The Baptism With the Holy Spirit 3: The Spirit Empowered Church John 1:33-34 Grace Fellowship Church December 13, 2009 Series 6 Sermon 12 29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is he of whom I said, After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me. 31 I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel. 32 And John bore witness: I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 33 I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. 34 And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God. Introduction So far what we have established in our understanding of the baptism with the Holy Spirit is that the Lord Jesus Christ would be the one who would come and be the bearer of the Holy Spirit. In His Messianic ministry through the power of the Holy Spirit He would work miracles, suffer, die, offer Himself as the sacrifice to the Father that would initiate the New Covenant, be resurrected, ascend to Heaven and then empower His church with the Holy Spirit. The ministry of John the Baptist was to herald in the coming of the Messiah who would usher in this age of the Spirit. The Old Testament pointed to the day when the Spirit of God would be poured out not on just a few select individuals but rather all the people of God would be empowered and indwelled by the Holy Spirit. This indwelling and empowering of the people of God by the Spirit of God would serve as the means by which the Kingdom of God will be ushered in. Last week I mentioned to you the already/ not yet tension of Scripture. Particularly when understanding the Kingdom of God we know that the Kingdom is here and Christ is ruling but not in a completed sense yet. There are glimpses of the Kingdom but the Kingdom is coming. And what I showed you last week from the prophecies of the Old Testament and the fulfillment in the New Testament was that the purpose of the giving of the Holy Spirit was to usher in the Kingdom of God on earth. Now this whole study was sparked by John 1:33 which told us that the Lord Jesus who had the Spirit descend upon Him like a dove and remain there would baptize us with the Holy Spirit. What is interesting as you read the New Testament is that Luke is the only New Testament writer that deals with this phrase baptize with the Holy Spirit. The rest of the New Testament writers write with the understanding that all believers have the Holy Spirit and He is active in the lives of believers in many ways. He is active in the conversion of sinners. He gives the power to repent and have faith in Christ. The Bible tells us that we were dead in sins and trespasses until we were made alive or quickened to 1
life. The Holy Spirit uses the proclamation of the Gospel and the same power that raised Christ from the dead to save sinners. We are then sealed and kept by the Holy Spirit who indwells us who then is active in our ongoing sanctification. Sanctification is the life long process by which God conforms us, His people to the image of Christ. So the Spirit is active in convicting us of sin and empowering us to be transformed into the image of Christ and to resist temptation. So all believers have the Holy Spirit. Just by the very nature of conversion you must have the Spirit. But as we saw two weeks ago there is a special baptism with the Holy Spirit that is a sovereign act of Christ as He has willed to give His people the fullness of the Spirit. We are commanded in Ephesians 5:18 to be filled with the Spirit. This is a command for believers who already have the indwelling of the Spirit now to be filled with the Spirit. So at conversion we do not receive all of the Holy Spirit that we are ever going to receive or should receive. Peter said on the day of Pentecost as he preached that this gift of the Spirit is for us and for our children and as many as the Lord our God will call. So we come to the Scripture many times with preconceived ideas. Some of us see the baptism with the Spirit happening only at conversion and being a part of conversion. Others see the baptism with the Spirit as a second blessing that is to be received after a person has sought this for some time after conversion. And my whole reason for camping out here for a few weeks is to show that both groups in our day for the most part are guilty of quenching the Holy Spirit by either a slavish rigidity in ignoring what Scripture actually teaches or discounting what Scripture teaches because of personal experience. What I showed you two weeks ago, and I hope at this point you have taken your Bibles in your own time and looked at those passages in Acts, is that there is no set pattern for the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Luke uses about five different terms to describe this event. But what is true of every event in Acts regardless of the term used is that the baptism is a sovereign act of Christ. This baptism with the Spirit is to empower the people of God for the service of God. It is not for some deeper life or deeper Christian experience. This baptism could very well cause that but that is not the primary purpose. The baptism with the Holy Spirit is also not so that you will have some outward sign that you indeed have been filled. There may be a sign but there may not be. I think what has been greatly confused in our day and has successfully divided us into separate camps of Spirit filled and non Spirit filled is the confusion over the signs of being filled with or baptized with the Holy Spirit. Tongues seems in our day to be the preferred sign. But Christian history has stories of many other groups who preferred other things besides outward signs. One group after the Reformation of the 16 th Century spoke of an inner light which gave them instruction. And many times these people with the inner light would do things contrary to Scripture because of this inner light. 2
Just like in our day we have so called Spirit filled Christians who have experiences that are outside the hedge of Scripture. Here is a rule of thumb. If you have a so called spiritual experience that is not consistent with Scripture then you must doubt the validity of your experience. I am not saying you did not have an experience but what you may have had was not of the Holy Spirit. Experiences abound in our day that are psychologically or even hypnotically produced in churches and then the Holy Spirit is given credit. We must be aware of lying signs and wonders. Last week I laid a theological foundation for understanding the baptism with the Holy Spirit. If you will recall with me the Old Testament prophesied of a day that would come when no longer just certain people would have the Holy Spirit but all of God s people from the least to the greatest would be empowered by the Spirit of God. When you understand the Old Testament background of Holy Spirit empowered service you know that no one was given the Holy Spirit just for signs. They were empowered for particular service. And so in the New Testament when believers are empowered by the baptism with the Holy Spirit it will be for spiritual service to the Lord not to call attention to one s self. I think what will be helpful for us in our day is to understand the hermeneutic that will keep us from being overly focused on signs. What we need to understand and appreciate is that our Lord does not always work in the same way. Nor should we expect Him to. Miraculous events in the Bible are always for a reason and they are usually not going to be repeated. For instance, if I go to Egypt and decide to take the same path into the wilderness that Moses and the Israelites used I should not expect God to show up with a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. Nor should I expect for manna to fall from the sky to feed me. And when I get to the Red Sea it is probably not going to part for me to walk across on dry land just because it happened that way in the Bible. Now this is not doubting God s ability to do this. This is just understanding that God does not always act the same way. Likewise in the book of Acts when the disciples were baptized with the Holy Spirit they spoke in other languages but the text is very clear and they did so as the Spirit gave them utterance. They were not looking for this miracle they just received it. So I think it is a huge error to try and make a case that when you a Christian is baptized with the Holy Spirit that a miraculous sign will accompany this. The Holy Spirit is promised to all believers not signs and wonders. Likewise we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater and simply say that God no longer performs miracles. God is perfectly capable of doing whatever He desires in His sovereign will and we are not going to persuade Him not to do something He has already willed. So we should not seek after signs nor should we think that God no longer performs them. He acts according to His will. PNP So with that understanding what I would like for you to see today is two reasons we are given the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. We will look at several texts today. 1. We are given the Baptism with the Holy Spirit because of the sovereign will of God. 2. We are given the Baptism with the Holy Spirit for the purpose of the glory of God. 3
Purpose My purpose in preaching this is hopefully that we all will have a biblical understanding of the baptism with the Holy Spirit and that we will not quench the Holy Spirit in our lives, families, or our fellowship. We need the Holy Spirit. We need the Baptism with the Holy Spirit and we will do well to try and understand that baptism as well as we can. RPNP So look with me at these two reasons we are given the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. 1. We are given the Baptism with the Holy Spirit because of the sovereign will of God. I would like for you to turn to Acts 1 and look starting in verse 1. 1 In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, 2 until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. Notice that it was the Lord Jesus who chose the apostles. They did not choose Him He chose them. So He is sovereign over who will be His people. Look on to verse 3. 3 He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. I showed you last week that the coming of Christ ushered in the age of the Spirit which is the down payment for believers that proves that the Kingdom of God is coming. Christians can be confident precisely because of the promise of the Father to send us His Spirit. We walk through trials and tribulations because we have been given the Spirit and we know the Kingdom of God is coming. So for forty days after the resurrection the Lord Jesus was with the disciples and he taught them about the Kingdom of God. Now when we get to verse 4 the Lord has some orders for His disciples. Look at verse 4. 4 And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, you heard from me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. The order is to wait. The promised baptism with the Holy Spirit is coming. In God s sovereignty the disciples are told to just wait. Now this flies in the face of much modern charismatic methodology when it comes to the baptism with the Holy Spirit. I want you to understand that you do not need to go to a particular church or a particular preacher to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Peter said in Acts 2:39. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. Did you hear the Sovereignty in that passage? Who receives the promise of the Holy Spirit? everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. And the Lord Jesus Himself said in Luke 11:13: 4
13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! And not only that but it seems as you read the Book of Acts that the Lord gave the disciples the filling of the Holy Spirit at the exact moment that they needed to be filled. Peter is filled with the Holy Spirit when he preaches on Pentecost. He is filled again when he stands before the Sanhedrin on trial. The church is filled when they pray that the Lord would give them boldness to proclaim the Gospel. Paul is filled in order to fulfill his ministry. Stephen is filled with the Holy Spirit as he faces those and proclaims the Gospel to those who would stone him to death. Listen to Mark 13:11. 11 And when they bring you to trial and deliver you over, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. So many times we have the wrong idea of Christianity. We often think that we are to do all that our Lord calls us to do and not have any help. But it is He who accomplishes through us what He desires and what we could never do. It is the Lord who gives us His Spirit sovereignly to accomplish what He has decided for us. What we need to appreciate is the fact that it is God who fills us or baptizes us with His Spirit sovereignly. I want you to hear some New Testament passages that promise this. Listen to Philippians 1:6. 6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Listen to 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24. 23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it. Listen to 1 Corinthians 1:4-9. 4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, 5 that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge 6 even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you 7 so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 8 who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Why do we think small thoughts about what God can do? Why do we doubt God s ability to accomplish His will through us? It is because we look at ourselves as weak and 5
feeble which we are and we do not look at the power that is available to us through the gift of the Holy Spirit which the Lord promised to pour out on His people. So why does the Lord promise to pour out the Spirit on His people? That is our second point. 2. We are given the Baptism with the Holy Spirit for the purpose of the glory of God. Look again at Acts 1:6-8. 6 So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? 7 He said to them, It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. The Lord s desire is to empower His people. The Spirit would come upon them not so that they would be aware of all that the Lord was bringing to pass but rather for a particular purpose. Look at verse 8. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. So they would be His witnesses to the very ends of the earth. This is His sovereign will. This is for the glory of God. And this is for the entire church. Through the faithful Spirit empowered proclamation of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ by the people of God the rule and reign of Christ will be extended over the face of the earth. I want you to think about this for a minute. Evangelism is the ultimate in impossible tasks to do. If you as a Christian understand and appreciate what the Bible teaches about the lost sinner then you understand what an impossible task evangelism is. Trying to evangelize one person is impossible. They are dead in sins and trespasses. They are natural man which means that they are not even able to receive the things of God. They view the Gospel as foolishness or they stumble over a crucified Savior. They by their very nature reject God and reject the Gospel and choose sin. Now imagine a whole world of these people. And the disciples are told in Acts 1:8 and in other places as well that they will be Christ s witnesses in the whole world starting in Jerusalem which is the place where Jesus was rejected and crucified. Now in Acts 1 these are the same disciples who scattered when the Lord was crucified. But in Acts 2 they take on a whole new persona? Peter who denied the Lord when confronted by a servant girl now stands before thousands and proclaims the Gospel. And he did not water it down at all. Look at Acts 2. Look at verses 22-24. 6
22 Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know 23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. 24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. Look at 36-40. 36 Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. 37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brothers, what shall we do? 38 And Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. 40 And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, Save yourselves from this crooked generation. Peter heals a beggar near the temple as he was on his way there to pray. And the people were astonished and gathered around. Look at what he says in Acts 3:11-15. 11 While he clung to Peter and John, all the people, utterly astounded, ran together to them in the portico called Solomon s. 12 And when Peter saw it he addressed the people: Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we have made him walk? 13 The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. 14 But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, 15 and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. Now Peter and John are arrested. They are standing before the same men who had the Lord crucified. I want you to look at Acts 4:5-13. 5 On the next day their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem, 6 with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. 7 And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, By what power or by what name did you do this? 8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, Rulers of the people and elders, 9 if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, 10 let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead by him this man is standing before you well. 11 This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. 12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. 13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. 7
Where did the boldness come from? Where did the fire to stand up and say to these rulers that the man they had just had crucified is the Savior and they must repent and believe? It came from the baptism with the Holy Spirit. And God is glorified in the proclamation of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and He is glorified not only in the proclamation of the Gospel but also in the conversion of sinners. We need the baptism with the Holy Spirit to remove the timidity and fear that we all naturally have. If not for the empowering of the Spirit how many of us would be ashamed of the Gospel? Friday night I sat through a pseudo Gospel presentation. The man speaking talked about the Name of Jesus and how important the name of Jesus is to which I am in full agreement. He spoke for about five minutes. But in His so called Gospel presentation he never mentioned sin, never mentioned the cross, never mentioned repentance, and therefore never even mentioned the Gospel. He had a good story but he did not have the Gospel story. And he was speaking to I am sure at least a handful of unbelievers. You have to ask, what would a Spirit filled Peter have said to that group? You can bet that Peter would not have relied on a cute story but rather would have relied on the Gospel empowered by the Holy Spirit of God to accomplish the purposes of God. Every day almost you walk into places that are filled with lost people. It may be just one person in the marketplace or workplace that you get to talk to. You need to be filled with the Holy Spirit in order to evangelize a thousand people or one person and that is even your own children and grandchildren. Or God may call you to some distant shore where there are so many lost people you may be the only Christian there. What we need to appreciate is the global scope of Spirit empowered Gospel proclamation. The Lord meant His Gospel to go throughout the world. I want you to think about some passages with me this morning. Look at Acts 1:8 again. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. When the Lord Jesus sent His disciples out the first time in the Gospel account he sent them to the lost sheep of Israel. But now He sends them all over the world. And when the disciples got comfortable in Israel he sent persecution to them to scatter them among the nations. I want you to listen to Luke 13:20-21 and the parable of the leaven. 20 And again he said, To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? 21 It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened. The leaven here would be the Gospel and the world would be the three measures of flour. And when you put in the leaven it will eventually make its way all the way in and through the flour. 8
Now how are we going to impact not only the coast but the world with the Gospel? It will have to be by Spirit empowered proclamation of the Gospel. That was the methodology of the early church and that should be the methodology of the modern church. But as I said last week the church has traded pneumatology (the study of the Holy Spirit) for methodology. And in the process has sold her birthright for a mess of pottage. So how are we glorifying God when we desire to be Holy Spirit empowered? It proves where our allegiance lies. It shows that we have not set our hope on the wisdom of man or the deception of Satan but rather our hope is in God. Listen to 1 Timothy 4:10. 10 For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe. And then finally you have the scene in Revelation 7:9-10 of the culmination of redemptive history and you get to see into the future what we will one day see in Heaven. 9 After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb! Last week in the conclusion I said I wanted this week to look at what a Spirit filled congregation would look like. I think it can be argued that the first example of a Spirit filled congregation is in Acts 2:41-42. 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. 42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Did you notice what characterized them? The Apostle s teaching which would be recorded for us in the New Testament, fellowship, the Lord s Supper, and prayer. The person who is filled with the Spirit will desire these things. They will actively participate in these things. They will not be able to get enough of these things. They will love to be with the brethren and worship with the brethren. The opposite of this is divisiveness. Listen to Jude 1:19. 19 It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. One of these divisions was over food and drink, what was clean and unclean. These were mixed congregations and what I mean by mixed was Jews and Gentile Christians together. So there was bound to be some issues. After all when the Gentiles started bringing pork chops and ham and bean soup to the fellowships some of those Jews who had not freed themselves from the dietary laws of the Old Covenant would naturally have a problem. Paul did not have a problem with the pork chops and ham and beans so he writes in Romans 14 not to cause your brother to stumble by what you eat and drink. But then he finishes it off in verse 17 by saying. 17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. 9
Notice those three characteristics of the Kingdom. Righteousness, peace, and joy and all three of these are in the Holy Spirit. Let me challenge you here to further study. Use whatever tool you have available and look throughout the New Testament at the word Spirit and see what all the New Testament says about life in the Spirit and what the Spirit does and brings about. What you are going to be surprised at is the overwhelming amount of material available to us. I could literally spend the next two years expounding all those passages that speak about the activity of the Spirit of God in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we need to be filled with the Spirit of God in order to walk in the Spirit of God that will bring glory to God by our lives and by our Gospel proclamation. Let s pray. 10