Holy Ghost and Fire

George, I'm gonna invite you if you can,

join me in the Word of God, Matthew chapter three, in verse 11.

Matthew chapter three, verse 11.

This is the Word that God has laid upon my heart, amen.

It reads this way,

I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance,

but he who is coming after me is mightier than I,

who sandals I am not worthy to carry,

he will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.

Someone say amen.

Gonna preach today on a simple topic,

Holy Ghost and Fire.

Father, I thank you for your spirit that is in this place,

God, Lord that over 2,000 years ago,

you descended in the form of your spirit

and you feel the church and the believers with power

and we're walking in that same power today.

I pray God that you would encourage us through the Word,

God enlighten us, God illuminate these words today

in our hearts, anoint our hearing

and anoint my lips of clay, God.

We give you all the glory and all of the honor,

can someone say amen, amen.

You may be seated in the presence of God.

Pentecost Sunday, amen, celebrates the initial outpouring

of the Holy Ghost in Acts chapter two,

which occurred on the Jewish harvest festival

known as Pentecost or as the Feast of Weeks.

Pentecost occurred 50 days after Passover

or in the case of the church,

50 days after the resurrection of Christ.

And Pentecost is a significant day on God's calendar

because it fulfilled his plan from the very beginning

to inhabit or to not only dwell among his people,

but within his people.

It has been the heart of God.

It has been the plan of God to dwell not only around

or above, but within his people.

And from the prophets of old who would prophesy

and foretell of this great occasion,

which would be Pentecost, they didn't have the name for it,

but there was a day that these prophets like Joel

and Isaiah and Ezekiel foretold the moment they hinted,

they talked about this day in the future

where God would break through the heavens

and descend upon his people.

Prophet Joel said that I will pour out my spirit

on all flesh.

I'm gonna say, amen today.

He said this, I'm gonna pour out my spirit on all flesh

and your sons and your daughters will prophesy.

The prophet Isaiah said that God

he would with stammering lips and another tongue

speak to his people.

Amen.

In Ezekiel, he said that he would give you a new heart

and put a new spirit within you.

This has been the priority of God

throughout the narrative of scripture

that one day he would feel the heart of his people

and turn their hearts of stone into hearts of flesh

and all of God's people for generation to generation

was living with anticipation of this very moment.

They were living with the expectation.

They were living with bated breath on the edge of their seat

on the tiptoes of their toes for the moment

that God would fulfill this prophecy.

They didn't know when, they didn't know where,

but they knew that this day was going to come.

And then all of a sudden,

a man by the name of John the Baptist

who was the forerunner of Jesus Christ

stepped on the scene after 400 years of silence

between the old and the New Testament,

between Malachi and Matthew.

The silence of heaven is broken

and he prophesies these words

that I have read to us today.

I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance,

but there is one that is coming, hallelujah.

There is one that is mightier than I, praise be to God,

whose sandals I am not even worthy to carry.

He will indeed baptize you with the Holy Ghost

and with fire somebody give God a hand, praise today.

Somebody shout hallelujah today.

John with the fire in his belly

preaches unto the citizens of Judea

and tells them that there is coming a baptism.

And it's not like just any baptism.

He tells them I'm baptizing you into water with repentance,

but there is coming a whole another level of baptism.

And he describes to us a unique experience.

He describes a two-part experience

with two separate elements

or two divine or supernatural works that takes place.

And it is the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire.

I want you to understand that the infilling of the spirit

is but one baptism.

I'm not talking today about two baptisms

or three baptisms.

We're not talking about successive baptisms.

We're talking about one baptism,

one Lord, one faith, one baptism.

But in this baptism, it is composed of different elements.

It's composed of power.

Someone say power.

Amen, come on, say it again.

Say power.

And fire, somebody say fire.

I want to tell you today that you cannot,

if you could put that slide up from your brother, please,

the infilling of the spirit is one baptism,

composed of two elements, power and fire.

I want you to understand today, friend and church,

anybody watching that you cannot have the Holy Ghost

and not have the fire.

If it is the real Holy Ghost, because there's a lot of,

I'll just call them like fake Holy Ghosts going around today.

What looks to be the Holy Ghost.

And not everybody that's speaking in gibberish

is speaking in a holy tongue.

Come on, I need you to help me today.

I need you to understand that not everyone who speaks

with gibberish and go la la la la,

if somebody has to teach you how to speak in tongues,

that's not the Holy Ghost.

If they say, just say Jesus, Jesus, Jesus real fast

and just say a bunch of words

and then you got the Holy Ghost.

No, that's not what the Holy Ghost is.

The Holy Ghost is the spirit of God taking residence in you

and supernaturally empowering you to speak in a holy tongue.

And I get excited to speak in a language

that you have never learned or spoken before, amen.

So I'm not talking about a fake Holy Ghost.

I'm talking about a real Holy Ghost.

And when the real Holy Ghost shows up,

there's going to be real fire that shows up.

We need to understand the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

This is an essential doctrine of our apostolic church

of what it means to be Pentecostal,

what it means to be a spirit-filled believer,

to understand the spirit and fire baptism.

We have to grasp the biblical concept of baptism.

Somebody say baptism, amen.

That's a powerful word.

That's a very important word, baptism.

The word baptism in Greek is baptism.

And it means to dip, to immerse, or to submerge.

A baptism, no matter the kind,

it is not a sprinkling of water.

It is not a partial dip.

When we say the word baptism,

we're not talking about a shower.

We are talking about full immersion.

All one's life and body be consumed, amen.

And in the case of water baptism,

we do not practice a sprinkling or a shower.

We practice full submersion, amen, somebody.

Amen, do we believe this?

Full submersion into the water, amen.

If you've got a foot that came out,

we gotta get that foot down too.

Everything's got to go down.

Bravely to God.

Full submersion in the name of Jesus,

not in the name of the Father and the another Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

No, we don't.

We don't.

In the name of Jesus Christ.

And that's all you need to preach.

That's all we need to do.

And there's one formula, one formula.

And I wanna say that if there's somebody today,

I just feel this of the Holy Ghost.

If you are contemplating,

if you've got like a toad that's kinda dipping in,

you should or should not,

I just need to tell you in the Holy Ghost today,

give your life to Jesus.

Surrender your heart and be baptized in His name.

Hallelujah.

Peter got up on the day of Pentecost

and he preached the Acts 238 message.

Repent and be baptized.

Every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ

for the remission of your sins.

And ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

Somebody give God some praise for that today.

Hallelujah.

Hallelujah.

Thank you Jesus.

Thank you God for this revelation.

And if that's you, you need to be baptized in Jesus' name.

Don't you wait another day.

Don't you wait another hour.

Jesus is coming soon.

And you've gotta be baptized.

Not only in water,

but you've gotta be baptized with the Holy Ghost

and with fire.

The Lord wants to consume somebody today.

My Lord, I feel something in my heart.

The Lord wants to consume somebody today.

He wants to immerse you in spiritual power

and spiritual fire.

Oh my Lord, I get excited.

I have preached many different messages.

I would assume hundreds, maybe thousands.

I don't know the number,

but I have preached a lot of different things.

And I gotta tell you that nothing gets me more excited

than when I preach.

There's two messages that get me excited more

than anything else.

It's when I preach about the oneness of God

or the name of Jesus.

And when I preach about the Holy Ghost,

whoo my God, something just gets a hold of me

because that is in my spiritual DNA.

That's who I am.

And I'm not ashamed of it.

And we need to tell the world about it.

Amen, somebody.

Oh my Lord, hallelujah.

Let me talk to you about the baptism of power.

Let's just talk about these two elements today

because I know we got a part day.

Amen.

I know we got some food waiting for us.

We have a wonderful time.

But amen, I will feel so much better

before we go to the park.

Someone gets renewed in the Holy Ghost.

Say, someone speaks in tongues.

Amen, hallelujah, hallelujah.

The Bible declares, let's talk about a baptism of power.

The Bible declares that God is spirit.

God is spirit.

One of the chief revelations of God is that God is spirit.

He is not limited by a body.

He is not limited by time and space.

He is not limited by the physical laws

that govern our natural world.

He is not limited by any of those things.

God is eternal.

And God is spirit.

And God is unchanging, hallelujah.

Come on, now God is, He is eternal.

He is spirit and unchanging, hallelujah.

And God is all powerful.

And God is all-knowing.

And God is all present.

He is a spirit, hallelujah.

And the first glimpse of God that we read

in all of scripture happens at creation

in Genesis one and verse two.

While the earth was with our form and void

and darkness was upon the face of the deep,

the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

What a profound picture of God moving upon the face

of the deep in a world that was dark and void.

Ooh, I just feel the stop right now

and tell somebody that if your world is growing dark

or void, that's a recipe for God to move.

Because there is something about things that look hopeless,

about things that look dark,

and things that look shapeless and formless

and without any hope that attracts the spirit,

the moving of the spirit.

So I just wanna tell somebody today

that no matter what shape your world is in right now,

you are a candidate for a move of God.

Woo, my Lord.

You are a candidate for God to sweep across your life.

Come on, someone just love him right now.

Oh, rabbi, by Yasha, I feel the Holy Ghost in this place.

The spirit is moving and the spirit was moving

upon the waters, above the waters.

And this gives us a concept.

It gives us a picture of how God's spirit moved

throughout the ages of the Old Testament.

From the very beginning in Genesis,

through the Tabernacle system and the wilderness

with the children of Israel and through the prophets even,

we see the spirit of God moving above the people.

This is how God chose to relate to his people

in the Old Testament.

He was always above the people.

The spirit was moving above the waters.

It was moving above the Israelites

as a pillar of fire by night and by a cloud by day.

He was above the people.

And then he was in a special room called,

in the Tabernacle called the Holies of Holies

or the most holy place.

And in a way, it was still very much above the people.

Why is that?

Because only the high priest could enter into that place,

but once a year, no one else had access

to the glory of God that was in that special room.

And it was like that for generations and generations.

But all of that changed when God came down

through the incarnation of Christ.

In here the words of John,

in the words of John, the word became flesh

and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory,

the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,

full of grace and truth.

Jesus or God said, I don't just wanna dwell

above my people anymore,

I wanna dwell among my people now.

And so when Christ came down to earth,

he went from being God above us to being God among us.

Somebody give God some praise here today.

How many of you are thankful that God stepped into our world?

How many of you are thankful that God robed himself

in humanity and he came and for 33 and a half years

he bottled up all of his divine essence into the Christ,

the man named Jesus and he was with us

and he dwelt among us.

Who praise be to God, he did that.

And it was during that among us period of the Bible,

during that among us time when John the Baptist now,

John the Baptist is the link between the Old Testament

and the New Testament.

Can I preach this like I want to today?

Who God, I said can I preach this like I want to?

He was the link between the Old system and the New system.

And he came like a herald to announce there is coming one

that is mightier than I.

And he said he's not just gonna do what everyone else did.

He's going to baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire

and likewise Jesus when he speaks to his disciples,

he said but ye shall receive, everyone say power.

He said ye shall receive power.

After that the Holy Ghost has come upon you.

Oh my Lord, I feel something in my spirit today.

Oh, rabababaya shambhala makandala.

Oh, rabababaya shambhala.

Hallelujah, I don't even know if I'm gonna get

through my message today.

I just feel something electric flowing through my veins today

because Jesus said where all you gotta do is wait for me

and you're gonna receive power when the Holy Ghost

has come upon you and then not too many days from there

about 40 days or so then it reads in Acts chapter two

in verse one when the day of Pentecost had fully come

they were all with one accord in one place

and suddenly someone say suddenly, come on say suddenly,

suddenly there came a sound from heaven

as of a rushing mighty wind and it filled the whole house

where they were sitting and there appeared unto them

divided tongues as of fire and it set upon each of them

and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost

and began to speak with other tongues

as the spirit gave them the utterance.

I wanna show you today church and friend

that at Pentecost there was a divine shift

and how God related to man.

In the Old Testament he was God above us

and when Jesus was here he was God among us.

But on the day of Pentecost he was God within us

and I came to tell somebody today

you don't just have to touch him

you don't just gotta feel him

but he wants to feel your life to the utter most.

Somebody give God some praise

somebody lift up a voice

somebody lift up a shout

somebody clap your hands

somebody clap your hands

somebody shout to God today.

Oh my God it is the infilling of the spirit

that gives us the power to live for God

and to accomplish his purpose in our lives.

We need the Holy Ghost.

Someone say I need the Holy Ghost.

Holy Ghost.

You know let me just clear this up.

Do you need the Holy Ghost to go to heaven?

Yes.

I thought it was a trick question.

It wasn't hallelujah.

But can I tell you you need the Holy Ghost more

than just to go to heaven.

You need the Holy Ghost just to go to work.

Amen.

I don't know.

Hallelujah Jesus.

You need the Holy Ghost just to go to Walmart.

You know what I'm saying?

You need the Holy Ghost just trying to find a parking at the

you know whatever it is you're going.

I don't know about you

but I don't just need the Holy Ghost to go to heaven.

My goodness I need the Holy Ghost to go to heaven.

I need the Holy Ghost in every aspect of my life.

I couldn't be married without the Holy Ghost.

And it's not because of my wife but it's because of me.

She's not here right now for God.

But hallelujah.

I couldn't be a father without the Holy Ghost.

Come on now.

I couldn't be a preacher without the Holy Ghost.

I couldn't be a singer without the Holy Ghost.

I couldn't be a musician without the Holy Ghost.

And there is nothing that we can do apart from the Holy Ghost.

We need God to consume us.

Hallelujah.

Hallelujah.

Shalomakala.

Oh hallelujah.

Speaking tongues every day.

Hallelujah.

Is that all right?

Every day speaking tongues.

Hallelujah.

Sometimes I get to praying and I never get to praying in

English.

Hallelujah.

Some of y'all are blessed.

You know why?

You get to pray in English.

You get to pray in Spanish.

Hallelujah.

You know, glory.

You just get all there.

Some of you, how many of you prefer to pray in Spanish?

Don't lie to me.

Come on.

Amen.

And everybody says we're going to be talking in Spanish when

we get to heaven, huh?

And the Chinese church are saying, no, we're going to be

speaking Chinese, right?

And then hallelujah.

And the Swahili are saying we're going to be speaking.

I don't know what language we're going to be speaking.

But all I know is that when I begin to pray and I begin to

enter the spirit of God, whatever it is I'm going through,

whatever's on my mind, whatever's bothering me,

whatever I need, I get to praying in the Holy Ghost.

And then all of a sudden, English is sheep.

Spanish is sheep.

Whatever language is sheep.

There is only one language.

And it's the Holy Ghost.

As you begin to speak with other tongues,

the spirit of God is making intercession for you.

There are things that I don't even know what to say.

I don't even know what to say.

But God begins to swear in me.

And I've got that baptism of his spirit.

Woo, praise be to God.

Somebody say, amen today.

Come on, clap your hands.

Give God a praise.

I need the Holy Ghost.

Woo, my Lord.

But I've got to switch gears here.

I've got to switch gears because we get excited when we talk

about the baptism of power.

Woo, man, I feel it.

Holy Ghost, miracles, signs, wonders, right?

All these things excite us.

And they should.

But there's another element.

Amen.

Someone say, uh-oh.

Because you can't have the Holy Ghost without the fire.

And I've got to talk to you before I leave today

about a baptism of fire.

Now, I had you say, uh-oh.

Because when we start talking about the baptism of fire,

all of a sudden, we begin to see what the will of God

looks like in our life.

Oh, hallelujah.

Because we like to focus just on the power, how it makes us

feel, and oh, yes.

But many times, our understanding of the baptism of fire

is lacking.

We don't quite many times understand what God means

by a baptism of fire.

In the church, we say we use fire.

We talk about fire in a variety of ways.

But usually, it's when we talk about passion, right?

We say, man, that brother, he's on fire for God.

And what we mean is, like, man, he's passionate, right?

Or service today was fire, right?

What we mean is, man, service was lit, right?

It was awesome, man.

You felt it.

But can I tell you, we don't have to stop saying those things.

That's awesome.

Nothing wrong with that.

But a baptism of fire goes beyond just passion and what

you feel and what the temperature is like in the building.

A baptism of fire goes beyond all of that.

The Bible declares this.

It says that for our God in Hebrews 12, 29,

for our God is a consuming fire.

Woo!

Hallelujah.

Our God is a consuming fire.

There is a fire nature to God.

And when John preached about this baptism,

he said, you're going to be baptized with the Holy Ghost.

And then he didn't put a period there and stop.

He said, and!

Someone say, and!

With fire.

With fire.

There is something to the baptism of God's spirit

that has this fire in it.

And he was describing something that would revolutionize,

that would radically change our life.

God is not interested in just feeling you.

He's interested in forming you.

Woo!

My Lord, that wasn't in my nose.

I got to say it again.

God doesn't just want to feel you.

He wants to form you.

And the only way you can form somebody, brother,

is through the.

I'll tell you why.

Some believers, as many tongues as they talk into,

never mature in Christ.

They never go from glory to glory.

They never go from faith to faith.

Why?

Because they may talk in tongues and all that there.

And that could be wonderful.

But they never let the fire consume them.

They never let the fire.

They're just satisfied with the feeling, but not

with the forming.

Woo, my God.

And God is saying, I didn't just come to feel you.

I came to form you.

And when John says this, he explains himself

in the next verse to understand what John means about the fire.

We need to keep, you know, it's very helpful in your Bible

studies.

Keep reading.

Don't just take one verse and lift it.

You got to read before and you got to read after.

So you can capture the full meaning, the full context.

So read the next verse.

And then he explains to us what this fire is.

He said, I'm going to baptize you,

or he will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.

Next verse, verse 12, John says, his windowing fan

is in his hand.

And he will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor

and gather his wheat into the barn.

But he will burn up the shaft with unquenchable fire.

And John is talking about something

that's called a windowing process in a harvest.

In a time of harvest, in this ancient agricultural society,

they would grain or they would thresh grain

on a threshing floor.

Amen.

I've preached about that before here.

And they would thresh the grain or the wheat or the barley

on the threshing floor.

And ideally, the wind would come.

The wind from the east would blow in at twilight

and would carry away the shaft.

All of the loose outer husk of the grain

would be carried away.

And the heavier true grain would fall to the ground.

This is called a threshing.

But sometimes there was no wind.

So what the farmer would do is get his windowing fan.

I wish I had one today.

But it's a fan.

Think of almost sometimes when you fan the flames inside

of a fireplace.

It's a fan.

And that fan would, he would blow since there was no wind.

He would, with the windowing fan, blow away the shaft

and separate it from the true grain.

And after a while, after he does this,

there would be a pile of shaft.

All the false grain would be over there.

And what he would do was gather up that shaft

and then torch it with fire and burn up all the shaft

that was there.

What John is describing for us is a process in which,

when the Holy Ghost takes resident in our life,

I'm almost done, but hear me, this is so important.

He doesn't just come to feel us and make us feel good.

But the fire comes with the Holy Ghost.

And the Holy Ghost comes, God sends His fire.

The fire of God is sent into our lives

to consume all of the shaft, all of the things.

Hear me today, all of the things in our life

that is not the true grain.

Are you following what I'm saying right now?

Amen, somebody say amen.

Okay, and he blows those things away

and that's what the word does.

The word blows these things and it starts to separate.

And then the fire comes, who shall aba maya shana?

And it begins to burn up all of those areas,

those characteristics, those elements of our life

that doesn't glorify God and doesn't look like Jesus.

And my God, it doesn't compliment a life in Christ.

And he begins to consume those things and burn those things.

I've come to tell somebody today on this Pentecost Sunday

that if you will let the fire of God consume your life

in his spirit, he will start to burn those areas in our life

that have got to change, have got to be removed

so that we can walk in greater perfection.

Somebody say amen today.

I know, I know, it's not very popular to talk.

We get excited.

You can draw a crowd, I guess,

talking about just the power of the Holy Ghost.

But then when we start talking about the fire

and what the fire does and how it begins to burn,

you know what it burns?

Someone say what?

It burns bad attitudes.

It, my God, you know what else it burns?

It burns relationships, bad relationships.

Oh, my God, it burns things like pride.

It burns arrogance.

It burns greed.

It burns disobedience.

It burns all of these things that are contrary

to the spirit of God.

I'm not getting a lot of amen right now,

but I know you're hearing me.

It burns these things so that ultimately what is left

is a true living witness.

What is left is a life.

And I understand.

How many of you have ever touched physical fire?

Like, how many of you,

some of you are real sophisticated Hispanics in Mexican.

You probably cook your tortillas like on, you know,

one of them fancy things that came from Mexico

and was passed down from generation.

But some of us, we just put their tortillas

right on the burner.

Yeah.

Did I make some of you nervous when I said that?

You just kind of just got to,

you don't got time to heat up the kuma.

You know, you just gotta like burn it right there.

And every once in a while, my wife has a technique.

You know, one time I saw she was, you know,

she was warming up the tortilla.

Man, I really feel the Holy Ghost now.

Hallelujah.

Hallelujah.

She was burning one of those tortillas.

And then I heard her blowing.

I heard, what are you doing over there?

And I couldn't understand.

So I asked my, what are you doing here?

Why are you blowing?

So I can grab the tortilla because if not,

it'll burn my fingers.

Oh, you're blowing the flame that way.

I see the technique now because a couple of times

I was sticking my fingers down there

because I was excited to get the tortilla.

Woo!

Fire was hot.

Fire burns.

Someone say it burns.

When the Holy Ghost and fire consumed your life.

Come on up.

When the Holy Ghost and fire consumed your life.

It's not always gonna feel good.

It's not always going to feel exciting.

It's not always going to feel, fire is painful.

There's no getting around into the baptism of fire

is gonna burn.

Yes it will.

But I'm gonna say something with a lot of respect.

I hope no one gets offended at what I'm about to say.

If you do, I apologize in advance.

But let me say this, we're all going to burn.

I prayed about before I say what I'm about to say.

We're all going to burn.

The only question is do you wanna burn now?

Or do you wanna burn later?

I'm gonna burn.

Wow.

But you're gonna burn.

And wow, Lord, you took all the excitement

out of the room, pastor.

No, I didn't.

Because my job is to get, to help you get to heaven.

I don't just want people to feel the Holy Ghost

and go right back to living the same life that they live.

That's kind of heavy.

You can burn now or you can burn later.

But you will burn.

So guess what I've decided?

I'd rather burn now.

I'd rather say, God, oh Jesus,

whatever it is you need to burn.

Whatever it is you need to consume.

Whatever it is God, you need to torch in me.

He alamaboyosh.

Whatever it is God, you need to burn God.

Burn it now.

I don't wanna leave this service.

God, until you burn it.

I don't wanna go another day, God, until you burn it, God.

I need you to burn it.

Would you stand with me at this hour?

God, I don't wanna leave this service.