuberance. They thought, they're drunk. And Peter says, no, no, they're not drunk. And each one heard them telling the marvellous deeds of God in their own language. And then Peter stands up and gives them this great exposition. This that you see and hear is actually what was promised by the prophet Joel, that in the last days I will pour out my Holy Spirit upon all flesh. It's not just now limited to this king, or that prophet, or this priest, or that one who has moved by the hand of God to speak. It's now upon all of God's people, this whole multitude. As Martin said the other day, so aptly you can try and block your nose, and block your ears, and block your eyes. But eventually you've got to take a breath, don't you? And instead of drowning, it's life. So here's this great multitude on the day of Pentecost and what happens? I don't mean to be in any sense sarcastic or not even ironical, but they don't have a strategy planning meeting, do they? They worship the Lord and they devote themselves to the apostles teaching and the breaking of bread and the prayer. And how was it that the Gospel got to Rome? And how was it that the Gospel got to so many other places by the time that others had got there? It's because people were there from those places on the day of Pentecost and they went ahead and when they got home they declared the marvellous deeds of God to their families and suddenly there was a church. But in the outflow of the Gospel from Jerusalem first to Judea, to Judea, to the Samaria, Remember Philip came down to the Samaritans and no one liked the Samaritans. They were just a horrible bunch of people. They were sort of neither Jew nor Gentile. They had this sort of cross-match of Old Testament and pagan worship and they were all over the shop. They were just the most impure mixture of half this and half that and not really anything that you could imagine. And the Samaritans and the Jews had a long dealing with one another which was very negative. And blow me down that God actually preaches to the Samaritans through Philip. And the Apostles hear this in Jerusalem and are, ah, out of most hearts. So Peter, get on down there, see what's happening. And blow me down if they didn't receive the Holy Spirit too and declare the marvellous deeds of God. And there's this Ethiopian eunuch And imagine a man being told by the Holy Spirit, go and stand by a desert road in a waste place. It would be like the Holy Spirit coming to you today and saying, go and stand on the road to Millicent. And there there's a car that comes along and it's broken down. And a man gets out of the car and because he's waiting for the RAA, he's reading the scriptures because that's all he's got in his glove box and he says, I've never been able to understand that bit, can you explain it to me? I mean that's what it was like for Philip. Except the chariot wasn't broken down. You just had to stand there and wait until the chariot came past. And you know the story that goes from that, it's not in the scriptures, but it seems to be reliable, that it was through that man that the Gospel came to the Ethiopians. The Ethiopians have a very long history of the Gospel in their land. And then later we are told in church history that that Ethiopian eunuch died as a martyr in what used to be called Siloam. Now who took him over there if that happened? Holy Spirit blew him, got in his sails and blew him across the ocean. And then it's not just Jerusalem and it's not just Samaria. But Peter had to be commanded to go and preach to the Gentiles. And you know how much convincing Peter needed. No, the vision that the Lord gave him of the sheep coming out of heaven three times. Arise Peter, kill and eat. No, I have never defiled myself with unclean food. Arise Peter, kill and eat. And in the meantime the Holy Spirit was preparing the house of Cornelius and he's sending angelic messengers to this one, angelic messengers to that one. And eventually he's got Peter in the place where he's willing to go. And Cornelius and his people are there ready to receive him. And so they all meet up and Peter starts preaching and as Martin said before he's finished his sermon, the Holy Spirit just comes upon them. Didn't even get to his fifth point. He just flooded the place. And Peter says, well seeing that the Holy Spirit came upon them just as he did on us in the beginning, God's given the gift of repentance even to the Gentiles. Now what amazes me in part about that story is the fact that Jesus had already instructed Peter that it was going to be Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and uttermost parts and still Peter just didn't seem to collect that that was the way it was going to be. And certainly it didn't connect that it was going to be through Him. And then the Gospel through the book of the Acts runs and runs and runs and the Lord says this and the Lord does that and the Spirit says this and the Spirit does that and wherever Peter and James and John or Paul, wherever it is, is sent, so the ministry of the Spirit has led them. They are not initiating a thing. Just as Jesus said, that he did not walk according to his own wisdom. He did nothing except it be a word that the Lord the Father had given him to speak. So it was with Peter and the others. They were not trying to make something happen. They were looking and listening and watching for the movement of the Spirit and caught up and carried along, men driven by the Holy Spirit. And wherever they went, what did they do? What did they do? They preached the Gospel. Remember what we said earlier today that there is no difference finally between word and breath. You can hear a word that's spoken but it's actually breath that's making that to be a word in your ears. And you can hear The Gospel preached, but what makes that word, word to you is the breath of the Spirit. So we read about the Holy Spirit preaching the Gospel. The Holy Spirit sent from heaven is the one who preaches the Gospel. But he preaches the Gospel. He brings the testimony of Jesus Christ and him crucified. He comes, so to speak, from the crucible of the cross. He comes from the furnace of that holy judgment, and he comes from the action of the ascension, and he takes all of that reality, and he preaches that through his earthly servants. So the amazing thing is, as we've sometimes said, that a man or a woman, you or me or someone else, can speak a word which we speak in all fear and trembling and we're all conscious of how poorly it's said and we feel all embarrassed that we've actually witnessed to our neighbour afterwards, but the result of it is, God spoke to me. And you'll know that when God speaks they never say, you touched God spoke. People recognise that it's God speaking. How? Because the Spirit preaches Christ. So this is the one thing I want to find out from you, Paul says to the Galatians in chapter 3. Did you receive the Holy Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Hearing what? Hearing the Word of the Gospel. Hearing how? Hearing with faith. This is the one thing I want to find out. Did you receive the Holy Spirit by works of the law? Because if you received the Holy Spirit by works of the law, things that you had to do in order to be ready to get him, things that you had to do in order to receive him, if you had to do works of the law in order to receive the Holy Spirit, you don't need a cross. You could have Pentecost without Calvary. But what did you hear, says Paul to the Galatians? We heard Jesus Christ proclaimed. So powerful was that proclamation in the Spirit. It's as though He was publicly portrayed before them as crucified. And when you heard the proclamation of that Gospel, when you heard the proclamation of the forgiveness of sins, and the love of God, and the propitiation of the wrath of God, and the utter cleansing of your heart, and your mind, and your conscience, and the removal of all of your guilt, and your making your sins, which were scarlet white as so, when you heard that, with faith what happened? Well we received the gift of the Holy Spirit. So beloved, how do you go on in the Spirit? You go on hearing with faith. And you know it from your own experience, when you start hearing something that is not the Gospel, your heart starts to shrivel up. When you start to hear preaching which is flesh not spirit, which is works not grace, which is constantly casting yourself back on yourself and your own commitment and your own abilities, your heart starts to shrivel up. Paul says to the Galatians, what happened to all your joy? Where has it all gone? How are you going to have the fullness of the Spirit's fruit? Love, joy, peace, patience. Going to have it through the constant hearing of the love of the cross and the joy that comes from the Son who has died for you and the peace which has been established. So how do you keep on going in the Spirit? How do you keep on receiving? How do you keep on being filled? How do you keep on hearing? How do you keep on hearing? Keep on seeing Christ and Him crucified for you. And what does that do? As that proclamation goes on, it brings about the obedience of the nations. We think, I don't see that happening. This is an extra biblical example, an example that comes from outside the scriptures and so you can poke holes in it, but let me just give you an example. Not long ago, I was speaking at a particular place and there was a man, a young man in that place who came from a particular part of north eastern India, a particular state there. And the way in which that Gospel came to that place a hundred years ago was through Welsh Presbyterian ministries. Yay for the presies. And the Welsh Presbyterians had been touched by a revival which had just flooded them with life and blown them across the ocean. When they came in the fullness of the Spirit, preaching Christ and Him crucified, there was already a group of people in a marvellous story ready to receive them. He said in the years since that revival has gone on virtually unstopped, starts in one place, sort of cleans out all of the demonic activity and false worship and moves on to another, He said, you know what happened? Because we, he was speaking about his people, he said because we loved the word, we wanted to be able to read. So we learned how to read, so we could read the Bible. And we could learn how to write. We've got the second highest literacy rate in the whole of India and Pakistan. And because we could learn to read and write, our people got jobs. And because they got jobs, they had some money, they brought back into the community. And he said, oh, and all the car system, that had all gone. So what are you doing here in Japan? Oh, I'm here because God sent me to preach the gospel to the nations from India, via Japan. And a whole nation, a whole people group, a whole language group is transformed from the ground up. They hear the Gospel. Their social structures change. Everything changes. And their people are now learning a multitude of different languages so that they can take what they've heard all throughout the known world, starting at their own doorstep with the other Indian language groups around them. Amazing story. Not amazing story. That's just the way that God wins the nations. So the coming of the Spirit is not just for me or you to know the comfort and peace of sins forgiven, though that is absolutely vitally so for us. The coming of the Spirit is not so circumscribed that he would bless just one person or one group of people. It's too small a thing, he says in Isaiah, that I should bless Israel. It's too small a thing that I should bless one people group. I'm going to bless the whole of the nations, the nations which have been in rebellion against me. So that's what we're about. Why would you come and give up your Saturday to go to a series of lectures on the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Glory? Because the Lord's sending you out. Who knows where we'll end up. Who knows where you'll end up. Might have to leave the farm. It's a conversation we had earlier. So the Lord bless us all in these things. Our time is well and truly gone. I've gone over, I'm sorry, but we're going to sing. Fountain of life, we come to you. We'll stand together to sing.