Baptism in the Spirit

Good morning.

Uh we're kind of in the uh beginning stages of this uh sermon series that we are calling uh for the church, where we're working to look at 1 Corinthians chapters 12, 13, and 14 to try and understand spiritual gifts within the church and how and why they exist for the church.

1 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

And so we've been kind of walking through this, and some of us are kind of eagerly anticipating when we're gonna get to like the good stuff, right?

But we have to build a foundation to understand uh before we can dive straight into some of the more challenging topics that this type of sermon series can address.

But this morning we're gonna be really, it's this is kind of a challenge, so I've got a lot of stuff to work through.

Uh, so I'm gonna say this on the front end, be patient with maybe my length.

I'm gonna try and get through this, but what's challenging about this sermon this morning is that we're inserting a topical sermon in the midst of an expositional series.

Here's what I mean by that.

Uh, if I was just to preach the text this morning, uh 1 Corinthians 12, 12 through 13, uh we we would not cover a lot of the stuff that we're going to cover today because it's it's not there.

We don't, it's unnecessary.

We'd be adding things to the scriptures to be able to try and make points that it's not trying to make.

And in our effort to be faithful to the scriptures and preach God's word, we we want to stay away from that, right?

But uh to be able to help understand positionally where Missio stands, because one of our uh identifying kind of theological markers of Missio Day Church is that we're called continuationists.

Uh what that means, simply, if you've never heard that word, is that we believe the gifts of the Spirit continue uh in and for the church today, and that they won't cease to operate within the church until Jesus comes back for his bride.

And so we're continuationists, and what that means is that we have varying perspectives and viewpoints on theological positions that establish us uniquely from different ones, right?

So uh all that to say, uh, we're gonna be working through a lot of stuff today because my hope is to try and help you understand where Missio stands on the issue of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

That's kind of our overarching topic this morning.

Now, uh this message, this subject can really create a lot of division more than it can create unity.

And when we have these differing perspectives and sides of the issue, we tend to create, again, a lot more heat than light.

We could we tend to create a lot more division than unity.

And the and the fascinating thing about that, or the frustrating thing about that, is that this position here, this statement that we're reading is dead smack in the middle of this laboring to unify an already divided church.

Right?

That's what Paul's writing to the Corinthians for.

He's trying to unite this already divided church.

They have all these different reasons of why they're divided within the congregation, and and he's addressing them to try and create unity.

However, in the modern church, when we approach this passage, we're really committing the same crimes as the Corinthians did, where we're creating more division than unity around it.

And I want to argue, I want to try to help us see that I think that there's more reason for us to be unified than divided when it comes to this issue specifically.

So we have to ask a question.

How do we seek to have theological clarity in the midst of confusing topics?

Because the Bible's littered with topics and issues that really at face value can be really confusing.

It can seem contradictive at times.

It can seem like they're kind of saying the same thing in different ways, possibly, right?

So, what how do we actually seek clarity in the midst of perceived confusion?

Here's a couple principles that we're gonna use this morning to kind of unpack our position and help you understand how you approach studying your Bibles personally as you work to know God better through his word, more intimately, through his revelation of his scriptures.

And the first principle that we want to talk about is scripture interprets scripture.

So, what we mean by that is that we cannot just smorgasboard the Bible, right?

The Bible's not a golden crowd buffet.

You can't just go up and take what you want out of it and leave everything else around.

Because what we do is we don't get the whole picture of what God's actually trying to create for us.

We kind of just pick out one thing, and then the dangerous part is when we then try to build a whole doctrine around that one isolated thing that we're trying to pull out from it.

And we're guilty of this a lot.

Well, we'll say, well, here it says this.

True, but there's a lot about that thing that the Bible speaks about in other places and passages throughout the entire set of scriptures.

And so when we approach any subject, any subject, we have to allow for scripture to interpret scripture.

We have to seek to see the whole picture of which God's trying to portray to us in the Bible before we just isolate something and build a doctrine around it.

We can't do that, but we do it all the time within the church.

So number one, scripture interpret scripture.

Number two, is that the Bible is really kind of divided into two ways of authoritatively knowing God.

We call these the descriptive texts versus the prescriptive text.

So here's what I mean by that.

The clearest understanding of this is uh of the prescriptive text is in the Ten Commandments, right?

So we have God says to his people Israel, thou shalt, thou shalt not.

Very clearly, very pointedly and purposely giving them instruction about himself and his relationship with his people, right?

So that's authoritative, the prescriptive text.

But the descriptive text is also authoritative.

What we say by that is that the Bible's full of stories.

The Bible is full of narratives about God and his people and their interaction with one another.

And the all of Scripture, we believe, is authoritative for knowing truth, for knowing God, for knowing ourselves.

All of the Bible.

And so even the descriptive parts are authoritative.

When we are looking through the narratives of the scriptures, we get to a place where they also become authoritative for us.

Now, here's the kicker, though.

The prescriptive is always over the descriptives.

Here's what I mean by that, right?

So let's go back to the Ten Commandments.

It says, Thou shalt not commit adultery, right?

Understand that?

That's in the Ten Commandments.

Descriptively, though, we see King David committing adultery with this girl named Bathsheba.

Everybody understands that story.

So which one's true?

Which one's authoritative for us understanding God?

Well, the prescriptive.

The prescriptive holds authority over the descriptive, and it allows us to know and interpret the rest of the Bible through the lens of prescriptive, clear, proclaimed truth.

So we have scripture interpret scripture, prescriptive verse descriptive.

Hang in there with me as we keep going.

But we often try to oversimplify.

Here's another thing with the church is that we often try to oversimplify complex issues.

And this is good and this is bad, right?

I'm a big believer in a theological framework called systematic theology.

What that means is that we take these big concepts, these complex things, and we try to put them in a silo to understand them and try to understand complex things in their most simplest form.

One of the ways that we do that is through this big theological word called soteriology, right?

That's a silo that we put a bunch of stuff about the Bible into.

And what that means is how are men saved?

That's what soteriology basically means.

But it's complex, and we want to try to really simplify it.

But the Bible says a lot of things that kind of seem like it's talking out of both sides of its mouth.

Do we choose God or does God choose us?

Well, both.

If we're honest and we really look at the text, we'll discover both.

But we try to simplify a very complex thing into these kind of generalizations or these summed up summaries.

And so we tend to be uncomfortable in the midst of complexity if we're honest.

We don't like complex things.

We like to make things as simple as we possibly can.

And we reject crucial aspects of certain issues to achieve a desired end, which is simplicity.

The Bible can be very complex, and at times we really need to be more okay with not being able to package it into a nice, neat little box.

But we're not.

We struggle with that.

We don't allow the Bible to say what the Bible says many times as we're approaching complex issues.

So let's first, as we try to understand what baptism of the Holy Spirit means and what's our position on it, let's first do our work faithfully to unpack the text that we're actually preaching from.

So when we look at verse 12, the way that I would summarize verse 12 is that there's no division in Jesus.

There's no division in Jesus.

You see, Paul begins this section of the letter with a strong anchor to the previous section.

He says, for.

Anytime there's a for or therefore, you have to ask yourself, what's that there for?

And so what he's doing is he's trying to elaborate or continue to exhaust his ability to teach us something.

And he's been working and laboring through.

You are not a divided people.

You are not a congregation that is divided by socioeconomic class, by spirituality, by anything.

In fact, you are united fully in Christ Jesus.

And so he's anchored this statement, this for, to the previous effort in trying to correct the Corinthians' thinking, to try to correct their theology.

He's laboring to emphasize reality that there is no division within the body of Christ.

There is distinction and difference.

We're going to get to this.

It doesn't eradicate your nationality, it doesn't eradicate your gender, it doesn't eradicate those things just because you are in Christ.

So your distinction is still seen, but itself, that distinction itself is united by a much larger and transcendent reality of oneness in Christ.

It's kind of like a husband and a wife.

A husband and wife becomes one flesh.

There's a transcendent, truer reality of the oneness of a husband and wife than there is in seeing their distinction even in gender.

A wife doesn't lose her gender distinction.

A man husband doesn't lose his, but yet there is a truer reality in their consummating of their covenant that they become one.

You see, the church is Jesus' body of whom he is the head.

There is no division within his body, even though our experience might lead us to believe otherwise.

But our inability to see and experience the oneness of the body of Christ does not in any shape or form diminish its reality.

Just because we can't see it, just because we can't tangibly experience at certain times and in certain ways, it does not diminish its reality.

We need to consciously course correct so that the realities of the revealed scripture become in clear view to our experience.

If our experience is in our life and the way that we're living life is contrary to what the Bible speaks, is the Bible a liar or are we?

Trick question, right?

No, the the Bible's not a liar.

It's us who's not living to the truth of which it proclaims.

Right?

We are the ones that have to course correct, not try to make the scriptures course correct.

They are truth.

It is us who's unwilling to live and submit to the realities of which it proclaims.

Verse 13a.

Summarize it in this way.

He says, For in one spirit we were all baptized in one body.

I would say baptism of the spirit is our entry into the body of Christ.

So this is the taste of Messio's position on baptism of the Spirit.

Baptism of the Spirit is our entry into the body of Christ.

Now, here, look.

Here in 13a, for in one spirit we were all baptized into one body.

This right here is a clear, direct, theological statement of the Spirit's work in us.

And this is why we hold 12 through 13 in this passage of 1 Corinthians chapter 12.

1 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

This is why we hold this up as the baseline or the foundational understanding when we approach the subject of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, because here is where we see and discover the most clear and direct proclamation of the Spirit's work in every believer's lives.

How did we become united to the body of Christ?

That's what Paul's trying to argue.

That's what Paul's trying to help the Corinthians see.

You didn't become united because you were gifted, you didn't become united because you were rich or prosperous.

You didn't become united because of any merit or effort of yourself.

You became united because the Spirit brought you in and united you to the body of Christ.

We were brought in through the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

This work, this baptism of the Holy Spirit is the universal experience of every true believer at the time of their conversion.

Let me say that again.

This work is the universal experience of every true believer at the time of their conversion.

In a context where division is dominating the culture of the church, Paul continues just to chip away at their misconceptions by drilling home the reality that they are united.

He is declaring truth that is beyond their experience to help them see clearly their united nature in Christ.

And this is the labor of the apostle here.

As he's approaching all this division, all this confusion within the Corinthian church, how does he address it?

How does he correct it?

Theology.

The theology of the gospel.

And this is what Paul does.

He understands that the gospel made the church, the gospel established the church, but it is the gospel that will sustain the church.

And so he doesn't revert to anything other than an understanding of who we are, who God is, and how we relate to one another.

And so theologically, he is trying to shepherd and teach and course-correct these believers.

His work is immersed in an effort to bring them into unity with one another.

And a driving theological truth he uses is the work of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

He's been laboring through this.

All the first 11 verses that we've gone through in this chapter and chapter 12, that's what he's been pressing in toward.

That's what he's been pressing in in some some in some aspects.

This verse, this 13A right here, is kind of the apex of his journey as he's been trying to get them to understand and get them to understand.

He's been building and climbing, he says, and as he reaches the peak, you have been baptized by the Spirit into one body.

So the work of the Spirit is to identify us with the body of Christ.

And the work of baptism is actually to identify one thing to another.

You see, baptism is actually rooted in the practice of dyeing fabric.

When we understand baptism, it means this immersion into something so that that thing becomes identified with what it's being immersed into.

And when we immerse fabric, it takes on the identity of the dye of which we're placing it.

And so the context of the work of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is actually not rooted in empowerment, though it's not absent of it, but it's rooted in identity.

While we do receive power through the Holy Spirit, the thrust of his work in spirit baptism is to produce for us a new identity.

How are we understanding that?

How are we coming to that conclusion?

Well, look what Paul says immediately after 13A.

He talks about identity.

Right?

We have to understand in the context of what the scripture is speaking of, what's Paul really getting to?

He says it's about identity.

For Jews or Greeks, slaves are free.

All of us were made to drink of one spirit.

So the summary of 13B, I'd put it, is that we are no longer identified by anything other than Jesus.

We're not.

We're not and what glorious news is that.

We're not identified by our mistakes.

We're not identified by our past.

We're not identified by our shortcomings.

We're not identified by how much we don't measure up to one another.

We're not identified by anything other than the all universal canceling work of Christ.

Where he cancels the record of debt of which we held so that we might be united with God the Father.

It's all about unity.

While distinctive of our identities are not eradicated in the Spirit's work, they are brought into a greater reality of our true identity.

There is nothing that would keep us from the love, favor, and blessing of the Father due to our identity any longer.

Nothing.

And this is why he picks these two subject marriages, picks Jews and Greeks.

Why does he pick Jews and Greeks?

Because Jews were the promised children of God.

Greeks were cut off from God, cut off from his blessing, cut off from his affection and his inheritance.

He says, whether Jew or Greek, you were all brought into the body of Christ.

And then he says, slave or free.

Why does he use that?

Because slaves did not get their inheritance.

Only free men were able to get their inheritance.

Only free men were able to have the lavishing prosperity of the Father poured out on them.

Slaves did not get that.

They weren't afforded it.

And so he says that it's no longer about who you are or who you were, because now, through the baptism of the Spirit, you were all brought into the body of Christ.

Christ the free man, Christ the Son, Christ the cosmic inheritor of all of the favor, love, and blessing of the Father, and now it's ours.

Because we are in him.

All of us who are true believers in the finished work of Jesus have drank from this fountain of spirit work.

There is no child of the Father who has had the Spirit withheld from them.

None.

We don't serve a Father who withholds his good gifts.

There is no child of the Father who has not been brought into the family through the Spirit's work.

This act of new identity brought about by the baptism of the Holy Spirit has been experienced in every believer's life.

So you look at this at face value and you say, well, why would this be such a dividing topic?

Baptism of the Holy Spirit.

You see, without getting too much into the thick of the issue, because we could spend a lot of time here trying to unpack all of this, I want to try to work to get us to the main point.

You see, there's really two different perspectives on baptism of the Holy Spirit.

The first one is the one that I've laid out from the text, which we refer to from here on out as one stage view.

This is one stage view of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Let me try to succinctly and simplistically nail this down.

This view is that the fullness of the Spirit is given to the believer at the time of conversion, producing the effectual work of being brought into the body of Christ.

So this view is the fullness of the Spirit is given to the believer at the time of conversion, producing the effectual work of being brought into the body of Christ.

This is what we mean that we are at the moment of conversion, at the moment that we get saved, we are receiving the fullness of the Holy Spirit, whose primary Work in that moment is to unite us through his baptism to the body of Christ.

And every true believer has experienced that power.

So that's the one-stage view.

That's the stage, that's the perspective that we hold up.

That's the perspective that we will preach and try to live our lives by here at this church.

But the second, more common one that we'll refer to as the two-stage view.

So one-stage view versus two-stage view.

This view is that the experience of receiving the fullness of the Spirit happens at a subsequent time to conversion.

So let me kind of unpack that.

What they're saying is that when you get saved, that's one work of God.

That you have been saved and you have put your trust and faith in the finished work of Jesus.

And now that's one work.

And what we're waiting for as believers is for a subsequent or second work of the Holy Spirit to give us the fullness of Him.

Now that could happen perceptively simultaneously of conversion, or it could happen years down the road.

But it's not one and the same.

They would say that there is a distinct, separate, subsequent work of the Holy Spirit that allows us to receive the fullness of Him.

While there are some variations with this view, the dominant one in our context is the Pentecostal view that's been established dominantly by the assemblies of God.

And this is where this is their nuanced perspective.

Where the baptism of the Holy Spirit happens subsequent to conversion and produces evidence of receiving it through the gift of speaking in tongues.

So let me unpack that.

So here's what they believe.

This is the dominant view.

Though there are other perspectives on a two-stage view, the dominant one that we have in our context is that you get saved, and then at some other time could be perceived as simultaneously, but it is different and distinct.

Could happen years down the road.

You are filled with the Holy Spirit in its fullness.

And the evidence that the church receives and that the individual receives, that you have been filled with the Holy Spirit, is this evidence of the use of the gift of speaking in tongues.

So we hold to the one stage view of the baptism of the Holy Spirit as it is derived from clear theological proclamation.

When Paul was writing this passage, he was working to communicate theological gospel truths.

So what Paul was doing was communicate, like we said before, he was trying to communicate clear, theological gospel truths.

And so that's what we're going to allow to remain as authoritative as we approach this subject and this topic.

So we hold to the one-stage view.

We strive from this clarity to develop an understanding on the entire issue at hand.

But I want to say this people that do hold to this two-stage view aren't fully theologically wrong.

While they may be wrong in their inconclusions, I would argue that they are rooted in attempts to apply theological framework around experience and descriptive passages of the scriptures, predominantly found in the book of Acts.

It isn't fundamentally wrong to try and put words or language around these things.

As we read through the book of Acts specifically, and as believers encounter the power of the Spirit in their lives, it's good and natural to try and put language around it.

So here's what I'm trying to say.

I don't think that everything about the two-stage view is wrong.

Because I think that while they came up to a wrong conclusion, their effort was in trying to put language around the descriptive passages of the scripture and their personal experience with the Holy Spirit.

And we as finite people will mess that up.

And we do this all the time with our Christian life.

We try with with our human experience.

We try to put words around things that is just, it's complex, it's confusing at times, and we miss the mark and fall short.

But I think their journey was right.

I think their journey was actually authentic in trying to put language around the things they read in the book of Acts and to try and put language around the experiences that were they were having, even though I believe fundamentally that their in conclusion was wrong.

Where I would submit people with a two-stage view went wrong is that they sought to bring clarity to complexity from the wrong starting point.

They sought to bring clarity to complexity from the wrong starting point.

Instead of starting from persp prescriptive, clear, theological truths, and allowing them to assist us in building theological framework around both descriptive texts and their experiences, they flip the norm.

So here's where I think they went wrong.

They had the wrong starting point.

They start from experience and then they try to put language around it.

We start from clarity, clear theological proclamation, but oftentimes we have absence of action around it.

While we would reject the conclusion of a two-stage view, we might be able to learn from them and how they arrive there.

If we outright reject the conclusion and the journey, I think we lose a fuller picture of the Spirit's work of the life in the life of the believer.

You see, we can and should seek to learn theology from the descriptive narrative text of the scriptures.

We should.

We should also work to submit those passages to the clear prescriptive parts of the scripture.

All scripture is God-breathed and beneficial for rebuke, correction, teaching.

That truth we hold.

That's a clear theological proclamation that Paul gives to the young pastor Timothy.

But yet we often don't allow the descriptive text that is included in that statement.

We often don't allow our human experience to form and shape our theological understanding.

If we were faithful to the theology that we hold, we would allow for both.

We would allow for both and we would wrestle relentlessly so that our experiences and the descriptive parts of the Bible are submitted to clear theology.

And so, in an effort to broaden our understanding of the work of the Spirit in our lives and be fully submitted to the Scriptures, Missio would uphold a view that affirms that all believers receive the fullness of the Spirit at the time of conversion through the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

And all believers are called to be perpetually filled with the Spirit in subsequent experiences.

Let me say that very plainly.

We believe that at the time of your conversion, when you trust in Christ, we believe that that's a monergistic experience.

Here's what we mean by that: that there's one agent, the Holy Spirit, who is drawing you to the Father.

There is one power and presence in God the Spirit who is causing you to be made alive, who's taking that dead heart within your chest that is made of stone and placing within it a heart of flesh, and then gifting us with faith so that we might believe in Christ's death, burial, and resurrection.

And so it is the Spirit at that moment where we exercise the faith we have been given to trust in Jesus, that we are baptized by the Spirit into the body of Christ.

No believer is absent or overseen in that work.

However, we believe that all believers are called both prescriptively, which I'm going to get to, and as we see it descriptively in the text, to pursue being continually filled with the Holy Spirit in their lives.

And so we would say, is there a subsequent event of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer?

Yes.

A second, a third, a fourth, a fifth, and so on.

That we should continually pursue being filled with the Spirit.

And so our main idea this morning is that if we have received the Spirit, then we should live to be continually filled by Him.

If we have received the Spirit, then we should live to be continually filled by Him.

This is a position that affirms both the descriptive and prescriptive aspects of the Scriptures.

The book of Acts shows us lives of believers who were already brought into the family of God through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, who were constantly being re-engaged and re-filled by that Spirit.

And when He came into their life, when He re-engaged them, when He filled them with His presence, there followed miracles, wonders, prophecy, visions, leadings, emboldened evangelism.

All these things continued to happen in their lives because they were continually pursuing being filled with the Holy Spirit, even though they had received the fullness of him in their conversion.

So descriptively, we see it in the book of Acts.

Yet also we can observe commands to us to be continually engaging the Spirit, being filled with Him all throughout the New Testament.

In Galatians, we're told to walk by the Spirit.

In Ephesians, we are told to be filled with the Spirit.

In Philippians, we are told we will be supplied with the Spirit.

These speak to continual engagement and greater realities of the Spirit in our lives.

So though we might have the fullness of the Spirit at conversion, we are called and we are shown throughout the scriptures that we are to continually pursue being filled by Him.

But this is our story.

Some of us have allowed our experiences to dismiss clarity.

Where there is clarity in the scriptures, we reject it to try and discover truth through our experiences.

And we do this in a lot of many different ways in our lives.

Our culture is riddled with this reality, where through our experiences, we try to actually come to a conclusion of truth.

And I think that this is the fault of those who hold a two-stage view.

I think they didn't start from the right place to understand what the Bible clearly says about X.

Then I'm going to allow my experiences and the rest of the Bible to try and formulate my understanding while that's submitted to where the Bible's clear.

We do this with marriage, gender, sexuality, finances, you name it, we do it.

We allow for our experiences to trump and have authority, uh too high of an authority in formulating clarity.

Specifically in this area, we too often allow for the experience or the desire of an experience of the Holy Spirit to dictate truth over the places in Scripture that we have clarity.

Here's some examples.

Here's some places where because we desire the experience, because we've had the experience, we're allowing those things to create clarity or truth, even though the Bible has already clearly and authoritatively proclaimed otherwise.

The work of the Spirit will point to the finished work of Jesus.

That's a very clear theological statement that the Bible makes.

The fundamental work of the Holy Spirit is to point to and glorify and magnify the finished work of Christ.

However, often in different charismatic camps, what they do is they actually allow for the Holy Spirit to be the one who builds up the self.

Tongues must have interpretation when expressed in the gathering.

That's a clear proclamation of theological truth.

Tongues must have interpretation when expressed in the gathering.

However, people on the side of a charismatic perspective will often allow their experience or desire of one to overrule that clear truth.

Another one, prophecies must be judged and should only be given by two or three in the midst of a gathering.

Again, if we look through the charismatic experience or we look through other perspectives that dominantly hold to that two-stage view, what they do is they allow their experience or their desire for one to trump where the Bible has clearly spoken.

And that's wrong.

We shouldn't do that.

However, some of us have allowed our over-emphasis of clarity to dismiss experiences.

Some of us have allowed an overemphasis of clarity to dismiss experiences.

We live a Christian life that often demonstrates no further engagement with the Holy Spirit.

If we're honest.

Some of us who seek for clarity, who seek to have this kind of neat packaged framework of the person and work of the Holy Spirit, we pursue that at such a degree that it costs us experiences with the Holy Spirit.

And what we end up doing is the exact same thing that we call out other brothers and sisters for doing when it comes to the preaching of the gospel.

And so one of the fundamental things that we uphold is that the gospel is not for just getting saved.

The gospel is the starting line of our salvation.

The gospel is that which cheers you along the road as you're running the race, and the gospel is what empowers you to cross the finish line.

We in the church must constantly preach the gospel, the finished and total work of Jesus Christ in our place as we are trying to pursue living this Christian life.

But we'll call out other brothers and sisters and say, you only preach the gospel to get people saved.

What about the truth that the Bible declares that the gospel is the power for salvation for those whom he has saved, for those of us whom are being saved, for those of us whom will be saved?

We have to constantly and perpetually preach the gospel to the church.

However, we treat the Holy Spirit like a starting line and we leave him there at the beginning of our salvation.

When we overemphasize clarity and theological precision, what I think has happened in our camp is that, yes, the spirit empowers me.

It fills me, and I am baptized into the body of Christ at the time of my conversion.

But hey, Spirit, I'm gonna go chug along.

You can stay here.

Thanks for what you did.

But now all I need is the Bible.

All I need is the word of God.

All I need is these disciplines of spiritual exercise.

And the Holy Spirit's saying, you don't realize that was just us getting started.

I have astronomically more than you could ever even imagine for you.

And we have to labor and work intentionally to bring the Holy Spirit through our Christian experience just as much as we have to labor to bring the gospel in through our church Christian experience in life.

We also fail to see the nature of progressive realities in our walk with the Lord.

Here's the truth.

We have been fully made dead to sin in Christ Jesus.

That is a truth that you should hold on to.

That is a truth that should liberate you.

However, we as believers fail to see that truth in our life.

We have to pursue the progressive reality in our lives of the truth that's declared.

You see, where we're not comfortable with progressive realities all the time, but the Bible is there.

It speaks about them, it introduces them to our life.

You were made dead to sin.

However, I still sin.

How does my experience in God's truth reconcile to one another?

You course correct to understand the truth, made living as real in your life.

That's what you do.

You were made dead to sin.

Therefore, put sin to death in your body.

You have been filled with the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, continue being filled with the Holy Spirit.

We have to pursue a progressive reality in our lives and in relationship with the Holy Spirit.

And what if we aren't experiencing the Spirit more in our lives?

Fundamentally, I would argue because we don't believe there's more of Him to actually experience.

If you believe that that's all it was, and what beautiful, glorious truth and experience that that was.

But the Bible is clear that it wasn't just for that.

There's this continued filling of the Spirit so that we're gifted by Him, so that He's manifested through us, so that we're emboldened in our worship, emboldened in our evangelism.

We have to continue to be filled with the Spirit so that his presence and purpose in our lives becomes the truth lined up to what the Bible declares.

And this is the truth of the gospel for us church.

Jesus became unidentifiable so that we could be identified in him.

And he gave up his spirit so that we could be filled.

Think about that.

Christ, and when you look at the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer, Christ was made unidentifiable in his crucifixion so that we could have an identity.

And on the cross as he cried out, my spirit, I give to you.

Church, we need to align ourselves up to what the cost of heaven has brought us.

To be identified in Christ through the baptism of the Holy Spirit and to be filled by the Spirit continually.

So how would we live this out?

Our gospel vision is that we would be a people who pursue being filled with the Spirit.

So having already received the fullness of the Spirit, we would be a people who pursue being filled with the Spirit.

If we are in Christ, then we have already received the Spirit and have been baptized into.

Into Jesus' body through him while having the Spirit.

We should be a people who continually pursue supernatural encounters of Him.

And to establish why this is true, to establish how this works for us, I want to point us to two specific verses.

This first principle to understand this is that if we kind of lay this out in two different ways, is that by being filled with the Spirit, one of the first things that would happen to us is that we would be intoxicated with God.

We would be intoxicated with God.

Ephesians 5.18 says this, and do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.

Paul's speaking to an already established church of people who have been baptized by the Holy Spirit, brought into the body of Christ supernaturally, transcendently, yet his command, inspired by the Spirit of God, is to be filled by Him.

And look what he correlates it to getting drunk on wine.

But he says, no, be filled with the Spirit.

The Spirit in the pursuit of being filled by him should cause us to be intoxicated with God.

Does our heart so overflow with a love for God that our heart, whether light or heavy, can't help but sing both to God and to one another?

We unpack that passage following that statement.

He says, then go and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to one another.

So what's the outcome of being filled with the Spirit?

It's spirit-filled worship.

Because we're intoxicated with God and what He's done for us and how He loves us and His affections are poured out on us.

If we can't just uncontrollably sing praises to God and to one another, then we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit because we're not worshipfully enjoying God according to the grace that's available to us.

That means we're not glorifying God as we ought to.

We're not experiencing satisfaction in God like we might ought to.

And so this pursuit of being filled is a pursuit to enjoy God more deeply.

We can't worship and experience God the way we're created to without being filled with the Spirit.

Paul says, Are you struggling in this church?

When he's writing to the church at Ephesus, are you struggling in this?

Then here's a command for you.

Not descriptive text, prescriptive text.

Here's a command for you.

Be filled with the Spirit.

Be filled by Him.

And you know what the outcome of that is?

It's praise.

It's worship.

Maybe, maybe we struggle so much to worship.

Maybe we struggle so much to sing praises to God because we've left the Holy Spirit at the starting line.

And we haven't continually said with humble hearts, pursuing Him, Spirit, fill me.

Fill me with your presence.

Fill me with your power.

Fill me to be able to be intoxicated with God.

I've pursued being intoxicated by the things of this world.

I've pursued their empty promises.

I've pursued the things that are vanity to me.

I want to pursue you.

So fill me.

So the first thing that it is, it causes us to be intoxicated with God.

The second thing it caused us to be empowered by God.

Empowered by God.

Let's look at this descriptive passage.

So Ephesians 5.18 was prescriptive, a clear theological truth.

Paul was saying, don't be drunk on wine, but be filled, this active, perpetual experience.

Now we're going to look at a narrative of the scripture in Acts 4, 29 through 31.

And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.

Here's the hitter.

And when they had prayed, the place in which they gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and it continued to speak the word of God with boldness.

These are people who are already believers.

We've already established that the Father does not withhold his spirit from any of his children.

They've already experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

But however, in their pursuit to be emboldened for evangelism, in their pursuit to be emboldened for the miraculous expansion of the kingdom of God, the Spirit fills them.

And what's the outcome?

What's the implication?

They were empowered to continue to speak the word of God with boldness.

Do we suffer in our evangelism?

Do we suffer in our witness?

Do we suffer to have boldness?

Are we crippled by fear when it comes to telling someone about the gospel?

What are they gonna think of me?

What's gonna happen to my job?

What's gonna happen to our relationship?

Will we still be able to be neighbors after this if I share the gospel with them?

What's it gonna happen?

And you know what?

These people who were who were terrified for their very lives cried out to God so that they might be emboldened by the filling of the Holy Spirit to continue their work.

Maybe we're terrified because we're not pursuing being filled.

Maybe we're apathetic in our worship because we're not being filled.

Maybe we're trying to live the Christian life empty.

And really, what that is doing is that's making you God.

And you're trying to do it on your own strength, you're trying to do it on your own power, you're trying to do it on your own discipline, you're trying to do it all on your own, and the Spirit is there saying, Come on, come on.

I'm here, I'm ready to gift you, to empower you, to fill you.

You see, church, we have to be more okay with our theology not being pretty.

We have to.

When you look at the book of Acts, and four out of five different experiences include what perceives to be a secondary filling of the Holy Spirit with certain evidences, what are you gonna do with that?

Are you gonna explain your way around it?

Are you gonna do theological gymnastics so you don't have to address the reality of what the Bible's trying to teach us?

And then when we see it in the text, we dismiss that too.

Why?

Because we want a neat package, but the spirit's not neat.

The spirit is destructively messy.

We try to tame this wild horse and we can't do it.

Praise God for theological clarity.

Praise God for his revelation.

Praise God that we can come to the scriptures and and know and understand him.

But church, can we just be honest that it sometimes it doesn't make sense and we have to trust God for just for his word to be at face value?

All of this makes us uncomfortable if we're honest, right?

As we walk through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, all of this makes us uncomfortable because half the list you're fine with, half the list you have no problem with at all that we walked through a couple weeks ago.

But that other half, boy, you better get rid of that.

We can't have that half.

Why?

Did God say that?

Are we allowing our experience to dictate clarity for us because the end of the day, our pursuit is simplicity, not abandonment to his authority?

And so, church, I want to create a culture where the spirit is wildly at work in us and through us, where we are filled by the spirit.

When you look at the book of Acts, the Spirit would tell some of them, don't go into this city.

The Spirit would tell others, go into this.

They were led by the Spirit.

When's the last time that you felt led by the Spirit of your life choices and decisions?

When did you have clarity of hearing the voice of God for His will for your life and what He has you to do?

When's the last time that you cried out, God, embolden me to be able to share your gospel with the people around me?

When's the last time you've cried out, my worship is apathetic?

My worship is it is it seems so uh anemic.

Fill me with your spirit, so I might worship you radically and extravagantly.

Or when the brother or sister comes into your presence who has been filled with the spirit, and their worship looks like an intoxicated person, do you just stand there and judge them?

Why?

Why do that to your brother and sister?

Why do that?

I hope, church, that we can be a people who constantly pursue being filled by the Spirit.

We could labor on this subject day and night.

There's all kinds of passages of scripture that we could point to and look at and dissect and try to understand.

And there's volumes upon volumes of work written about this.

My hope for you this morning was simply that you understood the position we hold, began to understand why we hold that position, and challenge you to retool and recalibrate the way that we engage with the Holy Spirit in our lives.