SEP 2 2015 | The Baptism of the Holy Spirit, Part 1

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

Let me pray. Lord Jesus, thank you, God, for your goodness. Now open your, your word is rich. It is rich. There is a wealth there. There is an eternity in every word. There is an eternity in every syllable of God's word because it is infinite and eternal, God. And when you speak, we come alive. Let this service, let these people, let this church become alive in Jesus' name. Amen.

Last week I started the book of Acts. And this week, guess what? I'm starting the book of Acts because I listened to my sermon last week and I didn't like it, okay? And I thought, can I, I just need a mulligan. You ever hit, you know, it's, it's like, it's like, you know, you expect pastors, you know, always to just give you the thumbs up on everything they ever do, you know what I mean? And every sermon has just got to be great. I shanked that one into the trees. I couldn't find the ball afterwards, okay?

I went back. I got a call from Evie Cotton. She wanted me to explain some things that I realized I didn't explain well. And I didn't even listen to it. Matter of fact, I didn't even post it up. Usually I put that on social media things and let people know. And I just didn't. And I said, so we're starting the book of Acts today. And, um, is that cool? We're cool with that. It wasn't like there was a few little good tidbits in there. It's a little, you know, Scooby snacks, some points, but, uh, spiritual Scooby snacks.

Thank you, Carol. I'll be here all week. Try the veal Parmesan. We're going to look at this again. And I feel like God really spoke some things to me. One of the things that really bothered me is I said that the book of Acts offers new characters into the story. And I said that the Holy Spirit was one of those new characters. And as I look through teaching this week, man, obviously we know the spirit of God is all over, um, the old Testament. And I know that as well as a theologian, a, a, you know, I would say pocket, um, a pocket theologian, uh, at best a comic book version. Theologian is what I consider myself. Um, I know that, but we really have a tendency to see the book of Acts and really say that, Hey, if we look at what happened in the first church, then we can understand the Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit. We can understand how to live according to the Holy Spirit. One of the things I realized is the Holy Spirit is evident in the life of Jesus. And I knew that as well, but I think I've made the mistake of looking at the book of Acts and saying, okay, this is where we start with the Holy Spirit. Now, obviously there's a mention of God's spirit in the old Testament, the fire of God, the, the, the, the wind of God, the whisper of God, the hurricane force, wind of God, the wind through the trees of God, God coming in, in power. His spirit is manifested in so many different ways.

As we go through the book of Acts, one of the things I want to encourage you to do is not to compare your experience of the Holy Spirit to someone else's experience of the Holy Spirit. That is when we get in trouble. We never want to compare ourselves to other believers. Can we take insight from other believers? Can we take encouragement? Of course, Paul says, look at my life, but we never want to compare. You can even follow some of the ways of other believers.

You know, I met with Dick Cotton this week and I, and I gleaned so much from you. Dick was so encouraging to me. He treats me like a son, like a father treats a son. And as we were talking in my office and he encouraged me, and I want to let you know as well that Dick has told the board that after at 90 years old, he's going to be stepping down as elder emeritus. Can we just give him a quick round of applause? I know he doesn't want it.

50 years, I think we'll give you a break. We'll let you off the hook. So he just said, there's other things in my life I want to focus on. He also says, I feel, and he's been here 50 years. He says, I feel the church is in good hands. And he spoke words of encouragement to me. And as I sat there, I thought, he is filling a place in my life that my father missed.

And that's how God restores the years the locusts have eaten away. And other men in this church, older men have done that for me. You know, Don has done that for me, Don Baker, other men in the church, many of them, where God will take a piece of their life and put it into the mosaic of yours. And we need to understand that God wants to surround us and he wants to heal our brokenness by surrounding us with each other.

Like Lazarus coming out of the tomb, and I'm preaching a different message now. But when Lazarus came out of the tomb, who took his grave clothes off? Jesus? No. Jesus said to others, take the grave clothes off. And so, Dick, I appreciate that. As we sat there, I thought, how honored am I to sit here and to have this man encourage me and take time with me?

It was phenomenal. And so, as we talk about the Holy Spirit, we see the church. We see the church working in different ways. We see the Holy Spirit coming and into the life of Jesus. And we never want to compare our experience of the Holy Spirit to someone else's. Dick's is going to look different than David's. David is going to look different than Maria in the kitchen.

But it is the Holy Spirit. And I want to give you freedom to not have to experience the Holy Spirit like someone else tells you you should. There is no should. Because once we start creating systems of the Holy Spirit, which we love to do because it lets us be in control. Control is whose job? God's. And we are always trying to recreate. And the first temptation, because I heard in Job yesterday, that God does not even trust the angels.

I'd never heard that before. I heard it in Job this week. It says that he does not even trust the angels. Because why? Even the angels themselves set themselves up because they wanted to be like who? Like God. And so you will see in our society today, the selfie stick generation that we live in right now, that we want to be the ones who identify ourselves.

We want to be the ones that can tell you when you can be born, when you should be able to die. When you look around at society, everyone says, look, it's the worst it's ever been. Let me just say this. It is a common ailment of humankind to want to be God. That has not changed. And the less we want to be like God, the less arrogant we are, the more we will see God move in our life.

I spoke to a, I was at a, we're going to Torrey Pines Elementary, and so we went to the newcomers. And it's all people from different countries who work at UCSD. All the new parents, okay? Britain, India, Africa. It was so cool. I thought, I don't even need to be a missionary. I just need to go to the Torrey Pines Elementary opening, you know, dinner.

And I sat there, and one of the men said, and I don't think he was a believer, but he says it's arrogant the way that we treat the world. He says if we live more humbly, if we begin to live humbly as a people, not have to expand, not have to build a bigger building, have an economy that's based on, if the economy isn't expanding, everyone freaks out.

You get there's an end to that. I mean, look at China right now, and I'm not even preaching my message right now. But China, the economy slows. Oh my goodness! We've quit building more stuff. Let's all freak out because we're not expanding. We do not also, I don't know what my point was right there, but I enjoyed talking about it. But we want to look back to Jesus.

We want to look back to Jesus and see the power of Jesus, the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus. And we want to see that in the church. So let me just say, you have freedom to experience the Holy Spirit. But let me say this. Experience Him. Dive deeply into Him through His love. Experience the Holy Spirit. We'll talk about that. Let me just go through this.

I'm going to read this again quickly, and then I'm going to preach it. The first account I can post, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach. Now, I spoke last week. Jesus began to do. That's a crucial word because if He began it, who's going to finish it? We are. Let me ask you a question. Where are you finishing the work of Jesus in your life right now?

You should, and I hate to use the word should because I don't want to use that on a regular basis, but definitively I will say that you should be finishing the work of Jesus. Where in your life can you point to and say, I am doing the work of Jesus in this place? Until the day when He was taken up to heaven, and this is what was so interesting to me and what struck out to me about having to move my timeline of the Holy Spirit back a little bit further than just the book of Acts.

It says, after He was taken up to heaven, after He had, by the Holy Spirit, given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen. My thought is this. Why did Jesus need the Holy Spirit to tell the disciples what to do? He's Jesus. Why does it mention that it was by the Holy Spirit that He gave those orders? Because Jesus chose, because He was the triune God.

And by the way, you're never going to be able to wrap your mind around the Trinity. So either a lot of people, you're either going to have faith in it, or you're going to try to explain it, and you're not going to be able to do that. I spoke to a man this week, and I said, you know, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. Like, when I look around, I think it takes more faith.

Seriously, the faith of atheists just blows me away. Like, I don't get it. Like, everything popped out of this gas, or this, I don't know, I don't even know the new theory, okay? I just don't, love, love came from that, compassion, that tree. I mean, the way everything, I don't have that, I lack faith. I couldn't be an atheist. I honestly couldn't.

It was just, it makes no sense to me. And so, when we look back at this, we see that Jesus is using, he's dependent upon the Holy Spirit. And even though the Trinity is part of him, we need to accept, because you're not going to understand it, that even though he had the Spirit of God, he was fully God, he fully had the Holy Spirit, he was the Holy Spirit, he was Jesus, he was the Father in the form of Trinity.

I can't wrap my mind around that, by the way, and nor should you, that's why we have faith, that he still chose to show himself dependent upon the Holy Spirit. Here's the point. You need to be dependent upon the Holy Spirit, because Jesus was. It is awesome to see what happened in a unique church in the book of Acts. It was one church during one season of time, and not every church is going to look that way.

Your life doesn't have to look like that one believer who looks like they're completely just killing life. They've got everything. Their teeth are extra shiny and white. Everything they do succeeds. Let's get that off the radar. That's their experience for the moment, and we know everyone hits hard times. It's all a sham anyways. No one's perfect.

If you've known enough people that have had a perfect life, and you've been behind the scenes, you know, right, that no one is perfect. And we look at Jesus, and we see that Jesus is dependent. So it says, After he had, by the Holy Spirit, given orders to the apostles whom he had chosen, to these he also presented himself alive after his suffering by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of 40 days, and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.

Gathering together, gathering them together, he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, and this is key, and I put it in your notes as bolded, but to wait for what the Father had promised. And we're going to talk about the Holy Spirit's timing in your life. It's not up to you. If you don't feel that you've had this amazing moment, okay, God's timing is up to him.

He said, you go wait. Be faithful and wait. Wait for God's timing. I want to say that we as people want to be faithful. And where are you faithfully waiting right now? Is there an area in your life where you're just faithfully waiting for God to show up? Don't be discouraged. Gather hope, because there will come a time where the Holy Spirit will come in and renew that thing that you've been waiting for.

It says, Which he promised, you heard from me. For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized. Now this is Jesus using this language. Baptism. Listen, this understanding of what it means to be baptized in the Holy Spirit has been debated for 2,000 years. Let me tell you what. I don't have it figured out. I'm not sure we're supposed to figure it out.

Does that make sense? I think sometimes the answer is, I don't want you to figure it out. I just want you to have faith and keep doing the things that Jesus did. I told you a few weeks ago, I had a guy who said, I can't be a Christian until I figure out all the answers. I said, what if the answer is that you're not supposed to figure it out? What if that was the answer?

He was like, oh, oh, you've messed my life up. You've totally messed my life up. I said, what if that's the answer? The answer is you're not supposed to figure it out. You don't have, some people, you know, the enemy wants you to think you have to figure everything out before you can make the next step. It's called faith. Faith does not, does not exist without what?

Anybody know? Doubt. Because faith overcomes what? Doubt. If there is no doubt, it's not faith. It's called foregone conclusion. God intentionally left you, some of the information, out of the equation for you. Why? Because he wants to be in control. He wants you not to know the answer. There is an understanding that once you become a Christian, you should have it all figured out.

You will pass away not knowing all the answers. And I want to say the more I get okay with that, the more peace I have. I don't have to figure it out. And that's why it's so good just to rest. To be able to rest in the Father's love. And so Jesus says you'll be baptized. He said to them in the bold there, verse 7, It's not for you to know the times or the epoch which the Father has fixed by his own authority.

That's after they were asking when you were going to bring your kingdom. I love that. Should that be a word of peace for us, right? Hey, if you're really wondering about the timing of your life, not just the times or epochs, just the time of when you think this is going to happen. I mean, we can talk about revelation and try to figure all that out.

And that's what he's talking about here, the times or the epochs. But I think it also goes down to just the timing in your personal life. Maybe it's okay not to know. Maybe it's okay not to know. And Jesus gives them that grace. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you will be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, even to the remotest parts of the earth.

Let's talk about the Holy Spirit. Understanding that the purpose of the Holy Spirit, that Jesus, as you'll see in your notes, is the starting point. I didn't want to say that. I mean, we could take it back to Genesis where the Spirit of God did what in the first chapter of Genesis? Hovered, okay? So we could take it back to the very beginning. But for me, when I fully want to understand something, because when God wanted to make himself most known, he sent Jesus.

And so for me, I feel that the Scripture apexes with the person of Jesus Christ. I need to look at the Old Testament, and it helps me understand Jesus. I can look at the New Testament after him. But for me, the person of Jesus Christ, that we can know what the Father looks like, because Jesus came in his form. And so if we want to understand how the Holy Spirit should work in our life, one of the best places to start is with Jesus.

So let's look at Jesus here. But Jesus, for me, is the starting point for our understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer's life. And the Scripture makes it clear that Jesus had a dependence upon the Holy Spirit. Some of us don't even know what that means. What does it mean to be dependent? And let me ask you this. Where in your life would you say that I'm dependent?

You know, we don't want to be dependent, right? I don't want to be dependent. I don't want to have to have faith. I don't want to have to have trust. Security comes in knowing often. Here's the complex thought of the Scripture. That security can come through Christ in unknowing. That when you don't know what your situation is, you don't know what is around the next corner, you don't know when the next paycheck is going to come, that we can find security in Jesus because of faith.

Faith is powerful. Faith is a spiritual weapon. And Jesus was dependent upon the Holy Spirit to lead him and to empower the work of his ministry. Let me say this. If you, if Jesus needed the power and the leading of the Holy Spirit, how much do you? And every believer, I think, on a regular basis has to ask himself this. Am I being led by the Holy Spirit?

And am I being empowered by the Holy Spirit? It's something that needs to be renewed every single day. You can follow Christ. You've seen this with Christian leaders that have fallen. You can follow Christ for 30, 40 years. 30 and 40 years. Follow him completely. And then in one moment, stop following God. And you've seen ministries just cast to the ground.

There has to be a dependence, a daily dependence. And even Christ, in his example, showed us that there needs to be a daily dependence. God bless you. Father, call us as Jesus and Lord God. Whatever they need to give up for for us and disfigureds in Christ. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen.