In the background on this recording, you may
be able to hear other voices and this
is because there were people present from several
nations and their friends were giving simultaneous translation
to them because of language problems.
If you want to begin to understand the
greatness of the Spirit of God, well, you
can study some astronomy and some biology, physics
and chemistry.
As the wise men of this world are
beginning to discover the fantastic intelligence and greatness
of God in the universe, but which they
don't recognize as being that of God, we
are having our eyes opened by the discoveries
of science to the immense intelligence and greatness
of God.
And the Bible tells us that God created
the whole universe by his Word and by
his Spirit, by the Word and by the
breath of his mouth which makes that Word
audible and intelligible.
The whole universe has come into being through
Jesus Christ.
The thought of God expressed becomes the audible
Word of God and the whole universe has
been brought into being by this process.
And just as my breath is now carrying
forward the Word which is born in my
mind and which is spoken by my mouth
and heard by your ears, in the same
way the Spirit of God is the breath
of God which makes audible, which makes concrete
and real to us, the thought that is
in the mind of God.
And the Bible tells us that the Word
became incarnate, became flesh and dwelt among us,
and we could see all the glory of
God through the human personality of Jesus of
Nazareth.
And it is the Spirit of God which
reveals Christ, which makes concrete the thought of
God.
It is the Spirit of God who has
brought the whole universe into being in order
to translate something of the thought of God
which is Christ.
And all that was incarnate in Jesus Christ.
And we see the full meaning of it
in the reaction of the soul of Jesus
Christ on the cross.
That is where we see right into the
heart of God.
Now the Spirit of God, as Christ said,
would come with one purpose which is to
reveal Christ.
The Spirit of God wants to do nothing
else but to express Christ.
He has expressed Christ in the miracle of
the galaxies and the star clusters, the nebulae,
in the miracle of the Alps and the
Himalayas, in the miracles of the flowering spring
that comes each year, in the miracle of
the birth of a little child.
All these things are just fragmentary, dim reflections
of the beauty and intelligence of God which
is all summed up in the word Christ.
All this was incarnate in the person of
Jesus of Nazareth.
All this was crucified and rejected by men,
spat upon, despised.
And all this has become precious to us
because the Spirit of God has revealed it
to us.
As Christ said to Peter, you are blessed,
you are happy, because flesh and blood hasn't
revealed these things to you but my Father
who is in heaven.
And Paul tells us that the natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God, they are foolishness to him, he cannot
know them because they are spiritually discerned.
They can only be discerned by someone whose
spirit has been resurrected, whose organ of spiritual
perception has again come to life and can
perceive God who is spirit.
They that worship God must worship him in
spirit and in truth.
And the natural man cannot ever understand God
or come into any conscious contact with him.
He is separated by the gulf of his
own spiritual death.
And the new birth is when the Spirit
of God brings us again into living consciousness
of our Creator.
Now, the Bible tells us that all the
children of Adam are born spiritually dead.
With our soul, with our human consciousness, we
are in touch with all the visible world
around us through our physical senses.
We are in touch with the universe around
us by our eyes, our ears, our hands,
but we have no spiritual senses with which
to come into contact with the invisible world
of God's own glory.
Because that was lost, it was atrophied at
the fall.
The very day that Adam disobeyed God, he
died spiritually.
And that spiritual death is really a disease,
a virus or a corruption, a microbe which
has passed from father to son all down
through the generations so that we have been
born with our spirits atrophied or dead, with
no possibility of seeing or hearing God.
And so Christ said to Nicodemus, the only
way you can enter into the kingdom of
God and see the kingdom of God is
by being born again.
But the Greek word is really born from
above, just as the seed falls into the
soil from above and takes the dead earth
and changes it into a living plant made
after the image of the plant from which
the seed has come.
In the same way, the living seed of
the word of God falls into our dead
heart, is watered by the spirit of God,
the rain of heaven, and germinates and takes
the dead soil of our dead personality and
out of it creates a new living personality
which is made after the image of Christ
from whom the seed has come.
Christ is the very seed, he is the
germ of life in the seed of the
word of God.
As we read the Bible, as we assimilate
the written word, just as the germ of
life is hidden in the grain, in the
seed of a plant, so the living word
of God, Christ, the logos by which God
created the universe and made us is hidden
in the written word of Scripture.
The mere letter of Scripture can't give us
life any more than the husk of a
grain can give us life.
But in the word of Scripture there is
hidden the spiritual word of God which is
Christ himself.
Every letter of the Bible is divinely inspired,
I believe that with all my heart.
But to be attached merely to the letter
without the spirit, as Paul says, is just
dead.
The spirit of God and the word of
God cannot be separated.
There are some churches and spiritual movements that
lay so much emphasis on the spirit of
God that they neglect the word of God.
And the result is they are unbalanced and
evil spirits can most easily introduce themselves, as
Paul said, disguised as an angel of light
or as an apostle of Christ with the
most evangelical language and come in and actually
get a purchase hold upon that church or
upon that Christian.
I know it because I've seen this sort
of thing happen many times.
There are other churches which are very faithfully
attached to the word of God but they
are so attached to the letter that they
forget that it is the spirit of God
who wrote this book and who interprets it.
And the true Christian life is a balance
between the two things.
God has three divine agencies by which he
reveals himself to man.
The son of God, the word of God,
and the spirit of God.
And these three things are indissociable.
You can't have one without the other.
If you do have one without the other,
it just becomes a dead letter, a mere
form, a symbolism.
So let us have that balance in our
Christian life.
Let us ask God always to keep correcting
us and bringing us back to the truth.
Yesterday I tried to show how the spirit
of God brings us through a sort of
prenatal stage, a real work of grace in
our heart which brings us to a full
consciousness of the meaning of Christ.
And then we have to decide.
The only thing that we human beings can
do in order to be saved is to
say yes or no to what God reveals
to us and what he gives us.
There's nothing else we can do.
And if I say yes to the spirit
of God, to the word of God, to
the son of God, in that moment God
takes me at my word.
The moment I accept identification with Christ and
I agree also to be identified with Christ
in this world that crucified him, in that
moment God takes me at my word because
he is faithful.
He never fails to do that and he
identifies me with Jesus Christ.
This isn't just a figure of speech.
We have this sort of thing all over
the world every day in every city.
We have contracts being formed, signatures being put
on bits of paper, only a bit of
paper, only a bit of ink, but those
signatures bind men, companies, countries and sometimes continents
to a certain line of action.
And every day all over the world there
are people being married, young fellows and girls
who sign a document and make a vow.
But that little bit of paper and that
little bit of ink and that mere word
or two that is pronounced is sufficient to
change the whole course of the life of
those two.
And so when God makes a contract with
us, when he makes his new testament, his
new covenant with us, it isn't just a
bit of paper, it isn't just a mere
promise in ink written in the Bible, it's
a real thing which changes the whole course
of our existence.
And when God says he identifies us with
Christ, even though we may not feel anything,
just as you may not feel anything when
I put a check in your hand, signed
perhaps by Jonathan McGrostie for a million dollars,
that you may not feel any different, except
that you can just feel the little sort
of feel of the paper in your fingers,
but you may not feel anything else at
all, but if you've got that check in
your hand and it's made out in your
name and dear brother Jonathan has come into
a fortune, well, that piece of paper changes
all your future life, all your future existence.
And so God gives us, so to speak,
his little piece of paper, his check, and
it's a contract, the word covenant or testament
means a contract or a will, and it's
binding.
And in that moment I belong to Jesus
Christ, therefore my sin belongs to Jesus Christ,
becomes his sin.
My heart also now belongs to Jesus Christ,
and I have no right over myself any
more.
I have given myself to him.
But at the same moment Jesus Christ gives
himself to me, just as in marriage, the
boy and the girl give themselves to each
other totally, forever, with no strings attached.
So Jesus Christ and I, we give ourselves
to each other.
And Jesus Christ gives me his death.
He has died, so his death is mine.
And he gives me his righteousness, and he
gives me his life.
And these things really become mine.
And as I say, it isn't a figure
of speech, and all of us who have
been really born again, we know this is
true.
It really does mean everything in the world.
So when I believe in Christ, the Spirit
of God immediately acts.
It's one great act which just fuses me
with Jesus Christ and integrates me into God.
But the New Testament shows us this act
in five phases, which all happen simultaneously.
There is a logical order, if you like,
but I don't think we can consider there's
a chronological order.
God, in any case, is outside of time
in his working.
Now I'd like to look at these five
operations of the Spirit of God which happen
simultaneously at the new birth.
And here again we're up against a problem
of terminology.
I think some of you will possibly be
shocked, or you'll just mildly disagree with me,
or question what I say.
But please remember that Christ has told us
we've got to love each other.
And even if you think my doctrine is
right up the pole, please go on loving
me.
And I'll try and do the same, so
far as you're concerned.
But I'm just going to try to show
you what I believe is the biblical terminology.
Now, I believe it's more important to have
an authentic experience of God, of the Spirit
of God, of Christ, than to have a
mere correct terminology without the experience.
And I know many Christians who have had
a really authentic experience of God and his
Spirit.
But who get their terminology, as I believe,
mixed up.
Well, I just say hallelujah, I'm glad you
had the experience, brother.
But if ever we have time to sit
down and look at the Bible together, I'd
like to get that chap clear on his
terminology.
If he doesn't agree with me about terminology,
well I say never mind, brother, I love
you, and God bless you.
But it is much better if we can
get the terminology right.
Because if we get the terminology mixed up,
it does leave the door open to a
lot of confusion, and we can even be
led to seek illusory experiences, which are not
the ones which are really put before us
in Scripture.
So bear with me as I go through
these next minutes with you, please.
I'll just say, give you a list of
these five things which I believe happen simultaneously.
The New Testament states quite clearly that all
these things have already happened to the believer.
Nowhere is the believer told to seek any
of these things.
But every passage that mentions them, mentions them
as applicable to all believers without distinction, and
in the past or perfect tense.
The first thing, don't be angry with me,
is the baptism of the Spirit of God.
The second thing is the indwelling of the
Spirit of God, or the presence of the
Spirit of God in us.
The third is the new birth, the birth
of the Spirit, spiritual regeneration.
The fourth is the seal of the Spirit,
and the fifth is the anointing of the
Spirit.
Now I repeat, every passage in the New
Testament which mentions these words in connection with
the believer, and in the case of baptism,
referring to spiritual baptism, show that every believer
has already received these things without distinction.
You just take your Greek dictionary and Greek
lexicon, if you've got one, and if you
haven't, well, your English concordance, and your Greek
concordance, if you've got it, and just go
through your New Testament studying every mention of
these words in all their different forms.
And I challenge anybody to find any other
conclusion.
I've been through my Greek Testament many, many
times on this subject as well as many
others, and I know before the Lord that
what I'm saying is true.
Now, the first thing logically, if not chronologically,
that happens then when I believe in Christ
is that the Spirit of God baptizes me.
Now, many Christians use the term baptism of
the Spirit for an experience or experiences which
happen after conversion, after the new birth.
Well, I don't want to quarrel with you
about that.
If you've had a wonderful experience of the
Lord and you call it the baptism of
the Spirit, well, I'm not going to quarrel
with you.
But I don't call that baptism, because I
don't believe the New Testament calls it baptism.
There are several words in the Bible, in
fact many words to describe such an experience.
Perhaps the most useful word, and the clearest
word of all, is the fullness of the
Spirit.
And during my talk with you, I'm going
to use these two terms, baptism and fullness,
as two quite distinct things.
We should not confuse the fullness of the
Spirit with the baptism of the Spirit.
The fullness of the Spirit in the New
Testament is shown to be a progressive experience,
an experience which you can lose, which you
can recover, of which you can get more
and more and more.
Whereas the baptism of the Spirit is one
initial act which takes place, as I believe,
at the moment you believe in Jesus Christ.
Now, that doesn't mean that many Christians don't
have a fantastic experience of God sometime after
their conversion.
But that is mainly due to the fact
that the Gospel, as it is preached and
presented, and as it is lived out in
the churches today, is usually of such a
poor quality, so presented very often in such
a diminished and watered-down form, that souls,
when they're born again, are often born spiritually
weak.
And instead of entering into a church or
a group of Christians that's absolutely on fire
for Christ, where Christ is manifestly present and
everybody's in love with God and loves one
another, they come into churches which are virtually
spiritual refrigerators.
And many people who've been born again in
these conditions have to stumble along for years,
very often in spiritual bondage in tight sectarian
systems, without knowing what the fullness really of
the life in Christ is.
And then one day they meet somebody who
says there's something much better than that, and
you seek it and you get it.
Well, that's the important thing.
It doesn't matter so much what you call
it.
And I believe that many Christians need such
an experience, but don't imagine that that experience
is all you can get.
If you've had such an experience of God,
well, now prepare for the next one.
I once heard of a dear old lady
who came to a friend of mine and
said, Oh, dear Dr. So-and-so, what
shall I do?
I've lost my second blessing.
He said, Well, what about a third?
Well, I know I've had many from the
Lord, and I know I haven't had enough,
I'm seeking more now.
I feel I've barely even begun.
God isn't limited to a second blessing.
The universe can't contain God.
All the wisdom and energy and intelligence and
beauty that exists in the universe is only
a dim, fragmentary reflection of what is in
the heart of God.
Who has ever been able to contain God
and keep Him?
Solomon, after he'd built his most marvellous temple,
could only say, How can God accept to
live in a thing like this, when even
the universe can't contain Him?
Then let's limit God.
Now, let us examine for a few minutes
the meaning...
Let us examine for a few minutes the
meaning of baptism.
First of all, the meaning of the word
itself.
The Greek word βαπτίζω, the verb and the
noun βαπτισμός, means to bury something in a
liquid, to immerse.
When you wash your hands and do the
washing up, or when you have a bath,
if you were speaking in Greek, you would
say, I've just baptised myself, oh, I'm going
to baptise the crockery.
But somehow we've given a peculiar, mystic aura
to the word baptism, and we've forgotten what
it basically means.
Well, when the early disciples and Christ himself
baptised their converts, what did they mean?
What were they getting at?
Well, the whole New Testament teaches us that
it was a picture, a symbol of burial.
The moment I believe in Christ, the Spirit
of God identifies me with Him, and in
that moment God reckons I'm dead with Christ,
buried with Christ.
I've died for my sins.
And then, the very same day probably, in
the New Testament times it was like this,
I would want the whole village, the whole
town, the whole countryside to know what has
happened to me.
I'm still too young in the faith to
give a theological discourse, I can't explain all
the doctrine of it, but at least I
can get the apostle who's converted me to
duck me in the village pond and lift
me up again, and then as I come
out dripping I can say to everybody, well,
that's a picture of what's happened to me.
I'm dead, and now I'm alive again, I've
got a new life.
I'm dead, all my sins are down in
the bottom of the old mud pond.
And the early Christians used to get baptised,
the early Christians used to get baptised as
soon as they were converted.
It was simply a picture of what had
already happened to them.
In other words, they had already been baptised
spiritually.
And so baptism in the early church was
a picture of death and burial, followed by
resurrection.
What else does baptism mean?
What else does water baptism mean?
What other reality could it convey?
Water baptism is a picture of what, if
not of spiritual baptism?
But in the New Testament we are given
only two symbols, only two ceremonies by Christ,
breaking of bread and baptism, and both these
symbols always follow the reality.
You don't break bread until you have actually
begun to partake of Christ.
And you don't get yourself baptised in water
until you have actually been baptised spiritually.
Otherwise it's a nonsensical rite.
What are you being baptised for?
What are you representing?
What are you trying to say?
And if you do get yourself baptised in
water before you're baptised by the Spirit, really
it's amounting to a magical rite.
In fact, I've met people who've said, you
can't have the baptism of the Spirit until
you've been baptised in water.
We've come right back to the Roman Catholic
position there, where you've got to be baptised
and have the rites of the church before
you can be saved.
Now this is the very opposite of what
the New Testament teaches.
Then what did John the Baptist mean when
he started baptising?
He was the man who introduced baptism into
the stream of biblical thought.
Where did he get the idea of baptism?
He didn't just pull it out of the
air.
He was preparing men for Messiah.
But all the teachers in the New Testament,
Christ himself drew their teaching and their symbolism
from the Old Testament.
What could there be in the Old Testament
which made John the Baptist use this symbolism
of baptism?
Having to die to self, die to the
world, die to the devil, die to sin,
in order now to be raised by God,
to live a new life with God, with
the power of the Spirit of God.
Well, of course, John the Baptist knew his
Bible.
He knew the story of Noah and the
flood.
And Peter, in his epistle, 1st Epistle, chapter
3, takes that thought up and we look
at that passage.
Peter speaks of a baptism that actually does
save us.
1 Peter 3, and verse 20.
Christ had been preached to the spirits in
prison, who formerly did not obey when God's
patience waited in the days of Noah during
the building of the ark, in which a
few, that is, eight persons were saved through
water.
And baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves
you.
I don't much like this standard version translation.
In the case of Noah's flood, these people
were saved through the water, through the flood.
It wasn't the flood that saved them.
It was the ark that saved them.
They went through the flood in the ark,
just as we go through death, hidden in
our ark, which is Christ.
And Peter says that this is a picture
of the baptism that now saves us.
So there is a baptism that actually saves
us.
And Noah's flood was a picture of this
baptism.
Well, isn't this clear?
Just as Noah was saved through the flood
by being hidden in the ark, so we
are saved as we go through the baptism
of death, hidden in Christ.
Well, that is why John the Baptist began
to baptize.
But there wasn't only the flood.
There was also the Red Sea.
When Israel came out of Egypt, they had
to go through death.
There was no other way of escaping from
their slavery in Egypt.
They had to go right into death, right
into the sea.
But they went through it dry shod.
And they came out the other side to
live a new life.
And that same Red Sea, which was death
to them, but allowed them to come through
death into life, was destruction to the enemy
that pursued them.
And Paul also takes up this thought in
1 Corinthians 10.
He alludes to the Red Sea as a
picture of baptism.
In chapter 10, the first four verses, he
says, I want you to know, brethren, that
our fathers were all under the cloud and
all passed through the sea, and all were
baptized, just as all Christians have been baptized.
All Israel was baptized into Moses in the
cloud and in the sea.
And all ate the same spiritual food, supernatural
food, and all drank the same supernatural drink,
for they drank from the rock which followed
them, and that rock was Christ.
So Paul says that all the Israelites coming
out of Egypt were baptized, the carnal ones
as well as the spiritual ones.
They were all delivered, they were all saved
by that baptism.
And Paul, in verse 6, says, These things
are warnings for us.
And a little further down, in verse 11,
he says, These things happened to them as
a warning, but were written down for our
instruction, upon whom the end of the ages
has come.
So you see, the apostles understood baptism in
that same sense.
And I have no doubt that John the
Baptist also thought of the baptism of Israel
in the Jordan as they crossed into the
Promised Land, the baptism of Naaman in the
Jordan, out of which he came healed of
his leprosy, the baptism of Jonah in the
whale's belly, at least the cachalot's belly, and
in the depths of the sea for three
days and nights, out of which he came
as a resurrected man to go with a
living message to the great city of Nineveh,
which he converted, or brought to repentance.
All these things were pictures in the Old
Testament which gave the baptism of the New
Testament a background meaning.
The apostles weren't at all mistaken.
It wasn't a vague and a woolly idea
for them.
It was very clear.
The Church, all down through the many centuries
since, has so complicated the simplicity of Christ,
the simplicity of the breaking of bread, the
simplicity of baptism, the simplicity of Christian fellowship
and love.
All these things have been chopped up into
compartments and labelled and made causes of division
and conflict, instead of uniting us all in
one desire, to love our Lord and to
witness for him, and to love one another
and live out Christ one with another.
How simple the Christian life is.
How simple the faith of Christ is.
How complicated we men are.
In France I often say, oh how simple
Jesus Christ is and how complicated the Church
is.
If only we could recover the simplicity of
Christ.
99.5% of all our problems would
just vanish away today.
What problem have we really got?
We've only got one problem in this world.
It's how to get the world evangelised and
get as many people saved from hell as
possible.
That's the only problem really we've got.
And if we can all unite in solving
that problem, as well as the Lord will
enable us to, well, our problem is solved.
All our other problems are really just footling
little things that hardly matter.
They just matter perhaps for a few years.
In eternity what will it matter whether you
had arthritis or not?
What will it matter if God healed you
or if he didn't?
What will it matter if you shed 20
tears or one tear?
What will it matter if your tummy was
always full or sometimes empty?
In eternity, if you're living your life out
for Christ and fulfilling all your eternal destiny,
what do these other things matter?
What matters in eternity is whether you've been
able to reap in a harvest of souls
and save them from hell, and whether they're
all there around you and thanking you for
all eternity for telling them about Christ.
But then what did Christ himself understand by
baptism?
Let us look at Matthew 3.
Christ himself was baptised by John the Baptist.
At the end of chapter 3, verse 13,
Jesus came from Galilee to John to be
baptised by him.
And John said, No, I'm the chap who
ought to be baptised by you.
You don't need to be baptised.
John was baptising people because he was trying
to point out to them the need to
die to their old life and to live
for the new life for the Messiah who
was coming.
John said to Christ, You don't need to
be baptised.
Christ said, Yes, I do.
I've come into the world for that very
purpose, to die and be buried.
And I want to begin my ministry with
this symbolic act of death and burying.
I want everybody to understand that this is
what I've come into the world for.
And so he said, This is how the
righteousness of God is going to be fulfilled.
That's how Christ began his ministry.
And then in Luke chapter 12 and verse
50, I think, Christ again speaks of his
baptism.
Luke 12 and verse 50, he said, I
have a baptism to be baptised with, and
how am I constrained until it is accomplished?
In other words, Christ considered that his real
baptism was still future.
In our case, we're baptised in water after
we've been born again, after we've been through
the experience.
But in Christ's case, it was a symbol
before the experience.
And his is the only case where the
symbol comes before the real experience.
Christ considered then, after two and a half
years of ministry approximately, that he was still
waiting for his baptism.
And it was going to be a terrible
baptism.
He just wanted to get it over.
The nearer it came, the more agonising did
the prospect become.
And in the garden of Gethsemane, he wept
tears of blood, and sweat tears of blood,
at the thought of the baptism he was
going to go through the next day.
That was Christ's baptism.
Now let us see what Paul says in
Romans chapter 6, speaking again of baptism.
And this is the clearest passage in the
whole New Testament about spiritual baptism.
And this, I believe, must be taken as
the key to the whole understanding of the
problem, of the question of baptism.
Paul cannot be talking about water baptism in
this chapter, because like Peter in 1 Peter
3, he's talking about a baptism that saves
us, and that delivers us from our sins.
In chapter 6, verse 1, Paul says, Are
we to continue in sin that grace may
abound?
By no means.
How can we who died to sin still
live in it?
Paul reckons then that we have actually died.
And then, in verse 3, he says, Do
you not know that all of us who
have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized
into his death?
We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism
into death.
So that as Christ was raised from the
dead by the glory of the Father, we
too might walk in newness of life.
Isn't that clear?
Verse 3 particularly, verse 4, We were baptized
into his death.
We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism
into death.
Are you going to tell me that it's
water baptism that gives us this, that identifies
us with Christ in his death, so that
God can forgive us our sins?
If so, then we've come right back to
the Roman Catholic position of admitting a ceremonial
right which actually procures us the forgiveness of
sins.
No, I utterly repudiate any such interpretation.
There's only one baptism that can be possibly
meant in this passage, and that is baptism,
the spiritual baptism, the reality of which water
baptism is the obvious symbol.
And you can't be raised again until you've
died.
We can't be born again until we've died.
God can't forgive us our sin until we've
died.
You see, this is something which only came
to me, I suppose, two or three years
ago.
I don't know why I was so dense
that I never saw it before.
God cannot do anything in me and for
me as long as the barrier of my
sin remains, as long as I am condemned
and a criminal in the sight of his
law.
Only if God's law can acquit me and
take away the hostility between him and myself,
only if God can take away the incriminating
act of his justice against me, can God
do anything for me.
However much a judge may love personally a
criminal who's standing in the dock in front
of him, if the jury has found him
guilty, the judge can do nothing for that
man.
He's bound to sentence him to whatever the
law demands.
And however much God loves us, he is
bound to sentence us to eternal death, unless
we can be acquitted by some other means.
Of course, in our case, the judge himself
has borne the penalty for us.
But God cannot forgive me until the penalty
has been paid.
Well, the penalty has been paid in Christ.
Christ died, spiritually, physically, totally.
And now that I'm identified with Christ, Christ's
death becomes mine.
And now God can consider me dead and
buried with Christ.
And now God can forgive me.
But he couldn't forgive me before.
Therefore God cannot forgive me my sin until
he has baptized me into the death of
Christ, buried me with Christ.
I can't be forgiven, I can't be born
again until this has happened.
And so really, as I understand the Scripture,
spiritual baptism is the first act of God
by which he is able to forgive us
our sin and prepare the way for the
entry of his Spirit into us.
And the moment that happens, then the Spirit
of God enters into us.
I want to go on to the question
of the indwelling of the Spirit.
I hope I can deal with that and
one or two other things before this session
is up.
But so that you don't think I'm just
grinding a personal act, I would like to
give you a short list of all the
Scriptures in the New Testament which actually refer
to spiritual baptism, and I would like you
to study them yourself.
If you're not satisfied with that, well, just
get a Greek concordance, well, possibly an English
concordance would do, but it depends which one,
and make a list of every single mention
of baptism and baptize in the New Testament,
and just go through every single passage.
I believe there are, if I'm not mistaken,
about one hundred and eight occurrences in the
New Testament of the word baptize, baptism, and
baptist.
And, of course, the great majority of those
refer, without any doubt at all, to water
baptism.
But I have discovered, I think it's fifteen
passages which cannot possibly refer to water baptism,
otherwise water baptism has to be considered a
magic rite as the Catholics believe.
Well, I know they don't call it a
magic rite, but really that's what it amounts
to.
I'm sorry if there's any Catholic here listening
to me, I love you, but I don't
agree with all your doctrine.
These are then the passages which refer to
spiritual baptism.
There are four passages in the four Gospels,
and all of them are the prophecy of
John the Baptist.
Matthew 3.11, Mark 1.8, Luke 3
.16, John 1.33, and all these are
the prophecy of John which says that all
that he was doing was a symbol but
when Messiah came he'd give us the reality.
But his prophecies don't tell us very much
more than that.
And then in Acts 1.5, Christ himself
repeated the prophecy of John the Baptist but
said to his disciples that it would happen
very shortly.
And in Acts 11.16, Peter quotes this
prophecy of Christ's.
Then we have Luke 12.50, which we've
just looked at, where Christ speaks of his
own spiritual baptism.
And there is one verse in Mark which
is parallel to it, which is almost identical.
Mark 10.38, 38-39.
Are you able to be baptized with the
baptism with which I am baptized?
That makes it, I think, 15 passages altogether.
16, I think it will make it.
Then we have that passage in 1 Peter
3, 20-21, which we've already looked at.
We have 1 Corinthians 10, verses 1-4,
which we've already looked at.
And now we have come to Romans 6,
1-11, which we are looking at in
a little detail.
Then we also have Ephesians 4.5, which
I want to look at in a minute.
We have 1 Corinthians 12.13, Galatians 3
.27, and Colossians 2.12. After 40 years
of steadily reading the Bible through and through,
I haven't found any others.
But if you find one, please send it
to me by express letter, and I'll be
very glad.
Now let us look once more at Romans
6.
But first of all, let me come to
Ephesians 4.
Some people say, oh yes, brother, that's all
very well.
But there are two different baptisms mentioned in
the Bible, or three, or four, or five.
I've heard all kinds of strange complications, if
you like, of that sort.
But see what Paul says in Ephesians 4,
verse 4.
He says there is one body, that is
one church, and one spirit.
Some people say the spirit of Christ isn't
the same thing as the spirit of God.
Well, this passage contradicts that.
Just as you were called to one hope
that belongs to your call, we're all going
to the same heaven, we have one
Lord, one Lord Jesus Christ, one faith, only
one way of being saved, one baptism, not
two, one baptism, which is the real baptism,
spiritual baptism, of which water baptism is the
picture, the symbol, one God and Father of
us all, seven unities.
So I think we must be careful to
remain within the strict framework of Scripture.
Once we start fiddling around with Scripture and
trying to make it mean what it doesn't
actually say, we're on very dangerous ground.
That is what all the false cults do.
So now we can come back to Romans
6 and look at that passage a little
longer.
There's no doubt there's only one baptism in
the mind of Paul as he writes this
passage.
And look at verse 5.
If we have been united with him in
a death like his, we shall certainly be
united with him in a resurrection like his.
So here we have that idea of identification,
unity with Christ in his death, so that
we can be united with him in his
resurrection.
There is another variant Greek text here, and
it's very difficult to know which is the
correct one.
I think probably Paul wrote both words originally.
We could translate this, if we have been
planted together with him in a death like
his.
The two Greek words are very, very similar,
and the manuscripts vary.
But I think that both things are true.
We are united with Christ in his death,
and we are planted with Christ in his
death.
Christ said, unless a grain of wheat falls
into the ground and dies, it remains alone.
But if it dies, it brings forth much
fruit.
Well, just as Christ was planted in the
earth, so to speak, in burial, and rose
again to bring this great harvest of the
Church, so the Spirit of God plants us,
so to speak, with Christ in his grave,
and fuses our dead little grain of wheat
into Christ's grain, so that the germ of
life which is in Christ takes hold of
our dead grain as well, and there's just
one new life that comes up.
We just integrated into Christ, and as Christ
is raised from the dead, so now the
elements of our old dead soul are now
integrated into Christ and made alive in the
living organism of his true body, and so
we are raised again with Christ.
This is the new birth.
And the culmination of the new birth is
the resurrection of the body when Christ comes
back.
We've just had the first instalment.
Well, once then I'm dead with Christ.
God has taken away all his incriminating act
against me.
He's got nothing against me.
His law now isn't against me.
His law is on my side.
The policeman, Satan, can never come again and
try to put me in prison.
If he does, if he does, I can
appeal to God's law.
I'm on the right side of God's law
now.
And therefore, since God has got nothing against
me, he can give me everything.
He gives me Christ.
And in that moment, not only Christ's death
becomes mine, but Christ's life also becomes mine.
And how can Christ's life become mine?
Only if the Spirit of God enters into
me.
Now will you look at Ezekiel chapter 37,
where we have the vision of the valley
of dry bones, which may seem very irrelevant,
but it isn't.
This speaks of the spiritual resurrection of Israel
at the coming of Christ.
What a marvellous thing it will be, and
how I long for it, and how we
ought to pray and work for the conversion
of Israel now, to pray for the blessed
remnant of Israel that will be converted at
Christ's coming, when all the remaining nation will
belong to the Lord.
What a blessing for the earth, when from
all over the earth they'll come hitchhiking to
Jerusalem to find something about Jesus Christ.
And as they arrive at the frontiers of
Israel, they'll just be welcomed.
On every face they will see the reflection
of Jesus Christ.
It won't be the old Jews trying to
screw something out of you, but every Jew,
every Israelite will be just full of Jesus
Christ, welcoming them and say, Oh, you've come
to meet our Lord.
Wonderful.
Everyone will have a testimony to give him.
Everyone will have some hospitality and some love.
And from all over the world, the Isaiah
tells us, the Zechariah tells us, people will
come streaming every month, every year, up to
Jerusalem to meet the Lord.
What a wonderful thing it will be.
I'm looking forward to it.
Now, in chapter 37 of Ezekiel, we have
the vision of Israel like a valley of
dry bones, which are resurrected and made into
a great, wonderful army by the Spirit of
God.
But this is, of course, a picture also
of the new birth of the Christian.
We are just like a lot of dead
bones before.
And there's a very important principle that comes
out in this chapter.
Verse 5, God says, I will cause breath
to enter into you or spirit to enter
into you and you shall live.
And at the end of verse 6, I
will put breath in you and you shall
live.
Verse 7, I prophesied and the bones came
together.
But the end of verse 8, there was
no breath in them.
And verse 9, God said, prophesy to the
wind or breath.
It's the same word in Greek.
Or spirit.
It's all the same word.
Ruach.
In Hebrew, rather, and in Greek, for that
matter.
Prophesy, son of man, and say to the
wind or the spirit.
Thus says the Lord God, come from the
four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these
slain that they may live.
And so I prophesied as he commanded me,
and the breath came into them and they
lived.
And further down in this chapter, verse 14,
God says to Israel, I will put my
spirit within you and you shall live.
So the new life, the resurrected life, is
the result of the entry of the spirit
of God into the body.
The very first thing that ever happened to
all of you, as you came into, was
that you got a big whack on the
behind from the midwife.
Or the nurse.
Or the doctor.
And you let out a yell.
That's how you began your painful existence on
this earth.
And they do that to you because if
you don't start to breathe as soon as
you come into this world where you're separated
from your mothers, from the placenta by the
umbilical cord, the moment that's cut, you've got
no further sustenance.
And your brain has got to take all
its nourishment and its life from the bloodstream.
But the blood isn't circulating properly until, at
least it's circulating, but the lungs aren't working.
And if the lungs don't work, the blood,
almost immediately, in a matter of half a
minute, will become so turgid that it cannot
possibly renew the tissues of the brain.
And a baby can be dead in a
matter of even two or three minutes after
birth if it doesn't start to breathe.
So every one of us has got to
breathe as soon as we come into this
world.
But the little lungs aren't used to breathing.
And that is why you start off with
your great big wallop on the behind and
you let out a yell and immediately the
oxygen comes into your lungs and you start
to breathe.
And nobody can live in this world without
breathing all the time.
If you haven't got the breath or the
wind or the spirit, so to speak, in
your lungs all the time, filling your lungs
all the time, you can't live.
Well now, you can't live in the kingdom
of God unless you have got the spirit
of God in you.
This is what the New Testament teaches.
You can't live in the kingdom of God
unless you are actually breathing the spirit of
God all the time.
But as soon as the spirit of God
does enter into me, I do start to
breathe and I am born.
I am actually living in a new world.
I am no longer living in my mummy's
tummy.
I am actually living in this world here.
It is just like a plant that comes
up out of the earth and is now
living in a new dimension.
And of course the instant result of that
is that I am born again.
I am resurrected.
I am a new creature.
I am living under the great blue sky
of God's eternity.
I am living in the sun of his
face.
I am swept by the wind of his
spirit.
All the colours of God's spectrum are now
visible to my eyes.
The other people who are not born again
don't even know what I am talking about.
I am just living in another world.
I am still rooted in this old world.
I am still very much down to earth.
I still do my duties and get tired
and work and have to eat and sleep
just like everybody else.
But at the same time, just like a
plant living above the ground and rooted in
the soil, I am living in two worlds
at once.
And one day God is just going to
pluck me up and tear me up out
of this soil and plant me in another
soil in his new creation.
That's going to be wonderful.
Well, I ought to have stopped.
But I just want to mention one or
two more things before I do stop.
I want to say that there are at
least twenty passages in the New Testament which
make it quite clear that every believer has
the Spirit of God in him.
You can't be a born again child of
God without that.
I haven't time now to give you a
list of scriptures.
There are more than that, actually.
But I will give you one which is
perhaps the very clearest of all, in 1
Corinthians 6.19. And let us bear in
mind that these words were written to the
Corinthian church, who were just a bunch of
carnal Christians.
They were perhaps the most carnal church of
all the ones to whom Paul wrote letters.
And yet Paul makes no distinction.
He doesn't say some of you have got
the Holy Spirit and some of you haven't.
In verse 19 of chapter 6 he says,
Do you not know that your body is
the temple of the Holy Spirit?
And then he says again, in Greek it's
clearer than in the Revised Standard, Which is
in you.
He says it twice over.
And now he says it three times over.
Which you have from God.
Three times over in the same verse.
He says the same thing in three different
ways.
And there are many other verses.
You can look them up yourself or ask
me some other time.
So there's no doubt about that.
I don't need to give you references for
being born of the Spirit.
I think you know enough about that yourselves.
What I haven't dealt with this morning is
the sealing of the Spirit and the anointing
of the Spirit.
And I don't know whether I'll have time
to go into those at all now.
Because there are other matters which I think
are perhaps more important.
But just in a word or two let
me say this.
The seal of the Spirit is our spiritual
circumcision.
Which is the sign of our having been
justified.
Romans 4 says, Abraham received the sign of
circumcision as a seal of the righteousness which
he already had before he was circumcised.
And he was circumcised because he was already
justified.
And it was a sign of the covenant
between God and him.
You can never undo circumcision.
When you have been circumcised you can never
become uncircumcised.
And in a sense spiritual circumcision is God's
actual signature in our heart that we have
been justified and we belong to him.
Just as Abraham bore in his body to
his dying day this signature, so to speak,
of God.
This sign that forever reminded him that he
belonged to God, he was justified.
So we have the signature of God in
our very heart which nothing can take out
that we belong to God eternally.
It's a wonderful thought.
And the anointing of the Spirit is simply
this.
In the Old Testament the anointing was given
to the prophet, the priest and the king.
And by our receiving the Spirit of God
we have been made kings, priests and prophets
of God.
We are his spokesmen.
We have right of access to the very
heart of his presence.
And we are able to use the authority
of Christ's name to get the will of
God done.
These are terrific thoughts.
Now all these things that I've been talking
to you about this morning in every passage
in the New Testament are described as applicable
to all believers without distinction and as having
already taken place.
We are nowhere told to seek them.
We are nowhere told that there's any possibility
that we haven't got them.
But it's only as we are filled with
the Spirit, which is the next thing that
happens, that all these things begin to have
their true value in our daily existence.
And that's what I hope to talk about
tomorrow.
Father, I pray that you will take these
words into your own hand as well as
the truth and the thought of your own
word.
That you will efface anything and everything which
is contrary to your mind.
But that you will guide us all into
all truth.
We ask it in the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.