The Gift of the Holy Spirit, Acts 2:14a, 36-41
Introduction
Along our highways, well placed at appropriate locations, are official signs which give us direction and warn us of danger. Most of these are the reflector type; that is, they are designed to reflect the light of auto headlamps.
In darkness, they are invisible to anyone who travels without a light. But when our auto headlights are flashed upon these signs, they reflect back to us their message of guidance or caution. Their night-time aid to us depends upon the light we bring to them. They have no meaning for unlighted lamps.
God would like to guide us through the days and through the years of this life. His signs are out there – in all the appropriate places. But whether we see them will depend upon the light with which we approach them.
Transition
This morning, I want to talk to you about what is – apart from salvation and eternal life – the greatest of all gifts that God has given to His Church. This morning I want to talk about what it is which lights our way through the signs of this life; what it is that gives meaning, hope, comfort, and encouragement to us.
This morning I will talk to you about the great gift given to us; The Holy Spirit!
This week has been a difficult week for my family. In fact this message that I am presenting to you took shape in the midst of my personal need for its content.
It is always amazing to me the providence of God and how he uses circumstances in our lives to reveal Himself to us and even to allow us to be used in His plan of revealing Himself to others.
I encourage you never to believe the lie that God is the author of evil in your life. But I also encourage you to never forget that God is always at work redeeming the evil in your life for His glory. I had intended to go in quite a different direction this morning, but as my week and this sermon took shape, my life and our Lord had other plans.
The content of this message helped carry me through a challenging week and brought great encouragement to me. I trust that as we examine this material about the work of the Holy Spirit that it will bring the same encouragement to you.
Exposition
In last week’s Scripture reading we saw the change that occurred inside of Peter as he went from a man who had denied Christ three times of the eve of Jesus arrest into a man who loudly and boldly proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In today’s Scripture reading we pick up where we left off in the life of the early Church. After Peter’s mighty sermon it says that “they who listened were pierced to the heart” and said to Peter and the other Apostles “what shall we do?”
Peter’s answer: "Repent, be baptized, and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."
The first principal that Peter shares concerning the receiving of the gift of the Holy Spirit is that of repentance. Peter is telling us that only those who have confessed their sinfulness to God and turned from a love of sin to obedience in Christ Jesus may receive the Holy Spirit.
Repentance is an often used though seldom understood word. The Webster’s dictionary of 1828 defines repentance this way;
In theology, the pain, regret or affliction which a person feels on account of his past conduct, because it exposes him to punishment. This sorrow proceeding merely from the fear of punishment, is called legal repentance, as being excited by the terrors of legal penalties, and it may exist without an amendment of life.
Real penitence; sorrow or deep contrition for sin, as an offense and dishonor to God, a violation of his holy law, and the basest ingratitude towards a Being of infinite benevolence. This is called evangelical repentance, and is accompanied and followed by amendment of life.
In the early 1920’s, then Governor Neff of the State of Texas received an invitation to speak at one of the penitentiaries in that state. He spoke to the assembled prisoners, and afterward said that he would be around for a while to listen to anything any of the convicts might wish to tell him.
He would take as much time as they wanted, and anything they would tell him would be kept in confidence. The convicts began to come, one at a time. One after another told him a story of how they had been unjustly sentenced, were innocent, and wished to get out.
Finally one man came through who said to him, "Governor Neff, I do not want to take much of your time. I only want to say that I really did what they convicted me of. But I have been here a number of years. I believe I have paid my debt to society, and that, if I were to be released, I would be able to live an upright life and show myself worthy of your mercy."
This was the man whom Governor Neff pardoned and this is the kind of repentance that God requires of us if we are to be forgiven and filled with the Holy Spirit.
In the book of Revelation 3:19 Jesus says, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent." (NKJV)
The second principal that Peter shares concerning the receiving of the gift of the Holy Spirit is to be baptized. It is interesting that Peter first says to repent and then to be baptized and then to receive the Holy Spirit.
I suspect that there were just as many people who misunderstood the meaning of baptism in the days of the early Church as there are today. Baptism is an outward sign of the seal of the covenant of grace. It is not the seal of that covenant itself.
There are those who teach that a person can not be saved apart from having been baptized. And not only that, they teach that a person must be baptized in a very particular way. This teaching is known as baptismal regeneration.
The Bible though, knows nothing of this doctrine as it implies that salvation is somehow based on our efforts. This teaching says, "If I get baptized then God will be merciful to me, if I get baptized just the right way and in the right church then God will show me grace!"
This teaching is contrary to the free gift of salvation that is taught throughout the Scriptures. Baptism is important but water gets you wet; grace by faith saves.
James 1:16-18 tells us, "Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father … that we might be a kind of first fruits of His creatures." (NKJV)
In Romans 4:16 The Apostle Paul writes, "Therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all." (NKJV)
Once we have turned to Christ and publicly proclaimed our faith then we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit – the comforter. While this gift is of immense and immeasurable value, it also comes at a price doesn’t it?
In Matthew 10:38 Jesus says, "And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me." (NKJV) In order to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit we need not make ourselves worthy through good works or any of our own doing – we need only lay down our lives at the foot of His wonderful Cross.
We need only allow Christ to clothe us in His righteousness and then He will fill us with His precious Spirit. And what a precious gift this is! Have you walked through a period of time in your life when you looked back and could barely understand what brought you through it? It was as though you were being guided by an unseen hand.
I read the story of a man and his five year old daughter. One afternoon he and some friends and family went to spend an afternoon at a river. Some of the adults decided to walk out to an island in the middle of the river. His daughter wanted to come out with him.
He returned to shore and took her hand. She stepped into the water but held on tightly to a branch on the shore. She was afraid of the river but wanted to go where her daddy was going. He told her, "You must let go of the branch if you want to come”. She said that she was afraid that she would sink. “I have your hand." He said. "You won’t sink and if you start to, I will lift you up."
Fearfully she let go of the branch. The man knew the water was just over waist deep and he guided her feet to each rock. When they began, she had no confidence, but she stepped on the rocks that her father guided her to.
With each step she gained more confidence until she was eagerly reaching for each stone and soon we reached the middle. This man wrote of how he looked back on this experience and realized that this is exactly how God deals with us.
In Psalms 37:23-24 the Psalmist writes, "The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD, And He delights in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; For the LORD upholds him with His hand." (NKJV)
When we are yielded to the presence of God in our lives, in a sense, we free God to guide us just as this father guided his little daughter through her fears to the other side of the water.
It occurs to me that many of us don’t experience this kind of guiding and leading by the Holy Spirit merely because we aren’t looking for it. We go through each day living as though we are only dependent on ourselves and as though there is nothing that we can not handle on our own.
We do well to remember the words of Jesus in John 15:5, "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." (NKJV)
Conclusion
God is always active in our lives. The Holy Spirit is always moving in us and through us. It’s just that we seldom stop to pay attention until those times when we need Him the most – when we are afraid, when we are scared, when times are uncertain and we just don’t know where to turn.
It is at those times when we can always turn to the Lord and if we yield ourselves to His presence in our lives then we will find that it is His hand guiding us across troubled waters and that it is the light of His love lighting the signs around us which point to our way.
And finally, be encouraged by the words of Richard Owen Roberts, a fellow Congregational Pastor and the founder of International Awakening Ministries, who says, "Living one day in the Spirit is worth more than a thousand lived in the flesh."
This morning, I encourage you to be ever mindful of God’s leading and guiding in your life. If you are uncertain or afraid, remember that we have received the gift of the Holy Spirit; we do not walk this road alone.
Amen.
