SUMMER TOGETHER | Part 9 | Under The Influence

Hey, welcome to Gray Summit Church

Podcast. We're so glad you're here.

We're all about helping people know

Jesus, grow in their faith,

and live out his love every day.

No matter where you're at in your faith

journey, our prayers that this message

helps you know Jesus more and live with

greater purpose and conviction.

Let's jump in.

How many of you remember church

bulletins? Remember them?

These are some actual

bloopers out of church bulletins.

Don't let worry kill

you. Let the church help.

Please remember in prayer the many who

are sick of our church and community.

The rosebud on the altar this morning is

to announce the birth of David Allen

Belzer, the sin of

Reverend and Mrs. Julius Belzer.

These are, I didn't make this up.

The senior choir invites any member of

the congregation who enjoys

sinning to join the choir.

Weight Watchers will meet at 7 p.m. at

the First Presbyterian Church. Please use

the large double doors

at the side entrance.

Announcement in the church bulletin for a

national prayer and fasting conference.

The cost for attending the fasting and

prayer conference includes your meals.

Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale.

It's a chance to get rid of those things

not worth keeping around the house.

Don't forget your husbands.

And finally, for those of you who have

children and don't know it,

we have a nursery downstairs.

Bring back the bulletins.

Hey, good to see everybody. Summer's

winding down, man. Isn't it?

Kind of in the homestretch. How many are

ready for hoodies and fires?

There was a little fire in that little

video that we just saw.

And my wife and I are going camping.

We're going to be sitting

around one of those tonight.

But I want to talk

about another kind of fire.

And if you would go with me to the book

of Acts, chapter 2, we'll draw our text

Acts 2 · chapter mention

from verses 36 through 39.

That is the fire of the Holy Spirit.

"Therefore let all the house of Israel

know assuredly that God has made this

Jesus whom you

crucified both Lord and Christ."

"Now when they heard this, they were cut

to the heart and said to Peter and the

rest of the apostles,

"Men and brethren, what shall we do?"

Then Peter said to them, "Repent, and let

every one of you be baptized

in the name of Jesus Christ

for the remission of sins, and you shall

receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,

for the promise is to you and to your

children and to all who are afar off,

as many as the Lord our God will call."

God give us ears to hear what the Spirit

is saying to the church this morning.

I want to talk to you about

being under the influence.

Now being somewhat of an expert on being

under the influence,

one thing I learned through the various

things that I've tried,

and I was going to say experimented, but

that wouldn't be proper.

But one of the things I've learned is

that what goes up must come down.

But we're looking here at a man named

Peter who is under the influence.

And Peter tells everyone in the crowd and

extending on to you and I that the Holy

Spirit is a free gift,

subsequent to salvation, it is a gift

whereby you can get up

under the influence of,

and it won't damage you and it won't take

your self-respect and you

won't end up in jail probably.

There ain't no high like the most high.

Let me put it that way.

And Peter is under the influence as well

as many other people that had come out of

a little upper room.

They had been up there praying.

This is the day of Pentecost, 50 days

after the resurrection of Christ, 10 days

after the ascension of Christ.

And Jesus had told his followers at the

ascension that he's

going to give them power,

that the promise of the Father, the Holy

Spirit was going to come, but he said,

"Wait in the city of Jerusalem until you

be endowed with that power."

The word power in Acts

1.8 is dunamis in the Greek.

And it's a word that means power, force,

might and ability,

energy, strength, abundance.

It is the root word of where

we get our word dynamite from.

It is also related to dynamo or dynamic.

The Holy Spirit is a power that God gives

us subsequent to salvation that is

available to every single one of us.

Now Peter had been a man before

Pentecost, before this experience,

who denied that he

even knew who Jesus was.

When the pressure was on and people were

asking him, "Weren't you with him?"

He's like, "I don't even know who he is."

And now the same man under the influence

of the Holy Spirit steps up and preaches

an in-your-face message,

so impactful that the people in the crowd

were cut to the heart

and asked the question,

as every preacher wants you to ask at the

end of a message, "What do we do?

How do we apply this to our lives? What

does this mean for us?"

And so they asked Peter that question.

So Peter is deeply under the

influence of the Holy Spirit.

Now the Holy Spirit is way too vast of a

topic for me to tackle in a short time.

You see it in the second verse of the

Bible, Genesis 1, verse 2, you see the

Genesis 1:2

Holy Spirit hovering

over the face of the waters.

You see it in the last couple of verses

in Revelation 22 at the

very end of the Bible,

"The Spirit and the bride say, Come."

The Holy Spirit is way too big for us to

cover all of this in

one particular message,

but I want to narrow the conversation

down to this thing here,

staying under the influence.

There's a couple of key verses I'd like

to give you at this point.

Ephesians chapter 4, verse 30 says, "Not

Ephesians 4:30

to grieve the Holy Spirit of God."

First Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 19

1 Thessalonians 5:19

says, "Not to quench the Spirit of God."

So it's one thing to

receive the Holy Spirit,

to have the influence of the Holy Spirit

on you to where it radically

changes you and makes you bold

and brings you into an arena where you

can have power and

miracles and faith and healings

and all the things that happen under the

influence of the Holy Spirit.

There's also the fruit of the Spirit

listed in Galatians 5,

love and joy and peace and patience and

gentleness and

faithfulness and self-control.

These are all things that the Holy Spirit

will bring into your life

if you're under the

influence of the Holy Spirit.

But if you're not careful, you can grieve

the Holy Spirit and even

quench the Holy Spirit.

And my prayer today for Grace Summit

Church is that we don't

quench the Holy Spirit of God.

We need more than technology.

We need more than just more screens and

more ways and approaches and gimmicks and

ways to try to reach people.

We need the power of the

Holy Spirit in our life.

And I pray that you get up under the

influence of the Holy Spirit today,

so much so that we have to call you an

Uber when church lets out,

because you're not supposed to be driving

when you're that intoxicated.

In fact, at this setting,

they thought they were drunk.

They saw them speaking in tongues and

over 15 languages were

discerned by bystanders.

It was a miracle.

And this once shy little crowd that had

been in the upper room

praying spilled on it in the street,

120 of them, about the amount of people

we have in this building,

spilled out into the street and turned

the world upside down.

At the end of Peter's message, 3,000

people joined the church.

That's the difference between

just going through the motions

and having the power of

the Holy Spirit in your life.

That's the difference.

That's what made Peter, who

cowered at being interrogated,

whether he was a follower of Christ or

not, to being a powerful preacher.

That's what'll take a drug addict and put

him behind a pulpit.

That's what'll take people and change

them so radically that you'll

barely even recognize yourself.

That's the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so it's poured out, and I want to

talk to you about what that looks like

to grieve the Holy Spirit

or to quench the Holy Spirit

lest you fall into a trap that many

people have fallen into,

because here's the thing.

You can be used by God mightily.

You can be under the influence of God.

But if you're not careful, you can

diminish that influence in your life,

and you can slip back.

You can be anointed in one season and

then fade into this form of godliness

by having no power.

Are you with me so far?

All right, just checking.

So there's a few men,

Peter's one of them,

a couple other men I want to

talk about to illustrate this,

are in the Old Testament.

And as I mentioned, the Holy Spirit is

throughout the Bible.

It wasn't just on the day of Pentecost.

The Holy Spirit came

on a man named Samson.

Samson is known for his strength.

But if you read his story,

you realize that he was strong

when the Spirit of God came upon him.

That's when he was tearing down gates of

city, gates and pulling down the doors.

That's when he was killing

lions with his bare hands.

That's when he was whooping guys that he

shouldn't have been able to whoop

because of the power of

the Holy Spirit on his life.

He was under the influence

of the Holy Spirit of God.

But Samson had issues.

And I believe a careful study of his life

revealed his issues to be that of women.

This strong man had an issue with women.

Oh, how many men have been taken down.

Ladies, I love you. It's not your fault.

As Jimmy would say, you can't help it.

You were born that way.

But some men are just

vulnerable to this particular attack.

In fact, I would give you three things

that all men need to be careful of,

particularly those in ministry.

The girls, the gold and the glory.

Samson's issue was the girls.

For instance, he saw a

woman of the Philistines,

which were the enemies of the Israelites.

But he was attracted to her.

And so this entitled man looked at his

parents and said, "Get her for me."

And they said, "Can't we get

you somebody more suitable,

somebody that has the same

faith system and everything?"

And this was Samson's reply.

"She looks good to me."

He didn't care about character.

He didn't care about her faith.

All he was attracted to is

what he was attracted to,

and he wanted it.

And that girl got up inside of his head

and made him do stupid things.

Then there was another

woman that we won't mention.

She's nameless in the Bible,

but there was another gal that

he shacked up with one night.

And then there was a third woman that we

read about in a story

whose name was Delilah.

Delilah, too, got in his head

and caused him to compromise.

And she would plead with him and say,

"You must hate me because you won't tell

me the source of your great strength."

And what she was trying to do is trap him

so the Philistines could destroy him.

And little by little, he began to

compromise in his answers to her

and get closer and closer to the real

source of his strength,

which was the Spirit of God, but which

was also the fact that he was a Nazarite.

He was covenanted to

God in a very special way.

The Nazarite vow is

found in Numbers, chapter 6.

Numbers 6 · chapter mention

I believe every Christian

should look at that and read it,

because it was a voluntary vow that men

and women could take

just whenever you choose to

for whatever set season of time.

And it was meant to

separate you from the rest.

You know, even in the church, there are

those that stand out as being

just a little more

committed, a little more covenanted,

like just going to church on Sunday and

singing a couple songs

and going home isn't enough for them.

They're radically pursuing Jesus.

And all of us can make that choice.

There are things in my

life that I stay away from,

that I abstain from

voluntarily for no other reason

and that it has no

benefit to my spiritual life

and it will not help me to use my life to

proclaim the goodness of God.

Those things are not

sinful in and of themselves,

but I have chosen to stay

away from them by covenant.

And so it was with Samson, but Samson

started to feel a little too secure

in the fact that he had whooped a bunch

of people and ripped down gates

and he had killed a lion and he started

feeling like he was really something.

And so he just began to let his guard

down with this woman.

She got all up in his head

to where he got so tired of it

that he disclosed the

source of his strength.

And so she calls the Philistines in to

attack the great warrior.

And Samson wakes up

and says this to himself,

"I will arise as at other times."

And he didn't even know, the Bible says,

that the Lord had departed from him.

He didn't even know it.

He had fought so many battles.

This is the caution I'm

giving the church today.

Get under the influence

and stay under the influence.

And so Samson was reduced

to a grinder in the prison.

And they poked out his eyes

and tied him to a millstone

and he was a grinder in the prison

because of compromise

and because of not staying under the

influence of the spirit

that had made him so

strong in the first place.

But here's the good news.

God is a God of redemption.

And how many of you are glad

he's a God of second chances

and fiftieth chances and eight hundred

and ninety thousandth chances?

And so we see Samson there blinded and

going in circles around this millstone

and they were mocking him and they tied

him up for sport to

these great big pillars.

But the Bible has this one little verse

that it's easy to overlook

because what had happened is, you know,

the hair that Samson had

was part of the covenant sign.

And when they discovered

that, they cut his hair all off.

But the Bible says that his

hair began to grow back again.

And so there, when they

chained him to those pillars,

he cried out and said,

"Lord, one more time."

He humbled himself after his fall.

And the Bible says that he took out more

of his enemies in his death

that day than he had his entire life.

What a God we serve.

But I would caution us to not end up

grinding in the prison

and to be reduced and

humbled to that place

that we can stay under the influence

before that happens.

Are you with me so far?

There's another man that I'd like you to

consider and that is Saul.

Saul was the first king of Israel.

Saul started with a measure of humility.

When they came to anoint him, he was

hiding among the equipment.

He had this timidness about him.

But here's a verse you

ought to mark down and know.

I love this verse.

1 Samuel 10, verse 6 says that

1 Samuel 10:6

the Spirit will come upon you

and you will prophesy and

be turned into another man.

The Spirit of God can change you.

I've got to tell you, the only reason I'm

standing up here today

is because the Holy Spirit hit my life.

There is no way I would be standing

addressing any crowds of people

if it weren't for the Holy

Spirit that got a hold of me.

I'm under the influence.

In fact, I'm going to

need a ride home today.

Walk.

That's so close.

That's true.

But you can be changed into a

completely different person.

That's exciting.

And that's a lot of times when we talk

about the Holy Spirit,

what we focus on.

The outpouring.

Peter said, "This is that which was

spoken of by the prophet Joel."

"Then I will pour out

my spirit on all flesh."

"On men and on women and on servants."

"Young men will see visions.

Old men will dream dreams

because they're taking naps."

I added that part.

But the Spirit would be poured out and

Peter said, "This is that.

That's what you're seeing.

And it can change you.

And it had changed Saul."

But where I mentioned three things,

the girls, the gold, and the glory, where

these are dangers and threats to men,

the first, Samson fell prey

to you, which is the girls,

I would submit to you that the gold and

the glory are the two that got Saul.

In fact, if you look at any minister

who's ever fallen in

the Bible or in our world,

they fell into one of those three things.

The girls, the gold, and the glory.

Saul became king.

The Spirit came upon him.

He moved into the palace.

He was used by God.

He was leading.

And he began to disobey the direct

instructions of the Lord.

First in 1 Samuel chapter 13, where he

1 Samuel 13 · chapter mention

gave an unlawful sacrifice.

Second in chapter 15, also in 1 Samuel,

where he spared the Amalekites when he

was supposed to destroy all of them.

And so God rejected him at that point.

And the Bible says that the Spirit was

taken away from Saul.

That's a scary verse.

Now, in Saul's case, he chose to stay

seated as king as

though everything was okay.

He knew the Spirit of God was gone

because a troubling

Spirit came over him instead.

So he's now left with

this position, but no power.

We, fellow Christians, can have a form of

godliness and have no power.

I'm not interested in

that kind of Christianity.

And if the title, if the position ever

becomes more important than the presence

of God, it's time to hang it up.

I've told God many times, I will walk

away from the pulpit

at a moment's notice.

I would rather have you than any position

or any church or any amount of money

because nothing compares with him.

And I feel like David when he repented in

Psalm 51 and said, "Don't cast me away

from your presence and take

not your Holy Spirit from me."

Saul was troubled and he didn't have the

Holy Spirit. He wasn't

under the influence anymore.

Now, here's where it gets interesting.

He sends for a man that God was raising,

a boy that God was

raising up named David.

The Spirit of God departed

from Saul and landed on David.

And David could play some music.

I wish I could play me

something. I can't play nothing.

I can turn it on on Apple Music or

something. That's about as all I can do.

But David could play music and the Spirit

was in it and so it

soothed people, including Saul.

So Saul began to send for David, "Bring

that kid here, let him play."

It's the equivalent of somebody in the

church who the Spirit of God has

withdrawn from because of disobedience.

But you still love to come to church

because you sense the Holy Spirit.

You get a contact buzz when you're around

other people that are

under the influence.

But you yourself are not under the

influence. Are we having fun yet?

Yes.

And so Saul is like, "Play us the songs

of Zion. Play us that

worship music. It soothes me.

It feels good when you play music. It

feels good when people are worshipping."

But then you leave and before you get to

the car, you realize the reality is you

have grieved or quenched the

Holy Spirit in your own life.

And so these two men, one repented there

at the mill and God used him again and

his hair grew back and the other man,

Saul, would never recover.

Peter is another one who did recover

because if you remember, he had denied

even knew the Lord just a little while

earlier, but Jesus restored him.

And Peter was obedient and

that's what it comes down to.

When it comes down to staying under the

influence, you have to be obedient.

The less you obey,

the less you will hear.

Hear me. The less you obey, those little

promptings, what the old folks used to

call a check in the Spirit.

Now I have to explain that terminology

now because nobody knows what checks are.

But the old folks would talk about a

check. I just, "Eh, it

just doesn't set right."

And that can happen in so many scenarios.

Don't send that text.

Here you typed it all out and you had

your little vent and I'm going to tell

you, you tell me, I'll tell you back.

And you go to push the send button and

the Spirit says, "Don't do

that. Those are the moments."

I shared a message a couple of weeks ago

called "The Strong Silent Type" and it

was based out of Isaiah 30, that in

quietness and

confidence would be our strength.

And a little while later in that chapter,

that was verse 15, verse 21, we have a

picture of how the Holy Spirit helps us

in those situations

and it's put like this.

You will hear a voice behind

you saying, "This is the way."

Walk in it whenever you turn to the right

or to the left. It's

that still small voice.

And if you dismiss that voice as just,

that's just my own head.

You will miss the ability to stay up

under the influence because the Holy

Spirit is grieved and He will withdraw.

Just the other day I was driving and I

heard a voice behind me say, "You're just

Speedy Gonzales today, aren't you?"

"Oh wait, that was you sitting

behind me on the motorcycle."

I get that confused sometimes. But that

does make a good

point. God can use people.

Because when she said that, I knew

instantly I'm going too fast, I've been

going too fast, and I said, "Yes, ma'am,"

and I throttled it down.

Way too fast. I don't know if I've ever

told you this, but one time many years

ago, back in the minivan

days, when our son was little,

I was riding that minivan, and we were on

a back road, and it was

just myself and my son.

He was three, four, I don't know, five.

But we're booking it, man. I'm pushing

that minivan to the limit.

And my son, my little boy,

says, "Daddy, is this a freeway?"

[laughter]

See, the Holy Spirit can speak through

people. And if I dismiss that, and I

ignore that, I become dead

into what He's trying to tell me.

The more you obey, the more you hear. The

less you obey, the less

you're even going to hear Him.

[silence]

So let's go back where we started.

So Peter preaches under the power of the

Holy Spirit, and it impacts people.

They're cut to the heart.

And they said, "What do we do?"

[silence]

What do we do? There's three R's in verse

18 that I would suggest are...or verse

38, I'm sorry, that Peter answered with.

Three R's, so it'll be easy to remember.

Repent, remission, and receive.

Repentance is a way of

life. It's not a one-time thing.

All of us have a tendency

to slip back in some things.

Remove halos now and acknowledge what I'm

telling you is the truth.

We don't walk around in this spiritual

cloud and never have attitudes and never

post things we shouldn't post and never

say things we shouldn't say and never

drive like we shouldn't drive, right?

And when we do fall into those things,

and the Spirit...listen, the Spirit is a

helper. He's a guide. He's a teacher.

And so you want Him in your life, because

if you're struggling, He will guide you

right out of that mess through obedience.

And so, He says, "Repent." Peter had had

to do that before because of his denial

and just choose to be obedient.

And when you repent, God is so good that

through Jesus is the remission of sins,

completely wipes the record clean.

And if we confess our sins, He is

faithful and just to forgive us our sins

and to cleanse us

from all unrighteousness.

That's an awesome truth.

Remission is available. And once you do

that, once you say, "I'm not going to

disobey you anymore. I'm not going to

resist you anymore."

And you receive remission, you are now in

a position to receive more of the Holy

Spirit, to be under the influence again.

It's a very delicate relationship. I

remember going to one church and having

words with somebody right before we

walked in the building.

Doesn't the devil try to get you like

that? Like even the drive to church was

fine. And in between the car and the

door, something happens.

And the flesh rises up and the Spirit's

like, "I'm out of here."

And I had that happen in a

church that I had to preach in.

And I came in and tried to just muscle

through it. You know how we do.

And tell ourselves all the reasons we're

right and they're wrong. And God, you

need to convict them.

You need to deal with them.

And then God's like,

"No, it's you, buddy."

And I remember right there in the middle

of the service walking over and looking

the person in the eye

and saying, "I'm so sorry."

And it right then and there lifted that

heavy Spirit off of me and I got up and

preached under the

influence of the Holy Spirit.

It's a delicate thing.

And so Peter tells them, "Repent,

remission, receive."

Now, one more kind of point on obedience

because that's really what it comes down

to as the worship team comes back.

The whole reason we're reading this

today, the whole reason it played out

that way is because of obedience.

Because Jesus, when He ascended, said,

"Wait in the city of Jerusalem until

you'll be endued with power."

And they did that.

Because they obeyed and stayed in a

prayer meeting for 10 days not knowing

what was going to happen.

That's why God could pour out on them.

That's why 3,000 people could be added to

the church that day.

Just a little while later, 5,000, just a

little while later, they

just started saying a multitude.

The church just exploded because

obedience led to being under the

influence, which led to effectiveness.

So maybe the Holy Spirit's

been dealing with you on things.

Repent, receive

remission, receive the Holy Spirit.

Get up under the influence of the Holy

Spirit and stay there.

Maybe it's as simple as while we worship,

like you're timid

about raising your hands.

Because you look around

first, "What's everybody doing?"

"Nope, I'm not going to do it."

But there's a little

prompting to do that.

And what God is doing through the Holy

Spirit is saying, "Worship me, abandon

your reputation and

just worship me freely."

But you tighten up

because nobody else is doing it.

And maybe something as simple as that.

It may be like when we have prayer times

at the altar and you're prompted, like

you're feeling like, "Man, I want to go,

but nobody else is going.

Let me just wait and see

if anyone else goes first."

Don't we do that.

Those little things can

grieve the Spirit of God.

I've got to tell you, the times that I've

gotten out of my seat because I felt

prompted and just did it,

just did it without even

really thinking about it.

You get the miracle

before you even get up there.

Like there's something so liberating and

empowering to obeying that little

prompting of the Holy

Spirit and just making a move.

And I don't care who

says what, who thinks what.

I don't care if

nobody else goes up there.

It don't make me no difference.

Give me a box of Kleenex

and I'll snot up there.

It don't make me no, because I want to

obey the Holy Spirit.

And there's a beautiful outpouring, like

a little personal outpouring.

Every time you obey, every time you

listen to the promptings, every time you

don't send the text,

every time you apologize,

every time you do what the Holy Spirit is

calling you to do, you get up under the

influence of the Holy Spirit.

And if you're like me, you need that.

You need the helper.

Someone said you need the

Holy Spirit to go to Walmart.

You need, you need some help.

In this world, you need to know what to

say, what not to say, who to hang out

with, who to stay away from.

All of those things are the things that

the teacher, the guide will lead you in.

Father,

Intoxicate us with

the Holy Spirit of God.

May we be under the influence in a

radical way and may we be sensitive to

the moment by moment situations and

decisions that we make,

that we don't lose connection with the

Holy Spirit, but help us

to walk in unity with Him.

Lord, because we want more.

We want more and we're not going to

settle for anything less.

Forgive us for our disobedience and we

commit in this moment to

obey you moving forward.

Speak, Lord, for your servant is

listening in Jesus name.

Would you stand with me today?

They're going to lead us in some worship

and our prayer team

is going to be up here.

And if you want prayer for anything,

they're going to be up

here to agree with you.

Let's just spend some time reflecting and

asking God to move in our, in our

situations in our lives.

Thank you for listening to today's

message from Grace Summit Church.

We hope it encourages you to walk out

your faith this week.

If you're in the Fort Wayne area, we'd

love to meet you in person.

Join us for a Sunday service at 9 15 or

11 a.m. on East Duvat Road or connect

with us online anytime at

Grace Summit Church dot com.

Have a blessed week and

we'll see you next time.