Study the Word

Guest (Male): Speaking of the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer, here's Pastor Thom Keller.

Pastor Thom Keller: He teaches us all truth. He interprets God's word into your heart. When you pick up this book, it's a supernatural event. There are a lot of great books and when I used to work with young people, they'd start out in their Bibles and then some would kind of slip away and get into the *Daily Bread* or some other book.

They're great books, don't get me wrong. Don't stop reading them, but don't ever stop reading this book. This is the only book that God promises to, by his Holy Spirit, interpret into your heart and your mind to address the needs that you're facing today.

Guest (Male): It's been said that if you have too much of the word, you dry up; too much of the spirit, you blow up. But the right amount of both in you, you grow up. How do you achieve that balance? Find the answers as you study the word with Pastor Thom Keller.

We visit Acts Chapter 19 today, and it's there we're provided insight on the practical and supernatural help given to us by the Holy Spirit. Let's head there now on *Study the Word*.

Pastor Thom Keller: Acts Chapter 19. To give a background of what's been happening, you can kind of see it in the end of Chapter 18. Acts 18 says when they arrived at the port of Ephesus, Paul left the others behind, and then it says they went to Caesarea and from there to Jerusalem and then to Antioch.

So this is his third missionary journey, but Chapter 19 begins Paul's third missionary journey. But where he was, was he went from Ephesus down to Caesarea, the port of Caesarea, and then he went to Jerusalem, which, if you remember, that's where he went to keep his vow.

And then from Jerusalem, he went up to Antioch, which again is the Gentile center for the Christian church at this time. This is now where he's going to begin his third missionary journey, the one that covered 2,700 miles, which is a huge trip.

Verse 1 says while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul traveled through the interior provinces. Finally, he came to Ephesus where he found several believers. And again, he started here in Antioch and he went through these provinces and now he's come—Paul's come to Ephesus where he found several believers.

"Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" he asked them. "No," they replied, "we don't know what you mean. We haven't even heard that there is a Holy Spirit." "Then what baptism did you experience?" he asked. And they replied, "the baptism of John."

Paul said, "John's baptism was to demonstrate a desire to turn from sin and turn to God. John himself told the people to believe in Jesus, the one John said would come later." As soon as they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Then when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they spoke in other tongues and prophesied. There were about 12 men in all. Now again, it says in Verse 1, in viewing and going back through this opening section, the whole time that Paul went back to Jerusalem, then to Antioch, and then up to these regions, Apollos had stayed.

He continued to teach the Corinthians. And he was a very popular teacher. If you remember, it says he was a dynamic, gifted teacher. And in 1 Corinthians 3, we learn that there was a little bit of a struggle between Paul and Apollos as far as it went with the Corinthians because in 1 Corinthians 3:4, Paul says this.

He says there you are—speaking of the Corinthian church—there you are quarreling about whether I am greater than Apollos and dividing the church. That obviously, when Paul was away, Apollos continued to teach and was such a gifted teacher that people broke off into factions and said, "I like Apollos better. No, I like Paul better."

And he says, what are you doing arguing about this? It leads to that famous line, "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase." And what Paul is saying is look, none of us really did anything. It was all God using each of us in different ways to bring about his fullness, his increase in the church.

Once again, it says that he traveled by land to Ephesus and we see that. He ends up in Ephesus and he stumbles across these—we find out later—about 12 men who were believers. They call them believers, which is interesting, but they were believers.

And Paul says, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit?" And they said, "What Holy Spirit? We've never even heard of the Holy Spirit. What is a Holy Spirit?" Well, it begs the question, what would have prompted Paul to ask this question?

Paul says, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" He runs into these 12 men, he sees them, and he asks the question, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" What would have prompted him to even ask that question?

Well, the scriptures are silent. We don't know what it was that prompted him. It could have been a word of knowledge; it could have been God revealed it directly. But it may have been that they just lacked enthusiasm or fervor for the Lord.

It may have been that he saw that their lives evidenced just a lack of love. Because again, it tells in Galatians that the fruit of the spirit is—the first gift is love. And again, in 1 Corinthians, we're told faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.

The greatest evidence, Jesus said, they will know you're Christians by your love. So it is the evidence, the mark of a Christian life, and it may have been that that was absent in their lives. We don't know. Somehow he knew.

If someone asked you this question, "What has the Lord been doing in your life lately?" what would your response be? Would it be a strained silence? Now all of us would have to think, don't get me wrong, to rattle off number one, number two, number three, number four. It wouldn't work like that.

But there ought to be some things that we think about and say, you know, God's been doing this. God's been showing me this. Last week, I had an opportunity to do this. Would that be your response, just kind of a strained silence, or would it generate an explosion of enthusiasm on the far other end?

We ought to have something in our life. I remember John Drescher, who's a mentor of mine, a man that I really respect. He said, "If your life can be explained in natural terms, there isn't anything Christian about you yet." Listen to that again.

If your life can be explained in natural terms, there isn't anything Christian about you yet. He didn't say you're not a Christian. He just said that the evidence—there maybe wouldn't be enough evidence to convict you of being a Christian if evidence was needed to prove you were one.

Because a Christian life really should be a life that's a little bit out of the natural, a little bit hard to explain, that you can spin some stories to people about things that God did in your life and they'd say, "Wow, that's a little bit out of the natural. The timing in that was a little too strange. Tell me more, tell me more."

We ought to have some of those stories. It may have been that Paul sensed that their love for the world exceeded their love for God. I remember Charles Finney tells a story. Charles Finney was an evangelist in the mid-1800s and he, I think, he started Oberlin College, and I think that's in Ohio.

And they had a professor come in to teach speech who was not a Christian. And Finney kept working at converting this guy to the faith. And so one day Finney pressed pretty hard the claims of Christ to this speech professor.

And the professor said, "Look, I'll believe this, I'll believe in this Christ when your seminary students believe in this Christ." And he said, "What are you talking about? They're in school because they believe." He said, "No, no, no, let me explain."

"When they come to class and as they're gathering, I listen to them. They talk about their horses, they talk about their houses, they talk about their hobbies. And then I get them in front of the class and they stammer and they try to find the right words to talk about this Jesus."

"He says they're so comfortable talking about everything else, but when it comes to this Jesus that you say they follow, they just lose their tongues." And Finney was embarrassed, ashamed. Same question for us.

Not that we need to be eloquent speakers, but can we talk about Jesus? Are we comfortable talking about Jesus? Well, Paul asked the question, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit?" They said, "We've never heard of the Holy Spirit."

He said, "Then how were you baptized? By what baptism?" They said, "John's baptism." Paul very rightly says, "Well, John's baptism was a baptism of repentance, repenting of your sins, but it was anticipation of the Christ who was coming."

Jesus Christ has come. He died. And so when they heard that, they were baptized and then it says the Holy Spirit fell upon them and they spoke in tongues and they prophesied. Now as we said earlier, there are three sections in Acts where when the people believed, they spoke in tongues and they prophesied.

Three sections. This is one of them. This passage and the others, but this passage in particular is used as a proof text by some in the charismatic camp to show that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a distinct and separate event from salvation.

Again, as I said earlier, Paul calls these people believers before they were baptized, before they had this experience. And now they have this second experience where the Holy Spirit falls upon them. And so they read this and say, "Look, it proves it."

"Here they were believers. Paul shows up, baptizes them, and they received the baptism of the Holy Spirit," which many will call that. Well, in truth, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. They weren't baptized in the name of the Holy Spirit.

That's what it says. It says that Paul then baptized them in the name of Jesus. So is receiving the Holy Spirit a distinct and separate event from your salvation experience when you first received Jesus? Is it a second work?

Well, in John Chapter 20, when Jesus appeared to the disciples in the upper room—if you remember that story—he poof, he appeared and he starts talking to them. And he said—he then breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit."

Remember? He breathed on them and he said, "Receive the Holy Spirit." So I guess if Jesus wanted somebody to receive the Holy Spirit and he was in the room, they probably received the Holy Spirit. I don't think Jesus would fail at much of what he tried to do.

But sometime later, probably close to 40 days later as a matter of fact, in Acts Chapter 1, we read this where Jesus said to the disciples, "But wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father, which I have told you about."

"For John indeed baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in a few days. And you will receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you." This "has come upon you" is the key to this understanding.

The word is *epi*, the preposition *epi*, which means to come upon. Not to receive, but to come upon, to manifest power through. The difference being that Jesus imparted to them—he gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit.

He gave them the capacity always to have the Holy Spirit within them. But when he said, "Wait in Jerusalem till the Holy Spirit comes upon you (*epi*), until he comes upon you," that will be the outpouring, the manifestation of the power of the Holy Spirit.

Again, at Pentecost, when Peter preached his stirring sermon and he comes to the conclusion and this crowd of people say, "What shall we do?" Peter responded by saying, "Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."

The gift of the Holy Spirit. The receiving of the Holy Spirit. When Philip preached Christ to the Samaritans, after they received, then Peter and John went down to Samaria—the region of Samaria—and when they came down, they prayed for them that they would receive the Holy Spirit.

For as it says, "for as of yet, he"—the Holy Spirit—"had not come upon them." Had not come upon them—*epi*. Not in them, upon them. That the power, the manifesting power of the Holy Spirit, had not yet come upon them.

The Holy Spirit was in them. The day you receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit takes residence in you. The capacity for God to manifest his life in you and through you is in you. But there is a separate event.

It's not a distinct time or place. It's an ongoing process. As much as you allow the Holy Spirit to do it, where he comes upon you, where he gives you power to be a witness for him. It's always the reason that's given, that you would have the power to witness for him.

Paul—when Paul was converted, he was converted on the Damascus Road. Remember? A bright light knocks him off his horse and he was converted right there. And yet it says a few days later, he received the Holy Spirit when Ananias prayed for him to receive the Holy Spirit.

To come upon him, to have that power. So the Holy Spirit has three distinct roles in our life. You know, everybody kind of gets who Jesus is and who God is, but this Holy Spirit to many is just kind of a mystery, kind of confusing.

What is it? And again, I've said this before: the Holy Spirit is not an *it*. The Holy Spirit is a person. We should never call the Holy Spirit *it*. It would be like calling your wife, your children, *it*. You know, the Adams family, that's proper.

In your family, *it* is not proper. Nor is it proper to call the Holy Spirit anything but the person of the Holy Spirit because he is a person. He has three roles. First, he is with us in our conversion. The Holy Spirit is the one that convicts us of our sin.

Do you remember Sue read the story and all the people said on one side, "We want our sins forgiven." People on the other side say, "We want our sins forgiven." That's the Holy Spirit. He convicts us of our sins. Jesus said that to the disciples in John.

The role of the Holy Spirit first is convict us of our sin. To convince us then, secondly, of the availability of God's goodness and the deliverance of judgment to come. Jesus said in John, "to convict us of sin, to convince us of the availability of God's goodness and of the deliverance from the judgment to come."

That's the role of the Holy Spirit prior to conversion. And if you're converted, if you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit did that work in your life. You didn't find your way to Jesus. Jesus drew you through those steps and you responded.

You had a choice. You responded. After you respond, after you become a believer, then the second role of the Holy Spirit is this: when we respond and accept God's call to receive Jesus, that moment, the Holy Spirit then comes and resides in our body, inside of us and dwells within us.

Again, the best definition I ever heard of the Holy Spirit is the invisible presence of God living in us and surrounding us. That's good. If you're a believer, the invisible presence of God living in us and surrounding us. That is the role of the Holy Spirit.

Paul said, "Don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you?" Not upon you, in you. He is in you as a believer. He wants to come upon you to give you power to witness for him. This second role where the Holy Spirit is within us, this is the role where the Holy Spirit teaches us, leads us into all truth.

Right? Jesus said that. "When I go," he said, "it is to your advantage that I go because if I don't go, the Holy Spirit won't come. But if I do go, I will send the Holy Spirit." And he's known as the great advantage.

Jesus said, "It is to your advantage that I go." The great advantage to have the Holy Spirit. He teaches us all truth. He interprets God's word into your heart. When you pick up this book, it's a supernatural event. There are a lot of great books and when I used to work with young people, they'd start out in their Bibles and then some would kind of slip away and get into the *Daily Bread* or some other book.

They're great books, don't get me wrong. Don't stop reading them, but don't ever stop reading this book. This is the only book that God promises to, by his Holy Spirit, interpret into your heart and your mind to address the needs that you're facing today.

Show me where it says it's going to do that with the upper room in here. I'm not knocking the upper room, but don't ever let any book change us. When I got saved and I have it on the front of my Bible and I feel like saying it every day, but I don't want to sound arrogant.

But I mean this. When I got saved, I thought every Sunday morning, every Sunday school teacher, every minister should stand in the front of the church and hold their Bible up and say this: "This book changed my life. It will change yours."

And I'm telling you, this book changed my life. My wife knows. This book changed our marriage. This book changed everything I do in business. It changed my life, my heart, my attitude, my outlook, my philosophy of life, everything.

And it wasn't this book except the Holy Spirit using this book to interpret to me what he knew I needed. Things that I needed to change. Get into the word. It did change my life. I have so far that I need to yet change in areas.

I'm so far from what I ought to be. But I'm telling you, this book has changed so much of me. And he'll do the same for you, but you need to be in that book. That's the role of the Holy Spirit. He teaches us, he leads us into truth.

He begins to lead us. He begins to change our hearts. He starts to change the desires of our heart. I witness to people and they say, "I don't want to give this up. I don't want to give that up." You kind of get to the bottom and you cut through all their little petty hesitancies and arguments.

And what it really comes down to is "I don't want to give this up." I say, "What if you wanted to give it up?" "I don't want to." "But what if you wanted to?" And they always say the same thing, "Well, I guess if I wanted to, I would."

Well then let God take care of that. Because God will change your hearts. Isn't that true? If there's ever been something in your life that you didn't ever think you'd want to give up, but later on God changed it and you wanted to give it up, raise your hand.

Okay. You know what I'm talking about, right? God does that. That's a work that God does in you. He starts to change your heart and this second role again, the part of the second role is to conform you into the likeness of Christ.

The Holy Spirit is always pointing to Jesus. Again, I always picture the Holy Spirit like this because he really doesn't have much to say except to point to Jesus. That's his role, to point to Christ. But this third role of the Holy Spirit is where Jesus promised power.

That when the Holy Spirit has come upon you (*epi*), when he's come upon you, he gives you power to be his witnesses. To be his witnesses. And that's what he's talking about. So then there is no separate distinct experience such as the baptism of the Holy Spirit, a one-time event where this whirlwind comes upon you and poof, I'm a different person.

What it is is a releasing of God's power in your life as you allow him to, as you appropriate that power day by day. And you know, you have the power to say yes to that. You're at work, you're at school, and a situation comes up and you could talk to someone about Jesus.

There's an opportunity to witness. And you know right at that moment, you can walk away from that. Mentally you can check out and take another road. You can have a different discussion than the one that you could have about Jesus.

But if you elect to take that decision, the road to talk about Jesus, the power of God will come upon you. You've experienced that. But see, he's in you, but he wants to come upon you. Monday, Tuesday, this afternoon.

He'll always be in you, but he wants to come upon you, to come upon me. What should occur is a willingness to allow the Holy Spirit to manifest the life of Jesus in us and through us. Galatians, Paul said, "I no longer live, but Christ liveth in me."

In Romans 7, Paul gives that beautiful discourse where he says, "Those things that I want to do I don't do, the things that I don't want to do I do. Who can deliver me from this wretched life of sin?" And he says this in Chapter 8:

"For what the law could not do because of the weakness of my flesh, God has done for me by sending his Son in the flesh that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in me as I walk in the spirit." So we are not in the flesh, but in the spirit if the spirit of God is dwelling in us.

The key to living a life that reflects the beauty, the glory, the graciousness, the gentleness of Christ is to allow God's Holy Spirit to come upon you, to live in you and through you. Will you allow the Holy Spirit to come upon you?

Is there something missing in your walk with the Lord? Are you living, am I living a dynamic Christian life? On a scale of 1 to 10, where would you rate your fervency, your excitement for Christ? If Paul was to meet you, if Paul was to meet me, if we went up to him on the street, would he say, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?"

Guest (Male): A thoughtful and challenging question Pastor Thom Keller wraps up our time together with on *Study the Word*. How will you answer? Be encouraged to receive all that God has for you in Jesus' name.

We're going through Acts right now on *Study the Word* with our pastor and teacher, Thom Keller. You can hear this message again by going online to ccleb.com. Again, we're at ccleb.com. There are many other messages for your growth and edification there, too.

Or call and request a CD copy at 717-507-7862. That's 717-507-7862. Here in the month of November, we're pleased to offer you a book by D.L. Moody we think you'll benefit from. It's called *Your Victory in Jesus*.

If you're a Christian, you have victory and that victory was secured by Christ at the cross. But the question that remains is, are you living in victory? Join D.L. Moody as he explores true victory and start to experience the overcoming life ruled by Christ instead of fear.

For a gift of any amount, we'll send this your way with our thanks. So call today, 717-507-7862. Or you can write to *Study the Word*, 740 Willow Street, Lebanon, Pennsylvania 17046.

You're invited to worship with us here at Calvary Chapel Lebanon, where Thom serves as pastor. Visit ccleb.com for our service times and see what's coming up at the church there, too.

When you get a chance, download our free Android app; search Calvary Chapel Lebanon in the Google Play Store. Thanks for studying the word with Pastor Thom Keller. We'll dig deeper into the Book of Acts with Thom next time. We hope you can join us.