Sermon Breakdown

1. We must be absolutely certain of our authority. We ought to obey God rather than men.
2. We must go not in our own strength, but in the strength of the Lord and in the power of his might.
3. Fear him, ye saints, said John Bunyan, and you will have nothing else to fear. If we work in the fear of the Lord, we shall soon lose the fear of men.
4. The Holy Spirit does not bear witness to himself. The Holy Spirit does not call attention to himself, nor to his works, nor to his own power.
5. The Holy Spirit came in the form of a dove. I believe that was very deliberate to suggest the shyness, the fact that he doesn't demonstrate himself, as it were, a delicacy, a shyness.
6. And the Holy Spirit has been specifically sent for one great purpose. What's that? To testify to the Lord Jesus Christ. To glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, not himself, nor anything that he does.
7. He says, it's Christ, this son of God whom you rejected, who's done this, it's always the same.
8. And Peter filled with the spirit, invariably, and I can take you on and give you other examples. He always does precisely the same thing.
9. The theme of the great revivals of history has always been the person of Christ's atoning death and his glorious resurrection.
10. My dear friends, we must keep the scriptural balance and realize that always the spirit glorifies and bears witness not to himself, but to the Lord Jesus Christ, his person and his work.
11. I am emphasizing this phenomenal aspect, this something that happens outside us.
12. You know, there's a great illustration of this in the chapter four of this book of the Acts of the Apostles. When Peter and John had been set free by the Sanhedrin, we are told that being let go, they went back to their own company and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said unto them.
13. And when they had prayed, the place was shaken. Where they were assembled together, the place was shaken. Now, that's not witness through people, is it? It was the building that was shaken.
14. And who shook the building? The Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was bearing his witness by shaking the building, not through the apostles, but through the material building.
15. I know the clever critics would have us believe that what really happened there was this, that these people praying were so frightened that they began to shake in. No, no, it was the building that shook. The Holy Spirit can shake buildings, he can shake nations. He can shake any power.