Word of Salvation – Vol. 15 No.26 – June 1969
The Baptism Of The Spirit
Sermon by Rev. A. I. de Graaf, B.D. on 1Corinthians 12.13
SCRIPTURE READINGS: Jeremiah 31.31-34; 1Corinthians 12.1-18
PSALTER HYMNAL: 233:1,3,6; 95:1,2 (Tune 100); 233:7,8
394:1,2,3; 394:5 (after sermon); 326:1,2,3; 326:4 (after benediction)
PENTECOST SERMON.
Brothers and sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ,
The big difference before Pentecost and after is that after this feast, ALL children of God receive the Holy Spirit. Before it had been given to people, too. For how could Adam have believed… Abraham have obeyed… and David have sung of his Saviour… without Him? Before it was true, just as it was afterwards, that to believe one must be born again, and …to be born again can only be through the Spirit of God. But that Spirit was not sending people OUT, He was not making them all Prophets, Priests and Kings! Moses was to sigh it: “Oh, that all God’s people were prophets!” and Jeremiah was looking forward to the time that no-one was to teach his brother, saying: “know the Lord” but that they all would know, and have the law in the innermost heart. That is Pentecost!
They ALL were waiting for this Gift from God, praying TOGETHER. They ALL were filled with the Holy Ghost, and, the Bible says in our text: You are ALL Baptized into One body by the One Spirit….. THAT is Pentecost: beforehand the Holy Spirit – His Power and His gifts – were for some, PARTICULAR people, like Saul when he became king, like the seventy when they were appointed in the desert to help Moses and prophesied, just for once, as the Bible tells us. Before, it was a matter of being a member of God’s people, Israel, but ANOTHER matter of being given the Spirit. You could wish that, you could long for it, but it was not just for everybody. But now… ALL…!
Paul writes this to the Church in Corinth. Were these people then such supermen in faith, so extra-good? No! In 1Cor.3:1 Paul rebukes them and says that “he speaks unto them as unto carnal Christians, yea, even “as unto Babies, in Christ..!” They’d just started, so to say. In that same chapter he rebukes them that they were quarrelling, just as Christians in different churches – or in the same church for that matter – can do today. One of the things they were quarrelling about, for instance, was the various GIFTS of the Spirit, which were there in the early Church to help them over the time that they did not have the full New Testament Scripture yet. Some were having the gift of “tongues others had the gift of prophecy, others again had the gift of healing…. Paul mentions quite a few of these gifts in our very chapter. But, for all these gifts, the Corinth Christians were making trouble, even at the Lord’s Supper!
But now about all these people there, Paul in our text says: YE ARE ALL BAPTIZED BY ONE SPIRIT INTO ONE BODY…!
There is one thing that joined all these people together, and that still today joins together all Christians, that is: they have the BAPTISM OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. For it is one thing to be baptized with water; the PROMISE OF GOD signed and sealed to you, that you too may be a child of God, but it is another thing, a GREAT thing, really, to be baptized by the Spirit of God. That GOD HIMSELF, with His mighty power, with His very own being, touches you, engulfs you, changes you, and gives you that new heart, that new life, in which Jesus is on the throne. There were different people in Corinth, having different gifts. There are people today, widely different still, of different gifts, of different nations, from different churches and different backgrounds, simple tradesmen and housewives, professors of theology, scientists, musicians, poor people and rich people, people with their fights, mistakes and shortcomings, the sort of people you sit in the pew with, and the people who sit in other pews, in other churches, but wherever they praise the Name of Jesus and are born again, wherever they love Him as their Lord it is because…
1. THEY HAVE THE ONE SPIRIT…. AND THE ONE BAPTISM WITH THE SPIRIT.
That’s what the Bible says here! As the blood stream goes through the body, unseen, hidden through the arteries and veins, pumped there by the heart to all the various parts – the eye, the ear, the foot and the hand – so the hidden power of the Holy Spirit joins all that are Christ’s together. Here we see why the Church of the Lord Jesus REALLY IS ONE. We do not always see it, neither do we always feel it, but where the same blood flows, where the same Spirit is poured out over us and into us, there we ARE one.
What, then, is the MARK of that? That we speak in tongues? We find people do that in 1Cor.12 and 14, and skite about that, too. But Paul, there, says that these Corinthians should stop making so much fuss about THAT. These are only the outward manifestations of the Spirit’s coming which the Lord deemed necessary for the first time; but, Paul says, you don’t really build the Church with it. No, he says: what the Spirit does is that He makes you say, ‘Jesus is Lord!’
NO ONE CAN SAY THAT JESUS IS LORD BUT BY THE HOLY SPIRIT.
There is the answer to the question whether you have received the Baptism of the Spirit of God: He is all-out to make people say THAT: “JESUS IS LORD”. Without the Holy Spirit you could not say that.
That is where the world should be brought: to the throne of Jesus! The tongues, the signs, they were the heralds of that time to come.
We find them where the Church for the first time gets on its feet among the Jews in Acts 2, so that everybody now knows that it is for ALL WHO BELIEVE, and not only some office-bearers.
Then, in Acts 8, these signs are God’s seal upon the first SAMARITANS joining the Church, so that later NO-ONE could say that these Samaritans, who were no-good Jews, were only second- class Christians.
Then, later again, in Acts 10, there is the other big step: the Gospel going out to the heathen house of Cornelius, where they got these signs even BEFORE BAPTISM, and well might that be, too, for it was a BIG, BIG step for the Jew, Peter, to step over a wall that had been there for 2,000 years and say to such heathen: YOU, TOO ARE GOD’S PEOPLE. Peter was, after having baptized Cornelius, called on the carpet by the other apostles. Peter! What have you done! YOU BAPTIZED HEATHEN PEOPLE. You went into their home! How dare you; that’s against the law…..! And it was very good of the Lord, to give Peter a good argument: that Cornelius got the VISIBLE OUTPOURING OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD RIGHT THERE.
And this happened more often, in heathen cities and heathen churches. But this is not the real BAPTISM of the Spirit. That Baptism is something of the HEART, it makes you say: JESUS IS LORD, It makes you kneel before your Saviour and say: “I believe, Lord; help Thou mine unbelief…!” ALL BAPTIZED WITH THE SPIRIT.
So THIS we share with all God’s people, all over the world. It is not the mark of the ELITE, the UPPER TEN, but it is the GIFT OF GOD, to small, weak, helpless little sinners, who flee to Jesus for help, and who ask Him: Lord, you are my Saviour, please be also my LORD, rule me by YOUR power within, HELP me, day by day, to walk as a child of light; HELP ME to love Thee, and my neighbour….! Jesus’ answer to that prayer is the Baptism with the Spirit. Have I got the Spirit, too…..? That may be a BIG question. Well, Paul says here: it comes down to that other one: Is Jesus your LORD? That shows differently, in Peter and in Thomas, in the shy girl or in the powerful, talented evangelist, but it joins them all together and gives them great joy; it is the work of God in you, GOD going on with what He began, GOD ALMIGHTY, who has not forgotten about His little child, but comes Himself, to live in you as in a temple, and who will carry you through, that JESUS be your Lord. Alleluia, what a Gospel, what a Saviour!
And so, also in regard to the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, I may remind you of the beautiful and comforting words of Scripture:
“Say not in your heart:
“who will climb right up into heaven,
– for then you do as if Jesus did not go there for you
or “who shall get down into hell”
– as if Jesus did not go through that for you,
but say it, in faith:
NEAR YOU IS THE WORD… IN YOUR HEART AND IN YOUR MOUTH,
THE WORD OF FAITH WHICH WE PREACH.
BELIEVE, ONLY BELIEVE, and this also, this Gift of God, the Gift of Him Himself is yours!
2. ONE SPIRIT…. ONE BODY.
Once I am thus bound to Jesus my Lord and Head, I start also getting an eye for those around me: FOR THAT ONE SPIRIT BINDS US ALL INTO ONE BODY. It is the wrong way to think that the Spirit must be something we quarrel about, Paul says to the Corinthians. That’s what they were doing, and that is going AGAINST the Spirit, that is GRIEVING Him.
One Spirit… One Body. Galatians 5 mentions the Fruit of the Spirit: the first of them is LOVE. Between 1Cor.12 and 1Cor.14, dealing with the Gifts of the Spirit, is 1Cor.13 dealing with the greatest Gift we all should seek: LOVE.
For without love we could speak all the tongues and have all the knowledge, but it is just noise, and nothing more. Without love, that living love for Jesus and all those that are His, we could be very good at doctrine, Reformed doctrine even…. but it is of NO use, then. As long as we are not filled with that, we may as well be badly wasting our time asking God for any other Gifts. THOU SHALT LOVE. That love makes me see…. the body. That is… the Church.
You can start within your own Church and make tremendous discoveries there, straight away. For how differently can that Spirit of God work in your brother who is so different from you! Have a good look at one another: you share the greatest thing in the world! And whenever you are angry with one another… just think of this: One Spirit… one body! But look out of these Reformed Church windows, too, please! For this same Spirit has not waited to do His work till a handful of Dutchmen came here some years ago! There are so many here, who say: Lord Jesus, I love thee…!” and they say it because that Same Spirit has made them too, as He did with you!
It is a marvellous, though sometimes also a painful experience to discover this. Painful, yes, because we then discover how our sins can keep us behind a smoke-screen. Brothers and sisters in Jesus, never give up the REASON why you are a Reformed Church! Never barter away the truth of the Word of God! But please, in the Name of the Lord, NEVER FORGET THE BODY! Never forget to be on the lookout for those who belong to Jesus, too! Never be “just comfortable” with the thought that what belongs together forever, cannot always BE TOGETHER YET. And never, never grow weary of seeking the brothers, even though others deal badly with us, now and then. Always remember: “One Spirit…One Body”. Believe it, it is God’s work. And LOOK for it… for He is mighty. Look for it the right way, not in giving away what is essential or trying too soon to make one super church. But look for it nonetheless, like Paul, the Jew, who could say that, by that One Spirit, Jew and Greek, Bond and Free are JOINED TOGETHER. My, that was a statement for him! Jew and Greek….Paul had learned from his youth that they NEVER could have anything in common. Bond and Free… that was even a bigger difference in those days than Capitalist and Communist now! But people who love the Lord Jesus and have His Spirit….. they are one body…. forever!
3. ONE SPIRIT… ONE LORD.
That is, then, what it comes down to. One Lord… Who has the say. A Lord may command, and then a servant will get up and DO. And what this One Lord says to that One Church of His, wherever they may be, is clear:
Go ye, and be witnesses unto Me In all the world.
Go ye, and serve, as I went out and came – not to BE served but to give my soul a ransom for many. That is what the One Lord says today to His Spirit-baptized people. You share that job with your fellow Reformed Church member whom you perhaps do not like. Can you afford, with such a Lord and such a command, to waste time on squabbles? You share that with your Presbyterian, Baptist, Anglican fellow Christian; yes, with those who within the very Roman Church love the Lord’s appearance, for there are no limits to what the Spirit can do. It may be that we can help them by clearly stating Reformed – that is: Bible-doctrine. That is sure. But then in such a way that we APPEAL to the brother’s heart.
There is ONE LORD. And the world in need must hear of Him. The Spirit and the Lord, they show us visions far beyond what our eyes can see. They show us the vision of a Church without apartheid, without apartheid in colour, denomination or social standing.
The Spirit and the Lord are at work, so that round that one throne, the Throne of the Lamb slain for our sins, also through our Mission prayer and work, they shall gather as ONE, singing that ONE song: To Him that loved us, be the praise forever!
Amen.