Into What Then Were You Baptized?

“John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” – Jesus (Acts 1:5)

May 19, 2013 on the church calendar is Pentecost, which is the name Greek-speaking Jews gave for the Feast of Weeks or Shavuot in Hebrew. It marks the end of the seven week holiday between Passover and Shavuot, and was the first day on which the faithful could bring the first fruits to the Temple in Jerusalem. Shavuot/Pentecost also commemorates the giving of the Law by God to the people of Israel on Mount Sinai.

Keep in mind that the Old Testament Law was given to provide hints that would point God’s people to Christ. So went we look at the account of Pentecost in Acts 2, we see the first fruits of the kingdom in the form of about three thousand souls being baptized. And as Pentecost commemorated the giving of the Law in the Old Testament, we also see in Acts 2 something much greater was given by God to His people, namely the outpouring, or baptism of the Holy Spirit.

That is what I want us to briefly look at. The baptism of the Holy Spirit does not get much press in traditional Southern Baptist churches today, largely because we don’t understand it, and we are afraid we might go off the “Charismatic” deep end. This is a shame, because in dismissing it we miss out on the incredible power and freedom that the baptism of the Holy Spirit brings.

In fact, if you ask the typical church member what comes to their mind when they hear the word “baptism”, most often it will be act of immersion in water. But water baptism is only a symbol of the reality of spiritual baptism. We tend to overemphasize the rite of water baptism at the expense of true baptism in the Holy Spirit.

Let me try to explain: Both Mark and Luke record that, in preparing the way for Jesus’ ministry, John the Baptist preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. (Mk 1:4; Lk 3:3) But John himself said, “As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me [Jesus]…will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” (Matt 3:11) And just before He ascended into heaven, Jesus instructed His disciples to remain in Jerusalem until they received what the Father promised, “for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit…” (Acts 1:5)

Both John and Jesus mark a distinct difference between the two baptisms – John’s was one of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and Jesus’ was one of the Holy Spirit. So what does that mean to be baptized in the Holy Spirit?

If we look further in the book of Acts, we come across a man named Apollos. According to Luke, he was a Jew who was eloquent and “mighty in the Scriptures. This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and…was speaking and teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus, being acquainted only with the baptism of John… But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.” (Acts 18:24-26)

So Apollos’ teachings about Jesus were accurate, but they were incomplete until Priscilla and Aquila explained to him the way of God more accurately. I think this is a good reminder for us that our doctrine about Jesus may be accurate, but it does not necessarily mean that it is complete. So what was it that Apollos’ teaching was missing? The first indication we get was that, although he was teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus, he was acquainted only with the baptism of John – one of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

It is no coincidence that Luke follows up Apollos’ story immediately with another that deals with John’s baptism. Acts 19 begins, “It happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul…came to Ephesus, and found some disciples. He said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” [Note that Luke refers to them as “disciples”, and Paul indicates that they were believers, not just God-fearing Jews] And they said to him, “No, we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.” And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” And they said, “Into John’s baptism.” Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in Him who was coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying.”

To be frank, I think that is where at least some, if not many of us are today. We are still in John’s baptism. Sure, we are taught that there is the Holy Spirit who is given to everyone who comes to Christ, but we are caught in the endless cycle where we sin, we repent, we acknowledge God’s forgiveness. We sin again, we repent again, we are forgiven. But just as the writer of Hebrews said, “Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works…,” (Hebrews 6:1) But that is where many of us are, laying foundation on foundation of repentance from dead works; we remain in John’s baptism.

Clearly, Scripture does not teach, nor is the writer of Hebrews saying that becoming mature means that you will no longer sin or have to repent from dead works. Repentance is a defining mark of every true believer throughout their entire journey with Christ. As long as we are in this physical body we will succumb to sins. The Apostle John makes it abundantly clear: “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.” (1 John 1:8-10)

However, as we are being sanctified, as we are pressing on to maturity in Christ, we begin to grow beyond the seemingly endless spiral where our lives are focused on sin and repentance. We begin to move toward a deeper intimacy with Christ and a powerful outworking of the Spirit through love and good deeds. We move from the “wretched man” in Romans 7 to the  freed man in Romans 8 who walks according to the Spirit.

Paul writes in Romans 6, “Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death…” That, I believe, correlates to John’s baptism – repentance for the forgiveness of sins. But Paul does not stop there; he says “so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life… For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

I believe the death correlates to John’s baptism, while the newness of life is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The problem is that many of us acknowledge that we have died with Christ, but we have yet to leave the tomb with Him. We have yet to experience the newness of life, the new creation, the truth that “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Gal 2:20) Christ in us is the baptism of the Holy Spirit, it is Christ living in us through the indwelling and power of the Holy Spirit. It is a new life; not an improvement on the old, but an “exchanged life”, as Hudson Taylor put it.

As I was studying, I came across this statement: “The baptism of the Holy Spirit is not an experience to be sought, but a truth to be believed.” That is a tragic statement. To be baptized in the Holy Spirit is to experience a new life. When Paul asked the disciples at Ephesus if they had received the Holy Spirit when they believed, his assumption was that they would know whether or not they had based on experience. Yet preachers tell us to be careful with experiencing things. We are not Stoics! God has given us emotions, feeling, senses so that we can experience Him. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is a truth that must be experienced!

John Piper spoke of the experiential reality of the Spirit, saying, “When you read the New Testament honestly, you can’t help but get the impression of a big difference from a lot of contemporary Christian experience. For them [the believers in the New Testament] the Holy Spirit was a fact of experience. For many Christians today it is a fact of doctrine… In Protestant evangelicalism [the gift of the Holy Spirit] is equated with a subconscious work of God in regeneration which you only know you have because the Bible says you do if you believe. It is easy to imagine a spiritual counselor saying to a new convert today, ‘Don’t expect to notice any difference: just believe you have received the Spirit.’ But that is far from what we see in the New Testament.”[1]

Aspiring pastors, worship leaders, and teachers, as part of your training, one of the best things you can do is to get out of your Southern Baptist (or Presbyterian, or Methodist, or…) context. I’m not saying that you need to renounce being a Southern Baptist or your Southern Baptist heritage. But I do believe it is healthy and good to experience how other godly, gospel-saturated followers of Jesus Christ worship, pray, and pursue fellowship with one another. If you go as a learner and not a critic you will find that it will broaden your view of the Holy Spirit, the church, and worship, and will increase the effectiveness of your ministry.

We too often discredit as “fringe” things we don’t understand or have never personally experienced. We are too busy being “correct.” Meanwhile, people on the “fringe” are doing mighty things for Christ and His kingdom. Scholars may wrangle over differences between terms like “baptized with the Holy Spirit”, “filled with the Holy Spirit”, “second work of grace,” and “receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Regardless, pursue the experiential reality of the Holy Spirit in your life that is firmly based on the truth of the gospel. And through the power of the Holy Spirit, do mighty things for Christ and His kingdom.

So let me ask you the same question Paul asked those disciples, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” Or are you still living in John’s baptism?

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[1] By John Piper. ©2013 Desiring God Foundation. Website: desiringGod.org http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/how-to-receive-the-gift-of-the-holy-spirit

Epiphany

January 6^th on the Western Church liturgical calendar is the Feast of the Epiphany. Epiphany comes from a Greek word that means “to appear, or to become visible.” Epiphany is among the oldest Christian feasts dating back to the 4^th Century and traditionally commemorates the visitation of the wise men to the baby Jesus. In the broader sense it is the celebration of the “epiphany” or the manifest presence of Jesus Christ – the Son of God in human flesh – to the Gentiles.

The fact that God the Son took on flesh and bone is of supreme importance to us. One of the reasons Jesus became Immanuel – God with us – was so that we could experience Him. Or to use biblical terminology it is so that we could have fellowship with Him. It is what Jesus meant in John 15 when He instructed us to abide in Him. Christ came so that we could experience the manifestation or the epiphany of God in a very real, tangible way. And He returned to the Father so that He could send the Holy Spirit to us so that we would be able to experience the manifest presence of the Spirit in our lives daily.

John Piper spoke of the experiential reality of the Spirit, saying, “When you read the New Testament honestly, you can’t help but get the impression of a big difference from a lot of contemporary Christian experience. For them [the believers in the New Testament] the Holy Spirit was a fact of experience. For many Christians today it is a fact of doctrine… In Protestant evangelicalism [the gift of the Holy Spirit] is equated with a subconscious work of God in regeneration which you only know you have because the Bible says you do if you believe. It is easy to imagine a spiritual counselor saying to a new convert today, ‘Don’t expect to notice any difference: just believe you have received the Spirit.’ But that is far from what we see in the New Testament.”

I’m afraid we fall into that contemporary Christian experience category where the presence of the Holy Spirit is more an academic exercise than an experiential reality. And I hope you realize that. I hope you don’t think that we have arrived. I pray you begin to long to experience the Holy Spirit like they did in the New Testament, even if you are a little uncomfortable and are not quite sure what that would really look like.

Three Rivers, you are approaching a divide in the road. To the left is a well-worn path taken by most because it is easier, neater, more manageable, status quo, indifferent. That path is well-traveled and easier because it can be done on our own strength and with our own wisdom. But straight ahead is a narrow path with steep grades and cliffs on either side, but it is the path that leads to life. That path is impossible to negotiate without the epiphany, the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit at each step.

Can I just be real honest here? I’m tired – not of the ministry or the pastorate – I’m tired of apathy, of indifference…in my own life and the life of this church. I’m tired of 20-25% participation in connect groups. I’m tired of seeing a prayer ministry that only has 2 to 3 college students and has to be led by a college student because no one else is willing. I’m tired of not seeing older men and women not stepping up and teaching the younger men and women.

Have you ever wondered where the Jewish religious leaders were when Christ was born? They knew the prophecies; they saw the star; they knew where the Messiah would be born. (see Matthew 2:4-6) Isn’t it ironic that they were not in the stable worshiping their King? Instead, there were pagan astrologers who had traveled hundreds of miles and uneducated, dirty shepherds who gathered around the newborn God-man in worship. The religious leaders knew the scriptures, had all the knowledge, but they did not act on what they knew. They were indifferent; they were apathetic. Their knowledge had not transformed their hearts. (see http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/the-irony-of-the-epiphany)

A.W. Tozer wrote in The Pursuit of God, “We have been too blind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desire anything better than the poor average diet with which others appear satisfied. To put it differently, we have accepted one another’s notions, copied one another’s lives and made one another’s experiences the model for our own…we have made the Word of Truth conform to our experience and accepted this low plane as the very pasture of the blessed.” (Chapter 5)

Frankly, I am growing weary of walking down this worn-down path of dry academic theology here in the Western church lined with cold stone walls that have chiseled in them the oldness of the Law, which can still be full of emotion, but it lacks real spiritual power. I’m tired of persuasive words of wisdom instead of the demonstration of the Spirit and of power (1 Cor 2:4). I want to begin walking in the newness of the Spirit. I want to begin experiencing Isaiah 30:20, that says, “[The Lord], your Teacher will no longer hide Himself, but your eyes will behold your Teacher. Your ears will hear a word behind you, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ whenever you turn to the right or to the left.”

What if you woke up every morning longing to hear the voice of God? What if the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit was a fact of daily experience in your life? What if you trained yourself to discern the voice of God behind you, telling you, “This is the way, walk in it”? Many of you are uncomfortable with that. Good. I want you to be. I’m not going to explain that away and say, “Well, what Isaiah really meant was…” No, what Isaiah really meant was hearing the voice of God in our daily lives.

Now, there are some who think, “Well, you know Brad, Hebrews 1 says that in these last days, God has spoken to us in His Son. That’s past tense; He has spoken. Jesus is God’s final word to mankind.” And in one sense that is very true – but it is in the sense that final means ultimate, not finished. Because it is nonsense to think that God, the omnipotent Creator who spoke creation into existence, and who has communicated to mankind since the days of Adam, the One who said that man cannot live on food alone, but by every word that proceeds from His mouth, the One whose very name is The Word, should somehow have ceased to communicate to His people once the last word in scripture was penned. God is not just a God who has communicated; He is a God who communicates.

An integral part to the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives is the use of spiritual gifts. What if we took Paul at his word and “earnestly desired spiritual gifts.” And then we began using our spiritual gifts in a way that edifies the church? I’m not talking about simply our talents or skills – those are of our own strength and wisdom. We trivialize the importance and uniqueness of spiritual gifts when we lump them in with talents or things we just enjoy doing. I’m talking about biblically-based supernatural Holy Spirit driven gifts for the building up of the church like prophecy, and helps, and administration, and healing, and tongues. See, I think Satan has done an amazing job at making spiritual gifts taboo in otherwise biblically sound churches.

Why are we content on just knowing that the Holy Spirit is with us instead of longing to experience the presence of the Holy Spirit in our church?

So before you take the bread and the cup of communion, I want you to pause – not to rest, but to consider: Are you able to drink the cup that Christ first drank, or to be baptized with the baptism with which He was baptized? (Mark 10:38) In other words, are you willing to pursue the manifest presence of God regardless of what lies ahead? Are you willing to say with Job, “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him.” (Job 13:15) If so, then drink deeply of His cup, and savor the richness of His bread. He died to bring you near to God. And He returned to the Father so that you could experience the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit in your life.

Father, forgive us of our sinful preoccupation with our own pursuits in our own strengths and with our own efforts. Holy Spirit, we want to experience You, we want to fellowship with You, we want to abide in You. We want to grow to discern Your voice telling us “This is the way, walk in it”. Now bless this cup and this bread, I ask, as we honor Christ’s death and eagerly await His return.

Taste and See

Honey. We all know that honey is made by honeybees. The bees collect nectar from flowers and then transform the saccharides in the nectar into honey through a process of repeated regurgitation until it is partially digested. The last regurgitation is still high in water content, so the process continues through evaporation and enzymatic transformation. The enzyme invertase synthesized by the bees and digestive acids hydrolyze the sucrose from the nectar to give the same mixture of glucose and fructose. So, honey gets its sweetness from these monosaccharides, and depending on the variety is slightly sweeter than granulated sugar.

Sweetness is almost universally regarded as a pleasurable experience. Foods rich in simple carbohydrates such as honey are those most commonly associated with sweetness. The tongue uses a different taste receptor pathway for each of the five basic tastes: sour, bitter, savory, salty, and sweet. So, when incoming sweet molecules in the honey bind to their taste receptors, it causes a conformational change in the molecule. This change activates certain proteins, which in turn cause the release of ions that ultimately cause neurotransmitter release, which is then received by a primary afferent neuron. So basically it takes all that for your taste buds to tell your brain that honey is sweet.

Now, I have just described to you more than you probably ever wanted to know about how the human body determines the sweetness of honey. But one thing I did not do, in fact cannot do, is cause you to experience the sweetness of honey.

The following quote comes from Jonathan Edwards’ sermon A Divine and Supernatural Light –

There is a twofold knowledge of good of which God has made the mind of man capable. The first, that which is merely notional…And the other is, that which consists in the sense of the heart; as when the heart is sensible of pleasure and delight in the presence of the idea of it…Thus there is a difference between having an opinion, that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet and having a sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former that knows not how honey tastes; but a man cannot have the latter unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind.

In other words, there is this “head knowledge” of God where you believe certain truths about Him. But then there is a “heart knowledge” where you not only acknowledge these truths about God, but you sense them, you feel them, because you experience the pleasure of His presence with you. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible to accurately describe the taste of honey. That is because honey was not meant to just be described, and analyzed and studied. Honey is meant to be tasted and experienced; its sweetness is to be enjoyed. In the same way, the Holy Spirit is not Someone merely to be described and studied, but He was given to us as a pledge of our inheritance, a deposit, or a taste, if you will, of the sweetness we will experience when we are with the Father for all eternity.

This may be overly simplistic, but it seems there are two extremes in churches today. Some emphasize knowing the truth of God’s Word. Others emphasize experiencing the Holy Spirit. But shouldn’t there be both? Isn’t that what Jesus meant when He said to the Samaritan woman, “the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.” (John 4:23)

Which extreme do you think Three Rivers leans towards? And if you think we are a good balance, then I would suggest you are guilty of what is called confirmation bias; you have surrounded yourself with people and information that confirms your own beliefs and bias. But how many of you woke up this morning and begged the Holy Spirit to impart to you a supernatural gift so that you could edify the church? How many truly understand what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit? I don’t mean you can write a paper on it, but you understand it because you have experienced it. It has been real to you. None of us have arrived, not your pastors, not Mitch, not Emmett, and especially not me. The Apostle Paul himself confessed that he hadn’t obtained it, but he longed to gain Christ so he pressed on to make it his own, because Christ Jesus has made him his own (Philippians 3:12-14). He wanted more of Christ.

Many of us stop short of a supernatural encounter with the Holy Spirit because we are satisfied with good theology. Let me be clear, there is nothing wrong with good theology; it is essential and without it we will not come to a saving knowledge of the truth. Just before Jesus explained to the Samaritan woman about worshiping in spirit and in truth, He told her that she worshiped what she did not know; the Jews worshiped what they knew. The Jews knew, but they had not yet experienced Immanuel – God with us. As someone once said, “The word of God is to lead us to the God of the word.” People without experience tend to be overly confident in their beliefs or theories, or good theology. To continue the analogy, they can describe to you down to the molecule the sweetness of honey, but they have rarely if ever tasted it. But people with experience tend to long for more; they crave the frequent and tangible interaction of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

Christ came to earth to die and be resurrected so that we could experience Him. He left earth so that He could send the Holy Spirit to be with us and in us so that we could proclaim to the world with King David: “O taste and see that the Lord is good!” (Psalm 34:8)

Holy Spirit we confess that we do not know You as we should. We know about You, and we are intrigued with the idea of You, but the realness of You in our lives is sporadic at best. We want to know You in a deeper way. We want to experience You. We want to be continually filled with You. Jesus, You suffered and died to make that possible. You purchased that on the cross. Father, You are seeking worshipers of You in spirit and in truth. Seek us out, Father; make us pleasing to You. Let us taste and see that You are good.