The Fragrance Of The Father I Series

Introduction:

A.W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous- One of their big milk companies makes capital of the fact that their cows are all satisfied with their lot in life. Their clever ads have made the term “contented cows” familiar to everyone. But what is virtue in a cow may be a vice in a man. And contentment, when it touches spiritual things, is surely a vice. Contentment with earthly goods is the mark of a saint; contentment with our spiritual state is a mark of inward blindness. One of the greatest foes of the Christian is religious complacency…Orthodox Christianity has fallen to its present low estate from lack of spiritual desire. Among the many who profess the Christian faith, scarcely one in a thousand reveals any passionate thirst for God.

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Our lack for the spiritual attributes of God is self-evident and those that have a passionate thirst for God. It is not that we lack opportunity for God is everywhere.

I. God’s Omnipresence:

1. God’s omnipresence fills the entire world, if this is the case then why can’t we feel that same presence in a mighty way right here in our hearts.

2. However there are stipulations in experiencing the presence of the Holy Spirit.

3. The high priest before he went into the holy of holies he had to go through a ceremonial cleansing and he did not do everything that was required he was struck down dead.

4. God did this so that we would not only love him but also fear him.

5. In order to feel this powerful presence we must be a clean vessel.

6. Illustration: For instance if you were in a room filled with human and animal waste all over the floors.

7. Some was smeared on the walls, flies were everywhere along with the cockroaches that would run around in broad daylight.

8. Dirty foal clothes that reek with human body odor fill the room in piles.

9. Sprinkling the room like confectionary sugar was food moldy and filled with maggots.

10. You were standing in the middle of all this you would positively feel out of place and look for the nearest exit to go and vomit.

11. Just exactly how you feel just thinking about this is how the Holy Spirit feels in or near a body filled with sin.

12. Giving in to our weaknesses all the time nauseates him and make him want to vomit.

13. When we ask for forgiveness we reestablish our relationship with him.

14. Dietrich Bonhoeffer -Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession the light of the gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. The sin must be brought into the light. The unexpressed must be openly spoken and acknowledged. All that is secret and hidden is made manifest. It is a struggle until the sin is openly admitted, but God breaks gates of brass and bars of iron (Ps. 107:16).

Since the confession of sin is made in the presence of a Christian brother, the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned. The sinner surrenders; he gives up all his evil. He gives his heart to God, and he finds the forgiveness of all his sin in the fellowship of Jesus Christ and his brother. The expressed, acknowledged sin has lost all its power. It has been revealed and judged as sin. It can no longer tear the fellowship asunder. Now the fellowship bears the sin of the brother. He is no longer alone with his evil for he has cast off his sin in confession and handed it over to God. It has been taken away from him. Now he stands in the fellowship of sinners who live by the grace of God and the cross of Jesus Christ… The sin concealed separated him from the fellowship, made all his apparent fellowship a sham; the sin confessed has helped him define true fellowship with the brethren in Jesus Christ.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 112-113.

15. He is there to bring us back into fellowship with God forever whispering in our ears to say Jesus has a better way.

16. Listen to me and I will guide you into his truth, the truth of life.

17. So instead of saying yes to our weaknesses we need to adopt the drug slogan, “Just Say No” to sin.