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Book: Acts
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Acts 19:2 Have You Received the Holy Spirit?
Intro. We sing, "God in three persons, blessed Trinity." We know the
person of Father, and the person of the Son, but so many do not
know the person of the Holy Spirit. One of the reasons for this is
that the Holy Spirit testifies to us of the Son, and not of
Himself. He has come to glorify Jesus. Any true work of the Holy
Spirit glorifies Jesus and draws attention to Jesus and not to any
man.
I. Paul's question to those in Ephesus, "Have you received the Holy Spirit
since you believed." or as some prefer, "Did you receive the Holy
Spirit when you believed." The Greek can be translated correctly either
way, and no matter how you translate it the same idea is there. i.e.
you can believe in Jesus and not receive what is known as the gift of
the Holy Spirit.
A. There is a separate experience that one can have with the Holy
Spirit which is separate from and subsequent to salvation.
1. In John 14 Jesus said to His disciples, "And I will
pray to the Father and He shall give you another
comforter that He may abide with you forever, even the
Spirit of truth which the world cannot receive because
it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him, but you know
Him, for He dwelleth with you and shall be in you.
2. In John 20 after His resurrection Jesus breathed on His
disciples and said, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit."
3. Yet he told them later, "But wait in Jerusalem for the
promise of the Father which I have told you about,
for John indeed baptized with water, but you will be
baptized with the Holy Spirit in a few days, and you
will receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon
you, and you will be witnesses unto Me, both in
Jerusalem and Judea, and Samaria, and unto the
uttermost parts of the world.
a. We note the Holy Spirit is with you, shall be
in you, and the promise of power when the Holy
Spirit comes upon you, or over you. The Greek
preposition can be translated either way.
b. On the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit
came upon the waiting disciples, when Peter
addressed the crowd that had assembled to
explain what the supernatural phenomena meant,
the people were convicted and said, "What shall
we do?" Peter answered, "Repent, and be
baptized in the name of Jesus for the remission
of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the
Holy Spirit, for this promise is unto you and
to your children and to those who are afar off,
even as many as the Lord our God shall call."
c. When Philip preached Christ to the Samaritans
and many believed and were baptized, when the
apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had
received the word of God, sent Peter and John
down to them: who when they had come down,
prayed for them that they might receive the
Holy Spirit, for as yet He had not come upon
them. That is, they had not yet had the
overflowing experience of the Holy Spirit to
give them power to witness.
d. Paul was converted on the Damascus road, but a
few days later he received the Holy Spirit when
Ananias came and prayed for him.
B. Our threefold relationship with the Holy Spirit.
1. He is with us prior to conversion.
a. He is convicting us of sin, righteousness and
judgment.
b. He is drawing us to surrender our lives to
Jesus.
c. He is testifying that Jesus is the only way by
which we can come to the Father.
2. When we respond to the witness of the Holy Spirit, and
invite Jesus to be the Lord of our lives, the
Holy Spirit comes into our bodies and dwells
in us. Paul said, "Don't you know that your
body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is
in you?"
a. He guides us into all truth.
b. He begins to lead us in our walk.
c. He begins to conform our lives into the image
of Jesus. Paul said, "And you with unveiled
faces beholding the glory of the Lord and
changed from glory to glory, into the same
image by His Spirit that dwelleth in you."
d. The Bible tells us that no man can call Jesus
Lord, except by the Holy Spirit.
e. Paul said, "If any man have not the Spirit of
Christ, he is none of His."
3. Jesus promised power when the Holy Spirit has come upon
us to be His witnesses.
II. Why would Paul ask this question?
A. He no doubt saw that their experience in Christ was lacking
something.
1. Maybe there was an absence of love.
a. One of the real marks of the truly Spirit
filled life is love. The fruit of the Spirit is
love.
b. This love is described as bringing joy and
peace, and causing us to be longsuffering. It
manifests itself in gentleness, goodness,
meekness faithfulness and self control.
2. Maybe they lacked real zeal and enthusiasm for the
things of the Spirit.
3. It could be that they lacked a real dynamic in their
walk with Jesus, and their witness for Him.
4. Whatever it was that Paul noticed, he suspicioned their
deficiency was due to the absence of the Holy Spirit.
B. It is one thing to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and quite
another to be overflowing with the Spirit.
1. When on the feast day, recorded by John in chapter 7,
Jesus stood and cried to the assembled multitude, "If
any man thirst let him come unto Me and drink, and he
that drinks of the water that I give, as the scripture
says, out of his innermost being their will flow rivers
of living water." John tells us that Jesus was speaking
of the Spirit which was not yet given.
a. What did He say of the Spirit? He would be like
a torrent of living water flowing out from your
life.
b. The question really is not do you have the Holy
Spirit dwelling in you, but do you have the
Holy Spirit flowing out from your life like a
torrent of living water?
2. You can pour water in a glass until the glass is full,
but if you keep pouring, the glass will begin to
overflow. Their is a difference between full and
overflowing.
C. Many have complained of the difficulty of living the Christian
life, and have given up because they found that it was too
difficult. It is not only difficult, it is impossible.
1. It is very frustrating to see the ideal and to admire
the ideal, to admit to the ideal, and then be unable to
live up to the standards of the ideal.
2. Paul spoke of that frustration in his own life in
Romans 7. "I do the things I don't want to do, and I
don't do the things I desire to do. I hate the things I
do. I consent to the law that it is good, but I cannot
perform that which is good. When I would do good, evil
is present with me. My inward man delights in the law
of God, but their is another law in my flesh that wars
against my mind, and brings me into to my
flesh. Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me
from the body of death?"
3. Paul then found his answer in chapter 8 as he speaks of
the life in the Spirit. "The law of the Spirit of life
in Christ Jesus has freed me from the law of sin and
death, for what the law could not do because of the
weakness of my flesh, God has done for me by sending
His Son in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law
might be fulfilled in me as I walk after the Spirit. So
then they who are in the flesh cannot please God, but
we are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit if the
Spirit of God is dwelling in us."
4. He shows me the ideal, and then gives me the power to
live the ideal.
III. Have you received the Holy Spirit? Is their something missing in your
walk with the Lord? Are you living a dynamic Christian life?
A. On a scale of one to ten, where would you rate your fervency
for Christ?
B. If Paul would meet you and visit for a while, would he be apt
to ask you if you received the Holy Spirit when you believed?
C. Is the Spirit flowing forth from your life like a torrent of
living water?
D. Would you like a new dynamic to live the Christian life?
E. Ask the Father for the gift of the Holy Spirit, that your life
might overflow with His love and power. Jesus said that if you
earthly fathers know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit
to those that ask Him.
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