Under the Unction and Anointing of the Holy Spirit — Gerhard Du Toit

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I gave a little introduction yesterday, on Sunday, but many of you were not here. But I'm very happy to introduce Brother Gerard Detoy to you this evening. My sons, Daniel and Samuel, and I, we went away to a prayer advance a year ago just because it sounded like a good idea to go away for two days and fast and pray and seek the Lord.

We heard about a place where a group of men gathered like that. And I thought it would be a good idea for a father to take his boys and go to something like that. So we went. And as we were there, we met Brother Gerard.

He was speaking on prayer and revival throughout those two days. And as soon as I heard the burden that God had put on his heart, immediately I felt impressed of the Lord that He should sometime be able to come and share with us.

Because I know that many, many of you that are in this room, you have some of the same burdens. And I knew that His burden would unite with our burden and maybe bring us further along the road that we want to walk on.

Then when we began to plan for a leadership seminar, I felt impressed of the Lord that He should come. And so we invited Him. He's originally from South Africa. He lives in Canada now, but he grew up in South Africa.

Dutch Reformed background. He has a good heritage. Praise God for that. But he has a bit of an accent, so you'll have to tune your ear. He lives in Canada. He has a dear wife, one little girl. He is an overseer of faith missions in Canada.

And I don't know that I can explain all what that is. But in the western side of Canada, he works with the faith mission. And he travels and prays and preaches. And he loves the Lord. And I want to recommend him to you tonight.

May God bless your brother. If you have your Bible with you tonight, I would like you to turn with me to Luke chapter 4, if you will. And if you don't have your Bible with you, you need to say, May God have mercy on my soul.

We're going to read from Luke chapter 4, and we will begin to read at verse number 16. The material that I would like to share with you tonight, we didn't have time to do that. But if you want, we can make copies of that, and then you would be able to receive it.

If you feel you can use it in the days to come. So we have sheets like that available if you would be interested in that. Luke chapter 4, and let's begin to read at verse number 16. And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up.

And as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and the recovering of sight to the blind. To set at liberty those that are bruised, and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister and sat down. And the eyes of all then that were in the synagogue were fixed upon him. And he began to say unto them this day, Is this scripture fulfilled in your ear?

And all bearing witness and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is this not Joseph's son? And he said unto them, You will surely say to me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself.

Whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country. And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you that no prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you the truth that there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up for three years and for six months, and when great famine was throughout all the land.

But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarephthah, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed, saving Naam the Syrian.

And all there in the synagogue, when they heard these things, they were filled with wrath and rose up and thrust him out of the city and led him unto the brow of the hill wherein the city was built, that they might cast him down.

But he, passing through the midst of them, went his way, and came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught them on the Sabbath days. And they were astonished at his doctrine, for his word was with great power.

Seeking God Beyond Biblical Information

Father, as we bow again for a moment in thy most holy presence, do we want to thank you tonight for the fact that we, as the people of God, are in the presence of God. And Father, you are in the midst of your people tonight.

And Lord, the way that I have recognized it in my own heart, is simply because of the sense of brokenness that you've brought into my soul, as we were waiting upon God for this service tonight. You have said to us in your word, it's not by might, nor is it by power, but it is by your Spirit.

And Father God, we have come these days, not just to be exposed to great biblical truths, but we have come these days because we want to meet with God. And Lord, maybe some of us who are sitting here this evening, we say in our hearts, yes, I've come to meet with God, and yet I'm not sure what God is going to do with me.

And so tonight we pray at the outset of these five evenings together, if you would tarry to come, I pray that the Spirit of God will come. Lord, we have not come to hear the voice of man these days. And Father, if you would have sent revival through messages, then we would have had revival a long time ago.

But we have come as the people of God these days to humble ourselves before you. And I pray again for my own heart tonight, and I ask in Jesus' name that as I unburden my heart to this precious group of your children, Father, I pray that you will pour into my soul the burden of God for every life in this sanctuary tonight.

And I ask that you would bless your Word. And I ask that the hush of the holy presence of God will fall upon us this evening, because we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. I love reading the old Puritans in my library out in Western Canada.

And some years ago I was reading the life story of a man with the name of Thomas Boston. And I found out that Thomas Boston one night had a dream, and in his dream did he see Satan preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And Boston the Puritan was so taken back by what he saw in his dream, that in his dream he went up to him and he said to him, Why are you preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus? He said, Surely you are doing harm to your own kingdom.

But Satan turned to Boston in his dream and said to him, No, he said, I'm preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus without the unction and the anointing of the Holy Spirit of God. And he said, I have found myself, instead of bringing people closer to God, have I found myself actually driving people away from this glorious message of the gospel of Christ.

If you will continue to read the life story of Boston the Puritan, you will discover that that dream revolutionized his life, and that from that day on he was never ever the same. I would like to speak to you tonight, if I may, on this great subject of what God is saying to us in our own individual lives about what it means to live a life under the unction and the anointing of the Spirit of God.

The Old Testament Pattern of Anointing

Now my brother and my sister, you and I would need to realize that whenever I study or we study a subject in the New Testament, I always ask myself, what does the Old Testament say about this New Testament subject, for the simple reason that the Old Testament is revealed for us in the New Testament, and the New Testament lies hidden within the Old Testament.

We don't have time tonight to explore this, but let me mention to you that if you study the subject of the anointing of God, or rather from God's perspective in the Old Testament, well you discover that within the Hebrew language are there no less than four wonderful words that He is trying to communicate to us this concept of the anointing.

There are two of those words that are found at 142 places in the Old Testament, and then there are two other words that you would come across in only two places in the Old Testament. And if you look at this subject, it's at a sense in which you will discover that there were no less than eight material things that found themselves being affected by this concept of the anointing.

For instance, the Bible is saying to us that the altar of God was anointed. God is saying to us in His Word that the tabernacle of God was anointed, and there were no less than twelve different classes of people that found themselves in this category of the anointing.

For instance, the prophet was anointed so that he could become the mouthpiece of God towards the people of God. The priest in the Old Testament was anointed so that he could be wholly set apart unto God.

And the king in the Old Testament was anointed so that he could become the leader of the people of God. And there were three different kinds of anointing. The Bible is speaking to us about the anointing with spices, and then the Word of God in the Old Testament is speaking to us about the anointing with oil, and then the Old Testament is speaking to us about what we would consider as the anointing of the Spirit of God.

Now, I don't think this Monday night is it possible for us to understand this great subject if you and I will not be able to come to grips with it as it revealed itself upon the life and the ministry of the Lord Jesus.

Now, maybe you sit here tonight and you say to yourself exactly what I said to myself when I was sitting in my own library, and I look at my own insignificant life, and I said to myself, but Gerard, surely you can't compare your life with the life and the ministry of Christ, because the Lord Jesus was not only sinless in His life, but He was also supernatural in His birth.

And yet you remember at the end of the Gospel of Luke how the Son of God turned to His disciples, and what did He say to them? He said to them, I want you to tarry within Jerusalem until you have received this endowment from My Father.

In fact, the Greek word is a very significant word for the word tarry, because what Jesus actually did, He looked upon them, and He said to them, I want you to sit down until you have received this something from My Father.

Holiness as the Secret of Spiritual Unction

I want us this evening to look upon this subject and the life of the Lord Jesus as it revealed and manifested itself upon the life of Christ, and I want us to look at it on three different hearings. I want us to consider the promise of the anointing of God's Spirit upon the life of the Lord Jesus.

I want us to look upon the purpose. Why was the Son of God anointed with the Holy Spirit of God? And thirdly, I want us to look at the power of the anointing of God's Spirit upon the life of the Saviour if time would allow us to do so.

So, what was this promise upon the life of the Lord Jesus? Well, my brother and my sister, I think that we are dealing with two tremendous essentials that as it were revealed to us, this concept of His promise.

And first of all, there was what I would consider the secret of His promise upon His life, and secondly, there was the symbol of His promise upon the life of the Saviour. And if you had asked me tonight and said, Gerard, why is it that you would say that there was a secret upon the life of the Lord Jesus, or why was it that as men and women look upon the life of the Son of God, that they had to stop and listen, and that they were able to say that no man ever spoke like this man.

That somehow every time when the Son of God opened His mouth and He uttered a word to the lives of men and women, that somehow it brought a division, and men and women realized exactly where they stood in the presence of God.

I simply believe that the secret of His life was, first of all, it was a life of holiness unto His Father. And my brother and my sister, I wonder tonight if you would allow me to suggest to you in this service, this Monday night and this evening, and I'm absolutely honest with myself in saying this to you, that there is no possibility for you and for me as a believer to know the unction of God's Spirit upon our lives if we don't know the secret of a life of holiness.

What about the life and the ministry of the Lord Jesus? Well, you remember in John 17 when He prayed that wonderful life, His sweet prayer, and what did He pray? He said, Father, He said, I sanctify Myself for the sake of My disciples.

And my friends, the meaning of the word sanctification in the New Testament, it's not so much for us to be separated from this Word, from this world, although it means that, but it most of all means for us to be separated unto God.

You see, if you and I as a believer tonight are separated unto God, then my brother and my sister, our lives would be so taken up with the things of God that this world and its influences will not have an effect upon my relationship with God.

I think of that wonderful verse in the life and the ministry of the Lord Jesus. You remember when they write to the Hebrews, He's saying to us about the Son of God that He was holy and He was harmless and He was undefiled and He was separate from sinners.

You see, in His relationship to His Father, He became the holy Son of God. And in His relationship to His fellow men, He was absolutely harmless. And in His relationship to His ministry, He was undefiled.

And in His relationship to Himself, He became the prophet and the priest and the king. And the Son of God was set apart unto His Father. And because of the fact that He was set apart unto His Father, my brother and my sister was set upon the life of the Son of God, something of the unction of the Spirit of God.

I wonder tonight if you would allow me to ask you what about you in my life. I think, for instance, of that amazing passage that we come across in 1 Thessalonians 5. And you remember in 1 Thessalonians 3 how the apostle Paul in chapter 1 wrote to the church of Thessalonica.

And I often say to myself when I was a pastor in my own days, and I looked upon my own congregation and I read that first chapter, and I said, how much I would long to have a church like that. They were a suffering church.

They were a giving church. They were a witnessing church. They were a church that knew what it means to sacrifice for God. Yet in the third chapter of 1 Thessalonians, what did he say to them? The apostle Paul turned to them and he said to them, I pray.

And he said, I pray for you day and night. He said, because I sense that there is something that is lacking in your faith. In 1 Thessalonians 5 he brought it to the climax when he said, I pray that the very God of peace sanctify you wholly.

I'll have a German translation because of my German background. And do you know what it says? It says, Heilig und durch und durch. And my friends, it's two wonderful words in the Greek New Testament. The first word is the Greek word halotilios, that is saying to us that God wants to sanctify us as His people extensively in our relationships with God.

And the second word is the Greek word halotilios, that is saying to us that God wants to sanctify us experientially in our relationships with God. And Paul explained to us the sanctifying work of the Spirit of God.

And do you know what he said to us? He said, this is not just a process. He said, this is a moment where God cleanses me. In fact, theologians, when they refer to the taints and the structure, which is what we would look upon as the aorist imperative mood, they refer to that as punctalia annaclinea.

It means that there is a moment that God is able to cleanse me from sin. And I wonder this Monday night if you would allow me to ask you, my brother, my sister, has there been a moment in our lives as the people of God when we have come to our God who is able to cleanse us from sin?

Oh, you say, Pastor Al, is it possible that you are saying to me that I remember there was a time in my life when the Son of God came into my life and He saved me from the pollution of sin, but maybe from the guilt of sin.

But maybe tonight I sit here and there is the pollution of sin in my life as a believer. Maybe you sit here this Monday night and you struggle with an evil temper. Oh, my brother, my sister, may I suggest to you this evening that God in His Word is not saying to us as His people that He wants us to sin and fought and wept and beat every single day of my life because if this is what He wants, why has He saved me?

Brokenness, Repentance, and Cleansing

I will never forget, I was born and brought up in Africa and I stayed with a farmer in what was called Deutsches Afrika, where there were many Germans in that part of the country. It was a wonderful time in my own life, I should say.

But I stayed with this man and the night we had supper together on his farm and I was preparing to speak at a missionary convention conference and he turned to me that night and he said, Gerard, he said, I want you to talk to my servants about Christ.

But this man in his right knew the Lord Jesus as his Savior and I began to pray about that and as I prayed about it the next morning, I had my quiet time and after I had my quiet time, I came down into the kitchen for breakfast and he was gone to what we would speak of as the Kral, the place where they keep their goats and their sheep in Africa.

And I remember as I came walking down towards that Kral, there was an African Bushman standing and I kind of passed by and as I passed by I said to him, I said, good morning to you. He never said a word.

So I stopped and I looked him straight in the eyes and I said to him, good morning to you and he didn't open his mouth and I looked into the eyes of this African Bushman and I saw the absolute hatred and the bitterness in the eyes of this man and I took his hands like this and I said, I said, I don't think you know me.

I said, but if you know me, you will realize I'm going to follow you all day until I know what's wrong. And he just looked down at me and he dropped his head and he lifted his arm like that and the blood was streaming down and he just pointed down to the man there at the Kral and he said, it's the man.

I said, what do you mean? He said, this morning with his walking stick he lost his temper and before he knew what he did, he said, you see how he hit me? He said, it's the man. And this was the man who said to me the previous night when he spoke to my servants about Jesus.

And I remember I took that African Bushman in his arm and I dragged him towards where this man was sitting and I sat next to him and I turned to him and I said to him, Um Hendrik, I said, do you think this man needs Jesus Christ?

And he said, yes, I do. I said, no, he doesn't need Him. I said, you need Him more. I said, of course He needs to be saved. I said, but He can't be saved by the way that you are living. I wonder if this evening if you would allow me to say to these precious men that I believe God has brought to us these days.

Listen, my brethren, we have come to learn about preaching. We have come to learn about pointing people to Christ. We have come to learn about the disciplines of the souls. But all these wonderful things that we are going to learn are going to be a waste of time if God is not going to meet with us.

And I know it's so easy for us to sit in a conference like this on a Monday night and you say, you know, I've flown in from Washington State or I've driven for 12 hours or for 24 hours and I've come and I love the fellowship and I enjoy the singing and I think the Word of God is great.

But in the midst of that, God is saying, what is the sense of your need? It's the life of holiness, you see. And I wonder this evening if you would allow me to ask you, if God His Holy Spirit in these days that are going to be together around His Word is going to come to your life and say, there are some areas of your life where you have never allowed the light of my Spirit to fall.

And you are seeking my face in prayer and you are trying to pray and you are saying sometimes empty words and somehow as you say those words I say, no, you need to look at your heart because there is impurity.

It's possible that you sit here this evening and you're seeking God to meet you if that's what you think. You are a believer and you need to discover that you've never received the witness of God's Spirit, that you are born again.

I remember counseling a man years ago at a conference in Africa who came out at meetings for 25 years to seek God for the fullness of the Holy Spirit. He said, I want to be full to the Spirit of God. And for 25 years he couldn't get through to God.

And I sat down and said, share with me your testimony. And we discovered that day that he was never born of the Spirit of God. And he came to the altar to be saved so that God could fill him. It's holiness, you see.

You say, Gerard, why is it holiness? You know, because the Bible is saying to us, without holiness no man shall see the Lord. My brother or my sister, the Spirit of God that has come to dwell in our lives when He saved us is the Holy Spirit of God.

And the Holy Spirit of God is living in my life. As a believer, the Spirit of God is dwelling in my relationship with God. He wants me to live a holy life. And I wonder tonight, if you would allow me to ask you this, I would ask myself.

If I look back over this last week, I wonder those of us who are men tonight, my brethren, I wonder if you would allow me to ask you that if we would have a piece of equipment tonight in this age of technology and we would be able to connect it with your human brain, and somehow as we connect it with your human brain on a screen, we will be able to project on that screen everything that you were thinking about this last week.

I wonder how many of us will be here tonight until the end of the service. You say, what does it mean? God wants to cleanse us. Well, you sit there and say, well, how do I know that God has not cleansed my heart?

How do I know tonight that I sit in this service and I need to lift up my heart and my hands to God and say, God, I can't say that my heart is clean. But many of myself were praying prior to the service here in his study, and I was reminded of the Lewis revival in 1948 -52 in the Highlands.

The Highlands was Scotland when there was a half-night of prayer, and this person prayed and that person prayed, and then a young man stood up and he began to quote Psalm 24, which says, Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, and who shall stand in His holy place?

And he said, those who have clean hands and a pure heart. And I wonder these days what will happen if God comes to you in my life and say, it's not clean there. I'm sure there are many of our dear wives tonight that are praying for us.

You have come to this conference as a husband and as a father, and there at your house where you came from, in the quietness where no one knows what's going on, you have said things to your wife that has deeply hurt her, and she's crying to God these days and said, God, will you please meet with my husband?

Ah, when he's in church on Sunday morning, he's all wonderfully dressed and he's got a smile upon his face and he's singing these old hymns, and I mean he's just the saint that you could think of. But boy, I tell you, when things go wrong in the house, and he loses this and he loses that, I sometimes wonder if God is existing.

Many of them tonight are on their knees, crying to God and said, would you come to my husband, the father of my children? I hate to say this to you, but some of the most loneliest women I've met in my ministry has been the wives of Christian men and those who are pastors and full-time workers.

And I refuse to stay in a motel when I'm involved in a conference, and I refuse to go to a church unless the pastor is willing to give me two or three hours of his day every day to spend in prayer. I'm sick of God meeting with people and congregations and the pastor doesn't get anywhere himself, and those people want to grow and they're not getting any spiritual food and there's conflict.

Most of the times I stay in parsonages with these men and their wives and their children. And I remember about two years ago in a church out in Canada, on a Sunday morning prior to the final service, it was a Sunday to a Sunday, I ran out of the basement suite and ran up into the kitchen.

I was staying there those days and ran up to just get a glass of water. And as I came into the kitchen, there was this pastor's wife, just a beautiful little person. And I said, would you mind if I just have a little glass of water?

And she gave me the water and I could see her shaking and I knew she wanted to say something. And as I took the water, I said, thank you so much. And she said, Sir Arch, can I just talk to you for a moment?

And I thought, yeah, this is another one. We sat down at the kitchen table and I said, what is it? And she said, you see, my husband is a wonderful preacher. He's a wonderful man. The church is growing.

He's counselling people all over the town. And she said, you see my husband? He's a wonderful man, isn't he? I said, yeah, I guess he is. She said, my husband is a tyrant. I said, what do you mean? She said, I know my husband.

The church began to scream down their cheeks. And she said, you know what? She said, he refused to pray with me. She said, he treated me sometimes like a dog. I feel in the intimacy of our relationship, sometimes I feel like a piece of mechanical structure.

That Sunday night after the service, I sat down with him and I said, I think we need to talk about things. And that Sunday night God met with him. And God met with him to such a degree that he left the ministry because he wasn't qualified for it.

I wonder tonight if I can ask you, my friend, you and I know what it means to be clean in the presence of God. Sanctify us through and through. How did Paul explain it? He said, God wants to sanctify the body and the soul and the spirit.

The body and its instincts. Those emotions that come. The eyes that I look through. Oh, I wonder if I can ask you tonight, the things that we look at, how do we look at those things? Is there a sense of desire after those things?

You see, my friends, what's inside has come out. And the Bible is saying for us, for out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, lasciviousness and evil eye, blasphemy.

God is saying to us, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. It's the light of holiness, you see. I think of that wonderful promise in 2 Corinthians 6 -7. What is the Word of God saying to us?

God is saying to us, Come ye out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will be a father unto you, and you shall be my sons and my daughters, sayeth the Lord God Almighty.

And then chapter 7 verse 1 is saying to us, Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

Do you know what I discovered in that verse? When the Bible is saying to us, let us cleanse ourselves, the word cleanse is in the aorist imperative mood. God said, I want you to be absolutely clean. And then He went on to say, perfecting holiness in the fear of God is in the present imperative mood.

You see, there is both a crisis and a process. A place where God cleanses me. And a process where God is going to keep on cleansing me. It was the life of holiness. I would never forget, I was out three years, out in the ministry in my own country, and I was converted at the end of my first year in a theological school in the city of Cape Town.

Got saved and went out into ministry afterwards, and three years later, I was preaching this wonderful life, you know, that God wants His people to be separated unto God. I mean, it's the message of the Bible.

It's just thoroughly clear. God said, I'm coming for a bride that is clean. But my friends, in my heart, I was so defeated. And in my heart, although I was preaching about a life of victory, I was speaking about the promise of the Spirit of God, I was referring to the fullness of God's Spirit.

I was saying to people, now, you must know, it's not a goal, it's a gateway. And I was trying to present these great concepts of a sanctifying work of God's Spirit, but in my life, I was so defeated. And I remember, I was asked to lead a few hymns at one of the conferences, and I made an absolute mess of that.

And afterwards, I went to the matron of our theological school, and she was the one that God used in my salvation. In fact, before I was saved, I was in this school, she went to the president and said, that student, should he mention my name, she said, is that student really born of the Spirit of God?

And the president said, well, he says that he is. She said, well, why is it that in a testimony meeting, you always tell us what he's doing for God, but you will never tell us what God is doing for him?

They began to pray, and then God worked and saved me. But I remember that night when I was leading the hymns at this large conference, and I made an absolute mess of it, and it was this absolute carnality, and I was in such disgust about everything I did.

And I went and I sat down, and there was Miss Stout, and I turned to her and I said, I said, Miss Stout, I've really messed it up tonight. And she said, no. She said, you've got a far greater problem.

I said, what do you mean? She said, your problem is you've never been died, you've never been crucified with Christ. Man, and did I like a woman saying that to me? I thought, where does she get the right to say that to me?

I mean, I was dedicated to God. I used to spend three, four, five hours in prayer every day. I would read His Word. I preached the Word of God. I knew I had a problem, but I didn't want to hear it from her.

God got a hold of me. And God said, you can't go on in ministry like that. And I got serious about it. And I resigned from the ministry, not because I've done anything wrong. But I thought, God, I can't associate myself with a life, a life where I don't know it myself.

And I began to fast and pray about it for two solid weeks. And I got so desperate that I was willing to die physically. I said, I'm not going to go on unless God does a work in my heart where I know that I'm full to the Holy Spirit.

And I will never forget, it was a Saturday night, but I thought the Spirit of God brought me to a place of absolute surrender. If you sit here tonight, you say, you know, I don't know that I'm full to the Holy Spirit of God.