Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Dr. Rutland is a world renowned leadership expert. He is a New York Times best selling author and he has served as the president of two universities. The Leaders Notebook is brought to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global Servants, please Visit our website globalservants.org Here is your host, Dr. Mark Rutland.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Now tonight, the topic particularly that I've been asked to speak to is the Holy Spirit.
Now there are a variety of ways that one can approach even the idea, the theology, the concept of the Holy Spirit himself.
So one might speak on the experience of the Holy Spirit, which I have done even here, I think to talk about my own experience in the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And I may touch on that, but that's not the direction I want to go tonight. One might speak strictly on a theology of the Holy Spirit, the theological word, the pneumatology, who is the Holy Spirit. What I would like tonight instead is a wee bit more of a biblical approach. And of course not to say that those aren't biblical. But who is the Holy Spirit as he is presented across scripture. What the sort of I want to give you tonight kind of a biblical chain reference on the work, person and ministry of the Holy Spirit so that we get something of a concept of who the Holy Spirit is as he moves through the Old and New Testament.
Just I'll make a reference to a wide variety of scriptures, but let's begin with just two. So if you'll turn to the book of Joel in the Old Testament, Joel, chapter 2. I want to begin reading with verse 28. We'll read through the end of the chapter 32, Joel 2 and 28.
And it shall come to pass afterward. Afterward meaning after what? After the coming of the just one, after Messiah. So and it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions, and also upon thy servants and upon the handmaidens. In those days will I pour out of my Spirit, and I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth. Blood and fire and pillars or vapor, you might translate, of smoke. And the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the great and terrible day of the Lord come. And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be delivered or saved, or rescued.
For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the Remnant, whom the Lord shall call. Now go to John's Gospel, the Gospel of Jesus as John records it, the 20th chapter.
And I want to begin reading with verse 19. Now, let me just say this before we read, so you have the context of it. This is an encounter, using our word tonight that the disciples have with the risen Christ.
So this is after his passion, after his death and resurrection. So they are now encountering the risen Christ.
John, chapter 20 and verse 19.
The same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut, where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, meaning of the Jewish leadership, not the Jewish people, came Jesus and stood in the midst. And Seth unto them, peace be unto you. Or that's the English translation, what he said was shalom.
And when he had so said, he showed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord. Then said Jesus unto them, shalom, peace be unto you. As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he. He breathed on them and saith unto them, receive ye the Holy Ghost.
Now let's just place our hands on our Scripture and pray together.
Just bow your heads and close your eyes, if you will.
Heavenly Father, we know, and we do believe, that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty.
But perhaps it is also true that where there's liberty, there's the Spirit of the Lord.
So we want to do exactly as we've been admonished already, to release you.
Come, Holy Spirit.
It's not as though we could restrain you or confine you or limit you, but we want to confess to you that we don't want to whatsoever pleaseth thee.
We release from our hands any constraint, and we believe you for it. In the sweet, powerful name, Jesus, the strong Son of God.
Amen.
So I fear sometimes that we, being as thoroughly New Testamentized as we are, that we have the feeling, if not intellectually, if it's not a cognitive thing, it is an emotional sense, that the Holy Ghost appeared in the upper room.
That kind of. He was generated in the upper room on the day of Pentecost. That was the appearance of the Holy Spirit.
Nothing could be further from the truth, and we know it. But I think it's important to revisit that and make sure that we understand the Holy Spirit. He is the third person of the Trinity. He is the Spirit of the living God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
So there has never been a time that there wasn't The Holy Spirit, and that the Holy Spirit wasn't the Spirit of God.
So he the Holy Spirit is not a New Testament manifestation of God.
The Holy Spirit appears in history on the first page in the first verses of the book of Genesis.
And the Holy Spirit brooded, moved might better be translated brooded over the face of the abyss, the dark, chaotic nothingness.
The Holy Spirit moved over the face.
Some translations translate it hovered.
But hovered is an active verb. There's no emotion attached to it. A helicopter can hover, but it doesn't tell you what the helicopter feels.
The better translation is brooded.
So it's the same verb one might use where when to talk about the mother of a two year old who suddenly realizes she can't find him and she broods from room to room, calling his name.
You feel something inside of her.
So the Holy Spirit of God, yes, hovers. But he hovers, brooding, unsatisfied.
In the reportage that happens inside the divine Godhead, the enclosed society of the triune God, he reports to the Father, this is not like you.
This is dark and not light. This is chaos and not order.
This is uncreated. This is, this is ex nihilo. This is the nothingness of nothing.
And you are the God of something. You're the God of creation and light and power and order.
So the Holy Spirit is, from the very beginning is the Spirit of God.
In Hebrew, ruach.
Ruach. It can be translated quite literally. It can be translated wind or breath or spirit.
It is the ruachadesh, the holy breath, the holy wind of God.
Now that concept of the spirit of God as wind and breath appears periodically throughout the Old Testament.
You remember the valley of the dry bones.
And the prophet Ezekiel has taken up to see the valley of this parched, dry bones.
And God quizzes the prophet, can these bones live?
It's fascinating. I love the response of the prophet. He says, well, you know, you're like God and everything you're asking me, thou knowest.
And God says, prophesy. And they will stand and the bones rattle and stand and begin to connect.
One can only imagine the sound of that as these parched, dry bones that may have been scattered begin to reassemble to the right connection.
It is to that scene that the old Civil War era Negro spiritual is referring to. The thigh bone connected up to the hip bone.
The hip bone connected, the backbone. Now hear the word of the Lord, the prophecy of calling the bones.
But then he says, now prophesy to the wind, prophesy to the wind that the breath of God would come and fill these bones and flesh and sinew and muscle, that they become a mighty army.
One must sense that it's a prophetic moment, that God is saying something.
But there in the book of Ezekiel, it's not entirely clear what he is saying there.
Now we look at, we stand in the church era and look back on it and we say, yes, a mighty spirit filled army. Yes, okay, the church.
But standing there, I wonder if Ezekiel himself had even a full concept of what was happening here.
But what he must have known is the life and power of that army. Raised from the dead, reassembled, reconstructed, was now by and through the breath of God, the Holy Spirit. He didn't really think it was the north wind. It's the wind, the ruach.
He is used and referred to repeatedly with regard to champions in the Old Testament. In the Book of Judges says the Holy Spirit would come upon one or the other judges.
There is one fascinating passage where Gideon is about to go into battle against the Midianites, if you remember, and it says, and the Holy Spirit came upon Gideon.
My Hebrew professor told me that it is very possible that that passage in the English Bible is translated topside down, that it may not actually say the Holy Spirit came upon Gideon. It may say the Holy Spirit drew Gideon on so that the Holy Spirit wears Gideon into battle.
Either way, it's pretty cool.
But it is the sense and that the anointing of the kings.
The anointing of the kings. That the Holy Spirit would come upon kings and champions and warriors and prophets.
So there was the concept in the Holy Spirit that he, by the divine order and selection of God, that the Holy Spirit that brooded over the face of the abyss that caused the dry bones to become a mighty army could also breathe power. And the phrase we use so much now in the broader spirit filled world of the Church anointing, that the anointing could come upon individuals, champions, kings, warriors, prophets.
Until about 300, 350 years before Christ was born, the prophet Joel gives this odd little prophecy that the Holy Spirit will be poured out on all flesh.
That doesn't mean every kind of flesh living at the time, meaning a general outpouring of the Holy Spirit beyond the select anointing of champions and warriors and kings.
It's a much more.
Challenging passage of scripture than at that time, 350 years before Christ, than it sounds like to you.
You're 21st century Gentile Christians.
But I want you to hear this. Can you possibly hear this prophecy being read in Synagogue where the women are not allowed to sit on the same floor as the men in synagogue.
And God says, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, your sons and daughters.
Then he says, I'll turn everything upside down. Your children will prophesy like gray bearded old prophets and your old men will have dreams.
That's upside down. That you see that, right? I'm an old man. Old men don't have dreams. We have memories.
Old men don't dream about the future. Boy, I know what I'm dreaming of in the next 30 years.
I know what I'm dreaming of.
So he says, when the Holy Spirit comes, he says, even servants. The phrase might even be translated slaves.
Even the slaves in your household.
So that passage was there.
Everybody. It wasn't as though rabbis and scholars of the Old Testament didn't know it. They knew Joel Chapter two. But it kind of laid on the cutting room floor of Judaic studies because it just didn't really.
It didn't really make sense.
I mean, God's not going to give women the Holy Ghost.
It's crazy talk.
So we don't know what it meant 350 years before Christ. They didn't know what it meant.
But it was great. It was good. Okay, fine. But you know, there's a lot of stuff in the prophecies we don't really understand.
But it was there.
But to an extent. A remote and infrequently quoted and studied passage of scripture buried in the depths of a minor prophet.
This is not Isaiah.
This is not Jeremiah. This is Joel.
And it's a prophecy that didn't really connect.
Then along comes John Baptist.
It blesses me as a Pentecostal that the first person to talk about the baptism of the Holy Spirit was a Baptist.
John Baptist says, another cometh after me, the latchet of whose shoes I'm not worthy to loose. And he shall indeed baptize you with fire and with the Holy Ghost yet again.
What can that mean?
I mean the words. We hear it now.
Can you push past 21st century Christianity and stand on the bank of the Jordan river as a Jew who's come down to see this prophet in camel's hair baptizing people in the Jordan river and hear him say, another cometh after me. The latchet of who? She's the greatest prophet since Isaiah.
Somebody else is coming. He's so great I shouldn't even unbuckle his sandals.
And they say, well, who could he be? How great could he be? Is he. Maybe he's talking about The Messiah.
If he's a. If John Baptist is a prophet, what could be greater?
Maybe only Messiah.
So when Messiah comes, he'll baptize us with fire and with the Holy Ghost. Well, the. The vision of baptism that they're using. That he's using. He's talking baptism. He's standing waist deep in a river.
It's. It's Mikhva. It's the submersion.
He will submerge you in fire.
Okay.
No, thank you.
I mean, that's huge. Words. We understand what that means now. But hear that? Can you hear that for the first time?
When Messiah comes, he will push you under a lake of fire, just like I push you into the Jordan River.
And with the Holy Ghost, they came upon David and Isaiah and Jeremiah and Gideon and Jephthah and Barak Deborah.
But you stand on the bank of the Jordan River, a little Jewish lady say, me, he'll baptize me in fire and in the Holy Spirit. What can that even mean?
And then, after his passion and death and resurrection, Jesus is sitting with the disciples, the resurrected Christ, and he breathes on them.
They're all speaking Hebrew or Aramaic.
They're not speaking English.
What did I say? Ruach can mean wind or spirit or breath.
So he says, Receive the Holy Spirit.
Now, insofar as we can read in the text itself, they didn't.
Jesus says that. But nothing happened in the room.
So what can that passage be about?
Remember that Jesus is both prophet, priest, and king.
So he is now the king. He's priest in heaven, our high priest, after the order of Melchizedek. But he is also the fulfillment of prophecies. Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. I believe in John, chapter 20, Jesus is speaking as a prophet, and he's giving them a prophetic word.
Let me give you an example.
If I said to you, tomorrow afternoon, pastor Ronnie's going to come to your house and knock on the door. When he does, let him in.
Open the door.
Receive him.
When you hear that noise, he's going to knock on the door and you'll say, oh, it's Ronnie.
Then receive him.
Jesus says, when this happens, Realize what it is.
It's the wind that filled the army of bones.
It's the spirit that brooded over the face of the abyss.
My spirit.
My breath, Jesus. My breath.
When you feel this, don't resist.
Don't close the door.
Receive.
But insofar as we can tell, they didn't get it.
Who would?
I mean, these guys are not theological geniuses. These are professional fishermen.
These guys have calluses on their hands and calluses on their brains.
They're not rabbis, they're not scholars of Torah, they work for a living. In fact, later on they are even diagnosed. Remember this is. And perceiving that they were ignorant and unlearned.
I believe that when Jesus left the room, they all looked at each other and said, what do you think that meant?
And one of them said, I didn't understand it, but I haven't understood anything he said for the last three years.
So on the Jewish feast of Pentecost, as we translate it into English, Shavuot, the feast of weeks.
So when the Hebrew Bible was translated into the Septuagint, the Greek Bible, they had to have a word for Shavuot.
How do you translate a Hebrew word that doesn't really precisely mean anything in English?
So they said it's 50 days after Pentecost, seven weeks, seven times seven is 49 and the day of 50 days after Passover. And so he says, seven times seven is 49 and one makes 50. So in Greek, anything with a derivative of five, the prefix is penta, pentagram, the pentagon, that five sided building in Washington where nobody knows what's going on is a pentathlete is somebody who participates in five Olympic sports.
So Pentecost is the day of the celebration of Shavuot, the feast of Shavuot.
There is nothing in scripture that gives us the liberty to think that the disciples got up on that day and said to themselves, acts, chapter two.
We have Acts. And so we look back and we impose Acts 2 on the day.
But I don't, I don't believe for one minute that at five minutes to nine that Peter saying to the other guys, hold on five minutes, they, they went to celebrate Shavuot as they had their whole lives, as their ancestors had since the time of Moses.
The clear, any clear expectation that what was about to happen was going to happen. It seems to be something that we impose on the passage.
They just went to celebrate Pentecost.
So Pentecost, you have to understand, Pentecost is not a particularly Christian word.
We've appropriated it. But it's a Jewish word. It's Shavuot and it's a Hebrew word. It's about the Jewish feast.
And that's what they were there for. They weren't there to become Pentecostals.
They were there for the feast of Pentecost.
And then the wind blows.
Imagine that right now, the sound of a tornado rips through the room.
Not a hair on your head. Ruffled by a breeze, just the sound of a tornado just rips through the room.
Wouldn't that be exciting?
Might scare the liver out of you, but wouldn't it be exciting?
I believe in that moment that it came into their minds. Particularly into the mind of Simon Peter, but into all of them.
Oh, when you hear me breathe in the room, Receive.
Don't leave. Don't fight, don't struggle.
Receive.
And then the wind goes and there appears up in the ceiling. Imagine if the boiling cloud of the Shekinah glory appeared up over our heads right now and separated off, whirled out so that over every human head in the place there appears a dancing, physical, visible tongue of fire dancing right over your head.
You say, no, no, no, I'm just visiting tonight.
Doesn't matter. You're here and you get one.
So yet again, what is one of the symbols of the Holy Spirit?
Fire.
The pillar of fire that guided the camp of the Hebrews in Exodus.
The fire when Aaron's sons decided to light strange fire, the authentic fire of God leapt off of the altar and burned them up.
The fire of God. Powerful. Light, heat, warmth and dangerous.
So if they sense the Holy Spirit with wind, they certainly said, now, now, the fire of God.
And then suddenly they're all filled with the Holy Spirit.
They begin to proclaim the glories of God in the tongues of men and of angels.
Imagine that what happened is exactly what would happen here if all those things manifested in this room tonight. I can promise you by morning the cars will be parked from.
From here to Waco.
What happened? Thousands gathered around. What's going on in there? What's going on?
Some people say, oh, they're just stoned. They're.
He can't talk. Plain babbling drunk.
Good old practical Simon Peter.
No highfalutin theology here. Peter just says, look, it's 9am Think how much booze it would take to get 120 people so drunk they can't talk plain by 9 in the morning.
There's not that much Thunderbird in all of Jerusalem.
But he says, this is that.
This is that which was prophesied by Joel.
And then Simon Peter, this uneducated, ignorant fisherman, begins to quote or closely paraphrase a chapter of the Book of Joel that the rabbis have not understood for 350 years.
He says, this is.
This is what Joel was talking about.
This is what the Baptist told us was going to happen.
This is the Messiah that you crucified.
God has raised him from the dead and now he's breathed on us The Ruachadesh, the Holy Spirit that brooded over the face of the abyss. This is not some new thing. This is the Spirit of God that is and always has been God, the breath of God, the Spirit of God that brooded over the face of the abyss and that anointed prophets and that empowered kings and was through whom and by whom the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth worked all the miracles that ever worked and who raised him from the dead has now come dwell in the likes of us.
In the likes of us, men and women folks, Galilee Galileans, fishermen and their women folk filled with the same spirit that came to rest on Gideon and David and the Messiah.
This, he said, this is that it brings the New Testament book of Acts outpouring of the Holy Spirit into the upper room and the broad biblical reality that this is not something new. The 21st century didn't somehow invent the Holy Ghost.
The Pentecostal movement didn't invent the Holy Spirit.
We're just clinging to the hope that he invented us.
So the church now is alive, living, moving, ministering in the empowerment of the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised them and prophesied to them would come and ordered them to receive him.
Receive the Holy Spirit.
So what is it? It means that they had.
If you have been admonished to receive Ronnie, inherent in that command or in that admonishment is the opportunity that you could not if you don't want to.
If I say receive Ronnie when he comes, I'm admitting the fact that you that you could refuse to receive him if you don't want to.
So what didn't happen In John chapter 20 when Jesus breathed on them and said receive the Holy Spirit did happen in the upper room. There was some surrender that had to happen in the room.
They had to submit to receive. When you hear, when you hear the wind blow, receive. They must have said, okay, Lord, who?
Here we go.
Then they must have said, John, said I. He will indeed baptize you with fire. And fire appears. Oh. Woo.
Thrilling, wonderful, scary, exciting, terrifying, totally new, ancient, all at one moment.
The Holy Spirit who is God and was God and always has been God before the creation, is now suddenly new and doing a new thing in us. Lord, who we receive.
Then from there on in the witness of the church, the Holy Spirit becomes then the indispensable reality that defines the church in her mission and empowerment.
If that whole day on the Jewish feast of Pentecost is that the church Receive the Holy Spirit. Welcome the Holy Spirit. Receive the Holy Spirit. If that's if all of that, thousands of years of history, 350 years from the prophecy of Joel, the prophecy of John Baptist, the prophecy of Jesus, if all of that was for the upper room, then how dare we not receive the Holy Spirit?
He says, this is what makes the church the Church. This is what makes you, what makes them able to live.
You got to think what they're. Think what they're facing.
They have just. Look, the crucifixion didn't happen like years before.
The crucifixion happened 50 days before.
Less than two months.
Less than two months before Simon Peter denied Jesus, having also been prophetically told, as I said, you, Jesus can function as priest and king. He can also function as prophet.
Peter said, oh, these other lightweights, they may turn against you, Lord, if they kill me.
Jesus said, before the rooster crows, before the alarm clock goes off, you will deny me three times.
And did he not, it says, a third time with a curse?
I never heard of him, don't know who he was cursing.
That only happened 50 days ago.
And now all of a sudden, Simon Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, stands up like with the boldness of the line of the tribe of Judah.
The Pentecostal message that Peter preaches is, it thunders.
This same Jesus whom you crucified, God has raised from the dead.
It says, when they heard him, they were cut to the quick.
This is the same guy, Jesus, no Jesus, who 50 days later, the only thing that made the difference was one thing.
The same wind that came upon those dry bones and made them a mighty army came upon a weak kneed, self absorbed fisherman and made him the anointed apostle of God.
Now, if I was God, nobody wants me to be God, but if I was God, I would never let Peter preach the Pentecostal message.
I would have said, you can be here, but you keep your mouth shut.
You didn't even. You didn't even come to Calvary.
Peter did not see Jesus crucified.
I would have said, john, step up on the platform.
My mother's at your house. Come on.
He chooses Peter, I believe, for the specific purpose of saying, this is that.
This is that which Joel prophesied. This is that which Jesus told us was going to happen. This is that which John said was happening. And now it's happened to me. And the power and the boldness that came upon him in the persecution of the church in the months that follow Pentecost, that boldness is there, dragged in before the Sanhedrin.
Peter and John say, should we obey God or You got to remember, this is before the same people that less than two months ago crucified Jesus. Why wouldn't they crucify him?
They bold, they're beaten and admonished not to preach Jesus. They returned to the church and it says, and the church prayed again, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.
Wait a minute.
What happened on the day of Pentecost? They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, so they had to be filled again.
Yes.
Somebody said to me one time, you Pentecostals are always wanting to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Do you leak? I said, yes, yes, we all leak.
Everybody leaks. Yes.
Life knocks the breath out of you.
Knock the breath out of me? Haven't you ever heard that life hurts? Wounds, fears, anxiety. History knocks the breath out of us.
We need that fresh infilling. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. People who only a few days before had been filled, got filled.
So, okay, fine.
Now we see.
They say, now we got it figured out.
God wants Jewish believers to be filled with the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem. Great. That's great.
What's the last thing Jesus said to him? Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
It's like a Monty Python skit.
They say, lord, we hear you. We know exactly what you're saying.
Stay here in Jerusalem and don't speak to anybody except the Jews.
So Peter is on the rooftop in Jaffa. Jaffo, Jaffa, however you want to call it.
And he's in a trance.
Sheet is lower down.
It's filled with non kosher food.
Jesus, the voice of God says, peter, rise and have a ham on rye.
And he says, no, Lord. I've kept kosher my whole life.
Remarkable, isn't it remarkable? He says, no, I more religious than you are.
I think some of us are more religious than God is.
He says, don't call anything unclean that I've cleansed.
It happens three times. Three times Peter's response, three times God's answer. And when it finishes, there's a knock on the door. And at the door, there stands three Presbyterians. I mean, Romans. And.
And they said, our master in Caesarea has asked us to come and fetch a man named Simon Peter to come to his house.
And Peter says, who is your master?
And he says, cornelius, a Roman centurion.
Now, there's so much in this that you, on a casual perusal, you'll miss Caesarea. If I say Caesarea, it doesn't mean anything, but let me pronounce it a different Way, if you put the emphasis on the wrong syllable, any word sounds funny. So if you don't say Caesarea. But if I say Caesarea, it's a Roman seaport town built by Herod for the Roman civil servants and army soldiers who are stationed in Judea. Because they don't want to live in Jerusalem.
They don't want to live in this religious uptight community. They want a Roman town.
They want to have horse races and chariot races, a hippodrome. And they want athletic. Remember the Roman athletic contest? The athletes were all nude.
That would have been horrifying, blasphemous in Jerusalem. So Herod says, I'll build you a Roman town and call name it for Caesar.
So the Holy Spirit says, go to Caesarea and talk to this guy. What guy? A Roman. What Roman? Well, a centurion.
The most hated of all the Roman occupation force centurions.
So Peter and the other Jewish evangelists go there to an unclean city. Jesus never went to Caesarea.
It's an unclean city. Any Jew that went to Caesarea had to go back to Jerusalem, shave his head, Mikhva. The whole thing, cleansing. Take a vow. The whole thing. It's an unclean city.
So Peter and the other Jewish evangelists go to Caesarea, to the house of a Roman centurion. And they begin to preach about Jesus. And while he speaks, the Holy Spirit falls on them that are there.
They haven't prayed the sinner's prayer, they haven't answered an altar call.
Somehow God discerned that faith was arising inside of them and witnessed with the blood as Peter preached.
And God filled them with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit filled them. They began to speak in tongues and prophesied Gentiles, Roman, Romans in Caesarea.
Doesn't it, am I the only one? Doesn't it seem to you sometimes that the apostles were just thick headed?
Doesn't it seem like, okay, really, you can't get there? They just said, well, okay, I guess that's one time God, this is Romans. God is making the statement, this has nothing to do with our descendant being descendants of Abraham.
This has to do with the church, the body of Christ. Wherever people witness with the blood and faith arises. I want the same thing that you had in the upper room.
They're filled with the Holy Spirit.
Then Philip the evangelist goes to Samaria. We know how the Jews felt about Samaritans.
Goes to Samaria.
And there's this great revival.
People are saved. Signs and wonders and miracles.
Acts chapter 8, verses 14 through 17 says, and when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John, who were then who, when they were come down, prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. For as yet he had fallen upon none of them. Only they were living as men and women who had been baptized, water baptized in the name of Jesus. And when the apostles laid hands on them then and there, they received the Holy Spirit.
So when the apostolic community in Jerusalem heard that an evangelical revival had happened in Samaria, the first thing they said is, now they need the Holy Spirit.
They need the Holy Spirit. Happened to us.
They need the Holy Spirit.
When Paul the apostle is struck blind and knocked off his high horse on the road to Damascus and sent blind for three days into the back room of somebody's house on Straight street in Damascus, God speaks to Ananias and says, go and pray for him, because I've chosen him and I'm going to reveal to him what great things he must suffer for me.
Go and pray for him that he may receive his sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost.
When Paul himself arrives at ephesus in the 19th chapter, it says, in finding certain believers, what's the first question he asks them?
Have you received the Holy Spirit since you first believed?
So it is clearly that, not only the prophetic hope of the church, but the clear apostolic expectation that Christians should be filled with the Holy Spirit.
So it's not for some select few. It's not just for the pastors or for prophets or evangelists, or for Gideon or Deborah. It's not just for David. It's not just for kings upon all flesh.
He says, look, when the Holy Spirit is moving, receive.
That's the admonition of Christ.
When the Holy Spirit is moving, receive. Don't resist, don't quench, don't fight.
Receive the Holy Spirit.
It doesn't have to be some big, huge fight.
The Romans in Cornelius House in Acts, chapter 10, they're just sitting, listening.
Suddenly God fills them with the Holy Spirit.
In Acts, chapter 8 in Samaria, it says, the apostles laid hands on them in the spirit baptism and healing of St. Paul.
He was struck blind first.
Can I just suggest to you that that's not the way you want to go with God. Don't say, lord, you want me to receive the Holy Spirit, do it just like you did it for Paul. Don't.
Don't go there.
Just receive.
But what you're receiving, who you're receiving is not some 21st century charismatic thing. We invented.
It's the spirit of God that brooded over the face of the abyss, that filled the kings, that anointed the prophets, that was prophesied by Joel, that was prophesied by the Baptist, prophesied by the Messiah, that was received in the upper room, that anointed the church, that empowered the apostolic community, and that has anointed and defined the church for 2000 years.
In these crazy days of the 21st century, no believer can afford to live without the Spirit of God.
So this is not like you said. Well, I do, you know, maybe I want to be spirit filled. Maybe I just want to be like, you know, like a regular Christian or something.
What, what can that even mean?
Regular Christianity is defined by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
So it's not. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is not optional equipment.
You're not deciding whether or not you want a supercharged life or kind of, you know, regular six cylinder life.
This is the promise of God and the prophetic promise of God.
How did Jesus put it?
If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, Luke, the 11th chapter and the 13th verse.
If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him, to them that ask him.
Now, the good thing and the challenge is how we talk to each other about what happened to us when we received the Holy Spirit.
We expect everybody else's testimony to look like ours.
When the people at Caesarea received the Romans at Caesarea received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, they said, we've been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Why can't we be baptized with water?
Do you get it? Do you see it?
It's fine for God to fill them with the Holy Spirit, but water baptism grafts them onto the Church.
Water baptism makes them part of the unity of the body of Christ.
If it's against the law to go into the house of a Roman, you don't want one grafted onto your body.
It's water baptism is where the tension comes.
Peter looks at the other people who came with him.
He said, what do you think? They say, boy, you're on your own.
So Peter baptizes them when he gets back to Jerusalem. James, the bishop and the others in Jerusalem, they said, what, are you losing your mind?
You baptized in Romans in a swimming pool in Caesarea.
How does Peter defend it?
He says, God gave them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us in the upper room.
So they Identify the experience of the Holy Spirit in them because it looked like their testimony.
Then God begins to widen it out.
So there are places where people speak in tongues. You can make a doctrine out of that if you want to, but it's not. There are places where people speak in tongues. There are places where there's no witness that they maybe they did, but it doesn't say. It Acts chapter 8 in Samaria, by the way, there's no documentation that anybody spoke in tongues.
It says they receive the Holy Spirit.
Okay, if you say that always means tongues. It's just that it doesn't say it.
Some people prophesied, some people begin to speak in tongues. Some people experience the Holy Spirit in different ways. St. Paul got his eyesight back.
So there are all kinds of ways that the Holy Spirit comes.
What doesn't vary is the Spirit himself.
So the Spirit of God brooded over the face of the abyss.
He didn't raise dead bones because there were no dead bones in the Valley of Dry Bones. He raised the dead bones because there were dead bones in the prophecy of Joel. He just came forth as a prophecy which didn't really do anything for 350 years until Peter identified it.
So the non variable in the equation is the Holy Spirit himself.
So you're sitting there in a 21st century Christian gentile church in Texas.
You say, I want to receive the Holy Spirit.
What's going to happen to me? Yet?
I don't know.
I mean, literally, I don't know.
God's not stamping out little charismatics with a cookie cutter.
Why can't we allow everybody's encounter with God to be as distinctly unique as ours is?
So I heard about one lady who was walking through a field in the evening and she fell into an abandoned well. There was no water and she didn't drown, but she couldn't get out.
She's screaming and screaming. Nobody's coming.
Finally, she, as so many of us do, she decided to do a deal with God. She said, God, if you'll get me out of this well, I'll become the greatest soul winner this county's ever had.
Just at that moment, somebody leaned over the face of the well and said, I'll help you.
And he got her out.
But unlike most of us, she remembered her promise. She became a great soul winner. Here's how she did it. She'd take people out there and push them down in that well.
So what we tend to do is we want to push everybody down in the same well where we found Jesus.
We want to push everybody down in the same well where we receive the Holy Spirit.
So.
See, if this is not news to you, let me say, you ain't running this for anybody else.
You're not running this for anybody else. You don't get to.
You don't get to dictate when the wind blows and the person beside you says, I receive.
You don't get to dictate what that feels like or sounds like to them.
Okay, here's the other part. You also don't run this for you.
You don't get to say, okay, Lord, I want to receive. I'm going to receive.
But this can happen or that can't happen, or that has to happen.
No, you. You write Jesus a blank check.
So I've picked on you all night.
But if I say to you, when Ronnie knocks, you're going to recognize him. Big guy when he knocks, is going to shake the door, receive him.
And you say to me, what's. What's going to happen?
I'm going to say, no, I'm saying, receive him.
Just let him in.
Just welcome him in.
So the thing is, that makes us feel. Let's be honest, it makes us feel a little bit apprehensive.
But in the very first prayer your pastor prayed tonight, I heard him say something to the effect, let's not restrain God.
Where the spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty. But the reverse of that is also true. Where there's liberty, there's the spirit of God.
We say, God, fill anybody in this room any way you want to. And I'm not going to judge their experience.
God said, oh, good. Thank you very much.
Then you say, lord, I'm asking you to fill me.
And I'm not even going to judge my own experience.
Fill me.
When I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, it was such a riot of conflicting emotions. All that anger and hurt and depression and fear and loneliness and sin. And I'd weep, and then I'd laugh. And it was all the emotion that had been piled up behind the dam, and the dam broke, and it was just, wow.
My wife. I'd been resisting the Holy Spirit. I didn't want it. I didn't believe in it. No. My wife had been longing for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. When she received it was sweet and gentle. She just said, oh, thank you, God. Thank you, God.
My inclination was, God, make her cry.
Tell them, thank you, God.
You knocked my socks off. Hit her.
I've seen people receive the Holy Spirit.
I've seen people respond in every way possible.
So somebody sitting there in this room right this minute saying, okay, I want it the way Alison Rutland got it.
I want to just say, thank you, Lord. No, but see, what did I say? You ain't running this for you or anybody else.
When the wind blew through the upper room on the Jewish feast of Shavuot, nobody in the room said, okay, God, behave yourself, come in the room, but don't, don't do anything weird.
What they said was Jesus told us when we felt this to receive.
And they did.
And the church and the world and the kingdom have never been the same.
[00:58:47] Speaker A: You've been listening to the leader's notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. You can follow Dr. Rutland on X at Dr.markrutland or visit his website, drmarkrutland.com where you can find information about his materials and his app. Join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
