Voice of the Nazarene 10-1-23

I'm coming to you from North Central Ohio, we share with you the voice of the Nazarene. A WEEK BY WEEK venture into the Word of God sponsored by the Bucyrus, Ohio Church of the Nazarene. We joined our Pastor Reverend Ray LaSalle, and the voice of the Nazarene.

Good morning. We welcome you. If this is your first Sunday, I hope it'll not be your last. And we're thrilled to death to have you. We're a church that's made up of a lot of different people.

We've got folks that have come to us from churches that never even taught salvation, churches that are strict, churches that really didn't teach about Christ much. I don't know where Community Church had just a church that gathers in everyone.

I can tell you this much, you'll be surprised when you get to heaven, who's there. It won't just be Nazarenes, and it won't just be a little clique. He said they'll come from every tribe and every nation, the north, the south east of the West, they'll be gathered. And I just kind of figured we probably better learn how to get along here.

If we're going to all fit together, over there. Thank you for your amens. And we welcome you. We welcome you by livestream had that we're so glad that you've joined us this morning. We generally telecast this first service. And we welcome you who have joined us by telecasts. Been on the been on the air for quite a few years now. And I don't know if you folk locally here realize it but we have never made a plea for money. But it's been outsiders that have watched that I have not a clue who they are that have paid for our time on television. And I think if anybody is on the air, I think it all be the holiness crowd. I think we have the message the world needs. If I didn't think so I'd go join the crowd that I thought I had the message.

Thanks for being here. We're on a series about the Holy Spirit.

And my thought this morning his hope are hopeless. The Holy Spirit makes the difference. And want to take you to a very familiar passage is found in

18. Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess. But be filled with the Spirit Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, not the mother guide. spiritual selves. singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. Giving thanks always, for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Submitting yourselves one to another the fear of God. Here's a quote from Samuel Chadwick. Christian religion is hopeless without the Holy Spirit, you better catch that you better get that in your noggin. Christian religion is hopeless without the Holy Spirit. Mother taking her little girl to the doctor, and the little girl was scared nearly to death and doctor was trying to make her comfortable and asked if he could look he could look at her mouth and she didn't want him to but finally she opened her mouth after he said his Mickey Mouse in there and just a bit of a smile crossed her countless but it erased quickly.

He looked in her ears and he said his Donald Duck in there barely smiled to gather a stethoscope and put it against her art. And he sent his Barney in there. And she responded said no. Barney is on my underwear.

Jesus is in my heart. I hope that Jesus is in your heart through the media of the Holy Spirit. I hope you believe in the spirit filled life if not, you're empty. You may be running wide open on rpm but if the Holy Spirit's not on the inside, you're running on a gas tank that's on empty. Here's what I want you to understand this morning. There are three groups that are listening. The first group and I'm excited that they are listening in that are those of you who are not a Christian.

You're not saved, you've never let Christ into your life.

You've never come to that moment when you admitted that you were lost and on your road to hell, and simply said, Jesus, I surrender, I repent, I beg you to forgive me. But we're glad that you're listening. Fact of the matter, I hope that every church would allow you to come and allow you to fit in and up because they love you, and they care about you. And they want to find a way to bring you into the kingdom. The second group is the group that have allowed Christ to come into their life because they needed fire insurance. They heard preaching hot enough that they heard that there was a hell and they didn't want to go. And they knew that one day they would die and stand before God and give an account. And they didn't want to hear the words, depart from me and be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, and, therefore they needed life, or fire insurance, life insurance too. But there's a third group, they not only allowed Christ to come in, but they allow the Holy Spirit to control their life, to control their life. And here, the Bible is saying, Be not drunk with wine where it is excess by the filled, not by the wine, but with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit. Now, my grandfather, on my mom's side, he was half Indian. He liked fire water.

He would get on those drunken benders sometimes, and he was a wild comanche. He was actually a Cherokee. Boy, he'd get drunk.

Grandma hated it. And I thought it was funny. But I was just a boy. I’ve growing up to realize how awful it is, when you see somebody drunk and fall and split their head open and fight and curse and damn and beat their wife. It's really not very funny. Because if you've been around a drunk, you know that they are out of control and what the Lord is saying here, just as they're out of control, and they've lost control over themselves. In like manner, you need to lose control of yourself and allow the Holy Spirit to so fill you that he's in control.

He's calling the shots. He's directing your life. He's helping put the right words into your mouth and the right deeds into your mind, the right things for you to do and to be. And he wants to live his life through us. Here's another way to look at it. How many of you have ever lived in a house that you didn't own?

Well, you can live in a house that you didn't own. My parents had a house and I didn't own it.

But I lived there.

Mom and dad needed me to help raise them. So I lived there. I don't know as I've ever rented, but I have a few rentals.

As you know, God can be in us and yet not own us. He can come into our lives and we still begin to resist and try to call the shots. He can reside in there, but we maybe don't let him but preside, be in charge.

And we want to be led not by the Spirit, but led by our own ambitions and our own flesh, and our own aspirations. And I want you to know something the Christian life is hopeless without the leadership and the control of the Holy Spirit. And there's some things that I want you to see from out of the Word of God. And here's what I want you to see is first of all the command a command. I wish I could get that word across the word command. We're commanded here to be filled with the Holy Spirit, Be not drunk with wine but be filled. And here's what you've got to figure out. Is that command for me and is that command for you. If it's not, then we can forget about it. But if God is saying that it’s for all of us, then we'd better fulfill the command, I'm thinking. So look who isn't written to. Well, in Ephesians,

1, who's the book written to?, Paul is writing this document.

And he's an apostle, What is an apostle? Well, Apostle is an appointed one who has seen the risen Christ. Paul said, I'm out of season I saw him on the road of Damascus, he revealed himself and those other disciples, other apostles, they ran around with him, and they saw him the risen Christ. But he saw him after the fact. Now, if you go down the road, you'll see once in a while those churches that on their marquee, it will say, Apostle, so and so. I always smile, because I know that preachers old. He has got to be over 2000 years of age, if he saw Jesus, I'm just talking to you don't get mad, put your knives up. So Paul, that apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God writing it says to the saints, verse one, which are in Ephesus Chapter one verse two, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus.

Now this wasn't written to a bunch of pagan lost people, is written to the very best to the apex, to the top notches, to the godly Christians. And people just like you and I, and who come to church on Sunday, and he's saying to all of them, and all of us, you need to be spirit filled. Now, it's not a suggestion. It's not something you ought to maybe take into consideration. It's not to the super saints. It's not just for Billy Graham, and Mother Teresa, it's for all of us. And another thing, it's not something that you can do yourself, only God can fill us with His Spirit, we can make ourselves available, but takes him to Spirit fill us.

And also, when he said be filled, it's in the present tense. So that means it's a continuous tense, I believe in an instantaneous work of grace.

But I think we've gotten away from talking about day by day, week by week staying filled with the Holy Spirit. And it's just not for us to see two trips to the alter and then we're through. No, it's a continuous filling of God's Spirit. Now, back in Matthew 25, it talks about 10 virgins, five of them were wives, five were foolish, and the foolish ran out of oil, their vessels ran dry. Now, you may not know this, but the lamp that they carried in those days was a little bitty thing about that big. And it was so small that if you lit it, every two to four hours, you had to refill it. You get that? We're not very big vessels either. And we need continuously being filled with the Holy Spirit. There's a command and that command is to Christian people be filled with a spirit. Now what are the conditions to this? Well, first of all, there needs to be a desire to be filled. You need to know that your church experience will become mechanical. If you don't have that fresh anointing.

And your marriage can get pretty methodical to, can't it? Without the Spirit's presence. Our ministry can get dry and church experience can become dry. And there comes a time in our lives where we say to ourselves, there's got to be something more than this. There's got to be a better way than me asking God to forgive me then I turn around and I don't have the ability to keep from sinning and I keep sinning and messing up I go back to the altar. I keep begging God to forgive me. There's gotta be a better experience. I need to touch from above. Because folk unless there's within us that which is above us will soon yield to that which is around us. And Jesus said something

13. Notice what he said to a little lady on a dry day. By Jacob's well. He said, Whosoever drinketh this water shall thirst again. This water that you have, you're gonna thirst again. He told that woman that in other words, all that the world can offer when it's all said and done, you'll still be thirsty. You can go down to some crystal pistol lounge where the lepers hang out and get a drink or two and see your buddies there. But when the night is over, you're gonna be dry and empty and thirsty. You say, preacher, I had an affair.

Yeah. And after it's all over, you're gonna be empty again. It was a little fling for a moment.

But now you realize you violated somebody else's companion. You caused them to break their vow, you broke your vow of your marriage, and life is empty and you're left thirsty. Now, I want you to know that everything the world has to offer, ladies and gentlemen, will leave you thirsty. Then look at what Jesus said in verse 14, that whosoever drinketh the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. And I like the way he said it. He didn't say whosoever drunk. No, he said, Whosoever drinketh it's in the continual process.

There's many times in my life, I've been dry, maybe you haven't, I'll testify. There's been a few times in my life that I was discouraged. Not many times, but few times. And it hit my mind to throw in the towel.

But the only problem was, I didn't have anything to go back to. And I realized probably all I needed was a fresh filling of God, fresh touch of God's Spirit. That happens in our marriages. It happens in our relationships, our church experience our ministries, we need the presence of God. And I know that we get a little bit scared of that. And we not sure where that might lead to. But I pastored long enough to know I'd rather try to calm down a fanatic than to warm up a dead corpse. We need a fresh infilling. And then not only that, we got to desire but we have to denounce sin. This is something some folks don't get.

But you got to denounce it. You got to get out of the sin business. Second Corinthians seven one having therefore these promises, dearly Beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God, we have to denounce. See pastor I don't know what you're getting at?

Well, many times God can't fill us because we're too full of ourselves. We're full of our ego. We're full of malice, we're full of anger, we're full of jealousy, and we could go on and on. I was told to be careful, I'll be careful. And I think there comes a time we have to say, God, I want you to look in my life, and what is it that's in my way? And what do I need to get rid of? And why do I need to denounce? And do it. And thirdly, not only desire to be filled, and we've got to denounce sin, but dedicate yourself fully to Christ. Now, why would you want to fully dedicate yourself to Christ?

Well, why wouldn't you want to?

No one loves us quite like he does. No one knows what's best for us like he does. Why would I want to call the shots for my life, when I don't even know what I really need. And he made me and he's the one that can fill me with what's best for my life.

And so we can be filled. And then I want to not only look at the conditions notice the consequences of being filled with a spirit. I don't want to just share that opinion. I want to give you a scripture. So I'm going right back to Ephesians

18. Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess but be filled with the Spirit. And then he tells us in verses 19 through 21 what the consequences are. He says first of all gladness. Look at verse 19, Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart.

Would you like to have a melody in your heart? Would you like to be glad instead of sad, mad and bad? You can be glad he talks about gladness here. Now I'm not trying to pass judgment on anybody, I've got too many other things to do. But if all you can do is complain, you need filled with the Holy Spirit. If all you can talk about is what's wrong.

I'm telling you, you need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. The consequences of being filled with the Spirit is gladness. Now am I in the book or not? It's what it said they're making melody in your heart. Some people I think would give an aspirin a headache. I was in a little situation here a while back. Somebody had kind of set their sails to take my sails down. If you don't understand that I do. They were saying a few things. And finally, in my heart, I had to say, God, I forgive them. And when it came up between me and another individual, I said, I've totally forgiven them. And then they said, Well, why is it when their name is brought up your countenance changes? I should have slapped him in Jesus name.

And I looked him in the face, and I said, You know what, you're right. If I'm gonna have a knee jerk reaction, every time I hear their name, I need to be sure it's totally because I want to live in gladness. And then it goes on and being filled with a spirit. You've gotten gratefulness. Look at verse 20.

It's right here in black ink in white paper. Okay, Giving thanks always for all things under God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. So if I'm spirit filled, I'm not grumbly hateful, I'm humbly grateful. If I'm walking in the Spirit, I'm going to have an attitude of gratitude, I'm going to be thankful. I thank God for my friends, both of them. Preacher was preaching, half his crowd got up walked out, he dismissed and told the other guy to go home to. I thank God, that I got a family. I thank God for my children. I thank God for the ministry. I thank God for the church. I thank God for good relationships. I thank God for jobs. We thank God for blessings. You heard about, I think I've told you about the lady that was battling cancer, and was on chemo and got up and looked in the mirror and only had three hairs on her head. And she said today, I think I'll braid my hair. But got up the next morning and only had two hairs on her head. And she said, I think I'll just part my hair in the middle. Got up the next day, and there's only one hair on her head, she said, I think I'll just put my hair up in a ponytail. But got up the next morning and was completely bald.

And she said, Well, thank the Lord I don't have to do my hair today. Some of us need to get grateful for what we have. Every one of us could spend our time talking about the bad times and it's so easy to do. It's easier to remember the tough times then it is the good times. But giving thanks always for all things.

Let's live that way. And if you look again, you'll notice the graciousness in your life if you're filled with spirit. Look at verse 21. Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Submitting. Would you mind if we just quit right now and I won't have to deal with that? Do you mean I've got to submit to my wife? You are you're telling me I have to put her needs in front of my needs?

Submitting yourselves one to another. Well it's a good thing I didn't write this I could have rearranged some of this.

You mean I'm not to be considering my happiness all the time, but I'm to enhance the happiness of others submitting ourselves one to another.

Wives submitting yourself also to your husband. Thinking about their needs to. Hey, what about children? What about young people submitting themselves to mom and dad? Can I run back to the kids department right now? You know it doesn't hurt to say Dad, thank you for being a hard working dad. I know a lot of dads that aren't but dad you do.

And thank you Dad for while there are homeless people you furnish me a home with a warm bed. Thank you dad. Or daddy, thank you for putting food on the table. I know it's not always easy. And you can't dress like you used to when you were a bachelor and yet a big flashy car. Now you've got to drive a used one but dad thank you or thank your mom. That's what it's talking about submitting. Thank your mom for home cooked meals.

Thank your mom when other mothers walked out and left their kids you didn't walk out and leave me and have got a home to go to. Submitting. When you talk about this submitting thing. It's talking about employees being submissive to their employer. Giving eight hours of work for eight hours of pay, being respectful on the job. And it's talking about in employers submitting under God who's the master of all so that they treat their employees well.

And you know, that doesn't come through us. That comes from being filled with the Holy Spirit. Gladness and gratefulness and graciousness only comes through being filled with a spirit of God. Let me go with a context and I'll wind up, okay? What's the context? Why is it important? Can I give you three quick reasons. First of all, spirit filled service, you say, Pastor, I sing, and I usher. I appreciate all of that.

But if you're not doing it in the spirit, you're soon going to burn out. If you're doing it in the flesh and doing it because you just feel obligated to do it, you'll soon get weary in well doing. So I don't want to do it in the flesh. I don't want to do it in my own ability. So I continually need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Now, think about this, over in Luke chapter three, verse 22, it talks about the Holy Spirit, meeting the need of someone, instead of the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove up on him. Who did the Holy Spirit come on Jesus Christ? And a voice came from heaven which said, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I'm well pleased. Jesus was 30 years of age when it happened. If you look at verse 23, it says then Jesus himself began to be about 30 years of age. I don't know if you know this, but a levite or priests had to be 30 years of age to begin ministering. Fact of the matter of a scribe could not teach until he was 30 years of age. Jesus didn't come to destroy the law, he came to fulfill the law in every aspect.

And here are 30 years of age, he began ministry, but it did not do so without being filled by the Holy Spirit. It said, by t being filled with the Spirit, he went out into the desert, he was filled with the Spirit. Now if he needed to be filled with a spirit, what in the world do you think about you and I? Some of us need to get serious about this thing and get Spirit filled and that's what I'm trying to say. And not only spirit filled servants, but what about Christ like living? How many of our relationships need love, joy and peace and long suffering and gentleness and goodness and faith and meekness and temperance? According to Galatians, chapter five verses 22 and 23. Those are the fruit of the spirits So, that's what we call Christ's like living.

And a third thing is victory in your life. God wants us to have victory. The Bible tells us in

13 For, if you live after the flesh, you shall die: but if you through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live. So if you want to put under those things of the flesh, you've got to be spirit filled to mortify the deeds. And that's why we preach being spirit filled. I want to tell you something. I got saved when I was nine years of age, Mom and Dad attended a little church and first time they'd ever been in church in their life. Now I'm not going to go on the story.

But when the altar call was given, they gave their hearts to Christ. They moved to a city called Indianapolis. There's a missionary bands church there, you probably never heard of that they merged with the Wesleyans and they submerged with the pilgrims and I don't know who's emerging now or what's going on.

But anyhow, I listened to J.

Wesley Adcock preach. God gripped my heart when I got home that night, tried to sleep, couldn't sleep. Nine years of age, I woke up mom and dad and I said to mom, I said, I think if I die right now go to hell. And Mama and dad both caught on immediately that God was dealing with my heart. And they rolled out of bed. They said, What do you want to do? I said, I think I need to pray. I said, I went to the front there at that revival tonight, but there was too many people there. And the church wasn't any bigger than this one section. But it was full and it looked fuller than that to me, and there between mom and dad I turned my life over to Jesus Christ. And the Holy Spirit, literally, for the first time, moved into my heart.

I didn't know anything much about religion, I just knew that mom and dad's life had changed.

I watched mom and dad begin to give tithe, they'd cut a check.

And I didn't know how much it was. But I found out it was a 10th. Everything changed around our house when they got saved, and it changed my heart, and I allow the Holy Spirit.

I didn't want it to get me. You talk about excited, I was so excited. I wanted all the other kids down at the school to know what had happened. The Holy Spirit begin to dominate my life. Things really begin to change. All I could talk about was what God was doing. But time began to pass and strange how things begin to creep into our life. You know, I was going to school and there's peer pressure and then you got these teachers and you got the left brain one and the right brain from the other one. And I had one teacher stayed in my room two years, I thought that old gal never would pass. And then you know, you get out of school and you get a job and you're working and you're traveling and you're putting up with life. And you deal with things coming this way and that way and you get married and then children come and next thing you know, you got bills to pay. And you got to buy a car and you got to get a house and you get the keys to your car and you get the keys to your house and keys to the bank place where you write down how much you owe them, and so life gets heavy. And then, you know, of course, along comes social media. I knew you'd go to shouting and running the aisles on this one. We're gonna get some police here next week just to direct the traffic when you get to running. And, you know, we got to talk to everybody, because everybody wants to hear from us. We've got so much to say, don't we? Don't we? Then why are you on there if you don't have anything to say. And you know, if we're not careful, we don't spend nearly as much time in the faith book, as we do on facebook. And everybody thinks what we have to say is just so clever. And we know they're gonna want to hear from us and so, you know, before we go to bed at night, we have to check in and monitor everything that has been said during the day and how many tweets and twitter's and all that happened when we said something. We get 113 and a half responses. And then you get up the next morning and before you can talk to the Lord, you got to talk on facebook and you got to see what happened during the night. You know, maybe the moon went down or something and never came back up. And the next thing you know, you don't have time for prayer.

You don't have time for the Word of God. It's called social media. I still have some spirit left in my life. But I've got all these other things you know, going on in my life. And of course I went to get my truck yesterday and somebody had worked on it and they left their sunglasses in it and I meant to bring them, we can just act like these are sunglasses. They're somewhere in my truck. I couldn't find them this morning.

And we got to look good it's the 21st century. I mean a woman's got to be a woman. You got to look good. And so I dropped these in, but I don't want to scratch them. And then the next thing you know we like Preacher Ray he's kind of a good boy. We watch him on Facebook because you know Billy's got soccer now and baseball, football, basketball seasons come and go used to be a time we let the kids you know go to church on Sunday but now we in some of these other institutions think that we ought to have the kids on the Lord's day too. And so we just watch Preacher Ray on Livestream we don't we don't follow him much you know otherwise because you know you got to spend time with the family.

Well, that water was heavy wannit? I am about to run out of objects. See if I can get this and we get so busy, then we got to play a little golf. I just picked this up for weight.

If it'd just do what it's supposed to do.

I'm gonna sit on it next. You say, Well, preacher, what are we going to do? We're going to deal with this bucket that's got all this other stuff that's gotten into my life? I know I was spirit filled back there and I didn't really let him control my life. But I've got all this other stuff in my bucket. You don't watch it in the bucket? I know what's in my bucket. Do you know what's in your bucket? Do you know what it is that's sapping all of your time and your energies and your efforts?

I'm just asking. That's why the word of God comes back and said, No, you need to do more than just get forgiveness of sin you need filled with the Spirit. If this don't work, I'm going home.

Gonna to help it. Now what just happened? Did I have to get rid of all that stuff? No, you get filled with the Spirit and it'll knock a lot of that stuff out of your life. Junk that you don't need. Suddenly you got more time to pray. And Facebook isn't so important and all the scuttling around that we do shuttling kids to this or that and the other.

Suddenly the church, the things of God, become more important.

And you know, if we're not careful, we can let these things crowd out the spirit, and soon wind up on empty and wondering why we're not spirit led. Why we're not spirit guided, it's because we're not full and filled with the Holy Spirit. And you can be and some of us need to say, God, it's time that I let you fill me with your Spirit. Deal with my heart there's an emptiness in there.

And I'm running here and running there and I let the things of life crowd in and it's crowding out the spirit, and I want to be full of your spirit.

Thanks for being a part of the voice of the Nazarene visitors every Sunday at 9am with BNC's pastor Ray LaSalle. For more information regarding BNC visit Bucyrus nazarene.org.