Divine Advantage

Part 1 of the “New Wine, Fresh Oil” Sermon Series

Introduction: The Moving Presence

“Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in the depths, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there Your hand shall lead me, And Your right hand shall hold me.” (Psalm 139:7–10)

David expresses very well in Psalm 139 and others that God’s presence is both a global reality and a personal refuge. From the far side of the moon to the nesting place of a tiny sparrow, He is everywhere at all times. He is the universal God, yet He is our most intimate companion. To truly know God, we must distinguish between His omnipresence (His being everywhere at all times), and His manifest presence (His being with us personally, right here, and right now).

In the Old Testament, God’s presence was visible - tangible even. He led the Israelites out of captivity in a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. Later, He rested upon the Ark of the Covenant and eventually filled the holy of holies - the innermost sanctum of the Temple. But God’s presence cannot be contained, it cannot be stopped... and when God wants to move, there is neither man nor angel who can get in his way. God never wanders aimlessly, and He’s never motionless; He is always moving His people toward "a new thing.”

After forty years in the wilderness, as Israel stood at the edge of the Jordan, a move of God was about to take place. The generation that clung to the comforts of Egypt had all passed away - including God’s servant, Moses. A new generation was rising, but before they could inherit the promise, they had to cross the river. And before they could cross the river, they had to be consecrated.

In Joshua 5:2, God gives a startling command: “Circumcise the sons of Israel again” This wasn’t just a physical ritual; it was a heart posture. Circumcising the heart represents a fundamental shift from external religious observance to internal spiritual transformation. A sign of genuine devotion and obedience. God was asking them to be “all in” this new season, stripping away every doubt and old expectation to fully trust the Source.

At the DOVE International Leadership Conference this week, Dan, Jill and myself heard from several leaders of the DOVE Movement who believe that this is a message for the church today; circumcise your hearts, for God is doing a new thing. I have to agree with them that we find ourselves in a “Jordan River” moment of our own. God is preparing a fresh harvest in our youth and young adults who are growing up in a world of AI-generated imagery and fabricated “truth.” They live in a culture where they cannot trust what they see with their eyes. To survive, they must learn to live by faith. They must learn that when you cannot trust the content, you have to trust the Source.

Jesus is ready to show them that Source, but it requires something of us - the older generation - first. Revival isn’t something that just “happens” to the church, revival begins in the Church. If we are going to lead the next generation across the Jordan, we cannot stay stuck in our comfort zones. We can’t have an “Egypt Mindset” (we know what happened to Moses’ generation they never saw the promised land.) We need to shift our hearts from the external, religious observances we’ve gotten used to and avail ourselves to pure spiritual transformation on the inside. We need to be circumcised again.

And just like the Israelites had their secret weapon in the Presence of God and the Ark, we have the Holy Spirit as our Divine Advantage as we move into this promised harvest season. He is not a distant force, or a “feeling” you get when the praise team plays a song you like. Holy Spirit is the manifest presence of God working in us and through us to bring “heaven to earth” right here, and right now. Without Him, we are just like the world - trying to claim our territory by force and human ambition. But immersed in Him, we don’t just “see” the Kingdom from afar- we can cross the river and enter it.

Pray

Defining the Advantage: Presence Over Program

So, if the Jordan is before us and the Promised Land is calling, how do we move forward? As children of the most High God, we don’t move by strategy or human effort alone. Israel didn’t cross the Jordan because they found a better map after forty years; they crossed because they followed the Presence. Moses understood this in Exodus 33:15 when He asked of the Lord, “If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here.” He knew that a journey without God was just an aimless walk in the desert.

In this new season, we face a choice: Will we rely on the structures we’ve built, or the Spirit who builds us? Will we keep looking back to the “way we’ve always done things” in Egypt, or will we give our hearts over to our Divine Advantage - the Holy Spirit? Are we ready to listen to what He is saying and prepare our hearts to reap a harvest? (wait for response)

Let me ask you, what do you think of when you hear the word “revival?” Do you think of a crowded tent? A famous evangelist? A college concert? We often try to manufacture revival through better lighting, better music, or more efficient schedules. But that’s not the advantage that brings true revival. The “Divine Advantage” isn’t a better program - it’s a Person. It’s the radical shift from doing things for God to dwelling with God.

Holy Spirit wasn’t a consolation prize; He’s the upgrade. Holy Spirit is Jesus’ own successor. He said in John 16:7, “It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.” It is better that I go and He comes. And in John 14, He didn’t tell them they would receive “a little bit of help” when the Holy Spirit came. He said they would receive POWER - dynamus which is where we get the word dynamite. This is the explosive, exponential, and MORE miraculous power than they’ve seen thus far. The power needed to do “greater things” in Jesus’ mighty name!

He wants to give us new vision and fresh anointing - New Wine and Fresh Oil - for this season, but that cannot happen if we are married to a program. The disciples themselves struggled with this, it’s human nature to keep doing things the way we’ve always done it. Even up to the day of Christ’s ascension they were casting lots to determine who would take the place of the twelfth disciple because, well, there just had to be twelve you know. When the Holy Spirit fell it didn’t matter how many were given a title, it didn’t matter how many had been at the cross, or at the tomb - we would all become witnesses of the resurrection and the power of Christ’s triumph over death through baptism into His Holy Spirit.

A lot of times the church seems to be concerned about back-sliding when we need to be concerned about front-sliding. We try to get ahead of God and force His hand before we sit, humbly in His Presence and just seek His Face. We make our programs and our schedules and then say, “Lord, Your will be done!” A program can run without God, but a Kingdom cannot. I don’t know about you, but I never want to push out the Presence of the Lord for the sake of our agenda. The Kingdom is our purpose and we can’t get there without His Presence.

Here’s something I really took home with me after my time with DOVE. When we come together on Sunday mornings, we aren’t just here to be ministered to, we are here to minister unto the Lord. We are here to press in and meet Him in His dwelling place. We are here to wait on the Lord. The Spirit is calling us to linger… to prioritize our intimacy with Him. Laverne Kreider likes to say that that word as “in to me see.”

God doesn’t just want us to be a “nice” church in Venetian Bay - He wants us to be transformative to this region and to the ends of the earth. That transformation has to start right here with us. As He looks inside our hearts, what does God see? Are we watching His glory from a distance, or are we living inside of it?

Entering the Kingdom: Beyond Just "Seeing" 

Some of us are satisfied with a “window view” of the Kingdom - sitting on the banks of the Jordan, admiring the landscape. But Jesus didn’t send the Holy Spirit just so we could spectate; He sent Him so we could participate. I’m speaking to those of us in the older generation now, God didn’t bring us to this point in our journey so we could just sit on our blessed assurance waiting to go to heaven. The work isn’t done until the Kingdom is passed to the next generation - the Kingdom is now, on earth as it is in heaven.

The Kingdom is not in the sweet by and by, and it never was. In John 3:3, Jesus tells Nicodemus, “unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” and verse 5, Jesus adds, “unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Jesus tells him that being born of water lets you see it, but being born of Spirt lets you enter it. This isn’t about where you go when you die; it’s about a new reality right now.

The Holy Spirit is our “legal access” to Heavenly authority on earth. Without Him, we are tourists; with Him, we are citizens. The Kingdom of God is not “out there somewhere,” - it’s right here, and the Holy Spirit is our direct access to everything it holds. This might be hard for some of us today - I’m not trying to condemn anyone - but I believe we all need to make a heart check from time to time so that we can make adjustments in our faith life. No pressure, no diamonds, right?

So, here are a couple of ways you can tell whether you’re “all in” living from the Kingdom or if you might still be watching from a distance.

Check your Motives - Are we loving God for later, or living for God today?

Check your Routine - Have we pushed out His Presence for the sake of religion or ritual?

Check your Prayers - Do we sound like an orphan begging for bread, or do we pray with the authority of a son or daughter of the King?

Check your Source - Do we let Holy Spirit lead us, or do we look to someone else to show us how to lead a Christian life?

This last test is something Jesus talks about in the Parable of the Ten Virgins in Matthew 25. The foolish virgins tried to borrow oil from the wise, but you cannot borrow intimacy. No one else can fill your lamp for you. Oil is only collected in the Presence of the Bridegroom. When He turned them away and said, “I do not know you” He was revealing that they had no history of lingering with Him. The quantity of your oil is directly related to the quality of your time spent in His Presence.

The revival of the Church depends on the children of God waking up to the fact that we may have settled for a lesser thing, when Jesus promised greater things! We’ve gotten comfortable in the routine and let our lamps get dry. Forgive us, Lord...

The Call to Abide: Entwining with the King

The Divine Advantage of being baptized into the Holy Spirit isn’t a one-time event; it’s a lifestyle of remaining. I love how Karen put it last week, “when someone asks if I’ve been baptized into Holy Spirit, I say “I AM Baptized in Holy Spirit.” We are designed to live emersed in His Presence. If the Holy Spirit is the air of the Kingdom, we don’t just need a deep breath on Sunday; we need to breathe Him in every moment of the week.

Isaiah 40:31 says, “But those who wait on the Lord Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles...” The Hebrew word for “wait” here is qawa. It describes the tension of a cord or tightly woven cloth. It means to be entwined - to be twisted so tightly into something else that the two become one. When your life is so woven with His that one can’t tell where you end and Jesus begins, you can bear weights you never thought possible. Like a rope made of many strands, when we abide in his Presence, our weakness is entwined with His strength. As we fuse our hearts with Him, we don’t just survive; we mount up with the height and the sight of eagles. Not by our own strength or power, but by His Spirit.

The Holy Spirit keeps us connected to the heart of God so we can be fruitful. In John 15:4 Jesus says, “Abide in Me, and I in you.” The word for abide is the Greek meno, which means to stay, to lodge, or to remain. This is a constant, consistent, and conscious connection. Meno is the root of the word mone, which Jesus uses in John 14 to describe the “many rooms” or “dwelling places” in His Father’s house. This isn’t just a future real estate promise in the sky, the Father’s House is the Kingdom. To abide (meno) is to live in that dwelling place (mone) now.

At any time we can enter into His dwelling place, “for in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). We carry the “dwelling place” of His presence within us wherever we go. This is our ultimate advantage; we can do nothing in His Kingdom without Him, but everything is possible while we are emersed and abiding in Holy Spirit.

Application: The Call to Consecration

We have defined our advantage in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we have stood at the edge of the Promised Kingdom and know what we need to enter in, and we have learned that we cannot force the hand of God, but through abiding in His presence will we learn to dwell by the Spirit. But, as I close, I’d like to take us back to where I began: Consecration.

God is faithful and He always keeps His promises. If we turn to Him with all our heart, “He will love you and bless you and multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land, your grain and your new wine and your oil” as He promised in Deuteronomy 7:13. If we consecrate ourselves “The threshing floors shall be full of wheat, And the vats shall overflow with new wine and oil.” as He said in Joel 2:24.

This isn’t just a physical harvest we are looking upon; it’s a spiritual overflow - but we must stay near to the Source. We often think of “waiting” on the Lord as sitting patiently for Him to move but no - we must wait like a waiter. A waiter stands in the presence of the host, attentive to every word, and ready to serve. In that place of service, we receive our portion. We receive our inheritance. We must stop seeing ourselves as working for God and start letting God work through us. Remembering to abide, for without His Presence, we can do nothing.

As you go to your homes today, I want you to listen to yourself pray. If you find your heart language is not that of an heir to the promises of the Most High God, you might be praying form the outside looking in. I want you to start praying from inside the Kingdom. If you don’t “feel” like you’re in the Presence of God, wait until you do… stay, linger, seek His face. You don’t have to fill the silent spaces with words… Be still, and Know as Psalm 46:10 says. Wait for His perfect peace to descend upon your heart and mind like a dove. It can’t be rushed, or scheduled but make it a priority to just sit in the presence of God.

Protect your time with Him. Make your “lingering” a sacred, non-negotiable time in your day. Psalm 87:7 says, “All my springs are in you.” If you want the living water of the Holy Spirit to flow through you at all times, you must keep your springs clear. That means staying consecrated unto Him. Don’t let anything get in the way of the clear, pure, spring water of His Presence.

Closing

I want you to see what is possible when a people decide that His presence is enough. We are living in a time of uncertainty, but Zechariah 9:12 gives us our command: “Return to the stronghold, You prisoners of hope.” Our stronghold isn’t a building or a program; it is the Person and the Power of the Holy Spirit.

Imagine a church that doesn’t just talk about God but carries Him with us. Imagine a generation who don’t have to guess what is real because they can feel the weight of the Spirit on their lives, and they can experience the resurrection life for themselves. Imagine a people so entwined with Jesus that the world sees the Kingdom before we even speak a word.

The greatest purpose of a Christian is not to go to heaven, but to bring heaven to earth. This is your Divine Advantage. That is the power of the New Wine and the Fresh Oil. Let’s consecrate our hearts today and cross the Jordan together.

Small group Questions

In your small groups this week:

Discuss how viewing the Holy Spirit as our Divine Advantage changes the way you approach your daily challenges compared to relying on your own strength?

Talk about an “Egypt mindset” or a “way you’ve always done things” that may be preventing you from stepping into the promised power God has for you.

Share one promise from God you need to start praying with authority.

Pray (Stand)

Tithes & Offerings

Next week, we will come together for the Lord’s Supper. Until then, may you be so tightly entwined with Holy Spirit that His strength becomes your strength, His sight becomes your sight, and His peace becomes your home. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.