Father, we thank you for this time that we can spend opening your word and learning more about the Holy Spirit. We pray that you would lead us to the truth, that your spirit would open our minds and our hearts to receive it, and that we would, by your power, your strength, walk in it according to what we are taught today. In Christ's name, amen. I think it's always good in a class like this that's topical and it can get kind of deep at times to regularly just do a check on where we are, where we've been, and where we're going. And I don't want to be too repetitive, but there's six days in between these classes. And even I forget about this when I have studied it. So I think it's good for us to just kind of step back. What are we doing? Why are we doing this? And where are we going? So it's a study on the Holy Spirit. And I handed out a one page handout outline last week. Did anybody not get it? I've got a few of them here. Ray, if you could hand those out to people that don't have it. Page 12. which kind of gives you a clue. It's not page one. And it's an outline. It's page 12. So we've been doing this for a while. The topic is the Holy Spirit and he's making more trouble and you're not even watching. So The topic is the Holy Spirit, which is, as we found, is a very broad topic, and we're trying to break it down into some logical aspects about the Holy Spirit. And most recently, we've been talking about the gift of the Holy Spirit, specifically given at Pentecost Acts chapter two and. After we get done with this and we're all the way down here, we've talked about Pentecost and Christ, Pentecost and the church, and we're in the middle of this Pentecost and the believer. We're going to go into the gifts of the Spirit specifically. Well, so we'll talk about them in general. And we've read some passages about the gifts. We talked about the difference between the gift of the Spirit that's once for all given to the church at Pentecost, the coming of the Spirit, the baptism of the Spirit, and the gifts of the Spirit, those remaining blessings from the Holy Spirit that each one of us, that are individually distributed, you know, based upon however God chooses to distribute those gifts. This is universally distributed to the church, the gift of the spirit. And then, so we'll talk about that. And then specifically about tongues and prophecy, not to avoid any controversy. not necessarily seeking it out, but it's an important thing for us to talk about because I think what happens as we talk about the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, there's this division between, you know, kind of the Pentecostal, charismatic movement and the Reformed view of the Holy Spirit, and the question is, Can you defend your position? What is it? Can you defend it? And that's kind of the goal as we go through this. And not just in a cursory glance, but into some pretty good detail so that we can do it. And this argument that is being built, this little book from Richard B. Gaffin, Perspectives on Pentecost, is our current text that we've been following through. And I think a couple of you have gotten the book. Who's gotten it? The Garces? All right. And Dr. Gaffin, as we said, a gifted theologian, Westminster prof, I think he was your Professor? Okay. He's still, I saw a picture of him in the latest New Horizons at General Assembly. So he's, I'm guessing, in his 80s now, probably? Yeah. And he's a professor emeritus at Westminster. So we're kind of following his book, and then we'll talk specifically about cessation, you know, do the gifts continue or do they end? So we are talking about some objections to this notion that we built last week that Pentecost is not, first of all, a matter of individual experiences, nor is it a model for indefinite repetition. So there are those that want to say Pentecost is They focus on the experience of the people that were involved. And if you read the Book of Acts as kind of an early church book of heroics, these men and women that did heroic things to build up the church, and you focus on their experiences, you'll be predisposed, I think, to viewing Pentecost, the baptism of the spirit, from an individual experiential perspective. But how did we say that the book of Acts really should be read? I mean, there's a good way to look at the book of Acts. Okay. Taking it all out. That's good. Taking it out. As a matter of fact, um, if you look at, uh, acts chapter one, verse eight, that's a, it's a command and it's a statement of program for the apostles and the book of acts. So, As you remember, Jesus is talking to some of the apostles there, and they're asking questions, you know, hey, is it, is now the time that the kingdom is, you're gonna establish the kingdom on earth? You know, these kinds of questions. But his last words to them in verse eight, Acts one are, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. That's telling them, hey, this is what's gonna happen. The Holy Spirit's gonna come upon you, Pentecost, and you will, you will not, I want you to do these things. You will do these things. You will be my witness. You will take the gospel out to Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. So, you know, that's how we're to read the book of Acts. It's the initial once for all establishment of the new covenant church. Not of Jews out of the nation of Israel, but of Jews and Gentiles, all believers, that whoever God calls to himself now are members of that church. And that initial establishment of the church is through the ministry of the apostles as described in the book of Acts. So that's how we read these events. And so the point that Gaffin reiterates is that if you take a look at Acts 8, which we will today, we briefly looked at Acts 8. Acts 8, 10, 11, and 19 are three other accounts of very similar Pentecostal experiences to what happened in Chapter 2. That they are correlated to Acts Chapter 2, but still they're not repeatable and not typical events in the rest of scripture. And so what we'll see as we look at them is there's indications in these texts that that's the case, that they're not repeatable. The focus is not on individual experiences and and if you take it. Take them as a model. So OK, acts as a model to be repeated indefinitely. Acts chapter 8, Acts chapter 10, Acts chapter 19, Acts chapter 29, as Herman brought up last week, today. Then there's some problems with that as well. So that's kind of the background to get us to where we are today. Does anybody have any questions or any comments, anything? OK. So let's turn to Acts chapter 8, and we're going to read, well, I just want to highlight a few things in there. So Acts chapter 8, Philip is in Samaria. And in verse 4 through 8, we have a little bit of a context. Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ. And the crowds, with one accord, paid attention to what was being said by Philip when they heard him and saw the signs that he did. For unclean spirits, crying out with a loud voice, came out of many who had them, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. So there was much joy in that city. So remember when we said the apostles, what power will come on them. So here we have an example of Philip standing up, preaching Christ and performing miracles. So the power of the spirit is working in Philip to perform these miracles. And then if we skip down, we'll skip past Simon and go to verse 12. But when they had believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. We talked about that last week, too, the significance of Luke mentioning throughout Acts this notion that it's men and women, Jews and Gentiles, in keeping with what Peter said at Pentecost, that those barriers would be broken down. Verse 13, even Simon himself believed, and after being baptized, he continued with Philip, and seeing signs and great miracles performed, he was amazed. So here we see, again, Philip is not only preaching the gospel, but he is performing these miraculous signs, very similar to what Christ did in his earthly ministry. and following is where we have this apparent re-occurrence of Pentecost. Now, when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. For he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit." So, it's interesting that what's The primary focus of just that last passage is that the Word of God had gone forth to Samaria, right, in keeping with that statement of program that we talked about, that they would go forth to Judea and Samaria. So that's included in this. And not only that, but the apostles heard about it. And when they heard about it, what did they do? Did they just thank the Lord? What did they do? In verse 14 and 15, they sent Peter and John, right? So the word of God had gone forth. They were seeing miracles. People believed, but nothing happened until what? until the apostles came to Samaria, prayed with them, and then they received the Holy Spirit. They laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. So it really is not a focus on the individual experiences at all. It doesn't talk about the people when the Holy Spirit came on them, what they experienced, how it went. There's no talk about speaking in tongues or prophesying or anything, the focus is the word had gone forth, it's now in Samaria, and the apostles are part of this coming down and laying their hands on them so that they receive the Holy Spirit. Again, it helps to make the argument that this is just an expansion of what took place in Jerusalem on Pentecost, rather than another occurrence of what happened at Pentecost. Any questions? Yes. Then, would it, if I had the Apostles going, obviously, would that have more spirit than that? So the confirmation that it was a real thing Oh, yeah, I mean, it could be that that was, I mean, it's either that or they were saying, hey, we've been commanded to go forth and do these things. We have evidence that this is happening in Samaria. That's where we need to go. The command that came from Christ was, you're going to go and be my witness in these places. And so I think that's, it could be, you know, dual purpose, but I think at a minimum it's confirmation that they received that command and they took it seriously. Okay. Any other questions or comments? Yes, Diane. Right, and we'll talk about that in just a minute. But so we will say x, we're going to put this up, x2, 8, then we're going to go to 10, 11, and 19. And maybe we can do this as we go through. They're pretty straight, but not level, okay. Okay, so the things that we're gonna look at, and this is the Holy Spirit baptism, which is what we just read about. Timing. And then we're gonna look at Laying on of hands. And we're going to look at, I think it's speaking in tongues. Oh no. I'm going to have to break this timing into two parts actually. Pre-conversion or post-conversion? Pre, post, conversion. And is it pre or post water baptism? Holy Spirit baptism. OK, so of those three things, when we look at 8, what do we see here? Is it pre or post conversion? In Chapter 8. Is it? Yeah, because they had already received, been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. OK, so we can say both of those things, right? So post and Post, right? And laying on of hands? Yes. Okay. Trying to do this. So is Holy Spirit baptism pre or post conversion? So, okay, so did they believe and then get baptized by the Holy Spirit, or did the Holy Spirit baptism, did that result in their conversion? Is that what caused them to believe? Laying on of hands, pre or post water baptism? So they'd already been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, so, okay. Okay, so on to the second passage, if everybody's ready to move ahead. Acts 10, 48 through 11, 18, it's an interesting passage. What is, I mean, if we were to summarize this, what happened in Acts 10 and 11? The first part of Acts 10, we're introduced to an important character. Cornelius the Centurion. So, not a Jew, right? I mean, he's a Centurion. He's a Roman soldier of some high rank. And he, with all of his household, were devout believers in God. And God spoke to him and said, hey, you need to send some men to Joppa and bring Simon Peter back here to you. And where is Cornelius? Is he at Caesarea? Okay. And Peter is in Joppa. So, I'm kind of doing some background verse 19 in chapter 10. And while Peter was pondering the vision, the Spirit said to him, Behold, three men are looking for you. Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation, for I've sent them. And Peter went down to the men and said, I am the one you're looking for. What is the reason you're coming? Just as the apostles had heard about the word going forth in Samaria, didn't say how they had heard about it. Now we've got the Lord using an angel to talk to Cornelius and then speaking to Peter and saying, hey, you need to go to Caesarea and meet with these people. And so, verse 24, on the following day, they entered Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends. And skipping down, verse 28, and he said to them, you yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. So that whole thing in chapter, what is it, chapter nine, where Peter, or even maybe it's earlier here, where he has the vision, it's here earlier in this chapter, the vision about unclean and clean animals and food and so on. Now we see why the Lord gave him that vision. That's because he is gonna go talk to some Gentiles and has to be ready for what that means. And we'll see how later he even gets criticized because he dared to go do something like that, go meet with and talk to Gentiles about the Lord. And then skipping down to verse 37, we're getting close to our text here. You yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. So we see here that Jesus was empowered by the Holy Spirit to perform those miracles. And we talked about that a few months ago, where it was the Holy Spirit that gave Jesus the power to perform the miracles that he performed so that people would believe. Now we've got that same Holy Spirit that's on the apostles, and as we saw, Philip was performing miracles so that people might believe. And then we skip down to verse 44. And if somebody could read verse 44 through 11.1, it's only like five verses. While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And the believers who were among the circumcised who had followed Peter were amazed, because the gifts of the Holy Spirit were poured out even on the Gentiles. For they were hearing him speaking in tongues, and they stole from God. Then Peter declared, Can anyone with cold water baptize these people who have received the Holy Spirit, just as we have? He commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. and they asked him to remain for some days. Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God. Okay, so very similar to Acts chapter 8, although it's in the end of this passage, we hear that the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles, so now we've got here in this case, not just believers in Samaria, but now we've got the Gentiles receiving the word of God and this baptismal, Holy Spirit baptismal experience. So let's take a look at Acts 10 and 11 from this perspective. Where's my pen? So, pre or post conversion, did the Holy Spirit come upon these Cornelius and his family, the Gentiles, the first recorded occurrence of this for the Gentiles, pre or post conversion? Yeah. Which would you say? Kind of have to take a look at this. Right. So I'm going to say pre. So he brings the word. And it's that word and the Holy Spirit working together that causes their... And I just looked at my notes. Let me see. I was looking at the wrong one. No. If you take a look at verse 45, Yeah, it is. Can we say for sure? Yeah. It's hard because you don't know the beliefs, like, internal. You're not necessarily listening to the show, but the voice and the affirmation to those things just falls under those that hurt. Yeah. I mean, there's some indication that that they were devout. Believers in God, that God spoke to Cornelius early on. What's that? Yeah. Right. And he followed he did exactly what God told him to do. So it almost seems like they were waiting for this moment in history rather than convert No need to convert to Judaism because Judaism is not the people of God. Although I would assume that God-fearer means the one true God. So this is what I had. is that they were already, what this means is the Holy Spirit came upon them after they had already believed. So they were already believers. Okay, what about laying on of hands? There's no laying on of hands. Water baptism is the Holy Spirit before water baptism or after water baptism? Okay. So see we're already starting to see some differences in these occurrences when it comes to the descriptions of them. Yes. Yes. Oh, as a matter of fact, Yeah, I think that's one of the passages. Can you read it, John? Yeah, I'll go back a couple of verses. The very moment three men stood before the house, this is Peter talking, where it was that heaven had sent me to people of Caesarea. Then the Spirit told me to go with him, and doubting nothing, moreover, these six brethren accompanied me, and we entered into the man's house. And he told us how he had seen an angel standing in his house, who said to him, send me into Joppa and call for Simon, Mr. and Annie Peter, who will tell you words by which you and all your household will be saved. Yes. And then, as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them as upon us at the beginning. And I remember the word of the Lord. It said, John, be baptized with water, but you shouldn't be baptized with the Holy Spirit. So it seems like, It could be. You're right. It could be. I agree. Okay. And then if you keep reading that in verse 17, and then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. Who was I that I could stand in God's way? When they heard these things, they felt silent. and they glorified God saying, then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads unto life. So that's how this whole passage is summarized. It's a declaration, okay? Everything that you said, you know, makes sense to us and now the Gentiles are part of God's plan of salvation as He promised through Peter at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2. So that seems to be the focus rather than the individual experiences of Cornelius and his family members. In fact, it doesn't really talk that much about what they did. I mean, there was some talk at the bottom, at the end of chapter 10, where it talks about, for they were hearing them speaking in tongues and extolling God. But to me, it's still, it's interesting that in the beginning, we have this kind of intimate introduction to Cornelius. But no more, this doesn't, it kind of lumps everybody together, they were speaking in tongues. It doesn't say, and Cornelius did this and these things occurred, you know, the Holy Spirit moved in Cornelius in such a way so that the focus would be on Cornelius' individual experience. And it's not, it's on Cornelius. I think that last verse in chapter 11, verse 18, where the apostles declare that to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life. Which, again, this isn't to take away at all from the individual experiences of these believers, and we'll be talking about that later, but I think The point that Gavin makes, and I agree, is that that shouldn't be the focus of the book of Acts. And it shouldn't be the focus of these events. We want to make them that. And when we press upon them that perspective, we start to see that there's some inconsistencies in terms of the experiences between these three passages. OK. It's time to end. Yes. And you know what? I'm just going to say, I'm just going to briefly talk about Acts 19. And you can turn there if you want to. But basically, this is the disciples. And we saw this when we went through the book of Acts in our survey. But this is very much like an oddity. Here's the disciples that were where in Ephesus and they found these disciples of John the Baptist and they're asked, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? So it kind of gets into our matrix up here. And what do they say? They said, no. Okay. Now who here? in their Bible, does it say, no, we've not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit? Who has a different translation from that? Anybody? Anybody have an ASV? Huh? Okay, what about NIV, ASV? Because that is a problem. Well, what's the new King James say? We have not so much as heard whether there is a Holy Spirit. Okay, so the way that that should be better translated, and the ASV and the NIV get it right, according to Gaffen, I'm not a Greek scholar, but it's that, no, we have not heard that the Holy Spirit has been given. So for them to say, we haven't even heard there's a Holy Spirit, I can't, I mean, John the Baptist said, He preached that there will be a Holy Spirit baptism. So for these disciples to say, we haven't even heard that there is one, is probably not the best translation. They said, no, we haven't heard that he's been given yet. So the purpose of this passage is to take these disciples who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and had been baptized by John the Baptist, and basically to upgrade their baptism to make it more current with the Holy Spirit baptism. Baptism 2.0, is that it? Yeah. So, and if you, again, if we go back and we look at Luke 3.16, you'll see that both kinds of baptisms are described there. John's baptism and the baptism that is to come through Jesus Christ, the baptism of Christ, giving his Holy Spirit. And that's what these disciples were receiving at that point in time. And the other point that I think this makes, and we could say here, pre or post conversion, Holy Spirit baptism, they had already believed, right? Post. Laying on of hands? Is there? Yes. And post, because they had already been baptized, right? Water baptism. So that kind of completes the matrix. And I didn't fill out Acts chapter 2, but we can do that as well. And then we'll talk about what all this means. next time as we get into the experiences. So we'll transition straight from these objections being brought to the notion that it's not a repeatable, a model for repetition. And we'll talk about the experiences next time. Yes? So to summarize why you did this? Uh-huh. It's to show that there's some, and I want to wait till next time. But we'll use this next time. is to say the focus is not on the experiences of the believers because there's differences in their experiences. If the focus was on the experiences, it would have been, I think, this would have all lined up with all the passages. The focus is on this commission that the Holy Spirit came to empower the apostles to once for all start the New Testament church, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth. What's that? Yeah. There's closing baptism, and there's conversion, and there's barbaric baptism. In all of those cases, it's just a different conversion. Right, there is. Not necessarily laying on of hands in all those cases. Not necessarily the same order in all cases, but yeah. The point then is, this is not just a paradigm for individual experiences. It's not oral solutist. It's a story solutist. Yes. Because these are events that are fulfilling the state of X18, and that's the purpose. The purpose, absolutely. Yeah, good summary. which is really important to get to the experience part and some of the beliefs that are present in the church today. Right. They want to make it all about the experience, and they want that experience to be right. They've set out a recipe for that experience, and it has to occur that certain way, which just doesn't really square with scripture. OK, I mean, I always hate to end in the middle of something, but we kind of have to. I won't be here next Sunday. Pastor Schroeder is going to be bringing a sermon response, question and answer. But we'll pick this up again in two weeks. OK, let's pray. Father, we thank you again for your Word. We thank you that your Spirit accompanies your Word and brings it into our hearts, into our minds, and actually just drives it home. We thank you that your Word has gone forth with power by the Spirit and that we are recipients of that grace even here today. We pray now for the rest of the day that you would use this spiritual food to cause us to grow and to go forth with courage and conviction in our beliefs that you are the one true God. and that your son Jesus Christ reigns at your right hand, and he is the way, the truth, and the life. We thank you in his name, amen.