Filled with the Spirit

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Holy Spirit from Acts from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library.

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I’ve said expressions like filled with the Spirit do not always mean exactly the same thing in every context. I’ve said before when I was just a whippersnapper my dad used to keep saying, “A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.” That’s the way he taught us to read the Bible. This is just the way language works.

If I were suddenly to shout forth a word, what would come to your mind? Wheel! I’m hearing a lot of cars. Probably for many of us a car wheel comes first. Fair enough. On the other hand, if I’m driving a car and you’re sitting beside me and I suddenly am getting a heart attack with shortness of breath and pain shooting down my left arm and I say, “Take the wheel,” I’m really not referring to one of the outside ones.

You may have a drill sergeant on a parade square yelling to a column of soldiers marching along, “Right wheel,” and there’s not a wheel in sight. It’s boots everywhere. Yet somehow the column turns around so the inside soldiers march a little less quickly and the outside ones march a little more quickly. Then you have a whole movement.

A wheelman, in North America at least, is a thug who drives the getaway car. The other thugs are inside knocking off the shop, and the wheelman is outside with a car engine running ready to drive away, whereas a wheelwright, in Old English, is someone who makes wheels. I could give a lot of other examples. All of this is obvious to anybody who speaks any language whatsoever. Words mean different things in different contexts.

Yesterday we scanned Acts 2 to see what happened when the people were filled with the Holy Spirit. It was a spectacular, miraculous event. The sound like mighty rushing wind and those dancing things that seemed like flames of fire on their heads and speaking other languages, other tongues.

Yet, later on when the 3,000 received the gift of the Holy Spirit, the result is not more tongues or more dancing flames or more wind; the result is spectacularly summarized in 2:42 and following. “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common.”

Supporting one another and so forth was the result of being filled with the Spirit. So also speaking in tongues, another expression we saw yesterday, that at least in Acts 2 they were real languages understood by real foreigners, and the communication is understood by these people. At the same time, in chapter 2, these tongues are understood to be part of the gift of prophecy.

Do you remember how Peter defends what is going on? He says, quoting Joel, “ ‘In the last days,’ God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions.’ ” Did you hear that? “Your sons and daughters will prophesy.” He sees this tongues speaking to be some kind of evidence of prophecy. Yet, when you come to Paul writing in 1 Corinthians, then you discover speaking in tongues can be differentiated from prophecy. It depends on the context.

Why do I burden you with all these details? Because some of us have been Christians for a long time, and then we are tempted to fall into a trap that tries to make distinctions that are finer than what the Bible allows. You get well-intentioned Christians asking, “What is the difference between the baptism of the Spirit and the filling of the Spirit?” The short answer is, “It depends.”

It depends on the context. In Acts 2, the two are the same thing. This is the baptism of the Spirit that is mentioned in chapter 1, and the filling of the Spirit is mentioned in chapter 2. Yet, the referent is exactly the same. It’s referring to the same thing. In other passages, it’s a bit different. A text without a context becomes a pretext for a proof text.

As we listen to the Word of God, one of the most important things we can do when we’re reading the Bible is to pay attention to the context rather than trying to think each word has a kind of magic, univocal force that always means exactly the same thing and you can sort of construct a simple meaning that is always exactly the same. That’s just not how language works, whether in the Bible or elsewhere. When you’re talking about wheels, for instance.

If you’re a young Christian or not yet a Christian and you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, don’t worry. The point is simply to learn that to understand the Bible you have to read it carefully and pay attention to the context. I’ve just chosen a remarkably awkward way of telling you that.

Acts 2 saw the earliest believers filled with the Spirit. Yesterday, Acts 2:42–47 gave us a lovely summary of how this transformed their lives and transformed the community, a kind of foretaste of heaven, but that first flush of real spiritual power had to work itself out in terms of the broadening horizons of their own experience.

Here I would like to draw your attention now to five pen portraits that Acts draws of what happens to this community as the Spirit works his way in their lives. Again and again we’re told in these chapters they were filled with Spirit. Yet, what works out is remarkably diverse.

1. The Holy Spirit and early Christian utterance

Chapter 4, verses 1 to 31, focusing especially on verses 8 and following. Peter, now called before the Sanhedrin, we’re told, is filled with the Holy Spirit, and thus, filled with the Holy Spirit he says to the people, “Rulers and elders of the people! If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed, then know this, you and all the people of Israel:

It was by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. He is ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone.’ Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”

That is a remarkable paragraph. Peter is looking around at the barbaric fact that the long-awaited, long-expected, long-anticipated Messiah came and was killed. That was so out of the popular expectation of what would happen when the Messiah came that it drove Christians to read their Bibles again, and among the passages they found was this one that is here quoted.

In fact, there is a whole string of them in the Old Testament. They’re sometimes called the stone testimonies because in each case something is said about a stone being rejected and yet finally approved. This quotation comes from Psalm 118, but Isaiah 28 has more of the same, referring back to Isaiah 6. Peter gives a longer explanation of how he understands these in his first letter later in the New Testament in 1 Peter, chapter 2. You can read more of what he says there.

In the ancient world, when you were building a temple you tried to set the cornerstone in such a way, preferably on bedrock, that it determined all the angles and the structures. It was not a foundation stone in the sense that all the weight was upon it, but rather it was the controlling stone. It was engineered with great precision, located at exactly the right place, anchored securely, and the entire building took its shape from that stone. That was the cornerstone. That’s the way it should be translated here, rather than capstone.

But the Old Testament itself anticipates the coming of a Messiah who is like a stone assessed by those building the temple and it was tossed aside. “We won’t use that one; it’s not square enough,” or “Somebody made a mistake in cutting that line.” Yet, in God’s own design this one becomes the cornerstone of the entire edifice. Of course, what this is saying is Peter understands from the whole sweep of the Bible’s storyline that human beings were in a desperate place before God.

Instead of somehow working harder to please God, they weren’t ready to take God’s own solution for how they could be reconciled to him, so that when the promised Messiah actually did come along, they set him aside, but their very setting of him aside, their actual rejection of him, which then leads then to his crucifixion is precisely the means by which God establishes him as the cornerstone for the entire edifice for all of the people of God.

Why so? Because when he died, he didn’t die a martyr, someone who was not able to control the circumstances, just sticking up his hand and saying, “I’ll die on my principles,” or anything like that. He died, rather, as a sacrifice, a God-given sacrifice, bearing the punishment and curse that should have come on the rebels themselves. That’s how God established him to be the cornerstone of the entire edifice of the people of God. He’s the only cornerstone.

Peter understands the implications. He says, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” All of this speech by Peter is introduced in verse 8 by this little expression, “Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit said to them …” In other words, the Holy Spirit enabled him to see clearly what the fundamental issues are and to speak straightforwardly about them.

He’s now being caught up before the Sanhedrin. You must remember in the first century it was not a democratic society. Here we’re ready to cut down the tall poppy. You can’t take any authority too seriously. It’s a matter of principle. It’s Australia, for goodness’ sake. But in a hierarchical society, to be called before the Sanhedrin would be a fairly intimidating business, but the Holy Spirit gives him confidence, insight to understand what the foundational issues are, and he speaks with boldness before these people. He’s not a trained lawyer. Not a brilliant scholar. He’s simply speaking the truth.

I was in Denmark two or three weeks after the tsunami. One of the victims of the tsunami was the son, daughter-in-law, and their baby of a former Danish cabinet minister who, in this very secular country, was known to be a Christian. The son himself and his wife and child who were all killed in the tsunami were training for Christian ministry and already had quite a remarkable witness amongst university students.

Of course, once the press identified this chap as the son of the Danish minister, immediately they wanted this former Danish minister on TV to interview. All the tough questions were put at him. “You say you’re a Christian. How can you believe in a Christian God who lets your own son die like that and thousands of others?”

The man replied, “I can’t answer all those questions, but my final measure that God is good is that he gave his own Son to die on the cross, not only in my stead but in the stead of my son, and I will see my son and my daughter-in-law again.”

“How can you be so confident of those things?”

“Because Jesus bore my sin and rose again.”

“Don’t you feel any bitterness?”

“This is a fallen and broken world, and we will all die. Some die earlier than others, but we will all die. In the light of eternity, my confidence still is in Christ Jesus who rose from the dead that we might live.” Such simple words. No profound theodicy. No deep, philosophical explorations. I doubt if the man was capable of it. Yet, he was filled with the Spirit.

In metro Chicago where I live, there is a radio talk-show host, a Jewish chap named Milt Rosenberg. A very interesting fellow. He’s just astonishingly well-informed, and when he gets people on, he’s the odd talk-show host who actually encourages people to say what they think instead of trying to belittle them and run them down and control the discussion. He really likes people to say what they think. He invites on some very interesting people.

A few years ago, he invited on three people from different Christian backgrounds. I won’t label them except for one who was an evangelical Christian teaching at a nearby biblical college. No, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me! Milt said, “All right. I’m a Jew. What possible reason will you give me to tell me unless I believe in your Jesus I’m lost and I’m going to hell?” Milt is never known for being understated in his approach.

The first chap said, “Well, I’m not sure just because you don’t believe in Jesus you are going to hell. I mean, that seems a bit narrow-minded to me. I don’t really want to go down that path.” The second sort of waffled around the place. He came to the third chap, and the third chap started to speak and then burst into tears and wept for three minutes on national radio.

Milt Rosenberg said, “That’s the best argument I’ve ever heard.” Sometimes when we’re filled with the Spirit, the explanations that are given come in very, very, very different ways, but they always return us to Christ, to compassion, to gentleness, to straightforwardness, to holiness, to integrity, to love for people.

The same expression is found at the end of the chapter. Verse 31. Now the Christians are praying together after Peter has gotten back with John after this first confrontation with the Sanhedrin. They’ve prayed together. Then we read, “After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.”

What that means, of course, is they were very bold in their own witness. Why? Because they were filled with the Holy Spirit. There’s a sense in which if you claim to be a Christian and you never share the gospel with anybody, how can you possibly claim to be filled with the Spirit? One of the entailments of being filled with the Spirit is precisely, if you’re a Christian, that you learn to speak the Word of God boldly.

I know there are different gifts. Some are more outgoing than others, and some of us have more reserve. I understand there are all kinds of personality differences, but somewhere along the line, to be filled with the Spirit works out in simply confessing Christ boldly in different contexts.

2. The Holy Spirit and early Christian deceit

Chapter 5, verses 1 to 11. It’s a remarkable passage. You read the text up till now, and the early church in Jerusalem seems like a foretaste of heaven, all right. There’s no mention of sin or failure anyway. Now there’s something that is pretty ugly introduced to us.

We’re told again at the end of chapter 4 in verse 32, “The believers were in one heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but each shared what they had. They spoke about the resurrection of Christ Jesus. There were no needy persons among them because from time to time those who owned lands or houses would sell them and bring the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet.”

There was such love amongst the brothers and sisters that it worked out in this kind of generosity so that everyone would be helped. This wasn’t a sort of enforced communism. “You cannot be a Christian unless you sell your house and make sure all the proceeds come to the apostles, and meanwhile, we drive Cadillacs.” It wasn’t like that! It was voluntary. It was for the good of others. It was open and full of integrity because the people themselves were transformed by the Spirit of God. This is a further unpacking of what we saw at the end of chapter 2 yesterday.

But these two in chapter 5, Ananias and Sapphira, have some property. They sell it. They hold back some of the money, which was their right to do, and then they come and lay the rest at the apostles’ feet for the help of the poor and the disadvantaged among them, but they claim it’s the whole thing. It seems like a fairly minor lie, doesn’t it? After all, they are giving money. It’s just not quite as much as they seem to be giving.

Then we are told (verse 3), “Peter said, ‘Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal?

Nothing was forcing you to give this. I’m not checking up on you because you haven’t given it all. That’s not the issue. It was yours to give. What made you think of doing this, however? You have not lied to men but to God.’ When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened.”

I suppose fear would come upon our churches, too, if every time somebody lied to God he fell down dead. About three hours later, his wife comes in and it transpires that she was in on the conspiracy, so again Peter says, “ ‘How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.’ And she fell down and died.” Then we read verse 11. “Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.”

What should we make of this? In the light of what the preceding chapters have said about the Holy Spirit, we readers know everything good and transformed about this congregation has been accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit of God, but now Ananias and Sapphira want the reputation of being transformed themselves without actually being transformed.

In other words, they did not simply lie about their money, though they did do that. It was theirs. They didn’t have to give it away. They lied so as to be thought holy, so as to be thought generous, so as to be thought transformed. They were more interested in having a reputation for holiness than in being holy.

That’s a perennial temptation amongst people (the desire to be thought better than we are by whatever scale), of course, and in the Christian church it can be a desire to be thought more holy, more sanctified, more spiritual than we actually are, but it is worse in this case in that what they are claiming for themselves is something which, at the deepest level, is not within their own power to be, thus, transformed. To be genuinely sacrificial and generous and loving … genuinely … is the fruit of the Spirit of God.

By their claim, Ananias and Sapphira were not only insisting they had what they did not, but they were also claiming it was within their power. There is, perhaps, another way of seeing how ugly this deep offense is. Think of an Old Testament parallel. Do you remember the account in 2 Samuel 11 and 12 of King David in the matter of Bathsheba and all that takes place afterward?

He seduces the young woman next door. Her husband is out at the battlefront fighting David’s wars. When she tells him some little time later that she’s pregnant, David thinks he can still get away with it by sending for her husband to come back, ostensibly to bear a message. He comes back, but he’s so tied in with his mates on the front that he doesn’t even go home to sleep with his wife. He actually just stays in the king’s gatehouse thinking, “How can I go home and have the comforts of home when my mates are at the front risking their necks?”

David knows his goose is cooked, so he sends a message back by this young man instructing the commanders that they should arrange some skirmish on the frontier. Everybody else in the platoon will be told by some signal when to fall back, but the young man himself will not be told and he’ll be exposed out there all by himself and probably he’ll get bumped off, and that will solve the problem. Won’t it?

That’s what takes place. The man is killed. But it’s not as if God doesn’t know, so in due course, God sends the prophet Nathan to confront the king. You recall the story. After David eventually is confronted and begins to see the dimensions of his own guilt and is genuinely repentant, though there’s not much he can undo about the crime itself, he writes Psalm 51. In the context of Psalm 51, he says, addressing God, “Against you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.”

At one level, that is a load of codswallop. It’s balderdash. It just isn’t true at one level. He certainly sinned against Bathsheba, the woman. He certainly sinned against Bathsheba’s husband. He sinned against the military high command. He sinned against the covenant people of God, because judgment falls on the nation. He sinned against the baby now conceived in Bathsheba’s womb. It’s difficult to think of anybody he hasn’t sinned against.

Yet, he has the cheek to say, “Against you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.” A more profound level, of course, finds David speaking exactly the truth, because in every sin we commit in God’s universe, the universe of the God of the Bible, the person most offended overwhelmingly so is God himself.

When we wake up in the middle of the night and remember some ghastly thing we’ve done to somebody else and we squirm with a bit of embarrassment, most of our embarrassment is at the horizontal level (we really stuck our foot in it and embarrassed ourselves and embarrassed somebody else), but from a biblical perspective, the one most offended when we cheat on our income tax is God.

The one most offended when we nurse our bitterness is God. The one most offended when we commit adultery is God. The one most offended when we are racist is God. The one most offended when we lie is God. The one most offended when we’re prayerless is God. It’s God. It’s God, because it’s God’s universe. He made us in his image.

Constitutionally, we’re made to love him with heart and soul and mind and strength. It’s a mark of our rebellion how far we’ve got from that. That’s why, if the first command is to love him with heart and soul and mind and strength, the first sin is not to love him with heart and soul and mind and strength. It’s the only sin we always commit when we commit any other sin.

David understands something of this. He knows he has abused all these other people, but he bows before God because he knows God, and he says, “Against you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.” Peter sees things with similar clarity. “Don’t you understand, Ananias? It’s not just that you sinned against the congregation. It’s not just that you’ve lied before the congregation. It’s true, but you’ve lied before the Spirit of God. That’s where your real offense is.”

Then it’s put a little differently. “You’ve lied to God himself,” a couple of verses further on. “You have not lied to men but to God. Not as if you can deceive God. God is not taken in, but your lie is before him.” That is why we must have God’s forgiveness for all of our sins. Nothing else will do. There are two final observations I must make on this passage.

Throughout the Bible, very often one finds most explicit judgment when the people of God as a whole are closest to him. When the people of God as a whole are walking in remarkable fidelity before the Lord and are corporately very much aware of his presence and his truth and his loveliness, his holiness, his justice, and his compassion, they really begin to see who God is and they’re self-consciously aware of his blessing and providential rule in their lives.

Then, when sin is actually done, it just seems all the worse and judgment is all the more immediate. Like Achan in the Old Testament or Ananias and Sapphira here. It’s where the people of God are most removed from God (just read the Old Testament history), when they’re most seduced by contemporary forms of idolatry and disparate forms of self-focus and vulgarity and even violent barbarity, when they’re most estranged from God, alienated from him, that God often lets them go.

Their punishment, then, becomes what Paul describes in Romans 1. God gave them over to do what they were doing, and the whole community just goes downhill and downhill and downhill. Don’t you see? It’s a form of compassion. It’s a form of care. It’s a form of gentleness for the whole community to exercise discipline rather than the kind of judgment that lets people, finally, go to hell in a teapot.

The question must be raised in our churches.… Is God’s judgment particularly immediate today? Time for sober reflection. The point to see is ultimately God is not someone to be played with. He’s the God who, by his Spirit, gives all of this transforming power, but God is never domesticated.

My wife, over the years, has done a whole lot of different kinds of craft things, from silken metal threads to embroidery of one kind or another and quilting and so on. She likes that kind of thing just on the side, as it were. Several years ago, she needlepointed for me a little sign that, in my old office, I had on my wall just above my head. Just the simple words in a frame, “He is not a tame lion.” Isn’t that great?

If you don’t know your C.S. Lewis, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. In fact, I had a Korean student come in to start his PhD, and of course, he couldn’t be expected to know English literature. He came in and with typical Korean courtesy and a certain amount of confusion background in which the teacher is way up there and he’s way down there, he’s looking at me. I could see his eyes going up to the sign. He clearly didn’t know what to make of it. Finally, after about an hour into this interview, he says, “Is that you, sir?”

No. It’s referring to Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. After Aslan, the figure in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe who represents Christ, has been put to death on the stone that cracks open so that time runs backward and death is undone, he comes back from the dead, and the children are looking to play with him. They are told, “Aslan loves children, but he is not a tame lion.”

God pours out his blessings on his people (it’s what the early Acts accounts are about), but he is not a tame lion, and he will hold us all to account on the last day. Where shall we go, then, but to the provision that only he himself has made in the gift of his Son? That’s why we need, in the second place, to reread verse 11. “Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.”

We read earlier of the great generosity that seized the church and the great love and the great focus on apostolic doctrine. Let me tell you when a church is full of a love of apostolic doctrine and full of generosity and full of love and full of compassion, it’s a wonderful thing, but because this is still a fallen and broken world, there jolly well needs to be great awe and great fear before a holy God or we’ll still missing something.

Pretty soon, we’ll be tempted to try to have a domesticated God who gives out a lot of goodies while we fake it sometimes to preserve our ecclesiastical reputations but with much more interest in being thought holy than in being holy, which God abominates.

3. The Holy Spirit and early Christian leadership

Chapter 6, verses 1 to 10. The numbers of the church are multiplying so fast now the apostles have a problem. Not only are they involved in ministry of the Word and prayer, but they’re involved in providing for widows and for those with not very much.

The church is now a mixed congregation. Not only the Jews from Jerusalem but also the hellenized Jews. That is, the Greek-speaking Jews who have come around here from the empire. They’ve originally come for the Jewish high feasts, so their mother tongue is not Aramaic or Hebrew. It’s some other language, and their shared language is Greek, so there are conflicts in the community of misunderstanding.

In addition, some feel the widows from the hellenized side aren’t getting enough of the actual goods that are being distributed to hold things all together, so in this community of love and light and sharing and focus on the apostolic doctrine, now you have arguing in the background as well. The apostles just don’t have enough hours in the day to sort it all out. They realize part of the problem is administrative. There are just too many people for too few leaders, so they make their judgment.

“It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the Word of God in order to wait on tables.” This is not because they’re despising those who wait on tables. The point is they were called, first and foremost, to the ministry of the Word of God and prayer, as they say later, as elders and as pastors are so called today.

You don’t want your pastor to be so bound up with building committees and deciding who will lick the stamps and what color the carpet should be that at the end of the day they don’t have time to focus on the ministry of the Word of God and prayer. You don’t want that! You ultimately prostitute the entire order of the church and the good of all of the believers in it.

They say, “Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.” So that’s what happens. They choose seven, and what’s interesting about these names is they choose seven whose names show them to be drawn primarily from the hellenized camp, from the critical camp. There’s shrewdness even in that, isn’t there?

“They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit.” What is so intriguing about this passage is the criterion that is raised. He says, “Choose these people who are full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom.” The word wisdom could lead us astray because for us today wisdom often has to do with a sort of sage, deep-seated assessment of things so we can analyze our culture and think deeply about relationships and give utterances that amaze the press for their profundity and depth and so on.

What that has to do with waiting on tables I don’t have a clue, but in the Old Testament wisdom just doesn’t mean that. Not ever. Wisdom, in the Old Testament, would take some unpacking. There’s a kind of downstairs level in wisdom in the Old Testament. It means something like living out your life faithfully in the universe God has made.

Upstairs there are various rooms that are supported by downstairs. One of the rooms upstairs is administrative skill. If I had time I could show you that’s pretty common. That, of course, is what Solomon asks for when he inherits the throne. “What would you like to receive?” God asks him, and he says, “Well, with this people who am I to rule over them? Just give me wisdom.”

We read that and read Western notions of wisdom into the text, and we think, “If Solomon was so flipping wise, why does he end up as he ends up? Seven hundred wives, three hundred concubines, compromised in his morality, compromised in his idolatry, and overtaxing the people.… He really did make a mess of things. If he was so wise, why does he end up so badly?”

Of course, what he’s asking for is not wisdom in this comprehensive sense. He’s asking for administrative and judicial skill, and God commends him for it because it’s not self-serving. It makes him the wisest man with the result that when these hard judicial cases come before him.… You know the stories yourself.

The two women, for example, claiming this one baby is theirs. He has wisdom to know how to handle it. They didn’t have DNA in those days, at least DNA that could be analyzed. He had wisdom. That didn’t mean he didn’t go off the rails in all kinds of other ways, but he had administrative and judicial smarts.

That’s what they’re asking for here: a man who is full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom (that is, these administrative smarts). That, too, is a gift, and you realize when you have thousands of people and you have to distribute food and you have to develop the channels and the responsibility and the accountability, keeping the books, and organizing it, it takes some wisdom, so they look for that, but the first criterion that is laid out is being full of the Holy Spirit.

These have to be good Christian men with the kinds of fruit of the Spirit already talked about in chapter 2 and in chapter 4. That’s why when you have the qualifications listed for the elders in a passage like 1 Timothy 3, yes, they have to be able to teach (that’s the distinctive function), but most of the criteria that are listed have to do with Christian integrity: blameless, handling their own homes well, not given to getting drunk, known to be gentle. They’re Christian people full of the Holy Spirit.

So here’s the Holy Spirit in early Christian leadership. Yes, for particular jobs there have to be particular wisdoms, but above all, there must be the work of the Spirit in their lives, or quite frankly, they have nothing.

4. The Holy Spirit and early Christian reading of Scripture

The reality is the first Christians, all Jews initially and proselytes who were converted to Jesus, shared with their unconverted Jewish friends the same Bible, what we call the Old Testament, but clearly they weren’t reading the same Bible in the same way the Jews who were not converted were reading it. In fact, they weren’t reading it the same way they had once read it themselves.

Their experience of Christ led them to read the Bible in different ways. They were finding different things in it. We skipped over an important example of that yesterday. We saw, for example, in Peter’s sermon in Acts, chapter 2, when he is explaining to the crowds what is going on as these early Christians are speaking in tongues and talking about the greatness of God and so forth, while some of the crowd (cynics that they were) are simply saying, “They must be drunk speaking a lot of rubbish,” Peter has an explanation from Scripture.

He asks them, “Don’t you recall what the prophet Joel says?” He quotes Joel 2:28–32, quoted for us as we saw in Acts 2, verses 17. “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.” In fact, this is a strain of texts from the Old Testament that is rather common, sometimes with mention of the Holy Spirit and sometimes not. Do you recall the famous passage in Jeremiah 31 which promises the coming of a new covenant? Jeremiah 31:31: “ ‘The time is coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant.’ ”

Before you turn to that verse, it’s important to read the two verses before it. Jeremiah 31:29: “ ‘In those days,’ declares the Lord, ‘people will no longer say, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” Instead, everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes—his own teeth will be set on edge. The time is coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.’ ”

In other words, if you want to understand the nature of this new covenant, remember that little aphorism that is going to change its meaning. If you want to understand the aphorism, understand what’s coming with the new covenant. The point is under the old covenant the entire structure was tribal and representative.

That is, God manifested himself to the tribes of Israel particularly through especially endowed people (prophet, priest, and king). They are said again and again and again to be anointed with the Holy Spirit or filled with the Holy Spirit or endowed with the Holy Spirit. They are supposed to be telling the people, “Know the Lord.” They are mediators between God and the covenant community.

When these prophets, priests, and kings especially endowed by God do something really awful.… When a wheel comes off … (There’s another use of wheel.) When a wheel comes off, then judgment falls on all of the people because they’re mediators. That is, the fathers eat sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge, but God says a time is coming when it won’t be like that. The covenant won’t work like that any more. The tribal representative structure of the old covenant will be gone.

“ ‘In those days, it will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt. No. This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,’ declares the Lord. ‘For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.’ ”

Does that mean, then, we don’t need any teachers under the new covenant? “No longer will anyone teach his neighbor, saying, ‘Know the Lord.’ ” In which case, what am I doing here? That’s not the point. In the context, the teachers of the old covenant were mediators. They were especially endowed by God. They were representatives before God of the people and representatives of God to the people.

They said in this mediatory role, “Know the Lord,” but under the terms of the new covenant, it’s not going to be like that. Everybody in the new covenant will know the Lord. “They’ll all know me, from the least to the greatest.” This doesn’t mean there is no place for teachers anymore. You read the New Testament and you discover there is a lot of place for teaching, but there are no mediatory teachers anymore.

The new covenant is not representative. It’s not a tribal representative structure. I can’t tell you, “You folks here in Katoomba, I have a special enduement from God you don’t have, and I am telling you, ‘Know the Lord.’ Of course, if a moral wheel comes off in my life, judgment will fall upon you because you’re accountable to me.”

That’s not the way it works under the terms of the new covenant. There may be different roles given in the church of Jesus Christ, but I can’t speak out of some special enduement you don’t have access to, for all of the people of God receive the Spirit of God. It transforms them. It regenerates them. It renews them all on the basis of what Christ has done on the cross.

Although there is a place for teaching, my teaching cannot be of the sort that says, “I have special enhanced insight into God that you can’t possibly have.” My teaching will inevitably be, “Isn’t this what the Bible says, the Bible that is given to you and me alike? Isn’t this what it says?”

Because under the terms of the new covenant we all know the Lord. The Holy Spirit comes upon all of us. That’s why Ezekiel 36, likewise, can speak of a new covenant when God pours out his Spirit on all from the old to the young again and sprinkles their hearts with clean water and pours out his Spirit upon them and renews them. This is what the church is undergoing.

This is a use of the Old Testament, but the use that is particularly interesting in Acts 7 is Stephen’s speech. The same Stephen, one of the seven, is now caught in this mob violence that is about to take his life, and as he tries to defend himself, he works through the Old Testament history, with an emphasis on how often the covenant people of God had been wrong.

Thus, the patriarchs, in verse 9, sell their brother Joseph into slavery. Verse 27. When Moses tries to offer himself to the people to help them, they just rebel again. “Who made you ruler and judge over us?” When he comes back 40 years later called of God to lead this exodus, this is the same Moses whom they had rejected with the words, “Who made you ruler and judge?” (Verse 35)

Verses 37 to 42: “Moses says, ‘God will send you a prophet like me.’ ” But, verse 39: “But our fathers refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt. They said, ‘Let us make us gods who will go before us. Who is this Moses?’ ” They rebel again. “God turned away from them and gave them over to the worship of the heavenly bodies.” Verse 42: “This agrees with what Scripture says.”

Eventually, they even lift up their own children to the god Moloch. Moloch was the god who had a kind of burning hotpot in his hands. A stone with fire heated underneath. People threw their screaming babies into this hotpot, and they thought this was a sacrifice to the gods. No wonder, then, he ends the entire discourse by saying in verse 51, “You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!”

How does he get this? He’s reading the Bible. Instead of reading the Bible in some sort of proof-texting, defensive way in which somehow we read the Bible in order to stroke ourselves and tell ourselves how wonderful we are.… “We’re reading the Bible and we have the right doctrine and we have the law and we know what the gospel is.”

No. They’re reading the Bible in such a way led by the Spirit of God that they see how the Bible shows us again and again and again and again and again and again how often the people of God themselves are inconsistent, fickle, faithless, and in need of grace. That’s what turns us to the Lord.

I look at what God has done in Sydney and other places in recent years and see the multiplication of this conference, for example, the growing strength of both Moore and of SMBC, the rising numbers of really fine expository preachers, the number of people who are involved in Bible studies, and do you know what I fear for you? I fear your success.

Read the Bible led by the Spirit of God, as Stephen did, which shows us our inconsistencies and our failures and our sins again and again and again and, thus, drives us to the cross. If this ever becomes merely a cerebral exercise, God have mercy on you.

5. The Holy Spirit and early Christian martyrdom

Verses 54 and 58. Here is Stephen now being killed. Mob violence. They are full of anger and fury. We are told, “But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit …” There’s that expression again. “… full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’ When they WhenWhen they start to stone him to death, he prays, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ Then he fell on his knees as the stones fall upon him and crush him, and he cries, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ ” Why? Because he’s full of the Holy Spirit.

The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France which condemned tens of thousands of Huguenots to a bloody death sometimes on slave ships and sometimes just killed and some fleeing.… Marie Durand, then only 15 years old, was incarcerated as a damned Christian in the Tower of Constance overlooking the Mediterranean. At the age of 18, her brother Pierre was hanged at Montpellier.

After 19 years in this prison, and now aged 34, she was promised release if only she would abandon her Christian faith. She refused. She was released after 39 years at the age of 54, in those times a very old woman. How do you do that? Does it make sense? What sort of calculus leads anybody to do that?

Martyrdom, moreover, is not just for yesteryear. Do you realize there have been more Christian martyrs in the last 150 years than in the previous 1,800? The experts who keep track of these things say over the last 10 years we’ve averaged about 150,000 martyrs a year, many of them, of course, in the Southern Sudan, but in the last four years about 8,500 in Indonesia. I have friends working in the underground church in Iran. There are more Christians in Iran today than at any time in the last 1,000 years, but some weeks they lose three pastors.

If this current rate of Christian martyrdom now going on in the world, much of which does not hit the press, continues over the next generation (150,000 a year), it means of all the Christians now living in the world today, one in 200 will die a martyr’s death. How many people are there on-site here? Four thousand? That’s 20 of you. Of course, it’s not evenly distributed so it’s not all that likely.

Most of us are not called to martyrdom, of course, but we are called by the same Jesus and by the same Holy Spirit to live with eternity’s values in view or, to use the language of Jesus, to take up our cross and follow him. I doubt there is any long-term Christian stability, any long-term Christian faithfulness, any long-term Christian courage, any long-term Christian spirituality, any long-term Christian morality, any long-term Christian integrity, any long-term Christian self-sacrificing love, or any long-term real devotion to Christ that does not live with eternity’s values in view. I just doubt it.

The gospel prepares us not only how to live and die in this world but how to live in the light of eternity because the one thing more certain than the Australian tax system is death, and Christians learn to live in the light of eternity, in which case death to self-interest does not seem like such a stupid idea after all.

It is bound up with the gospel of Jesus Christ that gives them all of this joy and this self-sacrificing pleasure and this love, this forbearance, this forgiveness, and in the life to come, resurrection triumph before the glorified Christ. Here is the Holy Spirit in early Christian martyrdom. Let us pray.

We confess, Lord God, how easily our eyes are focused on the immediate and the small and the peripheral, and we simply do not live with eternity’s values in view. Open our eyes, we pray, so we may see these things clearly. Work in us by your Holy Spirit so we hunger to be Christlike, to see things as the early apostles saw them, to make ourselves ashamed of our own sin and eager to turn to the cross for forgiveness. For Jesus’ sake, amen.