Good morning. An appropriate hymn for us to
open this service with. I want to try to bring a message
on the Holy Spirit from Acts chapter 19. If you'd like to
open your Bibles there with me. Who is the Holy Spirit? We're just saying God in three
persons. He is the third person of the
triune Godhead, you know that. Distinct in his personality from
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, but
one in his nature, fully God, fully God. I pray the Lord will
enable us to see what Isaiah saw when that hymn we just sang,
when Isaiah said, holy, holy, holy, as the Lord God of hosts,
or the seraphim said that, and Isaiah saw it and heard it. The
Lord Jesus was lifted up before him, and that's always our hope
when we come together in this place, that the Lord will be
pleased to reveal himself to us. Let's ask our Lord's blessings
on his word, Our Heavenly Father, we come into Thy holy presence
looking in faith to Thy dear Son for all our acceptance, all
our righteousness, and all our salvation. And we ask, Father,
that You would be pleased this morning to open the windows of
heaven, to send down Your Holy Spirit in power that he would
enlighten the eyes of our understanding, that he would cause us to set
our affections on things above, where Christ is seated at thy
right hand. As our sin bearer, as our substitute,
and as our advocate, Lord, we are in desperate need of the
Lord Jesus Christ to stand in our stead before thee. Lord,
we pray that you would cause our hearts to leap for joy as
we find him to be our all in all. For it's in his precious name
we ask it. Amen. I told the men in the study this
morning that the passage we were going to look at this morning
was a very difficult passage for me to understand. And I stand
before you and admit that. Anthony reminded me who is sufficient
for these things. There is two ways that we can
understand this passage of scripture. And I'm not sure which is right,
but we're not here to speculate this morning. We're here to declare
the things that we do know for sure. And so I'll take just a
moment and tell you what the two possible interpretations
are of this passage, and then we'll spend the rest of our time
focusing our attention on what we know for certain. And the
danger is that when we give options that men love, they love speculating
and they love coming to conclusions and all of that sort of thing.
And I warn you against that. I've looked at this passage every
way I know to look at it and I've listened to different men
preach from it. And I'm just not sure whether
these 12 disciples that Paul finds in Ephesus were believers
in the Lord Jesus Christ before Paul came or whether they weren't. I'm not sure. But the truth about
who the Holy Spirit is remains the same regardless of whether
or not these disciples were true disciples or not. So let's read
the passage together. We're going to begin in verse
1 of Acts chapter 19. read down through verse 7. And
it came to pass that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul, having
passed through the upper coast, came to Ephesus finding certain
disciples. Now a disciple is a learner and
there is several passages where we find followers or learners
who weren't really believers. The Lord in John chapter 6 calls
himself the bread of life, and he calls on his disciples, his
learners, his followers, to believe on him. And unless they eat of
his flesh and drink of his blood, they have no life in him. And
the scripture says that some of his disciples says, these
are hard sayings. Who can hear it? Who can believe
what he's saying? And, um, And then the Bible says
many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more.
So we know that the word disciple can be used in the Bible to define
men who are following after and listening and learning, but they're
not believing. The scripture says in John chapter
eight, If you continue in my word, then are you my disciples
indeed. So we know that there are men
who are not really disciples indeed. And that perhaps is what
we're coming across here in Ephesus. Paul is arriving at Ephesus on
his second missionary journey. It's the first time he's been
there. There's no church there. He finds 12 men there who were
disciples of John the Baptist. They had been listening to what
John had preached and And when Paul comes there, the rest of
Acts chapter 19 is going to be about the planting of the church
in Ephesus. Paul stays there for two years.
This is where the story of the seven sons of Sceva are told. A riot eventually breaks out,
as it did oftentimes where Paul went and preached the gospel.
This is where we learn about the silversmith Demetrius who
is losing his his livelihood because of the gospel and so
there's lots of things that happen in Acts chapter 19 but these
12 men that we're about to read about were the original founders
and and disciples whether or not they're saved here in verse
1 we're not sure but they become the original founding members
of the church at Ephesus. And the glorious epistle that
we have written by the Apostle Paul to the church at Ephesus
is so encouraging to us. And as we think back on how this
church was founded, it will enrich, I think, all of these scriptures
to our hearts. as we understand how the Lord
raised up these early disciples. Verse two, and he said unto them,
have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed? Now, Paul's obviously had some
conversation with them in order to ask them that question. And
they have, seems like, affirmed their faith in the one that John
the Baptist preached. John's message was clear. He
said, I baptize you with water, but there's one that comes after
me whose sandals I'm not worthy to unlatch, and he's going to
baptize you with fire and with the Holy Ghost. And we know that
the baptism of the Holy Ghost, the evidences of that came out
on the day of Pentecost. And so I'm not sure if these men, he
said, have you received the Holy Ghost since You believed. John's message was clear. John
preached, we're gonna find out these 12 men were disciples of
John and only knew of the baptism of John, but John's message was
clear. John said, behold, the Lamb of God was taken away the
sins of the world. John was the one that pointed
to the Lord Jesus and said, he must increase, I must decrease.
He's the one that I'm the forerunner of. And so the disciples of John,
would have, if they were followers of John, they would have believed
the message that John preached. And it seems like Paul, in conversation
with them, affirms the fact that they had believed John's message,
but they are yet to know about the extraordinary gifts that
were given by God through the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
Now before we go any further, let me make, let me make that,
this is one thing I know for sure. I know for sure that The
Lord gave his prophets in the Old Testament certain powers,
supernatural powers to perform miracles. He often suspended
the law of physics as we know them. He caused the ax head to
raise from the water. He does many things. And these
gifts were given to the prophets of scripture to confirm and to
authenticate them as spokesmen of God. The Lord Jesus even uses
that when he speaks of men not believing his words. He said,
believe me for my work's sake. So he performed miracles to authenticate
who he was declaring himself to be. And on the day of Pentecost,
the Lord gave the apostles certain gifts. to authenticate them as
the spokesmen of God. They were given the gift of tongues,
which is always a language that was unlearned
by the one who had the gift. This idea that tongues was some
sort of a some sort of a gibberish like you see today. The gift of tongues was given
to the apostles so they could preach the gospel to people that
they didn't know their language. And the Lord enabled other believers
to have those gifts through the laying on of the hands of the
apostles. We're gonna find out in Acts
chapter 19 that Peter, I mean, that Paul, they would take pieces
of cloth that Paul had touched and take them to people who were
dying physically and heal them by them touching that piece of
cloth. I mean, these are extraordinary gifts. that were given to the
spokesman and the penman of God to authenticate their message. These gifts do not exist today. They're not necessary today.
Why not? Why not? Because we have the
word of God. We try and test everything by
the scriptures. 66 books. You know, God would only have
to speak one time by one man and every person on the earth
would be accountable to believe what he said. But the Lord knowing
that we are foolish and slow of heart to believe, the Lord
remembering that we're made of dust, the Lord knowing that our
frame is fleshly and fragile, and the Lord being full of mercy.
And He has gone to extraordinary lengths to reveal to us what
He has for us in Christ. And he's given us 66 books written
over a period of 1500 years by 40 different penmen, holy men
of God, who wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. But
at this time, we didn't have the completed scripture. And
so the Lord gave these gifts to men to to prove the scriptures. One thing I know for certain,
I said there were some things I'm not sure about in this passage,
and there's some things I know about for sure. One thing I know
for certain is that what we see today among the Pentecostals
and among the charismatic movement is, it's a fraud. What else I say? It's demonic at worst. It's nothing but fleshly. It's men who mind the things
of the flesh, looking to fleshly means to prove that they have
the Holy Spirit. It's not the Holy Spirit. It's
a spirit, but it's not the Holy Spirit. How do we know if we have the
Holy Spirit? We believe God. We believe what God has given
us in his word. We don't need signs and wonders. We don't need tongues. We don't
need extraordinary gifts. We don't need miracles in order
to prove. We have the spirit of God who
takes the word of God and applies it to God's people and gives
them faith to believe God. So the Lord has been very merciful
to give us his word and One thing we're not gonna do is take this
passage of scripture and use it to justify the abuse that
we see in the church today among men pretending to have the Holy
Spirit when the spirit that they have is nothing but holy, is
everything but holy. So let's go back to verse two.
I hope this is, I hope I'm being clear. The other possibility here is
that these men were not disciples at all. Here's, have you received
the Holy Ghost since you believed? And I, what possibly Paul is saying
to them, have you heard about what God has done at Pentecost
in the pouring out of the spirit of God, since you believe the
gospel, since you believed on Christ, have you heard about
that? And they respond by saying, we've
not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. Now, do they mean that we don't
even know anything about the Holy Ghost? They didn't hear
John's message if they can say that. Or are they saying that
we don't know what you're talking about? We don't know about this
outpouring of the Spirit of God whereby God has given gifts to
his apostles to Could be one way or the other. And he said
unto them, unto what then were you baptized? And they said unto
John's baptism. And now he's going to clarify
John's message in verse four. Then said Paul, John verily baptized
you with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they
should believe on him which should come after him. That is on Christ
Jesus. Now, one of the key verses is
verse 5, and notice that the word this is in italics, so let's
just leave it out. It doesn't belong in the text.
Is Paul continuing his testimony of John's message, or is he saying
to these men, when they heard this, they were baptized? You see the difference? Here's
the problem. Were these men believers before
Paul found them who just didn't know about Pentecost and the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit? Or were they like so many who
call themselves disciples, learners, followers of God, and yet they've
never really understood the message at all. They've never really
believed. I don't know. If verse five means
that Paul baptized them, then we can conclude that they were
never believers and never really understood what John's message
was. But if Paul's saying in verse five that John baptized
those who he preached to, then perhaps they were believers and
they just didn't know about the work of God at Pentecost. You
see where that fits in. So John baptized under the baptism
of repentance, saying that the people that they should believe
on him, who should come after him, that is on Christ Jesus.
And when those people heard that, they were baptized. Or was it when those men heard
that they were baptized? I don't know. And when Paul laid his hands
on them, now this kind of, confirms the first possible interpretation
that they were believers, but they just had not heard about
the laying on of the hands of the apostles and not received
the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And when Paul laid his hands
upon them, the Holy Spirit came upon them and they spake with
tongues and prophesied and all the men were about 12. So you see where you could understand
this passage both ways. So let's look at what we do know.
Who is the Holy Ghost? Who is the Holy Ghost? In Hebrews 9, verse 14, he's
called the eternal spirit of God. Now, eternal means that
he has always been. So just as the Lord Jesus Christ
is the self-existent, I am, so the Holy Ghost is self-existent. He's not derived. He's not dependent. He's not created. He is the third
person of the triune Godhead who is himself eternal. In Ephesians chapter four, we're
told to grieve not the Spirit of God. which reveals him as
a person who can be grieved and can be quenched. And so here's
who the Holy Spirit is, regardless of how we understand this passage
of scripture, whether these men were believers before Paul found
them, or they just had not yet understood the point out of the
Spirit of God, the emphasis is on the person and work of the
Holy Spirit. And, In Ephesians chapter one,
verse 19, he's called the Spirit of Jesus Christ. And we see in John chapter 17
that the Lord said, it's expedient for you that I go away, for if
I go not away, the Holy Spirit will not come. But he's gonna
come, I'm gonna send him in my name. And he's gonna lead you
to me. So he's referred to as the Spirit
of grace. Only God can give grace. The
spirit of glory, only God gets all the glory. He's called the
spirit of truth. Only God has the truth. So we're brought to know that
the spirit of God is none other than God. He's as much God as
God the Father and God the Son. He's called the Spirit of life.
Only God can give life. He's called the Spirit of promise. Only God is faithful to all his
promises to his people. This is who the Holy Spirit is.
My prayer this morning is that the Lord will cause us to ask
for the Holy Spirit. We won't be able to believe,
we won't be able to see. What did the Lord say to Nicodemus?
Nicodemus, except you be born again, born from above, born
of the Spirit of God, you cannot perceive of the kingdom of God.
You cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus wanted to know
how it could, how it would be possible for him to go back into
his mother's womb and be born again. And the Lord said, Oh,
Nicodemus, that which is of the flesh, that's flesh. The flesh
profit at nothing, but that which is of the spirit, the spirit
giveth life and the spirit's like the wind and he listeth
with us wherever he wills. You don't know where he's coming
from or where he's going, but you are completely dependent
upon the Holy Spirit to come and blow. power of God in your
heart to believe on Christ. Here's how we know we have the
Spirit of God, not because we're pretending to have some extraordinary
gifts that don't even exist anymore, but because God has given us
faith to believe on Christ, to look to Christ and to rest our
hope in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And he is God, He's called the
spirit of promise. He's called the spirit of wisdom. Only he can open the eyes of
our understanding. Only he can reveal the wisdom
of God to us. He's called the spirit of the
Lord and the spirit of the living God. He's called the spirit of
holiness. That's who Paul was saying, have
you received the spirit? And we'll just leave off for
now, since you believed, because there is no spirit of God apart
from believing. Romans chapter eight is clear
on that. If you have not the spirit of God, you're none of
his. So this extraordinary outward
manifestation of the gifts of God given by the spirit that
were necessary in the early days of the church, which don't exist
today, have you received the Holy Spirit? Even then, Even then, if what Paul meant
was, have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed, Paul
knew that in order to believe, you had to have the Holy Spirit. So that leads me to believe that
I think I'm sort of leaning one way on this. I'm leaning towards
thinking that Paul's really talking about Pentecost here. But we won't force a position
on that. I'm not going to take a stand
one way or the other there, but I will take a stand on this.
You've got to have the Holy Spirit to be a believer. And he is the
third person of the triune Godhead and is as necessary As God the Father in election
and God the Son in redemption, God the Holy Spirit is the person
of the Godhead who makes us to believe. He's the one who opens
the eyes of understanding. He's the one who gives us faith. Regeneration will not happen
without the Spirit of God. The new birth cannot happen without
the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit is the one that
the Lord Jesus Christ came completely anointed with. The scripture
says that he was anointed with the oil of gladness above his
fellows. You and I have the Spirit of
God impart he had the Spirit of God in his fullness. It was the Holy Spirit that caused
the conception of the Lord Jesus Christ in the womb of Mary. The
very term Christ interpreted means the anointed one, the Messiah,
the one who was promised of God to come in the full power of
the Spirit of God to accomplish the work of God in saving his
people. So the Holy Spirit was necessary
for our salvation. The Lord Jesus Christ was completely
anointed by him and operated in the complete power of him. And he's necessary in regeneration.
We will not believe, we will not see, we will not come apart
from the third person of the triune Godhead, the eternal sovereign,
immutable, omnipotent and omniscient Spirit of God giving us faith
to believe on Christ. These are the things that we
know for sure. Turn to me to John chapter 17. What we know for sure, and one
of the reasons we know that John chapter 16, I'm sorry, verse
7, John chapter 16. One of the reasons we know that
the counterfeit gifts of the Spirit that you see in among
religious people today are not of the Holy Spirit is because
they call attention to the Spirit of God, and they call attention
to the individuals who pretend to have the Spirit of God. If
they were truly the Spirit of God, they would point to Christ,
and only to Christ. The Spirit of God doesn't call
attention to Himself, and He doesn't magnify the flesh. You
know, the stuff that... Some dear lady called me this
week, said, I've been going to this big church and it just seems
like all entertainment. That's all it is. It's an appeal
to the flesh and those who mind the things of the flesh are after
the flesh. That's all they have. They don't
have the Holy Spirit. Those who have the Holy Spirit,
they want to see spiritual things. They want the eyes of their understanding
to be open. They want, they want faith in
Christ. They want to, they want to know
him. Believe on him and rest in him. They're not satisfied
with these With these fleshly things they they've got to have
that which is spiritual John chapter 16 you have your
Bibles open look with me at verse 7 nevertheless. I tell you the
truth about Our Lord speaking to me and you, I tell you the
truth. And if the Lord Jesus speaks
and he said, I tell you the truth. Oh, give special attention because
there was no God found in his mouth. Every word he spoke was
the word of truth. But when he says, I'm going to
tell you the truth. And what he's saying is you pay special
attention to this because this is really important. It is expedient for you. It is
necessary. It is good. It is profitable
for you that I go away. Right now, you can only, you
can only know me if you're in my physical presence, but it's
necessary for you that I go away because when I go away, I'm going
to send the comforter and he's going to live in you and he's
going to be with you and each one of you, wherever you are.
That's what our Lord was saying to Mary at the tomb when she,
when she clinged to him and said, oh, Rabboni, don't, don't ever
leave me again. What did our Lord say? He said,
Mary, don't cling to me. The scripture said, don't touch
me. But he's saying, Mary, don't depend upon my physical presence.
I've not yet gone to my father, but when I go to my father, I'm
going to send you the spirit and I'm going to be with you
in the power of my spirit. It is expedient for you that
I go away. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto
you. But if I depart, I will send him unto you. word comforter is the word paraclete
it's it it it means literally it means one who stands along
beside you it was used as a as an advocate as an attorney of
law who stood in your stead and presented your case to the judge
and here's the lord jesus christ saying i'm going to send my holy
spirit and he's going to stand with you and here's how you're
going to know if you have the spirit of god because you speak
in tongues Because you're able to raise men from the dead. And
when he has come, he will, that word reprove means convince. He will convince the world. Now here's a good place where
we find the word world used as it's used in John 3, 16. You're
not talking about every individual person of the world. If that's
true, then the Holy Spirit is a miserable failure. How many
people do you know who live in the world who have not yet been
convicted of sin of righteousness and of judgment? The majority
of the people in the world don't have any idea about this. He's
talking about, he's talking about those who God has taken out of
the world. He's talking about his church.
People say, well, God so loved the world. He loves everybody.
No, the word world never is used to speak of each person individually
in the world. It's used in the same way it's
being used here. He will convince worldlings, those who are of
the world and those who I've taken out of the world. What's he going to convince them
of? Righteousness. of judgment, I mean of sin, of
righteousness, and of judgment. Three things. This is how we
know we have the Spirit of God. Of sin, because they believe not on me.
The sin that doth so easily beset you and me is unbelief. It is the polluted fountain of
all our sinful problems. It is the seedbed, if you will,
of all the weeds that grow in our lives. It's unbelief. What
is the distinguishing difference between the Lord Jesus Christ?
He's fully God, but he had perfect faith. We're always crying, Lord, I
believe, help thou my unbelief. or there's my problem, it's causing
so much sin in my life and everything, all the fears and all the doubts
and all the problems I have are caused by my inability to believe
God as I ought. Has the Holy Spirit convinced
you of that? You don't need the Spirit of
God to convince you that Doing something outwardly shameful
is sin. You've got a conscience for that. The unbeliever can be wounded
in their conscience when they do something that they don't
want anybody to know about. They think, well, you know, I've been
convicted of sin because I see that that's wrong. No, you're
convicted by the Holy Spirit. When you come to realize that
you are sin, That everything about you is sinful. That you're
not capable of believing God as you ought. That to will is
present with you, but how to perform that which is good, you
find not. When you would do good, evil
is ever present with you. That's the ministry of the Holy
Spirit. And that's what the people of the world don't know. They
don't know that. They think that because they
feel bad when they do something bad, that they're convicted by
the Holy Spirit. No, the law of God is written
on every man's heart. He knows when he steals. He knows
when he lies. He knows when he commits a sexual
sin. He knows these things are contrary
to the law of God written upon his heart and he feels guilty
about them. That's not the conviction of
the Holy Spirit. It's the root cause of our sin.
That's the, that's the real problem, isn't it? The more we see of Christ, the more aware we become of the
sin of the flesh and how how truly unlike Him we are in every
way. And the more we hate our sin,
and the more we grieve the thought of it manifesting itself in our
behavior. This is what the ministry of
the Holy Spirit is. In Romans chapter eight, just
read that whole chapter sometime. It's talking about the Spirit
of God restraining The sins of the flesh. That they don't manifest themselves.
The one who has the Spirit of God grieves over, and the more
they see of Christ, the more they see of their sin, and the
more they see the potential of these things becoming their life
if the Lord doesn't give them His Spirit to restrain them.
Lord, keep me. This is the ministry of the Holy
Spirit. People hear us talk about sin
and how we're nothing but sin, and they think we're condoning
sin. We hate our sin. The Spirit of God makes us. But
though the Spirit of God restrained the manifestation of our sin,
that doesn't make us any less sinful, does it? You see, we don't take pride
in the fact that there are certain things we don't do anymore. because
the Spirit of God has restrained us from those things. We don't
point our fingers at the sins of society and say, oh, look
at them. We don't do that. Because we know that everything
they're doing is in here. And all that does is cause self-righteousness
among religious people to point to the sins of society and say,
well, look how evil they are. We're just crying out to God
that he would cause us to not fulfill the lust of the flesh. It's always there. The sin nature
is always there. And we don't look at the fact
that we're not fulfilling it and take pride in the fact that
we're not as sinful as someone else. No, to whom much is given,
much is required. And the more we see of Christ,
the more the light of the gospel shines in our hearts, the more
aware we become of that sinful nature that's there. So that
we can say with the apostle Paul, I'm the chief of all sinners.
No one's been given more light. No one's been given more grace.
No one's been given more understanding and more truth and more mercy
and more gifts than I have and remain as unbelieving as sinful
as I am in my heart. You see, sin's a heart problem.
Everybody else is just looking at it as a behavioral problem. It's a heart problem. So the
child of God is saying, Lord, restrain my behavior. Don't let
my sin, don't let my sin break out in some shameful behavior
that's going to be a reproach on Christ or reproach on the
gospel. Lord, I'm as sinful as I've ever
been. More so we, the more we see of
him, the more we see of our sin, the growing in grace and in the
knowledge of Christ growing that how oftentimes the script, the
tree, the scripture speaks of believers as the trees of righteousness,
which is the planning of the Lord and a believer grows like
a tree. The higher that tree grows towards
the heavens and the more fruit it produces, the deeper those
roots go down into the ground. and the darkness of the ground.
And so it is, the more we see of him, the more fruitful God
enables us to be, the more we realize that the roots of my life are in sin. That's the ministry of the Holy
Spirit. Do you believe that? You believe that about yourself,
not the person sitting next to you. You believe that about yourself.
That's the work of the Holy Spirit. Of righteousness, because I go
to my Father. You have no righteousness of
your own. If you had to stand in the presence
of a holy God, based on the best thing you've ever done, the best
prayer you've ever prayed, The best sacrificial act you've ever
made for anybody. You'd go to hell for it. Why? Because it's got sin in it. You don't have any righteousness.
Your righteousnesses are as filthy rags before God. And when I say you, I'm talking
about me. You know that. You know that. Because I go to my father, we
have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one,
seated at the right hand of God, ever living to make intercession
for us. And of judgment, because the prince of this world has
been judged. This is all what the Lord said the Holy Spirit's
gonna do. And he goes on to say, in this passage, he's not gonna
call attention to himself. He's gonna point you to me, he's
gonna teach you all things. I don't know whether these 12
men in Ephesus were believers before or after. Doesn't really
matter. They were believers. They were
the founding fathers of that church in Ephesus. I'm sure so
many of them, when Paul went back in Acts chapter 20 and met
with the elders of Ephesus, I'm sure some of these 12 men were
those elders. But I do know what God says to
us about the Holy Spirit. Might we ask for Him and depend upon Him
for our faith in Christ. Amen? All right, let's take a
break. Thank you