Freed Believers
Acts 19: 1 – 7
Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 04 May, 2003

THE FIRST Christians were between Easter and Pentecost. They knew Jesus is alive; they didn’t yet know the power of his resurrection, because that’s the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life.
It’s easy to assume that these first disciples were stuck between Easter and Pentecost because that was the chronology, that was the timing of it all. What we read in John’s Gospel last week was about people literally living in those 50 days between Passover and Pentecost.
But don't imagine that, because Pentecost is past, we are unable to share that same experience.
I believe that many Christians today are in that exact situation, and remain in that situation, because they refuse to believe that it could happen to them. In fact, I’m pretty sure I have heard people preach that we live in the post-Pentecost era, and the disciples were in the pre-Pentecost era, so you can’t in any way compare the two.
Well, in Ephesus Paul found believers who had been stuck there for about 20 years. It’s not a question of timing: it’s a question of experience.

A few years ago, officials solved a mystery in The Phillipines.
Some creature was raiding gardens at night, and no one could ever catch it. In fact, people weren’t sure they wanted to catch the creature, because it was fairly large. Sometimes it would catch and kill a chook, and it took vegetables, too. It was big enough to break down fences that dogs couldn’t get through. This was one mean beast.
After years of complaints, the authorities sent a team of people into the jungle to see if they could catch the beast.
Finally, they made their catch.
It was almost hairless, stood about 5'7" — that’s about 1.7m — and spoke Japanese.
A Japanese soldier missed the end of World War II, couldn’t find his unit again, so decided to wait until he received instructions.
He had been trapped in World War II for 50 years after everyone else left.

Time can’t change what the power of God alone can change.

So these people in Ephesus were disciples, they were unaware of the Holy Spirit, they had only had John’s baptism, but when they heard the full message of the gospel, they were baptised in Jesus’ name and, in the end, we see them receiving the Holy Spirit.

“He found some disciples...” (19:1)
These people were not Jews, they were not Gentiles, they were not worshippers of idols, and they were not God–fearers. Luke uses a very specifically Christian word. They are disciples.

The Greek term, mathitis, means someone who learns, a pupil, a student, a scholar, an apprentice; even, in some contexts, a follower.
When Christians used it, unless they specifically related the term to some other person or some other curriculum, they meant someone who learns from Jesus, someone who is a pupil or a student of Jesus, someone who is a scholar in Jesus’ school or an apprentice to his trade, a follower of Jesus.
Paul is clear that these people are followers of Jesus.

You will remember that Joseph of Arimathea was a secret follower of Jesus. Another was Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night. There were many disciples who were on the fringes of Jesus’ ministry.
Some of these people probably came to Jesus after John the Baptist was killed. John had pointed them to Jesus, and they followed at a distance, not quite wanting to abandon John, and not quite wanting to be too far from Jesus, either.
We know that the more Jewish followers of John still exist, and are known as Mandaeans. But there were almost certainly Jesus–leaning followers of John as well. These people in Ephesus were no isolated case.

You’ll notice, too, that Paul did not question them about their beliefs relating to Jesus, but about the Holy Spirit. He was satisfied that they understood about the life, death and resurrection of Christ; he was not satisfied that this understanding had changed their lives in any way.

I wonder what Paul would ask us, if he visited us today? Would he be satisfied that we are disciples, or would he have to start even further back, and go through the basics of the gospel with us again?
Do we need reminding that our sin demands a sacrifice, that it radically separates us from God, to the extent that the Bible sees us as dead in trespasses and sins until Christ’s eye diffuses a quickening ray upon us? Do we need a note to tell us that the price is paid in full, that

Christ died, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God?

Do we need someone to tell us that, by simple trust in his death for us, we receive the gift of eternal life, and are

...delivered from the dominion of darkness, and transferred into the kingdom of [God’s] beloved son?

Clearly, the disciples in Ephesus understood enough about those matters that Paul did not need to go over them again.
Yet something was missing.Paul saw their need for correction. So he asked them a probing question, one designed to discover where their weakness lay.

Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?
Paul goes straight to the heart of the matter. He wants to know about the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives, because he can’t see too much evidence that the Spirit is active in them.
That’s a good diagnostic question. Some people quibble over whether is means ”Did you receive when you believed?” or perhaps, “Have you received since you believed?”

But that misses the point. The NIV is more faithful to the Greek original, though both are possible.Paul is not concerned with the theological issue of when, in relation to believing, you receive the Spirit. He is interested in the practical question, “Is the Holy Spirit active in your lives?”
And they answer him plainly that they haven’t even heard of the Holy Spirit.

I’m not sure that I entirely believe them.

In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit does get a mention. He is the Spirit of God, who moves upon the face of the deep in Genesis 1. He is the Spirit who comes on Saul, so that he prophesies. He is the Spirit who comes on David when he is anointed King. He is the Spirit who empowered Samson — do you remember when Samson tried to fight the Philistines, but didn’t know that the Holy Spirit had left him? And he is the same Holy Spirit who inspires prophets like Jeremiah.

But he is a Spirit who comes and goes, a Spirit who empowers a special event and is then withdrawn. He is a Spirit who is only ever received by a chosen few.

Furthermore, if these believers had listened to John the Baptist, they’d know that he told his follower that someone was to come after him, the Messiah, who would baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

So it wasn’t so much that they had never heard of the Holy Spirit at all, but that they had never heard of his activity in human beings in the present period of time. The Holy Spirit was a presence in the dim past, but not revealed in his fullness to all who believe. They had no expectation that the Holy Spirit might have anything to do with themselves, because they were not kings, they were not judges and they were not prophets.
If Paul came here, looking for evidence that we are true believers, disciples who are up–to–date on the working of the Holy Spirit, would he find enough evidence of the Spirit in us that he wouldnt have to ask us if we received the Holy Spirit when we believed?

What kind of baptism?
Paul continues his diagnosis by asking what kind of baptism they had received. They told him they had received John’s baptism.

You’ll notice that Paul rebaptised them in Jesus’ name as a prelude to the coming of the Holy Spirit upon them.

There is no magic in baptism.
Some Christians seem to think there is. It has to be done so solemnly and with such attention to the rules, that you’d expect a bigger flash of light when a baptism is done than if you had dropped a plugged-in hair dryer into the pool.
It’s not magic. It’s a declaration and a display and an enactment.

In the film, The Apostle, Sonny, the Preacher, is on the run. He’s got a murder warrant out against him; his marriage has fallen apart; he’s lost his kids, his wife, his church, his integrity and, to all intents and purposes, he’s lost his mother, all over about three days.
In abject grief, he reviews his life. He knows that his crime is going to catch up with him. But he pleads, “God, give me one more chance to do something for you.”
Then he goes down to the river, wades in almost to his neck, and baptises himself in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost as an apostle.

That shocked me when I saw it.You don’t baptise yourself unless there is really no other way. It’s a community thing. And you get baptised as a believer, not as an apostle. And I didn’t altogether feel right about someone who beat his assistant pastor’s brains into a pulp with a baseball bat baptising himself as an apostle, either, even if the assistant pastor had stolen wife, family and church from him. But I suppose that says more about my intolerance than about God’s grace.
As I watched more of the movie and reflected on what it was saying, I saw a kind of truth in that.Sonny needed to raise a marker, set up an Ebenezer stone, to mark this new phase in his life.

That’s the power of baptism. It’s not a magic rite that operates regardless of us and our needs. It’s a declaration before witnesses that my life has changed. Sonny needed to find a way of doing that.

And these disciples needed a marker in their lives, a declaration that their lives had changed direction.
John’s baptism was nearly entirely to do with waiting for change. It said, “I look forward to the Messiah. I look forward to forgiveness. I look forward to the kingdom. I am washed in expectation.”
Christian baptism says, “I have met the Messiah; I am forgiven; I am part of his kingdom. I am washed in his blood.”

There’s a vast difference between the two.
And when these believers heard what Christian baptism is about, they were ready immediately!

It’s a worry when people know the truth of the gospel but refuse to get right into it. They call themselves Christians and disciples, but they don’t observe all that Jesus commanded, because one of the first marks of a disciple is being baptised. If you claim to be a believer and are not baptised, there’s a line in the film, The Castle for you: “Tell him he’s dreaming!”
Baptism is the first step in making your mental decision into a way of life. If you are not baptised, you disobey Christ and you rob yourself of the experience. A baptised person can always look back and say, “There came a point in my life when I decided to go all the way with Jesus, and I went all the way in, into a new kind of life in him. I know when it happened because I can point to my baptism.”

They received the Holy Spirit
You’ll notice that the reception of the Holy Spirit is separate from Baptism. Paul laid hands on them and they received.

You and I live in this present fallen, evil world. But we are also, through Jesus, members of the Kingdom of God and dwellers in the coming Age of God’s triumph.
We can participate in the future only by faith.So I hang onto the glories to come by faith in Jesus, my saviour, and I make that faith concrete by being baptised.
But the future, the coming Age, also comes to me. The Holy Spirit enters my heart by faith, and makes that presence concrete by spiritual gifts and by the fruit of transformed lives.
When the Spirit came on those disciples, they didn’t turn green and burst out of their shirts. They didn’t change into red and blue underwear in a telephone box. They spoke in tongues and prophesied.

Have you ever wondered why speaking in tongues and prophesying seem to go together?
Paul says that the person who speaks in a tongue edifies himself. And don’t we all need to be built up, even when there is no one around to minister to us in that way? So the Ephesian disciples spoke in tongues so they could edify themselves.
But Paul also says that the person who prophesies edifies the people who hear him. So the Ephesian disciples were equipped from the very first moments to build themselves up and to build up others.

If you and I say we have the Holy Spirit, then we need to ask ourselves very quickly, “What evidence is there?” Because, if I don’t ask that question, someone else will, and I will not like the answer!

The Spirit works with all who trust and obey.

I was talking to a nun, a Catholic sister I know, and we were discussing Pentecost. I was saying that we all need to share personally in the Pentecost experience, that that is what makes the church into a living community instead of a dead institution.
She said, “Of course! That’s why we celebrate Pentecost: to provide an opportunity for each believer to re-experience Pentecost.” She knew it already.

Putting it into place.
So, where to now?
We can’t afford to remain stuck between Easter and Pentecost. If those Ephesians could be stuck for 20 years, how long might we stay stuck? It’s dreadful and it’s defeating to be confined into that narrow space!

Let’s turn with our whole hearts to the Lord, seeking his face, until he fills us and empowers us for his own glory forever and ever. AMEN.