AUG 30 2015 | The Baptism of the Holy Spirit, Part 2

Sea Change Church · "The Baptism of the Holy Spirit, Part 2" · Adam Stadtmiller · August 30, 2015
Acts 1:1-8
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Where are you dependent right now on God? Or is our entire being directed at trying to get to the point where we're not dependent on God? That if you can just figure this out, if you can just get to the point, if I can just work a little bit harder, it'll be figured out. Why did God create Sabbath? Because in Sabbath there is rest and it takes faith to rest. It takes faith to rest and depend upon the Holy Spirit.

And so we see Jesus here. First that we see is in Matthew 3, 16. The Spirit baptizes Jesus. Do you see this? Jesus is not only baptized, but the Holy Spirit comes upon him during his baptism. So we have a representation of a baptism where Jesus is actually being baptized, but there is a secondary thing that happens where the Holy Spirit comes upon him.

My question is, why does Jesus need to have a baptism of the Holy Spirit? Because he later on says the Holy Spirit will do what to the disciples? He will come upon them. The same thing happens when he is baptized. At the moment of his baptism, we see that the Holy Spirit comes and we see that Jesus' entire life changes. All of a sudden, he goes out in a spirit of power.

His ministry begins. One of the professors I talked about, who used to be a pastor's son that is no longer following Jesus, he said, he was fascinating yesterday as we spoke. He said, I'm not a believer anymore. My dad's a pastor. And we kept talking. He says, the thing I see with Christians is they have the, and he actually studies, he's doing his doctoral work on social movements.

And he said, the one thing I have found, that Christians have the biggest engine and the slickest tires. Let me say that again. Christians have the biggest engines. He says they have more passion for their cause in greater numbers. They have more ability. They seem to have, and he wouldn't say supernatural. He says they seem to have, and he was putting it towards a human emphasis.

I would say it's actually the spirit of God, the empowering supernatural spirit of God. They have this huge engine, but they have the slickest tires, that they're not accessing everything that is available to them. And I would say, when he said that, I thought, bingo. I thought, that is actually so good. You know, Jim says it another way. He says they have more sail than keel, if you're a sailor.

Keel is what keeps the boat sailing in the proper direction. If you have no keel and you have too much sail, what's going to happen? You're going to hit the water. Jesus came, and he showed in his own life that he was dependent upon the Holy Spirit. Throw yourself on the mercy of the Holy Spirit and dependence upon the Holy Spirit. If you want to go deep, when there is an opportunity to figure out something on your own, go into prayer and say, Holy Spirit, you need to sort this out.

Or maybe there's an opportunity to act in your own power, but you hesitate, and you wait, and you say, Holy Spirit, I want you to work this out. If you want to go deeper with God, understand when you take the wheel, when you take the helm, and when you can let the helm go. See, that's the thing. We want to live at the helm, as opposed to co-pilot with God.

Even Jesus shows us that he is dependent upon the Holy Spirit. And so it says in Matthew 3.16 that after being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened. He saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting upon him. Two things. The first is this. The Holy Spirit became visible in his life. Baptism of the Holy Spirit means that when people see you, they can see an evidence of something beyond yourself.

What do I consider the baptism of the Holy Spirit? I believe the baptism of the Holy Spirit is when you begin to see results in your life that are greater than you can do on your own. Today, Olin led us in worship. And during, especially during the first two songs at the beginning and the third song, I don't know if you sensed there was a spirit, a sense of a presence, there was a sense of a unity, there was a sense of something happening in the worship that he cannot do as a musician.

He is an incredibly talented musician. But not every musician can lead worship. Because worship has to co-partner with God where God says, Okay, Olin, keep singing your song. Keep playing your worship. Now let me step in, and I'm going to go here and touch this person's heart. And all of a sudden, the Spirit of God starts working beyond the ability of the person's gifts.

I understand that when I preach and people come to me and say, Hey, you said something, and my life was changed, and this happened. I can't do that. I understand that I am shackled to the power of the Holy Spirit for anything actually be done, for the Lord to build the work. You know you have the Holy Spirit when you take the gifts that you have, whatever they are, whatever it looks like, and you begin to see something beyond yourself.

When you can stand back, and I've stood back now in the last 15 months, I laugh. People say, Oh, you've done a good job being the pastor. I laugh. I just laugh because I know it's so, I mean, what's happening here amongst you, it's the Holy Spirit. It is the whole, I take, literally, I laugh. I know myself. I know my abilities. As we grow, as I see lives change, and I don't want to take responsibility for it, because when I do, I start stressing out.

Because then I feel like I have to control it. It's like trying to control a hurricane. You see, the Holy Spirit is just submitting and considering God in all your days, and He will do what to your paths? To direct them. Make them straight or to direct them. It's considering. If you want the Holy Spirit in your life to get more traction on those tires, consider the Holy Spirit in all that you do.

Consider Him in your finances. Consider Him in your marriage. Consider Him in your job search. Consider Him in your relationships. Everything that you do is waiting upon the Holy Spirit and saying, Direct me. And that's what Jesus did. Did Jesus have to do that? I don't think so. But yet, as we look, we see this profound working of the Spirit in Jesus' life.

And it is illustrated because Jesus came to show us how to live. And so when we see the book of Acts, we see how God did in a church what He had already begun to do in the life of Jesus in a very unique way. If our church never becomes exactly like the church of Acts, that's okay with me. There's people that say, if you don't have supernatural things happening, and I want supernatural things.

I like that. But I believe that there are churches that never see one supernatural work, but they have, like Corinthians says, the greatest, which is love. They act in love, and they act in hope, and they act in faith. And they have incredible works. And people come to know Christ that are so filled with the Spirit that if you could see what was happening behind the scenes in the Spirit realm, you would be blown away.

You would be blown. Your eyes would be peeled back. And there would be people that would look at that and say, well, no one's getting raised from the dead. No one's speaking in tongues. No one's falling on the ground, which, and I got no problem with that. I mean, there's other churches that God is working profoundly to this day. I do not deny. I wrote a book on spiritual gifts.

I believe in all the spiritual gifts. I believe they're all open today. And I believe there are churches that God is saying, the personality of your church is to go after these signs and wonders, to go and be prophetic. There's churches that are prophetic. There's churches that are evangelistic. But when we start saying that if you don't look like this, you've missed the boat, man, I think God gets sad.

I think God sheds a tear. John Wimber had a story. He started the vineyard. I was in the vineyard. I was a vineyard pastor. And he had this dream where he was in a dream, and he sat, and God brought him up on his lap. And he was sitting on the lap of God. And in front of him were all the churches of the world. And I won't name them, but, you know, he said, God, what about that church?

What about that church? I'll name a couple. What about the Salvation Army, man? They're just kind of militant, and, you know, they just kind of feed, you know, and they're not doing this. What about them? And he said the Father looked at him and said, oh, I love Salvation. Oh, I love the Salvation Army. Oh, if I could tell you an eternity about the Salvation Army.

He said, what about those Pentecostals, those guys over there, and they're running around and acting all crazy. And, oh, the Pentecostals. Oh, let me just tell you about how much I love the Pentecostals. What about those Catholics? I don't think they got all their theology right. Oh, I love, oh, I love, I have such, let me tell you about the Catholic.

What about those back, on, and he just went on and on and on. And I, granted, not everyone has perfect theology, but the love of God said, I just love that group of people. I want to say churches are like human beings. We're all different. But yet the thing is, are they preaching one thing, Jesus Christ crucified coming again. Jesus Christ crucified.

I want to say we want to major on the majors when it comes to the Holy Spirit. We want to, I want to be a church that majors on the majors. That Jesus Christ is Lord. He's come to lead us to the, to the Father. And he has given us the Holy Spirit that our lives might be cleansed. And we might be empowered to share the love of Jesus and the message of salvation with others.

Full stop. That's what we're about. And there are people in this church that want to go after the gifts of the Spirit and speak in tongues and do all that. Yay. I want that in the church. Okay. There are people who say, hey, I just want to be on the street serving the poor. Yay. Go for it. Other people, missionaries. You see, the problem that I had is every time I went to a new organization and God took me all over this Christian map.

I was at the vineyard. I was at Calvary Chapel. I was at Christian surfers working. I was with Young Life. I was with the Methodists. I went to a Nazarene university. I was everywhere. And every time I would get there, I would put the uniform on because I wanted to be like them. And I got to Young Life. I thought, oh, the church is not saving kids.

It is all about saving kids. And you know what? The church is a mess. And I was all against the church. And Young Life, we've got it. And then I left Young Life. And then I went to the vineyard. People were speaking in tongues and having Holy Spirit experiences. And I was praying for people and they were falling on the ground. And like, I've experienced all that stuff.

And God did radical things. And my youth group and prophetic. And I got there and I'm thinking, if you don't have that, oh, they're missing it. Young Life was good, but you know what? They don't have power of spirit. They don't have power of spirit. I got power of spirit. Watch this. Ah, you know. Ah, fall down. You know. And then I went to Calvary Chapel.

And it's like, we teach the word. We just teach the word. You know. It is all about the word. Good biblical teaching. You stick to the word. Yeah. And then I put that uniform on. Pretty sick. I had rash under my arms for putting so many different uniforms on. Okay. Just got sick of it. Like, I just want to put on. What does Paul say? Put on who? I just want to put on Jesus.

Go be you. Hey, freedom. Go be you. I'll tell you, what the Lord has told me to do in this church is I'm going to pitch a fastball every single week of God's love. I'm going to pitch a fastball. And I don't want to chase after anything. I don't want. You can get so caught up in chasing after the next thing. We can chase after the end times. We can chase after prophetic stuff.

We can chase after. You name it. The church has a lot of fascinations other than Jesus. Let me say that again. A lot of fascinations other than Jesus. And it says fix your eyes on who? The author and perfecter of our faith. You know what the enemy wants to do? He wants to look at you and say, hey, hey, hey, look at this. Fixate on that. Look at that.

And then he gets over there and does a dance. And it's very...