You and the Holy Spirit, Part 1: No Shortcuts
Series: Acts
Chuck Sligh
February 9, 2014
There is a PowerPoint presentation available for this sermon upon request by emailing me at chucksligh@hotmail.com.
TEXT: Acts 1:4-8 – “And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. 5 For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.
6 When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? 7 And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. 8 But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”
INTRODUCTION
Illus. – When our boys were little we were scheduled to attend a field conference with my mission board in Interlaken, Switzerland. We decided to go a week early, and begin over in Saltzburg, Austria on the opposite end of Switzerland, and then drive west across Switzerland to Interlaken in time for our field conference that was to start that next Monday.
After seeing Saltsburg, we slowly meandered west, leisurely taking our time. Susan wanted to visit a quaint village several kilometers south of the main Autobahn, so I looked on the map and it looked like there was a non-Autobahn shortcut from that village straight west over to Interlaken. (This was long before GPS.) We visited this gorgeous village and then headed west to Interlaken on this road.
Well…what looked like a good straight road on the map was anything but in real life. A trip that should have taken half a day took us almost a day-and-a-half on a one-way road that that zig-zagged on hundreds of hair-pin curves directly up into some of the steepest mountains of Switzerland.
The scariest part was that about on 90% of the road, you were looking straight down cliffs and steep valleys WITH NO GUARD RAILS—ON A ONE-WAY ROAD! And the VERY scariest part was when we encountered another vehicle. Have you ever tried to drive IN REVERSE to a little pull-off so a car can pass by with deep cliffs and valleys on one side with no guardrails? Believe me; you NEVER want to do that!
You see, sometimes shortcuts aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Hold that thought until the end of this sermon because we’re going to come back to it. But this truth segways right into our subject today about the Holy Spirit.
There’s a lot of confusion about the Holy Spirit today. Some Christian brethren would have you believe that there is an experience after your salvation which they mistakenly call the “baptism of the Holy Spirit,” and that the evidence of this baptism (they say) is speaking in tongues. I believe these teachings stem from a basic misunderstanding of what the Bible teaches about the Holy Spirit.
Well, who exactly IS the Holy Spirit? What really is the “baptism with the Holy Spirit”? Is it a second work of grace that takes place after salvation? If you haven’t experienced what these brethren describe, are you missing something that could revolutionize your life and provide a shortcut to victory? Is it manifested by speaking in tongues or other miraculous phenomena? Finally, what does the Holy Spirit actually DO in our lives?
We’ll address all these questions in the next couple of months in our study of the book of Acts. Today we’ll look at who the Holy Spirit is, and when He came, and next Sunday and the following Sunday we’ll explore what the Holy Spirit DOES in the world and in our lives.
I. FIRST, LET’S CONSIDER WHO EXACTLY IS HOLY SPIRIT
There are two simple, yet profound, things to know to understand who the Holy Spirit is:
• First you may have noticed that I refer to the Holy Spirit as HE instead of IT. That’s because the Holy Spirit is not an impersonal force, but a real PERSON.
That’s why we generally prefer to call Him the Holy “Spirit” in today’s vocabulary, instead of the Holy “Ghost” as it is found in the King James Version of the Bible. Today, the word “ghost” conjures up Casper the friendly Ghost or some scary phantom from the other world, so today we call Him the “Holy SPIRIT” to capture the real meaning of the Bible word.
The Bible speaks of the Holy Spirit as a real person, with all the attributes of personality: He has a mind; He thinks; He has a will; He has emotions; He forbids and permits and speaks and loves; He can be angered and grieved. All of these are characteristics of a person, not an impersonal force.
• Second, not only is the Holy Spirit A PERSON, but He is also GOD.
He’s the third person in the Trinity; one of the persons of the one triune God. He’s every bit as much God as God the Father and God the Son. The Bible teaches that there is only one God, but He exists in three persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
You say, “Brother Sligh, how can that be? How can three persons be one God?” I say, “I don’t know. I cannot understand it; I cannot explain it— but that’s what the Bible teaches.”
You say, “But that defies my understanding.” There are many things about God that defy our puny, limited, finite minds. John Wesley once said, “Bring me a worm that can comprehend a man, and then I will show you a man who can comprehend the triune God.”
The Bible is full of references to the deity of the Holy Spirit. It repeatedly ascribes the same characteristics and attributes to the Holy Spirit as are attributed to God the Father and God the Son.
For instance—
> The Holy Spirit is OMNIPRESENT, which means there is no place in the universe where God is not immediately present (Ps. 139:7)
> He’s OMNISCIENT, that is, He knows all things (1 Cor. 2:10-11)
> He is OMNIPOTENT, or all-powerful (Gen. 1:2)
> He is eternal (Heb. 9:14)
> He is called God (Acts 5:3-4)
> And in many passages in the Bible the Holy Spirit is said to be co-equal with the Father and the Son. (Examples: Matthew 3:16-17, 4:1-7, 28:19-20; John 14:16, 26; 15:26; Acts 2:33; Romans 8:2-3; 2 Corinthians 13:14; Ephesians 2:18; 1 Peter 4:14)
So, we’ve see first WHO the Holy Spirit is: He is a PERSON and that He is GOD.
II. LET’S CONSIDER SECONDLY WHEN THE HOLY SPIRIT CAME – Acts 1:4-5 – “And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. 5 For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.”
Jesus told His disciples to wait for “the promise of the Father.” The promise was that Jesus would baptize them with the Holy Spirit. This “baptism with [or “in”] the Holy Spirit” is one of the most misunderstood, mischaracterized, misinterpreted phrases in the Bible.
Illus. – In my first year of college, I had gotten away from close fellowship with the Lord and felt something was missing in my life. One day I met some long-haired college students who were “Jesus Freaks.” Being saved and all was cool, they said, but there was something MORE I needed—a second experience they called the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which would give me more power in my Christian walk and help me be more what God wanted.
I had been having a lot of defeat in my Christian life, and the idea that I could have some experience that would help me leap forward in spiritual maturity appealed to me, as it would any Christian. So, in all sincerity, I prayed to God for the baptism of the Holy Spirit and a few weeks later I spoke in what I was told were tongues. I joined in the movement and was an active Charismatic for almost a year.
The problem was that I already had what I prayed for according to the Bible. Also, as we’ll see later on in Acts, what I thought was speaking in tongues was not at all what the Bible calls speaking in tongues. Worst of all, I found myself more defeated in my Christian life than ever. Something was wrong.
The problem was that I had started with 2 wrong premises—namely that I, as a born-again believer, did not already have the baptism with the Holy Spirit and, second, that it was something that I had to ask God for.
Now there is a very important key that unlocks the secret of this whole matter of the baptism with the Holy Spirit. That key is found in the original language in which the Bible was written.
Without getting too technical here, let me just say that the key is found in the fact that the Greek word for “baptize” here is in the punctiliar passive future tense. You say, “The WHAT?”—The punctiliar passive future tense.
I know that’s mumbo-jumbo to you, and you’ll never need to remember that fact, but here’s what you really SHOULD take away from this: The punctiliar passive future tense was used in the Greek of an action that was to take place in the future at ONE particular time, ONCE FOR ALL. In other words, Jesus was saying this: “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit—at one exact time, once-and-for-all.”
So…when was this once-and-for-all, exact, particular event that Jesus promised? It happened on the Day of Pentecost, as we’ll see later in Acts 2. The baptism with the Holy Spirit was a ONCE-IN-HISTORY EVENT—which took place on the Day of Pentecost, and was NEVER repeated again.
When the Holy Spirit was given at Pentecost, all believers in the church age were baptized with the Holy Spirit all at the same time into the body of Christ. In other words, it’s not something that happens to Christians individually over and over again at the request of believers. Rather, it’s something that happened involuntarily to ALL believers collectively at a single moment in history—an act which the believer has no active part in receiving.
So if you’re born-again today; if you’re saved this morning—you were baptized with the Holy Spirit 2,000 years ago. It’s not in an experience AFTER salvation, nor even something that occurs on the day of your salvation, as is commonly taught by many. It happened one time—once-and-for-all on a single day—the day of Pentecost—almost two thousand years ago.
Spiros Zodhiates, one of the world’s greatest living New Testament Greek scholars says this:
The baptism in the Spirit by Christ of every believer into His body is a historical event similar to His incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and coming again. Christ did it ONCE-AND-FOR-ALL when He sent His Holy Spirit…in Acts….It is NOT SOMETHING THAT WE EXPERIENCE, but something that Jesus Christ did once-and-for-all in joining all believers into His body. (Spiros Zodhiates, The Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985), p. 1403 in his hotes on 1 Corinthians 12:13 (uppercase emphasis mine).
So if you’re saved today, you’ve ALREADY been baptized with the Holy Spirit! You can’t ask for and receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit because it’s not something you have an active part in receiving. Jesus ALREADY baptized you in the Holy Spirit—and every other believer in the church age—2,000 years ago on the Day Pentecost.
Praying for the baptism of the Holy Spirit is like asking for your inheritance from your parents after they’d already given it to you years ago. – They’d say, “What are you talking about? I’ve already given you your inheritance. I can’t give it to you twice.”
You can look through the whole New Testament and you’ll find that, though we’re commanded to BE REPEATEDLY FILLED with the Spirit (which simply means to be constantly controlled by the Spirit), we’re never told to be BAPTIZED with the Spirit. Why?—Because it was already done two thousand years ago.
APPLICATION AND CONCLUSION
So we’ve seen two main points so far this morning: We looked first at WHO THE HOLY SPIRIT IS. – He is a PERSON and He is GOD. Second, we examined WHEN HOLY SPIRIT CAME. – He came on the Day of Pentecost, as we’ll see in detail in a few weeks when we study Acts 2. Next week and the week following we’ll examine what the Holy Spirit does in this world and in the lives of believers. But this morning, let’s make some personal applications to our lives from what we’ve learned this morning.
• First, if the Holy Spirit is a person, do you know this Person?
That’s another way of saying, “Do you know God?” because, remember, the Holy Spirit IS God. Do you KNOW Him?… Not “Do you know about God?” or “Do you have a religion?” or “Are you a member of a church?”—but do you know HIM…PERSONALLY?
In other words, have you been born into God’s family by being saved? Do you have the Holy Spirit living inside you by your faith in Jesus Christ? If not, or if you’re not sure, then I hope that you’ll turn to Jesus Christ as your Savior today.
• Second, if you’re saved, let me warn to be careful about shortcuts in your Christian life.
There are many things in Christianity that purport to give you a boost in the Christian life—that will allegedly help you leap from spiritual babyhood to maturity.
> Our Charismatic and Pentecostal brethren—and they ARE our brethren, and may we never forget that—they talk of “being baptized by the Holy Spirit.”
> The Nazarenes and some old-line Methodists talk of a “second blessing” after salvation that can conceivably lead you to a state of sinless perfection.
> Some say you can jump to the head of the pack by attending some special seminar, or by espousing some particular doctrinal scheme, like Calvinism, or through the teachings of a particular teacher or preacher.
But ALL of these are false hopes that leave believers discouraged and disillusioned when the boom falls and people realize that they are no better—or at best only marginally better—Christians than they were before.
Illus. – I shared earlier how I got involved in the Charismatic Movement. I remember going home to Okinawa, where my parents were missionaries, after that first year of college and found myself somewhat unstable in my Christian life and realizing I had not grown in any substantial ways in my Christian life.
After returning home, my very concerned parents persuaded me to take a semester off to figure out what was going on in my Christian life. I thought to myself: I ought to be a stronger believer than ever after experiencing the so-called “baptism of the Holy Spirit” and by speaking in tongues and having all the experiences I had had. But, in fact, I was at the lowest point ever in my walk with God—spiritually, morally and emotionally.
I remember getting into God’s Word more than at any time in my life. The more I got to know God in His Word—the WHOLE OF HIS WORD, not just the portions that deal with spiritual gifts and the Holy Spirit—the less I needed emotionally to speak in tongues.
After about six months of in-depth study of the Word and sweet fellowship with the Lord, and coming to realize the error of the doctrines I had come to believe—I decided to stop speaking in tongues altogether, and never have since, except to demonstrate it. It was in God’s Word and in obedience to its precepts that I began to grow in my Christian life and get victory over certain sins in my life.
In that time of struggle, I learned one of the most important keys to the Christian life: That is that there are NO SHORTCUTS to Christian maturity. I remember reading two verses in Isaiah 28 (which I would like for you to turn to now) that God used to show me this truth. Look at verses 9-10 – “Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts. 10 For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little.”
What was Isaiah saying?—He was saying that there’s not a single experience that will catapult you to spiritual maturity. There are no shortcuts; no magic bullets; no panaceas.
Spirituality is never a giant leap—
> Precept must be upon precept.
> You must learn line upon line.
> You learn a little here, and a little there.
Maturity is a multitude of tiny steps—one after the other. Each previous one is necessary for the next one. You cannot jump too many steps at a time.
Illus. – The Holy Spirit matures believers like a cheese maker matures cheese—slowly but surely until the time is right—and not before.
So the question for you is NOT “Have you received the baptism of the Holy Spirit” or the second blessing or the latest seminar, but…
> Have you been in the Word this week?
> Have you been obedient to God this week?
> Have you been in the Lord’s house, and in a homegroup or a Bible study so you can hear the Word preached and taught so you can grow in the Lord?
> Have you had a steady input of godly music and godly reading rather than a steady diet of the world’s entertainment?
THESE are things that ultimately produce growth. We are changed a little bit more each day we as we learn God’s Word and obey what it says. God help us to work at it patiently day by day, and not look for some magic bullet that will be a shortcut to spirituality.
In fact, what you think is a magic bullet really short-circuits God’s plan for your life. So be patient; be faithful; keep on keeping on; study the Word; be faithful to God’s house; hang around Christians; have godly input in your life.
THESE THINGS mark the road to spiritual maturity.
