Baptized into God — Fred Tomlinson

Well, welcome here, every one of you, and welcome to those who are not here, who may be listening in to this message from somewhere in the world, who knows where, I don't know. I do know that there are people listening who obviously are in very many places around the globe, and I'd like to say what a tremendous privilege it is to be able to stand here in this room and to share something of the truth of the Gospel with you.

You know, there's a hymn that we quite frequently sing here, and the words go like this, Speak, Lord, in the stillness, whilst I wait on Thee. Hushed my heart to listen in expectancy. Speak, O blessed Master, in this hallowed hour.

Let me hear Thy voice, Lord, and feel Thy touch of power. And that's my prayer this morning, and I trust that that's your prayer also. I'd like to ask you to turn with me to the book of the Acts of the Apostles, if you have your Bible handy, and I'm going to read some verses which are very familiar to us, I'm sure, from the 19th chapter.

I'm reading from verse 1. It happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the upper country and came to Ephesus and found some disciples. He said to them, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?

And they said to him, No, we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit. And he said, Into what then were you baptised? And they said, Into John's baptism. Paul said, John baptised with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in him who was coming after him, that is, in Jesus.

When they heard this, they were baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying. There were in all about twelve men.

Amen. In this little section of scriptures and in this situation that is presented to us, there was one towering problem that we recognise, and that problem was inadequate information. When we receive information, there's a huge challenge that we face, and that is, what will we do with the information that we do receive?

And that's kind of setting the scene a little bit for what I want to share with you. Before going any further though, as I was reading these verses and thinking about this message, a very simple illustration came to my mind.

Information About God Versus Experiencing His Gift

It's kind of a story that is half true. So you can guess as I tell the story which half is not true. But certainly when I first left school, my first job was in a car dealership in Liverpool, England, and they sold some remarkable vehicles there, such as Aston Martins and Lagonda cars, if anyone has ever heard of them, and Rover vehicles.

And quite frequently in those early days, I was known to volunteer to work late in the office where I was working, and I had an ulterior motive, not merely that I would get a little extra money in my pay packet, but I could go to the upstairs showroom.

They had a big hydraulic elevator or lift that took the vehicles from the ground floor to the second floor, and also to take them down into the basement. So either on the upstairs showroom or down in the basement where there were vehicles parked, I would start the vehicles and I would move them around and go forwards a bit and go backwards a bit and whatnot.

I have to confess that on one occasion I realised that in the upstairs showroom when I was turning I was actually leaving black tyre marks on the floor, and that called for an extra long stay that night, trying to clean up the evidence of what I'd been doing.

But on one occasion the boss of the company came and said that he was going to be going away, he was going to go to Australia as a matter of fact, and he was going to spend a couple of years with his family in Australia.

So that was fine and off he went. When eventually he came home, he called me into his office and he said, I noticed that my blue Range Rover is still where I left it when I went away. And I said, yes sir.

He said, well, did you not read the note that I left on my desk? And I said, no, no sir. He said, well, there was a note and it had some transfer papers which were completed, stapled to it. And I said, no, I had not seen that.

And he said, well, what drew my attention to ask you this question is I see that you're still, not only is my vehicle still there, but you're still riding your bicycle to work. He said, in that note, he said, because I had noticed just how much you really enjoyed looking at that vehicle and I allowed you to drive me around in it a little bit.

He said, I made a decision that I would actually give that vehicle to you as a gift. And he said, that was written on the note and I had completed the transfer papers. So the vehicle was yours. And at that point, of course, I was completely stunned when I realized, I remember saying, you mean to say, sir, that for these two years, that vehicle sitting there has been my vehicle and I could have been driving.

He said, well, that's right. The Apostle Paul asked these disciples, as they're referred to here, he said, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? Seemed like a straightforward question. No doubt about that.

But then notice how they replied, they say, we've never even heard that there was a Holy Spirit. Perhaps you've remembered what I said right at the beginning. I said that the real problem here was inadequate information.

In other words, they confessed something which was absolutely true and reasonable. They said, we didn't even know there was a Holy Spirit. So how could we possibly have received him? The fact of the matter is that they, at some stage in their journey, they'd met up with John the Baptist when he was out there in the wilderness with the crowds of people that gathered around him and they'd listened to him preaching there.

And as you know very well, he invited them to respond to his message by actually submitting themselves to be baptized in the water. And they had done that and they'd clearly done it sincerely, but they had no understanding of who the one was who John said would follow him.

John sought to explain in some degree of detail, I'm sure he explained all that he knew actually, because this was a realm of incredible mystery. He said he was not the Messiah. They were all looking for the Messiah to come.

That had been the way that people had looked for a long time now. And he said, I am not the Messiah. Don't get this confused here. I am not the Messiah. He's coming after me and he's greater than I am.

And when he comes, he has a holy spirit and with fire. And I can't even begin to imagine what that meant, maybe even to him himself, but to the people who were listening to him, such as this group of men who evidently were there on one of those occasions.

What could they possibly have taken from such a strange statement? I mean they could relate to the fact that here were people listening to John's preaching and they were certainly identifying with what he was saying.

They were responding to what he was saying and they were submitting themselves to be dipped in the water there. They could relate to all of that. Their hearts were open to the one who was going to come after him, but they would not know detail who and what.

They could not even have begun to understand the significance of the death of the one who was going to come that John spoke about, or in fact his resurrection. And this reference to the holy spirit, what in the world could that have meant to them?

All that they really knew was that this baptism, this baptism that John was preaching about and encouraging them to participate in, was really a recognition of their own sinfulness and their unpreparedness for the one who would come and for the kingdom that he would represent when he came.

And they had no real idea of the fact that that baptism and the things that John was saying were actually symbolic. They were prophetic. They were pointing towards something. This baptism, John had said as much, but how could they have related to the fact that this watery baptism was actually symbolic of a far greater, far more profound baptism, which John referred to as a baptism of fire.

It was impossible that the message could have reached them. You know, when they say, no, we've never even heard, it just had not registered and become meaningful to them at that time. But today, for you and for me, we can't find ourselves lining up with those disciples and we can't say what they said because we have the note, do you remember from my illustration, we have the note and let me just tell you that the note has got transfer papers pinned to it as well.

And the problem is that so many men and women who profess to be Christians, perhaps regularly attend church when we're allowed to do that, and participate in the church activities and tithe and all that's part of that, but so many have never ever really read the note.

Let me read it to you. I'm turning back a few pages. I'm in the first chapter of Acts. Here's the note with the transfer papers attached to it. I'm going to read from the very first verse of the book of Acts, chapter one.

The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he was taken up to heaven and he had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom he had chosen.

To these he also presented himself alive after his suffering by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of 40 days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God. Gathering them together he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, which he said, You have heard from me.

For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. So when they had come together they were asking him, saying, Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel?

He said to them, It is not for you to know the times or epochs which the Father has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive the power or power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and even to the remotest part of the earth.

Amen. Here's one of the problems we face, I think, in our evangelical setting. I think that we unwittingly have bought into a kind of groupthink, which is a modern expression, I never learned that when I was at school, but we've been influenced by a groupthink within the Christian community by and large, and that is, well, we got the Holy Spirit when we first responded in that evangelistic meeting or when someone prayed with us, or when it was for me, when my father prayed for me when I was a young boy and so on.

The Pentecostals and their charismatic people, they embrace the concept that John was talking about and that Jesus has just reconfirmed, but I question to what extent they really understand what it is that the Scripture is speaking about, what it is that's written in the note, as it were, and the fact of the matter is that this experience that we're looking at, this promise that we're looking at here, is not presented in the Bible as the second blessing.

We don't read that expression anywhere in the Scriptures. The fact is that what we're looking at here, that which is written in this note, is the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the Gospel. In fact, the Apostle Paul would say writing to the Romans on one occasion, if any man have not the Spirit of God, he is none of his.

It doesn't come much clearer than that as far as I can see. And Jesus has said in this first chapter, chapter 1 and verse 8 of the book of Acts, he said, just note these words, that when you receive this power, he said, it will be power to be.

Just notice those two words, power to be. You shall receive. Don't leave Jerusalem until you receive the power to be. So the question really that I want to put out to you, the question which I believe the Holy Spirit of God would want to preach broadly, is the question that we find in chapter 19.

Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? I believe in my heart that this is the most needed question to be asked in the churches, indeed in the Christian churches of today. I believe it's the most needed experience today among those who are professing to be Christians.

You see, it was Jesus who said, without me you can do nothing. And I've reminded you that Jesus was speaking about the Holy Spirit who he said, whatever you do, don't go out, don't go out and try and minister, don't leave Jerusalem until you have received this power from on high, this power which will enable you to be, to be Christian in the truest sense.

Trying to live the Christian life without this power is to try and live a life that I do not possess. It's impossible. And all I'm left with is a powerless profession. You know, there are some questions that we don't ask one another.

I mean, we don't, for the most part, we don't ask even, how old are you? There are occasions when that seems okay. But we don't ask one another, how much do you have in the bank? Well, we just don't do that.

And we don't, for the most part, say, how much did you pay for that such and such and such and such. We're discreet about the questioning that we engage in with one another. But you know, this question is so imperative that I must ask you.

It's not to throw doubt into your mind. It's to ask you what you know to be true. Did you receive this Holy Spirit when you believed? It's the question that Paul asked and I'm asking you on this occasion.

Christian Life as Participation in Christ

You see, the issue really is not, of the Christian experience, is not imitation, where we're trying to imitate the Jesus of history, but it's participation. And I want to explain that a little more to you as we go through here.

You know, someone will say, well, I believe that I, you know, I received the Holy Spirit when I accepted Christ as my Saviour. Notice that there's another phrase that doesn't appear anywhere in the Bible, and yet it's common in our evangelical circles.

The issue is not accepting Christ. We can be misled by this groupthink, these terms, these phrases, these ideas. We need to come again with our eyes wide open and our hearts engaged with God as we say, Lord, show me what this note says here.

Show me what your word says here. I want to get this clear. The fact is, maybe someone did receive the Holy Spirit at that particular time. But you know, there is a principle in the Bible to do with redemption and our experience of it, and that is that it's God's gracious gift, certainly.

But so far as our experience of it in our lives, it will always be by faith. Faith is the key factor, and it is the principle upon which I am able to believe God and it's the key to receiving from God as we're seeing here.

But you remember that Paul says this faith is not something that we just conjure up ourselves. We're not convinced by someone's impressive argument about Christianity, and so we say, yeah, okay, we can say, yeah, I acquiesce, I understand, and yeah, I agree with that.

That's not the issue. The Apostle Paul, speaking by the Holy Spirit, he said, faith comes by hearing the word of God. And again he would say that we live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

Do you see, it's taken out of our borders altogether. It's part of God's gift as he speaks, and for those who are interested, it's the Greek word rhema, his rhema word, not the logos word, but God by his Spirit is able to transform his written word, his logos word, into a rhema word.

That is, it's personal, it's particular, it's subjective. As God speaks into our heart and he creates and quickens faith within our hearts to believe the truth of the Gospel, he also creates faith in our hearts to open our lives up to consciously, deliberately receive his Holy Spirit into our lives.

Faith comes by hearing. This is not automatic. There's nothing automatic about the way God deals with us. God doesn't give out, this is general grace and providence that we can all talk about in our lives, but in terms of the great work of salvation, God doesn't hand it out sort of unilaterally and give it or so on.

It's not like a handout, like a surprise parcel and, oh look what I've found in it. But truth is revealed to us and as truth is revealed to my open heart, faith is conceived within my heart and that faith calls for action on my part.

This is summed up in the simple statement we've heard from John the Baptist to Jesus and the apostles, repent and believe. They were exposed to the truth and there was faith quickened in the hearts of those who were responding to him and they acted upon it.

And that's exactly what's going on here in this section that we've looked at. We read and Paul asks them, well who was it, you know, what was the baptism all about then that you experience? And he explains to them and then by verse 5 we read this, and when they heard this they were baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus.

That was the action. They were exposed to the truth of the word of God. Faith was quickened in their hearts and they acted upon it. And that's the formula that will always be for God's dealings with us in this whole realm of his redemptive purpose in our lives.

The Father's Promise and the One Baptism

Let's just look back again to Jesus when he said, you will be endowed with power from on high. He also referred to this, as you saw from the reading in chapter 1, that this was a fulfilment of his Father's promise.

And you could read that specifically in Luke chapter 24 and verse 49, the promise of the Father. He was speaking about the Holy Spirit being given. Jesus was saying this will be the product of the Father, the heavenly Father's promise.

And Paul would speak of this same thing. He would go back into history and he would be able to show to the Galatians in particular that this was the blessing of Abraham, that ultimately there would be those through his offspring in the remote distant future who would actually receive the Spirit by faith.

The Apostle Paul would also speak about this baptism. Right into the Ephesians, Ephesians 4 and verse 5, he speaks about the one baptism. The one baptism. Are we really able to see what Paul is saying?

He's talking about there being an experience. He said it's the one baptism. He describes it again as a baptism into the death of Christ. And again, yes, he would speak of it as a baptism into the body of Christ.

We need to spend longer to make more sense of all of this. But Paul is saying that there's one baptism and it will involve and include these various other statements which are made in different passages of Scripture.

Someone may say, well, if what we're looking at now is the normal Christian experience, how many people are really experiencing this? The real question is, if this that we're looking at here is the normal Christian experience, are you experiencing it?

And this is how it boils down in Paul's questions to these disciples. He said, have you received this which was the promise of the Father which he himself, Paul, was preaching about and would continue to preach about in these various ways and expand and enlarge the truth to men and women's understanding.

May God do that for us again this morning. The sad thing is today, I think, that the normal is measured by the average and that's a grave mistake. In other words, well, everybody in our Christian community, in our group, this is the way we're operating and so that can create a sort of an indifference and that's sad.

And then the normal is lost and is degraded into something which is just average. But immediately that takes place with the Christian gospel. We lose the gospel itself. This is how Paul tackled the same problem right into the Galatians.

Once the true gospel becomes interfered with, diluted or altered or adjusted or made more appropriate for the culture in which we may find ourselves and so on, we destroy the gospel. We cannot alter, change or manipulate any particular part of it.

Sometimes it's being done with what we could call good intentions, the hope is that we make it more understandable by the people that we're talking to, make it simple so everyone can understand. But as soon as we start doing that, we lose the gospel itself and it's degraded and it becomes the new normal.

But the fact is it's not normal. The only normal gospel is the gospel which is detailed clearly in the note, detailed clearly in the Bible, in the Scriptures and that's what we need to come back to. Sadly, so many are so easily satisfied with the minimal response, minimal challenge and minimal understanding about the gospel and it's just considered to be sufficient but it's not sufficient.

That's the challenging truth. And you know, I think it's as though there's an underlying deception here and that is if you believe it, you have it. But that's not true. There is information. I've talked about this many times here in this church.

There's the information of the gospel. We've got the wonderful teaching in the book here before us and that's information and information is important. And the information must be believed by faith. It must be believed.

Pentecost as the Experiential Completion of Redemption

But there's something that needs to be experienced. That's the wonderful thing. So we're not left merely with words, even if they're biblical words, high lofty truths. We can become so knowledgeable. This is one of the snares that we engage with our minds and we like mindy preaching and we like to understand.

Well, there's truth which needs to be explained from Scripture, certainly. But the Scripture that is being explained to us is not profiting us until we actually receive what God is offering to us and it's experienced.

The trouble is there's clearly a disconnect between our believing and our experiencing. We cannot say with these men here in this passage of Scripture that we've never heard. We can't say that and there's no question.

We know. I've just read to you the truth even if you didn't know before this moment. We know that there is a Holy Spirit which God is intent upon imparting to men and women who will receive it or receive him.

And so we can't say, well, we didn't know. It may very, very well be that people who are listening right now have been dealing with limited or partial information. That's certainly true and I trust with God's help we're able to bring the whole counsel of God, the whole truth, the body of truth as it relates to this to one another and that the Holy Spirit will quicken the words and quicken the information to us in our hearts.

You know, it's as though we've got the story of Jesus. We've got the story of his redeeming work and the provision that he has made by his great redemptive sacrifice. But we need to understand that that's the solid ground upon which we stand.

But the point that I want with all my heart to convey to you today is there's another part to the story. Can I put it this way? Pentecost is the rest of the story of Jesus. Jesus in his life and through his death and resurrection accomplished this for us objectively.

He never asked me to do it. How could that have happened anyway? He never asked anybody about it. He did that. It was response to his own Father's will and purpose. I need to read that information. I need God to make it clear into my heart what price has been paid for my redemption.

But God's plan is that having recognized and understood and believed that truth, there is now another part of the story which began on the day of Pentecost when as the result of what Jesus had done and to make what Jesus taught to become a reality in the lives and experience of men and women, God sent his Holy Spirit.

Amen. And it's the other part of Christ's ministry. It's the other part of the Gospel. The issue is not then do I believe that there's a Holy Spirit. It's not really do I believe in the Holy Spirit. Here's another story that's completely untrue.

There's no half right to it. But if I were to give you or I say to you I want to give you a check for a thousand dollars, I mean you could go home and you could be very excited about it and you could have teaching seminars about what you're going to do with a thousand dollars.

Maybe I should have made the number a bit higher than that. But the question is what are you going to do? Have you received it? Do you have it in your hand? And that's the truth. You know we can, even those who are involved in preaching, we can preach about the Holy Spirit.

We can read the text. But the question is have you received the Holy Spirit into your life? Jesus, as we've seen, and I've reminded you already, he said that when you receive this it's going to be power to be.

Power. You're going to get power from outside of yourself imparted into your life which is going to enable you to live the Christian life which is not, the Christian life is not something that we try to fulfil and copy and mimic the way Jesus lived.

You know the question used to be asked what would Jesus do? That's not the question. It's whether I receive his life within me. Once again Paul said if anyone doesn't have the Spirit of Christ, well he's not in it yet at this point in time.

In that text, in Acts chapter 1 and verse 8, the Greek word is diunamis. You shall receive diunamis. You shall receive power. In the previous verse he's used the word power at least in the Old King James translation.

But in that context it was to do with authority. It's not for you to know the things that God has put under his own authority. That's how chapter 1 verse 7 reads. But, he said, you shall receive diunamis.

You shall receive ability. After that the Holy Spirit of God has come upon you. And this is an impartation of a supernatural dynamic enabling from God. It's something which I have never received by my first birth.

It's outside of the realm of my human nature. You know the scripture speaks about Saul in the Old Testament. Saul who became King Saul. And the text back there is very telling and prophetic I think as far as what God would do in the fullness of time.

The text says that the Spirit of God came upon Saul and he became another man. Do you see what we're talking about? We're talking about a divine supernatural power, the power of God imparted by the Holy Spirit into a life that recreates us so that we become another man, another woman.

We become another creature and so on. Amen. I think perhaps just to highlight this once again, I'm thinking of the disciples who walked with Jesus for three or four days. I want to just focus on Mary.

The Holy Spirit's Transforming Work in Mary and Believers

She's the best example of this but it would be true in a limited sense for the disciples. Mary was chosen by God. She didn't know anything about it but she'd been chosen and selected by God. The call of God was on her life from the moment she was conceived but in the fullness of time an angelic being comes and speaks to her.

You know the story. And based upon her response as faith was quickened in her heart, it was surrounded in an atmosphere of mystery and uncertainty, she said, how can this be, you know? And she was told, well the Holy Spirit's going to come upon you and that which will be conceived in your womb will be none other than the Son of God.

And do you remember how she responded? It's a great example for how we are to respond. She said, well, these are my words. I haven't got the foggiest clue what you're talking about or how this can ever be but whatever it is, let it be according to your rhema.

Your rhema is the word. Amen. And she opened her summer. So picture her in the fullness of time. She gives birth to this holy child. She spends years nurturing him and we don't know very much about it.

We don't know anything until he reaches age 12 and then suddenly just a little cameo of information and then it moves on. But the fact is she knew Jesus in a very, very unique way. That is indisputable.

But she was in the company of the other disciples also when Jesus said, don't go anywhere, don't leave Jerusalem until you be endued with power from on high. You know, the point is he's talking to people who if they were to somehow, let's be ridiculous, if they were to present themselves in our community at this point in time, just imagine the remarkable, remarkable person that they would be and the story they would share but Jesus was saying, don't go anywhere because there's something you don't have yet and you need it desperately.

How much more then would that apply to you and to me today? And I think a number of the things that John said are really quite prophetic. My time is now limited but let me briefly make one or two references.

Do you remember, if we were to turn the pages back to Luke chapter 3 we could read this, but do you remember how he said as he's preaching to the crowd about the one who is coming after him, he said, he will lay the axe to the root of the tree.

He's saying this in the context of saying that he who is going to come is going bring a fiery baptism for men and women and he will lay the axe to the root of the tree. Here's man's real problem. Here's our real problem.

Apart from a work of God, man's root problem is in his heart. It's in the roots of who he or she is. We talked about spiritual heredity a week or two ago and so on. The root of that spiritual heredity is sin, we reminded ourselves, not the fact that we commit sins but sin where it comes from, from the root.

Sin that dictates our behaviour. Sin that places us under the judgment of God. Sin that prohibits us from having fellowship with God. Sin which leaves a man hopeless because his situation is irreconcilable and ultimately he cries as did Paul in Romans 7, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me?

I need and you need something supernatural to change this and this is the promise of the morning. I need the stuff that I have inherited from Adam to be broken in my life and so does every man and every woman.

In fact, I could suggest to you that before I can fully express the rich life of Christ through my person, I need the stuff of what I've inherited from my forebears. I need that God with his axe would blow to the very root of my being and break me free to sever me from that which I've inherited through my first birth and that which I've collected through my relationships in the course of my life.

And you know there's a verse of scripture in Ezekiel it says, as is the mother so is the daughter. There's another scripture that says that the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge.

The same idea is presented, there was context for those statements certainly, but then how wonderful when the Apostle Paul is able to say, but where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. Amen. And this is the wonder of the Gospel.

You know, John in the very act of baptising as we have seen already, he's drawing a contrast between a watery baptism which is symbolic and the fiery baptism which is the reality. He could minister the symbolic baptism but the one coming after him would be the one who would minister the fiery baptism.

And when John said that to the crowd that were around him, there would be many, perhaps all of the people listening to him were quite well saturated in the scriptures that were available to them and I'm sure there would be those when they heard him talking about this strange fiery baptism, their minds would go back to scriptures like Malachi chapter 3 where the Lord is likened to a refiner's fire purging out the impurities and the dross and the scum from the life and certainly there's a sort of prophetic pointer in these very words to this one who would come after him and would bring that kind of purification.

Of course what John didn't know and couldn't understand at that point in time was that this that he's describing as fire would actually be produced through the very blood of the one who was coming after him.

It would be his sacred blood that would be shed upon the cross. Only the blood of Christ can cleanse the heart from sin and cleanse the very conscience of men and women and purges us from all of the indwelling impurities in our thoughts and in our minds and our base desires as Charles Wesley called them on occasion.

Cornelius and the Purifying Baptism of the Holy Spirit

You know in chapter 11 of the book of Acts here the Apostle Peter by this point in the previous chapter has been in Cornelius's house. Cornelius was a Gentile and through a whole strange set of circumstances and some that Peter had trouble with to start with he finds himself in Cornelius's house preaching to a group of people that had come together to hear what he, Peter, would say and clearly the Holy Spirit comes in that meeting and is poured out on the group of people there and there's a transformation that takes place and so on.

By the time we reach chapter 11 Peter's being called before the other elders and basically saying what in the world are you doing going to Cornelius's house a Gentile you've gone there with this message of Jesus and then do you remember how he said to them, he said, and I'm paraphrasing it to make the point very plain to you, it's as though he was saying to them do you remember what happened to us when we were gathered in the upper room on that day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came down upon us and you remember how our lives were so transformed as the result of what happened.