Revelation 3:1-6 (Sardis, Conquer Your Pretense, Jeff Kliewer)

In the Old Testament we have a couple of pictures of Christ in terms of figures in whom you see no sin. You see no sinfulness in the man Daniel. And of course we know that Daniel was a sinner, but in the Old Testament he prefigures Christ in that way.

There's no fault in anything that we see him do. I want to take a few minutes to open this sermon by discussing Daniel, the book, but how it presents Daniel as a man who is alive to God. Someone who has the Holy Spirit living in him, who is full of the Spirit as an Old Testament saint can be, but not in the same way that a New Testament saint can be, but full of the Spirit and relating to the living God.

So let's take a few minutes to consider Daniel. In Daniel chapter 1, he and his friends refuse the king's food, but right away it's noticed that in Daniel is understanding, a spirit of understanding that comes from God.

In chapter 2 we recognize that he needs that understanding because without a supernatural miracle he will not be able to help the king. The king is tired of fraudulent religion, dead religion. He notices that his astrologers and magicians, they come to interpret his dreams, but unless he tells them what the dream is, they can't make up an interpretation.

So the king says, tell me what I dreamt and then tell me what it means. Well that puts Daniel in a bind because unless the living God shows up, he has no way of knowing what the king dreamt, let alone the interpretation.

Of course, the Spirit of God in a vision at night reveals to Daniel what the king had dreamt, and so because Daniel has a living relationship with God, he's walking in the Spirit, he's able to interpret the king's dream, and he's promoted.

The next chapter, Daniel chapter 3, we see his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, otherwise known as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who are the the names that the Babylonians give to these three.

They're told that they must bow down in worship. They refuse to worship the image of Nebuchadnezzar, and so they're thrown into a fiery furnace, and apart from the living God coming to the rescue, they will be consumed in that fire.

But God, the living God, is with them, and the Bible tells us, I see four men bound, walking in the midst of the fire. The living God shows up. The person of Jesus, pre-incarnate, meets them in the fire and rescues them from the hand of the wicked king.

In chapter 4, this king is boasting, look at this Babylon that I have built, and according to the vision that he saw, he is reduced to an animal. His fingernails grow out like claws, and he crawls around for seven years, but having been restored to his right mind, he gets his kingdom back, and he acknowledges that it's God alone in heaven who is the true God, and he says this, all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth.

Nebuchadnezzar recognizes that there is a host in heaven. Hold that thought for just a moment. There are angels that worship him all the time. In chapter 5, another interesting story, the king now is Belshazzar, and in his drunken stupor, while he's drinking from Yahweh's table, from the cup of God taken from the temple, he looks and sees on the wall fingers as of a man's hand writing on the wall, and he's terrified.

Here again, Daniel needs the living God to come and help him interpret, mene mene, tekel perez, what does that mean? Wade counted and found wanting, and the Persians will conquer the king. It's bad news to deliver to the king, but of course, that very night, he drops dead, and the Persians conquer the kingdom of Babylon.

In chapter 6, now the Persian king, the Mede, Darius is on the throne, and again, being forced to pray to none other but him, Daniel refuses to do that, so what happens to Daniel? He's thrown in the lion's den, but God sends an angel to still the mouths of the lion, and once again, we see the power of the living God with Daniel, a real relationship with God that rescues him from certain danger and death, and halfway through the book of Daniel, at chapter 6, there's a transition.

In the first six chapters, we have these interactions between Daniel and the kings of Babylon and Persia, and the challenge to Yahweh as the true king, and the true and living God shows himself strong.

In the last half of Daniel, we have direct encounters between Daniel and his God, Daniel and angels, and so in chapter 7, he sees a vision, and the vision is the throne room of heaven, where the Ancient of Days is seated, and we're told that a thousand times a thousand angels are there before his throne, and ten thousand times ten thousand ministering to him.

I had to use my calculator to figure out what that was. A million and a hundred million angels before the throne of God. Daniel sees this vision, and then in chapter 8, we're told that he sees a vision of the stars, which represents the angels being cast down to the earth in rebellion as they join the rebellion against God.

In chapter 9, a most interesting thing happens. Daniel here on earth begins to pray, and as he prays, an angel named Gabriel appears to him. An angel comes and gives him a vision of the 77s. We'll learn about that as we go on in Revelation, but this angelic visitor, and then we learn in chapter 10, as Daniel is praying again and fasting for 21 days, that the angel is sent to Daniel, but the angel is unable to get through with Daniel's message.

For 21 days, Daniel is praying and fasting and humbling himself, but when the angel arrives, he says, I heard you when you first prayed, and I was sent to bring you your message, but I was resisted by the king of Persia.

A demon, a demonic spirit was holding back Daniel's answer until, we're told, another angel, Michael, came and fought and broke this angel through, and Daniel received his answer. In chapter 11, we learn it was this Gabriel who helped overthrow the kingdom of Babylon when Darius the Mede took over, Daniel 11 1, and then finally in Daniel chapter 12 verse 1, we learn that Michael, the great prince who has charge over the people of Israel, will arise in the last days.

Why do we spend this time reviewing Daniel? Answer. This is the picture of a human, a man, a mere mortal like us, who is seeing beneath the veil. His walk with God is so real and living, he's so filled with the spirit of excellence, the spirit of the Lord, a spirit of understanding, that God is working through him with the kings of the nations, but then he is able to see things that people ordinarily do not see.

Angels, Gabriel, Michael, coming to him and ministering to him. The unseen realm became seen to Daniel. Daniel served the living God. Turn with me to Revelation chapter 3. As we come to the church of Sardis, we will see a church that has lost the unseen realities of God.

The ministering angels have left them on their own. The Holy Spirit is departing from this congregation. The Spirit is no longer in their midst. This is a dead church, a dead church. Let's read it and then we'll comment.

And to the angel of the church in Sardis write, the words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God.

Remember then what you received and heard. Keep it and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy.

The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Amen. So we've been touring through the seven churches of Revelation, from Ephesus up to Smyrna, to Pergamum, Thyatira, and now moving southward again to Sardis. At this rate, we've now finished two chapters of the book of Revelation, and it's taken us two months to do that.

So I think I'm going to be preaching on the second coming until the second coming, and my goal in this is to make you guys say, Amen. Come Lord Jesus. We'll still be studying this while Christ comes for his bride.

Wouldn't that be an amazing thing? But as we get now to the fifth church that Jesus directly addresses, the church is in Sardis. This is a church in a place that was once a thriving capital of the Lydian kingdom, but now because of an earthquake and because of just the decay of the nation, it's no longer the great city that it once was.

But worse still, the church that lives there has lost the glory that they once had. They used to be a vibrant, living community of believers, but now something has gone wrong. The Spirit is departing, and what's left is just the outward show of religion without the heart, the Spirit behind what they are to be doing.

So it's a sad story, the departing of the Spirit. In Revelation chapter 3 verse 1, I want you to notice first of all that with Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and his angelic host is never missing. We're told here that he has the Spirit and the seven stars.

Chapter 3 verse 1, The seven spirits of God, of course, refers back to Revelation chapter 1 verse 4, where the Holy Spirit is referred to as the seven spirits. We know without a doubt that there is only one Spirit of the living God, but he's called here the seven spirits because it represents his completion and his omnipresence, that he's not just in one of the churches, he's present in all seven, and his attributes are complete, the fullness of the Spirit, the perfection of the Spirit.

So in this apocalyptic literature, you will have some figures of speech, and we don't literally take it to mean that there are seven Holy Spirits, but rather that there is a completion in him, a fullness in him, and we would probably do well to correlate this with Isaiah chapter 11 verse 1 and following, where the Spirit is called the Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and power, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

These attributes of the Spirit are sevenfold in the beginning of Isaiah chapter 11. So the Spirit here is the one Spirit of the living God, and who are the seven stars? I'm convinced these are angels, each one ministering over a church.

So just as there is an angel who's dedicated to the protection of Israel, the nation, ethnic Israel, what's his name? Michael. We learned about that in Daniel chapter 12 verse 1. Michael is the prince over Israel.

In the same way, there are angels that oversee churches. I think that's the case taught here. To the angel of the church in Sardis, right? These are the stars, and as Daniel has pulled back the veil, we are able to see that there is an entire realm of spiritual activity that is invisible to the human eye.

As some of you walked in here this morning, invisible demons were on your tail, and they've been harassing you, and tormenting you, and bothering you day in and day out. But you're convinced, because you live in a Western culture, that your problem is only psychological.

Your problem is only emotional or relational, when in fact there is a spiritual realm. Demons do oppress even Christians. Now, they cannot possess a Christian, because the control, the ownership belongs to God when you have been sealed by the living God.

But demons are still active in oppressing, and angels are battling for you as well, deployed from God. And one of the things we learned in Daniel is that the activity of the believer somehow influences the war that's going on.

Daniel fasted and prayed for 21 days, and then the breakthrough came. Meanwhile, in the unseen realm, demons and angels were going to war. Gabriel was unable to break through against the Prince of Persia until Michael came and had his back.

On earth, Daniel's praying that entire time. There are unseen spirits. Now, Jesus has these spirits, and we're going to see that Sardis has lost the Holy Spirit, and now they're abandoned. They're almost left for dead.

It's not too late, because the remnant can still turn back. But Jesus is never without a host of angels. It reminds me of the book of Isaiah chapter 6. Many of you are familiar with this. Isaiah is captured up into the throne room of God, and seeing in a vision God on his throne.

There around him are seraphim with six wings. With two, they cover their faces. With two, they fly, and with two, they cover their feet, because the very ground on which God is seated is holy ground. And these angels, these seraphim, call out day and night, holy, holy, holy.

The thrice holy God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, worshipped and adored by angels. Jesus has these angels. Did Isaiah see the Father on his throne? No. John 1 18 says, no one has ever seen God, referring to the Father, but the only God who is at the Father's side.

He has made him known. Jesus was the one that Isaiah saw. If you doubt that, look up John chapter 12 verse 41. Take note of that verse. Look it up later. John tells us that it was the glory of Jesus that Isaiah saw.

And so the point remains that Jesus is worshipped and adored all the time by a million, a hundred million angels who worship him day and night, singing holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. Daniel, as we saw in the introduction to the sermon, was experiencing those realities.

The fullness of the Spirit, the ministry of angels in his life and in his midst. Jesus has those spirits all the time. But look at the next part of verse 1. Next point. The glory has departed from this church.

I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Let that sink in for a minute. You have a church building. You have a preacher. You have a worship team. You have some churches in Oregon.

You have priestly robes. You have a church, but you are dead. It is possible to gather on a Sunday morning in the name of Jesus and be dead. For a church to be living in reputation, but actually dead.

Looking the part, but lacking the substance. Because the invisible Holy Spirit is no longer ministering in that church. This was unfortunately a pattern in Israel. There came a time in the Judges, the days of the Judges, when Israel had departed from God again and again.

And isn't that a cycle that we notice in our lives? As many times as he's been gracious to us, we have a tendency to drift. Hebrews tells us, be careful that you do not drift. Pay attention to so great a salvation.

But Israel had drifted. They had wandered off from their love for God. And so they went into battle with the Philistines and the Philistines routed them. And in answer to that, they tried to bring an external form of religion to answer a spiritual problem.

They tried to do religion. What did they do? They got the Ark of the Covenant and they brought it into the camp. And the people gave this loud shout, the Ark has come. We're surely going to win. And the Philistines heard that shout and they trembled.

A God has come into the midst of the Israelites. We're doomed. But then they said, let's be like men. Let's fight. And they went back to war. And in that battle, Phinehas died. The one who brought the Ark, the son of Eli.

And Hophni, his brother, died. And the Philistines routed the Israelites. And they took the Ark of the Covenant into their possession. Not only did Israel lose the battle, they lost the Ark. And when a runner came back to give the news to Eli, he heard the sound.

He was so devastated. This old 90-something year old man, a heavyset man, fell back in his chair and broke his neck. And the glory departing went from person to person. Then the wife of Phinehas heard that her father-in-law, Eli, the great leader of Israel, was dead.

Not only so, her husband Phinehas was dead. And the Ark had been taken. And she went into childbirth. She was almost nine months pregnant at the time. She gave birth, but in her birthing of this child, she died.

Just before dying, she gave that child a name. Ichabod. Ichabod. Parents, don't even think about it. Just like I told you a couple weeks ago, don't name your child Jezebel. Don't name your child Ichabod.

Ichabod means the glory has departed. The glory has departed. Israel's glory. They were still there in religion, but the glory had departed. Another fascinating story about the glory of the Lord. You'll remember in 1 Kings 8 verse 11, when the temple was dedicated to the Lord, a cloud of glory filled the place so thick that the people were stunned into silence and the priests could not carry on their priestly work.

So thick was the glory of the Lord in the midst of the assembly. But years later, 605 BC, the Babylonians come in a first wave and they take captive Israelites, including Daniel. He was in that first deportation.

And then in 597, they come again and they take Ezekiel captive to Babylon. Finally, the temple will fall in 586 BC. But between 597 and 586, Ezekiel is in captivity because the glory is taken. And while in captivity, Ezekiel sees a vision.

Watch this. In a vision, he's caught up in the Spirit and brought back to Jerusalem to look in the temple. First, he looks through a peephole and he sees the priests carrying on their work, but they are not worshiping the God of Israel.

They are painting images of false gods and reptiles and all kinds of creeping things that are not in keeping with the law of Moses. These priests are not priests at all. They're lying prophets. And then he opens a hole in the wall and he goes in and sees the horror of what is happening in the temple.

You know what he sees? The glory of the Lord lifts from between the cherubim on the mercy seat. The glory of the Lord raises up in the temple and goes to the threshold of the temple, the doorway, and pauses.

And then the glory of the Lord departs the temple and it goes to the eastern gate. And then the glory of the Lord departs the eastern gate and goes to a mountain east of Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives.

And so the glory has departed. One of the most amazing things about the story of Jesus is that when he enters from Galilee, he comes through the eastern gate. He goes up the eastern mountain, the Mount of Olives.

He comes through the eastern gate. He goes into the temple and he cleanses the temple of false religion. And before he left, he went back through that gate up the eastern mountain of olives and he ascended to the right hand of the Father.

And the angel said, in the same way you saw him go, so he's coming back again. Jesus is the glory of the Lord and he's coming back and putting his foot on the Mount of Olives. And Zechariah says that mountain will split in two when he comes.

The glory of the Lord is Jesus Christ. But the point of the story is that the people were still worshiping while the glory had departed. It's why the temple was destroyed in 586. They still had outward religion, but the glory had departed.

I've been reading a little book called The Person of the Holy Spirit, Person and Work of the Holy Spirit by R .A. Torrey. He was the successor to Moody, that great Moody Church in Chicago. He says this way back in 1910.

He said, some quiet Sabbath day you may visit a church. Everything about the outward appointments of the church are all that could be desired. There is an attractive building, an expensive organ, a gifted choir, a scholarly preacher.

The service is well arranged, but you have not been long at the gathering before you're forced to see that there is no life. It's all form and there's nothing really being accomplished for God or for man.

You go away with a heavy heart. It's not sad. Walk into many churches across this country on a Sunday morning and you will have all the form that you could want. Beautiful accoutrements, scholarly preachers, beautiful singing, but in many you will walk away saying, Ichabod, the glory has departed.

But Torrey goes on. He says, months later you have occasion to visit the church again. The outward appointments of the church are much as they were before, but the service has not proceeded far before you note a great difference.

There is a new power in the singing, a new spirit in the prayer, a new grip in the preaching. Everything about the church is teeming with the life of God. What has happened? Answer, the wind of God has blown upon that church.

The Holy Spirit, the Holy Wind has come. Torrey saw it all around the world as he went doing revival meetings. Brothers and sisters, don't you want a revival? Don't you want more of the true and living Holy Spirit?

Why just go through the motions? We can come here every Sunday, but wouldn't you rather come here and when we get here He is here waiting for us and He revives our heart in the preaching, in the singing, in the praying.

Don't you want to walk with the true and living God? Why go through the motions? Revive us, Lord God. Revive us again. That's what he says in chapter 3. Here's the great opportunity. Although the glory had departed from Sardis and what did they call the church?

Dead. You have a reputation of being alive, you're dead, but look at what it says in chapter 3 verse 2. Wake up! If anybody was sleeping that was meant to wake you up. And strengthen what remains and is about to die.

For I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. He's telling you that because He loves you. He's saying wake up because He wants you awake. He wants to change you entirely from the inside out.

He doesn't want to cast you off. He says in verse 3, remember then what you received and heard. What you received? The Holy Spirit and heard the truth. Spirit, truth. This is how the church progresses.

This is a living church. What makes Cornerstone so alive? Answer. The Spirit and the truth. We have the truth. This is where we stand and this is what we preach. And we have the Spirit. He is here with us.

We have the Spirit and we have the church. Remember then what you have received and heard. Was there a time in your life when you knew the power of the Spirit more than you have been experiencing recently?

Remember those days. Keep it and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. Whenever that thief image appears in the New Testament, it's always to do harm.

Thieves don't break in your house to do you good. It's an image of judgment but also of unexpected judgment. You go through the motion so long you think it's just gonna be like this all the time until, boom, judgment hits.

Like a thief. This is not what we want but this is a warning because he loves us. Remember. Let this be a wake-up call. Again, R .A. Torrey, he says, I shall never forget a solemn hour in Chicago Avenue Church.

Dr. W .W. White was making a farewell address before going to India to work among the students there. Suddenly, without any apparent warning, the place was filled with an awful and glorious presence. To me, it was very real but the question arose in my mind, is this merely subjective, just a feeling of my own, or is there an objective presence here?

After the meeting was over, I asked several different persons whether they were conscious of anything and found that at the same point in the meeting, they too, though they saw no one, became distinctly conscious of an overwhelming presence.

The presence of the Holy Spirit. Though many years have passed, there are those who speak of that hour to this day. The people who are in that meeting, when that missionary left everything to go to India, in the power of that moment, nobody ever forgets how powerful that service was.

The Spirit was there. And then he says on another occasion in my home in Chicago, when kneeling in prayer with an intimate friend, as we prayed, it seemed as if an unseen and awful presence entered the room.

I realized what Eliphaz meant when he said, then a spirit passed before my face, the hair of my flesh stood up. Job 415. The moment was overwhelming but as glorious as it was awful. Sometimes in a prayer meeting, in a church service, the presence of God is glorious and awful.

The awfulness is the Spirit convicting a sinner like me or Isaiah who says, woe to me, I am undone. I have unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips. He's undone in the presence of God. The Spirit will come and convict you of sin and righteousness and judgment.

It's an awful feeling but it's good. He's drawing you to himself and he's cutting away the sin that's keeping you from him. It's a good, awful presence. This is what we need. In the book of Romans chapter 6, we're told to remember.

Just like here, remember then what you received and heard. The analogy is to your baptism. Don't you know that when you were baptized, you were baptized into Christ. You were crucified with him and buried in baptism and raised to newness of life.

We're told to remember our baptism because in our baptism we cut ties with this world. We cut ties with our sin. We were buried in baptism and given new life. Remember. Remember. Maybe there's somebody here, you don't remember your baptism because you're not baptized.

Physically, you've never been baptized in water. Cut ties with the world. On Easter Sunday, as we did two years ago, we'll baptize right here. Somebody here, I'm sure, needs to be baptized. You need to cut ties with the world.

Remember Christ and be baptized identifying with him in the water. Come talk to myself or one of the elders if that's you. Easter Sunday, baptism. Finally, we're almost done. Look at verse 4 and we'll do 5 and 6.

Verse 4, Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. Even in a dead church, you'll find true believers.

There's always a remnant. God always has a remnant of his people. Remember it was Elijah who thought he was the only one in first Kings? And God said, you're not the only one. There's 7 ,000 who will not bow their knee to Baal.

So even in apostate Israel, 7 ,000 remained. And then in Romans 11, we're told there's always a remnant chosen by grace. Just as the Israelites mostly rejected their Messiah, there will be a remnant that did.

The 12 apostles and Paul and many others, there's always a remnant. But you don't want to be in a dead church, do you? Back in Sardis, there was no Second Baptist Church. Second Church of Sardis. There was only Sardis.

And so they needed to stay there and do the best they could with a dying, in fact, a dead church. Verses 5 and 6. Let's put a bow on this. The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, representing purity.

Not dirty clothes, but your clothes washed clean. And I will never blot his name out of the book of life. It doesn't say that your name can be blotted out of the book of life. In fact, if you study the historical practice of the blotting out of a name, in ancient cities, say Sardis, people took great pride in their city.

And if someone dishonored their city, they would be blotted out of the register. Blotted out. They're no longer regarded as a citizen of Sardis. What Jesus says here to the remnant, to the faithful, is actually the exact opposite of, you can be blotted out.

He says, I will never blot you out. Contrary to the practice of the nations, where you can be disowned, an adoptive child of God will never be blotted out. That's the point. I will never blot out his name from the book of life.

We are eternally secure. We are secure, having truly believed in him and been sealed with the Holy Spirit, Ephesians 1, 13 and 14. It's a guarantee of our redemption. I will confess his name before my father and before his angels.

You're gonna see the million, the hundred million, the seraphim with all those eyeballs on their wings, soaring around the throne. It's his angels. These are the ones that he makes his angels winds, his servants flames of fire.

They exist in fire to worship him with passion for all eternity. That fire will be in your heart as you worship him there. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. So the application of this, don't assume because you go to church, or you visit churches, or you know of a church, that that is a living church just because it has Jesus's name on the sign out front.

There is a such thing as dead churches, and sadly I think in this culture, as the last days approach, there's a lot of churches that meet the criteria of Sardis. It could be described this way. It's a very sad thing, but for us, let's choose the better part.

That Holy Spirit, the sevenfold Spirit, he's available to you. I cannot stand in this pulpit and preach to you unless he fills me. I'm so dependent on him to be here, but I want to tell you this. Every mom here, you are dependent on the filling of the Holy Spirit to raise your kids in the admonition of the Lord.

Every father, every single person in a family, every person who's in this church, you want to minister effectively here? You can't do it without the Holy Spirit. You need him inside of you. You need the filling of the Holy Spirit.

Close with this story. There was a young evangelist from Scotland, burning with passion for the Lord, felt called to go to America, to the Northwest, to preach the gospel. When he got here, he found no doors of opportunity, no church pulpits in which to preach.

No one wanted his ministry, and for years, he was very depressed, very sad. Finally, he ended up at Torrey's Church, and under that ministry, Torrey said, don't worry about being a traveling evangelist.

Teach the kids in Sunday school. Bring that passion to the Sunday school room. Bring a filling of the Spirit to the Sunday school room, and he was humbled by that admonition, and instead of being depressed in what he wasn't being given in terms of ministry opportunity, he brought the filling of the Spirit to the Sunday school room and ministered there with passion.

The neat thing is, after doing this for just a short time, the Lord opened all kinds of doors for gospel ministry, and he became a very powerful evangelist across the Northwest of this country. Point.

Whatever you're called to do, you need the Holy Spirit. You need the filling of the Holy Spirit in your life, or you will die. This is life or death stuff. It's the Spirit of life. We have the adoption of the Spirit, the Spirit into Christ.

We need the Spirit to live. It's not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. So let's pray now, and worship team come up. I want to give you just a moment. Ask him to fill you afresh.

Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Ask him to come take over your heart and your life. Just close your eyes now, all across this place. If you feel like your relationship with Christ has been dying, you're being chased by demons, not ministered to by angels, you're empty.

Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.

Right now, just ask him to fill you again. Fill you. Somebody here needs to pray, and ask for the courage to be baptized on Easter morning. Ask him for that courage right now. Others, remember your baptism, that you were buried with Christ and raised to a new life.

Ask for the fullness of the Spirit to experience that new life, that you would minister in power. You would counsel with power. Lord, we pray for Cornerstone Church right now, that you would fill us with your precious Holy Spirit.

We don't just want to go through the motions. We want you in the midst. We want to feel the brush of angels wing. We want to see glory on each face, and know that surely the presence of the Lord is in this place.

Spirit of the Living God, fall fresh on us. We offer our lives to you. Take our lives as we consecrate them to you again this morning, in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's stand.