Normal Life — G.W. North

I want to share with you tonight concerning the precious Holy Spirit and really moving into our inheritance. You know, beloved, we talk much about inheritance and sometimes the whole issue is obscured because we have so much Bible knowledge.

Now you may think that's strange that I should stand up here and talk this way and say, well, that Bible knowledge can obscure your realization of truth, but it can. We're so familiar, for instance, with the fact that Joshua of old was chosen by the Lord to lead God's people into their inheritance.

And we love at times to sing about these things and think about these things and investigate these things. Indeed, we may do so yet, although we only have tomorrow in which to do it. I mean, that is from the book of Joshua.

I don't know whether we shall or whether we shan't. But because we know these things and we think about lands and milk and honey and possessions on an earthly level, we tend to let it obscure the truth that our inheritance in Christ is entirely spiritual and that we're not called to possess a land, we're called to possess a person.

And unless this be seen, we forget that our inheritance is all that that person is. Wonderful. Our inheritance is all that that person is. And moreover, it is all that that person is in our earthly life, and that person, of course, is Jesus Christ.

But when we really enter into our inheritance in all its fullness, we inherit more than one person. We inherit a being, and Jesus Christ is only one person in that being. And so we inherit Father and glory be to God.

All the wondrous dimensions, if I may use that word, how can you rightly use terms when you're speaking about God? They merely can convey ideas to our mind. All the glories of the Father and of the Son, by the Blessed Spirit, this is our inheritance.

The putting away not only of our former rotten nature in Adam, but the putting on of a new nature and then as God moves us on into the discovery of the heights and depths and lengths and breadths of God himself.

This is our inheritance. And so, beloved, you see how often we are put off, put onto wrong ground, wrong habits of thinking, because we're so accommodated to thinking at least in materialistic terms, if not being materialistic in our whole outlook.

Remember, beloved, that though the inheritance of the children of Israel was actual to them, it is only parabolic to us. It is a figure of the true. It is an analogy, a parable, a working out in actual time, actually on the earth in flesh and blood of what God has for us in the Spirit.

Hallelujah. And lifting our eyes above what these things prefigure to enter into all that God is prepared to reveal unto us in the Spirit. Now, beloved, once we really are the children of God through faith in Jesus Christ, once we are born, altogether born of the Spirit of God, and we are God's children, the next important thing for us in our spiritual life is to be filled with the Holy Ghost.

That and that alone is normal Christianity. Anything less than that is subnormal. It can get perverted. We can be utterly twisted. The birth gives us the nature of God. We are born His children, and then we are to go on knowing the fullness of the Spirit as the norm of life.

What a blessed thing that is. You see, it is far more important for us to be able to say tonight, I am full of God, than to say I have had my baptism. You see, people nearly worship this term in certain circles, have you had your baptism?

And all that. They nearly worship it. That takes place in a moment of time. It is an introduction to something far more wonderful. Something far greater. So we don't sing the praises of the baptism, hallelujah, that's something we have, and I hope never forget about, but leave behind as an experience.

It is but an open portal, yea, it's more. It's a glorious entree, it's a bringing in to the abundance of this glorious life. Knowing what it is to be filled with the Spirit. To be utterly filled with the Spirit.

Be Being Filled With the Holy Spirit

Now, let us look at some scriptures together. I want us to move around in the Bible, and see something about this. Amen. In firstly then, in the Ephesians letter. In Ephesians in chapter 5 and verse 18.

I can always quote this verse, because this was the verse that God used to bring me into these great things of God. Be filled with the Spirit. It's compared with a statement in the beginning of the verse, which says, be not drunk with wine.

That's excess. But be filled with the Spirit. If you get filled with wine, you'll get drunk. If you get filled with the Spirit, you'll be sober. If you live a life of being filled with the Spirit, you'll be able to fulfill the oft-repeated injunction in the New Testament.

Be sober. Not that somebody will walk around and say, old sober sites. Hallelujah. This then, is the normal of spiritual experience. Some people think that spiritual experience is having a series of most elating experiences.

Whereby we roll round rooms and we say, we were drunk, we were drunk, we were drunk. It's a heady mixture that's always bringing people up to a place of an emotional explosion. And finding them midway through the next week, just about scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Not that there's anything wrong with having what we'll call glory times. Amen. That's marvelous. But to confuse glory times with emotional experiences, is about like confusing East with West. God wants us to move in this glory of the Spirit.

What a glorious thing it is. God wants us to be filled with the Spirit. Amen. That's normal. Well, I suppose most of you will know that this is the present progressive in the Greek. And it really means, be being filled all the time with the Holy Spirit.

That's what it really means. And this is the norm. That all the time I am being filled with the Holy Spirit. All the time. Glory. Now this will keep you normal. It won't make you a giant. What I mean by this, is that all giants have to be slung out of the Promised Land.

If you go back. That's right, that's what the New Testament is all about, isn't it? Anna Kim's and I don't know what other Kim's they were there. All the giants had to be slung out. It was only for God's normal people, the Promised Land.

You do realize this, don't you? All the Anna Kim's and the what not's. Out they had to go. The only remains there were of those were abnormally long graves in the ground. Got rid of them. Amen. Dust they were and to dust they went.

And this is God's tremendous revelation to our hearts. God wanted normal people in His land. The giants were a result of wrong associations. They were developments of an abnormal strain. It arose from mixing spiritual with carnal.

To use the New Testament terms. They became giants. Sons of God and daughters of men kind of idea. Mixing this thing. God didn't want that. Hallelujah. He wants normal people. Now normal people by God's standards are Jesus Christ.

That's God's norm. Jesus Christ is God's normal man. Hallelujah. That's why He sent Him. It's what the Bible says. The first man was of the earth earthy. He was God's normal man for a start. Then He fell into sin and He became God's abnormal or subnormal man.

So after the elapse of thousands of years God brought in the second man. He was the Lord from heaven. I suppose he might have been as tall and as broad as I am. You know within an inch or two. I think he must have been a lot better sort of chap than me.

Better looking and he had lovely black hair I should imagine. As a Jew would. And that sort of thing. But he was quite a normal man. People didn't come to see Jesus Christ because He stood nine foot two in His socks.

You see. And He weighed 595 pounds or something like that. They didn't come to see Jesus Christ because He was a great weight lifter. He could move mountains but He didn't do it with His two hands. This is the Lord Jesus Christ.

He was God's normal man and God's expecting us to be men by this standard. And we've got to be being filled with spirit. This won't make us swell and grow up and be about eleven foot ten tall like some philistine named Goliath.

But you see. You might think well if you're going to be filled with the spirit. Filled with the spirit. My word. You'll expand and expand and expand. No, no, no, no. You see. That's the wrong idea. You've got this wrong.

God keeps filling you with the spirit because the Holy Spirit should keep on flowing out to others. You see. That's the idea. You've got this, haven't you? This is implied to you very correctly in John's Gospel.

Where in the fourth chapter we read of Jesus Christ giving us drinks that become living springs in us. Springing up unto everlasting life. In the seventh chapter He says, If you really drink of me, out of your belly will flow rivers.

That's right, isn't it? Springs rising inside, rivers flowing out. That keeps us normal. But before they flow out. We have to go to Romans and we see something that's normal in the life. In Romans 5 and chapter 5 and verse 5.

That hope, we're told, makes not a shame. Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. And you will know that that shed abroad can be translated flooded. The Holy Ghost is flooding our hearts.

So the spring rises unto everlasting life. Floods us with love, you see. Flows out to others. Amen. Now this then is normal Christianity. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And you and I have got to know this.

This is absolutely essential for spiritual living. Fullness of the Holy Ghost is not a rare luxury for some people at odd moments in their life. Amen. If I was to make one calculation. If I was allowed to guess.

And there are lots of things I think. And you must always sharply distinguish between what you think and what you believe. I think lots of things but I don't believe them all. And I think, no, that's not right.

So I don't believe that one. You've got to distinguish between what you believe and what you think. The devil is very artful about this. He confuses you, you see. When he really wants to start a temptation.

He'll start it making you think it's what you believe. But he isn't. It's what he's put into your thoughts. And he's very good at coming and putting a thought in the back of the mind. Then come around the front and say, What are you doing with that thought in your mind, you see?

That's the devil. Accusation, accusation. You've no business with that thought in your mind. And you see, there it is. That's the cunning, artful way he works. And we're the biggest stupid people to believe it.

If we fall for his trickery. But, beloved, you have to distinguish between what you believe and what you think. For what you believe is what the Bible speaks of, As a man thinketh in his heart. That's what he believes because that's what he is.

All right. What you believe is what you think in your heart. Praise the name of the Lord. But the other kind of thoughts that have to go through your head all day long. Especially if you're one of these unfortunate people that have to go and work here or work there.

Or work somewhere else. You have to have your head filled up with this, that and the other. And you have to think about it. And that's it. And your governor will tell you, You're paid to use your brains or something like that.

Well, that's all right. But that's nothing to do with our heart faith, beloved. Glory be to the name of the Lord. It's very wonderful to be able to distinguish in this. But you see, you and I have to know the glory of being filled with the Spirit.

And flooded with the Spirit. And flowing with the Spirit. So that we can go on in our Christian experience being filled with the Spirit. That's quite a normal process. Amen. And of course, it's this that takes us out of this staggering drunken approach to it.

And the sober approach to it. And if I can make a guess, if I may. About when Jesus Christ was more filled with the Spirit than any other time. Perhaps you might think this is a perilous thing to do. I guess it was on the cross.

I guess it was. It was by the eternal Spirit that he offered himself without spot to God. Hallelujah. For it was on the cross, beloved, when most flowed from him of uttermost love. And measureless grace.

And oh, all our redemption flowed from him there. And you wouldn't have thought that Jesus Christ was drunk. I reckon he was as sober as ever he could be. And from this we read in Isaiah 53. That he was a man of sorrows.

And acquainted with grief. What a tremendous thing. Bless the name of the Lord. Alright. To be full, flooded, flooded, flooded is your experience. Or should be. So I think I ought to stop now and ask you, well, is it?

Is it? Normal Christianity. Hallelujah. And this is why I want to link these scriptures. If you turn with me at the moment into the Philippian letter. You read a word like this. Paul, when he writes this Philippian letter, is in prison.

He's a prisoner. And my, he's having it rough. He really is having it rough. And I would think that, well, I don't suppose he wants to be thought of as a martyr at all. He certainly wasn't a self-made martyr.

But he was really suffering for the faith. And in this first chapter, he prays like this. Or at least he talks about like this. I don't mind what's happening really. In verse 18. Notwithstanding every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached.

And I therein do rejoice. Yea, and will rejoice. For I know that this shall turn to my salvation. Through your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. And the word there actually in the Greek is further supply.

It is supply upon what has already been supplied. Now isn't this lovely? Supply upon what has already been supplied. Hallelujah. Isn't this glorious? Now this is God's intention for us, beloved. Amen.

Be being filled because God will keep on supplying. Isn't this precious? God keeps on supplying. Amen and amen and amen. That God should keep on supplying this blessed Spirit. You know in the things of the Spirit, beloved, we can afford to be utterly generous.

Unspeakably lavish. This great ministering of the Spirit. This is what God is wanting to do. We should be able to do this. But let your supply run short and the river will stop. That's the trouble. Then what you'll be needing is you'll be saying, I need another touch from the Lord or something like that.

What do you mean by a touch? I'm not quite sure about that. But there it is. It's accepted terminology. But I'm not quite sure what that means. We're supposed to understand something by it. But you see the glory of it is, beloved, it's absolutely subnormal for us to stutter around.

The constancy of the supply. Hallelujah. The normal being filled with the Spirit of God. And the flowing out of this Spirit to others. Is it like that with you? Now God grant it may be. For you see, there's no such thing as the ministry of the Spirit unless these rivers are flowing out.

The ministry of the Spirit is absolutely basic. Let me repeat there. It may sound quite a banal statement to you. The ministry of the Spirit is absolutely basic. And there's no ministry of the Spirit, be he or she the most golden-tongued and gifted person in the world.

There's no ministry of the Spirit except the opening up of the bowels. So that, I'm speaking now of the inner man. So that the Spirit of God is flowing out from our belly, as the Bible says. Right down there.

Where everything really commences. From the deeps of us. That's how we speak about going down into the bowels of the earth. We know that means that you go right down there. Dig right down deep. And that's where the Holy Spirit flows from.

Out of the deeps of us. Praise the name of the Lord. To others. And unless this is happening, there isn't any ministry of the Spirit. And yet this is the most vital thing. So far as the salvation of souls is concerned.

So far as the reaching of the outsider is concerned. Rivers flowing out to them. Amen. That's what it's got to be. You see, God has planned it this way. Jesus Christ went through terrible agonies. Jesus Christ went through the awful ordeal of Calvary.

He died and was buried and rose again. And went back home for the purpose of mediating the Holy Spirit. From God to men. That's why he went. And the ministry of the Spirit is our part of this glorious, precious thing.

That Jesus Christ is a minister of the sanctuary. He's a mediator of the Spirit. And he ministers and mediates the Spirit to us. And we receiving the Spirit have to minister it to others. So when we talk about ministry.

The great thing of this blessed covenant we've been brought into with Jesus Christ. Is this continuation of what Jesus Christ has commenced. It's this yielding ourselves up to the ministry. As he yielded himself up for the mediation.

Oh, glory. He rose from the dead. And he went back home. Father, he says, the promise. The promise. He said, you tarry, I'm going to send the promise of the Father upon you. Father, the promise. He went back home.

And he received the promise. Because you see, he confirmed and sealed it unto men. By his blood. He went back home. I've confirmed it. I've sealed it. I've shed the blood. And he went back home. And he received the Holy Spirit from the Father.

The promised Father. I'll pray the Father, he said. He'll give. Hallelujah. That's what he went home to do. And, bless the Lord, the Holy Ghost came pouring down on the day of Pentecost. Pouring, pouring, pouring.

You see, the difference between the Holy Ghost and Jesus is this. You see, what do you mean when you say pouring, pouring, pouring? I know it's a word that's used in the Old Testament. I will pour water on him that's thirsty.

I will send floods upon the dry ground. Hallelujah. This is it. This is the ministry, you see. He pours water upon me because I'm thirsty and I drink it. And it runs out through me onto all the dry ground.

This is God's great intention. When you're speaking about a person. Fancy speaking of a person being poured out. What do you mean by that? Well, oh, the vastness of it. Oh, the completeness of the gift.

No waiting. You see, when Jesus came, first he came as a word in the mouth of an angel. The seed from God. That word was the seed of God's intention and purpose. That's right. And there it was, a maid received it.

Then we waited nine months for gestation. And then he was born. And then we had to wait another thirty years before God could begin to sort of pour out through this glorious one. Oh, thirty years of waiting.

That's a lifetime. Not with Jesus. The lifetime was all lived. The wonder of it was all given up and instantaneously came the Spirit. Poured out. No waiting. Went out to God. Poured out. Bless the Lord.

Poured out. That's what it's all about. A man should be flooded. Flooded. Flooded with the Spirit of God. What a marvelous thing it is to be like this. The tragedy with so many of us is that we think according to the littleness of our own ideas.

Instead of taking up and believing the great statements of God. This is a marvelous thing. Poured out. The initial supply. Glory be to the name of the Lord. Let's turn to the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 2.

The further supply of God. Think of it. The further supply. Hallelujah. Look at old Peter in Acts, chapter 2. He says, This is that, verse 16, which was spoken by the prophet Joel. And it shall come to pass in the last days.

Now I want you to notice, it doesn't say, it shall come to pass on the day of Pentecost. Your Bible is evidence. There it is. It comes to pass in the last days. I'll pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Glory.

Isn't it a grace that God's extended these days? How many days is it since the day of Pentecost? In the last days, I'm going to pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Do you believe that? Why? What the Lord supplied on the day of Pentecost, He's further supplied.

Further supplied. Further supplied. Glory. A crowd of them got together in the fourth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. You know, they were all gathered there in that upper room, and some were filled with the Holy Ghost, and some weren't.

And after they'd all prayed, it says they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. So God had made another outpouring in Caesarea. And then the eighth chapter, you know how it all went on. Philip goes down there.

He preaches the Gospel. They receive the Word of God. They don't receive the Holy Ghost. So the apostles say, Oh, well, we can't have this. We can't have that. People believe in the Gospel and not receive the Holy Ghost.

Dan, you go there. You can't have that. That's an anomaly. You can't split this Gospel up. And so as soon as they could catch up with it, humanly speaking, old Philip had got down there preaching. It's all right.

God told him to go. That's fine. He just moved in God's... He was a marvelous evangelist, but the apostles say, We can't have this. It's a sort of a hiatus. It's split this thing up. Come on down. You go down there.

So down they went. And the Holy Ghost upon the Samaritans. Praise the name of the Lord. Then you get this. You get past the tenth chapter. Peter gets there, starts to preach. This is sort of the beginning of a good house fellowship.

They were all gathered there in that room in Cornelius' household. And down comes the Holy Spirit. Praise the name of the Lord. And it would all happen there. And wherever you go, further supply, further supply, further supply.

Not only do you see is it God's desire to further supply the individual, but it's based on further supply. This is the whole plan. More and more and more and more. You say, how can you take more? Why?

Because I'm giving more. There's more flowing out. There's more flowing out. And this is the great wonder of it all. The more you receive, the more you will know to pour out. That's right. The more you will have, the more God's glory, the more spiritual understanding, the more of the knowledge of Christ.

This is it. This is why people don't know Christ. This is why they've got no understanding. This is why, beloved, flooded, filled. It floods me. Flooded, flooded, flooded. Talk about being flooded with the love of God.

Flooded with the knowledge of God. Flooded with the glory of Jesus Christ. Flooded with an understanding. And I let it go. I let it flow. And lo and behold, I can't get rid of it quick enough. You know what I mean.

I don't want to get rid of it. God's flooded with it much more. I find, especially when I'm preaching, I think, well, after I've been preaching two hours, I say, well, I'd better stop. And I think, well, I can't.

You know, I've got to go on again. This is the whole secret of it. It's the whole secret of it, beloved. Blessed be the name of the Lord. It's so wonderful. When it happens. And as you go on, the revelations increase.

As you go on, the understanding comes. As you go on, the explanations come. As you go on, the mysteries become simple. As you go on, hallelujah, nothing remains hidden, nothing's secret, nothing's tucked away.

Everything's brought out into the open. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. What are you going to say about a God like this? Is this the one you know? Amen. Because you're told in the Ephesian letter, that's the one we looked at first, about being filled with the Spirit, that we are not to be any longer strangers and foreigners.

We're not to be strangers to this. Hallelujah. It's to be the norm of our spiritual life. But now it's most important, having looked at the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 2, that we look at it again, and we see something, because it's in this chapter, which says that God is going to pour out His Spirit upon all flesh, that we're given the clearest indication of the only way to being filled with the Spirit.

Baptism in the Holy Spirit and Pentecostal Fullness

Now the only way to be filled with the Spirit, my beloved brothers and sisters, is the way that we're told in this chapter. We'll read it, shall we? Just the opening verses. When the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place, and suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the place where they were sitting.

I wonder if that's why we heard the wind rattling through above this cellophane a little earlier. I don't know. It filled all the place where they were sitting, and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with utter tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Now there's only one way to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and that is to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. There is no other way. All right. There is no other way. Glory be to God. God's way of filling people with the Holy Ghost is pushing them down into Him, baptizing them in the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Pouring on them until they are absolutely flooded. Amen. That's God's way. Just the same as if in this water baptism we had here on Sunday night, Malcolm had pushed them underneath and put his foot on them like that.

That's it. And kept them there until they were full of water. That's right. Until they breathed water into all the places they shouldn't have breathed water. You see. To be filled with water. That's the way he should have done it, but he was wise enough to put them under and bring them up again.

But here then, beloved, is the whole secret of being filled with the Spirit of God. Fill. See, God made sure that they were not just anointed with the Holy Spirit. God made sure that he did not just come upon them.

He came into them. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit. Not just clothed with the Holy Spirit that Luke talks about. And sometimes can leave us a little bit with a wrong idea of what took place on the day of Pentecost.

That they were anointed or clothed with power. They were. Because Jesus said they were. But they were also filled. And that's more important. That's the most important thing. That you should be filled.

They were all filled. And it was after they were filled that they began to speak in other tongues as the Holy Ghost gave them utterance. That's what we read. And there's nothing in the New Testament that belongs to the New Testament which allows you to think that a man can be filled with the Holy Ghost before he's baptized in the Holy Ghost.

Now, we can read, for instance, let's go back into Luke's Gospel. See that Luke wrote the Acts as well as his Gospel. And in Luke 2 we can read about people. And first we read about Mary in the first chapter.

That the Holy Ghost came upon her. That's what you read. And you read down the second chapter and we read that there was a man in Jerusalem, verse 25. His name was Simeon. The same man was just stand about waiting for the consolation of Israel.

And the Holy Ghost was upon him. And because the Holy Ghost was upon him, he got revelations. Amen. That was a marvelous thing. And then also we know that there was a prophetess named Anna. And she also moved in this great way.

But before that, we read about John Baptist. And in the first chapter, we find that John Baptist was filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb. Now you say, well there it is then. He was filled with the Holy Ghost before the day of Pentecost.

That's right. But he belonged to the Old Testament. He belonged to the Old Testament. And you see, under the Old Testament regime, they could be filled with the Spirit without being baptized in the Spirit.

But when the New Testament commenced, it commenced there, and hallelujah, the first persons to be filled with the Holy Ghost in the great new covenant of Jesus Christ through his blood had to be baptized in the Spirit.

Amen. You must understand that and understand very clearly. Fill, hallelujah. And they were filled and filled and filled and filled. And Paul releases the secret to us. They were filled and filled and filled and filled again with the blessed Spirit of God.

It was the norm of spiritual living, beloved. Oh, hallelujah. Wouldn't it be wonderful if every one of us went home from this conference and we lived this normal life of being filled all the time, being filled with the Spirit.

My, what God could accomplish there. Of course, you might need conferences after that for teaching and things like that, that sort of thing, or coming together and worshipping the Lord. But not to have to be refilled with the Spirit.

That ought not to be necessary. But of course, if, it's like old John says in his epistle, he says, if any man sin, not necessary, but if you do, we have an advocate with the Father. The provision is made if you do, you see.

There is a provision, if you're not filled with the Spirit, you could be filled with the Spirit tonight. Hallelujah. Do you want to be? Absolutely filled with the Spirit. The provision's here. But blessed be the name of the Lord.

If we get all filled with the Holy Ghost tonight, and that's God's plan, will we all come to the place where we'll say, Lord, by your grace, I'm going to keep filled with the Spirit. Hallelujah. Every day, in every way, I'm going to keep filled with the Spirit.

Oh, hallelujah. Now, I'm going to ask you this question. How is it that you manage to keep your lungs filled with air? Yeah, I know, but it's more than that. That's what you do. But how is it when you breathe, you manage to keep your lungs filled with air?

Pardon? Because it's here. It's our normal element. That's right. Well, how can you keep filled with the Spirit? Because you live in the Spirit. And it's your normal element. That's right. Simple, isn't it?

How does a fish manage to keep itself filled with water? Well, it lives in it. It extracts the oxygen it needs, apparently, from the water, but it's all fitted up for its element. Yeah, it's all fitted up for the element it lives in.

Blessed be the name of the Lord. That's why you can't live in water, you see. And when you're a young boy, you detest it. I mean, girls bath every day, but boys bath once a year, if they can help it. But until they get sensible enough, then they try to bath every day, too.

Don't they, Ricky? Hallelujah! All right. We won't say any more about that. Amen. But you see, this is how you keep your lungs filled with air, because it's your normal element. Isn't it an extraordinary thing?

It always manages to keep filled up with air. Marvellous experience we had. Oh, it was wonderful. She got herself filled up with air. Her lungs were filled with air. Marvellous. Don't talk so silly, man.

It's quite normal. It's you that's not normal, talking like that. Let the lesson sink in. You've got to live in the Spirit. And I'll tell you why. Well, at least, we'll point some reasons why. It seemed very plain to me.

The Ministry of the Spirit and the Death of the Old Man

Will you turn with me, beloved, into the second chapter, the second book of Corinthians, and in the fifth chapter. In this great second Corinthians letter, among other things, Paul tells us of normal things that are in the course of the ministry.

I can't go into them all tonight. I don't particularly want to. Except that if you just turn back into the third chapter, you'll really see what he means about ministering the Spirit. Verse 6 of chapter 3.

God has made us able ministers of the New Testament. Not the letter of the New Testament. Don't go ministering this letter I'm writing to you. Not the letter, but the Spirit. The letter will kill. The Spirit giveth life.

The ministry of the New Testament is the ministry of the Spirit. That's how it all commenced. Jesus ministered, mediated the Holy Spirit from the heights of heaven. And the ministry is the continuation of this precious thing that Jesus has done.

Ministering the Spirit. And he talks about various things of the ministry, having laid down the fundamental thing in the third chapter. And on this great ministry of the Spirit, of course, we have the ministry of reconciliation in the fifth chapter and so on and so on.

But here then, beloved, in this fifth chapter, is something else that we need to see. Where shall we start? We are beside ourselves, verse 13, or whether we be beside ourselves, or it's to God, or whether we be sober, it's for your cause.