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  THE WORK AND MINISTRY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
  by Gerhard Du Toit
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes the importance of the Holy Spirit's work
and ministry, focusing on Jesus' teachings about the Holy Spirit in the
Gospel of John. It highlights the personal nature, purity, and power of
the Holy Spirit, urging listeners to seek a deeper relationship with God
and experience His presence in their lives.

Topics: "The Work of the Holy Spirit", "Deepening Our Relationship with God"
Scripture References: John 14:16, Acts 1:8, Matthew 9:20, Esther 5:2, Psalm 42:1

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes the importance of the Holy Spirit's work and
ministry, focusing on Jesus' teachings about the Holy Spirit in the
Gospel of John. It highlights the personal nature, purity, and power of
the Holy Spirit, urging listeners to seek a deeper relationship with God
and experience His presence in their lives.

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CONTENT
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Yeah, okay. But it's wonderful to be here this morning. I really wanted
to be there because I love to be close to people, you know.

And when I saw the chair, I was reminded to the old pastor he could
never get the people to sit in front of the church. And one Sunday
morning, he was so desperate that he took the pulpit to the back of the
church and asked him all to turn around. So of course, now we wouldn't
do that.

But I just want to say, you know, I need this because I wreck my back in
Africa. Janice and myself were doing a conference. This is amongst the
African people.

And there's a group of people in the land of Namibia. They are called
the African Bushmen people. They're nomads, which means they travel a
lot.

And there was a film made in the 70s with a title, The Gods Must Be
Crazy. Anyone of you ever seen that? Okay, those guys, we were amongst
them. And I had to be on my feet for about 18 hours after I had a
vertebrae that slipped for about, just about a centimeter or more.

Now we're dealing with all kinds of complications. But it's wonderful
for Janice and myself to be allowed to come back here. I really wanted
to come the weekend when we are, I nearly said burning the church down,
when we are burning the building down.

Because I've got a picture of that building that I've taken. And I had a
plan with that building. I thought maybe being a Canadian and African,
we could jack it up, put it on the truck and bring it to Canada and put
it in a small little lake.

And I'm gonna live there for the rest of my life. But this bastard
wouldn't let me do this, you know. And so I told him, when he told me,
and I said, so what are you doing with the little building? And he said,
hey Gerard, the fire department's gonna come and burn it down.

And I couldn't resist to tell him of the old pastor in the little
village somewhere in America that one evening, the little church, it's a
little independent Baptist church. They were so independent that they
were independent of God. But this little independent Baptist church
caught fire and it was burning down in this little town.

And so suddenly the town saw there was a fire and the whole town came to
this church that was burning down. And so the pastor stood there, and
the man came who'd never been to the church, and he stood next to the
pastor. And the pastor said to him, I've never seen you at the church
before.

And the old man said to him, well, the church has never been on fire. So
we don't wanna be like that. But thank you for allowing us to just to
come back here.

God has given us a great burden for this fellowship. And I'm not one of
these people, brother and sister, that blow into a place and blow up and
blow out, you know. And you know, if we are in touch of God, people
often say, you know, if you wanna pray with me, you need to be in touch
with me a lot.

And I said, oh no, it doesn't work like that. And they said, but how do
you know how you're gonna pray for me? And I said, listen, the only
thing I need to do is I need to be in touch with God. And if I'm in
touch with God, God will direct me how to pray.

And so it's a great privilege for us to pray for one another. And people
sometimes ask me, so you have a prayer list? And I said, yeah, but not
really. And they say, so what do you mean? I said, well, there's a list
of people that you are committed to pray for.

And you know, sometimes I stand at the door and people come to me and
they grab my hand and they said, will you please pray for me? And I
grabbed their hand and I said to them, I'm gonna pray for you right now.
And sometimes they are embarrassed. And they would say, so why do you
wanna pray for me right now? I said, I'm gonna pray for you right now
because that's how God's gonna remind me to pray for you in the future.

And I don't need a list to pray for people. The list look for me. And
when God comes to meet with us, and I trust that as a Christian, and as
a father of your children, because we said this many times that God
didn't give us children to populate hell.

That as a father of our children, as a mother, as a family, that we know
this thing to what it means to be able to meet with God on a consistent
basis. How dare we go into this wicked society and we are Canadians, you
know. We are aliens when it comes to the U.S. The problem with the
Canadians is that 80% of Canada lives within 100 miles of the U.S.
border.

And the Canadians know more of what's happening here with you than many
of you know what's happening with the Canadians. And I've never in my
life been so burdened to pray for the United States. In fact, I can go
and climb under a blanket in a cabin and spend 40 days.

Lingering underneath the burden of God and ask God to dissect it to pray
for this country. I've never in my life, and we know people are into all
kinds of stuff. John Wesley said, I read the newspaper because I want to
see what God is doing in the world.

But I've never in my life gone through a time as it relates to this our
country where we've seen such an absolute clear distinction between
darkness and light. And I've worked my heart out about this thing. If
you ask me why, I have this one question to God in my heart and I said,
where are the Christians? Where are the people of God? And the psalmist
said to the foundations be turned over.

What shall the righteous do? We are living in desperate times. I don't
like you, I don't want you to misunderstand me. God is not gonna keep
His hand upon this country.

We can end up in a civil war. And he said, man, are you way off track?
No, I've seen it. And so he said, what needs to happen? You and I as a
Christian are going to need to draw a circle afresh around our lives.

We're gonna need to go to God and say, God, we want you to, I'm okay,
Dan. I've got one, two, three, four, five. One for my nose, one for my
forehead, one for my tears, and one for you.

Let's pray. Father, we have come this morning because our hearts are
deeply burdened because the Lord Jesus Christ was the one that said to
us, as my Father has sent me, so do I want to send you. And we are so
conscious this morning, our God, that there is no one else that we can
trust.

And we are so conscious that you said to us in your Word that if my
people, which has been called by my name, shall humble themselves and
pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, you said, then
will I hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin and I will heal
their land. We are conscious of God that you have said to us that I will
pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground. We
are so aware, dear Father, that Christ came and said, if any man
thirsts, let him come unto me.

He that believeth into me, as the Scripture says, rivers of living water
shall flow from the innermost of his being. And your Word said that he
said of the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit was not yet given,
because Christ was not yet glorified. Lord, I was thinking earlier this
morning in my choir time that when we were in the midst of revival in
the island of Lewis and you poured out your Spirit and hundreds of
people in those years were converted and found Christ, and now Duncan
Campbell, when he was asked about the Lewis revival, and now they follow
up all the people that came to Christ and how 75 of the people that were
converted in the Lewis revival up in the highlands of Scotland, that
they were not converted because of an invitation that was made or some
measure of a pressure that could have been put upon men and women, but
that 75% of those people were gloriously converted, not inside the
gatherings when Duncan Campbell preached the gospel, but that they were
converted during the hours of the night and the early hours of the
morning.

And God, I couldn't help but think that after 40 years or 30 years after
the revival, when I sat down with those people that were converted to
the island of Lewis and asked them to share their testimonies, and now
the Spirit of God came and the depth of the conviction of sin, and now
God became so real in every aspect that after all those years, I could
not find one single backslider. And dear God, how when Duncan Campbell
was asked how they did follow-up work and how did they disciple people
in the midst of the revival and how they helped them and did this, that,
and the other, which is nothing wrong with, and yet he turned to them
and said, when we were in the midst of revival, there was no necessity
to do follow-up work because they just followed us. And Father, I was
reminded of Peter and John in the third chapter of the Acts of the
Apostles who went up to the temple at the hour of prayer.

And this man that sat there asking for alms or something to live from,
and now Peter and John looked at him and said to him, silver and gold
have we none, but such as we have, in the name of Jesus Christ, rise up
and walk. God, You need to forgive us this morning because we are in a
position where we sometimes can say silver and gold we have. But we do
not have the power and the unction to say in the name of Jesus Christ,
rise up and walk.

Father, I love this group of people. There are men and women here who
are serious with God. The men's retreat that we had earlier on this year
in March, in my own life, was just the turning point when we as men that
Saturday morning went alone and allowed the Spirit of God to search us
and to break us and to crush us to the degree that what's many say that
whatever we give to God, He breaks like the five loaves and the two
fishes.

Thank you for the privilege of being allowed to come here. Thank you for
this fellowship that has an interest in what God, but not in what God,
what we, Janice and myself, are trying to do for God, but they have an
interest in what God is doing in us because our effectiveness for God is
determined by what You do for us. And so that we can live Christian
lives that demand supernatural explanations and that we can be
intoxicated and saturated for the greatness of the presence of God and
that the little woman, when Elisha passed her house, turned to her
husband and she said to her husband, I behold that this man, which is
passing our house, is a holy man of God because there was an atmosphere
about him.

And there was an activity about him. And there were attributes in his
life that arise amazing explanations, being saturated with the
indwelling greatness of the life of God. Lord, as we take these few
minutes this morning and we ponder upon the beauty of Your Word because
we love Your Word and we want Your Word to dwell in our hearts and in
our lives, and we're serving a Christ that said that heaven and earth
shall pass away, but my Word shall abide forever.

And we are opening the Scriptures that He's saying to us, my Word is
sharper than any two-edged sword, cutting through the dividing asunder
of soul and spirit in bone and marrows. And a God that is saying to us
that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and it's a proof of
doctrine and correction and instruction in righteousness. And so when we
open the Word, give us a hunger and a thirst.

God, I was reminded again of Duncan Campbell who used to say to us, this
man that was used of God in the revival, if you are filled with the
Spirit of God, you cannot be filled with anything else. And Father, I
don't know my brothers and sisters here this morning. You are the only
one that know into the, have a knowledge into the depths of our hearts
and our beings and our relationships with You.

And You are the only one that know of the mountains and the valleys that
we are facing. And You are the only one that knows of the depth of the
iniquity of our sin. And I pray this morning that the Spirit of God will
just in one way or another touch in these areas of our life.

My life as the father of my children, as the husband of my wife, as the
priest of the house, and my life as the mother of my children and the
wife of my husband, that our wives will never lose the Spirit of
motherhood. Bless Your Word in these few moments in Jesus' name. Amen.

You know, I just want to take a few minutes to try and talk to you about
what I would consider as the work in the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
And you know, there are different ways for us to consider the
Scriptures. The Calvary chapels that I have the privilege of finding
myself in, we have this pattern, and I would love to do this.

In fact, I did this when I was pastoring my own church many, many years
ago, even before Janice and myself were married, just to go kind of
verse by verse through the Word of God. And it was just, I just so loved
it. In fact, if you really want to know, I spent six months in that
church in Canada.

I was just an interim pastor. I felt, you know, being what we are doing,
itinerant work, I felt, you know, you can't really do that right unless
you've been in a church and be the pastor because you see it from the
pastor's perspective. And so when I had the privilege of being with that
group of people, and I mean, I just loved it, because six months, oh,
Dan, I could have done it for six years.

But I spent six months in Romans chapter eight with those people. One of
them came to me one day and said, are you aware of the fact that there
are other chapters also in the Bible? I just look at him and said, it
was none of your business. No, I didn't do that.

But this is what happens in the Calvary chapels here in North America.
And there's this one way of looking at that. My problem with this is I
don't know how they can ever get through the word of God in 150 years.

But anyway, they try, you know, and I mean, who knows? And I'm sure they
skip some verses now and again. So here we are. The other way for us to
approach this is to take a subject in scripture.

And don't try to interpret that subject, but allow that subject in
scripture to just wash through every aspect of our lives. You know, I've
got a great library in my, in Janice and myself these days that I've
been crippled. We spend time in my library because I said, I need to get
rid of some books.

I mean, 20% of them have been stolen by pastors already, but I still
need to get rid of some books. I asked John, Dan last night, I said, do
you want some books? And he said, no, I don't want some books. And I
thought, oh, maybe I can visit his library and see what I can get out of
that, you know? But as we went through it, one of the things that I look
at is all my books in the work in the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Oh my, okay, could probably about 40 of them there. And so there are
ways for us to look at it. What I want to do this morning, I want us to
look at the Holy Spirit and we can look at one passage if we want to,
but I want us to look at the New Testament and see what the New
Testament is saying to us about the Holy Spirit and then allow what the
New Testament is saying to us about the Holy Spirit bring us back to
those individual verses and then we can explore it.

So for your information, we are here the next three months and I'm Dan's
associate. And I want to see how we burn this building down because
maybe I'm going to put up a tent there. No, we're not going to do that.

So when we speak about the Holy Spirit and oh, my brother and my sister,
you know, the Holy Spirit is that sense of that tender Spirit of God.
And when you and I begin to study Him and take the New Testament apart
or allow the New Testament to take us apart, you will discover that
there are 260 verses in the New Testament that can take you and me to
the work and the ministry of God, the Holy Spirit. It's absolutely
incredible.

And so what we need to do ourselves because we don't have a time to
explore that, we need to ask ourselves what would be the key concept of
these passages that we can find. Now, we can go to the four Gospels,
which is incredible and discover what they are saying to us about the
Holy Spirit. And then we can come to the Acts of the Apostles where we
have 59 of those passages speaking about the Holy Spirit of God.

And then of course, we can go to those epistles of the Apostle Paul and
we can see what Paul says about the Holy Spirit. And then we can go to
the general epistles of the New Testament like Hebrews and James and 1
and 2 Peter and even little Jude there, only 24 verses in that one
little chapter jumped out and encouraged us to pray on the Holy Spirit.
And then of course, the book of Revelation.

If we want to understand what we would look at as the key concepts or
books of the New Testament, we need to stop at the Gospel of Luke, which
I wish we had more time for, the Apostle of John, and of course, the
Acts of the Apostles. And then there are other books like the Epistle to
the Hebrews that gives us great insight in the Holy Spirit. What I wanna
do, I want us to just focus on what Jesus said about the Holy Spirit
from John chapter 14 to 60.

Now, I'm gonna quote to you that passages just because of the sake of
our time. Now, let me explain to you what I'm trying to say. In the
Gospel of John, and you know, the Gospel of John was the Gospel that was
written way at the end of the first century, kind of later on than all
the other Gospels.

And it's quite possible that when the Spirit of God moved upon the
Apostle John to give us the Gospel of John, because how did we get the
Scriptures? The Bible says holy men prophesy as they were moved by the
Holy Spirit. But it is quite possible then when the Spirit of God moved
upon the Apostle John to give us the Gospel of John, that He probably
maybe had something in front of Him that was written in the Gospel of
Matthew, possibly Luke, and maybe, and probably the Gospel of Mark. And
the fascinating thing about the Gospel of John is that most of the
material in John's Gospel, we don't necessarily find them in all these
other Gospels.

That is why when you and I studied John's Gospel, you know, if I may say
this, I love the Gospel of John. In fact, you know, my native tongue, we
spoke a different language, which is a combination between Dutch and
German. It's very close to Hebrew, so you better watch it, but it's not.

And I did this as a student when I was in theological school. God so
gripped my heart in the Gospel of John, those 879 verses that I said to
God, and I used to memorize 400 verses a year and write them out in
index cards and carry them in my pocket and just day by day repetition
allow these verses to become. If you've ever memorized Scripture, you do
it on the basis that when that passage becomes part of your life, boy,
it just begins to live in your heart and your life.

And I asked God and said, Lord, can you help me? Because I knew I didn't
have enough brains to give me a headache, you know. And I said, God,
you're gonna need to help me. And I wanna memorize the Gospel of John.

And brother and sister, it took me five years to let this Gospel become
part of my life. In fact, I didn't memorize the Gospel of John. The
Gospel of John memorized me.

It was powerful. And then when I got married to Janice, who's a
Canadian, and speak this foreign English language that I had to learn.
She still said I can't speak English properly, which is fine, you know.

But when I came to this country and went to Scotland to study, in fact,
I couldn't speak English, if you really want to know, because we were
brought up in a little village close to Mozambique, and we spoke this
dialect between Dutch and German. And in my country of South Africa, my
Opa and Oma grandparents and my father would tell us on the phone, you
know, the Dutch came in 1652 to South Africa, and then the French, you
know, my background is French and German. French and German, you really
need God.

I mean, you're worse than Donald Trump, you know. I mean, and my
background is French and German. And my grandparents, they say, so the
Dutch came in 1652.

The French came in 1763, Huguenots. They fled out of France because of
Catholicism. And then the German settlers came, and they said, you know,
everything is fine.

And then they said the British settlers came in 1820, and they said
that's when the trouble started. That's how they were. So I couldn't
speak English, you know.

And when I found Christ and went to theological school, an old pastor
gave me an old translation of the Bible. I didn't know that there were
many different translations. I don't think they were there those days,
you know.

And he gave me an old translation of the Bible, and he said to me, he
said to me, take this and memorize this. And I said, what is it? He
said, well, it's the King James Version of the Bible. I said, oh, okay.

I said, what does that mean? He said, well, if it was good enough for
Paul, it should be good enough for you. I didn't understand what he was
trying to say, you know. But ah, brother and sister, I took the Gospel
of John, and the Gospel of John began to memorize me.

Oh, and then when I got married to Janice, I said to her, I want to
memorize the Gospel of John in English, you know. It's a foreign
language, you know. And I began to do it, and it was easy because it's
there already.

You just have to change the language, which was a highly insulted thing
to my soul. And I did it in English. And then this thing became so real
that I said to myself, I want to find out what Christ said in John's
Gospel.

And I found that out of the 879 verses of the Gospel of John, 419 of
those verses consist just of the words of Christ, every time when he
spoke. And so I began to memorize that. In fact, we went to speak at the
meeting, and Janice said to me, it was a bunch of elderly people, so you
had to repeat things five times, which is great, you know.

And Janice said to me, what are you going to do? Because I had an hour
and hour and a half to speak. I said, I'm just going to quote everything
that Jesus said about the Gospel of John. Well, I tell you, we had a
great time.

I don't think they did, but I had to know. Now, listen to this. In this
Gospel, oh, there are these chapters.

And if you ever memorize, and let me just say this to you, if you want
to understand what John said, it happens between John chapter five and
John chapter eight, and John chapter 13 and John chapter 17. Those are
what we call the long discourses or the long statements of Christ. And
you say, if I want to understand John, why do you say that? Because from
John chapter five to John chapter eight, he tell us who he was and why
he was the son of God.

And brother and sister, from John chapter 13 to John chapter 17, he tell
us what he was going to accomplish when the Holy Spirit was going to
come. Now, let me drop these things with you, because when I prayed to
God at the back, he said, now, Gerard, you can't preach all morning
because we're having a great lunch waiting for us. We need to pray and
ask God.

But let me try and give you these few things. Men, I love him. We call
it the private ministry of Christ.

Because brother and sister, in the opening statement of John's gospel,
he gave us what we refer to in theological terms as the predestinate
ministry of Christ. So what did he say? He said, in the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was his God, and the Word was God, and all things
were made by him, and without him, nothing that was made. In him was
life, and the life was the light to the world, and the light shined
within darkness, and the darkness comprehended might.

And then he stopped and he said, now, there was a man sent from God,
whose name was John. He came to testify of the light. He was not the
light, but he came to testify of the light, which lighteth every man in
the world.

We discover his predestinate. You say, now, what do you mean by that?
Well, let me explain to you. That's everything that Christ was about
before the New Testament.

Oh, brother and sister, may I say something to you this morning? There
is a lot more about Christ in the Old Testament than you and I would
ever think that maybe even within the realms of the New Testament. And
if we don't understand him in the Old Testament, we'd never be able to
understand the fullness of his life as it relates to the New Testament.
And then you jump to chapter 12, because from chapter one to chapter 12
is his public ministry.

You say, what happened in his public ministry? He did eight miracles,
miraculous signs. You know what's the word in the Greek language?
Signposts towards spirituality. Every one of those miracles that he did,
you say, why did he do them? He did them so that he could reveal to them
an aspect of the name of his Father.

And in John chapter 17, he prayed, and he'd bring it to a fulfillment.
And you say, what did he say in John chapter 17? He said, Father, I have
manifested your name. He said, Brother Gerard, how did he do it? Just go
back into those first 12 chapters.

And look at those eight statements that he made to people in private and
those eight miracles that he did. And here he came in chapter 13 and 14
and 15 and 16. And you say, what did he do? He introduced to those early
disciples the work and the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

And you say, what did he do? He brought three things to them. He
introduced to them the Holy Spirit as a person. He introduced to them
the Holy Spirit in its purity.

And he introduced to them the Holy Spirit and the depth of his power. I
wonder if I can ask you a question this morning. I don't know if this
happens to you.

And you know, when I look at my library the other day and I said to
Janice, I have a book here in my library and I can't find it and someone
must have borrowed it. And why is it that I can't find it? Because she
said, why? It was a book that was written. If you have that book, I
would just love just to be allowed to read it.

And the only way that you will get it back is when I'm allowed to come
and preach in the church again. So, have you got that book, brother?
Have you got that book? I'll talk to you later about it. It's a
marvelous book.

The Work and the Ministry of the Holy Spirit. Who he is and what he
does. And R.A. Tari wrote this book.

Have you got that book? Oh, I've got a book to borrow. That's wonderful,
thank you so much. And Dr. Tari Kahneman, what he did, he came to us and
he introduced to us the work and the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Now listen to what Jesus said. When He began to speak to His disciples
in His private ministry, brother and sister, from John 14 to 16, in the
Greek text, every time when He spoke about the Holy Spirit, He did not
refer to the Holy Spirit as some influence in the lives of those early
disciples. He did not refer to the Holy Spirit as some atmosphere.

In fact, I hate to say this to you, He almost did not refer to the Holy
Spirit as some experience or some manifestation. He took those early
disciples and He had great difficulty doing it. I mean, you remember it
was Philip or Thomas who came to Him when Christ spoke to them about the
fatherhood of God.

And He turned to Jesus and He said to Him, show us a father and it is
enough for us. And Jesus turned to that disciple and He looked at him
and He said to him, Philip, don't you understand? I've been so long with
you. Have you not recognized that I am the Father? And my brother and
sister, if you systematically go through these Gospels and you see the
relationship that Jesus had with His disciples, and you recognize what
was going on, and you see the understanding that they did not know the
Holy Spirit in its deepest sense until the day of Pentecost, that they
experienced aspects of the Holy Spirit, of course they did.

I mean, I'm just in Matthew 10 in my quiet times, and He sent those
disciples out and He gave them power to cast out evil spirits and power
to heal and all those kind of things. He sent them out and as He sent
them out, they came back and they testified about the things that would
happen, and then they got stuck. When they couldn't cast out those evil
spirits, and the disciples came to Jesus and said, why couldn't we do
this? You told us to go and do this.

And, ah, do you remember what He said to them? He said to them, you
don't understand. He said, this kind can only go out by prayer and
fasting. There's a power, the evil one, that can only be destroyed by
prayer and fasting.

And here Jesus came and He said to them, it's to your advantage that I
go away from you. And if you would allow me to say this this morning,
and I know I'm taking a huge risk, but I'm convinced in my heart that
when He said to them, it is to your advantage that I go from you because
if I cannot go from you, the Comforter cannot come. And I wonder in my
heart if there were times that He turned to those disciples and said to
them, or tried to get an impression upon them, to say to them that when
I go away from you, and this Holy Spirit, this person of the Holy
Spirit, is going to come, that He will be so real in your lives that the
only difference is going to be you're not going to see Me.

I want to ask you a question this morning. You see, we don't know one
another. My sister and my brother, how real is God the Holy Spirit to
us? Can I ask you a question this morning? When last did God meet with
us? I'm in a time in my life when I, you know, we can't have these times
all the time.

Because you see, when we speak about the presence of God, and my time is
gone here, when we speak about the presence of God, the presence of God
is omnipresent. Believe it or not, God is everywhere. And the psalmist
in the Old Testament said, wherever shall I fly away or try to get away
from thy presence? And he said, if I go into the depths, I will find
Thee there.

If I rise into the heights of the skies, I've had the joy through the
years of leading people to Christ on planes 35,000 feet in the air. And
I always said to them, when I saw them really getting through to God,
and they were gloriously saved, and they would say to me, what happens
if I die at this moment? I said, I don't think we're gonna go down. I
think we're probably just gonna go higher up, you know.

But there's the manifested presence of God. And you said, Gerard, what
do you mean by the manifested presence of God? These are special times
when God comes to visit us. Now, I don't know what's happening in your
relationship with God.

If you sit here this morning and you say, you know, I'm not even
conscious of God speaking to me these days. I need to tell you that
there's something desperately wrong in your life. It could be an
unconfessed sin.

It could be a relationship that has never been restored. It could be
some aspect of restitution, whatever it is. And it's become a blockage
in my relationship with God.

And here Jesus came and he looked at those early disciples and he said
to them, when my spirit come, he said, my spirit is going to be with
you, and my spirit is going to be in you. Do you know, the majority of
us are so satisfied by just the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And I
don't know if I can say this this morning.

Let me give you a piece of my mind that I can't afford to lose. You can
be born of the Spirit of God and not necessarily being full to the
Spirit of God. He's a person.

I don't know if I can say this, you know, but you know, because it's
kind of personal, but you know, those of us who are married here and we
fell in love with our wives, you know, and then we thought, are we worth
it, you know? Oh, man. Janice, when we first began to correspond, wrote
to me a list of 30 things that she wants in a man. And I look at it and
I thought, don't even try the toy.

And I just wrote back and I said, Janice, I want you to know that I
really love you. I don't qualify for many of those things. I mean, not
even the Apostle Paul would have made it, you know, you know? And I
said, I don't know.

And the other day, she picked up the diary with those things. I didn't
do anything wrong when she did that, but we were trying to figure out
exactly when I was born. So, and so, and the list, and I just said, I
wrote back and I said, Janice, I really love you.

And I just want to tell you that I believe God wants me to marry you.
And I don't qualify for many of these things, but I want you to know
that I want to walk with God, you know? I think those fairy things are
still there, you know? Highly unfair. No, it's not.

But you know, when we were engaged and had 505 bucks in the bank and
we're missionaries, and I paid $500, Canadian dollars, wish they were
U.S. dollars then because we would have had some more money. And I
bought this ring, $500 and we went and sat in a bank, on a bench. And
she said, so what? I said, well, here it is.

And I said, I've got $5 left. And she said, what are we going to do? I
said, let's go and buy a Coke. You know, you know? So that was it.

And then, you know, now we were engaged. And I, you know, when we were
engaged, I would sit and I would just look at her, staring. Because
before that, you know, you're single and, you know, horses in Africa, we
have these things.

We only look straight. And so I would just look at her, you know? And
she would feel uncomfortable. And she said, is anything wrong? I said,
no.

She said, why do you look at me like this? Staring at her. I said,
because I love you. But she didn't do it with me.

Could you ask her why she didn't do it? I mean, I had a little bit more
hair than I had those days, you know? Didn't make any difference. We
were in love with one another's personalities. You know? And then we got
married.

And one day she wasn't happy with me. She's got red hair, you know? She
wasn't happy with me. And I went and stood in front of her.

And I said, I'm sorry. And she said, I'm not happy with you because I
tried to paint the house not like her father would do it, you know?
Because I'm an African, you know? And she said, I'm not happy with you.
And I look at her, I said, do you want to fight? And I've got huge
hands.

And I put her two hands like this. And I said, go for it. But our
personality, I'm sorry, Mama.

Our personality, we were in love with each other. Can you imagine
something? Can you imagine when the Holy Spirit came, that same Jesus in
His personality? Because the Holy Spirit is the person of Christ. His
purity, His power.

I was so struck in my quiet time this week. You know, we often speak, I
often speak about the little woman that touched the garment of Christ.
And she said, if I can just touch the hem of His garment.

And when she did it, you remember what happened? Power went out from
Jesus. And that's the word dunamis. It's the word where we get our
dynamite from.

It's the word you find in Acts 1.8. You shall receive power when the
Holy Spirit. It's the same word that Paul used and said, we have been
risen from the dead by the power of God, the Holy Spirit. And I've
always looked at that and I said, okay, so this is it.

Power went from Him. Because this little woman who suffered from this
issue of blood, she touched the Lord Jesus and this happened. And then I
was in the Gospel of Matthew and you know, in chapter eight and nine,
there's this miracle after miracle after miracle that came out of the
ministry of Christ.

And as this was happening, then I suddenly came across a verse. I mean,
you know, I've been studying the Scriptures for more than 40 years. And
every 10 years, I go through the New Testament between 30 and 50 times,
two and a half, three hours a day, just sunk myself into New Testament
Scripture.

I'm in one of those years this year. It's just been fascinating. And I
came across this verse and it says, and many, many, many, many people
tried to touch Him.

So, for a while, when else did you touch Him? I'm not speaking
physically. Ah, you remember Esther? In the book of Esther and
Mardukiah, the type of the Holy Spirit. Esther, the type of Christ.

She came and she just touched the Scepter of the King. And found favor
with Him. I don't want you to misunderstand me.

You know, this morning, you're staying overnight here in the town and
we're in a little room. And early this morning, I'm a morning person and
I went into the corner there and God came. Been doing it for the last 33
mornings.

I know it won't last forever. Some mornings it's just gonna be faith.
But, oh, this morning, I write out these old hymns and songs and
memorize them before I go into the Scriptures.

Suddenly, God came. And nothing special about anyone. Then about a week
and a half ago one morning, same thing happened.

I was just there in my corner and God came. If you really want to know,
it's got nothing to do with anyone. There was a moment when God came so
close I was afraid to open my eyes.

And Janice came later and she said, how you doing? God is in this
corner. I don't know what's going on in your life. I want to tell you
something this morning.

If you don't have faith in God and you don't believe in Him, then
there's nothing that God cannot do. There was a time in your life when
you walked close to God. There was a time in your life when you were
broken.

There was a time in your life when God was real. You've lost it. And you
are just hanging on to what there is.

And God is saying, just like me, let's pray. Heavenly Father, Janice and
myself have not been allowed to stand up amongst people for four months.
And I felt in my heart when we got to a place where we can somehow stand
on our feet and try and do something.

The place where I want to do this, we're allowed to be part of, would
have been here in Cle Elum. And I thank you for the pastor of this
church and I thank you for the leaders. And I thank you for these men
and these women.

But Father, we are a desperately needy people. And I just pray this
morning that you just will come by your spirit. We're not gonna prolong
this meeting, but I want to ask you something.

Would you mind just to slip around on your knees right where you are?
Can we just spend just a few minutes alone with God? Can you just slip
around wherever you are? Can you just get on your knees and can you just
say to God this morning, Father, would you come to my heart? I look at
my country and it's a massive mess. And I look around me and there's
nothing. But I look up and you can come to my heart and my life.

Let's just take a few minutes and I'm gonna ask Dan to come in close for
us and pray. Thank you.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/mQYbWtVl9Cw.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/gerhard-du-toit/the-work-and-ministry-of-the-holy-spirit/
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