“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.
“In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.
“Now while he was serving as priest before God when his division was on duty, according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense. And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.’
“And Zechariah said to the angel, ‘How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.’ And the angel answered him, ‘I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.’ And the people were waiting for Zechariah, and they were wondering at his delay in the temple. And when he came out, he was unable to speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the temple. And he kept making signs to them and remained mute. And when his time of service was ended, he went to his home.
“After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she kept herself hidden, saying, ‘Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people.’” [1]
It is not uncommon that one should find sermons bearing a title promising to tell us “How to be Great in the Sight of the Lord.” That so many preachers have delivered messages addressing this theme indicates the importance of the topic. Christians want to know what can be done to accomplish great things for the cause of Christ. As redeemed followers of the Lord Jesus, we do not want to be pedestrian, mundane, or mediocre. Because we follow the Risen Lord of Glory, we long to so live that Christ is glorified in us and His cause advanced through us.
In verse fifteen, Gabriel assured Zechariah that the child who would be born to Elizabeth would be great in the sight of the Lord. We witness the divine messenger assuring Zechariah, “He will be great before the Lord” [see LUKE 1:15]. We understand that John was not great because he was born in answer to prayer, nor because he had great family (Jesus was a first cousin and his father was a priest), nor yet because he was raised in a religious atmosphere. John was to be great before the Lord because he would possess supernatural power, he would be powerful in turning people to the Lord, and he would have a supernatural message.
JOHN WAS FILLED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT — Gabriel promised, “He will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb” [LUKE 1:15b]. John would be one of the very few individuals who was said to be “filled with the Holy Spirit,” even from the womb. The child was born with purpose, and the purpose was divinely announced. What is important for us to grasp is that the divine messenger was telling Zechariah that the son to be born of Elizabeth would possess supernatural power even before birth.
John’s had supernatural power, not a make-believe power such as Superman, or the Flash, or some other comic character. The Baptist had the power of the Spirit that anyone may possess as a twice born child of the Living God. Recall that when Jesus was about to ascend into the heavens, He assured His disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” [ACTS 1:8]. The difference between John’s supernatural power and the potential supernatural power you may possess is that John was filled with the Spirit of God even before He was born!
When the angel announced the birth of a child to Zechariah and Elizabeth, the angel assured the godly priest that not only would these parents experience joy and gladness, but that many people would rejoice at his birth. They were instructed to name the child “John.” Then, the angel delivered what must have seemed a strange command, even for Zechariah and Elizabeth, when he directed them concerning dietary requirements for the child, saying, “He must not drink wine or strong drink” [LUKE 1:15a]. In effect, the angel directed the parents that the child was to be raised as a Nazarite.
Perhaps the presence of a Nazarite among the Jewish people was not so unusual in those far off days. However, a Nazarite from birth would be an anomaly! People could take a Nazarite vow for a given period, and when the time was completed the strictures imposed by the vow would be removed. However, the child to be born to Zechariah and Elizabeth was to be a Nazarite from the womb! Moreover, the vow was imposed by the Lord God Himself, communicated to Zachariah through God’s divine messenger. John didn’t take the vow; he accepted the vow imposed on him by the One Who gave Him His being. This is a most significant point for us to realise. Throughout John’s days on earth, he would observe the vows imposed on one who was a Nazarite.
What is important for our study today is that John was obedient to the will of God, and he was consequently filled with the Spirit. Let’s establish a truth that is too often ignored in this day: to be Spirit-filled implies obedience to the will of the Lord. Too many of the professed people of God settle for emotional stimulation in the strange belief that it is evidence of spiritual power. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
I need to remind you that excitement, even excitement generated by religious activity, is not evidence of the presence of the Spirit of God. One pointed illustration demonstrates the veracity of this statement. Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal to a contest that revealed the difference between excitement and God’s presence. Here is the pertinent passage demonstrating this difference. I understand that the passage is somewhat long, but it is important to read it to grasp the significance of what I am saying.
“Ahab sent for the Israelis and brought the prophets together at Mount Carmel, where Elijah approached all the people and asked them, ‘How long will you keep hesitating between both sides? If the LORD is God, go after him. If Baal, go after him.’
“But the people didn’t say a word.
“So Elijah told the people, ‘I’m the only one left over as a prophet of the LORD, am I? But Baal’s prophets number 450 men? So let them provide two oxen. They can choose one ox for themselves. Cut it up, lay it on top of some wood, but don’t set fire to it. I will prepare the other ox and lay it on top of some wood, and I won’t set fire to it. Then you can call on the name of your god, and I’ll call on the name of the LORD. Let the God who answers by fire be our God!’
“‘That’s a good idea!’ all the people shouted.
“So Elijah told the prophets of Baal, ‘Choose an ox for yourselves and you prepare it first, since there are so many of you. Call on the name of your god, but don’t set fire to the offering.’
“So they took the ox that was given to them, prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from early morning until noon. ‘Baal! Answer us!’ they cried. But there was no response. Nobody answered. So they kept on dancing around the altar that they had made.
“Starting about noon, Elijah began to tease them:
“‘Shout louder!
“‘He’s a god, so maybe he’s busy.
“‘Maybe he’s relieving himself.
“‘Maybe he’s busy someplace.
““‘Maybe he’s taking a nap and somebody needs to wake him up.”
“So the prophets of Baal cried even louder and slashed themselves with swords and lances until their blood gushed out all over them, as was their custom. They kept on raving right through midday and until it was time to offer the evening sacrifice, but there was still no response. Nobody answered, and nobody paid attention.
“Eventually, Elijah told everybody, ‘Come here!’ So everybody approached him, and he repaired the LORD’s altar that had been torn down. Elijah took twelve stones, one for each of the tribes of Jacob’s descendants, to whom the message from the LORD had come that ‘Israel is to be your name.’ So Elijah used the stones to build an altar to the name of the LORD. But then he dug a trench around the altar large enough to hold two measures of seed. Then he laid the wood in order, cut the bull into pieces, and laid them on top of the wood.
“‘Fill four pitchers with water,’ he ordered. ‘Then pour them out on the burnt offering and the wood.’
“‘Do it a second time,’ he ordered. So they did a second time.
“‘Do it a third time,’ he said. So they did it a third time. The water ran down around the altar and completely filled the trench.
“As the time for the evening offering arrived, Elijah the prophet approached and said, ‘LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I, your servant, have done all of this in obedience to your word. Answer me, LORD! Answer me so that this people may know that you, LORD, are God, and that you are turning back their hearts again.’
“Right then the LORD’s fire fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, the dust, and even the water that was in the trench! When all the people saw what had happened, they fell flat on their faces and cried out ‘The LORD is God! The LORD is God’” [1 KINGS 18:20-39 ISV]!
What a contrast is witnessed! Four hundred fifty excited and excitable prophets of Baal contrasted with one quiet and confident prophet of the True and Living God. The four hundred fifty prophets of Baal pray, punctuating their pleas with dancing that grows more frenzied as time passes with no answer. They are even leaping up onto the altar they built. By noon, perhaps four hours have passed without so much as a breeze and no answer. Now is time to bring out the big guns.
With Elijah’s mockery ringing in their ears and the people gathered growing more and more disinterested in the antics of these phonies, they begin to slice themselves with swords and with lances. The blood flowing would show just how serious they were, and added to the increasingly loud and frantic cries, everyone would know they were caught up in a spiritual action. And they kept up the feverish, frenetic manufactured hysteria until Elijah at last called the people to come to him. Nothing had happened, and it was obvious that nothing was going to happen even if they continued shouting, dancing, and cutting themselves for days on end. It was time to move on.
Elijah rebuilt the altar that had been allowed to tumble into a state of disrepair. He prepared the ox to be offered, instructed people to fetch water to soak the offering, the altar itself, and the wood. The water was taken from the sea, some distance from the scene of the contest. The people bringing the water would be compelled to run down the mountain, fill the ewers with water, and hurry back up the mountain where the water would be poured out on the altar. There would be no possibility of shenanigans with the dour prophet of God!
Then Elijah prayed. And the prayer this man of God offered to the LORD was a model of simplicity, revealing power that had not been seen in Israel for many years. Study this prayer as a model for power in your own prayer life. With great confidence the man of God prayed, “O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Answer me, O LORD, answer me, that this people may know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back” [1 KINGS 18:36b-37].
And when he finished his prayer, the fire fell.
Well, what will it be in our own worship? Shall we dance and wave flags? Shall we sing thirty verses of the latest chorus as guitars strum while we weave under dimmed lights? Or shall we look confidently toward the Lord Who redeems us?
Let’s establish that each one who is born from above receives the Spirit of God. God’s Spirit takes up residence in the one who is twice born through faith in the Son of God. When God poured out His Spirit on the first disciples, they assumed the giving of the Spirit was unique to them. Then, God, through Peter, gave the Holy Spirit to Gentiles [see ACTS 10:44-47].
Peter understood the significance of what he witnessed, and later testified in the Jerusalem Council, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith” [ACTS 15:7-9].
Pleading with the Roman Christians to realise the power dwelling in them, Paul pleads, “If Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you” [ROMANS 8:10-11]. Where does the Spirit of Christ reside? IN YOU! God’s Spirit lives in you who are twice born!
In what is arguably his earliest missive, Paul urges the Christians of Salonica to be holy, refusing to be ruled by the flesh. Then, he appends this stern statement: “Whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you” [1 THESSALONIANS 4:8].
The Apostle of Love has something to say about the Spirit of God given to those who are redeemed when he writes, “By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us” [1 JOHN 3:19-24].
John iterates this truth pointing to the residency of the Spirit of God in the redeemed child of God when he again writes soon after the foregoing revelation, “No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God resides in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we reside in God and he in us: in that he has given us of his Spirit” [1 JOHN 4:12-13 NET BIBLE 2nd].
I stated this truth to encourage the people of God to grasp this wonderful truth—the same Spirit that filled John from his mother’s womb is the Spirit of God that lives in you. God has given you His Spirit. In fact, James will testify, “Do you think the scripture means nothing when it says, ‘The spirit that God caused to live within us has an envious yearning’” [JAMES 4:5 NET BIBLE 2nd]?
Since this is the case, the power that enabled John to glorify the Lord God is the very power that is at your disposal because the Spirit of Christ lives in you. He is with you, guiding you and empowering you to fulfil the will of the Father who gives you life. The Living God has set His Spirit in you, just as He gave His Spirit to the Baptist. The sole difference is that John was filled with the Spirit from His mother’s womb and you came to faith, receiving the Spirit, at a somewhat later time. Amen!
There is this one great piece of knowledge that cannot be overlooked—John was “filled with the Spirit even from his mother’s womb” [LUKE 1:15b]. This is quite different from a child being a gift of God; this is something unique in the timing of what was happening. To be filled with the Spirit of God is the charge that each follower of Christ should take to heart. Though the Spirit of Christ lives in the twice born child of God, that redeemed individual is still commanded to be filled with the Spirit, implying something greater than mere residence. Even a brief study of the Word of God will lead to the conclusion that which the Spirit of God takes up residence in the life of the follower of Christ, that follower is commanded to voluntarily surrender control of his or her life to the control of the Spirit Who resides within.
Sometimes, this filling seems to be spontaneous, while at other times the filling is preceded by a conscious decision on the part of the child of God. Examples of the spontaneous filling of the Spirit appear in the lives of Zechariah and Elizabeth. When Mary, pregnant with the Son of God, greeted Elizabeth upon entering her home, we read, “When Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord’” [LUKE 1:40b-45].
When John was born, Zechariah, who had been kept from speaking throughout the pregnancy by the Word of the Lord, was suddenly freed from the divine restraint. We read, “Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied” [LUKE 1:67].
Nor were these the only instances of individuals spontaneously filled with the Spirit. There was, of course, the fulfilment of Jesus’ promise to the disciples that they would be baptised with the Holy Spirit [see ACTS 1:5], fulfilled when the Spirit was poured out during Pentecost following the resurrection of Jesus. In ACTS 2:4, we read of that event, “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” It is important to note what the people among whom they were then located heard. The people did not hear gibberish, or a supposed spiritual language; rather, we read, “[The people who heard the disciples] were amazed and astonished, saying, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.’ And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean’” [ACTS 2:7-12]?
Filled with the Spirit, the disciples were telling “the mighty works of God” in languages that were readily understood by those about them. This was also what happened when Peter was haled before Sanhedrin to give a defence for why he would dare speak of Jesus of Nazareth without official permission. Compelled to give his apologia, we are told that Peter was “filled with the Holy Spirit” and spoke as prompted by the Spirit of God.
And what he had to say was easily understood! This was not ecstatic speech—it was energised speech. Peter said, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” [ACTS 4:8b-12].
There is a pattern developing! Whenever an individual, or individuals, are filled with the Spirit, they talk about Christ. They point others to the Risen Saviour. That is what happened when Stephen was stoned. As the brave deacon was being attacked, we read, “[Stephen], full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God’” [ACTS 7:55-56]. Full of the Holy Spirit, the godly deacon spoke of the Risen Lord and His position.
I will hurry as the hour is late. When Saul of Tarsus was at last brought to faith in the Son of God, Anaias said he was to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Immediately, the new convert seized the opportunity to obey the command of the Lord [see ACTS 9:17-18]. Barnabus was full of the Holy Spirit, and when he was sent by the Church in Jerusalem to review the ministry that was then developing in Antioch, “a great many people were added to the Lord” [see ACTS 11:23-24].
Witnessing a wicked man attempted to thwart the work God was performing, Paul pronounced divine judgement. The Scripture informs us, “Elymas the magician (for that is the meaning of his name) opposed [the missionaries], seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith. But Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, ‘You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind and unable to see the sun for a time.’ Immediately mist and darkness fell upon him, and he went about seeking people to lead him by the hand” [ACTS 13:8-11]. The Lord blessed this holy boldness by granting faith to the proconsul to whom the disciples were speaking. The text informs us, “The proconsul believed, when he saw what had occurred, for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord” [ACTS 13:12].
Spirit-filled preaching is accomplished through the one proclaiming the message being filled with the Spirit. The Apostle demonstrates the reality of this truth in his First Missive to the congregation in Salonica. As he opens that letter, Paul writes, “We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake” [1 THESSALONIANS 1:2-5]. Filled with the Spirit, the missionaries were not only empowered to declare the truth of Christ the Lord, but they were empowered to live lives that demonstrated the reality of God’s presence. The conviction of their lives was evident for all to see.
I’ve said all the foregoing to bring you to this point—you received all the Spirit when you came to faith in the Risen Lord of Glory, but for the greatest effectiveness in your service, you must allow the Spirit of God to have all of you! This is the message delivered when the Apostle writes, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” [EPHESIANS 5:15-21].
To be filled with the Spirit of God is not a matter of losing control over your life, it is to consciously determine to surrender to God’s reign over your life. It is to allow the Spirit of God to create in you a holy desire to know the Lord and to rejoice in the beauty of the Lord as you consume His Word and invest time in His presence. If this is your condition, your life will be marked by thankfulness and an attitude revealing your submission to the needs of God’s holy people—a submissiveness that grows out of reverence for Christ.
We’re beginning to catch a glimpse of why John was great before the Lord; and we are learning how we can be great before the Lord. And the wonderful thing about this in the life of the Baptist is that all that followed—John’s commitment to serve the Lord and his supernatural message, all flowed from being filled with the Spirit of God. And that can be our situation as well, if we are first filled with the Spirit of God.
JOHN WAS COMMITTED TO SERVING THE LORD — “He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God” [LUKE 1:16]. From before his birth, John was equipped to turn many within Israel to the Lord. Israel had descended into serious spiritual decline before John was born. For more than four hundred years there had been no prophet of the Lord. Religion had been reduced to the performance of rituals, mindlessly carried out without any evidence of spiritual regeneration.
There were exceptions, but such exceptions were occasional and individual. There was no great movements toward serving God to be witnessed in the populace. There was a yearning for God in the hearts of some; but for the most part, there was no seeking after God, no longing for His Word. What yearning was witnessed was sporadic, desultory, isolated. It seemed as if the dark prophecy Amos had delivered centuries earlier had at last come to pass:
“‘Behold, the days are coming,’ declares the Lord GOD,
‘when I will send a famine on the land—
not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the LORD.
They shall wander from sea to sea,
and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the LORD,
but they shall not find it.’”
[AMOS 8:11-12]
A heightened sense of anxiety, a sense of being ill at ease, a gnawing at the heart that could not be identified was not evidence of national longing for God to move in power.
It seems fair to say that the religious climate in Israel was not dissimilar from that existing in this present day. While most Canadians will claim to be Christian, whatever the term may mean for them, churches are mostly empty and much of the populace go to church so seldom that they don’t really qualify as church goers. We often hear people claim they are spiritual, but what that may mean other than acknowledging that there is a restlessness that comes from knowing there is a God without knowing that God is unclear! It does seem as if there is throughout contemporary society a longing to know there is a God, even though there is widespread unwillingness to seek God.
John would be a unique instrument of the Lord God turning many people to God. They weren’t drawn by his ascetic lifestyle, his raw language, or his eccentric attitudes toward society; but there was a genuineness that was missing from the religious leaders. John was pretending to be godly—he was godly. John wasn’t playing at building a relationship with God—John was living proof of the reality of a relationship with God. The Baptist was prepared to accept opposition, but he was prepared to push back against mendacity in religion; he rejected sanctimonious attitudes and hypocrisy in religious activities, and he refused to go along with deceit and affectation in matters of the Faith.
He could be raw in his rejections of phoney religion, as when we see him rebuke the Pharisees and Sadducees, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
“I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” [MATTHEW 3:7b-12].
The pushback John received was intense. Jesus said of the events surrounding the ministry of the Baptist, “Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force” [MATTHEW 11:11-12]. Violence marked the service of this Spirit filled man, and you may be assured that your service will not be eagerly accepted, though it will be blessed after you provide that service, if you serve the Master in the power of the Spirit He gives. For in the service you provide, God will use you to turn many of your fellow Canadians to righteousness. And what more would you wish from your service before the Lord?
JOHN HAD A SUPERNATURAL MESSAGE — “He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared” [LUKE 1:16-17]. John had a supernatural message, but it was the identical message that we who follow the Risen Saviour are appointed to declare.
Without the Spirit’s empowerment, our message will be insipid, dull, without impact. But, when God’s Spirit energises us, we will speak little, but our words will have an impact far out of proportion to what we would otherwise anticipate. This is precisely what the Apostle said as he opened the Letter he wrote to the Christians in Rome. Listen as I read the words recorded in ROMANS 1:16-17. “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith’” [ROMANS 1:16-17].
What Paul said then is verified in the impact the message of life had when you received it. Paul would again speak of the power of that message when he wrote in his first Letter to the Christians in Corinth. The Apostle testified, “The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” [1 CORINTHIANS 1:18-24].
Without apology, the message is a challenge for the people of God to be filled with the Spirit of Christ. In these final moments, there are people who hear my words who need to speak in their hearts saying, “Lord, here I am. Let Your Spirit take control of my life now. Do this, Lord, to the praise of Your glory. Amen.”
[1] Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2016. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
