Hey, welcome back to week four of the Restored series. I'm so glad you're still joining with us for this. I hope that by now you've connected with a really good solid group or cohort of two or three gathered together and that you're really growing in Jesus. That there's nothing that would thrill my heart more than to know that this series is helping you to connect deeper and deeper with the salvation that you've begun to experience. So last week we looked at the baptism in water and if you haven't already done so, I urge you to make an appointment or make a time that you can be water baptized. It really is really important as I described last week.
So I won't belabor that point because today I want to get into the really fun part because water baptism was the burial of our old self, right? We looked at how we're buried with Christ through baptism into his death so that just as God raised Christ from the dead to the glory of the Father, so we also will walk in newness of life, right? Romans 6. And today I want to talk about another baptism that brings us into that newness of life and the scriptures refer to it as the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Now I don't know if you've had any experience or heard anything about this baptism and for some especially, you know, if you've been around certain kinds of streams of Christianity, it can feel a little bit freaky and it might even be a little bit fearsome.
So I hope to alleviate those fears today with the teaching I'm going to provide for you. We're going to be in a lot of scriptures today, so get your Bible out and ready. Beautiful thing about recording like this, you can hit pause whenever you want, go back and say, hey, say that again, or where was that scripture? And hopefully by now you're getting familiar with your Bible. We'll mainly be in the New Testament today for the scriptures we're going to look at. But let's look at it like this. When it comes to, you know, water baptism, we buried something.
Spirit baptism is how we stay alive. The word spirit in the scriptures can be translated either spirit or breath. And like when we're introduced to the spirit of God in the beginning, he was hovering over the waters before the creation. But then we find when he creates the man whose name was Adam, when he creates Adam, it says God formed Adam out of the dust of the earth or the clay from the earth. And then he breathed into him the breath of life and Adam became a living soul. So the very first man drew his first breath because God breathed into him. It was like CPR for the first human being.
And that's how he became alive in the first place. And the first thing I want to share about being baptized or filled with the Holy Spirit is that we were hardwired by God for this. We were made to be filled not just with breath from the atmosphere, the physical atmosphere, but we were made to be filled with the spirit of God. It's not something new. It's not something freaky or weird. We were literally made for this. You know, around here in South Central Pennsylvania, there's a lot of Amish in this area.
And I've seen something where sometimes the Amish will buy a house when they move into the area that was built by the English, which to them is everybody who's not Amish. You're either Amish or English. So they'll buy a house that has electricity hooked up already. So there's wires in the walls, there's an electric panel in the basement, and it's connected to the power line or the power grid on the outside. So when the Amish come in, they have a conviction about that and they will not use electricity. So all they do is disconnect the electricity and they'll physically remove the power line that comes into the house so that they can remain Amish and remain true to their convictions.
Now that house under the Amish living in it will have the wires inside of it so that it can sustain power, but it won't be connected to a system that provides electricity. Now let's say an English person buys the house back from the Amish afterward. All they have to do is reconnect the power supply and that house is already hardwired for electricity. No work necessary, no digging into the walls. The wires are already there. And that's kind of what we are. We were hardwired by God to be filled with His Spirit.
It's what makes us human. And so it's not a strange or weird thing for us to say that we're going to be baptized or filled with the Spirit of God. We were literally made for that. Here's something that Jesus said at the Last Supper. And you're probably familiar already. He had a last meal with His disciples. It's where He instituted communion, which we'll talk about in a few weeks. And it's where He said some last words to them before He went to the cross. And during that supper, it says that He taught them a little bit about the Holy Spirit.
And He made a shocking statement. He said, It is to your advantage that I go away, or be crucified, raised from the dead, taken up into heaven. It's to your advantage to you that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Helper, and He was speaking about the Holy Spirit, will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you. So fathom this. You're a disciple of Jesus. Have you ever thought, man, it would be awesome to have Jesus actually discipling me Himself, Jesus in the flesh?
Well, to the men who had Jesus in the flesh discipling Him, He said, I've got something even better for you. I'm going to go away, and I'm going to send you a Helper who's going to live inside of you. He's going to do all kinds of things. He's actually going to do something that I myself cannot do. And here's what Jesus could not do before He went to the cross and before He sent the Holy Spirit. He could not make the change of heart on the inside to make us new creations. He had to go to the cross first.
So in other words, the disciples could learn a ton from Jesus. And the scripture records in John that they were baptizing people. John the Baptist baptized, and then Jesus and His disciples baptized. So Jesus probably baptized His disciples at some point. But that baptism did not change them from the inside out. All they still had available to them at this point were some new rules and some new ways of living life. And so we find this promise that Jesus gave when He introduced the Holy Spirit. And it was after He taught them the Lord's Prayer.
This is in Luke chapter 11 verse 9. So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened unto you. Very famous scripture. It's in some songs from the 60s even and 70s. And everybody knows about that. But not many people know what He was actually getting at when He introduced that concept. What are we asking for? What are we seeking after? What door are we knocking on so that something will be given to us? Well, Jesus clarified, for everyone who asks, receives.
Everyone who seeks, finds. Everyone who knocks, it will be open to them. Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish. He won't give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Verse 12, if a son asks you for an egg, will the father give him a scorpion instead of that? Of course not. And then he says this, if you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask for it from him?
So what's Jesus talking about? Ask, seek, knock. It's not asking, seeking and knocking after Jesus or after a faith system or belief system. It's asking him for the Holy Spirit. It's asking really to be brought back to what Adam had in the beginning. Adam was the first man who was filled with the Holy Spirit because God himself breathed into him. And now being born again, you know, there's this resurrection we've talked about. This is how we stay resurrected. We are filled with the breath of God himself. And so in Luke 3, John speaks of a baptism.
So we all know about John the Baptist. He came before the Lord. He's the one that said, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. John gave a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. So John introduced baptism in the New Testament as I hear, come and get washed, come and get clean. Your sins will be washed away in this water. But just like everything else under the old system of religion, the old covenant, we call it, you get washed of your sin, but then you go out the next day and you get yourself dirty again.
It's kind of like taking a bath. You take a bath, you get all the dirt off, then you go back out and play in the mud again tomorrow. Now you're dirty again. And that's what that baptism had. So when John introduced Jesus, he said, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the whole world. Whoa, that's next level. We're not just getting cleaned of our sin. We're getting our sin taken right out from inside of us. We're having it removed from us, separated from us, if you will.
So when John was talking to the Pharisees and the crowd that surrounded him, he gave this promise about Jesus. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but he who's coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not even worthy to carry, or another version says to tie them. But he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The Holy Spirit and fire. Now we'll talk about fire baptism later on, because it is slightly different. The fire of God and what that does, and we'll get into that later on, because today our talk is about the Holy Spirit. So John said, look, I've got a baptism, but it's limited.
Jesus has a better baptism for you, and his baptism includes the Holy Spirit of fire. So the one that's for us in the new covenant is Jesus' baptism. So let's talk about what Jesus' baptism is. Paul the apostle. He was the apostle that really went out and took the gospel to the ends of the earth. He preached among the Gentiles, and he went all around. And he had a certain way of preaching the gospel, which is why most of the New Testament was written by Paul. And it says that he came at one point, the book of Acts chapter 19, if you'd like to turn there, he came to the city of Ephesus, which was in modern day Turkey, Asia Minor, it was called back in that day.
And it was a pretty big city. And he came there just to kind of check it out and see. He later on became, like that became home for him at a future point. But this was his first visit there, and he came across some disciples, it says. So Acts 19 says this, that it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the upper country and came to Ephesus and found some disciples. And he said to them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? Now, I've always wondered why he asked them that question.
And my suspicion is that there was a certain quality to their faith that was missing. There was an aspect to the way they went about their relationship with Jesus that was just lacking. And we'll see in a moment what it was. But without the Holy Spirit, coming to Christ, being baptized for repentance, just feels like we just entered a new form of legalism. And sometimes the Christian faith can be made out to be that way, as if we left one set of rules, and we got another set of rules in its place. And this kingdom that we've come into, this faith that we've come into, is anything but that. Yes, there are rules.
There are things. God wants us to be holy. He wants us to live a certain way. But not because we've been told to do so. And we find this unreachable standard, like a goalpost that's always getting moved back further and further, and we never seem to get to it. We haven't been called into a life of frustration. And so there was something about the way these disciples were going at that made Paul curious. Hey, did you get the Holy Spirit when you believed? And they said to him, no, we didn't even hear about this Holy Spirit.
What's that all about? So he goes, oh. So then into what were you baptized? Because everybody knew you got to be water baptized. That's been since the beginning of it. Into what baptism were you baptized? And they said, into John's baptism. Interesting. This is during the days after Jesus went to the cross, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven. And somebody was going around preaching the gospel that basically said, John's baptism just means this. John baptized, Paul said, with the baptism of repentance. But he was telling the people to believe in the one who was coming after him, namely Jesus.
So there is a baptism that some Christians, we could be baptized into, which just says, all the gospel is about is that you repent of your sins. And there are sadly some movements within the church. And sometimes we get a little too much caught up in this baptism of repentance. Is that necessary? Yeah, it is. We looked at that last week. It's not just repenting, but it's like burying, crucifying our old self. That's the ultimate repentance and turnaround. I'm so far turned around from who I used to be that it's behind me now.
I buried it in a baptism tank. But there's more. There's more on the other side of it. And that's what Paul was now going to minister to them. And Paul said this, so he was talking about the one coming after him, that is Jesus. And then it says this, we're in verse six now, or five now, if you're following along. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. They came into Jesus's baptism now. And when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them.
They began speaking with other tongues and prophesying. We'll talk about speaking in tongues and prophesying at another time. So just kind of bookmark that, put it in the back of your mind, because I want to talk to you for a little bit, a few more minutes here, just about what it means to be filled with the Spirit of God, baptized in the Spirit of God. Because what Paul recognizes, there's a life that's missing from you right now. So come into Jesus's baptism, which includes now the Holy Spirit. Remember, Jesus promised even his disciples, I'm going to send you a helper. What's a helper do?
A helper enables you to do something you couldn't do without his help. What do we need help with? How do we live this new holy life that we've been called into? How do we live up to the measure, which is Jesus Christ? He's not like this older brother who's, you know, the perfect older brother. Maybe you had one of those, and they were always mom and dad's favorite and whatnot. And he's not like that. He's the one who says, I want all of you to become like me. I want you to be perfect, like the heavenly Father is perfect.
So in Acts 1, we have Jesus risen from the dead. He's talking with his apostles. And he said, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. So Jesus was with them for 40 days after he rose from the dead. After he ascended into heaven, we had the day of Pentecost. And that's a famous day. It's the day the Holy Spirit was poured out. The church of Christ was born and everything really began to hit another level in terms of these disciples that Jesus raised up.
So in Acts 2, they were waiting like Jesus told them to. They said, man, we don't know what this Holy Spirit's going to be like. This is a new thing. We can't find it really in the Bible, in the Old Testament scriptures. What's going to happen? And it says, Acts 2 verses 2 through 4, and suddenly there came a sound from heaven, like a mighty rushing wind. And it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them divided tongues as of fire. Remember that baptism by fire?
This is the introduction to that. Again, we'll come back to it, I promise. And one sat on each of them. So they're sitting there around in this room with each other, just trying to picture this. They had no idea what was about to happen. And this stuff's not even anywhere prophesied in the Old Testament. Like this is what it's going to be like when you get the Holy Spirit. So they're sitting around all of a sudden, these flames of fire dancing on their heads. They go, whoa, this is so weird.
What's going on? And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. They didn't know what was about to come, but it came. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit. What immediately began to happen? They began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. I'll put some bonus material in soon to teach about the gift of speaking in tongues for them on that day. If you keep reading through that chapter, they spilled out into the streets. And what speaking in tongues at the first meant was that they were speaking in other languages.
And it says they came out, a crowd of people gathered because it was kind of weird what was going on, but they heard them praising God in their native languages. So they were from all around the world. And all of a sudden they said, these men are speaking my language. And that's what the Holy Spirit does. It takes God's communication and it helps us to hear him in our own language in a way. In other words, that we can understand. And that's what the Holy Spirit does. So we'll have prophecy.
We'll talk about speaking in tongues another time. For now, I'm just here to help really soften your heart and ask you to be really open and ask of God, fill me with the Spirit of God. Fill me up with the Holy Spirit. I want that. That's what happened with me. I was born again and I was reading the Bible and all along, all that was happening from reading the scriptures as I was getting hungry for a real encounter with God. I'm reading about it. I want to experience that. I don't want to just read about it in a book.
I don't want to just hear about it from other people. I want some of that for me. And so I began to ask and I was baptized in the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands from somebody in ministry. And you'll see in your devotional for this week, I'm going to really invite you to do that, to find somebody who has been baptized in the Holy Spirit and ask them to lay their hands on you and pray for you. If you're part of Hillside, anytime that we open up for prayer or ministry, this is a great thing to ask for. Be filled with the Spirit of God. Again, it's nothing scary.
It's nothing freaky. It's about saying, okay, Jesus, I've given you my life. I've made you Lord of my life. I buried my old man. Would you breathe into me the breath of life so that I could live this new life in the fullness of who you made me now to be? So the main thing about being filled with the Holy Spirit or baptized in the Spirit, and by the way, the scriptures use those terms interchangeably. Don't get caught up on it. Jesus told them you'll be baptized with the Spirit not many days from now.
And then the book of Acts, what I just read to you, it says that when the Spirit was poured out there, we're all filled with the Holy Spirit. It's the same thing. All it means is that we got Holy Spirit on the inside, not just because we believe that we're filled with the Spirit, but we feel it. We feel something has changed on the inside. And being filled with the Spirit makes us so alive, it's actually kind of scary. And it's scary in a way, like if you like sledding, it's winter right now, so I'm thinking about sledding. When you go down a sledding hill and something, you know, everything is just going, it's amazing.
That's what it feels like to be filled with the Spirit of God, because we were made for it. It's like we were a house with wires and an electric panel. And all of a sudden, we got plugged into the power source. And we say, oh, the lights work now that I can plug in my appliances, and they actually work right now. And this new life begins to work when we're filled with the Spirit of God. So just a few things, because you don't have to have anybody around. When I first began speaking in tongues, nobody was there.
I was just asking for it, and I was open to it. And so I got it. So I'll just say this for the time being, about receiving the Holy Spirit. Number one, just ask for it from the heart. Don't be frustrated if nothing happens the first time. Don't get weary in it. And don't by any means allow the enemy to say, ah, yeah, it's not for you. There's something deficient about you. And maybe you don't have enough faith or anything like that. Don't buy any of that nonsense. Just ask the Father in heaven for it.
Like I read to you, like Jesus said, He's not going to give you something else besides the Holy Spirit. So there's nothing scary about it. There's going to be no weird spiritual thing. It's just going to be God saying, I'm going to breathe into you right now, and you're going to feel different on the inside. How do you know you received it? Well, when you read the New Testament, speaking in tongues is most often the first thing that happens. And there are tongues of men, like foreign languages. And then 1 Corinthians talks about tongues of angels.
Again, a bonus material coming on that soon. Some people, this is what happened with me. I just began to bawl. I began a hard cry. And this New York City boy had never cried until that point for anything ever. You just don't cry. And what happened to me was like my heart broke open and years and years of pent up animosity and anxiety and bitterness and all these things that I bottled up on the inside. It's like all of a sudden Jesus said, okay, I'm going to crack your heart wide open and whoosh, it all came gushing out.
And I literally, there was a stain on the floor, the carpeted floor of my tears. I could see I was crying that hard. And it felt, it was like a good cry. We have that expression. I just had a good cry. Some people just begin to laugh like that deep belly laugh of something that feels like a healing laughter that comes out. I've seen some people respond that way when they're filled with the spirit. Some people begin to shake uncontrollably and then try to stifle it because that can be a little freaky.
It's not freaky at all. You might've heard of the Christian movements called the Shakers and the Quakers. And that's how they got their nickname. That's what would happen in their meetings when they just asked for the Holy Spirit. There's nothing freaky about it. It's just what it feels like to be filled with an overwhelming power. And in this case, it's a good one. Some people have the exact opposite experience and they just feel this overwhelming peace. I've seen people take a deep breath and breathe out again. And it's like their countenance changes.
All of a sudden they're filled with a peace that can't be explained except to know that Jesus by the Holy Spirit just filled you with a peace that goes beyond comprehension. Some people fall down. You may have seen that in church. It happens here in our gatherings. We don't make people do it. Nobody pushes anybody over or anything goofy like that. But sometimes you just feel so overwhelmed that you pass out. I mean, people faint. I've watched videos of people fainting when the Beatles used to walk by and it goes, oh, you know, and they pass out like that.
Nothing weird about that. I don't think it's weird to pass out because a superstar or rock star goes by you, but it's not weird to pass out because Holy Spirit just filled you. And all of a sudden your body is so overwhelmed. So I just need to lay down right now. So some people do that. For some people, they just describe it. And, you know, I've experienced sometimes when I've had a refill where the heart just feels really warm. And you may have heard Charles Wesley or John Wesley rather had this experience with the Lord.
And he described it as, my heart was strangely warmed. And he was asking for the Holy Spirit. And that's how it felt to him when he was filled with the Holy Spirit. Because each of us is different, our personality, our experience, who we are, sometimes it can be a little bit different for each person. So don't box yourself in on, if I don't have this experience, then that means that I haven't been filled with the Spirit. If you feel like God did something inside of you, count yourself as receiving the Holy Spirit. But always also at the same time say, that was great, but I want even more.
There's always more. And in fact, with the Holy Spirit, it's not just a one-time event. Water baptism, that's a one-time event. Because you only need to die once to be resurrected from the dead. But to be filled with the Holy Spirit is something that has to happen over and over again. So as we describe it here, we become like one of those souvenir cups that you can get when you go to, say, an amusement park. And if you buy it at the beginning of the day and you pay like, you know, an arm and a leg for this big cup.
But all day long, anytime you go to a refill station, you can just get a free refill. We get free refills for life because we've been a cup that's now made by God, to be filled with the Spirit of God. Mostly the long-term fruit is what we're after, right? It's not an experience with God. It's a new life in Christ that we're after. So mainly, it feels like now we're living life by the strength of another. You'll read, and we'll talk about later on, the fruit of the Holy Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control, and gentleness.
Those fruits, instead of striving to be that way, we find that little by little, just like a fruit tree begins to bear fruit, and the more mature it gets, the more fruit it bears. Little by little, we're becoming that way without striving to do it because now the Holy Spirit's at work changing what we are, and the fruits of our life are changing as a result. We begin to live a supernatural lifestyle. We're able to see miracles happen when we pray, and when we lay hands on people, we're going to see sick people healed. We're going to see broken minds restored and broken hearts restored to God. We're going to see salvation come. Paul said it like this, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ because it's the power of God unto salvation.
It's not just the words of the gospel. It's the power that comes with those words, and you'll be a container that carries that power. Then all of a sudden, somebody will say, man, when you talk, something happens inside of me, and I might not even agree with your words, but there's something about the words that you say and the way that you say them. There's something that's going on. That's the power in the supernatural lifetime. And so, in other words, we're not striving to be a Christian anymore. We're just doing it because it's what the Holy Spirit does.
We ask once, we keep asking. Remember, knock. He who asks receives. He who knocks, the door will be open to him. Keep asking. Keep knocking. Keep hungering after this thing and desiring it, and God will fill you with the Spirit of God. Amen. So, go ahead and do the devotional this week, but this one especially, I want to encourage you. Make sure you do this with others and do this with somebody especially that you know they've received the Holy Spirit. They have this quality of life about them, and maybe they even already prophesy and speak in tongues and have them lead you into this encounter and this experience.
God bless you. I hope that you enjoyed today, and I look forward to being back with you again soon.