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Acts 1:1-5
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. 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.
4 And while staying1 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 with2 the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Invite you to open your Bibles to, the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 1. And we're going to look at the same 5 verses that we began looking at last week. I hope to get through these 5 verses tonight and that we don't spend multiple weeks here, but you never know. Acts chapter 1, verse 1. In the first book, O Theophilus, I've dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach.
Joel Brooks:Until the day when He was taken up after He had given the apostles whom He had chosen, He presented Himself alive to them after His suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God. 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. For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. Pray with me. Our father, we pray that the Spirit of truth would come and speak truth in our hearts.
Joel Brooks:The spirit of life would come and breathe breathe life into us. Well, we are desperate for a word from you. I pray that you would give me great clarity tonight in communicating your word. I I pray that any words that are mine and mine alone, that they would fall to the ground and they would blow away. But Lord, let your words remain and may they change us.
Joel Brooks:And I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. I grew up in a church where the Holy Spirit was rarely mentioned. It's not that my home church didn't believe in the holy spirit. I mean, of course, of course, we all believed in the holy spirit.
Joel Brooks:We just weren't sure what to do with him. He was kind of the best way I could describe, he was kind of like when you're at a family reunion and you have that uncle Eddie or that uncle Bob, there and you only see him once a year. You know you're kind of related. You're not exactly sure how. And when you go, you know, you hear them telling these cool stories about strange things, and and that annual hug is always just a little bit awkward.
Joel Brooks:And that's how I kind of grew up feeling about the Holy Spirit. It's like, well, I know we're we're family. I I I know there's a love between us, but there's just some things I don't understand, and it's a little bit awkward when we are together. Once I went off to college, I was involved in a ministry with a much different experience. There was a heavy, heavy emphasis on the Holy Spirit.
Joel Brooks:Almost at the exclusion of everything else. You would almost forget there was a trinity. It was the spirit this, spirit this, spirit this. And people were consistently talking about these extraordinary experiences that they had with the Holy Spirit. And instead of being like, you know, my my strange little uncle, there in that ministry, the Holy Spirit was talked about in such intimate terms.
Joel Brooks:It kind of made me blush at times, the way that they would talk about the Holy Spirit. And so I've been to these, these two different camps have been a part of my life. So how should we view the Holy Spirit? What does the book of acts, which we'll be looking at for the months ahead, what does acts teach us? Last week I mentioned that we could just as easily call this book, the Acts of the Holy Spirit for He is the main character here.
Joel Brooks:As we go through this book, you're gonna see people will be baptized in the Holy Spirit. They will be filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will speak through people. People will prophesy through the Holy Spirit, heal people through the Holy Spirit. People will be convicted of their sin because of the Holy Spirit.
Joel Brooks:They will be given instruction from the Holy Spirit. People will be called into missions through the Holy Spirit. And so the Holy Spirit is the main person working throughout this book. Sometimes in the forefront, sometimes behind the scenes, but this book is about Him. And so you would think that since He is everywhere in this book, that it would be pretty easy to come up with a pretty clear cut doctrine of the Holy Spirit based on the great book of acts, But it is not that easy to do that.
Joel Brooks:And, the sermon tonight, as I try to explain why it's not that easy and what are the things we should believe, the sermon tonight is gonna be a little bit different than how I typically preach. I'm gonna slow down a little bit more. It's gonna be a little more technical, I guess, or a little more details. We're gonna, we're gonna go through, more scripture than normal. You're gonna have to pay closer attention to really hang with me.
Joel Brooks:I, I could just tell a lot of cool stories about people been filled in the spirit, you know, and, and we could, you know, have this big rah rah rally here, but I want to teach you about the Holy Spirit. And I want us to, to, to walk through systematically, how does he move in x? What are some of the issues here so that you will have a greater understanding? And, and if we have time, I might even have, some, some question time for y'all and we could do a little q and a before we close the service and song. When reading through acts or reading through any narrative in the Bible, you have to ask this basic fundamental question is what we are reading, is it being prescribed or is it being described?
Joel Brooks:Is it being prescribed to us? Is, is Luke, when he writes acts saying that this is something we need to pursue, this is something that needs to happen to us, or is Luke just describing events saying this happened and it's not repeatable. And you have to decide which, which is this? Is this the normative Christian experience that's being described here or is this an extraordinary experience that is never to be repeated? And so you have to answer that question.
Joel Brooks:You have to be very careful as you read through acts. You have to try to discover what is the author's intent? How does it read in, in light of the rest of scripture? For instance, you know, let me just throw a little confusion your way. If you're going through Acts and you want to try to answer the question, So when exactly are people filled with the Spirit of God according to Acts?
Joel Brooks:Is it, are people filled with the Spirit of God, before they confess, maybe when they confess or maybe after they confess their trust in Jesus as Lord and savior? Is it is it before? Is it during? Or is it after? And the answer in Acts would be, yes.
Joel Brooks:Yes. You see the Holy Spirit at times, He, He falls upon people before they believe. At times, He falls during the act of belief and at times he falls after they have already believed. And so when he comes to something like that and it comes to time to prescribe something to people, what do you prescribe? And many theologians, they, they love the book of acts because there's something for everybody.
Joel Brooks:You know, every denomination is going to go to acts and it's going to pull. We believe this about the spirit because of this story here. And then somebody else is going, no, no, no, you're all wrong. We believe in this about the Holy Spirit because of this story right here. And all you can take from what seems to be conflicting stories is, well, that that happened.
Joel Brooks:But what is being prescribed here? It's a little more difficult. You're going to have some of these same questions of, you know, what and when and how often concerning the issue of the baptism of the Spirit. This is why I wanted to start our discussion about baptism of the spirit last week. When we looked at it, I wanted to start our discussion by not teaching about the when, not teaching about the how often, because I don't want you to get bogged down into that and just think if you could check a little box and all of a sudden, you know, this is this is something that's happened or you can feel really good about yourself.
Joel Brooks:I want you to think first off, what is the essence of what's being talked about here? And in Acts, we see that the baptism of the Spirit is when one is filled with God's Spirit and clothed in power for witness, and we saw that last week. And when the disciples were baptized in the spirit, they were not bringing in themselves a new theology. They were not bringing in themselves a new doctrine. They were actually having an experience with the living Jesus through his spirit.
Joel Brooks:And I realized that talking about, experience is uncomfortable for a number of people. It's, it's a lot easier and a lot tidier just to talk about the theology or the doctrine, but we do see here clearly that there is an experience that these disciples had because Jesus knew that in order for the disciples to be effective witnesses for him, they were going to need the verifiable facts, which we looked at last week. They would need to know proof of His resurrection, Shows them many proofs. I am real, but then they would also need to have that experience of God's presence in their lives. They needed both in order to have power for witness.
Joel Brooks:Now, there were a number of questions that I left unanswered last week that we're gonna look at tonight. Here's some of them does, we'll look at the main one here. Does this experience of the Holy Spirit, this baptism of the spirit happen at conversion, or is this something that we are to seek after conversion? Is this something that we we when you are regenerate, when you when the Holy Spirit changes your heart, when God changes your heart, is that the baptism of the Holy Spirit or is it after you have confessed, after you become a Christian, this is something we should seek later. And let me just say at the very beginning that you can be an Orthodox Christian in good standing and hold to either one of those positions.
Joel Brooks:Many of my favorite theologians hold both sides, both of those positions. So I just want to say that at the beginning that you can hold to both of these and still be in Orthodox Christianity. So let's kind of walk through this. When I first began really walking through this, I thought I got some clarity, and then I realized it was somewhat of a difficult issue. And then I started reading everything and there's probably, I can't think of a Christian subject that I've read more about over the last 20 years.
Joel Brooks:One time I, I got to sit down with Doctor. John Piper and I asked him, I was like, alright. Because I studied him for 5 or 6 years and I said, alright, Doctor. Piper, I've, I've gone through 5 years of your messages, concerning the issues of the Spirit. And it seems to me that you were saying that when you are saved, you're baptized with the Spirit here.
Joel Brooks:But then in this message over here, you seem to be saying that no, no, we are to seek the baptism of the Spirit after we are saved. But then you go back over here and you say this, and then you say this over here. It's like, I'm really confused. Which do you believe? And I will always remember his answer.
Joel Brooks:He goes, well, Joel, I guess I was being purposely vague. I was like, wow, I guess I was mad. And I thought it was such a cop out answer at the time at the time, but I don't think so much anymore. I've learned to respect it because the the more and the more I study the spirit of God and his work in our life, the more I realize it is hard to put very sharp lines on something that has somewhat blurry edges. It's not that they don't have edges, but they're somewhat blurry edges.
Joel Brooks:For instance, how much of the Holy Spirit is required for something to be called a baptism of the spirit? Exactly how much of the Holy Spirit do you have to receive? And when does this baptism end and then filling with the spirit begin? At what point is it? Can can you quantify that?
Joel Brooks:And are these subsequent fillings of the spirit, are they all of the same amounts or do you have different levels of fillings with the spirit? It's hard to kind of put sharp lines on this. You know, let's just look at the question. What does it mean to be filled with a Spirit? With the Holy Spirit in the same sense as what we find in Acts 2:4 at Pentecost.
Joel Brooks:When we read in Acts 2:4, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues, in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance. So when the spirit of God fell at Pentecost and they were all filled with the filled with the spirit, that was not a sustainable feeling in that same way. Otherwise, you could not have an acts 431, if you want to flip the page, when you're talking about the same group and it says, and they were all filled with the Spirit. So, but they were already filled with the Spirit back in acts 2. And then it says later, 2 chapters later, and they were filled with the spirit of gin.
Joel Brooks:And so at least seems like there's some part of Pentecost that can be repeated here. That there is seems to be a further giving of what the these people already possess. They already possess the Holy Spirit, but now there's a further giving of the Holy Spirit. And this happens throughout the book of Acts, this further and further giving. And this is why, the Westminster Confession states this about the Holy Spirit.
Joel Brooks:Spirit. Says that while the holy spirit is given to all Christians, his working is not in all persons nor at all times in the same measure. The holy spirit is given in different measure at different times. So it's hard to say concretely, this is exactly what baptism is. This is exactly what being filled in the spirit looks like because he has given in different measure at different times.
Joel Brooks:And so sometimes the lines are a little blurry, and this is why we can have Jesus doing things like in John chapter 20, breathing on the whole, breathing on the disciples and saying, receive the Holy Spirit. They received the Holy Spirit. And then he says, now wait for the Holy Spirit. Because there's different measures of the holy spirit being given. That's where these blurry lines come in.
Joel Brooks:So when one is filled with the Spirit, we don't know with how much measure of the Spirit one's filled with. And I personally don't know how you measure the spirit of God. I mean, I don't know if you use gallons, liters, if you know, if you if you step on a scale, do you weigh more, do you weigh less depending on how much you are, how are you filled with the Spirit? It's, it's not like any kind of measurement that we know. Yeah.
Joel Brooks:You know, God knows how, how He feels and how, how much measure He gives. I cannot figure that out. I think that there are times when Luke and the apostle Paul, both even mentioned being filled with the Spirit and they mean different things, different measures. For instance, if you go through acts, every time it says somebody is filled with the spirit, just watch what happens afterwards. I mean, it's awesome.
Joel Brooks:Somebody's filled with the spirit and they'll get up and preach this amazing sermon with boldness. Something they could have never put together on their own or, or they'll do this incredible miracle or they'll prophesy. There's something amazing happens when people in acts are filled with the Holy Spirit. Something extraordinary happens. However, when Paul talks about being filled with the spirit, let's say in Ephesians 5, he's doesn't say this is something that just kind of comes upon you for this occasion or for this extraordinary thing.
Joel Brooks:He says, be continually filled with the Spirit. You could go ahead and you could turn to Ephesians 5 if you want to. In Ephesians 5, he, he says in verse 18, he says, do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery, but be filled with the spirit. And that filled with the spirit is is in Greek, it's a present active imperative. It's meaning I'm commanding you to never stop being filled with the spirit.
Joel Brooks:But the results of this kind of being filled with the spirit isn't miracles. It's a spirit isn't miracles, isn't extraordinary things happening. It's this it's this deep abiding joy. It's this fruit in the spirit. Something sustainable.
Joel Brooks:You're commanded to always be filled. It seems to be used differently than how Luke uses it when he goes through acts. You can actually, I think, see 2 different measures and how the Holy Spirit is given just within the book of Ephesians. And so we've seen this here and, you know, be filled with the spirit in Ephesians 5. And if you go back to Ephesians 3, which we looked at a few weeks ago, verse 14.
Joel Brooks:It says for this reason, I bow my knees before the father for whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. That according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with the power through his spirit in your inner being. So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. What's being described there seems to be the Spirit given in greater measure than just Ephesians 5, be filled with the Spirit. In Ephesians 5, Paul can command this.
Joel Brooks:Every Christian, you are to be filled with the Spirit. Here in Ephesians 3, he doesn't command, but he prays. God, may you grant this to us. And it's gonna require that you strengthen us, and you strengthen us again, that we might be filled with all the fullness of God. Seems to be something extraordinary.
Joel Brooks:And he prays for that. And So so with all of this in mind, hopefully, it's a little clearer than mud. Let's walk through what exactly this baptism of the Holy Spirit looks like. There are only 7 times in scripture that we have the phrase baptism of the Holy Spirit only 7 times. For the times is in the gospels, each gospel, and they simply say that Jesus will baptize in the Holy Spirit.
Joel Brooks:There's no real description of this. There's no explanation. So, all we know is Jesus will baptize in the Holy Spirit. We have two times in Acts. We have one here and what we just read, which we know was fulfilled in Pentecost.
Joel Brooks:And then we have one in Acts 11, which is kind of like Pentecost for the Gentiles and Peter refers back to the original Pentecost and says, yes, this is the baptism of the Spirit. And then we have once by Paul in 1st Corinthians 12. Now, in looking at these, different traditions have developed. And I already mentioned one of these traditions is that you are to seek this baptism of the spirit after you are converted. I do not believe that.
Joel Brooks:And let me give you a few reasons why. For starters, Paul neither Paul nor any new testament writer ever prescribes being baptized in the spirit to Christians. Never. Paul never writes to Christians and says, you know what you need to do, you need to be baptized in the spirit. He never says that.
Joel Brooks:However, in many Christian circles today, and one of the You need to know what to do in your life, you need to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. Your marriage has fallen apart, you need to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. I mean, it was it was the answer for everything. It was a cure all. And I just find that if the baptism of the Holy Spirit was that important for after salvation, that important for Christian living that that Paul just might have mentioned that, or that some new testament writer might have prescribed that.
Joel Brooks:It's extraordinary that they did not, if that's the case. Also, we find in 1st Corinthians 12, Paul says that as Christians, we have all been baptized into 1 spirit. Says as Christians, we've all been baptized into 1 spirit. Just as think of it as water baptism, just as water baptism is this rite of initiation into the church body, into Christianity. And it only happens once.
Joel Brooks:It's the initiation there. Spiritual baptism is also seen as an initiation into the faith. And it only happens once just as water baptism is a common experience that we share with all Christians. Spiritual baptism is a common experience that we share with all Christians. So the Spirit of God, I believe the baptism of the Spirit unites us, not divides us.
Joel Brooks:You know, it's interesting. When I I had worked at a college ministry, university Christian fellowship for about 10 years, and, a number of times I I would be preaching, and afterwards, I I could have somebody, and usually it was some adult that would come up. I I specifically remember this one guy came up to me and he's like, man, you're just so anointed up there and anointed. And they probably said anointed 50 times. It was like, you know, and just God's spirit was just flowing through you and saying all this on and on and on.
Joel Brooks:And then he asked me something about baptism of the Holy Spirit. And I said, well, actually I believe that you are baptized in the Holy Spirit when you're saved. And he goes, woah, woah, we got to get that fixed. We gotta get that fixed. And I was like, you, you were just saying anointed, anointed, anointed.
Joel Brooks:You were just saying a Holy spirit flowing from me. And now, because you, you see that I believe something different, now I am a second class Christian to you. There's now 2 tiers in your Christianity. The spirit's no longer uniting us, Now the Spirit of God is dividing us. And he went on to say, Hey, 95% of the people I lay hands on receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Joel Brooks:Can I do that now? And I said, not if you want to keep your arms. I didn't quite say it like that. I was probably thinking that. I know I did say, actually sir, there is nothing that you have that I want.
Joel Brooks:Nothing that you have that I want. Now people come to this issue and sometimes it they use it to divide instead of to unite. But the spirit unites us. Many of my friends and theologians I greatly respect believe in this baptism in the spirit as a second work of the spirit, mostly based, not all, but mostly based on an experience. And how can you argue with an experience?
Joel Brooks:How can you argue with that? I can't argue when I look at their life that they've had an experience, and I believe in experiences of the holy spirit. I think we should seek them. I think we should desire them as Christians. I am glad when people have experiences of the holy spirit.
Joel Brooks:It's fantastic. But I think these experiences need to be interpreted rightly. And what they are seeing in this experience. Isn't the baptism, but it's maybe the filling is maybe more measure and more measure given. Sometimes this filling of the spirit can be a wonderful and it can be a super emotional thing.
Joel Brooks:Sometimes it can be more quiet. But I would expect as a lot of people, my friends, when they describe being baptized in the Holy Spirit, they're like, well, what I did is I confessed all my sin. I just surrendered all my life to Jesus, and I just spent all this time fasting and prayer. I think, well, it's probably likely that you did have this great enormous step in your spiritual life. I would say you're filled with a spirit.
Joel Brooks:I'd say your Ephesians 5 is happening. And I think sometimes when that experience is extraordinary, Not just like your day to day walking with God, walking with the Holy Spirit, being filled with the Spirit, but sometimes there's that extraordinariness to it. I think Ephesians 3 might be happening. You're being filled with all the fullness of God. God's like, wow look at your look at your width, look at your height, your depth.
Joel Brooks:You just gotta hold me together because the joy is so great. I think that could be what Martyn Lloyd Jones, what we looked at last week. You know, those few times when when God picks you up and he, you know, spins you around and holds you. This I believe those times happen. It can happen with an extraordinary feeling, over and above what we would see as a normal feeling of the spirit.
Joel Brooks:Now we are to pray for this filling of the Spirit of God. We are to do this. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, And we know what he taught them as the Lord's prayer. You know, our father, which art in heaven. After he taught them the Lord's Prayer, he said this, explaining some more.
Joel Brooks:He says, and I tell you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open to you. For everyone who ask receives, and the one who seeks finds, and the one who knocks it will be opened. I mean, what father among you if his son asks for a fish, will a son of a fish give him a serpent?
Joel Brooks:Will the heavenly father give the holy spirit to those who ask him? And Jesus is saying here that the, the greatest gift, how much more, the greatest thing that we could ask for is the holy spirit. And we need to ask and we need to we need to ask and we need to seek and we need to knock. Meaning this needs to be a persistent asking on our part. You you've heard me say several times that Jonathan Edwards, when he would write about, being filled with the spirit, he would say a lot of times we deny ourselves the very, that we deny ourselves the spirit by the way that we ask for the spirit.
Joel Brooks:Because we ask for the spirit of God in a way that does not express that he is the greatest gift there is. We ask with such halfhearted devotion. We ask which such little frequency. We ask after we've gotten all the real things, the real problems that we want God to fix in our life. Let's get all those out of the way first.
Joel Brooks:Oh, yes. And then fill me with your spirit. And Jonathan Edwards say, just by the way we ask, we actually deny ourselves our request. But Jesus says that we are to knock, to ask and to seek and to knock, And that the Holy Spirit is far greater than any healing, any comfort, any wealth, anything we could ask for. The reason it's greater in any of these things is because Christ or the holy spirit is Christ's presence in our lives.
Joel Brooks:And I would say as a Christian, if you long for more of Christ, if you long for more of Jesus in your life, then you will long for His Spirit, because that is how His Spirit, how He is manifest in your life. And I would encourage you not to make the mistake that so many people do as we go through acts, in which it's just a subtle shift, but you can begin seeking an experience instead of seeking Christ. Now I just wanna warn you about it. Some of you wanna leave here and you're like, I want to be picked up and spun around. You know, I want I want the chill bumps.
Joel Brooks:I want the whole package. Give it to me. And you're gonna go out seeking this experience. Don't seek an experience, seek Jesus, seeking with all your heart. And if you want to see the Holy Spirit come into your life, you want to see the Holy Spirit really move into this church.
Joel Brooks:The best thing you could do is try to lift up the name of Jesus and the Holy Spirit is going to go, there's an opportunity to lift up the name of Jesus. I'm going to go there And he will fill you and he will empower you because he lives to make more and more of Jesus. We seek a person. We don't seek an experience. We seek Jesus, not just some impersonal power.
Joel Brooks:I mean, let's just be honest here. Our confession that we read earlier, John 16, Nevertheless, I'd tell you the truth. It is to to your advantage that I go away. Do do you believe that? I mean, be honest here.
Joel Brooks:You know, we've talked about this before, but really, do you believe it's better? Would you rather have Jesus next to you right now with, you know, with His arm around, you know, Jesus right there with you or would you rather this or do you believe this is true? It is for our good is to our advantage that He goes away. I mean, we've seen what presence means in people's lives just over the last 3 weeks when the tornadoes came and there's just utter destruction. How much did it mean to the people when, you know, president Obama comes or Condoleezza Rice comes and actually walks with these hurting people?
Joel Brooks:You know, these powerful people come and bring healing in a sense with their presence. I mean, it's there's real healing kind of there. Totally different if they're not there. But Jesus says, no, no, no. When I leave, it is for your good.
Joel Brooks:Do we believe that? I think a lot of us are like Mary and we see Jesus who's resurrected after the tomb and we hold on. Like, don't leave. He's like, let you gotta let go of me, woman. And I I I I need to ascend so I can send the Holy Spirit down.
Joel Brooks:Because then, I will be with you in a way that is much better than this. I will be inside of you. And not just you, but in all who believe. It is for your advantage that you let me go, Mary. It is to our advantage that Christ go away so that he might send us the helper, his holy spirit.
Joel Brooks:And I pray that would be a reality and we would really believe that in our lives. If you would pray with me. Jesus, we love you. We want to live our lives to your glory. We know that in order for us to do that, we need to be filled with your Spirit.
Joel Brooks:We are commanded to. Your Spirit will bring forth fruits in our lives. It will help us to testify about Jesus. It will deepen our worship. It will help us to resist sin, make us holy.
Joel Brooks:And so we do pray that you would give us more of your spirit. We pray this for the glory of Jesus and in his name. Amen.