The Mission of the Spirit

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the Holy Spirit from the book of Acts.

Before I embark on this talk, I should thank you for your many kindnesses to me yet again. People sometimes ask me, “What is it that brings you back to Australia again and again?” I have to tell you, it’s airplanes.

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In all fairness, it’s a great privilege to be here. There are challenges and difficulties confronted everywhere, but whatever the peculiar challenges here, this part of the Lord’s vineyard also has a surprising number of Christian leaders and pastors and teachers and gifted lay folk concerned to make the Word of God known.

I come here, and I am encouraged and learn at the hand of those who are leading the way, in some respects, in various patterns of discipleship and so forth. Believe me, it is a privilege for me to be here not a burden, so I am indebted to you, and I give you my thanks.

We have been studying parts of the book of Acts regarding the Holy Spirit, and in the first three addresses, I could focus on chunks, two or three chapters at a time. In the rest of the book of Acts, there are no substantial blocks of Spirit references, but there are many, many scattered references. Moreover, many of these scattered references are thematically tied to the growing themes of mission and outreach.

Yet, it is important to keep saying the disciples do not preach the gospel of the Spirit. They preach other things. Above all, they preach Jesus, Jesus crucified and risen, Jesus who pours out his Spirit, Jesus who inaugurates the kingdom, Jesus who is drawing in Jews and Gentiles alike, Jesus who is transforming men and women, Jesus who is anticipating his own return, Jesus who has already ascended to glory and will come again.

That’s what they’re preaching, so there is a sense in which the kind of approach I’ve taken to the book of Acts, precisely because I’ve been assigned the topic of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts, is slightly skewed, because the Holy Spirit does not surface in these pages as the principle topic of conversation.

In other words, Luke does not say, “Now I’m going to write a book about the Holy Spirit.” One of the reasons why I’ve taken as much time as I have to sort of unpack the storyline as we’ve gone to show how the Spirit surfaces in all of these accounts is to make sure you don’t lose the drift of the book as a whole while we do learn what we should learn about the Holy Spirit as we run through these texts. Still, Luke draws attention to the distinctive roles the Spirit exercises mostly now from 13 to the end to serve his theme of mission.

1. The Holy Spirit’s commission

Chapter 13, verses 1 to 3. “In the church at Antioch …” This first, great, multicultural church. “… there were prophets and teachers.” Just reading their names is an education. “Barnabas, Simeon called Niger …” Which means Simeon the black, almost certainly from Africa. Then someone from off the coast. “… Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen … and Saul.” He’s been up there in court circles. It’s already a pretty cosmopolitan group just up the coast from Jerusalem in Antioch.

“While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said …” Presumably through a prophecy. “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” This, then, precipitates the first so-called missionary journey that embraces chapters 13 and 14. “So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.”

Not because the placing of hands on them somehow conveyed a chunk of magic or something like that, but rather, to express solidarity with these two men and appointment of these two men on behalf of the church, so that later, when they come back, the men report back to the church which sends them. Lest we miss the theological point, Luke makes it clear by adding verse 4. “The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia …”

In other words, the combination of the reference to the Holy Spirit in verse 2 and the repetition of this theme in verse 4 makes us deeply aware this is God’s initiative. This first missionary journey did not erupt out of a committee. “Well, you know, the Lord did give us the Great Commission. Now how shall we organize our resources here? Which country shall we go to first?”

This is not the result of strategic planning. Do not misunderstand me. Not for a moment am I suggesting that we should, therefore, abandon strategic planning and abandon committees. That’s not quite the point I’m trying to make. The point, rather, is at every great turning point in redemptive history, the Lord jealously insists he is the one who initiates things. All the way back in Genesis. You’ve come through the flood, yet corruption is multiplying again, evidenced even in the Tower of Babel.

Then you come to chapter 12. How does chapter 12 read? “There was a pious man called Abraham in the Ur of the Chaldees who woke up one day with a very good idea and said, ‘God, I have a great idea. Why don’t you start a new humanity? I’m willing to be the great-granddaddy. I promise to follow you wherever you send me, and I’ll do what you say. I’ll be called a friend of God, and I’ll be the father of many nations, no doubt, but this would start things off in another whole direction. What do you think, God?’ ”

When you come to Moses, is God now waiting for Moses to have a certain amount of initiative? Well, Moses thought so! He ended up on the back side of a desert for 40 years until God said, “Now’s the time. You’re humble enough. You now have to learn that I let my people go.” At this point, Moses was not quite so keen.

Then when you come to the appointment of the king.… Oh, the people wanted a king but for all the bad reasons, and they chose someone who should have turned out all right but he was a bit of a disappointment. Then, when God chose the king, it was the young shepherd boy in the family.

Then, when David wanted to build the temple, God said, “Did I ever tell anybody to build a temple? Besides, you’re a bloody man of war. The temple will get built as predicted, as far back as Deuteronomy, but when I say so. It’s going to be done by your son.” At every major turning point in redemptive history, God takes the initiative.

It’s not as if God is sort of wondering what to do and then we offer him a bit of advice in our prayer meetings and ask him to bless the plans. God has his own strategic ways, and especially in the turning points of redemptive history, he wants to make it clear his glory he will not share with another.

Now at this great outset of missionary enterprise, not simply Christians going elsewhere and gossiping the gospel but an actual plan beginning to go, to be sent specifically for this purpose, God declares himself by the Holy Spirit, and that is why the first missionaries were sent out.

2. The Holy Spirit’s power

The same chapter, verses 6 to 12. There is now a confrontation from a sorcerer named Bar-Jesus, and eventually, he gets Paul’s goat. He is upset by the constant damage this chap is doing. Eventually, he looks him straight in the eye, and he says, “You are a child of the devil,” but he doesn’t say this simply because he’s bad-tempered, a bit short that day, wanting in sleep and, therefore, his tact abandons him.

No. He says this because, we are told, he was filled with the Holy Spirit, which suggests you shouldn’t go around saying this sort of thing unless you’re filled with the Holy Spirit. This should be a Spirit-prompted utterance not an utterance that’s prompted by mere irritation and want of sleep. Yet, it is important.

It is important not only because it’s Spirit prompted, but it is important to see God not only brings his people along in understanding Scriptures as we’ve seen by the Holy Spirit and pours out his blessings on Samaritans and Gentiles to authenticate them back to the Jerusalem church so as to guarantee there would be one church, as we’ve seen, and not only commissions his people in sending them, and later on we’ll see, gives them joy and power, but here there is power in confrontation.

We’ve seen that already, of course, in the matter of Ananias and Sapphira. Peter, filled with the Spirit, confronts them, and there are two deaths. When I was a young man at seminary, one of our teachers was, at that point, on the edge of retirement. He had been a pastor for many, many years. As he edged toward retirement, he was sort of demoted and came to teach us at the seminary. It is important to remember the pastoral ministry is the front line. The seminary is merely the quartermaster’s job.

He spent many hours telling us something of his pastoral experience. He was teaching us pastoral theology. He told of his own early years in the ministry when he was a young man how he had been assigned to this church. It was a Baptist church, as it happened, but it was a Baptist church in a village where the only church in the village was this Baptist church, so it was sort of a community place, a community center in some ways.

In those days in that particular part of the country, most people did go to church, and whether they believed much or not, it didn’t really matter. The business people were all there. The families were there. Most people showed up. Seventy or eighty percent of the village showed up at this church on Sunday.

He discovered the politics of the village were also the politics of the church. The senior business people controlled also the lines of authority in the church. There wasn’t much he could do. If there was gross sin, and sometimes there really was disgusting stuff going on, there was no way there could be any sort of church discipline because, after all, the business people controlled everything, and they weren’t really all that interested in the gospel.

They’d pat him on the back now and then. “Keep going, Sonny. You’re doing not bad. Just mind your business.” He found this more and more and more depressing. He started Bible studies, and he preached the gospel, and after two or three years, a young man still single, he was beside himself, so he set himself to seek the Lord.

Prostrate before the Lord, day after day in tears for six months, he said, “Lord, either take me out of this place, or you clean it up. I can’t handle this. Put me in a small church, an assistant somewhere under someone who has a lot more experience and godliness and ability than I’ll ever have, or you clean it up, because this isn’t right. We recite the creed, and we confess Jesus as Lord, and all of this sin is going on. You clean it up.” In the next three months, he had 34 funerals, and the next year he baptized 200.

I’m reluctant to tell you that story. You don’t want to pray like that too quickly. I mean, you might be the first to go! I don’t want to give the impression the gospel is a bit of magic, either. You pray the right prayers and you get prostrate enough and intense enough and … Zap! People die and others get converted and everything is hunky-dory.

Yet, at the same time, understand this. This is the church of Christ. First Corinthians 3 insists he will confront those who try to destroy the church. This is the same Holy Spirit who can see people on their sickbeds because they’re approaching the Lord’s Supper the wrong way. You don’t play around with this kind of God. The same Spirit who brings comfort is perfectly able to bring judgment. If you just want to play around with the gospel, go elsewhere. It’s less dangerous.

3. The Holy Spirit’s joy

Chapter 13 now, right at the very end of the passage. This chapter has witnessed one of the longest sermons in the New Testament, the evangelistic address of Paul in Pisidian Antioch in a synagogue addressing Jews and proselytes and those who are already familiar with the Old Testament and proving as Paul preaches Jesus really is the promised Messiah and that he was supposed to die and rise again.

Then, eventually, there is a backlash from some of the Jewish authorities, and as a result, some react against him. Paul says in verse 46, “We had to speak the word of God to you first.” That’s part of Paul theology, to the Jews first and also to the Gentiles. “Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles.

For this is what the Lord has commanded us: ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’ When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed. The word of the Lord spread through the whole region.”

Yes, there were some troubles here. “They stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their region. So they shook the dust off their feet as a warning to them and went to Iconium. And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.” You would have thought, after the preceding couple of verses, the text would read, “And the disciples hunkered down and tried to be faithful in this rather difficult circumstance,” but that’s not what the text says.

It says they were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. The fact of the matter is the fullness of joy brought about by the Holy Spirit is not, finally, dependent on external circumstances. These people were filled with joy, judging by the flow of the narrative, because they had been accepted by God. They had their sins forgiven. While some were rejecting the gospel, these Gentiles were receiving it. They were filled with joy, and if it meant a bit of persecution, who cares? They were looking at things from a divine perspective.

In fact, it’s pretty often in Scripture that the joy is associated with a sheer consciousness of God precisely in the midst of the circumstances that are so difficult. That’s true in Nehemiah, chapter 8, verse 10. “The joy of the Lord will be your strength.” This is when everybody is trying to shut them down. Not the joy of your victory will be your strength or the joy of your circumstances or the joy of a pretty new dress or a great car. No. The joy of the Lord will be your strength, precisely when everybody is shutting you down.

That’s the confidence at the end of Romans 8, too. It’s when we’re persecuted, being shut off like sheep, slaughtered and killed, that golden chain (“Those whom he has foreknown are those whom he has predestined and those whom he has predestined he has also justified them, and he sanctifies them, and he glorifies them. They are the Lord’s and who shall separate us from the love of God?”).… It’s the context, also, of the great prayer in Ephesians 3, too, isn’t it? We learn something of the height and depth and length and breadth of the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Let me tell you about Mike Wheeler. Mike Wheeler is an American who went out as a missionary to Bolivia quite a number of years ago now. He went out single and was involved in church planting and theological education. He learned the language well. Really was absorbed into the culture.

A tall, thin man about 6 foot 4, not your average Bolivian Hispanic. Yet, he really got in there, and after quite a number of years, he met another single missionary out there, and the two of them got married and had a little girl. The mission decided to send them back to Trinity so he could do a PhD in New Testament. The mission realized they had to upgrade their theological training. They had to get more Bolivians and missionaries who spoke Spanish fluently to upgrade their theological training and improve the possibility of training national leaders.

He was sent back to Trinity where I teach to pursue this training with their little girl, who was just a couple of years old. At this point, of course, because they had gotten married a little later, they were about 40. He had barely got going when his wife was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer, so his whole program slowed down, of course, as she went through all the rigors of that kind of treatment, but she was coming out the other side, and he returned to his program working hard when he was diagnosed with advanced stomach cancer.

Although Chicago is a bit of a cancer center (the Lutheran General Hospital there is superb on the cancer front), they wouldn’t even touch it. They said, “There is no hope. There is no cure.” The mission thought enough of him that they sent him up to the Mayo Clinic, and they said the same thing, but they were willing to do something.

They took out 90 percent of his stomach and treated him with some experimental drugs for colon cancer, and gradually, he turned around. The cancer was gone. He had to eat every two or three hours, little wee bits because he couldn’t store any food in his stomach, but he began to recover. He regained his strength and went back to his studies. His wife’s cancer then returned, and it killed her.

Last autumn, after Mike Wheeler had finished his PhD, he returned to our church. Our church is one of the supporting churches. He and his little girl, now 7 or 8, were just about to leave to go back to Bolivia, and for half an hour Mike Wheeler told us about the goodness of God, and that, I tell you, is simply normal Christianity. That’s all it is.

He was thankful for all the help along the way from the seminary community, from his family, from the mission, for all the medical help. He was thankful at least one of the parents had been spared for their little girl. He was thankful for the marriage he had. We’re all terminal cases; the only question is when.

He was thankful, above all, for eternity, the Savior who had called both him and his now deceased wife and had now called his wife to glory, whom he would see again. He was thankful, above all, for the Savior who taught him to live with eternity’s values in view. All he did was talk about the goodness of God, because you see, Mike Wheeler knew the joy of the Lord was his strength.

I was brought up in French Canada. When I was a boy, French Canada was a pretty brutal place for the gospel. The opposition was pretty strong. Baptist ministers alone between 1950 and 1952 spent a total of eight years in jail. I used to get beaten up from time to time as a maudits Protestant, a damned Protestant.

It was tough sledding, and as late as 1972 there were a grand total of 35 or 36 congregations that were French-speaking in a population of about six and a half million. None of them had more than 40 people. It was difficult. Between 1972 and 1980, those churches multiplied from 35 to 500. It was one of the closest things I have seen to historic revival. It wasn’t quite in revival proportions or anything, but it really was remarkable.

I was in England between ’72 and ’75 and came back. In ’76, although I was pastoring on the West Coast of Canada, I was back pretty often because I had the language. I remember going to a church in Sherbrooke in the summer of 1976, this little congregation that had been nothing (30 to 35 people, discouraged) a few years before. I went on a Wednesday night. I was passing through doing something else, and I couldn’t be there on the weekend.

On the Wednesday night I went in, there were about 90 people on a Wednesday night for prayer meeting. They sang for about half an hour. Then I was supposed to speak, and I asked the pastor, “How long do I have?” He said, “Well, these people are hungry. I never take less than an hour. I’m just packing it in as fast as I can. You’re a guest. You can take longer.” They never told me that at Katoomba. In fact, there was once at Katoomba I was up here going just a little bit beyond. David Cook was behind me and actually grabbed my trouser leg! I prefer Quebec!

I went on for about an hour and a half. Then the pastor said, “Most of us in this room have been Christians for only a year or two or three. I’m sure you have a lot of questions about the Bible. It’s a good chance to ask them, so ask them.” So I answered questions for another hour or so. Then they said, “It’s time to pray together. What are the things that are on your heart and mind? What are you concerned about?”

In some churches you hear things like, “I’ve got a great aunt. Her name is Louise. Great Aunt Louise is 98, and she has just been diagnosed with cancer. I wonder if you’d pray that the Lord would heal her,” or “My uncle Moe has an ingrown toenail, and it’s causing him quite a lot of difficulty.” I’m concerned about Aunt Louise and Uncle Moe, but at the end of the day, although the text does say, “Cast all your cares on him for he cares for you,” somehow there seems to be a disproportion somewhere.

But these people.… Item after item. “I’ve been talking to my neighbor about the Lord Jesus, and this is what he says, and this is what I say. It really is exciting to see the Spirit of God beginning to work in him. Would you pray that he’d get converted?” That sort of thing, again and again and again for 40 minutes. Then we got down on our knees to pray. At 1:00, they were still praying.

I left. I had to lecture the next morning at 7:30. I wimped out. What can I say? This is what they did Wednesday after Wednesday after Wednesday. It was just normal. These people didn’t have all that much. It was still a pretty difficult place to work and be and serve. Yet, at the same time, the joy of the Lord was so strong in them because they saw things from an eternal perspective.

Their prayer meeting was not joyful because somebody had whipped them up and said, “Now we really have to be happy. Let’s give Jesus a big clap,” but they were full of the Holy Spirit and faith. They were full of the Holy Spirit and joy. They understood the gospel. They were living with eternity’s values in view, and the joy of the Lord was their strength. May it be so in Sydney.

4. The Holy Spirit’s leading

Chapter 16, verses 6 to 10. “Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.

So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.”

To understand this paragraph properly, you need, really, to look at your map at the back of the Bible. They’re just names. You don’t have to do it now, but look it up later and you’ll see. It’s very interesting. Paul is traveling roughly northwest through what is now modern Turkey but was then Asia Minor. It was called Asia Minor because it was the first part of Asia the Romans got hold of. It wasn’t all of Asia. It was just Asia Minor, but it was part of Asia.

Paul was heading up through that area. He’s trying at first to go to Bithynia. I think on to Bithynia as he headed north he would have turned right, to the east, across the top of what is now Turkey, and been on a main road that could take him all the way to India. Had he gone that way, that’s where Paul’s efforts would have headed, off to the big cities to the east. That was a major trade route for spices in those days.

Squeeze between Mysia where the Holy Spirit says no and Bithynia where the Holy Spirit says no.… If you take a look at a map with the ancient roads on them, there’s really only one place to go: either back where you came or you go to Troas. If you’re at Troas, you are now right on the coast. If he was heading to Troas, and that’s what the text says, before this dream he had in the middle of the night, he was already in Troas. There’s only one place to go from there and that’s Europe.

In other words, the Spirit said, “No. No.” He has just come from here, so he goes to Troas. That means he’s headed for Europe, and that’s when he has the vision of the man in Macedonia, which is in Europe, saying, “Come over and help us.” That’s an interesting set of circumstances, for the fact of the matter is the Spirit’s no doesn’t mean Paul sort of sits around and waits for the Spirit’s yes; he keeps pushing, and that’s heading him toward Europe.

It’s while he’s on the way in Troas that he has this additional confirmation, as it were, the vision of the man in the night saying, “Come over and help us.” It seems to me there are two lessons here on which we should reflect.

A) The sovereignty of God in mission

When the gospel suddenly makes a great advance somewhere, all of our sociologists of religion look and analyze and see what has happened and give all the reasons why it happened here and didn’t happen somewhere else. The fact of the matter is they never predict in advance; they only give all the sociological reasons after the fact.

When Mussolini went into Ethiopia and all the missionaries had to leave before World War II, at that time people were saying, “That’s going to shut down that mission field. That one’s a goner.” In fact, in the peculiar mysteries of providence, the church flourished. Gently persecuted by the fascists, purified, they multiplied 30,000 to 40,000 converts.

When Mao Zedong got hold of China and the missionaries were expelled between ’49 and ’51, at that time there were just over a million Christians with a very broad definition of Christian in China. People, then, again said, “Well, that’s it for a bit,” but, in fact, the most conservative estimates today put the number of Christians in China at about 75 million.

What differentiates South Korea from Thailand or Japan … Japan, where it’s still so difficult and South Korea where about a quarter of the population is Protestant evangelical? Look at Eastern Europe. The Iron Curtain comes up. The gospel is multiplying faster than you can believe in Moldavia, in the Ukraine, and in Romania. Meanwhile, it’s death warmed over in the Czech Republic and pretty slow in Slovakia and very challenging in some other places. After the fact I can give you all the sociological explanations, but nobody predicted it exactly like that going in.

This is not a call to fatalism. This is not a call to sit back on your laurels and wait till the Holy Spirit does something magnificent, because at the same time, you still have to understand there are days of leanness, days of small blessings. I’ve mentioned here once before, although I’m sure most of you won’t recall, when I was a lad in high school growing up in French Canada when it was still so difficult, about that time the Congo shut down.

That was the time when the Congo, which was the Belgian Congo, was decolonizing, and as a result, it was very dangerous. The missionaries left. It eventually became the Congo. Then it became Zaire. Then it became the Congo. But at that time, the missionaries left, so you had all of these missionaries who were French-speaking looking around for another French-speaking part of the world to go to, and some of them came up to Quebec where my dad was a pastor.

Some of us thought this was pretty exciting. All these experienced French-speaking missionaries.… I know it’s another part of the world and lots of different things to learn in another culture, but at least they have the same language and literary heritage. Not one of them stayed more than six months. Not one. Teenager that I was, I had all this sussed out in a big hurry. They were wimps. I said to Dad, “What’s the matter with these people? Don’t they have any stick-to-itiveness, any stamina?”

My father, who unlike his son, was the mildest of men, said, “Don, you have to understand these people have seen gospel blessings in abundance. They’ve built hospitals, they’ve built churches, they’ve built theological colleges, and they’ve seen thousands of people converted. That’s the way they think of missionary work. They just don’t think of missionary work the way I experience missionary work here.

If we get two people converted in a year, it’s jolly close to revival. Then we’ll probably lose one the year after that who is kicked out of the province because his business is shut down with so much pressure on him. They haven’t seen that, so they read it as not being blessed by God, and they leave. Don’t be too hard on them.”

So I said to him, “Why don’t you leave? Why don’t you go some place where there’s more fruit, where you can invest your life in things really happening instead of in this dump?” Oh, I was theologically clueless, I was. My father wheeled on me. He said, “I stay because I believe God has many people in this place,” and he walked out of the room. There’s a place for small days of small things.

I’m not for a moment suggesting you have to chase every revival that comes along or else you’re not doing the Lord’s work. I’m not suggesting that, but at the end of the day, when the Holy Spirit moves in powerfully, you can’t stop him, and you can’t predict it, and you can’t control it. You try to behave biblically. You try to behave wisely. You try to teach the Bible, but at the end of the day, Christ Jesus said, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

The Spirit himself is poured out and brings conviction of sin and conversion. That’s what happens. This sovereign move by the Spirit leads Paul to Europe. It is not too much to claim that all of Western history, all of world history would have been very different if, instead, Paul had gone to Bithynia instead and headed east. This is what brings him, finally, to Athens, to Corinth, to Philippi, to Thessalonica. It finally brings him to Rome, and he has plans for Tarshish for Spain.

B) Not in every instance, but at least in this instance, the leading of God is for a man who is already in motion.

God shut some doors by his Spirit so he couldn’t go into Mysia and couldn’t go into Bithynia, and he didn’t want to go back where he came from, so Paul keeps moving. He’s heading to Troas, and that’s when this vision in the night comes of the man over in Macedonia in Europe.

In other words, if you are sitting on your backside waiting to be told what to do, you might sit a long time. It’s far wiser to get up and knock on some doors and see what the Lord will do with your life and how you can be used effectively, fruitfully. The Lord may shut some doors in due course, and the Lord may give you some special burden in leading in some way down the pike, but that’s far, far, far more likely to come and be effective and clear when you’re already moving. You can’t steer a stationary ship.

5. The Holy Spirit’s preservation of unity

We’ve seen this already in chapter 15 rather briefly at the great Jerusalem Council where the events of the conversion of Cornelius and the other Gentiles are duly reported to Jerusalem. They concur the Holy Spirit was given to the Gentiles as initially given to the Christians in Jerusalem, so how could these people be rejected? They are Christians. They have received the same Spirit. They have confessed the same Lord Jesus. This preserves the church in one body, Jew and Gentile alike. We’ve already seen that.

Now the situation in chapter 19 is immensely interesting. It’s the final group that receives this corporate experience of the Spirit. Yet, before we read chapter 19, verses 1 to 10, it’s important to read the last few verses of the preceding chapter. You know, of course, when the Bible was written, there were no chapter-verse breaks. Today we have our devotions, and we read chapter 18, then tomorrow we read chapter 19 because there’s a break there, but when we read chapter 19 we’ve already forgotten what’s in chapter 18 so we don’t see how the two chapters fit together.

In fact, the two chapters interpret each other for us. We’re told in verse 23 of chapter 18, “After spending some time in Antioch, Paul set out from there and traveled from place to place throughout the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples. Meanwhile a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria …” That’s down in Egypt. “… came to Ephesus.” This is on the coast of Asia Minor, modern Turkey.

“He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor and taught, though he knew only the baptism of John.” That’s the crucial phrase you have to remember.—Or “with fervor in the Spirit” “He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.”

Isn’t that lovely? They don’t simply write him off. Bring him home for a meal. “Boy, we sure loved your sermon today. We do have a couple of suggestions to make.” They take him, as it were, under their wing, and they explain the way of God more adequately. Exactly what is the problem is not explained.

The text does say, on the one hand, he had been instructed in the way of the Lord (verse 25), and he spoke with great fervor (yes, yes), and he taught about Jesus accurately. On the other hand, he knows only the baptism of John, and there’s something wrong with his theology somewhere, because Priscilla and Aquila have to sort him out.

“When Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, the brothers and sisters encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him. When he arrived, he was a great help to those who by grace had believed.” That’s why Apollos shows up in the Corinthian correspondence later. Then, in case we didn’t make the connection, Paul begins the next verse, the beginning of our chapter 19, by referring to Apollos again.

“While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus.” This place Apollos had just left. “There he found some disciples and asked them, ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’ They answered, ‘No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.’ So Paul asked, ‘Then what baptism did you receive?’

‘John’s baptism,’ they replied. Paul said, ‘John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.’ On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. There were about twelve men in all. Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God.” He’s doing his evangelism.

What are we to make of this very interesting chapter? Is this an instance of unambiguous delay such that first you believe and then you get the Holy Spirit later in one of these tarrying meetings we’ve looked at already in chapter 2 with respect to Pentecost? No. They’re in the same situation as Apollos. They only have John’s baptism. They eventually ask, “What baptism did you receive?” They reply, “John’s baptism.”

That was the same as Apollos’ problem. Do you recall back in chapter 18? “He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John.” What’s going on here? How are we to understand this?

I suspect it’s along these lines. I can’t quite prove it, but it’s the only explanation I can think of that makes sense of the evidence actually there in the text. You must understand this is a culture before cell phones. It’s a culture before instantaneous communication. I was in the speaker’s lodge a couple of nights ago and my cell phone went off at 3:30 in the morning. When my cell phone goes off at 3:30 in the morning, since not all that many people have my number, I think, “Uh-oh. What sort of crisis do we have this time?”

It was my favorite daughter. I have one favorite daughter and one favorite son. She had lost her debit card. She had done all the right things. Somebody had stolen it and started charging on it. She had cancelled it and all of that, but she just wanted to have a quiet chat with Dad about it. She knew I was in Australia but didn’t do the arithmetic, so my Easter morning was hearing from my favorite daughter. After she was reminded it was 3:30 in the morning, she apologized about 15 times and then talked for 40 minutes.

This is a problem the apostle Paul never had, but it also means there is less communication. It’s not instantaneous. By ancient standards, Rome was remarkable for its roads and communication networks and so on, but there was no postal system except that which was used by the military system itself. There was no public system. You just hoped a friend was going who eventually would carry a letter and he didn’t get mugged on the way. There was no phone system. No telegraph.

What you have then are thousands, literally thousands, and according to Josephus tens of thousands of Jews in the Diaspora coming to Jerusalem for the great high feasts. They come to Jerusalem and they’re there participating in everything. This particular Jerusalem is the time when Jesus is killed and rises again.

Maybe these particular Jews have come once before two or three years earlier hearing the ministry of John the Baptist and first being introduced to Jesus, baptized by John maybe in the Jordan River, receiving his baptism, hearing him not only demanding repentance but saying, “Don’t you understand? After me is coming one whose sandals I’m not even worthy to unloose.”

Maybe they were with him when he said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” They were John’s disciples, but they were beginning to be exposed to Jesus’ ministry. Then they come back from this great feast again three years later, and Jesus is crucified, and he is risen. They stay around a week, two weeks, or three weeks. They can’t stay any longer. They go home, and they missed Pentecost. That was seven weeks and a day later.

How are they going to hear about it? Does somebody ring them up on Optus? In one sense, they’re not just John the Baptist’s disciples in some narrow sense, because John pointed to Jesus, and Apollos himself, we’re told, had been instructed in the way of the Lord. Maybe he had met some Christians, or maybe he had been instructed himself precisely because he had been in Jerusalem. We can’t be sure about him, but he was a learned man and he spoke with great fervor and even taught about Jesus accurately.

For the text to say that, it must say something about who he was and the kinds of things he taught and probably, also, his death and resurrection. Yet, they left before Pentecost. Now Paul comes along and for these people to say they’re Christians and they’re following Jesus.… They don’t use that term perhaps, but they’re the followers of Jesus, and yes, they’ve been baptized. Paul senses there’s something wrong but can’t quite put his finger on it, so he starts his questions.

“Are you believers?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe in Jesus?”

“Oh, yes.”

“What do you believe about Jesus?”

“Well, he’s God’s promised Messiah, and he introduced the kingdom. He preached, and he went around doing good. He taught us to repent. He was eventually crucified by wicked men, and God raised him from the dead. He’s alive!”

“Were you baptized?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you were baptized?”

“What’s that all about?” And the penny drops.

You see, when they say, “We have not so much heard that there is a Holy Spirit,” they’re not denying they have any exposure whatsoever to the Holy Spirit. If they’re reading the Old Testament, they’ve come across the expression again and again. What they mean is any Holy Spirit that comes from all of this Christian belief. It’s not integrated into their thinking in any sense.

Paul twigs, and he says, “All right. You were baptized. What baptism did you receive?” “John’s baptism, of course.” So the account, then, unfolds. If this is right, Paul understands there is a normal linkage of conversion faith, baptism, and reception of the Spirit. He assumes that’s the normal linkage. We’ve seen in this book the three are tied together again and again in various sequences and combinations, but they belong together.

What makes this group abnormal, in a sense, could not be repeated today. What makes this group abnormal is they’ve gotten so far in their understanding of God’s great revelation in the sweep of redemptive history, and then they’ve sort of been removed from the scene of action that has gone on and nobody has told them, and they haven’t been integrated with the church of Jesus Christ this side of Pentecost.

The effect of what takes place next, then, as Paul prays for them and says, in effect, “You are my brothers and sisters in Christ, but you must understand the outflow of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the promised Holy Spirit, promised in the Old Testament.” Some of the texts we’ve already looked at during this week. “I pray, Almighty God, that you will pour out your Spirit on these, my brothers and sisters in Christ.”

The Spirit falls with phenomena similar to those in chapter 2, assumed in chapter 8, and explicit in chapters 10 and 11. What’s the effect? In chapter 2, the tongues had as part of their function communicating the gospel to outsiders. In chapters 10 and 11, it had a major function of authenticating these Gentile believers back to the Jerusalem church.

Here, there’s not a question of authenticating these people back to the Jerusalem church (it’s too far away), nor are there any outsiders here to communicate with. Here, the same phenomena have the effect of authenticating these people as Christians at this point in redemptive history to themselves so they understand truly and thoroughly where they are and what is going on in the whole sweep of God’s redemptive purposes.

To put this another way, the Holy Spirit preserves the unity of the church very carefully as these various groups come together under one Lord with one baptism confessing Jesus alone is the King.

6. The Holy Spirit’s appointments

Chapter 20, verses 17 to 31. This is part of Paul’s great address to the Ephesian elders. It’s a wonderful passage, but as he addresses them, he says in verse 22, “And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there.”

Isn’t that interesting? Enough leading of the Spirit that he knows he has to go but not so much that he has a clue what’s going to happen when he gets there. Some people who claim the leading of the Spirit do so as if they have it all taped. Paul doesn’t. “I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me.”

“Keep going, Paul. You’re going to get beaten up again. I’m leading you to the next place. You’re going to get beaten up again. Head on to Jerusalem. I’m not going to tell you what’s going to happen except that you’re going to get beaten up again.” That was the leading of the Spirit in Paul’s experience at this juncture.

Now he charges these people, these elders (verse 28), “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.” Here is a mixture of guidance, warning, uncertainty, the nature of principle.

Never imagine if you are led by the Spirit you will avoid all danger, all temptation, and all trouble. Provided you’re led by the Spirit life will be downhill and never uphill, a bed of roses with no thorns, perfect strength and no sickness, lots of success and never any failure, an upbeat and optimistic outlook with never any depression, a vast conquering over sin and no serious temptation. You can handle it because you have the Spirit. It just isn’t the way it is in the Bible.

What do we read of the Lord Jesus himself? After his anointing by the Spirit (his baptism with the Spirit coming upon him as a dove), then we are told, the Spirit drives him into the desert to face temptation from the Devil. So the believers here who have been appointed by the Spirit are told to expect vicious wolves from their own number to ravage the flock.

“You’ve been called by the Spirit. Brothers, this is what you can expect. Me? For my part, I’ve been called by the Spirit, too. I have to go to Jerusalem, and I know I’m going to get beaten up along the way.” That’s the leading of the Spirit, too. First, the cross. Then, the crown. If you ask for a mighty enduement, you ask and you pursue fullness of the Spirit of God rightly, understand this.

This will not necessarily lead you into unadulterated pleasure. It will lead you to the joy of the Lord. It will lead you also to thorns and tears and suffering and temptation, confrontation with wolves that ravage the flock. That’s part of what we’re called to do while we’re here led by the Spirit.

7. There are more warnings about which I’ll say no more.

Chapter 21, verses 4 to 11.

8. The Holy Spirit speaking through Scripture

We’re going to jump now to the last chapter of the book. While you stick your finger in Acts 28, you might want to glance back at Acts, chapter 1. Keep your finger in both places, because in Acts, chapter 1, there is one reference to the Spirit I purposefully left out. I’ve alluded to it once but made very little of it.

In chapter 1 … this is before Pentecost but after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus … we read (verse 15), “In those days Peter stood up among the believers (a group numbering about a hundred and twenty) and said, ‘Brothers and sisters, the Scripture had to be fulfilled in which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through the mouth of David concerning Judas.’ ”

This leads then to the appointment of Mathias as the replacement for Judas to keep the number up to 12. I mentioned that part of it earlier, but it’s the Scripture given by the Holy Spirit or the Holy Spirit speaking through the Scripture, through the mouth of David in the Scripture. Now, at the end of the book in chapter 28, we read these words.

Paul is under house arrest waiting for his trial. People can come and go, and we’re told, from morning till evening he explained and declared to them the kingdom of God and tried to convince them about Jesus from the law of Moses and from the Prophets. He’s expounding Scripture (verse 23). Some were convinced and became believers. Others, we’re told, would not believe (verse 24).

“They disagreed among themselves and began to leave after Paul had made this final statement: ‘The Holy Spirit spoke the truth to your forefathers when he said through Isaiah the prophet: “Go to this people and say, ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.’ For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes.

Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.” Therefore I want you to know that God’s salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will listen!’ For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and without hindrance!”

Isn’t this a remarkable way to end up the book? From the point of view of our study, of course, what is so striking is the first chapter of the book and the last chapter of the book both include references to the Holy Spirit speaking through Scripture. In other words, Paul is not encouraging some voice from the Spirit that stands outside what Scripture says.

He sees what’s going on, whether in the appointment of Mathias or, now, in the hardening of hearts of some amongst the Jews that leads to further evangelism amongst the Gentiles. He sees all of this as part of the fulfillment of what God himself has said by his Spirit in the Scriptures, and of course, here he’s following also the Lord Jesus.

The Lord Jesus cites this same passage in the great parables chapter (Mark 4 and parallels). He cites it in John’s gospel (John, chapter 12), because Jesus well understands the Holy Spirit has spoken in Scripture and announced how so many do harden their hearts. In fact, Jesus goes so far as to say in John’s gospel, “Because I tell you the truth, you do not believe,” a striking passage.

Isn’t that powerful? Not, “Although I tell you the truth …” A concessive would have been hard enough. “Although I tell you the truth, you do not believe,” but rather, “Because I tell you the truth, you do not believe.” Sometimes in some groups it’s the truth itself that guarantees unbelief, so what are you going to do? Tell lies?

You then realize that when you’re in that kind of setting it’s precisely your faithfulness to the truth that will guarantee unbelief and opposition. Jesus understood it, and that was taught already by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of Isaiah seven and a half centuries earlier, for the Holy Spirit speaks through the Word of God and addresses us still today.

Moreover, one of the reasons why Luke begins and ends his book with this reference to the Holy Spirit speaking through Scripture is because that ties the whole book of Acts to the book of Luke. Luke ends Luke 24 by Jesus insisting after his resurrection the Scriptures have all along spoken about him, and he opens their minds so they can see what things in Scripture do talk about him. He teaches them.

So the book of Acts becomes the outworking of precisely that teaching as the Christians in the first years of their existence as the post-Pentecost church begin to understand the Word of God more adequately, taught by the Spirit of God and now worked out and fulfilled in their own existence.

I said at the beginning there is a sense in which this series of studies on the Holy Spirit in Acts has at least the danger of distorting Acts because the book has lots of references to Acts, and yet, in one sense, its big themes assume this account and interlace the account with references to the Holy Spirit, but it is not the Holy Spirit who is being preached throughout the book of Acts. What you need to do now is go back and reread Acts and track out the triune God disclosing himself in this book.

God raises Jesus from the dead. God commissions his people. God adds to the church those who are being saved. It is the kingdom of God that is being preached. Jesus rises from the dead. Jesus ascends to the Father’s right hand. Jesus is coming again. Jesus pours out his Spirit. People confess the name of Jesus. Jesus is Lord. Jesus is King. Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is preached. He is the One who has been announced by the prophets, and now he is here! Jesus is Lord. Will you bend the knee or no?

The Holy Spirit who gave the Scriptures now opens dark minds. He brings joy. He displays himself in magnificent phenomena that not only communicate the gospel to outsiders and reverses Babel and multiplies unity while blessing diversity and at the same time insists it is the gospel of Jesus that is non-negotiable, so that Peter, filled by the Spirit, insists, “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Only Jesus. The Holy Spirit empowers people to bend the knee to Jesus.

This Holy Spirit, then, knits the gospel and the church together in unity, sees the apostles and others commissioned as missionaries, crossing all kinds of cultural barriers, and the church is being built up. There is comfort. There is joy. There is persecution. There is suffering. Almighty God, the triune God, is behind all of this to bring his people to culmination on the last day.

You and I, here in Katoomba in this year of our Lord 2005, worship the same triune God, experience still his call to his saving power, bow before the same Lord, and walk in the same Spirit. Let us pray.

In our most sober moments, Lord God, we are ashamed of how fickle our faith can be, how parochial our vision, how small our conceptions of you, our Maker and Redeemer. Merciful God, we bow before you this day, and we confess our sins, sins of indifference and of lovelessness, sins of nurtured bitterness, sins of arrogance and one-upmanship, and sometimes grosser sins that have sucked us in and captured us and ensnared us.

But to whom else shall we go? Christ Jesus has the words of eternal life, and we confess we have found in him sins forgiven, acceptance before you. We bow with confidence before him but also in deep awareness of our utter inadequacy, accepted in the beloved not because we are good but because Christ Jesus bore our sins in his own body on the tree.

Able to see, not as we ought, but able to see because the Holy Spirit has given us sight. Able to experience something of the joy of the Lord in anticipation of the glories yet to be revealed, not because we are freed from all the entanglements of a glittering world that loves glamour and despises truth and integrity, but because, by the power of the Spirit, we have some grasp of the glories of eternity, the delight of holiness, the anticipation of what is yet to come, the enjoyment of the fellowship of the saints.

O Lord God, we read again and again and again in this Book the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit. Fill us, too, we beg of you with this same Spirit for the good of your people, for the glory of Christ, for the calling of your people from around the world. For Jesus’ sake, amen.