The Inadequacy of an Advent Faith

Our reading today comes from Acts 19:1-10. Acts chapter 19. And it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples. He said to them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?

And they said, no, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. And he said, into what then were you baptised? They said, into John's baptism. And Paul said, John baptised with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who has yet to come after him, that is Jesus. On hearing this, they were baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus.

And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, they began speaking in tongues and prophesying. There were about twelve men in all. And he entered into the synagogue, and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. And when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the Hall of Tyrannus. This continued for two years so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.

Thank you, Phil, for that reading. And if you would just make sure you leave your Bibles open there, friends, at Acts 19 as we work through that passage this morning. I also want to get you to turn to another reading a little later during the message. Let me lead you in prayer as we pray for blessing on this. Father, thank you for your word and that it's a living word to us.

Father, it's the word that speaks to us in all the ups and downs of life. And we think of brother Bill Biren's message last Sunday focusing on that word that it is life giving and that it is everlasting and that it does focus our thoughts again and again on Jesus. May it do that also this morning in our worship service here this day. Pray Father for clarity of thought and for open hearts for all of us this morning that your word may indeed have its effect in our life for your glory. We pray that in Jesus' name as we say together, Amen.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, many of you will be aware that the last eighteen months I've been blessed to be able to come here every month and to take with you some studies from the book of Acts. Every month again another passage from Acts we've looked at, but there was one exception this time last year, where because it was Advent, I thought I need to do something different, focus on an Advent text and we did that from Genesis and I thought this morning, for this morning, I maybe should do something similar again and just forget about Acts and find an Advent passage. Then I began to think about it and I realised that the next chapter that we're up to in Acts really lends itself to an Advent theme. And so this morning we're continuing our studies in Acts, but at the same time doing a bit of an Advent focus. Now by way of introduction congregation, let me also point out that these verses this morning that Phil read for us have been terribly misused and they've been misused in three different ways. First of all, I've heard these verses used as a proof text for rebaptism.

And the guy that argued with me in favour of rebaptism used this as his proof text. He used the details of the story in quite an incorrect way. He saw there that what Paul did was a rebaptism and so it was okay for Paul to baptise again, it must be okay for him. He never once considered how Paul in Colossians chapter two links baptism with the Old Testament ritual of circumcision. And a male can only be circumcised once, right?

Do I need to say any more? I don't think so. Okay. Secondly, this text has often been used to support the idea that all Christians should speak in tongues. These twelve guys were first stage Christians who had not yet experienced the second blessing.

They hadn't yet received the Holy Spirit, and that was the great thing that was missing in their lives. Now people who argue that way overlook the fact that only three times in the book of Acts are tongues mentioned, only three times, and in every instance something unique happens. So we'll look at that this morning. And then thirdly, there is a movement in some parts of the Christian church for Jesus only baptisms. These people use this text to argue that all we need to do is be baptised in the name of Jesus.

Isn't that what Luke tells us in verse five of our text? Then they were baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus. And so they assume that this overrides the baptismal formula in Matthew 28, where Jesus says we must be baptised in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. So let's have a closer look at this story this morning. This chapter begins with a strange Christian congregation.

Paul returns to Ephesus, now on his third missionary journey. Aquila and Priscilla and a few other converts had asked him when he left to stay on in Ephesus and he didn't. But he did say to them, well if it's God's will I will return and it must have been God's will because he's returning to them. When he arrives, he comes across this small group of disciples, and the fact that Luke calls them disciples is Luke's way of identifying them as Christians. Whenever Luke in either his gospel or in the book of Acts refers to other disciples, he calls them what they are, disciples of John or disciples of Moses.

And so these dozen or so men certainly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. But when Paul meets them, he's quickly aware that something is not right with these guys. Something is lacking in their faith. Luke doesn't tell us what alerted Paul to that, but Paul knew. And he was concerned enough about that to ask these guys some questions.

I don't know about you congregation, but I've come across a similar phenomenon, and I think many of you probably have. We bump into people who call themselves Christians. And they do believe in Jesus in a way, in their own way, but something is seriously lacking. Often these folk are just believing in Jesus as the greatest prophet ever, a great model as a human being. Maybe that or maybe there's simply no joy in their life or they have this hypercritical spirit.

And you think to yourself, well if these people were baptised, they were baptised in lemon juice. As a pastor congregation, I've so often come across Christians like that. It's literally hard work to have a discussion about the Lord with them, and they have absolutely no assurance of salvation in Jesus, their eternal destiny. And if you ask them whether they would know that they're going to heaven when they die, they will say, I hope so. But you know when push comes to shove, they will confess that they do believe in Jesus.

Big question is, what kind of Jesus do they believe in? Just a good man, a role model, just a great prophet? Sometimes like Paul, we need to put these people, pull these people up and assess the nature of their faith. You see how Paul does that in our text congregation. He asked them this strange question.

He says, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? Wonder if someone asked you that question tomorrow. Another Christian comes along and says, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? How would you answer? Maybe the question gives us a clue this morning as to what Paul saw was wrong with these people.

There was no spiritual vitality in their lives. There was no fruit of the Spirit. It's a little like asking when you were converted, did your faith make any difference in your life? Did it change you? If Paul's question seems a little strange, brothers and sisters, then the answer that these people give sounds equally strange.

They say, no. We've not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. And you hear that reply and you're tempted to ask, what's going on here? Is it not true that these people had learned from John the Baptiser? By the way, I call him John the Baptiser because John wasn't a Baptist, he was Reformed, right?

So John the Baptiser had been their mentor. They had learned from him. Flip back a moment, would you, to Luke chapter three, where we have the story of John the Baptiser, and you'll see that John had spoken very clearly of the Holy Spirit. In Luke three, he tells his listeners that he is the forerunner of the Messiah to prepare the way for His coming. And so his task is to point people to Jesus, the Messiah who's to come.

But then notice verse 16 of Luke three, verse 16. John answered them all saying, I baptise you with water, but He who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of His sandals I'm not worthy to untie. And then notice these words, He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And yet these men are ignorant of the Holy Spirit? If these dozen men congregation were Jews, then their ignorance is even more appalling.

By the way, my personal opinion is they were Jews because Paul always in every location he went, the first place was to meet Jews. He'd go to the synagogue. So I believe that that's where he found these twelve men. If that's the case, they were Jews, they would have been familiar with the Psalms. But didn't David in Psalm 51 say, take not your Holy Spirit from me.

Isaiah spoke about the Holy Spirit often. Ezekiel spoke about it many times. And yet these men say, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. Some commentators have tried to prove that these men couldn't possibly have been that ignorant, and that what they really meant was that they didn't know that the Holy Spirit had already come. Well, I've got to say that I'm not convinced.

I think they meant exactly what they said, that they were ignorant of the person and work of the Holy Spirit. And the point is congregation that sometimes there are huge gaps in the knowledge of Christians, even today. I want to give you an example of that. It came home to me some years ago when I took the wedding of a nephew. And at the reception of my nephew's wedding later on, he read some words from that book Song of Songs, some rather erotic words, which was the reason why Jewish children were not allowed to read the book of Song of Songs until they were at least twelve.

But his reading of that at his wedding reception caused quite a bit of hilarity amongst the wedding guests. The following morning at church, over coffee, there was a group of ladies chatting and they were standing behind me talking and I overheard their conversation. I shouldn't have been listening in, but I was. One of the ladies said to the others in the group, you know that bit that he read to her last night, that really is in the Bible. I went home and I checked it out.

That's what she told her friends. She was ignorant of this portion of God's word. And here are men, Jewish men I believe, who obviously have huge gaps in their knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures. The reason for much of their ignorance is that their knowledge went no further than that of John the Baptiser. Well, it didn't even go that far because at least John the Baptiser mentioned the Holy Spirit.

The point is that a faith like that is not adequate congregation. It is not enough to have a right relationship with God. John the Baptiser was an Advent preacher. He came to tell people Jesus was coming, get ready to meet Him. John even told people that this Jesus was the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, but John did not know how Jesus would do that.

Neither it seems did these twelve men. I think this morning that's hugely relevant for us congregation. We're living in a culture and in these weeks leading up to December 25 where lots of people are celebrating the coming of Jesus. I know there's lots of paganism interwoven, many atheists are still putting out their Christmas decorations, but there are many who are focusing on the coming of Jesus. And that's put sometimes beautifully in the fact that they still have a nativity scene in their front garden.

They may accept that this Jesus whose birth we celebrate is even the Son of God, but like those men at Ephesus, they cannot join the dots. They don't have the full story. They have what we might call an Advent faith that stops with Christmas and with John the Baptiser. And it is an inadequate faith that Paul makes so very clear, was the same problem that Apollos had, as we saw in the previous chapter of Acts. To me friends, this is a little bit like reading volume one of a multi volume work.

Many years ago when I was a young dad, I came across a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in an op shop. And I thought, it looks like an interesting book, I'll read it. And I took it home and I loved it. So I read it to my young children and they loved it. Many years later, I discovered that there were six more books about Narnia.

And I suddenly thought, wow, there's more, there's all this other stuff about this mythical land of Narnia and Aslan the lion, who is the Christ figure. And that's how it was in a sense for these men that Paul was speaking to, and he brings them up to speed on the gospel. They suddenly realise, wow, there's more to Christianity than just the Christmas story, than the Advent story of the coming of Messiah Jesus. There's all this stuff about the cross of Calvary and the empty tomb. That's marvellous.

It's amazing. It's wonderful. In this text, Paul asks a second strange question congregation. He asks, what kind of baptism did you undergo? Okay, maybe it's not all that strange because I guess that people today sometimes still ask us questions about our baptism, don't they?

I've been asked, you know, were you dunked or were you sprinkled? I've been asked, were you baptised as a baby or were you baptised as an adult? But why does Paul want to know the details of the baptism of these twelve men congregation? It's because it takes Paul to the heart of the issue. There had been another baptism that was quite common at this time, John's baptism.

John had come to call Israel to be ready for the coming of Messiah according to Isaiah 40 as we saw at the beginning of the service, and as part of his ministry, he had started dunking people in the Jordan River. There's been a lot of debate about where John picked up this idea of having to baptise people in the river. One of the most common answers that's given today is that he learned that from the Jewish sect called the Essenes. If you know anything about the Dead Sea Scrolls, you'll know that the Essenes were a group that lived near the Dead Sea, and they had established this solemn ritual of washing. Something to symbolise people's desire to live a holy life free from sin.

Others have argued that John did this because he was from a priestly family and he picked it up from the priestly family. The priests had a ritual bath for purification before they began their work of bringing sacrifices in the temple or the tabernacle. And so John extended that ritual to the people in a general way when they desired to live a holy life. So whatever the case, wherever John picked it up from, Jesus in Mark 11 makes clear that John's baptism was from God. It was a legitimate baptism.

The important thing for us is that with regard to Christian baptism, there is both continuity with John, but there is also difference. There is continuity because when you were baptised, that was a sign of your cleansing, of your purification, of your desire to live a holy life if you're an adult. But there's also a difference. Your baptism was also a sign of your union with Jesus, your oneness with Him in His death and resurrection. And again, Paul is concerned that John's baptism didn't tell the whole story.

It was inadequate. It was incomplete. And so in our text, Paul explains that John's baptism was a baptism of repentance. Think again of his ministry, calling people to turn back to God to be ready for the coming of Messiah. That was his great ministry, and that ministry was spelled out in the book of Malachi, that Messiah would come like a refiner's fire that purifies molten metal.

Purification is part of it. And so these men had undergone this baptism of repentance, of purification, and that highlights this morning the problem. If you've got the Baptiser's understanding, yes, you can call people to repentance, and Advent faith will do that, but it will include purification and repentance. If you're the kind of person that celebrates Jesus coming, and you're not a Christian, it's even appropriate that you say, this has got to make me a better person. But it's all about the coming of the Son of God into the world, and people need to be ready to meet Him, and so repent, be baptised as a sign of that, but it's not the whole story, friends.

So if you have an Advent kind of faith, a faith that believes that Jesus came at Christmas, then you can be striving to be a very moral and upright person, and you can repent of your sins, and you can be an advocate for a just and orderly society. But the problem is that when all is said and done, it will give you no certainty of your salvation. You cannot preach with any certainty the forgiveness of our sins and the acceptance with God. You need to know the Easter story. You need to know the message of the cross to have that assurance.

You need to know Jesus crucified, dead, buried and risen. John could preach repentance, but he could only look hopefully towards salvation happening. Paul on the other hand knew the whole story, and he knew that Jesus had carried our sins to the cross. So brothers and sisters, Christian baptism is certainly about cleansing, and it ties in with the call to repentance. And your baptism should always remind you of your need to turn to Jesus in repentance.

But your baptism is so much, much more than that. It portrays for us in picture language, our unity with Jesus, that we belong to Him in His death and resurrection. And your baptism will always be a reminder to you of the wonderful work of Jesus on the cross. Baptism is a way of identifying brothers and sisters. John's baptism identifies you with the Advent message of the coming of Jesus.

Christian baptism identifies us with the glorious gospel of salvation in His dying and in His resurrection. Can you see congregation why Paul rebaptised these people? This rebaptism is not a blank cheque for rebaptising people nor is it stating that people must be baptised only in the name of Jesus. The reality is that the original baptism of these men was not a Christian baptism. And that's why Paul rebaptised them as a sign of their oneness with Jesus in His death and resurrection.

Okay, finally then, what about this matter of speaking in tongues and prophesying? It's very clear that in our text this happens after these men have been rebaptised by Paul. And so can we use this as a basis for arguing that all baptised Christians must speak in tongues? I want to make a couple of things clear this morning congregation. I'm not sure that I've got all the answers, but first of all we need to understand that Acts is not giving us a formula to be repeated.

I think it's one of the big mistakes that people often make when it comes to the book of Acts. They forget that it is descriptive and not prescriptive. It tells us how things happened, but not how they ought to happen. We realise that too when we think of the variety that there is within the book of Acts itself. In Acts 10, we have the story of the centurion Cornelius, and as they're baptised they speak in tongues.

Here the reverse is the case, baptism first then tongues. With Cornelius it's tongues and then baptism. In fact, if it's true that all Christians must speak in tongues, then we're gonna have problems with Acts chapter two, because we're told in Acts two that the original 120 disciples in the upper room spoke in other tongues, but that chapter is silent about the other 3,000 who were converted that day. It says nothing about them. So why do we have the speaking in tongues here in Acts 19? There's been a lot of debate about it, a lot of disagreement.

So I'm a little bit cautious about claiming to have a definitive answer. However, let me give you a somewhat tentative explanation for you to at least think about. This is the third time in the book of Acts when some features of Pentecost are repeated. Acts two mentions tongues of fire, the sound of a rushing wind and the speaking in other tongues. The second instance of some visible evidences of the Holy Spirit's work is in Acts eight, although interestingly there we find no specific mention of tongues, just a visible manifestation of the Spirit, whatever it was. But some obvious signs take place so that people can see that the Spirit has fallen on the Samaritans.

The third instance is found in Acts 10, the story as I mentioned of the Roman centurion Cornelius, and then the fourth instance here in Acts 19. Now I said before that in each case there is some repeat of Pentecost, there is something unique that happens. The uniqueness in Acts eight is that the first Samaritans come to faith. And let me remind you that the Samaritans were kind of half caste Jews who the Jews didn't particularly like all that much. In Acts 10, the first Gentiles come to faith.

And again, I have to say very clearly, the Jews did not like Gentiles. The Pharisees prayed every morning, I thank you Lord that you haven't made me a woman or a Gentile, go figure. Here in Acts 19, it's far away in Ephesus with these men baptised by John's baptism. When I reflect on that, I see a parallel to the mission's agenda that Jesus gives in Acts 1:8. Some very well known words, most of you are familiar with it, and I've mentioned it several times in our studies in Acts.

Acts 1:8 reads this way, you shall be my witnesses, and then notice the locations, in Jerusalem and Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. It's as if Jesus is sealing each step of that agenda with some evidence of the Spirit's power. Jerusalem and Judea, that's the day of Pentecost. Samaria, that was Acts eight. The Gentiles, Acts 10.

And the early church being basically Jewish needed clear signs of the Spirit's falling on these people to show them they're included in the church. Remember the original believers were Jewish believers, and these Jewish believers had a very, very strong sense that they alone were the people of God. And so in Acts eight, God is saying, no, no, salvation is also for Samaritans. In Acts 10, God is again saying, no, no, salvation is even for Gentiles. And so in each case, a little bit of Pentecost is repeated.

And now here in far far away Ephesus, it's as if God is giving this sign to say two things. First, from the Jerusalem perspective, this is the ends of the earth. Paul's last missionary journey and the central place of his labours on that third missionary journey, and the Spirit comes and He very obviously seals this work that's happening at the ends of the earth. The agenda of Acts 1:8 is now well and truly in its final stages. And then secondly, congregation, I believe that there is also a sense in which this formally marks the end of John's Advent ministry.

No longer from here on will people be baptised in the name of John the Baptiser or by John the Baptist's baptism. It's regarded as no longer valid. So let me come back to that question. Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? Your answer to that friends is still a crucial thing because it challenges the kind of faith you've embraced.

But let me add that that question is not answered first of all, by whether or not you've spoken in tongues. In the book of Acts, the evidence for the Holy Spirit, His presence in someone's life is far, far broader. It's marked by changed lives. And some of that comes out in the rest of this chapter. The question is, when you came to believe in Jesus, did that change your life?

Are the fruit of the Spirit according to Galatians five, are they being shown in your life? That's the proof of your relationship with Jesus by faith. So have you moved on from Christmas to Easter? You cannot live out a Christmas faith. You cannot live by that.

You need to move on from the baby in the manger to Good Friday, the Hill of Calvary and the open tomb in the Garden of Gethsemane. A faith in a crucified and risen Lord. That's what saves us and that's what gives us the assurance of our salvation. Let me lead you in prayer. Father we pray that in this season of Advent and Christmas, there may be many people who have an Advent faith, who believe in the baby in the manger and the Christmas story, but who have never moved on to Good Friday and Easter, that they may come to know Jesus as Saviour and Lord in this way.

Father, we thank you that you have indeed opened our hearts and our lives to that all important message of the doing, the dying and the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you that this morning we've once again been able to celebrate that and we thank you that we may take that message with us into this week that lies ahead of us as we seek to live again to your glory and praise. Please hear our prayers as we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.