Wanted： Spirit Filled Believers!

And the title of today's message is Wanted Spirit-Filled Believers. Wanted Spirit-Filled Believers. You all might have noticed that I like this topic and we've talked about it many times from the pulpit, but I've made something of a resolution before the Lord that we need to come back to it every few months. And I need to really impress upon you something that's so very important, that the Christian is not only indwelt with the Spirit of God, but we can also be filled with the Spirit of God. And I need to continue to teach that until we're all unitedly seeking that. And we're really getting it and desiring it in our lives. The passage before us speaks to that reality. And let's read John chapter 7, verses 37 to 39. And we're going to have our finger today in John 7, and then we're going to go back to Genesis 2. So if you like, just be ready to flip between those passages, John 7 and Genesis chapter 2. John 7, verse 37. In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the Holy Spirit, excuse me, of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive. For the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified. Amen. Let me pray one more time for us. Lord, I so desperately need your help in preaching. Lord, this is such a vital topic. So I ask you that you wake us up completely to this reality, Lord. Help me, please, Lord. Give me clarity. Lord, give all of us a filling of your spirit today. Give us hope. Give us clarity in mind. Give us warm hearts, Lord. And give us understanding of these precious words of scripture that are before us, Lord. Please help us, Lord, to hear from you and not to hear from me today. Help my words be few, Lord, and your words be many. Lord, please come and speak through me and give us the very word of God. Convict us, Lord. Chasten us. Fill us with joy and love and hope. Lord Jesus, we need you. Amen. Amen. So let me ask that question again. Let me ask it as a question. Do all believers have the spirit of God in them? Who can answer? Yes. Yes. Amen. That's absolutely right. Every true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has the spirit of God dwelling in him or her. Now let me ask you this. Can every believer have more of the spirit? Yes. Yes. Every believer can seek more of the spirit. Amen. Right there is the essential doctrine we need as believers as we approach this topic of the Holy Spirit. You can prove the first part with Romans 8 and chapter, excuse me, Romans chapter 8 and verse 9. It says, if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his. Implied in that is that every Christian has the spirit of God. Amen. And there we're talking about the indwelling spirit, the spirit who is in every one of us. If we've truly been born again, then we have now the spirit in us. He's changed our lives. He's changed our affections. He's made us want to go to church. He's made us want to do good things with our lives. He's made us want to glorify Jesus Christ. That's the indwelling spirit. But secondly, every Christian ought to seek more of the spirit. Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 18 says, be filled with the spirit. So that's the second reality. Are you all catching this? We all have the indwelling spirit, but then we all need the filling of the spirit or the baptism with the spirit. And we need that reality and we need it again and again. We can be filled, we can be refilled. We see people in the book of Acts receiving the baptism of the spirit. And then a few chapters later, we see them receiving that baptism yet again. This is so very important. Before we get into our text, let me ask, why is it important? Two reasons I'll give you. One, to reach the lost. I'm becoming more and more convinced that the only way we can possibly reach the lost in this city, through this church, is to have spirit-filled believers. Look in your Bibles. Look and see if you ever see people coming into the kingdom without a spirit-filled believer being part of that somehow. In the preaching, in the witnessing, in convicting, in persuading people. Those people have to be filled with the spirit. So if we're going to reach this city, we don't need just programs. We don't need just more meetings. We need each and every one of us to be filled with the Holy Spirit of God. Amen? This is so important. And I wrote down this statistic. Just consider this with me for one second. There are 66,000 people in Portland. Okay? 66,000 people. The most generous estimate of Protestant conservative maybe Christians is that there is 12%. Okay? 12% of those people being Protestant conservative Christians. Can you all do the math in your head? That would mean something like, I wrote it down here because I'm not good at math, 8,000 Christians around the greater Portland area. And then how many non-Christians? 58,000. Okay? So we've got 8,000 potential Christians, although I've never seen them, but potentially there are 8,000 Christians and then 58,000 non-Christians. That means there are 58,000 people going to hell right outside these windows. We have to keep that statistic right in the front of our mind all the time. 58,000 people. And how in the world could we ever reach them? The only solution we see in the Bible is that day of Pentecost, when people get filled with the spirit, when the spirit comes down, when people get baptized, and then all of a sudden all you need is one Peter to stand up and to preach. Instead of a bunch of programs, we must be filled with the spirit. Amen? Now the second reason I want to preach on this today is that seeking more of the spirit will bring a sweetness to your soul. And if there's anything I know about this topic, and I know very, very little, it's that seeking the spirit and more of him will bring a sweetness to you. It will make your heart melt. It'll make you think of your own humility. It'll make you think, you know, I don't have that much. You know, I need more. I'm not seeing these realities happening in my life. And that in itself will humble you, make you go low, and make you say, Lord, more, more, the filling, these rivers of living water, I need it. And it produces just a meekness, a quietness, a sweetness. So that's why we're studying this today. And let me tell you one brief story. Yesterday, I had to go out and do some errands. I had to go to three different shops, and Chiara and Shiloh stayed home, and I don't like shopping that much, but I had to go shopping. I head to the first store, and I'm looking out the window, and I realize the sun is up. The weather is beautiful again. What's happened? And then I realize I can open my windows, right? So I open the window, and it's beautiful. The breeze is coming in. I get to the first shop. I go in. I buy what I had to buy, get back in the car, and I realize I'm turning on the heat. The windows are up. I'm just driving along as if it's still winter. And then I realize, oh wait, the sun is out. I open the windows again. You all following me? Then I go to the third shop, and again, the same things happens. I get in the car, and I realize I'm so used to the winter weather and to having closed windows and having the heat on in the car that I can't even get used to this opening the window and letting the breeze in. If you follow my train of thought, this is how we need to think about the Holy Spirit. We can become so used to saying, I have the Spirit. I'm indwelled by the Spirit, that many people, maybe even some of you, get offended when I say you need more of the Spirit. You need more of the Spirit. You need more of the Spirit. I've told you all about John Hyde, who got so offended when his friend wrote to him and said, you want to go as a missionary, you must be baptized in the Spirit. He got angry. He said, no, I'm a Christian. I have the indwelling Spirit. But this has to hit us like a ton of bricks. No, you've got to open the windows. No, you've got to get used to this idea that you don't have enough of the Spirit. You must be filled with more of the Spirit. Have I made my point? Okay, so here are our three points today. I want to talk about these rivers that Jesus mentions right in front of us. Look at verse 38. And our three points are going to be these, the promise of the rivers, the name of the rivers, and finally, junk in the rivers. Three points. The promise of the rivers, the name of the rivers, and junk in the rivers. First, just look at this beautiful text with me. Look at verse 37. And look at every sparkling word here. This is so powerful. Verse 37. In the last day, that great day of the feast, it's probably the feast of hooves, Jesus stood and cried. Now just pause there. Have you ever heard Jesus cry? Have you ever wondered why? Why right here? This is the only sermon he preached where he stood up and cried. I don't know what it would sound like if there were tears or if he's just screaming this thing. But he's saying, note this, mark this, this matters, listen to this. And what does he say? If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. Notice right there the simplicity of the gospel call. Does any man thirst? Does anyone have problems? Does anyone have a need in their life? Does anyone have depression? Anyone have an addiction? Anyone have anxiety? Anyone thirst? Anyone have a need? It's so simple, isn't it? What does he say? Come unto me. Now if you get studying the baptism of the Spirit, the filling of the Holy Spirit, you'll find all these wacky ways that you achieve this. You'll find that people want to have tarrying meetings. You'll find that people want to worship for a certain amount of time and then you'll procure the Spirit somehow. You'll find that all these different theories about how to get the filling of the Spirit in our lives. But Jesus gives us the true method here, doesn't he? If any man thirst, what should we do? Go to him and drink. Isn't that simple? And that, you say, well how do you do that? Well you just have to do it. You're alone and you say, where do I go? I go to Jesus, right? I go to him. He says, come unto me and drink. What does that mean? Well, you realize that he's here. He's everywhere. He's in this room, no? He's willing to fulfill this promise right now. You're on your bed and he's willing to be there and his presence is all around you and you simply receive. You drink. You take it in. Isn't that beautiful, just how simple this call is? Then look at verse 38. He that believeth on me as the scripture hath said out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. So that simple call, come unto me, drink, and then here comes this promise. And this is a promise that every single one of us in this room can take to the bank, no? He that believeth on me, anyone who believes as the scripture has said, and here it comes, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. That literally in Greek is out of his guts, out of the lower parts of your belly, out of your guts. I like the old King James, out of his belly. You all have another translation there? I think other translations say his heart, yeah. And other translations say out of his inmost being, but this is talking about in the Greek, the guts, from where you really feel it, the very center of your life. And what will happen? What's the promise? Out of your guts shall flow rivers of living water. The promise right here is that if you are filled with the Spirit of God, you become abundant, you become fruitful, you become refreshing to people. You make a lot of money? No, that's not what it's saying. Do we have wonderful housing? No, that's not what it's saying, no. But it's saying that you yourself will become a Spirit-giving person. You will become refreshing to other people. Now stop right there as we look at this promise. Does it convict you? Do you look at it and say, oh yeah, that's me. I'm just flowing with rivers of living water. Oh yeah, I'm living this wonderful, abundant Christian life. Maybe all of us would say, no, not quite. I'm not quite there. I need more of that. I think we should let this verse hit us like that, like a ton of bricks, like just, Lord, that's not me. Some days, maybe for an hour, I'm like that. Maybe at times I've refreshed people. But I want to have this, these rivers of living water flowing from my belly. Amen? And finally, look at verse 39 here. It says, But this he spake of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive, for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified. So it's interpreting it for us right there, right? This is talking about Pentecost. This is talking about the church age. This is talking about once Christ has been glorified and the Holy Spirit is given in fullness to every single one of us. I love that. That's the promise of the rivers. Would you all quickly turn to Genesis chapter 2 with me for a moment? Genesis chapter 2. And I want to give you the name of the rivers. We have shown you that this is promised to you. Now I want to talk about the name of these rivers. What did he promise? Rivers of living water flowing from our bellies. Look at Genesis chapter 2 and we'll start at verse 10. It says, Genesis chapter 2 verse 10, And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted and became into four heads. So do you all imagine that? The garden of Eden, a river is going out from it and it turns into four rivers, right? It sort of separates into four rivers. Look at verse 11. The name of the first is Pishon. Now here it gets amazing. I want to tell you about the name of these four rivers. And if the names of these rivers were just any normal river, if it were just Royal River and Cousins River and Kennebec River and Anderstaden River or whatever, Main River, we would say, okay, it doesn't really matter. No, all those are beautiful names of rivers. Don't get me wrong. But when you look into the Hebrew meaning of each of these words, you'll see that they are rivers of living water that point to the Holy Spirit. Are you all following me? These rivers are not the Holy Spirit. They're actual rivers that were coming from an actual land of Eden that we actually believe in, right? But each of their names is a type of the Holy Spirit. Each of their names points towards the Holy Spirit. Each of their names is a shadow of which the Holy Spirit is the reality. When someone taught me this, it blew my mind. So I hope it blows your mind and I hope it gives you encouragement today. Verse 11, the name of the first is Pishon. Pishon literally means in Hebrew, increase or growth. Okay, do you all imagine the start of a river when it's gathering its waters and there's these little swells in it and it's flowing and it's swelling downstream? This is Pishon. It's the river of increase or growth. So let's search our hearts. Do we all have that river of living water flowing from us? That river of increase? Can we say, okay, Lord, last week you taught me something. Can we say, okay, Lord, a year from now, I want to increase in my knowledge. Can we say, Lord, a month from now, I want to be more filled with the Spirit. I want that increase in my life. That is the river of Pishon. Isn't that beautiful? And then it says, that is it which compasses the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold and the gold of that land is good. There is bdellium and the onyx stone. Do we see that? There's richness, there's increase, there's growth, there's gold, there's nice jewels coming around that river. Beautiful. That's Pishon, increase. Verse 13, and the name of the second river is Gihon. Gihon means in the Hebrew literally bursting forth or power. Now is that one of, is that potentially a type of the Holy Spirit? Is that one of the things that the Holy Spirit can do when he comes into our lives? Bursting forth or power. Imagine that part of the river that gushes, that breaks, that bursts. If you go to the center of Westbrook, you can see this. The river is sort of gaining strength and gaining strength. And then right when you get to the center of Westbrook, it just, boom, it gushes, it bursts, it breaks right there. What's the river of Gihon? If we have this river of living water streaming up from our bellies, what do we have? Well, we have power. We have bursting forth. You could put it this way. We have breakthrough. There are so many Christians who say, no, I can't have breakthrough. No, I've tried on that for years. No, Lord, I've got that problem. It's just not going away. I've got that addiction and it hasn't gone away for 20 years. If we have the river of Gihon coming up from our bellies, then we say, no, I'm bursting forth. I have power in me. No, I have this gushing in me. I can break through. I can do better by the Holy Spirit. Amen. Y'all following me? I love these names. So we have Pishon, increase. We have Gihon, bursting forth, power, the power of the Spirit. And then look with me at verse 14. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel. Now that river we can still find today. It's the Tigris River. And it literally means in Hebrew, vehement, vehement. What's that? Hiddekel, vehement. You could also translate it rapid or active. But I love this word. You can think of zeal, no? If you're a Christian and you have Hiddekel flowing up from your guts, then you are vehement. And you have conviction, no? I love all of you because most of you have some pretty strong convictions, right? And I love what it's like when we work together. Can you imagine that part of the river? What part of the river is that vehement, active part? I think of those eddies in a river, the swirls, right? That sort of rapid flow where things are just gathering, right? And you know, it's just kind of rapids. Amen. That's Hiddekel, vehement. Where do we need to be vehement, brothers and sisters? Amen. Yeah, we have to be vehement about the truth. We have to be able, in today's world, if we have Hiddekel bubbling up from us to say, a man is a man and a woman is a woman, and you can't change that. We have to be able to say, you know, marriage is between a man and a woman, and you can't change that. It doesn't matter what the law of the land says. We have to be able to say, you can't kill a baby in the third trimester. No, you can't. Not the third trimester or the second trimester or the first trimester. And we have to be vehement about that and say, that's murder. That's sick. Right? We need these convictions. Where else are we vehement? Where else do we have Hiddekel in our lives? The cross of Christ, the blood of Christ. It's really his blood. He really sacrificed for us. He really poured it. You really have to remember it every day, Christians. The resurrection of Christ. We can't be like N.T. Wright and some of these heretics today who say, it's a myth, but it's a beautiful myth, and we can still gather as a church around it. No. Hiddekel would say, it's a true resurrection. It's not a myth. It's what we bank our lives on, vehemence, vehemence. And we don't want to lose it, and we need it on the street, and we need it here, and we need it when we're singing. We say, I actually believe it, Lord. Hiddekel. Hiddekel. Isn't that a beautiful word? Vehemence, vehemence. Don't let it die, please, saints. Don't let it die. Do you understand? The more I pastor, I've been pastoring for a tiny bit of time. The more I pastor, I realize we are in a time of unprecedented apostasy. Do you understand? Even if we don't all agree on eschatology or something, but something is going on. People are falling off like dead little raisins. It's bad. It is bad. I fear that some of you in this room, even this tiny crowd right here, we have that vehemence right now. Are you going to have it next year? Are you going to have it the year after that? Are we going to stay vehemence? We have to for the cause of Christ. Verse 14. And the fourth river is Euphrates. And it's funny, the translators just mess with this name here. Literally, in Hebrew, it's Perot. Perot. It's not Euphrates, but it is talking about what's now called the Euphrates River. Perot. You're not going to believe when I tell you what Perot means. It means fruitfulness. Does fruitfulness have anything to do with the Holy Spirit? Amen. John 15 verse 16. Our Lord said, I have ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit. Did you know that? You were ordained to bring forth fruit. And he's not looking at pastors there. He's looking at disciples. You all were ordained to go forth and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain. True fruit. Real fruit. Lasting fruit. Not dried raisins. Grapes. Good grapes. Perot means fruitfulness. If we have this thing, this river coming up out of our bellies, then what do we have? We bear fruit. The fruit of the Spirit. Yell out for me. What are the fruit of the Spirit? Kindness. Goodness. Love. What else? Amen. Joy. Yes. Patience. Okay. We were a little bit out of order there, weren't we? But that's awesome. Now that's true fruit. That's the Euphrates River. That's Perot coming up out of our souls. And there again, are we going to continue to bear that? That fruit? We must. We must. Forgiveness. Amen. We have to bear that fruit. Imagine that part of the river. That's what we see right now. Drive by a river and you'll see these green banks. You'll see lush vegetation. You'll see right by the river, trees that are doing well. That's what we need. That's what we need. True fruit. Healthy fruit. I've talked to you about the promise of the rivers. I've given you the typological name of the rivers. And thirdly, I want to talk very briefly about junk in the rivers. Go back to John 7 with me for one second. John chapter 7. And let's look at our promise one more time in verse 38. It says, John 7 38. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Now again, what if you're a Christian and you say, I'm a Christian. I believe this promise. But honestly, this is not a reality. If that's true of you, the basic thing that you need to think about is grieving the Holy Spirit. Right? So we say there's the indwelling spirit, and then there's this promise of being powerfully filled with the Spirit. And if that's not happening to you, then you need to think about how you might have been grieving the Spirit. And it's so vital that we as Christians come back to this truth, that the Spirit is God and the Spirit is a person. He is a personality. We refer to him as a hymn, right? Not as an it, not as a mode, not as a gas, as that heretic T.D. Jakes would say, who thinks he's just a mode. The Holy Spirit is a person. And so we can grieve him. It says in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 30, grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Don't grieve him. Don't grieve him. Don't grieve him. My third grade teacher in Yarmouth was a man named Mr. Weil. And he was a great teacher. And he told me that in the 60s, the Royal River, which is now a very healthy river, in the 60s, well, he used to swim there with his friends and they'd jump off a little rope swing into the Royal River. One day he's swimming and he looks around his side and he sees, you're not going to believe this, a little chicken head floating down the river. And then he and his friends look over to the other side and they see little bits of chicken skin floating down the river. And they start to see little chicken body parts and styrofoam junk coming down the river. And then a few days later, signs are erected on the side of the Royal River saying, do not swim, warning, poisoned river. And what had happened, all these factories upstream of the Royal River were just throwing their chicken junk into the river. And it was polluting the whole thing all the way down. Now, praise God, they're taking care of some of that. And you can see people fishing at the end of the Royal River there. What's my point? If these rivers of the Holy Spirit are not flowing well, it's because we've started to grieve him. And we're just letting those chicken guts fall into the river. May it not be, may it not be. I want to give us six things briefly that we need to think about. Six types of junk that can get into the river. Okay. And we'll end with this thought. First of all, the sand of unbelief. If anyone has been listening to this sermon, and I've told you, you're indwelt by the spirit, but you must be filled. You must be seeking to be filled. And you say, whatever. I don't really believe. I don't really care about that. That's the desert sands of unbelief. And if you pour that stuff into the river, what are you going to get eventually? A desert. The rivers are going to dry up. So first we have to believe. We just have to believe. I have to believe that God wants more for me, that he wants to fill me, that he wants to baptize me. Amen. Second, what about the mud of lies? Another type of junk that can get into the river is the mud of lies. This is why we so badly need clear doctrine. We're sounding the alarm bell for clear doctrine. Okay. This is why in this church, we try to actually open our Bibles, right? We try to see exactly what God says. If we let the mud of lies get into our rivers, we're going to grieve the Holy Spirit. If we start believing something wrong about heaven, something wrong about the atonement, something wrong about the resurrection. I love Jeff Price's point last week. Didn't you love that? Where he said, you just master the basics of the Christian faith. You master the basics of the Christian faith. And you know how many people, I come back to this example a lot, but how many people say, I'm a Christian and assembling with the saints doesn't matter. You know what problem they have right there? It's a doctrine problem. It's a truth problem. They're lying and they've been lied to. So the second thing I'm trying to impress upon you is we just need clear truth. And we all better remind each other of clear truth all the time. Please, as we go on as a church, you have to remind me, Sam, it's real. Sam, this is bad. Sam, this is right. We need clear doctrine, not the mud of lies in our rivers. Third bit of junk we need to get out. What about the debris of social media and the debris of our phones? Christ, don't say amen too long. I believe that some parts of social media can be used for good. Some parts of these phones can be used for good, maybe. But really, brothers and sisters, consider it. What did we read right here? There's supposed to be rivers of living water gushing up out of my belly. And you know how it feels, don't you? When at times you're so excited because you get this little tingle in your pocket, and you're so excited about this, that there's going to be, oh, someone's in touch with me. Oh, I'm hearing from someone, right? We can get so addicted to our phones. Oh, someone liked my post. And that's addiction. And it's the debris of social media. There's this endless scrolling on our phones. There's this addictive buzz on our phones. And what's that going to do? It's just like throwing junk in the rivers. It's throwing junk in there. Fourth bit of junk in the river. What about the bridge of busyness? Has anyone ever experienced the bridge of busyness, where you can erect a bridge that actually goes over the rivers? So you say, oh, yeah, so well, I'm a Christian, and I can be filled with the Spirit. But I don't really have time for that right now. I built a bridge over it. I have better things to do. I have to go from work to here, to here, to here, to here, to here. And what ends up happening? Don't even look over the side of the bridge to see the river flowing. The bridge of busyness. What do we do if the bridge of busyness has become that junk? You just got to smash it. You got to take a sledgehammer to it. Junk in the rivers. Fifth thing. Sometimes there can just be poison in the river. Has anyone, you're not going to raise your hand for this, but has anyone ever just poured poison into the river? You watch pornography, you're just pouring poison in. Occultism, you're pouring poison into that river. Addictions, and you're entertaining those addictions. You're just saying, whatever, Lord, I'll just put some chicken heads and some junk in there and just poison it the whole way down. But we want clear, flowing, beautiful rivers of living water, don't we? The sixth and final bit of junk that we can put in our rivers is the pavement of pride. We can say, I just don't need any more. I'm good. I'm fine. I'm self-reliant. I have a good job. I have enough money. I don't actually need a filling of the Holy Spirit. And we need to label that properly. That's the pavement of pride. And when we get to that place, it's just like concrete and pavement, just running through those rivers. Pave paradise and put up a parking lot. Have you ever heard those lyrics? But seriously, think of that. I started this by saying, if you pursue more of the Spirit, you will be humbled. You will feel these streams, this refreshing coming through you. You will become more sweet. If you say, I don't need that, and I'm going to forget that in a day, then, well, it's pride, really. It's pride. We've talked about the promise of the rivers, the name of the rivers, and the junk that we can put in the rivers. Can I just plead with you all one last time? Get that junk out. Get the junk out of the rivers. We desperately need Spirit-filled Christians. It's as simple as that. I can't make it any more simple. And you might say, well, what will happen if I get Spirit-filled? That's a whole other question. That's a whole other sermon. We can talk about all the things that happen in the New Testament when people get Spirit-filled. Boldness comes. Preaching comes. Souls get saved. People speak in tongues. People prophesy. The Word goes out with power. People start selling their things. People become more generous. People start giving more to the church. People start tying themselves more to the church. Romans chapter 5, the love of God is shed abroad in people's hearts. All those wonderful things can happen. But all I'm telling you today is this. Pursue it. Be filled with the Spirit. Make room in your life for this, please. Amen? Amen. We thank you, Lord, that you, Lord Jesus, are the one who baptizes with your Spirit. Would you please help us today to go home wanting this reality. To go home wanting this reality, Lord. To go home wanting it and not neglecting it. In Jesus' name, amen.