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This verse records that John the Baptist's continual witness of Jesus as the Christ some weeks after his initial baptism.
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We've already shown how the theme of witness is a major emphasis of John's gospel, the fourth gospel, and this is actually the fifth time the word witness is found here in John chapter 1.
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It's a major theme. And here in verse 32, John was speaking of what he had witnessed on a much earlier occasion.
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John testified that when he had baptized Jesus, he had seen the Holy Spirit come upon Jesus like a dove, which we should understand to have been in the form of a dove.
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Now there are some who rejected the idea that the Holy Spirit came in the form of a dove, but rather they argue that John saw the
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Holy Spirit descend upon Jesus as, say, a dove descends. In other words, which pretty much resembled the hovering and lightning of a dove upon anything.
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And so they argue that the Holy Spirit did not come in the form of a dove, but he came like a dove.
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It would seem to me, however, it's best understood that John saw a dove descend upon Jesus, which he had recognized to be a visible representation of the invisible
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Holy Spirit. You cannot see the Holy Spirit because he is spirit. He came in the form of a dove.
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This was a visible manifestation to John of the invisible presence of the
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Holy Spirit. The dove is an emblem of the
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Holy Spirit. How is the Holy Spirit like a dove? Some suggest it implies the simplicity, the meekness, or the love of the
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Holy Spirit. Others suggest the main thought of the
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Holy Spirit as a dove is the dove -like innocence, humility, and affection of Christ on whom he lighted.
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What John saw was not only significant, but apparently it was quite remarkable. And we can tell from the verb that the evangelist used, the writer of the gospel, which is translated as saw in our text.
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John said he saw this. But the Greek word that the gospel writer
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John, the apostle John, used was not the common Greek word for seeing, rather an unusual word.
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And so the word actually conveys a greater meaning, more significant meaning than just seeing with his eyes.
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As one wrote, the verb John used to describe what he saw is used in the New Testament to denote seeing with the physical eye, though it can carry along with physical sight a sense of perception that is above and beyond what is merely seen with the eye.
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John is saying, I saw him. And he used this word to suggest it was more than just physical sight.
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He saw the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus. The tense of this verb is also somewhat unusual.
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It's translated in our English text, of course, as a simple past tense, I saw. But it's actually a perfect tense verb in the
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Greek language. And so perhaps the best way to translate this statement would be I had beheld the
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Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven and remained upon him. Again, John is talking about something that happened in the past.
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John was testifying much later what he had witnessed firsthand on the occasion that he had baptized Jesus, which was at least 40 days before this.
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There's not a great deal of information about Jewish belief in the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. Some see a correlation with the
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Holy Spirit brooding over the deep that's recorded in Genesis 1, verse 2, which speaks of the
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Holy Spirit ready to bring about the six -day work of creation. And so the Bible opens up with,
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In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the
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Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And the verb hovering carries the idea of brooding like a dove broods, hovering.
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And so in Genesis 1, the Holy Spirit was hovering over the face of the chaotic waters, signifying the onset of God's work of creation, the creation of this world and life upon it.
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And here in John 1, in which the Holy Spirit descends and lights upon Jesus Christ, signals that through Jesus Christ is the onset of the new creation.
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That probably is what's being conveyed by the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. Holy Spirit brought about the old creation.
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Holy Spirit brings about the new creation in and through Jesus Christ. Interestingly, there was an early
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Jewish writing that wrote of the dove that Noah had let fly out of the ark.
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You remember that account? They'd been in the ark quite a long time. Noah was trying to determine if the waters had abated so that they could soon depart from the ark.
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We read of that in Genesis 8. So it came to pass at the end of 40 days that Noah opened the window of the ark, which he had made, and then he sent out a raven, which kept going to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth.
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And he also sent out from himself a dove to see if the waters had receded from the face of the ground.
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But the dove found no resting place for the sole of her foot, and she returned into the ark to him, to Noah, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth.
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And so he put out his hand and took her and drew her into the ark to himself. And he waited yet another seven days, and again he sent the dove out from the ark.
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And then the dove came to him in the evening, and behold, a freshly plucked olive leaf was in her mouth, and Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth.
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And so he waited yet another seven days and sent out the dove, and then I am bold and italicize this, which did not return again to him anymore.
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Now, interestingly, the Jewish writing that I came across expressed the belief that this dove that did not return to Noah would one day actually carry the crown that would be set upon the head of the
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Messiah. Isn't that fascinating? And so I saw this in John Gill's commentary.
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John Gill was a Baptist pastor in the 18th century. Spurgeon would later pastor his church.
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John Gill was an expert in Jewish writings. He taught himself
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Hebrew as a teenage boy going down to the bookstore and reading Hebrew books on the shelf.
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And he became an expert in Judaism, and so in his commentary he came across this Jewish writing.
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However, who can read, and these are Gill's words, However, who can read this account talking about John 1 with the dove coming upon Jesus?
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Who can read this account without thinking of Noah's dove, which brought in its mouth the olive leaf, a token of peace and reconciliation when the waters were abated from off the earth?
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Give me leave to describe a passage I have met with in the book of Zoar. A door shall be opened, and out of it shall come forth the dove which
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Noah sent out in the days of the flood, as it's written, and he sent forth the dove, that famous dove.
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But the ancients speak not of it, for they knew not what it was, only from whence it came, in other words, out of the ark, and did its message.
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As it's written, it returned not again unto him any more. No man knows whither it went, but it returned to its place and was hid within this door, and it shall take a crown in its mouth and put it upon the head of the king
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Messiah, and a little after the dove is said to abide upon his head and he to receive glory from it.
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That's interesting. What this suggests is that there were some, on the part of some ancient
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Jews, that the dove would set the crown of kingship upon the Messiah, and thus it was
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God anointing the Messiah to serve as his king over his people. Now, this is an apocryphal story.
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Don't misunderstand. I'm not advocating this is actually a right understanding of the dove in John chapter 1.
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But it does connect the dove with the Messiah, at least in some Jewish thinking in the ancient world.
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Nevertheless, in the days of Noah, when the dove did depart from him, leaving the ark and not returning, it indicated that the dove had come across new life in the post -diluvium, or the post -flood world.
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And when God called Noah and his family forth from the ark, the Genesis account clearly sets forth the idea of God having set before Noah and his family a new creation, having washed the old world with the floodwaters, cleansing it of the corrupt human race that had populated its surface, and now
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Noah and his family would signal a new start in a new creation.
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And again, the dove is connected with this new creation. We know, by the way, that that new world coming forth from the flood is depicted as a new creation because God gives the same instruction to Noah that he gave to Adam and Eve.
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Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. It was like a new start. The problem, of course, is
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Noah and his family carried sin over into the new world, too, and it soon became corrupted.
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We've already considered the evangelist's emphasis in this first chapter of John as being on the new creation.
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We saw it in Genesis 1 -1. These words in the beginning are also the words in John 1 -1, in the beginning.
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Genesis 1 -1, in the beginning, God created. John 1 -1, in the beginning, was the word.
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There's an emphasis on the new creation in John's gospel. And just as the
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Holy Spirit was hovering over the face of the waters in Genesis 1 -2, here in John 1, we read of the
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Holy Spirit coming down upon Jesus while he stood in the baptismal waters of Jordan, signaling that this one would affect the long -promised new creation in which
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God would dwell with his people. The idea of the new creation is evident everywhere here in John 1.
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Now, John had not only seen the Holy Spirit descend in the form of a dove, but also John, the gospel writer, the evangelist, declares that John saw this dove remain on him.
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And there's an emphasis to that. The Greek word translated remain emphasizes a continual abiding of the
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Spirit that had landed upon Jesus. The Holy Spirit coming upon Jesus at his baptism was
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God empowering Jesus of Nazareth to fulfill his office as the promised
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Jewish Messiah, the son of David, who would rise to reign over Israel. This was
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God anointing his son, empowering his son to conduct and fulfill his office as the promised
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Messiah. And so he was anointed as promised king, he was anointed as high priest, he was anointed as prophet at the onset of his earthly ministry.
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This event at the Jordan River is to be understood to be the fulfillment of God's promises that he gave to his prophets in the
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Old Testament. And perhaps the prophecy of Isaiah, the book of Isaiah, is most pronounced in this regard.
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And I want us to consider three passages in Isaiah's prophecy that speak about the coming
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Messiah who would be anointed with the Holy Spirit. The first is in Isaiah 11, verses 1 and 2, which speaks about the promised messianic kingdom.
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There shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse. Jesse was, of course, the father of David. And so here is the descendant of David, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
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The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. And commentators commonly see this as being realized in the
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Jordan River when the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus in the form of a dove. The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the
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Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. The Holy Spirit came upon the
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Messiah. Also, we can read in Isaiah 42. Here we have one of the servant songs of Isaiah.
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Behold my servant whom I uphold, my elect one in whom my soul delights, I have put my spirit upon him.
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This is God the Father speaking of Jesus prophetically. And again, the
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Holy Spirit. God the Father put the Holy Spirit upon Jesus. And what would take place?
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Well, he would be the messianic king. He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. That's to the world.
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He'll not cry out nor raise his voice nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed he'll not break.
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A smoking flax he will not quench. Clearly prophetic of the
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Lord Jesus. And then lastly, we could look at Isaiah 61.
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Verses 1 through 3. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor.
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He sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.
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And of course, that passage, Isaiah 61, is what the Lord Jesus himself read and quoted in the synagogue in Nazareth at the onset of his public ministry.
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Not long after this account in John chapter 1. And we read of that in Luke chapter 4, verse 20 and 21.
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Jesus had read this passage from the scroll there in the synagogue. He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, sat down.
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The eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.
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The Spirit of God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me.
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When the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus, when John baptized him, it was God the Father anointing his son as his servant, as the
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Messiah, to begin to bring about the salvation of his people and in the inauguration of the kingdom of God.
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Now again, we cited three passages from Isaiah, all speaking about the Holy Spirit upon the
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Messiah, the servant of the Lord. These were prophecies of the promised age of salvation to Israel that would commence upon the arrival of the
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Messiah. With the coming of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus at his baptism,
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God was announcing and declaring that the days of fulfillment had arrived. The long promised kingdom to Israel was being realized.
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And later on the day of Pentecost, when the risen and thrown son of David poured out his spirit upon his people, the days of fulfillment commenced.
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We are living in the last days, the days of fulfillment proclaimed and foretold by the
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Old Testament prophets. Thomas Schreiner wrote two paragraphs that I thought were excellent.
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They're a little long, I realize this, in these block quotes, but he stated it very well.
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The servant is endowed by the Spirit. And notice he quotes two of the three passages that we mentioned,
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Isaiah 42 and 61. Only by virtue of the power of the Spirit does he carry out his ministry, by which he suffers for the sins of Israel.
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If we put all of Isaiah together, we see that the son of Jesse, the Davidic king, is also anointed with the
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Spirit. He refers to Isaiah 11, which we read earlier. So there are all three passages.
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What is remarkable is that in chapter 11, the Spirit -endowed one brings in the new creation, which, as was argued above, is the same blessing brought by the servant of the
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Lord in chapters 40 through 66. It seems fair to conclude from Isaiah's own narrative that the servant of the
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Lord and the future Davidic king are one and the same person. Now, he's making that statement to counter some liberals who argue that they're two different people.
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He's saying it's obvious it's the same person, Jesus Christ. For both have the
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Spirit empowered and bring about the new creation. Of course, this fits well with the New Testament witness, as we will see.
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Jesus is the Spirit -anointed Messiah, the royal son of David, the one who will bring in the kingdom of God.
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But he is also the servant of the Lord, the one who dies as a ransom to deliver his people from their sin.
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Now, this second paragraph. The coming of the Spirit in Isaiah signals the fulfillment of Yahweh or Jehovah's promises to Israel.
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Israel suffers judgment because of its sins, and when the Spirit is poured out, the new creation will dawn.
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Israel will be secure, at peace, and live righteously in the land. Similarly, the end -time blessing for Israel will come when
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Yahweh pours his Spirit upon Israel, when the Spirit is dispensed. Yahweh's covenant with Israel will be fulfilled.
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We see another indication that the Isianic themes cannot be asundered from one another.
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The Spirit is the eschatological Spirit, in other words, the end -time Spirit, who brings eschatological salvation, in other words, the end -time or promised salvation.
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And the servant of the Lord is endowed with that Spirit, showing that the new creation cannot arrive from the
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Spirit or apart from the servant of the Lord. In the New Testament, Jesus, as the exalted and resurrected
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Lord, is the one who pours out the Spirit on his people. The Spirit is poured out when
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Jesus is glorified, and the coming of the Spirit signals the arrival of the last days, the fulfillment of all of God's saving promises.
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Those are very accurate, very detailed descriptions of what
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I think is true to the Scriptures. And if you take what he's saying to heart, it completely discredits and disregards any notion of a future thousand -year
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Jewish millennium on the earth. What's being declared here is that Jesus Christ was bringing to pass the promises that God made to Israel that the
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Messianic kingdom was going to be inaugurated, the new creation would begin. And what we're arguing is that's exactly what
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John the Apostle was setting forth in John chapter 1. Now, in this statement of John 1 .32,
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of John's witness of the Holy Spirit coming upon Jesus at his baptism, John's ministry was coming to an end.
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And so of John the Baptist, it was written, The Baptist is not Elijah, or the prophet, and is certainly not the
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Christ. Rather, he's the one who sees and points, the one who understands in order to testify what he has seen.
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He's nothing more, for nothing more is needed. Once the Spirit descends upon him, all attention has moved appropriately from the witness to his subject matter.
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All attention, John now, is pouring into the Lord Jesus. Once the
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Spirit came upon him, John recedes from the background, and Jesus comes to the forefront.
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And again, beginning next week, Lord willing, we'll begin to address the Lord Jesus calling out his first disciples.
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Now let's look at verse 33. Here, John tells how God identified to him that Jesus was the
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Messiah. Verse 33, John declared, I did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, upon whom you see the
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Spirit descending and remaining on him, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.
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Now, this verse, he repeats what he's declared in verse 31. I did not know him.
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We touched on this already. Again, the question asks, how did John not know him?
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He was his cousin. He knew him before he was even born. He leapt in his mother's womb when she came into the presence of Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus.
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How is it that he did not know him? And I included some explanations that were proposed by some old church fathers,
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Chrysostom, who was the silver tongued. He was known to be a great orator, a great preacher of the gospel.
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He declared, John is speaking of former times, not of the times near to his baptism. In other words, earlier on, he didn't know that Jesus was the
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Christ. Then, not too long after that, Augustine believed that John was saying,
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I had not known till the day that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Ghost. Although I had known all along him personally and had not recognized him as the
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Christ of God, but when he came to be baptized, it was also revealed to me that he would confer on men the great gift of the
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Holy Ghost. In other words, more clear and full understanding was given to John.
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Still others thought John was saying, I had not known Jesus by sight until the day when he came to be baptized.
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I knew that he had been born of the Virgin Mary, but was not personally acquainted with him, having myself been brought up in the wilderness.
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Jesus was brought up in Galilee. John the Baptist in the southern Judea desert wilderness.
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Matthew Poole, we commonly hear Matthew Henry. Matthew Poole wrote about the same time.
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He also wrote a full commentary on the Bible. Matthew Poole was one of Charles Spurgeon's favorite commentators.
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And Matthew Poole wrote, I knew him, this is what he thinks John was thinking, I knew him not perfectly or distinctly, though I had an impression when
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I first saw him coming to be baptized that he was one far greater than myself. And under that impression demurred to baptizing him.
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In other words, I hesitated to baptize him. And after his baptism, I saw clearly who he was.
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And J .C. Ryle liked Matthew Poole's explanation of the matter.
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And so Ryle wrote again in the 19th century, the last explanation is perhaps the simplest and most probable, that John at one time did not know our
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Lord by sight at all, that he afterwards knew him imperfectly, and that his perfect knowledge of him, his nature, office, and work was not attained until the time when the
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Spirit descended at his baptism. Or points that seem clear. The time when he said
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I'd need to be baptized of thee would seem to be the time of imperfect knowledge when the fact that Jesus was the
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Messiah began to dawn upon him. It made him cry out, comest thou to me? I think that explains why
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John could say I knew him not. After John declared he had not known
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Jesus, he said, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, upon whom you see the
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Spirit descending and remaining on him, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.
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We're not told when God told John. Now you wait, and when you see the Holy Spirit come upon this man, he's the
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Messiah. We're not told when God told John that, but probably when God commissioned John to begin to baptize.
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By the way, notice John says he who sent me. We already emphasized in an earlier week that word sent is a very important word in John's gospel.
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John the Baptist came with the authority of God who sent him. God sent him to baptize.
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And of course later the Lord Jesus would challenge the Pharisees. Was John's baptism from heaven or from men?
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And you recall that the Pharisees didn't know how to answer. If we say from heaven, then
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Jesus will ask, well, why didn't you obey him or believe him? And if we say from men, the people are going to stone us because they all think he was a prophet.
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But God had told John the Baptist, upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, this is he who baptizes with the
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Holy Spirit. This was assigned to John alone. The others who witnessed the baptism of Jesus did not see the sign that God had intended for John.
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Perhaps they had seen the dove descending, but they did not recognize it to be a sign of the
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Holy Spirit. That was God informing John the Baptist as to the identity of Jesus as Messiah.
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God had shown John that Jesus was the promised Messiah who would baptize his people in the Holy Spirit. In the
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Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you have the common idea, John baptized in water, the one who comes after him will baptize in the
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Holy Spirit. And I cited three passages there, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Jesus Christ baptizes his people with or in the
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Holy Spirit. The parallel is with John baptizing with water.
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And so in any baptismal setting, you have one who's doing the baptizing, whether John or Jesus.
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They're baptizing people, and then they're baptizing them into the sphere of something.
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John into water, Jesus in or with the Holy Spirit. This is important.
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It may seem to be rather simplistic and straightforward, but if we understand this, this actually refutes a common error that I hear all the time in evangelicalism, especially among our
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Pentecostal friends. They teach that there is a second blessing subsequent to salvation.
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Sometime down the road after you're saved, the Holy Spirit will baptize you, and you will have power.
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The Bible nowhere teaches that the Holy Spirit baptizes anyone. The Bible always presents it's
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Jesus Christ who baptizes his people in the Holy Spirit. John baptized people in water,
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Jesus baptizes people in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit doesn't baptize anyone.
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Jesus baptizes his people in the Holy Spirit. What does this mean?
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What is suggested or meant by Jesus baptizing his people in the Holy Spirit?
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I think this is critically important. First, we should understand that being baptized in the
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Holy Spirit, what it is not, is not to be understood as a second blessing that a believer may experience sometime after initially coming to faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
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The doctrine and experience of our friend, Pentecostal friends, and of those who advocate
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Wesleyan sanctification, is not biblical. The Lord Jesus baptizes his people in the
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Holy Spirit when they are converted to him. Secondly, being baptized in the
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Holy Spirit should not be understood as a blessing for only some Christians, and that's commonly taught too.
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The Lord Jesus baptizes in the Holy Spirit everyone who becomes a Christian, everyone who becomes his disciple.
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This baptism of the Holy Spirit is part of the experience of everyone who comes to salvation on the day of Pentecost after the risen and thrown
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Son of David, Jesus Christ, poured out his Holy Spirit on the 120 disciples in the upper room,
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Peter declared that everyone who repents of sin and believes on Jesus Christ, the
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Lord for salvation, would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. I won't read the whole passage, but Peter declared of the promise of the
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Spirit, this promise is to you, to your children, to all who are far off, as many as the
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Lord will call. In other words, as many as the Lord calls unto salvation. Everyone who comes to salvation is baptized by Jesus in the
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Holy Spirit. Thirdly, we should understand that Jesus baptizing his people with the
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Holy Spirit is the realization of God's promises of the age of the Messiah that the prophets foretold in the
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Old Testament. The days would come when the Messiah would baptize his people in the Holy Spirit and they would be transformed.
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As a result, it happened on the day of Pentecost.
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You recall the people of Jerusalem, they heard the commotion, they gathered to the 120, they heard them speak in the wonderful works of God in their own language.
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At first, they thought they were perhaps drunk. Peter stood up and said, no, this is that which
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Joel spoke about. Pentecost was the fulfillment of Joel's prophecy of the coming
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Spirit. It shall come to pass in the last days, and this church age is the last days,
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I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Everyone who's a Christian is baptized in the
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Holy Spirit. By the way, there are certain signs that are mentioned.
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Your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Your young men see visions. Your old men shall dream dreams.
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And again, our Pentecostal friends see those things as normative. Everyone who is baptized in the
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Holy Spirit should manifest some of these signs. We would say that this phenomena was evident on the day of Pentecost, was evident on other occasions, but it's not normative.
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We would argue that where Joel declared that these phenomena would occur when the people were baptized in the
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Spirit did take place. People did see visions. They did dream dreams. This occurred.
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This is the fulfillment of the prophecy. He's not saying that everyone is going to encounter or have these visions or dreams.
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Of course, there are other places in the book of Acts where these phenomena were witnessed when the people experienced the baptism of the
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Holy Spirit. You have the Samaritans in Acts 8, chapter 8, Gentile God -fearers in Acts 10,
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Cornelius, and later still Greeks in far -off Gentile lands in Ephesus. But again, they were manifestations of the
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Spirit on those occasions, demonstrating that God was bringing salvation to those people.
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Fourthly, the baptism of the Holy Spirit transforms people from living as sinners onto as people living as saints.
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It is transformative power. The Lord Jesus performs this act of baptizing in the
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Holy Spirit upon everyone who comes to true faith in Him. He thereby secures and enables
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His people to order their lives according to the law of God. Every true
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Christian orders his life according to the law of God. Not perfectly, but the law of God, the
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Holy Scriptures, governs his life. Romans 8 makes this clear.
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Paul wrote, There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the
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Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.
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Look at verse 3 closely. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh,
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Christ did. The law could not make people holy.
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Christ could and did. How? God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh on account of sin.
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He condemned sin in the flesh. Why did He condemn sin in the flesh? So that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the
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Spirit. God saved us, not just to pardon us of our sin, but to enable us to live lives of righteousness according to His law.
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That's what a Christian does. He goes on to say, For those who live according to the flesh, that is, they order their lives according to sin, they set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the
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Spirit, those are Christians, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, that's the non -Christian.
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But to be spiritually minded, that's the Christian, life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God.
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That's the unsaved person. The unsaved person is hostile to God.
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His very nature is at enmity with God. For it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.
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It's impossible for a non -Christian to live the Christian life. Verse 9,
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Paul reasons, But you're not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells within you.
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And that's what took place when Jesus baptized you in the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God dwells within you.
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If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he's not His. If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, the
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Spirit is life because of righteousness. Drop down to verse 13,
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For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. If you order your life according to sin, you're going to die in your sins.
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But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you'll live. That's what a Christian does.
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He puts to death the deeds of the body, the sins of the body, through the power of the Holy Spirit. And the promise is life.
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For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the children of God. And here being led by the
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Spirit is not feeling the Lord's leading me here or there. Here being led by the Spirit is being led to order your life according to the law of God.
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They are the children of God. And so the baptism of the
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Holy Spirit transforms people. He enables them, puts a desire within their souls to love
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God and to love His people and to love His law and to order their lives according to His word. Fifth, this experience of being baptized in the
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Holy Spirit was a blessing of the promised kingdom of God, a blessing of the new covenant that God had promised
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He would enact with the house of Israel. Ezekiel 36 spoke of this anointing of the
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Holy Spirit that God bestows upon every Christian in the new covenant. Drop down to verse 25 in the block quote,
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God declares of this remnant of Israel, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean.
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I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.
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I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I'll put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you will keep my judgments to do them.
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The sprinkling of clean water in order to cleanse them is not a prophecy of baptism by sprinkling. It speaks of God forgiving his people of their sins and it speaks of God purifying his people of their life of sinning against him and he does so by giving them the
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Holy Spirit. Our Lord Jesus told his disciples just before he separated from them and went his way to the cross.
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He declared, I'll pray the father he will give you another helper that he may abide with you forever.
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The spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him or knows him but you know him for he dwells with you and will be in you.
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He's talking about Pentecost. Every true Christian is baptized by King Jesus in the
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Holy Spirit enabling them putting within them the desire to live for God according to his will.
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Lastly, let's look at verse 34 of John 1. John testified he had fulfilled his mission to reveal the
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Son of God to his people. John 1 34 I have seen, I've testified that this is the
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Son of God. John concluded his witness of Jesus Christ by again asserting the deity of Jesus Christ.
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Jesus is the Son of God. Later the Jewish leaders of Jerusalem will attempt to kill
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Jesus because he claimed to be the Son of God thereby making himself equal with God.
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John finished his witness by declaring that Jesus was God incarnate.
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He was indeed the Son of God. Now let's just draw a conclusion and this is an important conclusion that I want to emphasize for us all.
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We've had the Lord Jesus set before us as the eternal Son of God who took upon himself our human nature dwelt among us in this fallen world.
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God the Father sent him to be the Savior of sinners. This salvation that he,
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Jesus, works on behalf of his people is set forth in two great depictions of his person here in John chapter 1.
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First, Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Verse 29
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And secondly, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. The first description sets forth the
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Lord Jesus as the Savior who can bring about to his people the forgiveness of their sins.
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The second description sets forth the Lord Jesus as the Savior who can enable his people to live holy lives.
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Without holiness, no one shall see the Lord. We need our Savior to be our sacrificial Lamb to bear our sin.
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We need our Savior to be our King to give us the Holy Spirit to enable us to live as the children of God.
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Both are a part and essential to salvation. We need both pardon and purity.
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And the Lord Jesus provides both of these essentials for the eternal salvation of our souls. We need our sins forgiven.
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He's the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. And we need our lives to be conformed to the will of God.
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He is the one who baptizes us with the Holy Spirit. But it's a very sad and tragic matter that in today's
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Christianity forgiveness of sins is often offered and pronounced upon those who claim to believe on Jesus as their
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Savior but their lives are void of desires and displays of holiness. They claim to believe on Jesus as the
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Lamb who takes away the sin of the world but they are clueless as to the one who baptizes with the
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Holy Spirit. Both come with salvation. And oftentimes churches, pastors, evangelists, books, tracts offer people a form of godliness while denying the power.
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The Apostle Paul warned Timothy about this, that in the last days there would arise some lovers of themselves, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to parents, treacherous, reckless, having a form of godliness but denying its power.
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And then Paul tells Timothy, you avoid those kinds of people. And so we live in days now where Jude wrote, certain people have crept in unnoticed long ago, designed or designated for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our
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God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. Salvation is often presented as forgiveness of sins.
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It's rarely presented as deliverance from sinning. But that's what
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Jesus does through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit that he imparts to every one of his people.
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I mentioned in Sunday school that Jason and I were visiting a friend this last week who attends another church.
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He was talking to a man who claimed to be a Christian, part of that church. And all of a sudden, this fellow we were talking to said, this fellow talking to him just started unloading this whole long verbiage of profanity, including the
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F word, in the church building. And our friend warned him, don't you realize that sinful speech?
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Doesn't that concern you? And the response was, what difference does it make? I'm saved by grace.
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I'm forgiven of my sins. I'm under the blood of Jesus. What difference does it make? Jesus baptizes with the
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Holy Spirit. That's the difference it makes. And if you haven't been baptized by the
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Holy Spirit, and that's not evidence by speaking in tongues or getting excited or anything like that, but a desire for holy living, a love for God, a love for the brethren, a love for righteousness, a love for his word, a hatred for sin, a desire to know
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God, a desire to walk before God. If that is not present, then you're void of spiritual life.
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And you're just fooling yourself in thinking that the Lamb has covered your sins if you haven't been baptized in the
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Holy Spirit and experienced his new life in Christ. The great awakening that transformed our colonies, you know, in here in Massachusetts back in the 1730s and 40s, was brought about,
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God brought it about, primarily through Whitefield and Edwards, telling everybody who thought they were
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Christians, you're not a Christian unless your life demonstrates it. You can claim all day long that you believe on Jesus, but unless your life validates your claim to faith, you're still in your sins.
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And God used the Holy Spirit to awaken people. They say one -third of the colonies were converted to Christ.
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The crime stopped. There was harmony, there was peace. The churches were full.
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The policemen didn't have anything to do but go around and sing in the churches. There were no crime. And there needs to be an awakening today.
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And so there's the need for the message of holiness, without which no one will see the
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Lord. People are in need of the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit.
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And every Christian has experienced this blessed work of grace in the soul.
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And it's just to our shame and our pity that we don't experience it in greater degrees. Every one of us laments that fact.
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But we who know the Lord Jesus know that it's there, because it wasn't there before, it's there now.
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It was a work of the risen and thrown King Jesus calling us into the grace of kingdom living.
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Amen. Let's pray. Father, help us to understand these things more clearly, perhaps, than what we've been able to express.
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Help us, our Lord, to present Jesus Christ as a complete Savior of sinners, a glorious one who pardons our sins through his life and sacrifice on the cross, and a glorious Savior who's able to enable his people to live in holiness before you through faith in him.
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And we know, our God, that through our conversion and through the blessing of being baptized in the
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Spirit, you put this desire within us. And yet we know, our God, that the power resides in you,
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King Jesus, and we need your power each and every day to enable us to do the things that please you and bring delight to us.
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And so, Father, help us to go forth from this place with a fresh realization of our weakness, and yet with the fresh confidence that you,
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Lord Jesus, are able to enable us to live before you in righteousness.