Filled or not?

Written by Marv Thiessen

Pastor Marv Thiessen

Calgary First Mennonite Church

May 9, 2010

 

FILLED OR NOT?

Acts 8:4-8, 12-17; Acts 19:1-7

 

I chose to preach a sermon on the two stories from Acts that we’ve read today because the stories intrigue me. They present events that include the coming of the Holy Spirit that seem to contradict what I think the Bible teaches about receiving the Holy Spirit in other passages. As a result, I find these passages both interesting and confusing. I believe there’s something valuable first in trying to understand these stories. Then, I think these stories play an important role in the overall message of the book of Acts, the story of the spread of the good news of Jesus by the urging and guidance of the Holy Spirit. When we look at them in that context, I think we’ll find some useful application for our own lives as followers of Jesus Christ.

Now, I know that this is Mother’s Day and that you might have expected a sermon that would relate especially to matters regarding the family. You may be disappointed that I’m preaching a sermon that focuses on the Holy Spirit. But, here’s what I’m going to do in order to pay attention to Mother’s Day. Throughout the sermon and especially in the story I’ll tell to introduce the sermon, I’ll include some references to the day we’re celebrating today. If you want, you can try to count the references although I’d advise against ignoring the message of the sermon in favour of counting references to Mother’s Day. So, I’m going to tell you a story that will help to explain to you why I find these stories about the coming of the Holy Spirit in Samaria and Ephesus very interesting.

When LuAnn Redekopp, who later married Zeke van Zanten, was just a teenager still far removed from becoming a mother she had a very interesting experience. She grew up in a small community dominated by Mennonites but among her friends, there was one friend whose mother had experienced things that caused her to believe that the Mennonites in the community did not have the Holy Spirit fully. This was during a time when the charismatic movement was bringing spiritual revival to all kinds of people across western Canada. LuAnn’s friend’s mother was not shy in telling people about her experiences and encouraging people to join her Bible Study group that was going deeper in the Holy Spirit. LuAnn’s friend participated in this Bible Study group occasionally and told LuAnn about it so the day came when LuAnn decided that she was going to succumb to her curiosity and go to see what this group was all about.

This is what she experienced. She chose a night when the group was meeting at her friend’s mother’s house since she thought she that might be more comfortable in that setting than in someone else’s home and went to their study and prayer night. The study focused on Acts 2 and the story of Pentecost with special emphasis on how the believers in that story were filled with the Holy Spirit and then spoke in tongues. The leader of the group went on to examine the stories of how the believers in Samaria and Ephesus received the Holy Spirit. He explained that people could be Christians without being filled with the Holy Spirit. As long as they were not filled with the Holy Spirit, they would be ineffective Christians. They would not have the full power of the Holy Spirit to live victorious Christian lives and to draw others to Jesus. He emphasized again that every Christian needed a filling of the Holy Spirit. He explained that the book of Acts made it evident that the way to know that people had been filled by the Spirit was if they spoke in tongues. (Now, that whole progression of thought is quite a mother of an idea, isn’t it?) The leader told the group that he was fairly sure that there were interested people in the group that night who had never experienced what he was talking about. As far as he was concerned, they had not been filled by the Holy Spirit even if they considered themselves Christians. He then led them in a time of prayer that was intended to bring about the filling of the Holy Spirit for those who had not experienced that with the accompanying speaking in tongues.

LuAnn’s friend’s mother came to sit with LuAnn and urged her to seek the filling of the Holy Spirit. She knew that LuAnn’s mother might not approve of this event and that LuAnn would be hesitant to pursue something without her mother’s approval so she told LuAnn that this was a very important step in her growth as a Christian and that if she would be filled with the Holy Spirit her life would become so wonderful that her mother would have to approve. LuAnn agreed to have the group pray over her and they proceeded to pray for LuAnn to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Of course, they waited for LuAnn to begin speaking in tongues in order to demonstrate that she had been filled. After some time of prayer without the proof of filling taking place, the leader began to instruct LuAnn about sounds that she should make that would facilitate speaking in tongues. LuAnn tried but nothing remarkable happened. Eventually, the group gave up and LuAnn left her friend’s mother’s house disappointed and questioning whether she truly was a Christian.

It’s not hard to read the stories we read from Acts today and come to the conclusion that people can be Christians without being filled by the Holy Spirit and that they are then missing something very important in their lives. It’s not hard to conclude that there are people like that who can’t grow to the levels they should as Christians. After all, these stories indicate that people who had responded positively to the good news of Jesus did not receive the Holy Spirit. It’s not hard to use these stories to support the theological ideas that I presented in my story. Those are ideas that I understand charismatics, Pentecostals and others who believe in a second blessing experience to believe. In responding to those ideas I suggest that it’s worth asking whether we are missing something as Christians if we can’t clearly identify an experience that would qualify as the filling of the Holy Spirit. Surely, it’s worth asking what’s so important about being filled by the Holy Spirit. Surely, we want to live as followers of Jesus Christ and pursue experiences that will be most pleasing to God. So I want to lead you in an investigation of these stories and emphasize the significance of the Holy Spirit in our lives as followers of Jesus.

The story in Acts 8 follows right after the martyrdom of Stephen. It seems that the trial and execution of Stephen sparked a wave of persecution against the developing Christian church in Jerusalem. Leading Christians in Jerusalem fled Jerusalem in order to preserve their lives. One of those men, Philip, went to a city in the region of Samaria where he preached the good news of Jesus and performed miracles. Many people believed what Philip was preaching and were baptized on the basis of their belief. The news of these happenings reached the church leaders who were still in Jerusalem and caused those leaders to want to investigate. It seems likely that they were curious because they were surprised that people in Samaria would respond positively to the good news of Jesus. As Jews of that time and culture, they would still have been inclined to be prejudiced against the Samaritans and they might have viewed the Samaritans as either unlikely to be worthy of receiving the gospel or unlikely to be inclined to respond positively to the message. As a result, they sent Peter and John to Samaria to investigate what was happening there.

When Peter and John arrived in Samaria, they determined that the new believers there had not received the Holy Spirit. They prayed for the believers to receive the Holy Spirit, placed their hands on them, and then the believers received the Holy Spirit. The logical implication of this story is that people can become followers of Jesus without receiving the Holy Spirit.

Our other story took place perhaps as much as twenty years later. On the apostle Paul’s third missionary journey, he came to the important city of Ephesus. He found some followers of Jesus and asked them if they had received the Holy Spirit when they believed in Jesus. They said they hadn’t and that they had never heard of the Holy Spirit. Evidently, whoever told them about Jesus told them about Jesus with an emphasis on the baptisms that John the Baptist had done as one who was preparing the way for Jesus. Their knowledge of who Jesus was and what his importance was seemed to be incomplete and so they had not been informed about the Holy Spirit’s ongoing work in the lives of those who follow Jesus. It was also understood that they had not been baptized in the name of Jesus so, when that was rectified and Paul placed his hands on them, they received the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues and prophesied. Again, the logical implication of the story is that people can believe in Jesus but not receive the Holy Spirit.

Do we believe, as the teacher in our introductory story did, that we are not necessarily filled by the Holy Spirit when we believe in Jesus and that the filling of the Holy Spirit is a further experience that we should seek? Are many of us living as Christians without the full power of the Holy Spirit at work within us? The stories we’ve looked at today could lead us to think this is possible.

I think we would be wrong to think that way and here is my reasoning. I think that the overall teaching of the New Testament about the Holy Spirit indicates that the Holy Spirit is equally present in all those who have decided to follow Jesus. Let me suggest several examples of teaching that indicates this. When Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit coming after he leaves the Earth in John 14 and 16, the most likely understanding is that everyone who is his follower will receive the Holy Spirit. Just as Jesus was fully available to anyone who would choose to follow him, so the Holy Spirit would be fully available and effective in the lives of those who followed Jesus after Jesus left the Earth. Then, when Paul gives substantial attention to Christian life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit in Romans 8, he seems to indicate that every Christian is full of the Holy Spirit. In the first seventeen verses of Romans 8, Paul contrasts life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit with a life lived in the sinful nature. I think Paul essentially teaches that everyone who has Christ also has the Holy Spirit and, with the Holy Spirit, the power to live victoriously in the face of sinful temptation. I believe that the weight of New Testament teaching suggests that all followers of Jesus Christ have the full gift of the Holy Spirit present in their lives.

If we believe that to be true, then we wonder how to understand these stories in Acts and I have a few suggestions to help us understand them. First of all, it is an important principle of biblical interpretation that we interpret stories in the light of teaching. When stories and teaching seem to contradict each other, the stories don’t trump the teaching. Teaching trumps story in biblical interpretation. If my understanding of the biblical teaching in this case is correct, then the stories in Acts don’t tell us that we can be Christians without having the Holy Spirit.

The second suggestion I have about understanding these stories is that I think that there are some reasons to believe that God was providing important direction for the early church in the way that he provided the Holy Spirit in these stories. In the first story, we recognize that when Philip went to Samaria to preach the good news of Jesus, this was the first time that the message of Jesus was taken by the church leaders in Jerusalem outside of Israel and to people who were not Jews. In order to confirm that this was good and that God wanted the early church to expand to other people than the Jews, he indicated this by providing an experience that made it clear that the Samaritans had received the Holy Spirit. In the Ephesians story, a very similar purpose was likely behind the story. Ephesus was a very important city and it is likely that God intended it to be another centre from which the good news of Jesus would radiate outward. God made that clear to the early church by providing another Pentecost-like experience with the Holy Spirit’s presence being made clear by the speaking of tongues. It seems likely to me that the author of Acts emphasizes this point in the story of the Holy Spirit coming to Ephesus because he tells us that there were about twelve men in Ephesus that experienced this. I thought it was interesting, given the day on which I’m preaching this, that no mothers were mentioned as receiving the Holy Spirit. I told you that mostly to create another reference to Mother’s Day but also to point out the similarity between this story and the story of Pentecost when the gospel was preached by the twelve disciples of Jesus that had been filled by the Holy Spirit. The author of Acts signals in his stories of Samaria and Ephesus that God was moving his mission outward from Jerusalem and that he was doing it by the power of the Holy Spirit at work in his followers.

Now, what lessons do we take for ourselves from these stories and our understanding of them as we follow Jesus Christ in our lives? I suggest several. One is that we do not need to feel like second-class Christians when our experiences of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives are not as outwardly remarkable as the experiences of other Christians. We are all filled with the Holy Spirit who is at work in us to produce lives pleasing to God. I think it’s wonderful to have the outwardly remarkable experiences of the Holy Spirit that some Christians have and I think that those experiences are real but that it’s more important that our lives show proof of the Holy Spirit’s presence by having the qualities of godliness.

Another lesson for us is that the presence of the Holy Spirit is an incredibly important and good gift for the followers of Jesus. We could say that this is the mother of all of God’s good gifts. These stories demonstrated to those early Christians and to us that God empowers all of his followers by giving them the Holy Spirit. By doing that, God purposes to change the lives of those who follow him by the work of the Holy Spirit and to inspire the spread of the good news of Jesus by the work of the Holy Spirit. When we recognize the goodness of this gift, we pay attention to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives more closely as we should.

It strikes me that a third lesson in these stories points to the understanding that God rather than humans is predominant in the spread of the good news of Jesus. In both cities, God’s followers had preached God’s good news and people had responded positively. Perhaps in delaying the reception of the Holy Spirit, God was demonstrating that He is ultimately responsible for the effects of the good news. It is God, and not human effort, that brings people into relationship with him. We don’t bow out of the call to invite people to reconciliation with God but we recognize that it is ultimately God’s work. The implications of that are that we should pay close attention to where God is working and not forge ahead on our own without that attention and that we should not take ultimate responsibility for whether other people respond positively to the good news of Jesus. It is our role to live lives that bear witness to Jesus and to share the good news with others but it is God who moves in people’s lives as they hear. God will close the deal.

I see this sermon as a sermon of encouragement to be engaged in God’s work of spreading the good news of reconciliation between God and humans through the work of Jesus. The power to engage has been given to all of us who have decided to follow Jesus by the presence of the Holy Spirit. None of us have inferior gifts. All of us who believe in Jesus, grandparents, fathers and mothers, and children have the Holy Spirit in us to enable our participation in the work of God. We have been filled in order to fulfill the good purposes of God.