Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Welcome to the Chroma Church podcast.
[00:00:06] Right, find Acts, chapter 21 and verse 1. Why don't you stand? And we're going to read the Word of God.
[00:00:15] So Acts 21:1. Now, it came to pass that when he had departed from them and set sail, running a straight course, we came to CoS following day to Rhodes. And from there to.
[00:00:30] And finding a ship sailing over to Phyllisia, we went aboard and set sail. When we had sighted Cyprus, we passed on the left, sailed to Syria and landed in Tyre.
[00:00:44] For there the ship was to unload her cargo. And finding disciples, we stayed there seven days.
[00:00:51] They told Paul through the Spirit not to go up to Jerusalem.
[00:00:56] When we had come to the end of those days, we departed and went on our way. And they all accompanied us with wives and children till we were out of the city. And we knelt down on the shore and prayed. And when we had taken our leave of one another, we boarded the ship and they returned home. And when we finished our voyage from Tyre, we came to somewhere. I can't pronounce, greeted the brethren and stayed with them. One day, on the next day, we, who were Paul's companions, departed and came to Caesarea and entered the house of Philip the Evangelist. Do you remember, we read about him earlier? And I said that if you obey God and you're an evangelist, you get to live by the sea. Well, he's now in Caesarea, living by the sea. And this is where Paul and his companions have all started. And he was one of the seven, and they stayed with him. Now, this man had four virgin daughters who prophesied.
[00:01:52] And as we stayed many days, a certain prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. When he had come to us, he took Paul's belt, bound his own hands and feet, and said, thus says the Holy Spirit, so shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles. Now, when we had heard these things, both we and those from that place pleaded with him not to go to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, what do you mean by weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. So when he would not be persuaded, we ceased saying, the will of the Lord be done.
[00:02:35] Amen. Take a seat.
[00:02:41] So, as I said, we now find Paul.
[00:02:45] He's been doing his missionary journeys. As we've been reading through Acts, he's heading back to Jerusalem and he's in Caesarea. He comes and stays at the house of Philip the evangelist, who has four daughters, who prophesy. And then a new character is coming in Agabus from Judea. And what we'll do is we'll come back to the main story of this. Probably not next week, the week after. Okay? But what I want to talk to you about this morning is I want to talk to you about the Holy Spirit who dwells and speaks.
[00:03:27] Verse 4.
[00:03:28] They told Paul through the Spirit not to go to Jerusalem.
[00:03:34] So who's speaking the Spirit?
[00:03:38] And then verse 11, Agabus. Thus says the Holy Spirit, so shall the Jews at Jerusalem that the Holy Spirit speaks.
[00:03:51] He is a person and he has come and made his home in your life when you accept Jesus. And there may be people this morning that need to accept Jesus into their life.
[00:04:05] John writes that he is knocking at the door of our heart.
[00:04:10] And that's what that persistent knocking is, or that draw to his presence. And he says, whoever opens the door and welcomes me in, we come and make a home in them.
[00:04:23] And he comes in our life by the person of the Holy Spirit.
[00:04:30] He inhabits. He dwells in our lives. It's not like sometimes he's here and sometimes he's not. Now I know sometimes it feels like that. But that's not him. That's you.
[00:04:43] Well, how do I know? Well, this is Jesus speaking. He says John 14. He says he may abide with you forever, talking about the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows Him. So part of our journey with the Holy Spirit is learning to see him and know Him. But he says, you know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
[00:05:10] I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you.
[00:05:15] And then again, verse 23, we will come to him and make our home with Him. This is Jesus speaking about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. So I want to say five things and I'm going to move really quick, but we probably will overrun number one, practice his presence.
[00:05:34] The greatest way we learn to host the Holy Spirit in our lives is to live real life.
[00:05:42] That's why he's come. That's why Jesus doesn't you give your life to Jesus. Jesus doesn't just take you out of real life, you know, Anyone ever, ever have difficulties in life here?
[00:05:53] Yeah, right. Everyone, right? But the. But now he has come into our. Into our life. And the way we learn to host him is going through life and learning to conquer life in Jesus name. So what am I talking about?
[00:06:13] Well, what's going on with you at the moment? You know, think about, well, I'm dealing with this. I'm pushing through that. I'm trying to learn this. The Holy Spirit wants to walk you through it. You are not on your own.
[00:06:25] He has come to take you by the hand and lead you.
[00:06:29] So lots of you, if you've been around here, will know that I started my Christian life as a teenager reading Benny Hinn's book, Good Morning, Holy Spirit. So we start each morning, Good morning, Holy Spirit, I honor you, renew my awareness of your presence. Let me start the day knowing you.
[00:06:56] Let me be aware of you.
[00:06:58] And then talk with him about yesterday.
[00:07:02] Lord, Holy Spirit, what can I learn from my life yesterday? What would you like me to do differently today than I didn't do yesterday?
[00:07:16] And then talk with him about today?
[00:07:19] You know, how can I obey you?
[00:07:22] You know, do you know how lucky you are to live your life amongst sinners?
[00:07:30] You know, all you that have real jobs, I'm referring to myself because I only work Sundays, right? So everyone else that has a real job, you are so lucky. And you're thinking you're not meant to say luck in church. No, you are fortunate whatever to be amongst people that don't know Jesus, because that's one of the primary ways the Holy Spirit speaks to us and uses us in life. One of our young guys last week, he's doing music and stuff and he's working in a cafe because musicians need to live. And he was just chatting to somebody who was coming into the cafe and he was talking about faith and they talked about church. And he said, do you want to come to my church? And the guy said, yeah, I'd love to come.
[00:08:15] So he came last Sunday and walked forward and gave his life to Jesus. How cool is that?
[00:08:21] That's what we get. That's what we get to do.
[00:08:25] And so what I want to say to you this morning, will you make a deal with the Holy Spirit that if he interrupts you in your daily life, if he speaks to you, you will be listening and you will obey what he says.
[00:08:44] Okay, how many? There's like five at the front. Who's going to make a deal? Holy Spirit, you speak to us. You interact. Interrupt my life. Because if your life is anything like mine, we get busy and we need the interruption of the Holy Spirit, and that's how we long. So we start the day with him and we honor him, but I don't know how long it takes. But before you're in the whole swell of things. And he interrupts us because he wants to speak to us and use us and move through us. So the deal is, if you'll do that this week, Lord, and every week, I will hear and listen. That's number one. Number two, prepare the house.
[00:09:26] You see, the Holy Spirit comes and inhabits.
[00:09:30] You know, we had a brief period of time when all our children left home and they were studying or anything. Our house was so tidy. It was perfect. There was never anything out of place. But whenever the kids, any of the kids come home or they come and visit, there's mess. They kick off their shoes, they leave their stuff lying around. They forget their stuff. Even if they don't live in that house, they still leave half their stuff lying around. Okay? If the Holy Spirit has made his home in your life, his stuff should be everywhere, all right? His fingerprints should be everywhere in your life. You see Jesus?
[00:10:12] What am I talking about? Jesus, when he talks about the Holy Spirit, he says this. He says, you will do greater works.
[00:10:19] You see, being a Christian is not about being good.
[00:10:22] It's about doing greater works.
[00:10:26] You see, if you're just trying to be good, you've missed it because it was Jesus that made you good, because he forgave your sin on the cross. Being a Christian is about doing greater works.
[00:10:36] And we do that by the greater works, by the Holy Spirit. So we need to get expectant. So part of preparing the house is expect him to do something.
[00:10:47] Jesus, when again talking about the Holy Spirit, he says, you'll keep my word.
[00:10:52] This book is a treasure of greater works.
[00:10:56] And you are better because he dwells in you.
[00:11:03] And so not only do you have the Holy Spirit, but he brings the word of God to life in you.
[00:11:11] And then Jesus says this, and you will have peace. The world doesn't know.
[00:11:17] Do you know what the most common command in the Bible is?
[00:11:20] Do not fear.
[00:11:23] The most common thing the Bible says is don't be afraid. Why? Well, because we get afraid. We get flustered, we get worried.
[00:11:31] But the Bible says, fear not. Why? Because you have the Holy Spirit in you and he brings a peace. You know, when John has the vision of heaven, he sees the throne room of God and he sees the lake, a lake of glass before the throne.
[00:11:50] What's he describing? There's not even a ripple in the throne room of God. No matter what's happening on the earth, there is so much peace, so much authority, so much glory. There is not a ripple in the throne room. And that same peace comes to us when the Holy Spirit Moves in.
[00:12:13] But sometimes we lose the peace, right?
[00:12:16] And so we have to stop and pray and ask that the peace would come back.
[00:12:24] You see, if he is in your life, his stuff is everywhere.
[00:12:29] And the challenge. So challenge number two. Is there anywhere in your life that you have not opened up to the Holy Spirit yet?
[00:12:40] And that's a really good prayer to pray. Lord, is there anything I'm holding back? Is there anywhere in my life that I haven't let you in?
[00:12:48] And if there is, Lord, I yield.
[00:12:50] Because you are Lord and Holy Spirit, I want you in my life.
[00:12:58] So practice the presence. Prepare the house. Number three.
[00:13:06] Grieve him.
[00:13:08] He is a person.
[00:13:10] He speaks. He can be grieved.
[00:13:14] When Paul writes to the Ephesians, he says, do not grieve the Holy Spirit. And you go, well, how could we grieve the Holy Spirit?
[00:13:22] Well, I think one of the main ways we grieve the Holy Spirit is we just forget he's there.
[00:13:26] We just forget about him.
[00:13:29] You know, if I'm out in a restaurant with Juliet and I just forget she's there and go home, she gets grieved, okay?
[00:13:40] Oh, I've never done it.
[00:13:43] Never gonna do it. But we forget. We forget he's there. You know, maybe it's when we don't love the words of Jesus. Or what about this one? When we criticize other dwellees because he's in his people and we criticize them. And when we criticize other dwellings, we're criticizing the Holy Spirit and it grieves him. That's why we don't judge. That's why we don't criticize, because we'd be criticizing other dwellees.
[00:14:14] You see, sometimes we just don't realize who we are carrying.
[00:14:22] Let me try and explain.
[00:14:24] You see, some. I'm going to move this back, otherwise there'll be no more iPad, you know?
[00:14:34] Oh, just enough.
[00:14:37] You see, many of us as Christians, we just believe we're carrying, you know, water, you know, and we don't understand the worth of the Holy Spirit, so we just live life. And this is what we're like.
[00:14:53] Yeah. And, you know, oh, I'm sorry. You know, and this is how we just live life.
[00:15:01] And, you know, nothing really matters. It doesn't matter. And then you wonder why you're half full because you forgot who is in you.
[00:15:16] But actually, do you know, if you go to Harrods, right. At the basement of Harrods is the wine cellar, and you can buy bottles of wine for £100,000 a bottle. One bottle.
[00:15:38] I mean, how would you know if that tastes good?
[00:15:41] Oh, you couldn't drink it, could you?
[00:15:43] But it's incredibly, credibly valuable.
[00:15:49] And you see, we carry the Holy Spirit, the new wine.
[00:15:57] He is so precious in our life.
[00:16:02] So as we carry him, I'm not even going to go down there.
[00:16:09] You know, we are very, very careful how we walk and how we are. You know, Sarah's got some lovely white trousers there, you know, if I could spill this, you would know she's been to church.
[00:16:23] But we walk very, very carefully because it's precious.
[00:16:27] We don't want to lose a drop of the Holy Spirit in our lives because we honor him and we are aware of him every moment of the day.
[00:16:40] And so it starts to change how we live.
[00:16:45] Get it?
[00:16:56] You might see yourself as a clay jar. Paul describes us sometimes like that. But he says, you have a treasure in you.
[00:17:09] It is his presence.
[00:17:12] And so we carry him and we must be aware of Him. We need to move number four, stay free from religion.
[00:17:20] You know, I've been saying as we're going through acts that the biggest problem for the church is not sin. Never has been. Jesus paid for your sin. That was done at the cross. It's unbelief. The biggest problem we have in the church is unbelief.
[00:17:33] The second problem we have in the church is religion.
[00:17:37] You see, if you take the Holy Spirit out, our faith becomes religion and it becomes rules and regulation. It comes about you, not him, because we work our own righteousness. We can never be righteous. He makes us righteous. We were singing it this morning. We plead the blood.
[00:17:57] If it wasn't for the blood of Jesus, there's no hope. But because of the blood of Jesus, we are purified. But when we take the Holy Spirit, you see, religion says, well, you please God by being good. And remember, it's not about being good, it's about greater works.
[00:18:14] It's about walking with the Holy Spirit. Let me give you an example. There was a young guy, it was when we were at Southend, he was a really bright young man. He was from South Africa.
[00:18:23] And we had lots of people getting saved. And this is, you know, 30 years ago, could be 40 years ago, I don't know, it's a long while ago.
[00:18:33] And people were getting saved and they were smoking and, you know, they were doing all sorts of things, weed and stuff like that. And they were on a journey of getting free. And I remember him coming up to me one day and said, steve, those young people who are smoking, they're going to go to hell.
[00:18:51] You got to tell them so they don't go to hell.
[00:18:54] And I remember looking at it, and he knew his Bible, he was a good young guy, and said, is it all right if I ask you a question? He said, yeah, of course.
[00:19:06] I said, you know, when you're back in Africa, do you have a gun?
[00:19:10] He says, yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone has a gun. I know that everyone has a gun because I've been to South Africa and you have gun check in at the airport.
[00:19:18] And he says, yeah, I have a gun. I said, why?
[00:19:21] Well, he says, to defend myself.
[00:19:25] I said, what do you mean? If someone breaks into my house, I'll shoot them.
[00:19:30] And I said, what? Shoot and kill them? He said, if they break in my house, it's their problem.
[00:19:36] I said, let me just get this right.
[00:19:39] You think that somebody who smokes a leaf is going to hell and you can shoot someone and they won't?
[00:19:48] That's nuts.
[00:19:51] That's crazy.
[00:19:54] You see, what I want you to understand is religion kills people.
[00:19:59] Religion always kills people.
[00:20:02] Freedom comes from the spirit and the grace of God.
[00:20:06] Let me give you a Jesus example. Remember the woman that was caught in adultery and they throw her down before Jesus? The law of Moses demands that this woman is stoned. They're doing it to test him.
[00:20:19] Now, the problem Jesus has is the law of Moses does say, this woman should be stoned. But if he. And so if he doesn't stone her, he breaks the law of Moses. But if he does stone her, and the Romans will arrest him, and he kneels down on the floor and he starts writing. The Bible doesn't say what he writes, but I bet it was the Ten Commandments.
[00:20:41] Love, Lord, your God, with all your heart and all your mind. I love your neighbor as you love yourself. And he's writing. He just kind of looks up at them and says, why don't you. That has no sin, throw the first stone at her. Here's the rock, you know, Throw the first stone.
[00:20:58] And they all look and there's this wonderful story where the oldest to the youngest move away.
[00:21:09] You see, that was the spirit of wisdom. That was the Holy Spirit in Jesus speaking wisdom, cutting through religion. Because he came to destroy religion. But to bring freedom. Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is God freedom.
[00:21:27] But there is only freedom if you carry him attentively.
[00:21:33] If we forget he's there, if we live as he isn't there, we start to fall into religion and we lose our freedom when we don't treasure his presence because it's his Presence that brings the grace and mercy into our lives and into their lives. That makes sense.
[00:21:53] Okay, number five, live your life with him.
[00:21:58] Look, the early church has only made it this far because they knew the ways of the Holy Spirit. You know, we've seen him on every page. And in Acts 21, we find ourselves in a room full of word workers.
[00:22:09] It's full of Holy Spirit superstars. It's full. You know, you've got evangelists, apostles, prophets. They're all gathering together. But who's in charge? The Holy Spirit.
[00:22:20] The Holy Spirit is always in charge of his church. It's not men who are in charge. It's the Holy Spirit.
[00:22:28] And you see, Paul walks with the Holy Spirit.
[00:22:31] And even though all the people around him are going, don't go to Jerusalem, don't go to Jerusalem, you're going to die. They're right. Paul treasures the presence of God, no matter where it leads him.
[00:22:44] That's the beauty of the Apostle Paul. And we'll talk about this more in a few weeks. But Paul says, I don't care where the Holy.
[00:22:51] If you think dying for Jesus is going to be a problem for me, I'm already dead.
[00:22:56] I died when I gave my life to Jesus.
[00:23:00] I gave my life. I'm just going to walk into his glory, into his presence.
[00:23:07] See? Really quick, how do I know if I'm hosting well, or do you have the peace?
[00:23:12] Walk with him in peace, and if you lose it, stop and pray.
[00:23:16] Number two, does it conflict with scripture? So what you're doing, the direction you're heading, he always leads us into truth.
[00:23:25] Does it conflict with this? Number three, do those around you confirm, Test your journey and even if they disagree, win them over.
[00:23:35] Don't you see? This journey with the Holy Spirit, even with the Apostle Paul, is not separate from the Church.
[00:23:43] He is taking counsel even though he doesn't agree. And they're going, don't go, don't go. And he just wears them down. And they went, the Lord's will be done. And he says, I know, but that's how you know it's the Holy Spirit when you can wear them down.
[00:23:57] You see, the revelation was right. The problem was the application was not right because Paul was going to die and he's going to go to Rome and testify for Jesus Christ.
[00:24:10] Does it involve faith? The easy option really involves the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will take you on journeys that require you to believe God and to have faith because he wants to bring glory to Jesus.
[00:24:26] So the easy road is rarely the Spirit road. The Spirit will take you on a difficult journey and some of you are going.
[00:24:34] It's really hard at the moment that. Good, good, because he's going to take you through that and you're gonna see his wisdom unfold in your life.
[00:24:44] And five does it release freedom? Are you free and are those around you becoming free? You see, when we host the Holy Spirit, you will be free because he brings freedom. And all those around you start to get free. There is the fruit of his presence. What am I saying? Practice his presence, prepare the house. Do not grieve Him. Stay free from religion and live your life with Him. Remember, the Holy Spirit is your pastor.
[00:25:10] Thanks for listening to the Cromer Church Podcast. If you enjoyed this message, you can like and subscribe. You can also join us in person or online every Sunday at Cromer Church. For more information about us, including our ministries, events, worship and how to donate, visit our website at Cromer Church.
