The Holy Spirit and power from on high • Acts 1:1-8

Now, because I am such a visual person, I want to show you some things this morning in a visual way by reviewing what we've talked about. I'm going to start by putting Joe anybody up on the screen. This is going to be our example of someone who has opened their heart to their need of a savior, to open their heart to the need for the forgiveness of sins, and they've confessed, this person has confessed their sins to God and laid hold of the promise in the Bible that says that if we do so, we will be forgiven. Now, the Bible tells us that when an individual comes to know Christ in this way, then they receive a gift from God. It's the gift of the Holy Spirit, and I've kind of visualized it for you there on that graphic by a dove just because that's the, you know, John the Baptist saw the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove lighting upon Jesus, so I'm sharing kind of that same picture with you. Otherwise, it's kind of difficult to illustrate the Holy Spirit in a picture. But what we're talking about when we discuss the Spirit coming into the life of a believer, we call that the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, and so that's what we'll call it. This is when literally the Holy Spirit comes to take up residence in the life of that individual. Christians, I want to just remind you of something. God's Spirit is in you, and that's kind of exciting. We know that theologically speaking. If somebody were to ask us as Christians, is the Holy Spirit in you, we'd say, well, yeah. We'd check the yes on that particular question. But we forget about the dynamics of all the things that that does, all the things that He does by being in us, by literally indwelling us, living within us. First of all, we obviously have the new birth. It is by the Holy Spirit that we are born again, all right? Well, that's an obvious benefit of having the Holy Spirit in your life. In fact, if you don't have the Holy Spirit in you, then you can't be born again, and vice versa. You can't be born again without the Holy Spirit, because He is the one who gives us that new birth. We talked about these things in the last couple of weeks. We also discussed the fact that when the Spirit comes to indwell, He also gives us understanding. And we call this biblically, well, more theologically than biblically, we call it illumination. And it is when the Holy Spirit begins to open us to just get it, whereas we really struggled to get it before. And there's lots of things the Spirit comes to give us understanding about. The Word of God, our sonship, which, by the way, has no reference to gender, meaning simply that we are a child of God. The Bible says that God's Spirit testifies to our spirit that we are children of God. And so by His Holy Spirit, we are given new birth, and then He confirms that new birth by testifying to our spirit that we are a child of God. If somebody comes up to you and says, are you a child of God, your response is, yes, I am. How do you know? Well, the Spirit is testifying. Well, I know because of the Word of God. First of all, there's the promises that are given in the Word of God. It says that I will become a child of God if I receive and believe that Jesus is my Savior and so forth. More than that, the Spirit Himself testifies and says, you are, in fact, a child of God. And then last week, we dealt further with our man who now has the Spirit by talking about the fruits of the Holy Spirit that have now begun to manifest in the life of the believer. And the Bible refers to these as the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and we talked about what they are. They are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We discussed them all last week. And we talked about the fact that when you come to know Christ as your Savior and His Spirit comes to live within you, then you will begin to exhibit these various fruit of the Holy Spirit. You will begin to do that. It is impossible to be a believer, to have His Holy Spirit living in you, and have absolutely no fruit on the vine. Jesus said that He came that we might bear fruit, fruit that will last. And what He does in us and through us is fruit that will last as we express that fruit to other people. But there's something important that is missing from our man with the Spirit. He has been born again, He has been illuminated, He has received the fruits of the Holy Spirit whereby He begins to manifest the very character of God as it relates to those various behavioral sorts of character traits and attributes. But still there is something missing. And in order that we might find out what it is, I'd like you to turn with me to Acts 1. So have your Bible open now to the book of Acts, chapter 1, and we're going to see what it is. Acts, if you're just getting used to kind of the geography of the Bible, comes after the first, the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and then we come to the book of Acts. It is, the larger title for it is the Acts of the Apostles because it basically chronicles for us the early church and their doings, their goings on, and the work of God's Spirit to establish the church through the disciples and apostles and so forth. Acts chapter 1, skip down to verse 4. It says, on one occasion, while He was eating with them, and He, by the way, is Jesus. This is after His death, burial, and resurrection. He gave them this command, do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift, notice what He calls it, my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. And then He says this important statement, for John baptized or immersed you with water, but in a few days you will be baptized or immersed with the Holy Spirit. And I use the word immersed there because as far as defining the Greek word, that's what baptism means, to be immersed. Jesus says to His disciples, John came immersing people in water, but in just a few days the Holy Spirit will come and He will immerse you in Himself. So the Spirit is coming. Now I want you to notice that He refers to it as being baptized with the Holy Spirit. That's not a term that Pentecostals came up with, or some charismatic weirdenheimer somewhere in a closet decided he was going to call it, let's call it the baptism with the Spirit. This is a statement or a term that Jesus coined. He's the one who came up with it, and said that this is what's going to happen to you. Now after the disciples asked some questions about the timing of some things related to Israel, Jesus says this, if you'll skip down to verse 8 in your Bible, verse 8.

Now I want you to notice on the slide I've even actually underlined that first section of the verse that says you will receive power, all right? Now just to make sure you're listening, I'm going to ask a very, very simple question. What did Jesus tell His disciples they would receive when the Holy Spirit came on them? Very simple, yeah, power, exactly, thank you, I'm really glad you guys are awake. That's wonderful. But I'm not trying to belittle you or make this sound childish, we lose sight of this, we read these verses, but we don't lay hold of it like I think that we should. So what's missing in our man who's filled with the Spirit, boom, power, and the reason I put these little graphical explosions next to the man is because the word power, interestingly enough, in the Greek is dunamis, and it's where we get our word dynamite, isn't that interesting? So it speaks of real, genuine power. So this is what is yet missing in our man with the Spirit, at least as far as what we've talked about. Let me share with you a verse that Paul, the apostle, wrote to Timothy related to this, and here's what he said, For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, your Bible may say fear, but what did He give us? He gave us a spirit of power, in fact, it's power, and then he even mentions some of the fruits of the Spirit, and also of love and of self-discipline. So he's not trying to be comprehensive in his verse and talk about all the things that God gave us, but he's simply telling Timothy, listen, God did not give you a spirit of fear. What God did give you was a spirit of power. And when does that power come? Jesus told us when that power comes, when we are baptized with the Holy Spirit. That's what Jesus said, He says, but when the Spirit comes upon you, you will receive power. So what exactly does that power look like? or if you're still in Acts, let's turn over to the second chapter, and let's take a look at it, because that's kind of where we get a sense of the direction of this thing. It says, when the day of Pentecost came, I'm reading in verse 1, they were all together in one place, and suddenly, a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven, and filled the whole house where they were sitting. And they saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated, and came to rest on each of them. And all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other languages. That's what that word tongues means, you guys. Don't get weirded out by tongues. Oh, I tell you, people get so weirded by that. I had a lady about 15 years ago call up one time, and she said, first thing she said, she said, I've never visited your church, but I just have one question. Do you guys speak in tongues? And obviously, this woman had been exposed to some weirdness. And so she basically told me, if I hear anybody speaking in tongues, I'm getting up and I'm heading for the door right now. And I was like, well, I don't blame you for one thing, because it has really gotten weird as far as people's usage of it and so forth. But please don't mistake the fact that tongues is just a Greek word for languages. Okay? You speak in a tongue, and that's English, I assume. Some of you are bilingual. Some of you speak, you know, Spanish. Some of you speak other languages. Those are just different tongues that you speak. Now, what it is saying about the disciples is that they were enabled by the Spirit to speak in languages they'd never learned before. But that's the supernatural aspect of what's going on here. But it says that they began to speak in these other languages. Notice what it says, as the Spirit enabled them. That tells you it was a supernatural event, because it wasn't as learning enabled them. It was as the Spirit enabled them. And so it says in verse 5, Now there were staying in Jerusalem, God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. And when they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. Same word, okay? It doesn't say speaking in his own tongue, but it could have. Just languages, all right? And utterly amazed, they asked, Now wait a minute here, aren't all these guys speaking Galileans? Well, then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, meaning they were Gentiles, Cretans and Arabs, we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues, languages. Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, What does this mean? And boy, let me tell you something, people have been asking that question ever since. And they haven't always gotten very good answers. Let me just say that too. People have been asking for a long time, What is that? And somebody comes along and starts saying, Well, that's... And it's not necessarily biblical in their response. Well, we're going to do our best to stick with the Word of God. Verse 13, Some, however, made fun of them and said, Ah, they've just been drinking too much. They've had too much wine. And so Peter stood up with the eleven and raised his voice and addressed the crowd. They didn't have PA systems. That's why he had to shout. Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you. Listen carefully, he says to what I say. These men are not drunk as you suppose. It's only nine in the morning. No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel. And then he proceeds to quote that verse or passage saying, In the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit. So Peter says, No, this is an outpouring of God's spirit that you are hearing here. He says, It's on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams, etc., etc. Stop there. Now, let me have your attention for just a moment. We see from this passage that when the Holy Spirit came upon the assembled believers, they were each given the ability to do something for which they had not a natural gifting. Okay, please understand that. Once again, I've heard people explain this passage by saying that, you know, all these people were all multilingual and they just started praising God in their different ability to know these languages. But that totally belies the statement that Luke gives us as he writes this down and says that they spoke in these languages as the Spirit enabled them. Okay, they were able to do something beyond natural gifting. Now, the word we use to describe something that goes beyond natural gifting is supernatural. Or anything that's beyond the natural period, okay, is supernatural. And in this case, the disciples were speaking languages that they'd never learned. But they were speaking them as the Spirit enabled them to speak those languages. And this is referred to, as we've already talked about in the Bible, as speaking in tongues or the gift of tongues. And the reason that I wanted to read through this section here in Acts chapter 2 as we get into talking about the empowering of the Holy Spirit is I wanted to show you what the power of the Holy Spirit is given for. No, it's not just for speaking in tongues. Once again, a believer who is empowered by the Holy Spirit, this is the point of what I wanted to make. A person who is empowered by the Spirit is enabled to do things that they would otherwise not be able to do by natural ability. Now, God's given us a lot of wonderful natural abilities. Some of you are administrators. Some of you are, well, I could sit and go through the whole list. You know what you are. But, you know, God has just naturally gifted you with those things. And we can use our natural gifts for the Lord, and we ought to. But there are other things that God wants to do in His people that do not come by natural means. They come by supernatural means. And I know, and I've brought up here the gift of tongues, I know this is something that a lot of people have very strong feelings about, both pro and con, and mostly con, to be completely honest with you. But I'm going to ask you to set your feelings aside, and maybe even your preconceived ideas or conclusions about this for just a little while as we study together what the Word of God has to say about the gifts of the Spirit from the Bible. And that's what we're going to look at here, people. That's one thing. As we get into the gifts of the Spirit, I'm going to promise you something. We're going to follow the Word of God and only the Word of God. I'm not going to bring out some manual written by Dr. Snow Schneebenhaber, who's an expert in Pentecostal weirdness, and come back and say, well, see, according to Dr. Joe, he says, da-da-da-da-da, that's not what we're going to do. Because you know what? Opinions abound. Who cares, right? What I want to know and what you should say that you want to know is what the Word of God has to say. And we're going to leave it there, you know, as it relates to these things. Here's the reason I bring up, though, the passage from Acts 2, which portrays the gift of tongues. It's because this gift that was seen there on the day of Pentecost as these individuals who were worshiping the Lord and so forth began to speak in languages they'd never learned before by the Spirit's enablement. This never showed up before this time. Now, hear me, this is very important. This gift never came on the scene up until this point. But after this point, we see it several times. We see it several times through the book of Acts. Paul talks about it later and so forth, and we find that it continues on in the Bible. So what happened to change things? Well, quite simply, Jesus made good on His promise that He gave them back in Acts 1 when He said, don't run off half-cocked and leave the city because in just a few days, you're going to receive what my Father promised. The Spirit is going to come upon you and you are going to receive power. That's what changed, okay? And that's important for you and I to see that. Jesus said they would be baptized in the Holy Spirit. They were, and we begin to see supernatural gifts in the body of Christ, okay? That's when we begin to see supernatural gifts in the body of Christ. And that's very important. We believe then that this gift and all the other supernatural abilities that God may give us, not necessarily will, but may, are a direct result of the baptism of the Holy Spirit because it is not until the baptism that we see these things, okay? So we're concluding biblically that because we didn't see them before the baptism of the Spirit, that they are part of it. And there's another reason we believe it. the Bible, Paul is actually going to create a list of supernatural giftings. And he uses or includes in that gift this gift that we see in Acts chapter 2, this speaking in unknown languages without previously learning them. It's in Paul's list. So once again we make a conclusion based on that. But I want to first show you that list. I'll put it on the screen for you. It's from 1st Corinthians 12. Sorry for the slightly smallish print. I wanted to get the whole thing on there. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit, not the manifestation of the natural ability, but of the Spirit is given for what? The common good. To one or to one person there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom. To another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit. To another faith by the same Spirit. To another gifts of healing by that one Spirit. To another miraculous powers. To another prophecy. To another distinguishing between spirits. To another speaking in different kinds of languages or tongues. And to still another the interpretation of those languages. So that means that gift, that person can actually interpret that language having never learned it before. And then he says this, all these are the work of one and the same Spirit. And he gives them to each one. Who gives them? The Spirit just as he determines. So once again this list, which by the way we call the gifts of the Holy Spirit, not the fruit of the Holy Spirit, which is character-based and behavioral, but the gifts of the Holy Spirit that are written out here by the Apostle Paul are considered to be something that the Spirit imparts to a believer as a result of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And again why do we make that conclusion? Because the gift of tongues appears in this list. We see when it first hit the stage and it was right when the Spirit fell upon the church for their empowering. So we believe that all of these gifts, supernatural abilities, are the result of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. That is a logical conclusion on our part, okay? And it's biblically based. Now let me stop here. And before I go any further, I want to address something that some of you may be well aware of, in fact may even have been taught. I need to tell you that quite honestly not all Christians believe that the gifts of the Spirit are available for today. And in fact many Christians have been taught in church or in Bible studies that the gifts of the Spirit died out at some point in history. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about this teaching. Why they believe that and what I believe related to that. And I'm going to, once again, it's not what I believe that matters, it's what God's Word says. But this is referred to as cessationism. Now don't get weirded out, I know it's a five-syllable word, cessationism. But it really just comes from the root word to cease, to stop, to end, alright? So cessationism basically goes like this. Cessationism generally teaches that the miraculous gifts were given only for the foundation of the church during the time between the coming of the Holy Spirit, as recorded in Acts 2, which we've read this morning, and the fulfillment of God's purposes in history, usually identified as either the completion of the last book of the New Testament or the death of the last apostle. In other words, cessationism teaches that the gifts of the Spirit, by the way, nobody denies that the gifts of the Spirit are in the Bible. Nobody denies that. You'd have to literally deny the Bible to believe it, to say that. Well, there never were any gifts of the Spirit. Of course there were. Paul talks about them, he writes about them. Nobody complains or argues about that. Here's what the issue is. Cessationism teaches that they were only around for a short time. Because we only needed them for a short time, and then they went away. And here's why they went away. Either the Bible got finished, as far as being written, and now we have the Word of God to lead us, and we don't need those gifts of the Spirit anymore, or they will say that the gifts of the Spirit were only necessary for the apostolic era. And because the church was in its ground-building, organizational stage, and they really needed extra, they needed these gifts to be able to do this, so God empowered them with gifts and said, here's my Spirit to give you strength and power. But after they got the church off and running, it's kind of like, you know, a wind-up thing. You get it going and you get it rolling, and now it's like, okay, you guys don't need these gifts anymore, so I'm going to pull them away. And these aren't necessary anymore, so. And this is what is taught in many churches here in the United States of America. I can't vouch for what's being taught in other countries. But just to let you know, it is called cessationism. Now, cessationism, or a cessationist, that's not a biblical word, that's a word we gave it to simply describe someone who teaches that the gifts of the Spirit are no longer for today. Now, without giving anything away, can I just ask, has anybody been exposed to the teaching of cessationism? It doesn't say that you believed it. Just, okay, some of you have that were brave enough to say you have. All right. For those of you have been hanging around Calvary Chapel for any period of time, you know that when we come across any claim, or any teaching, or anything that presents itself as something that we are supposed to lay hold of and believe in, we only have one response, show me in the Bible. Show me in the Word of God. So to the cessationist, we might say, prove to me that God's Word says the gifts of the Spirit would end with either the completion of the writing of the Bible, or with the death of the final Apostle. So let me be clear about something. The Bible does say the gifts of the Spirit will cease. What is debated among people is when that cessation of the gifts of the Spirit will take place. Again, everybody agrees they were around, everybody agrees that they will cease. What is disagreed upon is when they will cease. And if you are, let me show you another verse from 1st Corinthians. This is the passage that cessationists look to, to prove that they are going to pass away. It says, love never fails, but where there are prophecies, they will cease. Where there are languages, the gift of tongues, they will be stilled. Where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. I'm going to highlight a word here. The word is perfection. Did you just catch that? I highlight this word because the whole premise of cessationism is based upon this one word. It says, when perfection comes, that's when they're going to disappear. So what is perfection? Well, let's start at looking at the word that is translated perfection. In the Greek, it is the word telos, perfection. But it has other meanings. It can be translated perfection. It can also be translated completion, or it can be translated just simply end. And the cessationists will tell you that what was completed or perfected or ended was the writing of the Bible or the apostolic era. They're not really sure about which one it is. But when that happened, the gifts of the Spirit ended. But here's the problem with that. It's based on assumption. The Bible says something is going to be perfected. It doesn't say what. And there's nothing in the passage that suggests it will be either the completion of the Bible or the end of the apostolic era. I believe that what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 13, when he says, when perfection comes, these things will cease. I believe he's talking about the coming of Jesus who will make all things new. And I'm going to tell you why. I'm going to give you two reasons. And first is that show you that how the same Greek word is used elsewhere. 1 Corinthians 15, then the end will come when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority, and power. Do you know that that Greek word telos is right there in that passage, just the word end? And secondly, I believe it because that perfection... In fact, are you still in 1 Corinthians 13? Are you still there? Turn there, would you, if you're not there? And go to verse 12. Chapter 13, verse 12. but a poor reflection is in a mirror then when perfection takes place we shall see face-to-face now I know in part then when perfection comes Paul says I will know fully even as I am known let me ask you a question do you know fully do you know as you are known God says he knows you perfectly God says he knows you to the very numbering of hairs upon your head do you know about the things of God in the same way that God knows you it says that when perfection comes you will but you know what I have to confess something to you I don't I don't know that perfectly I can't stand here I've taught through the Bible two times I've been in the ministry now for about 29 years there's so much I don't know there are so many things that I don't know but the Bible says when perfection comes we will know and we will know perfectly what I have done for you this morning is I have shown you in God's Word why I believe that the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the power that comes to believers is still available for the present day and and and and I want you to know this I haven't shown you these things so that you can go argue with a cessationist if you come against to come upon someone who believes that the gifts of the Spirit are for today you just shake their hand and say God bless you and and this is not for argument sake this is for teaching sake so that you might have a greater sense of the fact that we're not going to play fast and loose with God's Word here we're not gonna we're not gonna try to blow things past you to get you to believe something that isn't firmly founded in the Word of God and and and what I want to do now that we have established a foundation for saying that the gifts of the Spirit there's no biblical reason to believe that the gifts of the Spirit aren't functional today aren't operating in the body of Christ today now the way is clear for us to start to teach on them and talk about what they are but let me just say this before we get to it you don't need to wait till next week because if you're sitting there today and and your heart is is thinking I need power I need power from God's Spirit I need power he is willing to meet you right where you are it doesn't have to be weird it doesn't have to be strange it doesn't have to be you know crazy it's just God empowering his child to go beyond the natural and every single one of us needs that you know I I think of the condition of the world today the world's in rough shape I mean man I just this last week I saw some videos that really just underscored that again just the condition of the world and I thought man if there was ever a time in in in the history of the church that we needed the power of the Holy Spirit to meet the challenge of witnessing for Christ in a lost and dark world is now it is now at this time on the on the the theological calendar before Jesus returns and I believe just before Jesus returns we need his power we need his him to enable us to live for him and to go beyond what is just our natural ability to do we need his spirit we need him and he's given us wonderful wonderful gifts to strengthen us think of them as spiritual like barbells but it's not a it's not a working of the flesh it's a working of the spirit and we're going to talk about it we're going to go through the gifts of the spirit in the next couple of weeks we're going to talk about what they are we're going to talk about what they aren't we're going to talk about how they've been misused in a lot of charismatic slash Pentecostal churches to the point where people have just shut down over him and you know that I believe a lot of people are cessation is simply because they're so disgusted with what has happened they walk into a church and everybody's just yelling and screaming in tongues and and and frothing at the mouth and they walk in there and they're just like forget it you know and and it would breaks my heart is that there are people who come to church genuinely wanting to meet Jesus genuinely wanting to know the love of God and what they what they see the or what they get when they come to church is Pentecostal weirdness and what we've done Christians is we've thrown out the baby with the bathwater we can't have that kind of a knee-jerk reaction to the thing just because some church there or wherever is doing things badly and out of order does not mean we take whole portions of the Word of God and toss them out so we're not going to be cessationist just because the alternative is to embrace something that we don't like in fact what we don't like isn't even a matter it's what the Bible says and we're going to be open to what the Bible says and and no it's not going to get weird because when God's Spirit is in control there's order we're going to talk about that too everything we got spirit is in charge is done decently and in order and it's not scary and it's not crazy and it's not dumb it's God's Spirit moving among his people that's what we're going to talk about that's what we're going to look into that's where my heart wants to go but as I said before if if you're if you're here today and you're just you're you're hearing about God's power in your and you're thinking I want I need God's power then you can pray today and just say Lord I need your power today I need your power to live my life I need your power to to go beyond the natural I need your power in every way in every way to be the best husband to be the best wife whatever may be to be the best employee or employer to be your witness I need your power in every way I need you to enable me let's stand together and let's pray