The Power Of The Holy Spirit

If you have your Bibles, turn with us, please, to Mark 16, and we'll begin reading at verse 15. We're beginning, tonight, a journey into the supernatural, as we talk about the power and the purpose of the Holy Spirit. Our roadmap is going to be the eternal sovereign and unchanging Word of God. And our exploration is the power and the purpose of the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the function and manifestation of its gifts in your life. I'm going to begin prodigiously, slowly, because some of you are hearing this for the very first time. Others of you have heard it before. Listen closely. Miracles may happen and you learn something new. There are four dangers for every Christian, when he begins to explore the supernatural.

Listen closely. The greatest danger is the danger of understanding scripture in the light of your experience. I want you to understand this: we should never interpret scripture by the light of your experience. You should examine your experience in the light of the scripture. And if your experience and the scripture do not coincide, you've had a wrong experience. One of the great problems in Christianity today is that we have experiential Christians. I have this experience, and they try to find the verses to support that experience rather than what the Word of God says. The second danger is to go beyond the scripture or to be contrary to what the scriptures say. I heard a charismatic teacher say the other say: he said, "I don't care what the apostle Paul said. I know because I've had an experience".

Now that's fanaticism. Let me define fanaticism for you. Fanaticism is a divorce between scripture and experience. Say that with me. Fanaticism is a divorce between scripture and experience. The third danger is to put tradition above the clear teaching of the Word of God. Tradition can be found in the teaching of your denomination. Most every major denomination has a traditional teaching that you can no more support in the Word of God than jack and the bean stalk. But people believe it, by the thousands, because it is a doctrinal tradition of their church. The fourth danger is that of being satisfied with something much less than what the Word of God offers in scripture.

When you are dominated by your experience or you are dominated by tradition or something contrary to the Word of God, it is impossible for you to grow in Christ. When you reject truth, you are mastered by a lie. When you reject light, you are doomed to the darkness. The Bible says in John 1:16, "From the fullness of his grace, we have all received grace for grace". Say that with me. "Grace for grace". What does that mean? That means when you come to the Lord, there is one blessing after another. There is one level of spiritual growth after another. There is more in Christ than what you have. When you got saved, you did not get it all. When you got the baptism of the Holy Spirit, if you have it, you did not get it all. When you got one of the gifts of the spirit, you did not get it all.

There is more, much more! It is an eternal river of God, an ocean of the magnitude of God's supernatural. And you grow from glory to glory, precept upon precept, grace upon grace, never exhausting the rich resources of God. Tonight, we're going to share with you the Word of God. What is the baptism of the Holy Spirit? When do I get it? I'm going to give you ten Bible proofs that you can be saved, have the Holy Spirit in you, yet not experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Why do I need it? And what is its purpose in my life?

Read with me Mark 16:15 and following. Ready? And he said unto them, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe in my name, they shall cast out demons: they shall speak with new tongues". Say that again, "They shall speak with new tongues: they shall take up serpents: and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them: they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover". That is the fourfold commission of the church of Jesus Christ. It has not changed. There is not one verse in this precious text that says that has been subrogated. That is dispensationalism. Dispensationalism says that God had to work in a frame of time in such a fashion, and when that frame of time ended, he could not work in the continued manner in which he did work.