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COMPLETE SERMON NOTES

Understanding the Anointing

INTRO: Last week’s message – The Desperate Need to Experience God

• God didn’t make you wrong

The anointing is Available to all believers, but very few actually walk in it.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18).

• Chrio [anointed] – the authority and the ability to perform God’s will with supernatural strength – ANOINTED… Christos – Χριστός

– A church in the land without the Spirit is rather a curse than a blessing. If you have not the Spirit of God, Christian worker, remember that you stand in somebody else’s way; you are a fruitless tree standing where a fruitful tree might grow. ~Charles Spurgeon

– The Kingdom of God is not going to be advanced by our churches becoming filled with men, but by men in our churches becoming filled with God. ~Duncan Campbell

1 Big Reason Spiritual People Are Leaving Churches: To those really seeking to encounter God, soon the fancy stage, the bright lights, the cool bands and the video screens, just become white noise…They want Spirit and fire. Sometimes they cannot even articulate the reason they are leaving. They may tell you it’s because of the music, or the preaching, or the youth and children’s programs, but the underground reason may be because they are not encountering God.

• “My soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water. So I have looked for You in the sanctuary, to see Your power and Your glory.” (Ps. 63)

The Anointing has a cost – there is a price: “Others may, you cannot.”

Be available and willing – no agenda but God’s – THEN LIVE ACCORDINGLY

• Men and women who were/are anointed “set their hearts toward God” – Nehemiah, Ezra, Daniel, Samuel … most early N.T. Believers.

Dire times require a strong anointing

“Judgment is coming … Or is Revival?” Changes how you live – Dooms-dayers building BOMB shelters or powerful Spirit-filled men and women seeking the heart of God?

• How are you going to walk in the power of the Spirit, lead your family, make wise decisions, overcome evil, and walk in God’s will without it? You won’t – you can’t.

This is why many Christians are fearful, angry, bitter, and unproductive – they aren’t walking in the power of the Spirit.

EXAMPLE: David Anointed King after Saul was Rejected – 1 Sam. 10 Now the word of the Lord came to Samuel, saying, 11 “I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king, for he has turned back from following Me, and has not performed My commandments.” And it grieved Samuel…17 So Samuel said, “When you were little in your own eyes, were you not head of the tribes of Israel? And did not the Lord anoint you king over Israel? 18 Now the Lord sent you on a mission…19 Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you swoop down on the spoil, and do evil in the sight of the Lord?” 20 And Saul said to Samuel, “But I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me, and brought back Agag king of Amalek; I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. 21 But the people took of the plunder, sheep and oxen, the best of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.” 22 So Samuel said: “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams. 23 For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He also has rejected you from being king.”

1. The anointing can be Extinguished – it must be replenished, watered, and nurtured – “For he has turned back.” Old vs New Testament Anointing

The Quenching Agent is the FLESH: “Why did you swoop down on the spoil…?”

1. Humility is always a requirement – “When you were little in your own eyes, were you not head of the tribes of Israel?” LESS OF ME, MORE …

1. Partial obedience is not obedience – “Because you have rejected the word of the Lord.” This was not a one time slip up – God’s Patience is not His Approval.

But I did this and that …

• I provide financially – but you deplete spiritually.

• I go to church – but you still live like the world.

• I read the Bible – but there’s no change.

• I give to charity, but you take from everyone else.

BACK TRACK: 1 Samuel 10 Then Samuel took a flask of oil and poured it on [Saul’s] head…and said: “Is it not because the Lord has anointed you commander over His inheritance? …5 After that you shall come to the hill of God where the Philistine garrison is. And it will happen, when you have come there to the city, that you will meet a group of prophets coming down from the high place with a stringed instrument, a tambourine, a flute, and a harp before them; and they will be prophesying [powerfully speaking God’s Word]. 6 Then the Spirit of the Lord will come upon you, and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man. 7 And let it be, when these signs come to you, that you do as the occasion demands; for God is with you.

• Don’t minimize the role worship plays – A Call to Worship – Dec. 2012: https://vimeo.com/56217153

• The anointing leads to a radical departure from nominal Christianity.

CLOSING: “My soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water. So I have looked for You in the sanctuary, to see Your power and Your glory.” (Ps. 63:2-3)

• Oswald Chambers was dying spiritually, to the point of depression: “God used me during those years…but I had no conscious communion with Him. The Bible was the dullest, most uninteresting book in existence…” Then he writes a few years later, “If the four previous years had been hell on earth, these five years have truly been heaven on earth. Glory be to God, the last aching abyss of the human heart is filled to overflowing with the love of God.”

• John Wesley – crossing the Atlantic ocean back to England as a failure

• John Bunyan [Pilgrim’s Progress was anointed], Amy Carmichael and Catherine Booth

• Charles Finney: When I awoke in the morning the sun had risen and was pouring a clear light into my room. Words cannot express the impression that this sunlight made on me. The way I felt the night before returned upon me in the same manner. I arose upon my knees in the bed and wept aloud with joy, and remained for some time too much overwhelmed to do anything, but pour out my soul to God.”

• D.L. Moody was a spiritual failure – weak sermons – UNTIL….

D.L. Moody was deeply saddened by bible teachers in his day, asking, “Why don’t they see that this is just the one thing that they themselves need? They are good teachers, they are wonderful teachers…but why will they not see that the power of the Holy Ghost is just the one touch that they themselves need?”

REVISED: I’m saddened by most Christians today, “Why don’t they see that the presence of God is the one thing that they themselves need? They are good people…but they lack spiritual power. They lack ANOINTING.

There are probably a few good answers to Moody’s question, “Why don’t they see their need for the Spirit’s power?” The most common answer is pride…Many do not want to admit that there may be something lacking in their spiritual life.

The Difference – they were hungry, not satisfied​

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