To misunderstand this passage we are looking at today is to
put in jeopardy the entire purpose of the Holy Spirit and His ministry to the
church. Understanding this text
correctly is crucial to understanding not only the purpose of the church, and
the function of the church, but the empowerment of the church.
One of the main reasons that the church is not functioning
effectively in our society today is that many people are completely clueless
about the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Lack of understanding the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is one of the main reasons why the average
Christian feels powerless to live a godly life. The church has never in it’s history been as superficial and
anemic in regards to true spirituality and godliness than it is today and that
is largely due to an incorrect, unbiblical understanding of the ministry of the
Holy Spirit.
And that is ironic, isn’t it? It’s ironic because there is more emphasis today on what is claimed
to be the power of the Holy Spirit than at almost any other time in church
history. There is more emphasis on
the gifts of the Holy Spirit today than at any other time in recent history and
yet this age is characterized by superficial, worldly, carnal churches that are
more consumed with prosperity and physical “blessings” than they are with
godliness.
Well, I don’t want to build a church like that. And I’m confident that if you’re here
today you do not want a church like that either. There are a lot of other churches out there you could be a
part of that would fill the bill if you were looking for superficial Christianity. But I believe, and I hope you believe, that
God has a blueprint for His true church.
I don’t believe that God has given us the church so that we might have
52 different flavors and you get to pick the one you like the most. I believe that He gave us the
blueprint of His church that we are to pattern ours after right here in the
first few chapters of Acts. So I
want to carefully examine this text so that we can be sure that we follow that
example faithfully. And also so
that we might have the kind of fruitfulness that God expects us to have - the
kind of fruitfulness that we see characterized in this first church which is
given for our example and encouragement.
The key to understanding the context of this momentous event
in church history is found in the eighth verse of the chapter one. In Jesus’ last instructions to the
disciples before His ascension He told them to wait for the promise of what He
called the baptism of the Holy Spirit
in just a few days. Then Jesus said in Acts 1:8 “but you will
receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My
witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the
remotest part of the earth."
So what were they to wait for? The power of the Holy Spirit. The power to do what?
Be His witnesses. To be His
witnesses in word and deed. And
right there we should understand the nature of the baptism of the Holy
Spirit. The Holy Spirit provides
the power to carry out the ministry of Jesus Christ. It’s not necessarily the power to speak in tongues. To limit it to that would be to
shortchange the ministry of the Holy Spirit. It is the power to be the ministers of Jesus Christ to the
world, by empowering His body, the believers in Christ, to be able to reveal
Jesus Christ to the world in word and deed.
The first church we have as the premier example before us
today had none of the usual things that we think are so essential for church success
today. They didn’t have a
building, they didn’t have any youth or children’s programs, they didn’t have a
worship team, they didn’t have social status in the community, and yet this
church won thousands to Christ and sent out people who would start other
churches throughout the world.
Why? Because the church had
the power of the Holy Spirit empowering it’s ministry. Their people were empowered by the Holy
Spirit to become shining witnesses, testimonies to the transforming power of
salvation.
So it behooves us to examine this passage carefully so that
we might faithfully follow their example and fulfill Christ’s purpose for our
church. First of all, note that
the Apostles and the rest of the church were waiting for the empowerment of the
Holy Spirit as Jesus had told them.
And on the tenth day after the ascension came the day of Pentecost, the
day that Christ had promised. It
is important to understand what that day signified for the Jew. Now please bear with me, this is
important.
Pentecost means 50th, which means this feast
happened 50 days after the feast of the First Fruits as indicated in Leviticus
23. There are three feasts there
which illustrate the work of Jesus Christ. The Passover pictured the death of Jesus as the Passover
Lamb. Then came the feast of the
First Fruits which pictured Christ’s resurrection from the dead. And then 50 days later was the feast of
Pentecost which pictured the formation of His church.
The feast of First Fruits was observed the day after the
Sabbath following Passover, which meant that it was Sunday, the first day of
the week. Christ was crucified on the Passover, was resurrected on the day of
First Fruits, Sunday, and then Fifty days after that would fall on a Sunday as
well. So the day of Pentecost, the
day the church was inaugurated by the Holy Spirit was on a Sunday.
During the feast of First Fruits, the priest would offer a
wave offering of a sheaf of grain.
But during the feast of Pentecost they would offer two loaves of
bread. And contrary to the feast
of Passover, the bread loaves of Pentecost had yeast in them, so they would
rise. Now what this signifies is
that grains which are the fruits are baptized by the Holy Spirit into one body,
represented by the loaves of bread.
And there are two loaves which represent the Jews and the Gentiles. The
Jewish believers received the baptism of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and the
Gentile believers are baptized in the Spirit at the house of Cornelius which is
found in Acts 10. And the
fact that the loaves are baked with leaven indicates that the presence of sin
will be in the church. The church
will not be perfect until it is one day glorified in the presence of God.
So the believers and apostles are all together on the day of
Pentecost. We don’t know if they
were in the upper room or not at that time. It would have to be a very large room if they were, because
there were 120 people gathered together.
Some think that they would have been in the temple worshipping God
together when this happened. The
word house there can also be translated as temple. So that would explain the reaction from the multitude to
what would have been a very public phenomenon.
As they were gathered together, a sound like a violent rushing wind fills the place
where they were. It doesn’t say it
was a rushing wind, but a sound like a violent rushing wind. I imagine it might have sounded like a
siren. If you’ve ever been in a
hurricane you know that sometimes the wind blows so hard it starts to whine
like some sort of siren. So there
is this loud, wailing kind of sound that fills the place and alerts everyone
that something is happening.
Then it says that tongues like fire, or as of fire, appeared
and were distributed over the heads of each one of those in the church. And then the third part of the
phenomena, they were all filled
with the Holy Spirit and began to
speak in other languages of the mighty works of God as the Spirit was giving
them utterance. Now all three of
these things make up what Jesus described as the baptism of the Holy Spirit in
chapter 1 vs. 5.
I find it interesting that those people that claim a baptism
of the Holy Spirit today only seem concerned with the third aspect of the
phenomenon, that of speaking in tongues.
I haven’t heard any sound like a siren coming from those churches, or
seen any tongues of fire distributing themselves on anyone’s head. Furthermore, in the first experience everyone
could understand what was being said in their own language, which is in direct contrast
with what happens today when no one can understand anything that is being
said. Quite a different
experience, I would say between what happened in Acts 2 and what is happening
today.
So what exactly happened there in this baptism of the Holy
Spirit? What did it signify and
what purpose did it achieve? Well
the Greek word for baptize is “baptizo” which has two meanings, one literal and
one figurative. Literally, it means to be immersed, but the figurative meaning
is to identified with. So first of
all the baptism of the Spirit means to be identified with Christ, the head of
the church, and secondly to be formed as the spiritual body of Christ on earth,
that is the church.
1Cor. 12:12-13 says, “For even as the body is one and yet
has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one
body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,
whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink
of one Spirit.”
Now try to understand how this works with me for a
moment. If we are to become
Christ’s body on earth, then how is that possible? How does my physical body become the spiritual body of
Christ? Well, it becomes the
spiritual body of Christ when Christ’s Spirit indwells my body. When does that happen? It happens at salvation. We are born again by the Spirit of God,
made holy and righteous through
the transference of the righteousness of Christ to us, and then indwelled by
the Spirit of Christ, that we might have the mind of Christ controlling our
body.
And that indwelling produces the third aspect of that
baptism, we are filled with the Spirit.
That means we are controlled by the Spirit. The energy, the power to energize this body the way Christ
would have it operate is by being filled with the Spirit. That power of the Spirit which fills us
is like the wind that fills the sails of a ship. It fills the sails and the ship is mobilized, it is under
power.
Now let’s break all that down a little more in hopes of
getting this settled in our minds.
Because it’s difficult enough to understand on it’s own, but when you
add all the disinformation that has accumulated in many of us from years of bad
teaching, or lack of teaching on this subject, then it becomes even more
difficult.
The three aspects of the baptism of the Holy Spirit are
first of all, identification.
We are identified with
Christ. We are born again by the
Spirit of Christ and are now in the family of God. Secondly, we are baptized into one body. All believers are joined together and
related because we all are one in Christ, and we all are indwelled with the
Spirit of Christ. And then
thirdly we are all filled with the Spirit, that means given the power of the
Spirit who enables us to do the works of Christ.
It’s important to note that historically the baptism of the
Holy Spirit took place in two stages.
The Jewish believers were baptized at Pentecost and the Gentiles were
baptized later at the home of Cornelius.
Today the baptism of the Spirit happens when a sinner is converted and
born again by the Spirit of Christ.
You are instantly spiritually reborn into the family of God, you are
instantly baptized into the body of Christ, the church, joined to every
believer, and you are instantly filled with the permanent indwelling of the
Holy Spirit. All of that happened
by the way with the 3000 souls that were saved as Peter preached. There was not a subsequent baptism for
those 3000. They were saved,
baptized in water and immediately added to the church.
Let me point out another reference which I think pictures
this very well. As you know, the
children of Israel are an OT picture of the church. And Paul relates the baptism of the Israelites to the church
in 1Cor. 10:1-4 “For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our
fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and all were
baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and all ate the same spiritual food; and all drank the same spiritual drink,
for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock
was Christ.” Moses is a type of Christ. In Acts 3:22
it says, “Moses said, ‘THE LORD GOD WILL RAISE UP FOR YOU A PROPHET LIKE ME
FROM YOUR BRETHREN; TO HIM YOU SHALL GIVE HEED to everything He says to you.” So the Israelites which are a type of
the church are baptized into Moses in two ways: in the cloud, that is the Shekinah
glory of God which went before them to guide them by day and dwelt in the
temple in the middle of their camp, a constant presence with them, and they
were also baptized into the sea, that is the Red Sea. That represented identification with Moses, separation from
the world, Egypt, and salvation from death. And then you see the unity in the same spiritual food, the
same spiritual drink, all coming from the rock who is Christ.
So in like manner, as the church of Christ, we are
identified with Him, become one with His body, and are filled with His Spirit
who leads us and guides us as He indwells us. He is constantly with us because He is within us. We are not told to seek a baptism of the
Holy Spirit, because that is done once for all when we are born again, but we
are told to be continually filled with the power of the Holy Spirit because we
need His power if we are going to serve God effectively. On the day of Pentecost, they were
baptized with the Holy Spirit and filled with the Spirit simultaneously. But afterwards, though there were more
fillings of the Spirit to do a particular work, they did not experience any
more baptisms. There is a
distinction between baptism and filling.
For instance, baptism means I belong to His body, being
filled means that my body belongs to Him. Baptism is non-repeatable, but the filling is repeated over
and over again as we trust God for the
power to do what He asks us to do. Baptism involves all believers being
united into one body, but filling is individually done as we yield to Him.
Now let’s consider the languages and the purpose and meaning
of that part of this phenomenon.
Luke tells us that there were God fearing, devout Jews from 15 different
nations present, and they each heard the gospel proclaimed in their own
language. Verse 4 the word used
for language or tongues is glossa, which refers to language, but in vs.6 the
word used is dialektos and means dialect.
There is no question that means that each person understood what the
disciples were saying in their own native language or dialect.
The question is why did this happen? What is the significance of this
sign? Well, I gave away the answer
in my question. The speaking of
various foreign languages happened as a sign to the unbelieving Jews. We are going to examine Peter’s message
in more detail next time, but note for now that Peter says this baptism of the
Holy Spirit happened according to the prophecy of Joel 2:28-32.
First and foremost then, tongues were for a sign. They happened as a sign to the Jews that a particular prophecy
was being fulfilled. And Paul confirms this by quoting Isaiah in 1Cor. 14:21,
“In the Law it is written, ‘BY MEN OF STRANGE TONGUES AND BY THE LIPS OF
STRANGERS I WILL SPEAK TO THIS PEOPLE, AND EVEN SO THEY WILL NOT LISTEN TO ME,’
says the Lord. So then tongues are
for a sign, not to those who believe but to unbelievers.”
Now that is exactly what Peter is talking about when he
stands up and rebukes those in the crowd who had suggested that they might have
been drunk with wine. Peter says
no, it’s only 9 o’clock in the morning, no one here has been drinking at 9 in
the morning. But he says in vs. 17
“'AND IT SHALL BE IN THE LAST DAYS,' God says, 'THAT I WILL POUR FORTH OF MY
SPIRIT ON ALL MANKIND; AND YOUR SONS AND YOUR DAUGHTERS SHALL PROPHESY, AND
YOUR YOUNG MEN SHALL SEE VISIONS, AND YOUR OLD MEN SHALL DREAM DREAMS; EVEN ON MY BONDSLAVES, BOTH MEN AND
WOMEN, I WILL IN THOSE DAYS POUR FORTH OF MY SPIRIT And they shall prophesy.”
This phenomenon was a sign of the outpouring of the Holy
Spirit to those unbelieving Jews, the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon the
disciples to be a witness to them, that the last days had come upon Israel,
just as Joel and the prophets had warned it would. And a sign of these last days would be that by the languages
of foreigners they would hear of the gospel of Christ and yet still they would
not believe. Israel as a nation
would reject Christ. Thankfully,
3000 of them did repent that day in response to that sign, and they were saved
and God added them to the church.
But the nation of Israel as a whole did not repent, they continued to
persecute and put to death the witnesses of the gospel (that’s what the Greek
word witness came to mean, martyrs).
And so it would not be only about 35 more years ( this generation)
before the judgment of God would fall upon Israel and the temple was destroyed
and hundreds of thousands of them were killed and the rest dispersed. This phenomenon was a sign that the end
of the age of the nation of Israel had come.
The phenomenon also correlated with the Tower of Babel which
we read about in Genesis 11. At
that time the men of the world spoke the same language and thought that they
would build a temple reaching to heaven as a testament to their great civilization. But God came down from heaven and
confused their language and dispersed them throughout the world. So God’s judgment at Babel dispersed
one people into many nations, but the Spirit at Pentecost united many nations
into God’s people, bringing both the Jews and the Gentiles into one body, the
church. At the Tower of Babel one
language was confused into many, but at Pentecost people of many languages
understood the gospel in their own dialect.
The bottom line is this; the baptism of the Holy Spirit is
given so that we might be saved, identified with Christ, so that we might be
unified with all other believers into the body of Christ, and so that we might
have the power to be witnesses for Christ. But though baptism of the Spirit happens once at salvation,
there is a daily need to be filled with the Spirit.
Did you know that Plato and the ancient Greek philosophers,
long before the time of Christ, taught that the highest religious expression
was found in a phenomenon of speaking in strange syllables which was induced by
drunkenness? This was practiced by
the Greeks in their drunken, religious orgies. So it’s interesting that some people observing what was
happening would automatically assume the disciples were drunk. But Peter is quick to show that they
were not drunk. And furthermore,
this wasn’t some nonsensical gibberish, but it was men speaking of the mighty
works of God.
So in reference to what Peter said in rebuttal to the charge
of drunkenness, let’s look at how Paul contrasts drunkenness and being filled
with the Spirit in Ephesians 5:18. “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is
dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual
songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; and be subject to one another in the
fear of Christ.” Paul goes on to
talk about wives being subject to husbands, husbands sacrificing themselves for
their wives, parents, children, slaves, workers, etc, being subject to one
another as unto the Lord.
So what Paul is showing in verse 18 is the contrast between
drunkenness and being filled with the Holy Spirit. When a person is filled with alcohol, he loses control of
himself and dishonors himself and God.
But when a man is filled with the Spirit, he exhibits self control and
honors God. That is the contrast
and it is given to illustrate what being filled with the Spirit is and is
not. Being filled with the Spirit
then is to exhibit self control, self discipline. Unfortunately, that is not what we see most often when we
witness the charismatic outbursts on CBN.
They revel in spiritual drunkenness which they claim is of the Holy Spirit. They
babble incoherently. They exhibit
a lack of control, a lack of discipline, and dishonor God. Paul makes it clear
that they know not what sort of spirit they are of.
If you are being filled with the Spirit, that is under the
control of the Spirit, then you will walk in the Spirit and bring honor to God
by the way that you live. We have
the power of the Holy Spirit available to us, indwelling in us, if we are
saved. The dilemma is whether or
not we will trust in the Spirit and walk in the Spirit and be obedient to the
Spirit. When we do, we will be
filled with the power to do so, and in so doing, we will be witnesses to the
transforming power of Christ.
Let me close by reading Galatians 5:19 which shows us that
contrast between the life lived as evidence of the flesh and the life evidenced
as of the Spirit. “Now the deeds
of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife,
jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and
things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that
those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh
with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by
the Spirit.” Amen.
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