Pauline Pentecost and the Holy Spirit-Filled Church

If you have your Bibles, we'll turn together to the book of Acts,

Acts 18 · chapter mention

chapter 18, beginning with verse 24, and we'll read down to chapter 19, verse 10.

While you're turning there, I'll make a pastoral note. It's nice to see that

even most of the men are now clapping their hands.

Wow, the women and children didn't have a problem, but even the men are now,

starting to do that. So praise the Lord.

Let's look to God's Word in Acts 19, beginning with verse 10.

We'll pick up on the story with Paul in Ephesus.

This is now the holy and inspired Word of God. Now a Jew named Apollos,

a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus.

He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures. He had been instructed

in the way of the Lord, and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately

to the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John.

He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. But when Priscilla and Aquila heard

him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.

And when he wished to cross to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote

to the disciples to welcome him.

When he arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed,

for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the scriptures that the Christ was Jesus.

And it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland

country and came to Ephesus.

There he found some disciples and said to them, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?

And they said, No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.

And he said, Into what then were you baptized?

They said, Into John's baptism. And Paul said, John baptized with the baptism

of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is Jesus.

On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

And when Paul had laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them,

and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying.

There were about twelve men in all.

And he entered the synagogue, and for three months spoke boldly,

reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God.

But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the

way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with

him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus.

This continued for two years so that all the residents of Asia heard the word

of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.

This is the word of the Lord. You can be seated.

Before we move forward, let's pray together. Holy Spirit of God,

we pray that you would fall fresh on us this morning,

doing what you do, O Spirit of God, bringing Christ to us, that as we hear your

word, as we worship you, as we are called to Christ, we would come to Christ,

and that by your spirit and power, Christ would dwell richly in us.

This we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

So this morning I'll be focusing on verse 5 primarily and then the surrounding incidents.

Verse 5 says, on hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

And when Paul had laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they

began speaking in tongues and prophesying.

Sometimes when you read a commentary on Acts, usually the commentaries will

call this a Pauline Pentecost.

You can quibble over the name. It's not the first Pentecost.

It didn't happen at Pentecost and so forth. But typically, as theologians are

looking through the book of Acts and trying to figure out, is there a pattern?

Is Luke writing to tell us something? And I want us to pay attention to this

because I think it's significant, not only in Luke, but in all of the scriptures.

When you read a story in the Bible, sometimes people just read the words.

They look at the words and they forget there's a structure to the way the words are put together.

So Luke, we know from his gospel, writes his gospel with a particular structure.

Many of the same stories, sometimes he's adding stories in order to add to his

structure where Luke's gospel is particularly interested in the weak,

the needy, the marginalized, the prostitute, the publican, et cetera,

the widow and the orphan.

In Luke's writing here, we find that Luke is working, beginning with the Great

Commission, and the structure of his story is, remember, it's not just history.

He doesn't just say, Paul did this, Paul did that, and so forth.

He skips sections that we only find out later in the letters of Paul what was happening.

So Luke is structuring his work so that we theologically see in the structure

of it, not just the words, but the structure of it, what's happening.

At the very beginning of Luke, remember, the Great Commission was given,

The apostles were completed after Judas had failed, and they were waiting for

the coming of the Holy Spirit to send them on this great commission,

to constitute them on this mission.

And they were told, and we're told several times in Acts, that they were to

go from Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth.

This is the pattern that we're seeing in the book of Acts. And we see not only

is it commanded, that's what they're going to do, that's what they're supposed

to do, but now we see it structurally.

So for instance, the first time you see the Holy Spirit coming down in the way

he does here Signs, not just signs and wonders, but particularly tongues and

prophesying is Acts chapter 2,

Acts 2 · chapter mention

It's sort of what I call the constitutional convention of the church It's when

the church was really constituted They were waiting, the Spirit came and manifested

himself in marvelous ways Miracles, signs, and wonders But particularly speaking in tongues.

And prophesying according to the prophecy of Joel, which meant that the end of the age was coming,

and at the end of that age or the inauguration of this kingdom,

there would be multiple different signs given by the Holy Spirit so that the

church would be enabled to lay the foundation for itself and do its mission to the ends of the earth.

We see it in Acts chapter 2, we see it in Acts chapter 8, and we see it again here in Acts chapter 19.

Acts 2 · chapter mention Acts 8 · chapter mention Acts 19 · chapter mention

It's a trifold repetition of the apostles laying hands on people,

the spirit coming down and manifesting himself in marvelous ways.

At Pentecost, God poured out his spirit on the masses, and these people,

remember, had been gathered from all different parts of the world.

I'll get back to this again later, but we see very clearly, which is why we

read from Genesis 11, that the Tower of Babel is the historical backdrop,

of a miracle with the signs and wonders that involve language, which scattered.

And then at Pentecost and the continuing work of the Holy Spirit in a Pentecostal

way, quotes, did everyone see my air quotes? Because I'll qualify it.

But in the spirit or in the manner of Pentecost, the church is,

we're reminded, the church is the work of the Holy Spirit.

I know I've said it before, but again, I'm just gonna be, I'm gonna say it's

because I'm a good teacher, because teachers always repeat themselves,

but repetition is the mother of learning. So we just read, we believe in the

holy Catholic and apostolic church.

And by holy, we mean that this church, this community, this body,

this glorious thing which we're a part of has been birthed by the Holy Spirit,

founded by the Holy Spirit and only lives and exists by the continued work of the Holy Spirit.

We should want to be a Holy Spirit filled church. Amen?

See, you can tell that if we were

Pentecostal, we're not filled with the Spirit. We only got three amens.

But I want to remind us, that's not necessarily, as much as I really want you

to say amen, I want to hear it. Please do.

But that's not necessarily the metric by which we said that church is filled with the Spirit.

You know, when every man's clapping, no. That's not the measure.

What is the measure? We'll see in a moment towards the end.

The measure is, does Christ dwell richly in us?

Is there love and unity Which only comes Only comes By the work of the powerful Holy Spirit in us.

We don't expect to see, in other words, the signs and wonders that we saw at

Pentecost, Acts 2 or Acts 8, or even here in Acts 19.

We don't expect to see that because these were signs and wonders given for the

foundation of the church to authenticate their message.

So we don't expect those things. But we do expect, and we should pray,

to be a Holy Spirit-filled church, a church filled with the Holy Spirit in the biblical sense.

So let's look at the story, and we'll move our way to that. First of all,

we see Apollos introduced.

Remember, Luke is beautifully, masterfully weaving into his narrative these

people that come along, these Corneliuses and the Lydia's and Priscilla and Aquila and now Apollos.

So Apollos arrives on the scene, he enters, and he's a great man, right?

Just as we said, Lydia was a wonderful woman, Priscilla and Aquila are a wonderful

couple, without which or without whom the church couldn't do its work.

Now Apollos comes onto the scene and he's described as eloquent and a master of the scriptures.

He understands the scriptures and by eloquent, it's referring to the ancient

sort of rhetorical sense in

which there's not only a man that has mastered his substance and subject,

but he's able to communicate it in such a way that people listen and understand

and believe it. They're persuaded by him.

A great guy. And not only is he great, we'll see in a moment that he's also humble.

He also becomes a constituent part of the follow-up of the ministry of Paul.

So the church is going to go on beyond the apostles through the Holy Spirit

working through men like this.

Apollos was a man who knew the scriptures. Luke says he was mighty in the scriptures.

He was a great man of intensity and fervent spirit. He had the persuasive spirit.

I remember years ago, I read a biography of James Henley Thornwell and there,

was a chapter about his preaching and the author said his preaching was logic on fire.

I loved that. That's great. Not only good substance, not only great arguments,

but it was filled with persuasive fire and passion.

That's what we have in Apollos. But there's a problem with Apollos though.

He comes here and he has a deficiency. There's something wrong.

He's teaching, he's preaching. He's a follower of John the Baptist.

He's teaching the way of the Lord, but he's missing something.

And it's actually spoken of here in the phrase, the way of the Lord.

At first, when you're reading through it, you don't notice, but Luke says,

Apollos is following the way of the Lord, but Priscilla and Aquila taught him

in the way of God. Like, what's the big deal?

Well, because he's following in the ministry of John the Baptist who came and

said, prepare the way of the Lord.

John the Baptist was the Elijah towards the end of the age, inaugurating this new time period.

And when Elijah or John the Baptist came, he was speaking of the way of the Lord.

The way of the Lord is a quote from Isaiah 40.

In fact, it says in Isaiah 40, verse 3, it says, A voice cries in the wilderness,

Isaiah 40:3

prepare the way of the Lord.

Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Those of you who love the

Messiah at Christmas, love that.

Make way, get ready. Handel did such a great job at weaving that together and

making a masterful song.

But this is from John the Baptist, Isaiah 43. And John the Baptist is the one

that said these very words. He went out preaching the words of Isaiah.

Make way, prepare the way of the Lord.

Messiah is coming. He's right behind me.

He's going to be here. This is the time. Repent.

And come to the way of the Lord. John rests his calling and ministry as the

one who was fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 40, verse 3. John the Baptist

Isaiah 40:3

was the Elijah that would come before Messiah.

Apollos seemed to know that.

Apollos was understanding it. He was acknowledging and teaching these very things.

Messiah's here, it's about to take place, but he hadn't connected all the dots yet.

So he's a God-fearing Jew who was eagerly awaiting Messiah, and that's pretty

much a pattern we see with all the people so far in the synagogue,

the humble ones who are looking at the scriptures and saying,

I want Messiah to come so much, so badly.

We long for him. It is the longing of all the ages.

Jesus, for them, Messiah. And now Apollos has the same heart,

has the same soul, understands the scriptures.

He's not surprised by the prophetic connections that Paul will make because

he's already making them.

He's already looking and saying, well, if Isaiah says this, that means that

the Messiah, the one who's going to come, is going to be a suffering servant.

He's going to save us from our sins. He's going to do all. So Apollos is,

whoo, he's excited. He gets it. He understands, but he hasn't connected it entirely

to Jesus and his ministry.

And Luke wants us to see that in Apollos. He's a disciple and he has disciples

in Ephesus. And Ephesus is a glorious city. We'll speak more about it a little

bit next week because we'll come back to Ephesus. But Ephesus is a beautiful, amazing city.

If you go to Ephesus today, even the ruins, you'll see we went there once.

And you're walking on streets of marble.

It's like this is a magnificent city. Even the loo, as our tour guide said,

you know, the toilets, even they were made of marble.

I mean, it was like this place was spectacularly adorned with libraries and

temples and everything that you can imagine.

A tremendous city. So this city, as we'll see, is going to also be a headquarters

for Paul, who virtually starts a seminary there.

He starts a seminary for pastors and teachings. He stays there a long time.

So in Ephesus, you have Apollos and the disciples there ready to go,

ready to establish a church and ready to establish a seminary and a headquarters

from which the gospel would move out. But there's a problem.

He had only received the baptism of John, the sprinkling. John the Baptist,

how about that former Baptist, sprinkled.

He did. That's the only way. Remember, he was a Nazarite who only had baptisms

or washings, and the Hebrew word used for them was shakots, which meant to pour

or sprinkle or lave. There was no dipping.

He didn't dip anybody. Just a side note. Again, that's from me.

My recovering Baptist background.

So Paulus had received John's baptism. He was sprinkled with a sprinkling or washing of repentance.

He was ready for the Lord. He was ready for Messiah.

But then he had to be re-baptized. Now, this is another little former Baptist in me coming out.

He didn't have to get re-baptized because he didn't have the right form or mode,

or, you know, believer's baptism versus infant baptism. That's not why he got re-baptized.

He had never been baptized.

That's why, right? The baptism of John was a washing of repentance.

That was not the baptism that Jesus said, all the disciples of the nations need

to be baptized and come under the teaching of the Lord.

So it wasn't about baptism per se, like mode or person.

It's important. In our own confession, it says this, with regard to the sacraments, the.

Grace which is exhibited in or by the sacraments rightly used is not conferred

by any power in them, right?

The water is not holy. We visited a church on our trip recently,

and I think my friend and I both wanted to dip our hand in the holy water.

We didn't because there's something weird about it, but there's no such thing as holy water.

If you use regular water, it doesn't matter. So it says that,

nor does the efficacy or effectiveness of the sacrament depend on the piety

or intention of him that doth administer it.

So if the pastor happens to be living in sin and he baptizes your little baby, it doesn't undo it.

Oh no, pastor was arrested, now he's in jail. We have to be re-baptized.

No, you've been baptized.

The efficacy or effectiveness of the baptism depends entirely on the Holy Spirit, okay?

So the church has given the sacramente. So it's neither the water nor the minister

that would require re-baptism.

And by the way, we don't require re-baptism here. If you come to us from any

church background, if you've been baptized by water in the name of the Father,

Son, and Holy Spirit, you don't have to be re-baptized.

We would say it was an improper mode But we wouldn't say it was invalid,

Because the effectiveness doesn't depend on any of those things You could be

dipped, sprinkled, immersed You could even go three times forward I had Grace

Brethren people, you know, they dunk them three times forward And that doesn't matter,

as far as re-baptism It matters in terms of how we do it,

Because baptism is only sprinkling or pouring That's all we'll do But we don't

require you to get baptized again because of something else.

That's almost entirely a Baptist essential principle.

It doesn't belong, I think, to the history of the church nor to our church.

And by the way, you'll notice baptism does belong to the church.

The apostles are the ones given baptism, and they are baptizing people.

We have sort of a movement, I know right now, where churches of all stripes

and kinds think it's really cute and emotional and nice to have,

mom and dad or your favorite teacher baptize you or your favorite aunt or uncle

come in and water and dunk. That's also not appropriate.

If that happened, again, we would receive your baptism. even if Uncle Joey did

it or whoever did it. It's not proper, but water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The reason I say that is because I want us to notice as the Holy Spirit is creating

the church, churches aren't just popping up into existence randomly like they

do in America. That's the American way, right? You don't like that church, start another one.

And usually if the trend keeps going, you don't like that church,

that church, start a church in your house.

Why not? You know, I don't like those churches.

That's nowhere in the book of Acts. Churches aren't just, they didn't just evolve

in someone's basement or on their back porch.

Churches came into existence by the power of the Holy Spirit through the work

of the apostles, which is why we say holy, Catholic, and apostolic.

There is no church without the power and authority of the apostles who were

given that authority by the Holy Spirit on behalf of Jesus Christ.

Individuals have no more right to establish a church in their house than you

and I would have to create a new nation of America.

I know Trump's renaming everything this America and that America,

but we wouldn't be able to have a congregational meeting and start a new reformed

state of America. It's not legitimate.

You'll notice that the legitimacy of the rite of baptism and the administration

comes through Christ, through the Holy Spirit, through the apostles.

That's how churches are formed. Even our own church, you say,

well, weren't you guys started in 1936?

Yes, under the apostolic authority that had come before that,

and before that, and before that. You see, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds

of years before that. We didn't just say we get the right to start our own church.

The church is apostolic, founded by the apostles through the power of the Holy Spirit in Christ.

So here the apostles come to this group and they organize a church.

You'll notice that now in Acts.

They're organizing churches. We'll see that in Acts 20. They have elders.

They have pastors. They have deacons.

The church is becoming, dare I say, an institution, a religion.

You know, you hear it's not a religion. It's a relation. It's becoming an institution

under apostolic oversight and authority.

That's the church of Jesus Christ. That's why when Paul,

baptizes these men and lays hands on them, the Holy Spirit confirms that,

the whole process, the whole establishment of the church with these new guys,

with the coming of these Pentecostal gifts.

Again, Acts 2, Acts 8, and now again in Acts chapter 19. What's happening here?

Acts 19 · chapter mention

Well, first of all, the Pentecost, if you want to call them that,

I know where the manifestation of tongues and prophesying happens in Acts 2,

Acts 8, and now in our chapter. Why?

Again, it seems to be following the pattern that was originally given.

Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth.

And now we have the Apostle Paul in the city of Ephesus with Apollos,

who had been there waiting by God's sovereignty to establish this church here.

As if the Holy Spirit is saying, because he is, now we're on step, the last step.

Now we're towards the end, and we'll see that increasingly as we see us moving

in Acts to the end of the age itself.

By 70 AD, the city of Jerusalem is destroyed. The temple is gone. There's no going back.

So the Lord, in his sovereignty and providence, is saying to Paul and to us,

you are fulfilling what has been commanded in Acts, ends of the earth, Gentiles.

We've already seen Paul's ministry authenticated by visions from Peter and other

things, but here we see Paul himself as the apostle to the Gentiles going here,

laying on hands, and down comes the work of the Holy Spirit.

Again, laying the groundwork for this new era of ministry through Paul and then

eventually Apollos, and now, ready? Through us.

It's our work to continue. We're not ground, we're not laying a foundation anymore,

we're building, but the Holy Spirit is laying the foundation here.

In fact, I would remind you again at the risk of repetition that when you see

in Acts or in anywhere in Scripture, miracles, signs, wonders,

those types of things, you're not seeing random events.

They don't happen randomly. They don't happen accidentally. The apostles aren't

just bumping into people.

Although next week I have a, it's really interesting. You've got to come next

week because, well, it's a sermon on whether or not Paul had a holy hanky with

power to send out spiritual healing.

Not interested. See, that's interesting. But anyway, she's interested.

So what happens even there, we'll see, has very deliberate theological context.

It's not just Paul's bumping into people and the Spirit of God is zooming out all over the place.

It's not random. That's not how miracles work. Remember what we said, what is a miracle?

It's a sign or wonder in which God suspends the laws of nature.

But it's not even just that. It's the suspension of the laws of nature in order to what?

To authenticate the message of the one whose voice is coming from God.

Remember I told you in school, I had a teacher that used to say a miracle is

the suspension of the teleological.

I thought that was so cool. I don't know what that meant even,

but I thought that's cool.

In other words, God is suspending the normal laws of nature,

like gravity, like walking on water or the whole process of nature whereby water

would be transformed into wine to a process of planting grapes and harvesting

grapes and smashing grapes. You see that?

Instead, instantaneously, the water becomes wine. That's a miracle.

So the water didn't turn into wine randomly.

You look at that, I've heard many people say, well, they ran out of wine.

So Jesus' mother said, hey, son, create mine.

Another reason to ask Mary for things, right? If you're Catholic.

Hey, Jesus, would you make some more wine? Sure.

But no, it's that his inaugural miracle was creating wine so that we would understand

where Messiah was going to take us.

He is going to take us to that blessed marriage supper of the Lamb in which

one day when he makes all things right, we'll be seated with him and feasting

with him in heaven itself, eating rich meats and drinking good wine.

Yes, my Baptist friends, we will drink wine in heaven.

So what is a miracle? It's a wonderful sign from God to authenticate a message.

And this is even true in the Old Testament. Miracles then didn't just happen randomly.

Moses wasn't just wandering through the wilderness, zapping things or doing miracles.

The miracles had a purpose, even Moses himself. How will the people know?

Put your hand in your pocket, pull it out, it's leprous. It wasn't a magic trick.

He even says, this is how you'll know. this is how they will know that you are

my voice, that you are my mouthpiece because you're sowing them a sign.

It wasn't a magic trick. And it happens all throughout the Bible.

Particularly we saw, and I've noted it's great story in 1 Kings 18,

when Elijah is there on Mount Carmel with the prophets of Baal, great scene.

He's sitting there and he pours water all over the sacrifice and he's ready

to call fire down from heaven.

And this is what he says, hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that you are God.

God, he wasn't just doing a trick, a magic show.

He was saying, Lord, bring fire from heaven so that these people will know that

my voice is from you to authenticate what I'm saying.

That's what we see in miracles. That's what we see in the ministry of Paul. He's going to Ephesus.

He's on the edge. He's actually now on the cusp of almost entirely ministering to the Gentile world.

The Gentile world. And here in this sign and this wonder, we're reminded again

that the Gentile world belongs to Jesus Christ.

And Paul is there in the name of Jesus to claim that world.

And he does so. And these miracles and these tongues and these signs and wonders authenticate that.

We don't necessarily need to have those signs and wonders today to have great

joy in the signs from then.

Praise God. Now we see in the foundation lane of the apostles that the world

belongs to Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit will take it back.

Amen? That's wonderful news.

We don't necessarily need them today. We have them through the apostles.

So John the Baptist teaches Apollos. Apollos comes to Christ through Paul,

and now we see that great sign of tongues.

We've seen that before as well. Tongues, remember, is not just gibberish.

It's not just words Randomly spoken.

See I saw a guy on TV Actually do that once I think it was Kenneth Copeland,

He was just going on In the name of Jesus He just stopped And everyone's like

Oh man that's great He's speaking in tongues No he's not,

Whatever he's doing He's doing something Does it a lot actually Although he's getting old,

But he's not speaking in biblical tongues because biblical tongues were a known language, remember?

And the reason they were a known language is connected to the very passage we

read earlier to remind us of the original Pentecost and the Acts 8 Pentecost

and now Paul's Pentecost, if you wanna call it that, where tongues now come as a sign,

a sign that through a miracle of language, God is going to regather the nations

in the name of Jesus Christ. Such a glorious sign.

Speaking in tongues means that all the hatred and all the confusion and all

the scattering and all the ethnic strife that took place because of Babel is

going to vanish in the name of Jesus Christ. People are going to come together.

And remember in Babel, they came together.

They came together, they wanted a name, they wanted power. And the word Babel

meant gate, gate of heaven.

They built for themselves a tower in the middle of that city because they wanted

to reach heaven and they wanted to unify the whole world around this false religion.

They even built a false mountain and a false tower and so forth, to get to heaven.

And when the Lord saw it, he scattered them. How did he do it?

Through a miracle of language.

And when he scattered the languages, the tribes divided, and there was racial

and ethnic division. There was tribal divisions. There was warfare.

There was fighting. There was confusion. There was strike.

But praise be to God that in the miracle of tongues we're reminded that one

day in the name of Jesus and by his power and through the strength and glory

of the Holy Spirit, all nations and all peoples will be brought back together again,

in Jesus' name. That's what this is about.

There's no longer going to be confusion. and hatred and division,

ethnic enemies anymore.

There's gonna be unity and love and peace through Jesus Christ,

which is, I might add, the ultimate work of the Holy Spirit,

that in Christ, the Holy Spirit brings us together as one people in love and unity with each other.

That is, in fact, how you know whether the Holy Spirit is at work.

That's a question I've asked already, haven't I?

How do you know if the Holy Spirit's at work in the church? When you look at

Acts, you see miracles, signs, and wonders. We don't have them.

Everybody tends to think, wah, wah, wah, downer.

We don't have them. Not much excitement. I mean, we're clapping our hands,

but that's as far as it goes.

What do we do? Well, we remember that these things were going to pass away anyway.

Paul says it in 1 Corinthians 13, if I speak in the tongues of men and angels,

but have not love, I am a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal.

If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge,

so as to remove mountains, but if I have not love, I have nothing.

He goes on to describe love.

And later in verse 8, he tells us something quite profound.

Love never ends.

As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease.

They will cease. They will pass away. For we know in part and prophesy in part,

but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. What does that perfect mean?

I mean, if most people think, well, perfect is the end of the world when Jesus

returns forever, it's not the word that's used. It's not the word for perfection.

It's telos, not telos. It's telos. It's a little different.

It's a word that means the end or purpose for which something was constructed.

It means, let me pull up my Greek dictionary. It says this, a word pertaining

to that which is fully accomplished or finished according to a previous design, right?

So when the perfect comes, when the end of the age comes,

okay, when that comes, there will be no longer a need for tongues or miracles

or signs or wonders or prophecy because that age, the age for which they were

sent, The age for which they were designed is over.

It's finished. We shouldn't be looking for them any longer.

How do we have a Holy Spirit-filled church then? Don't you want to be a Pentecostal,

small p, Holy Spirit-filled church?

You should be saying, yes, we do.

We want the Holy Spirit. We love the Holy Spirit, one of the persons of the Trinity himself.

The Holy Spirit directed the apostles to Jesus Christ in every case.

From Pentecost in Acts chapter 2 to Pentecost in Acts chapter 8 to,

Acts 2 · chapter mention Acts 8 · chapter mention

if you want to call it Pentecost here in our chapter, in every situation,

the Holy Spirit didn't just do random signs and wonders.

He did those things to authenticate to Apollos and others and to direct them,

or to Paul's work, and to direct them where? To Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit isn't just about activity.

The Holy Spirit's purpose and work isn't just about creating a movement or shouting.

It's about directing and driving us to Jesus Christ and then by his grace through

regeneration and faith who causing Christ to dwell richly in us.

The work of the Holy Spirit is that and it's continuing and it's ongoing.

And you and I in this church should pray for it every day.

The Holy Spirit would guide us and direct us and cause Christ to dwell richly

in us that more and more we would hate our sin and that we would more and more

love Jesus Christ. That's a church filled with the Holy Spirit.

Your baptism reminds you of that. I hope we're going to have some baptisms next week.

I hope. And if we do, we'll be reminded that this person baptized had been marked

out by the Holy Spirit for Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit works through baptism.

Not necessarily, we said, through the water or through the minister,

but the Holy Spirit, the sovereign Holy Spirit, uses that sign to drive us to Jesus Christ.

And every time you see a baptism, Every time you should see,

you should remember, I've been set apart by the Holy Spirit to Jesus Christ.

And you should be called to it. You should be ashamed of existing and indwelling

sins and repent of them and come to Jesus Christ.

Every single baptism, not just yours, every single one.

The Holy Spirit uses baptism to remind us that in Christ we're washed of sins.

Our sins are washed away in baptism, through baptism. Again,

no, not literally or automatically, but certainly our sins are washed away by

the power of the Holy Spirit.

Baptism reminds us, the baptism that Apollos got reminds us that we belong to Jesus Christ.

And by the way, our destiny, our destiny is now belonging to Jesus Christ as we're baptized.

We now have a new destiny, a new life. We're new creations through the work of the Holy Spirit.

We should hope for that, by the

way. We should hope for that in all of our lives. We should pray for that.

You should come on Wednesday nights and make that a mark of what we're gonna pray for.

Lord, cause your Holy Spirit to be alive and well and fill our church,

fill the homes and hearts of our fathers, our mothers, and our children with the Holy Spirit.

So that we'll be a Holy Spirit-filled church or Holy Ghost.

I know Pentecostals say Holy Ghost, but a Holy Spirit-filled church with core

marks like preaching and teaching that treats the Bible as the word of God,

as the standard or metric, by the way, by which you measure the work of the Holy Spirit.

Not activity, not tongues, not miracles, not signs, but the metric of the word of God.

In this word, we have a measurement or standard by which we can measure the

work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Preaching, teaching, worship. Our worship should be filled with the Holy Spirit.

You should pray before you enter into the sanctuary. Lord, send us your spirit.

Guide us, direct us, convict us, help us be a light and lamp to our lives.

Worship, a commitment to the holiness of God. God is a holy God.

We need the Holy Spirit to help us serve a holy God.

And ultimately, we need the fruit of the Spirit.

We need the fruit of the Spirit. If you could summarize it, and I looked this

week, I looked at early church fathers who wrote about the work of the Holy Spirit.

Now, a lot of them were writing about the consubstantiality of the Spirit and

the Son. They were technical things. But the ones who were writing practically

for the benefit of the church would always land on these things, love and unity.

Is there love and unity in a church? There is the work of the Holy Spirit.

You should pray for that.

I think there is here, but we should long for it, pray for it,

seek it. Is there love and unity?

There is the work of the Holy Spirit, whether it's St. Basil the Great,

St. Ambrose of Milan, Athanasius of Alexandria, St. Gregory of Nyssa,

Tertullian, Augustine of Hippo, they're all landing on the same thing.

They never move to say, if they're screaming and shouting, you know it's the Holy Ghost.

I can tell you, brothers and sisters, that if screaming and shouting were the

metric of the work of the Holy Spirit, then Africa is a perfect place because

there's screaming and shouting everywhere.

There are revivals and crusades sweeping through Africa probably right now.

There was not a single month in our city of Mbali where there wasn't a gigantic

revival crusade, resurrection crusade, victory crusade every month.

And if screaming and shouting and howling and walking an aisle were any indication,

any metric of the work of the Holy Spirit, our city of Mbali would have been a perfectly pure city.

And it wasn't. I wondered, I even looked back, there was a big movement in the

1950s, an East African revival, and there's this and that.

Since the early 20th century, Africans have been involved in revivals and crusades

and this and that, and the screaming and the shouting continues, and there's no change.

None. It's actually something we should lament for. It's sad.

All the screaming, all the shouting, all the revivals.

I told my wife once, I said, I don't know if the Holy Spirit got the memo that

this was a real revival because it doesn't look like anything's changing ever, ever.

We know things change. We know the Spirit's alive and well and work in us when

we love each other and we're in unity.

Remember Babel, the reversal of Babel and the sign of the tongues was to bring

us back together. We are a people that are different.

Even though we're socioeconomically mostly the same here, we still have very

great differences. And our job is to ask the Holy Spirit to help us come to

unity and love with one another.

The work of the Holy Spirit can't be measured by emotions or activities,

but by the metric of the word of God.

When you see it, praise God, the spirit is at work.

Love and unity and peace.

Paul even says the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience,

faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

I almost lost track of that stream of my mind. I wanted to pull a Joe Biden

and say, you know the thing, love, joy, you know the thing.

It's love Joy Peace Patience Kindness Goodness Faithfulness Gentleness Self-control

Against such things There's no law That's the fruit of the Spirit The Holy Spirit

is at work In the church And should be at work In the church In this way Are you praying for it?

Presbyterians don't often pray That's sort of a Why do we let the Pentecostals Have all the fun?

They pray for the Spirit all the time. We should pray for the Holy Spirit earnestly,

sincerely, consistently.

Our church can't survive without the Holy Spirit. You realize that?

We don't exist without the Holy Spirit. No foundation, no hope,

no life without the Holy Spirit. Pray for it in your life, in my life,

that the preaching would be filled with the Spirit, that people would listen

to the words of the pastor and to the words that come from the Bible and believe it and do it.

Paul says this, and on this we'll close. So look carefully on how you walk,

not as unwise, but as wise, making the best of the time because the days are evil.

Don't be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

Don't be drunk with wine, for that's debauchery. But ready? Be filled with the Spirit.

And you'll notice what he says afterwards. It's just like the fathers have said

and church history has directed us. It's directed horizontally to others.

Be filled with the Holy Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and

spiritual songs, making melody to the Lord in your heart, giving thanks always

and for everything to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,

submitting to one another. You notice that?

Spirit of God in our lives means that we're directing our love,

our unity, all of our activities to other people, to love them,

to encourage them, to build them up.

And then he says later in Ephesians 3, 16, he says, I pray that the Lord would

grant you to be strengthened with the power through his spirit in your inner

being, so that Christ may dwell richly in your hearts through faith.

Amen? Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we do pray that now, Lord, for our church here locally,

that Christ would dwell richly in our hearts through faith.

Lord, even as we come to this table where we are reminded of how we have faith

through Jesus Christ, his death, his resurrection, through the body and blood

of the Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen and increase, O Lord, the work of your Spirit.

Even in the sacrament, mysteriously and wonderfully, a work of grace in us,

that Christ may dwell richly in our hearts through faith,

and that this local congregation would be filled with the Spirit,

that the local churches in our community would be filled with the Holy Spirit,

directed by the Holy Spirit, that your Holy Spirit would be at work among us and in our community.

We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.