It is almost incredible to realize that Jesus once lived here! That means that God used to live here. Yet much of the face to face communication Jesus had with the disciples was lost to them because of the hardness of their hearts. Even His closest disciples were often deaf and dumb to what Jesus was saying and doing because they were not yet truly spiritual men.

It is truly amazing that Jesus spent three and a half years in almost constant companionship with those men. But though He was with them physically, it wasn't until after Pentecost that He was really in their very lives.

Anybody can explain spiritual truths, but only spiritual people can understand them (1 Corinthians 2:14). This is why Jesus said that we must be born again through the Holy Spirit. The Word of God is unintelligible to the person who is not born again. It cannot be understood as an experience unless one is spiritual.

For this reason, it is not an option that the remnant church in these last days pray for and receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Some think that the problem in the Christian life is that we don't understand some fact or other about the Christian life. And so we teach and study to the place that we have now just about reduced everything to a seminar.

Some think the problem is we are not organized enough and so we have installed databanks in our churches. Some church offices have so many computers and other equipment that they look like an insurance company.

Some think our problem is that we have lost the spirit of corporate worship, and that if we would revitalize church and Sabbath School our problems would be over.

In regard to worship I would like to suggest that, in our current focus to do meaningful worship, many of us seem to have forgotten that Jesus said that if you bring your gift to the altar and have anything against your brother, leave your gift at the altar and be reconciled first to your brother (Matthew 5:23).

It is funny how we over-emphasize first one thing and then another. I've said it before and I'll say it again--fanaticism is often simply the act of over-emphasizing one truth at the expense of other truth.

It is true that the last message to the world is a message of worship. Fear God, give glory to Him, and worship Him who made heaven and earth (Revelation 14:7). But there is another message that is preached in the last days and it is found in Malachi 4:5,6: "Behold, I send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awful day of the Lord:" The last message is also a message to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers.

Somehow we must understand that worship is more than what we do on Sabbath at eleven o'clock. Israel seemed to think worship was what you did in church. God said, I'm fed up with your sacrifices of bulls. What I wish is that you would realize that worship is not something you do; rather it is something you are (John 4:23).

What does all this have to do with the Holy Spirit? Everything, because the Holy Spirit is not something on the outside, but something on the inside. If we have troubles on the outside of our lives, it is because we need to be reformed on the inside.

I have entitled this series of sermons, Beyond Pentecost, because I don't believe we need to get back to Pentecost AD 31, but I believe we need to have an even greater experience in the 21st century than they had at Pentecost.

For some reason there seem to be some who are insisting on what I would call a pre-Pentecost experience. Not only are some obsessed with going back to Pentecost, they somehow want to have an Old Testament experience. Some of us are trying, it seems, to be what we might call "Old Testament Christians."

I was eating with some ministers the other day, and almost out of the blue one said, "What is this we are doing--suddenly making David the role model for the Christian life?"

Friend, I often wonder this myself. Though David was a role model for repentance, he was surely not a role model for victorious Christian living.

Though David was a man who was inspired by the Holy Spirit, I can't conceive that we would say that he was a man who constantly had the in-filling of the Holy Spirit. When we have the abiding in-filling of the Holy Spirit we won't run off with other men's wives!

Notice even the difference between David's attitude toward his enemies and Jesus' attitude and Paul's attitude toward their enemies; the difference is between night and day. This is because David had a pre-Pentecost experience with the Lord.

You may think I'm a heretic. I'm not saying that the Holy Spirit did not move upon men of God in the Old Testament. But the fact is, the experience that is available to us was not available to them because Christ was not yet glorified.

But then, if you want a Christian experience modeled on the pre-Pentecost days of the Old Testament, or even if you want an experience that the disciples had with Jesus when they walked with Him for three and a half years, fighting among themselves as to who was the greatest, you're welcome to it.

I don't even want the experience of Peter when he got up and walked out of a meal with a group of Gentiles rather than be embarrassed by his prejudiced Jewish Christian colleagues. I want an in-filling of the Holy Spirit that is beyond racism and that is not confused over law and grace. I want the Pentecost that God has for his people in these last days--an experience that will purify, sanctify; an experience that will give us a witness that leads people to have a burning heart.

I don't want an experience with the Holy Spirit that has me climbing the walls, swooning in the aisles, or jumping up and down and clapping my hands. Though God is the God of wind, He is not in the wind. Though God is the God of fire, He is not in the fire. But He is in the still small voice.

I seek not an experience in the Holy Spirit that is hysterical or hypnotic. "One thing have I desired of the Lord, that I will seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple" (Psalm 27:4).

I don't even want the Holy Spirit in my life because I want power. I want the Holy Spirit in my life because I love the Lord Jesus Christ with all my heart. And though Jesus left us physically 2,000 years ago, in the Holy Spirit we have the most wonderful gift of all--Christ in us, the hope of glory.

I repeat, I don't want the Holy Spirit because I want power. I want Him to live in me because I love Him and crave His blessed presence. I remember when I first met my wife, Betty, and fell in love with her. We were only 17 and 18 when we began to fall in love. I married her more than 40 years ago. This marriage has a lot of benefits. We share expenses. We have someone to keep each other company. We share physical intimacy. We have four children and eight grandchildren.

These are all benefits of being married to Betty. But the best part of all is that we love each other, and when you love someone you just want to be with them. The blessing that the Holy Spirit is in my life is best summed up in the words, "Emmanuel"--God with us. You see, that is what it's all about. The Holy Spirit is the most wonderful of all of God's gifts. I guess you can say that, when the Holy Spirit is in your life, it is God moved in with you.

A lot of problems disappear or become mute or irrelevant when that happens. You see, God is Holy, and when a Holy God moves in with you. His Holy presence will prepare, if you please, a sterile field in your life.

It is for this reason that Scripture says, "Old things are passed away; and behold, all things are become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17). It also gives meaning to the words, "What fellowship has light with darkness" (2 Corinthians 6:14). When you and I have the Holy Spirit in our lives, we will hate the world, and as we sing, the things of earth grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

If only God's people in this generation would pray for the Holy Spirit and mean it. We sometimes pray for the Spirit like a young man with passion prays for a woman in his life. Though marriage has a sexual component, marriage is not built on sex.

A person who seeks the Holy Spirit for gratification of His spiritual fantasies or for personal gain in power or popularity may very well receive a spirit and exhibit those characteristics, but they will not be from the Holy Spirit of God, but from another spirit. God will not be used by us. He is not God because of us. But we are created by Him for His pleasure and for His glory.

When the Holy Spirit dwells in its fullness in our hearts, then we will grow and experience what it means. "Forever, O God, thy word is settled in Heaven" (Psalms 119:89). And also, "I delight to do Thy will, O My God; Yea, thy law is written in my heart" (Psalm 40:8).

Our worldliness or spiritual instability--the direct hit that many of us are taking from the flesh and the devil--are the direct result that we have not asked for, and thus have not received, the fullness of the Spirit.

Of one thing you may be sure, and that is, when you and I ask for and experience the indwelling of the Holy Spirit:

1. All known sin will go.
2. We will seek first the Kingdom of Heaven and His righteousness.
3. Sin will not have dominion over us.

We will no longer be under the law of sin and death. We will know what it means when it says, "There is now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit"(Read Romans 6 and 8).

Listen to me. If your life is dominated by a bad temper, if you nurture a spirit of criticism, if you love to keep up with the Jones, if you have secret immoral practices, if you enjoy watching people break the law of God on television programs, and I could go on and on, you are not under grace but under law.

The Spirit of God in Christ has made us free from the law of sin and death. You may be thinking, "Are you saying that when the Holy Spirit is in us, we will be perfect? That we will never sin again?" I didn't say that. But this I know, and that is, when the Spirit of a Holy God dwells with us, we will begin to hate the things we have loved and we will be begin to love the things we have hated.

As the Holy Spirit dwells in your heart, if you will ask Him and cooperate with Him, He will give you an ongoing victory over the sins that have so long ruined our quality of life. The promise is sin shall not have dominion over you (Romans 6:14).

One thing I must remind you and that is, the more the Holy Spirit works in our lives, the more unworthy and sinful we will appear in our own eyes. That's the bad news. But the good news is, your wife and children, the people you work with, and your friends will be able to tell the difference!

Why does the spiritual life have to be so complicated? I believe it is because, in the days of Pentecost, the truth about the Holy Spirit had not been yet distorted or misrepresented. But it must have been messed up before long though, because of Simon Magus. He wanted to buy it.

Remember the Holy Spirit does at least two levels of work:

1. Convicting of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment (John 16:8-10).
2. Then there is an in-filling of the Holy Ghost. This is much more than a work of conviction. It is an on-going condition by which we are actually purged of sin and changed fundamentally and permanently. This is the sealing work-the Holy Spirit settling us into the truth so that we cannot be moved.

When I started this series, I warned you that once we know what the Holy Spirit is for and what He does, we may decide it's not for us. But we must not linger. The Spirit will not always strive with men. Someone has said he believes the Holy Spirit is even now being redistributed.

We're in the 21st century now. We can't go back to Pentecost but, full of the Spirit of the indwelling Christ, we must go on to the Latter Rain. For too long what has been marketed as being full of the Holy Spirit is not being full of the Holy Spirit at all.

It is high time that we wake up and begin to pray with all our hearts to be filled with the Holy Spirit in the truest sense of the word. Some of us have seen what the devil can do in our lives. Why don't we get serious now and see what the life-changing, sealing power of the Holy Spirit can do in our lives?

People have asked me, "Do you have the Holy Spirit?" I used to hem and haw. Now I am praying that God will give me the full indwelling of the Holy Spirit. He is answering my prayers.

We have tended to equate praying for the Holy Spirit with a view to church growth instead of personal spiritual growth. It seems to me that the foundation of Christian witnessing is not just being able to explain what we believe. It must be much more. It seems to me that the foundation of Christian witnessing is based upon being able to tell others what Jesus has done and is doing in our life. It seems to me that the foundation of Christian witnessing is that our families and friends will see what Jesus has done and is doing in our life. As this happens, the church will grow, but not only numerically, but in Spirit and truth.

I invite you to pray for and receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit into your life. From this moment forward you will never be the same.