Pneuma

Well, good morning, nice to see you.

It's actually a privilege to preach on your birthday.

Somebody put a thing on my seat. I was born to preach so I never

thought I'd be a preacher. My dad phoned me when I was 24

years old, took me to business meetings from the age of 14 and

he had seven petrol stations and he phoned me and said, boy,

you've got a week to decide to come and take over the business.

You come and work with me and when you're 30 years old you can

take over the businesses and and then I'll go and retire.

And I phoned him back after a week and I said Dad, God's

called me to preach and he just started to sob on the phone.

He didn't know Jesus and I didn't hear from him for about

two weeks, never heard a word from him.

And I thought I've disappointed my dad so much.

And then one day he phoned me and I picked up the phone.

I said I always speak. He said, hey boy, it's dad.

I said, how are you, dad? He said, what's it going to take

for you to be the best preacher in South Africa?

That was the response of a businessman to his son deciding

for Jesus where he had no context whatsoever.

And so it's a privilege to be, I don't think I'm even close to

the top 5%, but but I'm here and it's great to share the gospel

with you and it's great to have all of you.

I saw some visitors coming in 4 1/2 years ago.

I met a couple on the side of a cricket field and I just

happened to have some blueberry muffins from Woolworths and I

wanted to share them with them and and they refused.

So I ended up chasing them around the field with blueberry

muffin. I'm quite a convincing guy and

and they obviously thought that was quite cool for a pastor to

do so they came to church. I have got no idea why.

How do you get people saved with blueberry muffins?

And through a process of events, I had the privilege of doing

their dad's funeral on Friday. And I actually thought it's

quite an amazing thing how God builds community.

I heard the Blue Bulls rugby players come back from France

and his granny comes to this church.

And so now he comes to this church and, and God uses the

most and, and his granny came to this church because they were

friends with my accountant from my business and Harry Smith that

I eventually did take over when my dad died.

And so God works in the most unbelievably and unusual

circumstances. But, but I had this privilege of

doing this amazing man, Chris, his funeral and seeing his

friends speak and hearing his daughter speak about her dad.

And it is just one of the most amazing privilege.

You don't know what God is doing, what will happen in three

years or four years or five years time by being part of a

community. Anyway, their friends, their

business partners and their friends, their best friends from

down the road have come to church today and they're

Catholics. Welcome to our church.

Sort of same, same, but not quite.

So I wanted to be a Catholic priest and then I met this

chick. So I had a choice.

I chose her. I thought I'd work out my faith

in a different place. You know what I'm saying?

So it's same, same, but different.

And the stained glass windows are not here, but it's, they're

in the eyes of the person sitting next to you.

And if you look in their eyes, you'll see the love of God

shining through their eyes. Ariel beautiful man, a beautiful

man, been through lots, a beautiful man.

Life of God Signs 3. And so I'll see The tattoo boys

have been preaching for the last few weeks.

Have you seen them? I think they've done remark.

And yes, thank you. They're doing well.

You're like the mean tattoos and doing well don't go together or

OK. OK.

And you still don't know whether I've got a tattoo.

You think Rory shut up and start preaching.

It's my birthday. It's my birthday.

It's my birthday. My mum, as you saw her is

getting dementia. Hello mum.

I know you're online and you see I had her on the stage the other

day, one foot in the coffin and 1 foot out and she's saying when

you waiting for me to get both feet in.

Well, I mean, it will be good. I mean, not now, not now when

the time is right, but because she's got dements, it just adds

a naughty to my birthday present.

So I phoned her very early this morning.

I said Mum. So anyway, the tattoo boys have

been doing a good job. So do you mind?

Do you mind just taking your shirts off?

You're in your jersey. Do you mind just taking it off,

please? But now you can stand up and

take it off, please. Just.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, yeah.

And you too. None of you.

The other tattoo boy. No, no, no, no, no.

Take it off. Let me hold this down.

So these are my preaching partners.

How are we doing? OK, I've got to lose a bit of

weight and put on some muscle and have some ink.

But but we're going to use you in a moment.

So this is like Christianity. This this is like Christianity.

I I don't if you can't fix it with prestig or super glue, I

normally get a a guy who can. But you know what this is

called? What's it Anybody else know what

this is called? A Jack.

Yeah. But what kind of jackhammer?

Don't say Hilti. That's not the answer.

Who said it? How do you know that?

Your wife told your wife told you.

Your wife told you. You should be embarrassed.

You should be highly, highly embarrassed.

You're one of those prestig guys that is a pneumatic jackhammer.

And this is the challenge of life.

And that's what you and I are like.

If we don't have a source, it is impossible with that thing to

break these things unless you plug it into some form of power.

Impossible. And so we're reading Romans

Romans 8 · chapter mention

chapter 8 and you can put my Bible up just so you show your I

read. I'm a little bit of ADD funny

guy, but that's my Bible. And this is an invitation into

the very deep part of my heart. And Stephen and Chad have so

well taken us through Chapter 8. And for the next few weeks,

we're going to study this part of Scripture.

It's a very holy, very beautiful, very freeing, very

empowering part of the Bible. And you need to concentrate and

you need to believe it and you need to understand it so that

that thing can be released inside of our hearts so that

these things around us can be broken and we can start to live

in freedom. When I look at that, and I've

underlined not for your sake, I've just done it in my Bible,

over time, you'll see the word holiness, holiness.

And you think, wow, I'm coming to church.

Holiness, if you can just put Holy Spirit up, please.

For me in Pretoria, the Trinity goes like this.

God the Father, God the Son, and Angus Buchan, that's the

Trinity. When you mention Holy Spirit,

people immediately become nervous for two reasons, and

they're both up there. The first one is the word holy,

and the second reason is the word spirit.

And the moment you talk about holiness, people say don't put

your stuff on me, don't put your stuff on me.

And the moment you talk about Spirit, you think, oh, hectic

speaking in tongues, weird stuff, prophecy.

You're going to get your friends to church.

Your Catholic friends are going to come on this Sunday that I

speak on the Holy Spirit. I remember inviting my boss to

church. He didn't come, didn't come.

And then one Sunday he came and one of my friends decided he's

going to jump. So he started jumping all around

the congregation, all around past my bus, all the way then.

And I lined them up and as he came towards, you know, just put

my foot down and he tripped and I stuck my foot on his chest.

Is that wrong? Yes, of course it's wrong.

I've grown up dramatically since then.

But let's just forget about the person next to you and just

think of Holy Spirit. What does that mean, Holy

Spirit? And you might have had bad

experiences with the church. You might have had weird

experiences with the church. You might have come from a

spiritual realm or be worried about witch doctors or sangomas

or maybe and you think, so now what?

You sort of keep this aside. And we build the church with God

the Father and God the Son, but we never allow access to God the

Holy Spirit because we are, we grow up with a tendency to

reject anything where I lose control.

And So what we'll do, we'll do God on my terms.

We'll do God by my terms. And what I'll do is I'll just

dig really deep. Instead of plugging this thing

into a power source, instead of taking this cord and linking it

to a power source, I will pick it up and I will try and smash

these rocks by myself. And then Christianity becomes

really exhausting, becomes really, really tiring.

Amen. And we want to teach you that

Christianity is actually a joy. It's actually a joy, actually

fullness and holiness and but but it but it comes on the

inside. So if you can put my Bible back

up again. And so you see these words,

holiness and holiness. And then you see this law, law,

law, law, law, law, law, commandment, commandment,

commandment, commandment, law, commandment, law, law, law, law.

You think, Oh my head, they're going to come to church and they

want me to be holy and they're going to put the law on me.

Let me explain the law to you. My son went to a boarding

school. The law and the rules.

And we have to have rules because if we don't have rules,

we have lawlessness. But laws cannot change you

inside. Laws just put restrictions on

you. And most of the time, we are

either rewarded or punished according to the law.

And what happens, we come into the church and think, if I

behave well, I will be rewarded, and if I behave badly, I will be

punished. That's how most of you grew up

in the church. But the church doesn't work like

that because the church is not an external set of laws trying

to contain your behavior. And so for five years, I saw my

son and his hundred classmates go through the law.

You're not allowed to drink and you're not allowed to smoke.

Obviously, as a schoolboy, you're not allowed to do that.

But at the end of their passing out parade, when they got their

old boys tires and as they walked off the gates of the

school, the first thing they did was pop the champagne and open

the cigars. The way that they expressed

their freedom was by drinking and smoking.

And so you realize the rule can't actually change you from

inside. And so if you come to the church

and you get smacked on the nose and you go away and you be

naughty and you come back the next week to get smacked on the

nose again, and then you come back and you go, I didn't smoke

as much as I did last week. So I feel a bit better.

And you feel good and bad and good and bad and good and bad.

They said no, there's got to be a better way.

There's got to be a better way, which Stephen has been

introducing to us. And so God does want holiness.

And so we don't get justified by obedience, but justification

does lead to obedience, and we get completely covered by grace.

But God wants us to outwork holiness, but not from the

outside in, from the inside. And if you read this little

scripture at the bottom here, it says, but now by dying to what

once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we

serve in a new way, say new way of the Spirit, and not in the

old way of the written code. Now you can see what we're

studying here with Stephen, and I think it's been an amazing

introduction from Stephen and Chad.

What does it say? Say it, say it.

So you got the law, you got the spirit.

We are not under the law. We are under the spirit.

But most of you are scared of the Spirit.

And push away the spirit. And so Christianity is hard.

So I'm going to get my 2 preaching buddies to do a

hammering competition. Come here, big boys. 4 nails

each and a hammer. He's already telling you what to

do. Yeah.

Told him he must let me win. 4 nails. 4 nails.

You got four and a hammer. You can check.

Ease on the bluff. That's hors d'oeuvres.

OK, on three we start nailing them 123.

Hard, hard, hard. Yeah, yeah.

Not very straight, but they keep going a bit harder and faster.

Give up smoking. Give up quickly.

Give up quickly. Pornography.

Pornography. Stop your pornography.

Yeah. Come on, give it.

You preach better than your nail, Bruce.

Come now, let's look at your dad's remarkably poor work.

Come now, stand there. One of them's gone through.

How's it look if you 2 can just hold that for me?

Hey, Chick, you're the reason I didn't become a Catholic.

What do you say? Be careful.

Ah, fully aware. It's in on it.

Out. Ricky, come get it out.

Yes. Listen.

Put up Romans chapter 8 to me, please.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

The second part of it, just before you can keep standing

there. Second part, Numa, part, second

part, right. Therefore there's now no

condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because Christ

Jesus, the law of the Spirit, Numa.

What kind of drill is that the Numa of life set me free from

the law of sin and death. Next verse please.

We do not live according to the sinful nature, but according to

the say Numa, but those who live in accordance with her have

their mind set on what? The next verse, please.

The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the.

None. Christianity by the power of

God. Christianity by human effort.

Or you must love your wife, you must look after her, you must

treat her properly. When you're really tired and

grumpy, you're going to have to lay down, you're laughing,

you're going to have to serve her because God wants to use you

and her to show people what it's like to live by the Spirit of

God. Sometimes I'll get really tired

and marriage is not easy because a man has to live with the woman

and they're different. And come on with me.

Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God.

So Holy Spirit, would you, would you just fill me?

Holy Spirit, would you take my small offering and instead of

the law and works and activity and buy flowers?

And instead of that, Lord God, would you fill me from the

inside? Would you do something deep

inside of me, Lord God, that I don't live with the rule?

You must, you must, you can't, you shouldn't stop, start, do,

give, don't you start acting pneumatically.

You start acting by the Spirit of God.

And then I bless her not with something from the out,

something from the inside goes to her.

And then she says, Lord. Can I love that guy?

He's he's difficult sometimes he's grumpy, sometimes Lord God,

he's unreasonable. And sometimes Lord God, he's too

short. He he answers too quickly or

sometimes he's harsh. But Lord God can somehow, Lord

God can somehow can you pneumatically take me from just

being a vessel that lies on the ground and actually be filled

with the Spirit, the numer of God so that I can bless my

husband with those words. And so I am the product of being

pneumatically loved by my wife. And what the scripture says in

Romans 8 as we read it. Let's put my Bible back up

again, if you don't mind my Bible.

Which is therefore, brothers, you have an obligation, but it's

not to the sinful nature to live according to it for you live.

If you live according to the sinful nature, you will die.

But if by the sinful nature you put death the myth deeds of the

body, you will live. I've been quite taken by this

verse. If the numer of God deals with

me, I will live. And so this is my illustration.

If I said to you, what is the stinkiest animal on earth, you

would say to me, a pig? A person is as greedy as a, a

person stinks like a. If a man commits adultery, acts

like A and then God, when Peter's there and he's under the

law, it's under the rules of the church, under the rules of his

religion, and God drops a sheet from heaven and it's full of all

sorts of dirty animals. And you've got to believe inside

of there were pigs, dirty, stinking feces, eating fat pigs.

And God says kill and eat. So God's basically saying, you

know what, Peter, if you understand this gospel, you're

going to love Rory Dyer. He's a pig, he stinks, but

you're going to love her. And Peter says that's not right.

I've never eaten anything impure.

I thought, why did he say kill and eat?

And I realized this. When the pig dies, it starts to

live. Because you cannot imagine

breakfast without bacon. You can't.

You can't. You can't imagine breakfast.

How can something that stinks so much when it's alive smells so

good when it's dead? And for you connoisseurs, a good

Parmer ham. A sliced Parmer ham on a good

biscuit with a bit of Brie cheese and cranberry sauce, or

crackling in front of the fire on a winter's night with a glass

of red wine. You see, when it dies, it

actually starts to live. And so you know what?

I'm just a dirty pig. But by the grace of God, I trust

as somebody walked in and wished me happy birthday and said, when

you arrived here, you were really.

Venkat said. Thank you for the compliment.

I actually thought maybe I'm smelling a little bit more like

bacon now, or maybe like Parmer Han, or maybe like a crumbed

chop with some Mashed potato. But when the Spirit gets hold of

me and the numer of God, the air starts to flow through me.

The life of God starts to break out around me.

This is my prayer. That you will be plugged in to

the Spirit of God. Instead of trying to fight those

rocks, kick those rocks, get removal companies to remove

those rocks. You just plug in and allow the

Spirit of God to lead you apart from the law into freedom and

holiness. Amen.