The Judgment You Can Judge

We're just following on now in this series on the seven judgments, in order that we see how all of these tie together, relate together, and have a very real and definite application to us today. Now, when you believed in Jesus Christ, a number of tremendous things happened to you. In fact, Dr. Chafer has, in thoroughly studying this, has found 33 different things that happen to you immediately when you become a Christian. They're a wonderful list of things. You can't read them through without being amazed at the grace of God.

33 different things. I'm not going to list them for you, but among those 33 things was the ministry of the Spirit of God given to you. That you were baptized by the Spirit of God into the body of Christ, and that way you were made to share in the life of Jesus Christ, and you were made members one of another, all who believed in him.

And then you were not only baptized with the Spirit, but you were sealed with the Spirit. And that has to do with the fact that God placed his own seal upon you, to guarantee that you would be carried through to the perfection that he has in mind for you. That's the sealing of the Spirit, and it has to do with the assurance of our salvation.

And then you are not only sealed with the Spirit, but you were filled with the Spirit. And it's particularly about that, that we want to be speaking tonight. Now all of these things happened just by believing. I wish we could make clear to people today that you enter into the value of the cross of Christ by believing something. You didn't have to pray for it. Now you might have prayed, but that isn't what brought it to you. You didn't have to ask forgiveness. You didn't have to confess your sins. You didn't have to plead, or weep, or tarry, or anything else. The minute you believed that Jesus Christ did something for you, and you accepted it as being true, God did all these wonderful things for you.

Now, you may have done some other things in connection with it. You may have come down to the front in a meeting, or you may have signed a card, or you may have raised your hand, but those things had nothing to do with the fact that you were a Christian. So many people confuse that today. I'm always sorry to see in any meeting any emphasis put upon some activity like that, because so many people get to thinking that you have to do something like that in order to be a Christian. You don't. You get all this when you believe. And you can believe sitting in your seat. You can believe listening to the radio. You can believe driving down the road and just thinking over something of Scripture. And the minute you genuinely believe that and accept it, God makes all these wonderful things true for you. Now, you were filled with the Spirit, and that means that the Spirit of God came in and took over every area of your life.

Now, He didn't do that unless you really believed. If you held out and you didn't really commit yourself to Jesus Christ, you didn't really crown Him Lord of your life, then I don't think it can be said you were filled with the Spirit. And I doubt if it can be said even that you were genuinely saved, because as the Scriptures make clear, it's when you crown Him Lord that He becomes your Savior.

But if you did, and I assume that all of you genuinely have here tonight, come to know Jesus Christ by genuine faith in His work on the cross, then you see you were filled with the Spirit. And you were given by means of the indwelling Spirit the full equipment that you need to always win the victory over the temptations that come from the world, the flesh and the devil. You don't get to the place where you're not able to see it, but you do get to the place where you're able not to see it. And that's quite a distinction. And that's where the filling of the Spirit brings you when you come to know Christ.

Now, I think it's been the experience of most of us that as soon as we became Christians, we experienced a tremendous sense of exhilaration, of victory, of joy. And for a while, things went along pretty well. We felt that we were delivered from much of the sin of our lives, and we were rejoicing over some of the old habits that fell away, and some of the victories that came our way. But then, sooner or later, we discovered that we didn't always use the weapons that God put at our disposal. Either it was because we didn't know what they were and how to use them, or we used them wrongly, or we just didn't bother to use them at all.

Because you know, the thing that strikes most of us after we have been Christians for a while is the awful revelation of the fact that there is a side of our nature deep down within that really loves to sin, loves to wallow around in the mire. It loves to feed on the husk down in the hog pen.It likes that sort of stuff. It hates to give it up. And so sometimes, when we allow ourselves to be controlled by that aspect of our life, we just don't bother to resist the devil, or flee from the flesh, or overcome the world.

And we fall. We fail. We fall into sin.

Now, when that happened the first time, I'm sure that all of us felt terrible about it. In all that wonderful flush of our new, newly found victory in Christ, and with the anticipation now of going on in the joy and strength of the Holy Spirit into the days ahead, when that first fall into sin came, most of us felt pretty bad about it. There came a sense of real misery of heart. And we were wretched for a while. In fact, we might even, if we haven't been taught very well, we might even have thought that we lost our salvation. And you know, there are people today who feel that if they fall into some sin after they become a Christian, they lose their salvation. And then, of course, they have to be born again. And they sing that song, you must be born again, and again, and again, and again, and again. But when you know your Bibles, you learn differently.

We don't lose our salvation when we fall into sin as a Christian. We can't do that. Our salvation depends upon Jesus Christ. It doesn't depend on us. If it did, we would lose it every time we sinned. And I don't know if anybody would ever get through. But thank the Lord, he didn't make it depend on us. He makes it depend on him. And he won't fail.

We're not looking to the sheep to struggle their way through to glory, but we're counting on the shepherd that knows how to get them there, you see. And the union that we have with Christ is a link that's so strong that nothing on earth, heaven, and hell, anywhere in the universe, even the new satellite floating around the world here and the power behind the launch of it, has the power to break that union with Christ. Now, that's something I think we need to stress again and again, because we forget that sometimes.

But the union once formed with Jesus Christ can never, never, never be broken. Well, then what happened when we fell into sin? Well, we didn't lose our union. We didn't break that union, but we broke the sense of communion. That's what happened.

We lose three things when we fall into sin as a Christian. First of all, we lose immediately our power over sin. We discover that when we let sin of any type come into our life, or we disobey the will of God in any sense, immediately we have become sitting ducks for the world, the flesh, and the devil. From then on, we've opened a gate by which the temptations flood us, and we no longer have the power to resist. And we go from one evil to another evil in our life. Once we let in one thing, there are ten more right behind it, crowding through the gate, ready to get in. And we lose immediately our power over sin.

Then secondly, we lose our attractiveness as Christians. We're no longer ready. We no longer have that wonderful light within that is so attractive to people. That thing that makes people stop and say, well, I don't know what it is about that person that I like, but boy, I sure wish I had it. That inner radiance that marks a Christian is walking in fellowship with the Lord. You lose that. The minute you fall into sin of any type, it's gone. You sometimes can retain the words. You say the same things, and you act in the same way, and you go to the same places, but you lose that wonderful warmth that convicts others of their need of Christ.

And then the third thing that you lose is the enjoyment of your salvation, the enjoyment of the presence of Christ. Now, you don't lose the presence of Christ. As I said before, that union can never be broken. And when Jesus Christ says, I will never, never leave thee, nor forsake thee, he's not kidding about it. He won't. Nothing you can do can drive Christ out of your heart once he comes in.

Oh, but you can certainly lose the sense of him being there. It seems like he's gone. It seems like you're lonely and miserable, and that he's left you just to sit alongside the road by yourself, and you feel the loneliness of it. He really hasn't, but you lost the enjoyment of that thing, and the enjoyment of your Christian life. No longer do the things concerning the Lord really make you happy, really fill your heart with joy. You just go through them in an outward sense.

Now, all of this happens, you see, the minute a Christian who has been filled with the Spirit after believing in Jesus Christ falls into any kind of sin. Just an evil thought will do this thing. Well, then what happens then? That's the question now before us. What do you do then when you come into that place? And every Christian sitting here tonight has had this experience. This is nothing new. You've all experienced it. If you've been a Christian for more than two days, I'm sure that you've experienced this very thing. Well, then what? How do you restore it? How do you get back again into the fellowship of the Lord? Well, now this brings us to our subject tonight.

You see, a judgment is needed. A judgment in which God allows you to be the judge. And if you want to see a reference to this in the Scriptures now, turn with me to the 11th chapter of 1 Corinthians, and I want you to see from the Scriptures itself what this judgment is like. In this chapter, Paul is writing to these Corinthians about a matter that was causing a great deal of concern to his heart. He'd received a letter from this church down in Corinth telling him of some of the things that were going on in the church, and among them was a disturbance over the Lord's table. They were having an awful time over the Lord's table. And so Paul writes this letter to correct it.

Now I want to begin reading here with the 27th verse. He says, Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, now listen, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. That's a fearsome thing to say. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation, or condemnation it should be. It doesn't mean hell damnation, but condemnation to himself. Now discerning the Lord's body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, and you see here it is, this self-judgment. If we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. Wherefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, tarry one for another. And then he goes on to the details of this here.

Now, in that passage you see an example of this self-judgment that he's speaking about. And if you look back now in verses 20 and 21, you'll see that these Corinthians, because of their sin in connection with the table of the Lord, had lost their power over sin, to win the victory over sin in their lives. Look back there. He says to them, when you come together, therefore, into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's supper. For in eating, everyone takes before another his own supper, and one is hungry, and another is drunken. Now you can see some of the things that had been coming into their lives as a result of this. There was selfishness. One little group was over here eating their supper while someone else didn't have anything at all to eat, and they weren't sharing with one another. There was selfishness there.

And then there was outright drunkenness. They were taking the wine that was used at the Lord's table, and drinking so much of it, they were actually becoming drunk at the Lord's table. Drunkenness was there, and quarreling among themselves.

All this, you see, shows immediately that they had lost the ability within to withstand the temptations of the world and the flesh and the devil. And as a result, they had fallen into sin of a very vile and open sort.

Now look at verse 22, and you can see how they lost their attractiveness as Christians. What, he says, have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? Or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I praise you not. You see, they were causing shame before the eyes of the world, in despite of the church of God, in the eyes of others, by their actions. They'd lost immediately their attractiveness as Christians.

And then in verse 29, you can see how they've lost their sense of fellowship with Christ. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh a sense of condemnation unto himself, not discerning the Lord's body. That is a guilty feeling, you see. Their worship at the Lord's table was not accepted at all. They were feeling guilty about this thing. And they'd lost all the enjoyment of their salvation.

Well, now, what does Paul tell these people to do? That's what we want to learn. Once you come into this place of the loss of fellowship with Christ, how do you get back? And I'll look at verse 28 and 31 here. Here's the key.

But let a man examine himself. That's the first thing. And so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. Then verse 31. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. Now, this is what God is asking us to do. We're to examine ourselves. We're to search our hearts with the lamp of the word of God. And let it say something to us. If there's something there that isn't in line with what the word of God says, if there's bitterness there, if there's rancor, if there's rebellion, if there's disobedience, if there's something there that is evil, if there's some lust that's dwelling there that we're clinging to, we're to examine that and look at it and bring it out and look at it right in the face and see if it's there, you see, by the light of the word of God. You're to be the judge that pronounces the verdict upon yourself in this.

Now, you'll recognize immediately that this is exactly what 1 John 1 9 says about our life. You remember that verse? It's a wonderful verse. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. What is confessing? Well, the Greek word there is the word homo logel, and that means to say the same thing. You see, when you confess your sin, you don't just get down and mumble through some kind of a, forgive me, Lord, for this and this and this and this. That isn't confessing. That isn't what he means. It means that you say the same thing about that thing that God says about it. When God looks at it in your heart, he says, this thing is evil. And if you look at it and say, well, yes, probably it isn't exactly the right thing, but you know, Lord, it's, it's, it's just a bad habit, really. It isn't evil. Then you're not saying the same thing God is about it.

If you've got a vicious temper, for instance, and you just say, well, Lord, I know I'm bothered with this righteous indignation all the time. Well, you're not saying the same thing, are you? If you have a tendency to spread gossip around the neighborhood and you say to yourself or to the Lord, well, Lord, I just feel that it's my duty to tell others these things in order to protect them from some evil thing or harmful thing in their life, you're not saying the same thing the Lord says about it. He says that thing is, the words of a tale bearer are wounds going down into the innermost part of the being. Well, you say that about it, too.

And that's what confession means. Now, don't say, Lord, if I've done such and such a thing, forgive me. That's the worst kind of confession. There's no confession in that, if I've done it. Well, have you done it or haven't you? If you've done it, you know you have.

Don't say if. There's a song -- sometimes I get disturbed about the songs that we sing -- and there's one song we should never sing. That's this silly little thing that used to be so prominent on the radio in some of these hymn programs, you know, that goes, the words go something like this: If I have wounded any soul today, if I have caused one foot to go astray, if I have walked in my own willful way, dear Lord, forgive. My, how pious that sounds! But it's completely dishonest. Because if you've done it, you know you have. And don't say if.

See, now that's what judging means. We have to just get down and get a hold of ourselves. These evil things we find within, and drag them out into the light, and lay them out before the Lord and say, Lord, here it is. I'm not trying to hide this from you, Lord. The rebellion is here. The disobedience is here. And I can see, Lord, it's an ugly thing. And call it the worst name you can think of. Because that's exactly what it is. You'll never be able to name it worse than it really is.

Our tendency, you see, is to try to perfume it up a little bit so it doesn't smell so bad in our eyes. And we like to keep a bottle of eau de cologne inside our vest pocket or something to perfume up these things so they look a little better. Now, the Lord doesn't want any perfumed corpses. He wants the thing taken out. And if we do that, he'll take it out. We can't take it out. But if we just name it and call it what it is, then he takes it away himself. See? And then the fellowship is restored. And with the fellowship comes the restoration of your effectiveness as a Christian, the radiance of heart within that makes you attractive to others, and also the ability to withstand temptations that come from the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Now, another thing about this confession, don't confess something today and then tomorrow go out and do the same thing over again. Because if you're confessing it with that idea, then you're going to discover that you've never really named it and said the same thing about it that God says about it. You can't, and keep it. You can't call a thing filthy and loathsome and vile and awful and then put your arms around it again and hug it to yourself. But if you really confess it or put it out of your life, that is, let him take it out of your life, you've not really judged the thing until you're ready to give it up. And I know sometimes it's a struggle to do that.

I remember reading Dr. F. B. Meyer's biography about how he said for years he went on with the Lord in his ministry, but there was one little tiny closet in the room of his house, that is, his spiritual house, that he kept reserved for himself. And he said the Lord kept reminding him of that thing and asking him for the key to that little closet. And he'd bring the keys of his house to the Lord and say, Lord, here are all the keys to my life. The Lord would say, all of them? And he'd have to say, well, no, Lord, there's one little tiny key I've kept that fits the closet up there in the hall, but it's just a little thing and I'd like to keep that for myself. And the Lord would say, well, if that's the way you feel, I'll give you back the keys and he wouldn't take any of them unless he could take them all.

And so F. B. Meyer said there finally came the day when the odor from that little closet just was so filthy and filled the whole house that he couldn't stand it any longer. And he went to the Lord and he said, all right, Lord, here's the key. And he said, I can't take it out, but will you? And the Lord took the key and opened the closet and cleaned the thing out and it was gone in his life. And what a relief F. B. Meyer said it was.

I don't know what it was specifically in his heart and life, but there are so many things like that in our own lives. And you know, I'm convinced that sometimes Christians fall out of fellowship with the Lord and they lose the filling of the Spirit, and they go on sometimes for years and years and years and years without ever recognizing that they're weak and ineffectual and failing, and they have no sense of the real wonderful fellowship of Christ, simply because they neglect this tremendous thing of confessing sin, confessing our sin.

You see, the scriptures make clear that there's nothing, no other way by which this fellowship can be restored. When this thing has come in in our lives, there's nothing else that can be done but to confess. God's only provided one way by which we can be filled again with the Spirit and have access once again to the inrushing power of the Spirit of God in our life, and that's by confession. And if we neglect it, there's no other choice. I think many Christians feel that if they just go on long enough, that the Lord will just kind of forget about this thing, you know, like husbands and wives do. They have a little quarrel and they don't say much about it and finally one just kind of forgets about it and then they make up and it's all smoothed over.

Well, you can get by with that in marriage. But God is faithful and his nature will not permit him to do anything like that. And so there is an estrangement that comes in, that just may persist for year after year after weary, dreary, barren year. And unless we face the need of confessing and examining ourselves and judging ourselves, there's no way to restoration at all.

You see, sin doesn't die of old age. I think a lot of us wish it would, but it doesn't. It just keeps on going. It's always there. And the only thing that can deal with that thing in your life and mine is to, in honesty of heart, just name it for what it is. Confess it. Say the same thing about it God said. And the minute you come to that place, then the power of the Spirit comes in to sweep that thing out of your life and the wonderful fellowship is restored. The channels are open. The power begins to flow.

This is sort of like electricity. We've got a lot of electrical gadgets in our lives. And if we pull the plug, they won't work, that's all. The power is there. It's available to us. But as long as the plug is not inserted, the gadget is absolutely worthless.

At our home, we have a new dishwasher and a disposal that are tied together in our sink. The dishwasher drains in through the disposal and goes out the drain that way. And sometimes I've discovered that if there's a bit of dirty food or something that's left in the dishwater as it comes out, that it will clog the drain. And instead of draining out, it floods up into the sink and fills the sink up. And at first, we didn't know what to do about it, how to get it clear. And then I discovered if we just flicked the switch on the disposal, why, it immediately takes it all out. And so whenever there is a stoppage, I've learned to just go over and flick the switch on the disposal. And the filthy, dirty water is immediately swept out of my life, out of the sink there.

And of course that's, well, it's out of life that way too, you see. The dirty, filthy water is like the old nature in our life. All it's got is dirty filth in it. There's no good thing dwells in the old nature, and that thing just comes flooding up and fills our life and stinks to high heaven before us and the Lord and everybody around us if we don't do something about it. And the switch, you see, is our will that turns to the Lord and asks Him to yield to the Spirit. And immediately we flick that, the power of the Spirit washes that all away.

But you know, the other day, the sink filled up like that, and I went over and flicked the switch, and it started to go and then it stopped. And immediately there was kind of some sparking and stuff, and then it just wouldn't work at all. And I looked all around and I discovered that way down underneath the disposal is a little red button that acts as a fuse, and that if you don't get that dirt out of the sink soon enough, it stops the disposal and the thing blows a fuse, and then the power is shut off. And the instruction book says the only way you can get that thing to work is to wait a few minutes and then press the red button that restores the fuse, and then it works again.

Now you can stand there and argue with that thing. You can stand there and poke sticks down it. You can stand there and cuss it out if you want to, if you know how. You can stand there and beg it. You can plead with it. You can pour water down it. You can try to prime it. You can do everything, but it'll never work unless you push the red button.

Now that's the way it is with this business of confession, see. Once we have grieved the Spirit of God by something that we've allowed to come into our lives, some filth that's clogged the channels of our life and has stopped it and blown the fuse, there's only one way to restore it. That's by confession. Say the same thing about it that God says about it, you see. Face that thing. Examine it in the light of the Word, and as you do, you discover that immediately the power is restored and the thing is swept away and your life is clean once again.

Now what if you don't? Here's the question that I think we need to face. What if you don't do this? What if you just go on and you just, oh, you think, oh, it's just a little thing. I'm not bothered with it. Or maybe you think, maybe it's a big thing, and you get stubborn and you say, well, I'm not gonna do it. I'm just gonna pass it away. Well, what happens then? Well, the Scriptures tell us that the Spirit of God, the Lord within, is grieved. We grieve the Spirit.

Now, that doesn't mean that he's mad at us and he's ready to just beat us with a club if we don't get in line. I think some people get the idea that when we grieve the Spirit of God, that he's kind of standing around just waiting to catch us off guard. He's gonna swat us under the ear a couple of times and get us back in line.

He is grieved, but he's not mad. What it means is he's filled with sorrow. You know why? Because he gave his life in order to have fellowship with you. And to him, it's a very precious thing that he should have fellowship with you, that you should be a willing instrument by which he can reach the world around you. And he loves that. He longs for it. He, well, I say this very reverently. He's lonesome without you and without the fellowship with you. He's lonesome. And in his own gracious way, the Lord goes about correcting it in several ways.

First of all, there's that immediate feeling of misery and of restlessness and unhappiness that we have. That in itself is a means by which he tries to get us to face this thing and correct it. We just get so miserable and we feel so unhappy and so at odds with ourself that maybe if we get feeling miserable enough, we'll quit and face the thing and call it what it is and ask him to take it out of our life.

And if we don't, if we still are stubborn and go on in that, then he makes us aware of our weakness. He lets us become aware in some moment of clarity of what a barren, dreary, fruitless life we're living. We don't seem to do anything for the Lord. We don't accomplish anything for him. We get nothing done. We go through the motions and they, it's not satisfying at all. And nothing seems to come from it. In some moment, perhaps it's at a meeting, perhaps it's with other people, maybe it's all by ourselves. There'll come an awful sense of the barrenness of our life. Well, that's just the Spirit of God trying to say, I've got something for you to face here. I bBrought you up to it and wants you to look at this and examine yourself.

And then if we're still stubborn, sometimes even after a period of years, God does another thing. Because he loves us so, he will not let us stay in that position of lack of fellowship. He just won't let us get by with it. And so he does something else. If it's bad enough and it's evil enough and we've hidden it long enough, sometimes he exposes us before others. I've seen this happen. Sometimes, usually, it happens in connection with some moral guilt in our lives.

I have a friend who was well known for many years as a prominent Christian leader. And he was really used by the Lord in many, many ways. And he was looked up to by many Christians. He became the leader of a little mission work, a missionary opportunity that was used to the Lord in a wonderful way. And then one day, much to the surprise of all of us who knew him, and to the shock and grief of all of us who knew him, he was discovered molesting little girls. And he was immediately put out of his office, of course.

And it all came to light. You know why? Because that thing had been in his mind all the years and he never faced it. And he confessed it finally. He said that for most of the years of his ministry, he'd been letting his thoughts dwell on things that were not right. And he'd been letting his mind just be occupied with it. And he watched his actions. He didn't get involved in that way, but he let his mind dwell on evil things. And sure enough, there came a time when, refusing to face that thing in his life, the Lord brought about conditions by which he did let it be translated into actions. And he was caught at it. And the thing was brought out into the open.

Now it was an awful painful experience, but he thanks God today that it happened because it meant that he faced the thing. He judged it. And it was taken out of his life and his ministry was cleansed. And for a while, perhaps for quite a while, he's had to be a castaway, laid on the shelf as far as service for the Lord is concerned. But at least the thing is cleaned out and his fellowship with the Lord is sweet again.

And then if still we resist the pleadings of the Lord within us, there's a fourth thing he does. And it's mentioned here in this passage in 1 Corinthians. You notice in verse 30, Paul says For this cause, many are weak and sickly among you and some and many sleep. That is, these people had let this business of misbehaving at the Lord's table go on so long that God had visited them with sickness.

And sometimes it's necessary for him to physically afflict us and just get us down in bed, make us sick, so we'll think through on these things and face the things that are wrong in our lives. And as he suggests here, some have even been taken home to glory because they refuse to face it, you know, like a mother will say to her children now that are doing something wrong outside the door: she'll say, well, now if you do that anymore, I'm going to have to call you into the house. And then pretty soon she hears it taking place again. And so she goes out and says, all right, you can't behave out here while you're out of my sight. You just come on in where I can keep an eye on you. And the Lord sometimes has to do that with us.

Now this leads us into the judgment seat of Christ that we're going to talk about next Sunday night. And these two things are very closely connected. Now don't misunderstand. All physical ailments are not from this cause. And if they are from this cause, no one will know it better than you will. Because the responsibility of the spirit of the Lord is to make you know that the thing that you're suffering is in order to get you to face something that you've been not willing to face before.

But I wish you'd see it from this aspect. All of it simply stems from the overwhelming love of the Lord. He loves us so much. He will not permit us to go on in weakness and failure and misery and wretchedness year after year after year. He's very patient, very long suffering. Thank God for it. No one can say that more than I. How patient the Lord has been with me to wait for years until I'd be willing to face the thing. And he didn't do anything about it publicly when he could have.

But he will. And if there isn't any facing of it, he must. Now you see, you lack utterly any ability to live a Christian life apart from the filling of the spirit.

The standards of Christian living are so tremendous and so high that not one of us could do these things if it weren't for the spirit of God active within us. And when we have allowed sin to block the channels of our life, then the spirit is not able to fill us. And so there's consequent weakness and failure.

But oh, when you begin to face these things in your life, then there comes once again the opening of the channels, the flooding forth of the spirit of God within. And we need to constantly face the question, am I filled with the spirit? Before I go out to minister to someone, before I speak at this meeting, before I teach this Sunday School class, before I get up in the morning to do my day's work, am I filled with the spirit? What a difference it makes when you do these things under the anointing and the unction and the filling of the spirit of God. My, what a tremendous difference!

Life is thrilling and exciting and joyful when we walk and work in the filling of the spirit. But oh, how barren and dreary and drudgery it becomes when we try to do it in the energy of the flesh. Now the answer, you see, is this one thing, confess. Maybe you have to go back years, I don't know. Maybe it's way back there in your past. There's something that you just refuse to face.

You remember how God brought the children of Israel right up to Kadesh Barnea, the edge of the promised land. And he said to them, now go in and possess the land. And they sent out 12 spies, and 10 of them came back with the majority report that they couldn't do it. Two of them said they could. And as a result, Israel refused to obey the Lord. And they wouldn't go into the land.

And God sent illness and affliction among them. And they were defeated in battle until finally they said, all right, Lord, now we'll go. And he said, no, no, you're not saying this because you want to obey me. You're saying this simply because you want to avoid more punishment. And do you know that God took them back and for 40 years, they wandered in that wilderness until they came to the place where they were willing to obey him. And when they came to that place, he led them right up to the promised land again. And he said to them again, now you go on.

And you see what that teaches us? You make no progress in your spiritual life while you're out of fellowship with God. No progress whatsoever. You just go along until you come to a place where something like this comes in and then bang, the process stops. You make no progress. You just spin your wheels from then on, that's all, until you face the thing. Then you begin to move again in growth, in grace, and in spiritual maturity and all.

Now, the question I want to leave with you tonight is this: Are you filled with the spirit? You see, the filling of the spirit is not an event that took place 2,000 years ago. It's a perpetual rushing forth of the river of life coming out from the throne of God and coming through the people of God and overflowing into the lives of others all the time, a perpetual stream of blessing that comes out from the life of God. That's the filling of the spirit.

Are you filled with the spirit tonight? Or have you closed the door somewhere along the line? Have you pulled the plug? Well then, find your way back to that place. Maybe you have to go back through the years to some time away back. Maybe it's just last week. Maybe it's just this morning. Something there that you have refused to face in your life and confess. Say the same thing that God says about asking to take it out of your life. And when you do that, you will experience once again the flood tides of blessing as the spirit of God takes you up and begins to use you.

It may not come in any vast emotional experience, but you'll immediately sense that sweetness and cleanliness and glory of fellowship with a living God within. That's the judgment of self. Christian, you can be the judge in this thing.

Shall we bow in prayer?