Are You Filled With The Spirit — Acts 18-19

0:03 Good morning. Good morning Turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 18. Before we start, let's pray. Dear heavenly father, we come before you this morning. We thank you for this time that we have together to open your word.

0:28 We ask that you would open our hearts this morning. We ask that you would guide us, direct us through your word and what you have for us. In Christ's name, amen. Alright. Last week, Jeremy talked us through the first half of chapter 18 which is Paul in Corinth where he meets Priscilla and Aquila.

0:55 I'm not going to do a whole review there because I don't have enough time for that. But we are going to pick up in verse 18. Acts 18 verse 18. And I'm going to be covering through 19 and verse seven. And we've got three, two really basic sections here.

1:16 So the end of chapter 18 is wrapping up Paul's second missionary journey. And then beginning in verse 23 is Paul's third missionary journey and him going on to Ephesus at the start of 19. So there's kind of our high level overview. Let's start reading in verse 18. We'll read the first few verses here as we wrap up Paul's missionary journey.

1:38 Verse 18, And Paul, having remained many days longer, took leave of the brethren. He's in Corinth right now. He took leave of the brethren and put out to sea for Syria and with him were Priscilla and Aquila. In Cenchrea he had his hair cut, for he was keeping a vow. And they came to Ephesus, and he left them there.

1:57 Now he himself entered the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. And when they asked him to stay for a longer time, he did not consent, but taking leave of them and saying, 'I will return to you again if God wills,' he set sail from Ephesus. And when he had landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church and went down to Antioch. We'll stop there. So, in verse 18, Paul leaves the city of Corinth.

2:23 He's leaving Corinth with Priscilla and Aquila. But that's after he remained there for a good while. So, this is interesting because unlike previous cities, Paul was not forced out of Corinth. And this is fulfilling the promise that Jesus made to him earlier in the chapter in verses nine and ten. For I am with you and no man will attack you in order to harm you for I have many people in this city.

2:48 Jesus told him that he wanted him to stay there. And Jesus is, and the Lord is fulfilling his promise. So, Paul goes out to leave Corinth and Priscilla and Aquila go with him. So Paul had developed obviously a very good relationship with this couple. A deep friendship, this deep partnership.

3:11 And this couple wanted to go with him. That's how close they were. So they had worked together there long enough in Corinth and Paul was going to go out and they were like, I'm going to go with you. We're going to do more of this work of the Lord together. So as Paul heads back east towards Jerusalem and then ultimately Antioch, they go with him.

3:29 And in verse, sorry, we're still in 18, we're still in 18. And then Paul cuts his hair because he was keeping a vow. This vow was almost certainly the vow of the Nazarite, which is in Numbers chapter six. It's a good long section there. It's some good light reading if you want to, if you're bored later.

3:50 So I'm not going to go into it. But the high level of this vow is, it's a vow of consecration and it's taken for a certain period of time And when it's completed, you would cut your hair because during the vow you would not cut your hair. So you cut your hair at the end of the vow at a special ceremony and you offer it to the Lord at the temple in Jerusalem. Okay? That's the TLDR.

4:13 Now, the purpose of the vow was to express a certain, a unique sort of consecration. And you're promising to abstain from all grape products. It wasn't just wine but it was also juice and you couldn't even eat the skins or the seeds. Like it was no grapevine products and you couldn't come near a dead body. And Paul, why did Paul do this, right?

4:37 Because he's accepted Christ. We're in the church age. You don't need to carry on these Jewish traditions, right? The old law was abolished. Well, Paul's observance of this vow really shows us a number of things.

4:52 First, it's that you have all of this opposition from the Jews towards his message, right? The gospel. The Jews are opposing the gospel and all of this opposition to Paul's preaching had not made Paul anti Jewish. He never forgot that he was Jewish, that his Messiah was Jewish, that Christianity is Jewish. Right?

5:15 All of the Old Testament rituals could still be used to good effect, to good purpose. Right? This vow, it wasn't... This wasn't a sacrifice saying, This is going to take away my sin. No, that's not what this was.

5:28 This is just a vow to God and dedicating myself. And that could be used to a good purpose. And Paul, of course, thought that these rituals should not be pushed on Gentiles. They should not have in any way come under any of the Jewish law. But there are certain things that could still be observed by the Jews.

5:50 Presumably as long as your fulfillment in Jesus is also being recognized there. But there's nothing wrong with this. William Barclay suggested that Paul's motivation for this was gratitude. And the thought is, he said, No doubt Paul was thinking of all God's goodness to him in Corinth and took this vow to show his gratitude. Now the general purpose of the vow is really more about consecration, I think, Thanksgiving.

6:19 And I think maybe the, there was an intense worldliness in Corinth. Corinth was a trade capital of the world if you will. There was a lot of fun stuff going on in Corinth, if you know what I mean. So, maybe there was really Paul thinking more than ever he needed to set himself apart. He needed to dedicate himself, consecrate himself before the Lord and express his separation.

6:47 I think that's probably more of what it was. But we don't know 100 for sure. Now, the Nazarite vow could only be fulfilled in Judea. I mean according to the law, right? But Paul begins this vow in Cenchrea, not in Judea.

7:04 Although it was ultimately fulfilled later in Jerusalem. We'll see that in a minute. But, so Paul is taking part of this vow, he's already kind of outside the bounds of what would have been permitted. Right? So he's already taking liberty here.

7:18 So he's demonstrating that you can observe this ceremony, you know, still outside of the bounds of Jewish tradition and you could practice just a purely biblical observance of it without everything else that goes along with it. So that gets us to verse 19. And Paul goes to the city of Ephesus. And he comes... So he gets to Ephesus.

8:01 So Paul wanted to go to Ephesus two years ago and the spirit of God forbade him. That was 16 verse six. And now the spirit says it's okay. The Lord is giving him the liberty to preach in this very important city. And there's great results to be seen here.

8:23 So, the spirit of God forbade him in chapter 16. But now it's okay. So God didn't really tell him no in 16. God was telling him wait. God has special timing for everything in our lives.

8:39 If Paul was able to discern it, he could have seen that God was saying, Wait. But, right, this is how it works. You don't ever see it till you're on the other side of it. It wasn't really a no. It felt like a no at the time.

8:50 But, this was really a wait. Sometimes God says, Wait. And he always knows what he's doing when he says it. In 2013, my wife and I were going to buy a house. And we were living in Columbus at the time.

9:09 And we were going to move up to Cleveland. We had been looking at houses online. The market was better up here. Better meaning cheaper, right? It was cheaper up here than in Columbus.

9:19 And we were going to move up here. So we were going to get new jobs up here. So we both secured jobs. I was gonna move up here with my grandparents a little bit early, right? A month or two, several weeks early.

9:33 Narrow down our house list because I could see them in person. We could make our decision and carry on from there. Well, at the beginning of October is when I moved up here, narrowed down our house. We had like two houses that I had got to the short list. And I'm supposed to start my new job on Monday.

9:52 And the Friday before, they call me and say, we're going out of business. We can't buy a house with the one income. I mean, neither one of our incomes was, they were both low. Neither one was high enough to support a mortgage. And so, okay, we're not looking for a house anymore.

10:14 That wasn't fun. Get a job, took me two months to get another job and I got a job in December. We let things stabilize a little bit. We get back on the market in February. The house that I had shortlisted four months ago was still there.

10:32 It's a house that we really wanted. And it had sat there, there had been a pending offer in the interim. They had dropped the price a little bit. They were having a hard time selling it. This is 2014.

10:43 It's not today when you sell the house the very weekend you list it for 10,000 over asking price. This is 2014. The market was different then. And so, long story short, we ended up getting the house for about $25,000 less than we would have had we bought it in October. And God told us what felt like no at the time.

11:06 And there was a lot of other emotional trauma that went on in that four months. That was fun. But, God says wait. And he always knows what he's doing when he says it. So, Paul leaves them there though, them.

11:22 Aquila and Priscilla, right? He leaves them in Ephesus. And it seems like it's at Paul's request. Paul wants to leave them there. He started something good at Ephesus and he wanted to leave his entrusted friends to carry on in that work.

11:41 They asked him, they tried to get him to stay. They tried hard to get him to stay but he said he couldn't stay. And most other translations include here that he must keep the upcoming feast at Jerusalem. That's not in the New American Standard but most other translations include that. Which makes sense given the Nazarite vow that he had completed.

11:59 He needed to take the offering of his hair and go to Jerusalem and complete the ceremony. So that's why he's got to go. He's got to leave Ephesus. So in verse 22, he lands at Caesarea, goes through Jerusalem and then to his home of Syrian Antioch. So he goes up to the church, he goes up to Jerusalem, and then back down to Antioch through Jerusalem, and then to Syrian Antioch.

12:55 This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord and being fervent in spirit, he was speaking and teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus, being acquainted only with the baptism of John. And he began to speak out boldly in the synagogue. But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. And when he wanted to go across to Achaia, the brethren encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him. And when he arrived, he helped greatly those who had believed through grace.

13:26 For he powerfully refuted the Jews in public demonstrating by the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ. It says, after having spent some time there. In verse 23. So we don't know how long Paul actually stayed at his home base. Luke writes it in such a way it seems like he immediately set back out.

13:52 But we don't know for sure on that one. But he goes from Galatia to Phrygia in that order. And when he sets out, his focus is strengthening the disciples. This is very similar to what I spoke about in chapter 16. His focus when he set out was strengthening the churches there.

14:15 And now he's strengthening the disciples. So he's visiting churches that he had already planted. So he's got Tarsus, Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, and Pisidian Antioch. He's visiting all of these places and he's strengthening them. Why?

14:32 Because it's not Paul's sole mission to plant churches and win souls for Christ. That's just the start of it. But building up the disciples, building them up, strengthening them, that's the other half of the work. And Paul's... The importance of that is very evident here.

14:51 Not only here, but elsewhere in Acts. If Paul were to visit us, what do you think he would say? What do you think he'd be thinking when he's here? You know, he'd come up to you and he'd say, How strong of a disciple are you? You know, What can I do to help you?

15:11 What can I do to strengthen your walk with Christ? Like you could just imagine Paul's, I don't know, his enthusiasm and his fervor with this, right? And it's the fire and the passion he has. It's not just for saving the lost but then it's also building you up. This continues.

15:28 It doesn't stop when you accept Christ. This work has to keep going. I'll talk about that more a little bit later. We'll see that more in 19. So he's strengthening the disciples in Ephesus.

15:41 Now, in verse 24, we shift gears slightly and we talk about Apollos and the ministry of Apollos in Ephesus. So who's Apollos? So Paul is still in Galatia and Phrygia when Apollos gets to Ephesus. And by many measures, he's a pretty remarkable kind of guy. He's eloquent.

16:05 He's mighty in the scriptures. He's instructed in the way of the Lord. He's fervent in spirit. He spoke and taught accurately the things of the Lord. So he's got a lot going on.

16:16 And he's fervent in spirit. The Greek word there is literally like boiling in the spirit. So you've got this idea of he's got this stuff in his heart and it's just coming out. It's just coming out. And he's teaching accurately the way of the Lord.

16:30 So it seems like Apollos, like many at that time was a missionary called by God and called by God alone because there's no indication that there was another apostle or another church that he was commended by and sent out. We don't have a record of that. So, there were many others that were sent by God himself. And he simply came to Ephesus from Alexandria. So he's well educated and probably, very likely well traveled.

17:03 And we can imagine that if he was in his youth, if he had gone to Jerusalem, especially if he had an interest in the Old Testament and while he was there maybe he came, maybe he saw John the Baptist. He might have heard John's preaching himself. We don't know for sure. But it's reasonable to guess that. But he only knows the ministry of John.

17:25 He only knows the baptism of John. So John the Baptist's ministry had come, I mean, it had reached far among the Jews in the Roman Empire and it had came all the way to Alexandria, obviously, and it was widely known. But it's likely that Apollos is preaching that the Messiah had come and that we have to repent and respond. But Apollos has nothing else after that. He doesn't know about the full person of Christ, the full work of Christ.

18:01 But he's speaking boldly in the synagogue. So he doesn't know that much about Jesus, but what he does know, he taught accurately, it says. He did teach it accurately and with really, really bold passion. This guy had a gift. What he did know about Jesus genuinely excited him.

18:22 And this passion that it says that he spoke boldly, it's not merely just a skill on his part, but it's this conviction that's based on something that's deeply rooted in your heart, that's deeply rooted in your soul, It's deeply embedded there and it's got no place to go but up and out. So what happens then is Priscilla and Aquila verse 26, they heard him. Priscilla and Aquila again, right? Paul had left them in Ephesus. He left them there.

18:58 Apollos comes to Ephesus, starts doing his thing in the synagogue, right? Priscilla and Aquila are still there. So they hear Apollos and they do something really valuable for God's kingdom. They help someone. They pull someone to the side.

19:13 You've someone who's got a great passion for God and someone who has a lot of power and a lot of gift in serving him. But they're... They have limited knowledge and therefore they have limited resources to really have an effective ministry. So they're coming in, they see Apollos, they pull him to the side and they explain the way of God more accurately. So they set him straight.

19:37 They give him all the extra information that he didn't have to help further his ministry. And so then what happens? Apollos wants to go to Achaea and he ends up with a letter of recommendation from the church and he also has this teaching that he got from Priscilla and Aquila. And so with all of that together he's able to go over to Achaea and do a great ministry there. And he's even refuting the Jews publicly, powerfully.

20:05 He powerfully refuted the Jews in public, demonstrating by the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ. When Apollos went to Achaia, this really is Corinth. And we get this from verse one of chapter 19. And you think about when Paul wrote the letter to the Corinthians, he apparently, Apollos had a really remarkable ministry there in Achaia, in Corinth, which was in Achaia because, right, a lot of what's in one Corinthians is evident of that. Apollos went to Corinth to water what Paul had planted.

20:52 And if you know, there's a lot of there was some tension in Corinth around Apollos. There were some of them who fixated on Apollos and there was a divisive thing going on and Paul was trying to set them straight. And there's no reason to think that Apollos himself condoned this or caused it. Paul considered Apollos really a dear friend and a trusted colleague that you see in Corinthians in chapter three and also in verse 16 there. So Paul holds Apollos in high regard.

21:25 And through all this you see that, all right, Apollos was Jewish. He's described as being eloquent and very fervent in spirit. He has an effective ministry. He can vigorously refute the Jews and can demonstrate that Jesus is the Christ. And you put all these things together and there are some folks who think that maybe Apollos is possibly the type of guy who might have written the book of Hebrews.

21:52 Maybe. I'm not going to say one way or the other. If God really wanted us to know, He would have told us. But there are some of those who think that way. Could have been possible.

22:25 And 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 were you baptized?' And they said, Into John's baptism. And Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in him who was coming after him, that is in Jesus. And when they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying. And there were in all about 12 men.

23:08 Okay, so Paul now comes to Ephesus. Apollos has left. Priscilla and Aquila are still there. Paul's coming back to Ephesus for the second time. And he meets some folks who have not yet received the Holy Spirit.

23:28 So apparently, there was something interesting about these 12 disciples. We don't have any indication that it was customary for Paul to walk up to people and say, Did you receive the Holy Spirit? There's something about these disciples, or maybe there isn't something about these disciples, that prompted this question, right? He realized that their knowledge of the Christian faith was lacking. Their knowledge was imperfect.

24:05 It was defective. He could tell there was something wrong with these people. And they say, We have not so much as even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. What? Okay.

24:21 So by this response, these disciples are showing that they don't know much about God's nature, not as revealed in Christ Jesus. They knew enough to be saved. They knew enough to be students of Jesus. They're called disciples here. But they don't know all about what Christ did for us, his promise to send the Holy Spirit, after he ascended into heaven.

24:51 They don't know any of this. And so then in verses three and four, Paul distinguishes between the baptism of John and baptism in the name of Jesus. So you get some more of, okay, these folks like Apollos who are familiar with John's ministry. The Ephesian disciples had a very basic understanding of Jesus the Messiah and his ministry. Only that basic part that could be understood through John's ministry which was pointing people to Christ.

25:28 John's ministry pointed people to Christ, didn't take people all the way there. John's baptism was a baptism of repentance, not necessarily faith unto salvation. So we can imagine that these disciples would have heard about the coming of the Messiah through John's message. And they had heard about their need to be ready through repentance to receive the Messiah. Yet they did not seem to actually know that the Messiah had come, that He had in fact come, died, resurrected, ascended into heaven, sent the Holy Spirit.

26:18 And they didn't know of their need to trust in the specific work and the person of Christ. And so the 12 Ephesian disciples believe on Jesus, they're baptized and they receive the Holy Spirit with his gifts. The Holy Spirit's gifts, not Paul's gifts. So they're baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. So, again, their exposure to John's ministry would have completely prepared them for this.

26:53 They would have been completely prepared in their response to John's message. And they were ready to embrace Christ fully and be baptized into the name of Jesus. And then the Holy Spirit came upon them. So after they were baptized, Paul laid his hands on them and they were filled with the Holy Spirit. This is the fourth distinct time in Acts where the Holy Spirit is given.

27:41 You had a collection of Jews there. The second time was in chapter eight. And the spirit was given to Samaritans. So non Jews. And it was only by the laying on of hands by Peter and John.

28:00 The third time was in chapter 10 and it was the Holy Spirit was given to Cornelius's household. Jews, I'm sorry, not Jews, these were Romans. And now in chapter 19, it's given to the Ephesians. And there's another laying on of pants here by Paul. So, each one of these times, the order of events is different.

28:23 And we have to talk about that for a minute. So why is it different? So here's the order though. In chapter two the order is they repented and then they were baptized and then they received the Holy Spirit. In chapter eight, the Samaritans believed, were baptized, had the apostles pray for them and laid their hands on them and then they received the Holy Spirit.

28:49 Cornelius and his household, they flipped this around. Heard the word, it says there. So they believed and then they received the Holy Spirit and then they were baptized. And now in '19, they had faith. They believed, right?

29:06 That's still the first step. Then there is a rebaptism laying on of apostles hands and then received the Holy Spirit. So why is this? First, let's point out they're all saved the same way. They are saved by faith through grace.

29:29 That's it. They are saved by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and him alone. However, during this very transitional time, right, you have to think about what was going on right now. So during this very transitional time, God chose to act sovereignly to different groups of people. You have connection with different types of communities of believers.

29:55 And I think the best answer to this is that this is really about unity of the church. Unity of the whole church. And why is that such a particular thing? It's a particular thing all the time. It's still a thing.

30:10 But back at this time, the unity of the church, the big segregating factor was, are you Jewish or are you not? The Jews would have naturally... They have a natural inclination towards the superiority complex here. Right? God is theirs.

30:30 Jesus is theirs. We've had thousands of years of this. We are God's people. And now you're telling me these people? Right?

30:41 So there's all this work that has to go into helping them along to say, there's not going to be a Jewish church in a gentile church. We've all accepted Christ. There is only one church. There would have naturally been a rift. And I think God sent the apostles to lay their hands on the Samaritans and the Ephesians because it expresses a full fellowship with them.

31:11 They're all believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. They were all members of one body, all one in Christ. That's what that's doing. And not only that, why did Paul have to do this? So Peter and John already laid their hands on the Samaritans and the Holy Spirit was given there.

31:28 Why did Paul have to do it again in Ephesus? And I think a good reason for that is that the Lord is validating Paul's ministry. You can't ever say, no one could ever bring a charge against Paul later and say that he was inferior to Peter and John, who were apostles who had been with Christ during his ministry, right? Paul's the redheaded stepchild who came along later, right? But he still, he was a full apostle that was given the authority by God.

32:01 And so, the Lord is choosing to act this way here as part of that validation. And there were about 12 men in all. Luke calls this out because there's the church in Ephesus where Priscilla and Aquila are working. So it's not the whole church who have this misunderstanding and lacking of the Holy Spirit. There's just a small group of them.

33:08 They knew so little of Christ and his work. And they were baptized into water again and this time into the name of Jesus. So it's really difficult for us to say with certainty whether they were Christians or not. But there is something that we can say, something that we do know with certainty and that's that Paul could perceive easily and quickly that there was something lacking, that there was a lack of the Holy Spirit in their lives. And I want us to think about ourselves for a moment.

33:45 Think about yourself. Would it be fair? It is, actually it is fair. It's fair for us to consider if someone were looking outside at you, would there be a conspicuous lack of the Holy Spirit? Would there be an absence of the power of the Holy Spirit in your life?

34:08 Could anyone discern a lack of the person of the Holy Spirit in your life? We know once we receive the Holy Spirit, we are sealed forever. But that doesn't mean we can't grieve the Holy Spirit, right? It doesn't mean we can't do things that will hinder His work in our life, that will hinder His presence in our life, that will hinder His great power. These Ephesian disciples sensed their need.

34:48 They had a need to get right with God. And they knew that the answer was God's Messiah. They knew that. But they had gone no further than that. They needed to go all the way to trust in everything that Jesus did.

35:22 Are you living under his divine influence? Are you filled with his power? Put the question personally. I am afraid some professors will have to admit that they hardly know whether there be any Holy Ghost, and others will have to confess that though they have enjoyed a little of his saving work, yet they do not know much of his ennobling and sanctifying influence. End quote.

35:51 God always wants us to go deeper. We need to go deeper. We take a sip of the glass when you're supposed to be taking a gulp of it. You take a gulp of the glass when you're really supposed to be wading into the water. And you're wading into the water when you're really supposed to jump in and swim.

36:15 Most of us need to be encouraged to go deeper into the things of the Holy Spirit. To go deeper into the things of the Lord. We need to go deeper. If someone doesn't know that they have the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives and the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives, it's fair to assume that they don't have it. If you have it, you should know it.

36:43 Spurgeon also said, Give a man an electric shock and I warrant you, he will know it. But if he has the Holy Ghost, he will know it much more. This isn't something that we can hope about. This is something that we can know. We can know whether we are filled with the Holy Spirit.

37:09 Let's pray. Father, we come before you once again. We thank you that we have your word, that you have given to us that we might know how we ought to live. Father, as we study the early church and all that was going on in this time, We thank you for these examples that we have that show us so much. We thank you for the powerful work of the Holy Spirit that was being done in those early churches.

37:43 And Father, we look at that today and we ask that you would empower your Holy Spirit within us today and that we might recognize the power of the Holy Spirit and the essential work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We ask for your blessing now as we go. In the Lord Jesus name, Amen.