So the PCUSA, which is the mainline denomination, they added two extra chapters to the Confession of Faith, which was written in the 1650s. And they added them actually kind of from this chapter. The two extra chapters they have in their confession is on the gospel, one, and then the love of God in missions, which I think really that Westminster Divines got it right in chapter 10. But OK. Acts chapter 19. Can people in the cry room hear me? Do I need to put my lapel? Are you guys good back there? Okay, good. All right. So I think if I'm good with the degree of the sound of my voice, I'll just keep my lapel mic off. Where are we? I've shortened the reading. I do this every week. I just don't reprint the bulletins because I don't want to do what George said on free will and election, effectual calling. We've killed so many trees. I don't want to kill any more trees. So I think I'm going to preach one thing at the beginning of the week. And then I, so the text is actually going to be Acts 19, 1 through 7. And the new title is Helping Defective Disciples. So Acts 19, we are flying through this book. I think this is Sermon 75. All righty. Okay, one through, there we go, seven. Hear God's holy word. It happened that while Apollos was in 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 have you been baptized? And they said, into John's baptism. Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in him who is coming after him, that is Jesus. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying. There were in all about 12 men. God's word, let's pray. Lord God, where would we be but for your word? We bless you, oh God. It is a light and a lamp unto our path. It shows us our sin. It shows us the face of our sin bearer, even Christ. Build us up. Shape those who you have heretofore called to yourself, Jesus. Shape us into your blessed, divine, holy, loving image. And if there are any people, Lord, even right now, that are not converted. Might you use the foolishness of preaching, even the preaching of the cross, the preaching of Christ, to convert them, even as you converted us. We pray this to your glory in the extension of your church and the destruction of the devil's kingdom. In Christ's name, amen. My method, I don't usually state it every time, but I'll state it now. It's kind of the method that I approach every sermon, is I first look for the primary doctrine. And the word doctrine just means teaching. So I'm looking for the main teaching of the preaching portion, the text that I'm in. There may be subsections within that, but I want the main idea. So I start with, in my own, if you get my manuscripts, I start with the doctrine. as I understand it. And so the doctrine that we're looking at here, I will tell you that there are some chapters or passages that are perplexing, that good men disagree with. This is a perplexing chapter. We meet with 12 men that claim to be disciples of John the Baptist. That's the John being referenced, John the Baptist. John the Baptist, at this time of the writing, at the time of the events of Acts chapter 19, John the Baptist has been dead about 30 years. So his ministry concludes, and you get this from, what is it, Luke 2 or 3, Tiberius Caesar, they know when he reigned, John the Baptist dies right about that time, so it's A.D. 25. We're right about here in the events of Acts 19, A.D. 53, 55, so something like 30 years down the line. So you have a length of time from the death of John, now you have these guys, and then also John ministered almost exclusively, well I think exclusively, in Judea, in the wilderness of Judea. And we're here in modern-day Turkey, and so what's the distance from Jerusalem to say Ephesus, which is where we're at, maybe 1,200 miles. So you have a length of time, 30 years, 1,200 miles. And so I'm going to argue that these men are not so good disciples of John the Baptist. So many men have written many papers, killed many trees, as we're talking about free will and effectual calling. on the identity of these particular guys. So if I don't preach your view, I'm going to preach the other view of who these guys are. And we have a difficulty with these men because these men are supposed disciples of John the Baptist, but they don't know the Holy Spirit. They say they've never even heard of the Holy Spirit, which is problematic. And they don't seem to know the Holy Son, which Jesus, which is why the Apostle Paul says, you don't know the Holy Spirit. And then he launches into a discussion on Jesus. So they don't seem to know the Holy Spirit and they don't seem to know the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the doctrine that we're looking at here is the Apostle Paul is the Orthodox believer. Orthodox, why the OPC changed, picked, we, the OPC began as the PCA, the Presbyterian Church in America. And we got sued by the mainline denomination back in 1936, 37. They said, it's too close to the PCUSA, you can't be the PCA. And so we chose Orthodox, which to make it even crazier, to get one of our churches going, you just name it Orthodox. Orthodox means straight truth. That's all it does. It's a compound Greek word, straight truth. And the orthopraxy is straight, proper practice. Orthodoxy is proper doctrine. That's all orthodox means. And then, of course, the PCA, what is it, in 72, 73, they got to get our name. I digress. But when we're looking at here, we're having the orthodox believer The Apostle Paul, he has it right, and he's helping these unorthodox, they have it wrong, professors. I'm going to call them professors, not Dr. Professor, but professors. And so I'm going to show you my cards by my title, Helping Defective Disciples. In my notes, if you get them, I call these guys for myself almost believers. I promise I'm really a Calvinist, almost believer, because I read the English Puritans so much. There's a guy, Matthew Mead. He's one of these little-known English Puritans that only goofballs like me know, but Matthew Mead writes a treatise on almost-believers. So this is a person who says, yep, I'm totally a Christian. I'm totally a Christian. Oh, you're this close to the kingdom of God. That's an almost believer. Jesus uses, you're this close to the kingdom. I think these fellows are almost believers, but they'll become believers by the end of our passage. So that's what's going on. The defective disciple is being helped by the person who knows the truth, which is to say the apostle Paul. This passage opens with the mention of two gospel laborers and the sphere of their gospel laboring, which is Corinth and Ephesus. So the two gospel servants that we're looking at is Apollos, and the second fellow that we're looking at is obviously the apostle Paul. And both of these men, by their birth, they are Jews. And these are Jews converted to the Lord Jesus Christ. These are Jews that believe that Jesus is the Christ. He's the promised Messiah from Genesis 3.15. The Bible, I'll just, redemptive history. The Bible has a golden thread that runs from Genesis 3.15 all the way to Revelation chapter 22. And the golden thread is Christ. God will send in his Christ to crush the head of the serpent, to set his people free, and then he'll be victorious. That's the golden thread. So the Jews knew of Christ from Genesis 3.15 onward, all the way to the book of Malachi. And so these Jews believed that Jesus is God. the Christ, and so they're believing Jews. And I will say this, I think it's illegal, if you go to modern day Israel, I think it's illegal to proselytize in the name of Jesus Christ. You could fact check me on, do a fact check, tell me later. But it's not antithetical, we think it is, if you were to question some of the talking head Jewish folks out there, is it contrary to being a Jew and being a Christian? They would say, no, those are two contrary things. Well, it's not contrary. It is actually a fulfillment of scripture. Jesus came to the Jews, and Jesus came for the Jews. And then he says, I came for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So it's not antithetical being a Jew who believes that Jesus is the Christ, thus a Christian Jew. Moreover, the Bible says, you remember what Jesus says to the Samaritan woman, John 4? Samaritans are a hodgepodge of Jew plus Gentile, and the Jews really didn't like them because they're kind of mongrels. And Jesus says to her, salvation is of the Jews. And so when we're looking at these two fellows who are converted Jews, that's the promise of the Bible. So if you hear a modern Jew saying you can't be a Jew and be a Christian, of course you can. And so we're looking at two. Moreover, I would say this, for us that are from Gentile stock who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, what does the Bible say that we are? We're Jews. You see that. We are the Israel of God, Galatians chapter six. We're true Jews. We've been circumcised. We received the circumcision of the Holy Spirit, Colossians two. So salvation is, as I've said, of the Jews. So the Bible says that the gospel goes to the Jew first and then to the Gentile. And you know the scripture, Jesus came to his own and his own knew him what? Not. But that's not a universal statement. Sometimes there are things that look universal. We think, well, that means every single Jew on the planet rejected Jesus. It looks like it's a universal statement. His own knew him not. But that just means the majority of the Jewish folks, they rejected Jesus. It doesn't mean every single person. We're looking at two Jews that did believe in him, Paul and Apollos. Moreover, almost the entire early church came from Jewish stock. So when you see a passage that you think looks universal, check the rest of the Bible. So primarily, most of the people didn't believe. Most of the Jews didn't believe Jesus was the Christ. Some Jews did believe. And the Bible says to those folks that believe Jesus is the Christ, what right do we have then now? We can be called sons and daughters of God, not in a physical sense, but in a spiritual sense. And so the fact that we have these two Jews who are in the majority, Apollos and Paul, believing in Jesus, it teaches us the truth, this is a biblical truth, the truth of the remnant, the truth of the remnant. I'm thinking Romans eight, Romans chapter nine, the truth of the remnant. The Bible says, though Israel be as numerous as the sands on the seashore, yet only the what shall be saved, the remnant. But I would add that to the church. Though the numbers of the professing churchgoers be as the sand of the sea, only the remnant will be saved. Faith is a precious, precious thing. It's way different to be born into the visible church than to be born again in Jesus Christ. And these people are truly born again. They have faith. Read Hebrews 3 and 4, the better part of Israel in the wilderness did not have faith. So these men are part of the remnant. The remnant are those people that have from eternity been elected by God, but in time, This is in Acts 13.48, but in time, God the Holy Spirit opened their eyes to see Christ, their need of Christ, to close with Christ, as the Puritans would say. Both of these fellows, the Jews, converted Jews, lovers of the Lord Jesus Christ, both of these fellows are intellectually gifted. This is against a lot of modern Christians. Oh, you Christians are a bunch of hick, rubes, or whatever. And I will say this, I love the Reformed faith. I really do. I'm Westminsterian through and through. I love it. Sometimes in the Reformed faith, we pick on fundamentalists, so-called fundamentalists, which the founder of the OPC used to, he wrote a book, The Fundamentals of the Faith, back when it wasn't really considered the same kind of term. We make fun of the, we shouldn't make fun of any Christians. I'm against Christians making fun of other Christians. It's bad form. but we make fun of them. Oh, we're reformed, not like these hick fundies. I don't drink alcohol for safety reasons, and I was called, why don't you drink alcohol? Are you a hick fundie? No, because I don't like to wake up in the bushes and, like, don't make fun of another Christian. It's bad form. And so we do poke fun at folks, but when we look at this business of Jesus Christ revealing himself to these people, we're looking at intellectually gifted men. It's not, these are not slow boats. These are not intellectual slow boats. If you look at guys in the, John MacArthur is not an intellectual slow boat. John Calvin was not an intellectual slow boat. All of these fellows, R.C. Sproul, gifted, gifted men. So sometimes if you meet an unbeliever, they think that you have to be half a chimpanzee if you really believe this. This is not true. This is not true. Francis Turretin, if you think that Christians are stupid, I have a three-volume theological set. Francis Turretin, I will challenge you to read it for 30 minutes. and you will fall down on your face and say you are beaten. This guy is a genius. And so these are gifted men and they're Bible men. So these gospelers, these preachers, these teachers are Bible men. And that's what we're looking at here. And the Bible tells us that Apollos was a mighty preacher. People liked his preaching. That's one of the reasons in Corinth, there was a little party split. We're of Peter, we're of Cephas, we're of the Apollos party, and then we're of the Paul party, which is, that's again, bad form. Sectarianism is a sin. It is a sin in its foolishness, which it happened in Corinth. But so Paulus was mighty in the scripture. And then the other thing that we know about Paul as a Bible preacher is actually a lot of people held him in a low view as regards to his preaching. They thought Paul was subpar. What do you think about that? The Apostle Paul, he writes three quarters of the New Testament, either 13 of the New Testament epistles or 14 if you count Hebrews. He writes three quarters of the New Testament and there are people that said he can't preach his way out of a paper bag. He's directly inspired by God the Holy Spirit. He receives direct revelation from the Lord Jesus Christ. And then in his preaching, people say he's unimpressive. He's really not impressive. The other guy is impressive. He's not impressive. The Bible says, for us as believers, we will share in the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ. So in a minor way, when people thought he was a lousy preacher, in a very minor way, this is his part of sharing in the derision that Christ received. So when you become a Christian, don't immediately think, wow, people are going to think highly of me. It's usually the other way around. So we have these two gospelers, the two gospel laborers, and they're in two different places. We have Orpolis is in Corinth. Corinth is in here in the Macedonian region. Now it's modern Greece. And then what we have is maybe 250 miles to the east, almost due east. is Ephesus, which was at the time part of Asia Minor. I want to make sure I don't stick an R in the Asia Minor, my Boston coming out, which is part of, what is it, modern Turkey. And so that's the places. And you remember why there are these different, the gospelers are laboring in different places. Previously, it was Paul that started the Corinthian church. He went there as an evangelist, apostle evangelist. He stayed for a year and a half. And what was he teaching them for a year and a half? He taught them Christ. They were converted to the Lord Jesus Christ. He spent a whole year teaching them the Bible about Christ, teaching them about Christ. He established that. Then he stopped off at Ephesus for a short time. That was last week's sermon. And he was going on down to Jerusalem to fulfill, I think, a Nazarite vow. And then he said, if God wills, I'll come back. If God closes the door, I won't come back. I'll try to come back. But if he closes, I won't. And if he opens, I will. So Apollos is over in Corinth. And Paul here in our text is in Ephesus. This is one of the benefits. I know this is a small point. But when we're joined to the Lord Jesus Christ spiritually, mystically, when we believe, we're spiritually and mystically joined to the church. So in modern thinking, American thinking, modern American Christian thinking, It's just me and Jesus. We don't even have a view of the body, the church. It's just me and Jesus. I don't need to go to church and blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't need the church. That's wrong. That's not Bible. If you think that, just read the Bible. So Jesus Christ is the head and the church is the body. And then what we're looking at is part of the fellowship of the saints. We have a whole chapter on confession, chapter 26, on the communion of believers. The church is chapter 25, communion of the saints is chapter 26. What we're looking at here is the benefit of being joined to the body. Paul's being called off to Ephesus, and so what about those folks, the Christians in Corinth? Now you don't have the apostle Paul, but now you have Apollos. So if God takes one servant away, part of the benefit of the body is he's raising up other servants, other gospelers, other teachers, and Paul passes the baton to them, as it were. This is why I'm against gurus, like Christian gurus, where a Christian says, oh, my guru, they don't use the word guru, I'm using the word guru, and so my guy is this guy, and all I follow is this guy, he's my guru. Well, don't do that. What happened to the Christian church when Calvin died? What happened to the Christian church when Luther died, Jonathan Edwards died, the divines died? It doesn't miss a beat. Why? Because God is raising up these other gospel or teachers. If one guy goes to one place or goes to glory, another guy picks up the baton. So it shows us the truth of the church. It shows us the communion of the saints. And one of the neat things about the Apostle Paul is, Paul was not petty. He talks about this in Philippians chapter one. All of us as Christians, we have the flesh. And imagine you have certain gifts. Imagine you're a preacher. This has happened to me. In true confessions, I'll watch a buddy of mine preach, who's a better preacher, and people will be like, oh man, he's better than Calvin. I'm like, yeah, he's pretty good. Yeah, he's pretty. Look, he's better than me. He's better than me. Blah, blah, blah, blah. That's petting. This is a breach of the 10th commandment. Read our catechism on how we flesh out. Tony talked about it in Sunday school. We're grieving at the good of our neighbor when we're supposed to rejoice at the good of our neighbor and be fully content with our own condition. So Paul says, Apollos, you minister Christ in Corinth. And if you're a better preacher than me, praise God. If people are receiving Christ better from you, praise God. When Paul is in a Philippian jail, in Philippians chapter one, he says, you know what? I don't care who's preaching Jesus. I don't care who gets the praise for preaching Jesus. You know all I care about? Christ is being preached. Beloved, that is a true Christian, who shows that the preeminent love he has for Christ. All I care is that Christ gets the glory. Give me the work, I want Christ to get all the glory. So he loves Jesus, and Paul is manifesting by passing the baton, as it were, to Apollos. He loves other Christians. What's the mark of a true Christian, that we're all five-point Calvinists, and we can beat up on all the Armenians we find? What's the true mark of a true Christian? We love Jesus and we love other Christians. That's Paul. And so he just wants Jesus to be preached. That's the heart of a true preacher, and that's what he manifests. And you remember, we talked about the open door. Obviously, God opened the door, because Paul's back here in Ephesus. You know, when we pray, oh God, please, oh God, please, open this door, oh God, please, We need to look around. The Christian life, again, as our brother Tony was teaching through J.C. Ryle on holiness. J.C. Ryle's book on holiness is a sanctification book. And I will show my cards. I'm monergistic as far as our regeneration. God the Holy Spirit regenerates us, we're utterly passive. But the Christian life is radically active. So in sanctification don't get, and I'm synergistic in this, so we work. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. I have just not flipped my lid. I really am a Calvinist. So in sanctification, we work, we labor. So Christianity is not sitting in the Barker lounge or like, you know what? I guess God's gonna have to do it. I'm gonna be watching TV. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. So when Paul says, if you open a door, God, I will go through it. He's looking around at his life. Did God open that door? Because I'm fixing to go through it. And so Paul goes through the door, he's back here at Ephesus. And one of the things that we learn from this passage, through these almost Christians, these defective disciples, one of the reasons God sends him back to Ephesus, you remember the Jews in the synagogue in Ephesus, who Paul's teaching Jesus to. Now they're going to pitch a fit later, and we see some difficulty. But he had a favorable hearing there. And he got run off from Jews at another place, he goes to another place, and the Jews at that synagogue say, you know what, tell us about Jesus some more. So part of the Christian ministry, both, I guess, by office, and then by ordinary, we're all the priesthood of believers. So one is the preacher, one is all of us as gospel-ers just by being a Christian. We're prone to get discouraged too quickly. We give up too quickly. There's a little cartoon, I've wanted to put it up on my Facebook, two people see your Facebook book. There's this guy, it's a cartoon, and he's in a diamond mine. and he's chipping away with a pickaxe and then you see him giving up and then he without getting to the diamonds and then the next picture is like he's like a half an inch away from the diamonds. A lot of Christians, well, I'm gonna share Jesus. I'm gonna live my life for Jesus. I'm gonna tell people about Jesus. What? You told me to take a long walk off a short pier? You don't wanna hear me? I'm never gonna tell anybody about Jesus ever again. No, don't do that. If you're a farmer and you get your hands dirty, what does that tell you about you being a farmer? That means you're a farmer. So if you think that you can be a Christian without wearing your waders and getting in the muck and the mire, you can't. This is the work. You're going to get dirty. And so here, Paul gets thrown out from one place. He does not give up. He's like the Energizer bunny. I'm going to keep telling people about Jesus. I don't want to hear. Well, maybe someone else will want to hear. And so, beloved, think of that. When you share Christ with one person, one person says, I don't want to hear Jesus. Don't stop there. Some other person may want to hear Jesus from your lips. And I will say this as well. Even for that person that said no to you, don't stop with them either. And I'm not talking, be obnoxious. Every time you talk to your sister back in Boston, you always have to drop down. You want to talk about Jesus? But always keep that door open because the person could say no to Jesus from your lips on a Monday and on a Friday, they could be in the fire and they want to hear Jesus. So you don't give up. So he goes back. God sends him back to Ephesus, one to talk to the Jews in the synagogue. But the other reason is this passage. We have these defective disciples, and that teaches us that God, even though sometimes we think, is anyone running the show out there? I mean, if you watch the news, I mean, you watch the news or you look at our culture, Katie, bar the door, we look like Sodom and Gomorrah. I'm 59, and when I look out there, and I watched a guy, he was like 6'5", yelling at his poor teacher, call me a girl, and she's like, you're not a girl. And then I'm watching this whole thing unfold, and I'm thinking, this is like madness. This is the emperor's new clothes. Like, who believes this nonsense? Well, you'll go to jail if you don't believe this nonsense. It's madness. Everybody knows it's mad. Am I not right? We all do. And if you say you're going to get fired if you work for the government, it's madness. We think, is anyone in control? Yes. God is in control. God superintends Paul's life and says, I'm sending you back to Ephesus in part to help the Jews at the synagogue, but the other reason is there are these disciples there who call themselves disciples and they're defective and I'm sending you to help them. What does that teach us about the nature of the preacher and of the Christian? We are what? We are fancy servants of Jesus. One of the reasons Christians, real Christians, people that really love Jesus. One of the reasons we're so miserable, and this is true, I'm not picking on anyone. We do get this, like walk around completely miserable. One of the reasons we're so miserable is we spend too much of our time trying to make ourselves happy. What's gonna make me happy? What's gonna make me happy? When I went to Calvary Chapel, I've been everywhere as a Christian, we were in Calvary Chapel, which is a totally different kind of a thing. But I remember the ministers one time said, the reason you're so miserable is you're so measurable. And my kids thought that was hysterical. And I actually thought, you know what, that's rather pithy that he said that, that's insightful. One of the reasons for us as Christians, we become overwhelmed, dejected and unhappy, is we forget that we're servants. Servants are the happiest when we do what? When we serve. You ever go to the horse track or the dog track? I'm not for going to the dog track, but I used to go to the dog track all the time in my previous life. When I went to the dog track, you have these greyhounds and they're going like this in their boxes and they're ready to run. Why? Because they're created by God to run. We have been created by Jesus to serve. And when we think, well, it's all about me, it isn't. We are to imitate the Lord Jesus Christ. So Christ has service for Paul to help these other people. Beloved, one of the best ways to be happier, more content as a Christian, one of the best ways is to walk in the footsteps of Christ, is to imitate Jesus. And we imitate Jesus. Jesus said, I have not come to be what? Served. I have come to serve. We fulfill our purpose, our chief end of life is to bring glory to God and to enjoy him. We do that best when we serve others and we serve others Christ, when we minister Christ to other people, that's what's going on. Now the identities of these 12 guys, so, We meet with these fellows, these 12 guys. Paul runs into them in the upper countryside in Ephesus, and the Bible calls them disciples. Greek is methētes. It means learner of. Essentially, a disciple means a student. Now, the question regarding their identity is going to boil down to this. Who is their master? Is their master hyphen slash teacher John the Baptist? Are they disciples of John the Baptist or are they disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ? Now I'll tell you, there are only two choices that I know. If you know of a third one, tell me later. Here are the two choices. The two choices for the identity of these 12 guys, which will dictate how we take the rest of the passage, is these guys are true disciples of John the Baptist, but they're babes in the faith. They know Jesus Christ savingly, so they're converted to the Lord Jesus Christ, but they're babes in faith. And the ministry of John was preparatory, and the ministry of Christ is obviously perpetual, but these are babes in Jesus Christ. So we treat the rest of the passage as if Paul is coming to help these babes. That's one view, that they're true disciples of John and true disciples of Jesus Christ, but they're immature. Now, I will say some of the big boys like this view. I don't like to go against the big boys, but I don't think that's true. And the way that they, if they hold that these are true Christians, they have to add a few, and they do, they will add some interpretation to the text. They'll say something like this. These guys are saying this. We have not even heard whether the holy, and this is, if you understand them as true Christians, you have to interpret the passage like this. We have not even heard whether the Holy Spirit, ready, will baptize believers in Jesus. We have not heard that the Holy Spirit will give spiritual gifts. That's how you have to understand the passage. So they know the Holy Spirit, they just don't know about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. They know the Lord Jesus Christ, they just know him in an infantile way. That's one view, that's not my view. And the reason for my view, even against the big boy, it comes from the Protestant principle of Sola Scriptura and the liberty of conscience. Beloved, I've said this before, obviously I'm a Presbyterian, it says it on the sign, I'm a Presbyterian. If you're a Baptist, I mean, you're a Baptist, you read the Bible and you think you're a Baptist, and you read the Bible and you think you're a Pentecostal, say it loud and say it proud. You get it from the Bible, say it loud, say it proud, it's from James Brown, but say it loud and say it proud. Know why you believe from the Bible, it's gotta be Bible. I'm against, now if you wanna talk to me about why I believe what I believe, of course, I'd love to do that. So when the men say, well, I think they're Christians, OK, that's your view. But if I don't believe, let's say, Calvin believed the perpetual virginity of the Virgin Mary, so did Martin Luther. I disagree with Calvin and Martin Luther on those things. I don't like to disagree with John Calvin on anything, but I disagree with him on that. So don't go anywhere. even with me, Bible, it's gonna be Bible. Don't go anywhere or follow any man beyond the Bible, even the big boys. So the other side, also big boys, some other names, they say, well, these guys say they're disciples of John the Baptist, but they get it wrong. They're defective. They think that they believe what John taught and they follow what John taught, but they're not. This is why I'm calling them almost Christians or defective believers. That's my view. These fellows think they're disciples of John the Baptist, but they're really not. They think they are his disciples again, but they're not. Now, regarding the other party, they'll say, well, they just didn't understand that God the Holy Spirit would gift people with these extraordinary gifts. Beloved, I will say most of the conversions I'm aware of in the Bible don't come with any extraordinary manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Most of them don't. You remember Lydia? So Lydia in Acts 16, she's converted and what happens to her? She gets water baptized. Any extraordinary signs of the Holy Spirit? No. The Philippian jailer, what happens when he comes to become a believer? Same deal. He is water baptized, no extraordinary manifestation of the Holy Spirit. So there are many biblical reasons why I reject the former view and I hold to these fellows think that they're disciples, but they are not. So Paul says to them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believe? Look at what they're ignorant of. This is what the text says. This is why I can't add the other words. We have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit. Can you be a believer without hearing of the Holy Spirit? Can you be a true Christian without hearing of the Holy Spirit? And then the Apostle Paul launches into, when they say, we don't even know the Holy Spirit, he launches into a discussion on the Holy Son. He sees that they're ignorant of Jesus. Can you be a true Christian and be ignorant of the Holy Spirit? Can you be a true Christian and be ignorant of the Holy Son, Jesus Christ? Can you go to heaven? I'm not going to dump on C.S. Lewis, but I'm going to just mention this. So C.S. Lewis held to a doctrine. This is not exclusive to him. It's the doctrine of called anonymous Christians, that there are people of other religions, when they die and go to heaven, they're going to go, I didn't know that it was really Jesus I was following as a Buddhist. That is not true, beloved. That is not true. So our tradition, what we believe the Bible teaches, calls that a pernicious error. It is not true. C.S. Lewis will say, if you're a lousy Christian, you're not getting in, but if you're a good Buddhist following the mercy of Buddha, you're getting in. That is not true. If you deny, you don't know the Holy Spirit, you don't know the Holy Son, you're not going to heaven. You know, faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of Christ. That's how it comes. Romans 10, John 17, John 3, 16. So what we're looking at is, he says, you don't know the Holy Spirit. You don't know the Holy Son. The Bible says, for those who truly profess Jesus Christ is the Lord. How does that occur? By God, the Holy Spirit. J.I. Packer, he has this quote. Obviously, this is an introduction to the truth of the Trinity. J.I. Packer says this, the Trinity is the basis of the gospel, and the gospel is a declaration of the Trinity in action. They don't know the Holy Spirit. They don't know Jesus Christ. You say, well, I disagree with Packer on that quote. I think you shouldn't. Romans, I'm gonna read Romans, because all he's doing, Packer is paraphrasing Romans chapter one. on the nature of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Paul, a bondservant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures concerning his son, who is born a descendant of David according to the flesh, who is declared son of God by the power of the resurrection from the dead according to the spirit of holiness. That's the Trinity. Backer's saying the gospel is a declaration, a manifestation of the Trinity. He's just parroting the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 1. 1 Peter chapter 1 talks about the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit in the proclamation of the gospel. I don't mean to be offensive to anyone. I want to be faithful to God. You cannot be a true Christian without the Holy Spirit. You must be what? Born again. You must be born again or you can't enter into the kingdom of God. So these folks are calling themselves disciples and that's key to us. Calling ourselves Christian is not the true litmus test for whether we're true Christians. Calling yourself a disciple of John the Baptist is not the litmus test that you're a true disciple of John the Baptist. What do I mean? Did John the Baptist not teach about the Holy Spirit? Did he not? These guys don't know the Holy Spirit. Paul has to teach them on the Holy Son, Jesus Christ. Did John the Baptist not talk about the Holy Spirit? And did John the Baptist not talk about Jesus Christ? Because these guys say we're disciples of John, we're just ignorant of the Spirit and of the Son. Did he not talk on the Spirit? Did he not talk on the Son? What's the answer? Zacharias was his dad, Elizabeth was his mother. Zacharias, when he gets the announcement from the angel, is it Gabriel? He gets the announcement from the angel that his wife is gonna have the forerunner of Christ. The Bible says he's filled with the Holy Spirit. Then the word comes to Elizabeth, who's pregnant with John the Baptist. John the Baptist does what? This is not a proof of baby baptism, but it is a larger proof of the theology of the family. John the Baptist does what in the womb of his mother? He leaps for joy at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible says John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit from birth. And then John the Baptist says, this is why if someone says, I am a disciple of John, but I never heard the Holy Spirit. I never heard about Jesus. You're wrong as regards to your discipleship. John the Baptist says this, while the people were in a state of expectation and they were all wondering in their hearts about John, whether he was the Christ, John answered and said to them, as for me, I baptize you with water, but one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not fit to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the what? the Holy Spirit, and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand. He'll thoroughly clean out his threshing floor. He'll gather the wheat into his barn. He'll burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. That's John. John knows that he's the servant or the friend of the bridegroom. He knows he's not the Christ. John the Baptist is the guy who says, I must do what, and he must do what? I must decrease. And Christ must, John is totally conscious, he's self-aware. Not only God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, he's the one. He was told by God the Father, when you see the Holy Spirit descend upon the Holy Son, that is the Christ. And he preaches Jesus, and he speaks boldly about the work of the Holy Spirit. So if you say, but I am a disciple of John, but you don't know the fundamentals of what John taught, on the nature of God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. We could only conjecture what they may know. Well, sin, sin is a bad thing. John taught against sin. Yeah, but he taught way more. It's not just sin is bad. Look to Christ. So John simply did teach on those things and they are unaware. And my point of application would be this. When Paul is, he's questioning them. This is catechizing, by the way, which is a compound Greek word. And people get crazy. Are you saying that Paul says that these guys who say that we are disciples are not disciples? That's offensive. That's exactly what he does. That is exactly what he does. Now, I'm not saying go to Thanksgiving and doubt all of your Christian family, and then you catechize them, and if they don't pass the test, you hit them over the head. Because even Paul doesn't do that. But that's what does occur. He says, when you believed, and you don't know the Holy Spirit, you don't know Jesus, and you're a believer, yeah. If it's possible to be a false disciple of John the Baptist, is it possible, because John the Baptist was making disciples not for himself, but for Jesus, is it possible to be a false disciple of Jesus? Is that possible? Paul gives them a test. And what's the test? He does it in a gentle way. Paul's not being mean. He gives them a test. And what's the test? It's a Bible test. It is a Bible test. Who's Christ? What about the Holy Spirit? Are you living a holy life by the power of the Holy? It's a test. What do you believe? And they fail the test. Beloved, Jesus says, himself, Christ himself, I didn't make this up, Christ says it. There will be many people on the day of judgment, it's way too late then, in Matthew chapter seven, who say, Lord, Lord, they say they are disciples of Jesus, but they're not. I'll throw this out there. Do you think you could find many professing Christians who will tell you, I am a Christian, don't you doubt my Christianity? Then you give them a Bible test. On basics. I'm not talking on church government. I'm not talking sprinkle, dunk. I'm not talking any of that. Basics. How many gods are there? Trinity? Is the Trinity true? Talk about the natures of Jesus. Talk about what the gospel is. What repentance is. What faith. Basics. Basics. How many professing Christians do you know that wouldn't pass that Bible test? they would not pass. I've said this many years ago. Someone wanted to teach something in the church. I didn't want him to teach because he's unorthodox. And I didn't want to say that to him, so I did a tricky pastoral way around it. So at a men's prayer, I said, okay, anybody that wants to teach anything, they have to pass a test. And I passed out a bunch of Bibles without cross-references, paper and pencils. And I said, you've got five minutes. You've got to write down the gospel with proof texts, and you can't call your wife. You've got to do it. One guy, 19 years old, did it. I'm not saying the other guys couldn't do it, but you would be surprised, beloved, how many people who say, I'm a Christian, you can't pass the test. You can't, you fail. Who Jesus is, who the Spirit is, what the gospel is. Many years ago, a Christian girl wanted to marry a non-Christian boy, and the parents put the boy and the girl to put them up to come in, and I said to the father, why are you doing this to me? You know this kid is not a believer. I can't marry this kid to your daughter. Yeah, maybe he'll be converted when he comes in your office. And he said, yeah, your wife's gonna hate my guts when I say no to them. And so the kid came in, he was raised like me. He's from Philadelphia, I'm from Boston. And so I asked this kid, I'm throwing him Jesus beach balls. Jesus beach balls. Who's Jesus? Why did he come? Oh, he came for lots of reasons. Come on, man, I wanna marry you. He missed it. He goes, this is like a test. And I said, yeah, you're failing. And the girl burst into tears and said, this isn't fair. He wasn't raised the way you were raised. I said, he was raised exactly the way that I was raised. And she looked me square in the face and said, I am gonna marry him. And I said, lady, you think I fell off the turnip truck? I knew that you were gonna do that when you walked in, but you're not getting me. Because the Bible says I can't marry a believer to an unbeliever. So she got a Methodist. I'm not saying all Methodists are unbelievers, but you've got a Methodist. He failed. Beloved, we don't want to know that we're false. We want to know if we're false disciples before we die. Because after you die, your eternity is fixed. And so Paul leads them in a more excellent way. And notice what he talks about when he finds out that they're not true believers. This is instructive. What does he talk about? Who to vote for, what kind of diet, eat carrots all the time. I'm not talking, of course I want to vote conservative, and of course I eat carrots all the time. I'm not talking, but he doesn't do that. And he doesn't launch into a discourse on the moral law, and I love the moral law, does he? He doesn't do any of that. What does he talk about? Jesus. Now you're gonna think, oh, Pastor John, this is so simple. No, it isn't. You know this as a Christian. We wanna like be good Christians and witness for Jesus, but we're afraid to say the name Jesus. Why are we not? We'll talk about other stuff. You should, you know, marriage is between a man and a woman. I think that's true, I know that's true. Yes, tell your friends that, yes. And boys should wear short hair and not long hair, and I'm just JK, JK. So we talk about these other things. Why? Oh, I'm witnessing for Jesus. If you don't say the name Jesus, you're not witnessing for Jesus. He tells them about Christ. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of what? Jesus. Paul's whole life is to make Christ known. And of course, give the cup of cold water, tell people if they're girls to marry boys. I'm for all of that. People are not converted by the law. How are they converted? When God the Holy Spirit applies the gospel to them. and he talks about Christ, and they're converted, and they're converted in this extraordinary way. That's the whole business of the powerful manifestation of the Holy Spirit. I think it's in the earlier epoch, before the close of Canon, get my notes. The way that the Holy Spirit shows us and shows the world that we are true believers now, right now, what's the way? The fruits of the Holy Spirit come out of us. So we own Jesus Christ as our only hope in life and death. He's our savior. And how does that profession prove to be true? We love Christ, we love Christians. What are the fruits of the Holy Spirit? Galatians 5. Love, joy, peace, patience, all those things. That's what's going on. So these people believe they're baptized, the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, extraordinarily. We believe we're baptized, and the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, ordinarily. It's the fruits of righteousness. Beloved, this is the work of the gospel. This is the work of the gospeler. And today is the day of our salvation. Today is the day that we have to be assured that we are true disciples. And by our owning him, he owns us and we belong to him and he belongs to us. That's the passage. May God be pleased with the preaching of his word.