Three Months Without a Riot

Date: 2024-01-07

Audience: Grass Valley Corps ONLINE and in-person

Title: Three Months Without a Riot

Text: Acts 19:1-10

Proposition: Everyone’s spiritual journey is different

Purpose: Seek the Spirit’s fruit

Grace and peace!

After a month of spending some time looking at Christmas, we have entered a new year and a new season, which seems like a great time to get back to our study of the Book of Acts! We’ll be in chapter 19 today, so grab a Bible and find that section to be ready. If you have a copy of our Acts Journal, you’ll find it on page 58. If you need a copy of our Acts Journal, they are available (if you shoot me a message with your address). It’s a copy of the New International Version text of the book, with a few sidebars and space to write notes, if you have any.

For those who are joining us for the first time or who may need a refresher after a long break, let me give you the ultra-short version of all that’s come before.

Luke, a Greek doctor from Troas and Philippi, wrote this biography detailing the way the Holy Spirit was working in the lives of the believers of the early church.

Those believers, in the first days, were Israeli Jews who recognized Jesus as the Messiah who had been sent by God to bring salvation to his people.

But who WERE God’s people? That was and is a big question for the Followers of the Way of Jesus. Who is loved and accepted by God and who isn’t?

The faith spread to Samaria, then to Roman settlements in and around Israel. Faithful leaders like Silas and Paul began to carry the message of Jesus out around the Mediterranean. People who weren’t Jews became Followers, even though their traditions and practices and even culture were different from that of the first group. Sometimes HUGELY different. But they followed the teaching of Jesus and Luke keeps showing us how they were accepted by the larger body of believers because of that.

Increasingly, this diverse group of faithful carried the teachings of Jesus out to the greater world. Men and women who taught about the faith, hope, and especially the love of Jesus, and about God’s invitation for anyone who accepted his offer to have a place in his family in the Kingdom of Heaven.

God’s Kingdom is a place here on earth, by the way! It’s a here-and-now reality for the Followers of Jesus to live in and live out now.

While Paul was visiting his home in Antioch in Syria, others were continuing the work in Corinth and Ephesus. It was Paul’s habit to revisit places he had been to grow and encourage the believers there before he moved on to new areas. Everywhere he went, he would start by speaking to his Jewish brothers and sisters. Along the way, he kept meeting people who knew or followed the teachings of John the Baptizer but who didn’t know about Jesus, yet. And now, as we move into Acts 19, we find Paul as he is getting back to Ephesus, a city he had only passed through on his journey home.

Which brings us to where we are: Acts, chapter 19, starting with verses 1 and 2.

While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples 2 and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”

They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” [1]

In just a moment it will become clear that these are disciples of John the Baptist, not followers of Jesus. For those of us who keep count of such things, this is the fifth time that John has been mentioned in Acts.

John was an important person in his day and scripture always speaks of him reverently. He was known for calling people to repent – to turn back towards God and to live out God’s ways. He said that having been born Jewish wasn’t enough! They needed to live out their covenant with God to truly be his people. And John said one more thing that caught everyone’s attention. He said the Messiah was coming. Then, later, he pointed to Jesus as being that Mesiah.

Something funny about people then that’s still true about us now: When we commit to a leader or a group, it can be really hard for us to change. These disciples Paul had met in Ephesus either didn’t hear or didn’t listen when John said about Jesus that: (John 3:30)

30 He must become greater; I must become less.” [2]

Although it is also possible that these disciples didn’t realize that it matters WHO they follow. A lot of folks believed that all that mattered was that you followed well. The practices of the Baptists and the Followers of the Way were similar, and if you believe that the things you do define your faith, you may not realize that WHO you do them for makes a difference.

I know that may seem confusing. Let’s see if this helps…

There are, even now, a lot of people who believe that it doesn’t matter what faith you follow if you are sincere and do good things. Have you heard folks say things like that? Me too. It’s pretty prevalent. I heard someone describe the life of faith as trying to get to a mountain peak. He said that, at the base, many faiths look the same. Do good works, give back from what you receive, care for those who cannot care for themselves, stuff like that. He pointed out that, as you continue to climb, you move away from the broad basics you all share and towards a specific end point which is quite different than that of any other mountain.

In short, when the goal is to get to the top of Everest, climbing Shasta isn’t going to get you there, even though they may both look and climb the same at the bottom.

So Paul has found this group of disciples who think they are climbing towards God, and he asks them a very specific, destination-oriented question:

While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples 2 and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”

They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” [3]

If you’re trying to climb Everest, you need a Sherpa to guide you. If you’re trying to reach God, your guide is the Holy Spirit. If you haven’t met the guide, you’re on the wrong mountain.

Did you receive the Holy Spirit?

While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples 2 and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”

They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” [4]

Okay, this is one of those less-than-stellar translations we get stuck with because there’s not an easy way to get from the Greek to the English. It’s closer to say they responded by saying, “We haven’t heard that the Spirit is manifesting!”

It's not that they hadn’t heard of the Spirit. There were Jewish! God’s Spirit is mentioned in the second sentence of the book of Genesis! (Genesis 1:2 – post, don’t read)

2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. [5]

And they’re disciples of John the Baptist. He preached about the Holy Spirit. It isn’t that these guys haven’t heard of the Spirit! It’s that they haven’t heard it described as interacting with people the way that Paul tells them. So Paul is curious where they are at on their faith journey.

3 So Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive?”

“John’s baptism,” they replied. [6]

And again, we’ve got a translation that is easier to read in English, but loses something of the original flavor.

They say, “We haven’t heard about the Spirit manifesting the way you’re describing,” and Paul says, “you haven’t? Then into what were you baptized?” To which they reply, “We were immersed in John.”

Which I know sounds weird, but it helps when you understand what baptism IS.

Go back with me for a moment to the time of the Exodus. The plagues have all been visited on Egypt and after the death of the firstborn of those who didn’t follow God’s instructions to be passed over, the Pharaoh told them all to leave. Then, realizing that he had not only sent away his entire country’s slave labor pool, but a sizable portion of its population and food and treasure and livestock, he decided to go get them back.

He mobilized his army and headed out after the fleeing Israelites, driving them onto a peninsula of land where they were trapped with his army on one side and the waters of the sea surrounding the other three. It wasn’t just Israelites either. There were others with them. Egyptians who had seen the power of God and had decided they would rather follow him. Other slaves who had seen opportunity to escape when their Hebrew cousins were released. People Exodus describes as a multitude.

They are all about to be killed or dragged back to captivity together.

But then God spoke to Moses and had the old man raise a hand out over the water as the sun set. A breeze blew up from the east, growing in strength as the night set in. And as light began to glimmer on the horizon the people saw a strange thing: the waters of the sea had been pushed back, creating a clear path for them to cross through.

On either side of them was a wall of the sea and they marched through together until they reached the safety of the distant shore. All day and all night they streamed across, until every one of them had made it out.

The Egyptians came through behind them, but as the last of the escapees climbed onto dry land, God spoke to Moses again and the old man stretched out his hand one more time and the wind stopped. The walls of water were held back no more, and those left standing on the bed of the sea were crushed by the collapse and left beneath the waves.

And LORD said to those who had followed his path to freedom, “I will be your God and you will be my people,” and they were all one people from then on. The experience of passing through the waters together erased the distinctions. They were not a multitude anymore, but one people, one nation, one in Spirit.

This was the first baptism.

When people came to the LORD after that, the last step of the process of being confirmed into the faith was being passed through the waters, a symbol of the joining which happened, a symbol of the becoming which occurs when you accept your place in the family of God.

It's not the water or the act of being dunked in it or sprinkled with it. That’s just a symbol of the much greater thing which is happening. It’s a symbol of belonging.

Baptism isn’t about getting WET. It’s about being WED. It’s a joining.

In the New Testament, the authors and apostles refer to baptism by painting a picture of the Spirit of God surroundingthem like air wrapping them in and filling them with life giving oxygen. We are immersed in the Spirit like we would be immersed in water if we were dunked into an ocean.

Baptism isn’t something you do so much as it is a sign of something you are becoming.

Ephesians 1:13 and 14 talks about the belonging brought by the Spirit this way:

13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory. [7]

The Holy Spirit is a seal, notarizing us as belonging to Jesus. We may have been part of the multitude before. The Spirit says that we are part of Christ when we believe.

John’s baptism called Israelites to become Israelites. That’s part of what made him so controversial in his time. His opponents said that his baptism was pointless because anyone born an Israelite was automatically and permanently part of God’s family. But John called people to turn back to God, saying that being born children of Abraham wasn’t enough to seal them to God. They needed to be actively taking part in the covenant God had set up.

And John said that this mattered, because his job was to help them be ready for the One who was coming.

John 1:26-27

26 “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. 27 He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” [8]

As Jesus came to the time of his ministry on earth, John named him as the One.

John 1:32-34

32 Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. 33 And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.”[9]

So, according to John himself, he was just using water as a symbol or something greater, but Jesus was the one who would supply even more than that.

And Paul explained this to the disciples of John in Ephesus.

4 Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” 5 On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.[10]

When John baptized them, he did so with water. Paul helped them be baptized in something greater: The name of Jesus. Instead of water, they have been covered with belonging. And then, once they were one with the family of God, once they were sealed and surrounded by the Spirit of God, he laid hands on them and prayed for them.

6 When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues j and prophesied. 7 There were about twelve men in all. [11]

There’s nothing magic about laying on of hands. It’s a physical symbol of sharing a spiritual event or authority. It has no power, but it can have a great psychological impact. It helps you know that you belong. That’s why we do it at ordinations or when leaders are set apart. It’s a way of showing that connection, that being part of a thing, is being passed or shared from one to another.

Here, we have an instance of Paul laying on hands and then these men felt they could share what the Spirit was speaking through them. But what came out wasn’t just restricted to their own language. We’ve seen this a couple of times before in Acts, right? In areas where people needed to see and experience God’s presence in a dramatic way, the Spiritenabled a kind of speaking where those doing it may not have even realized they were, but those hearing it heard what was said in their own languages, languages that the speakers had never learned.

In some modern traditions, when they talk about speaking in tongues, what they mean is that one person will make the sounds they think God wants them to, and another person will interpret those sounds into some kind of spiritual message. Which is not particularly meaningful to me, but to a select few this is a vital part of their spiritual experience, so who am I to say it isn’t valid for them? It isn’t what is described in this passage or the others like it, though.

Prophesy, too, is described here in a quite different way than we think of it now. These days, people tend to think prophecy is about fortune telling or future-casting. What it meant back when this was written was simply that someone was passing on a message from God. That’s what a prophet did: spoke the word God inspired in them. It wasn’t even necessarily a supernatural thing! It could be anything that was encouraging or spiritually connecting.

I think prophecy may come more easily to those who are truly putting the well-being of another ahead of their own, which is what it means to love the way Jesus talks about loving someone. When you care about someone and make time to seek what is best for them, perhaps it is easier to see and share God’s love and leading with them.

One more thing I want to be sure we notice is how God never does anything the same way twice. Even in these instances of new followers receiving the Spirit, even the ones which have echoes of the speaking in tongues of similar events, things happen differently to different groups. In some instances, the Spirit comes before someone explains it, in others it comes later. In some there is a laying on of hands, in others, there isn’t. Sometimes the Spirit comes when people believe. In others, it waits for a more opportune time.

God is big on faith, but not so much on tradition or ritual EXCEPT as ways to learn faith. I guess it’s like trainingwheels on a bike. You’re expected to learn to ride and then take them off. We are to learn to live our faith like riding that bike!

Let me finish one little piece, now that we’ve seen this group of disciples come to faith in Jesus.

8 Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God. 9 But some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way. So Paul left them. He took the disciples with him and had discussions daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. 10 This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord. [12]

The synagogue in Ephesus is where Paul had visited and been well-received when he had passed through town before. He came back, as he had said he would, and he spent the next three months sharing about Jesus with all who would listen. And some wouldn’t. Some refused to consider that there might be another way. Some didn’t like the way of Jesus, with his focus on love and grace. We would all prefer to bathe in the blood of our enemies rather than think of ways to love them, right?

Opposition always seems to come, especially once you start to advocate for new ways and new things and new beliefs, even when they complement or otherwise add to the old instead of simply replacing them.

Paul was there, speaking about the Kingdomof God that Jesus taught about. Inviting people to begin to live in the Kingdom in the here-and-now instead of some unknown afterlife or other distant future. And some disagreed or were uncomfortable and they wanted him to stop and they lashed back, trying to obstruct his teaching, trying to tell people to ignore it, it’s wrong, it’s too easy, too inclusive, to focused on love and peace and all that, when we all know that here in the “real world” we should push back and kill those we fear might bring harm to us or others we care about, right? The message of Jesus just doesn’t fit with those ideas, does it?

So Paul did what Jesus always did when faced with conflict and opposition. He moved on. In this case, out of the synagogue and into a teaching hall. And more and more people heard about Jesus and the message until it seemed like everyone in the province had at least some knowledge of him.

There may be more to that than just Paul’s amazing teaching, but we’ll talk about that next time.

What are some key things we can take from this history to help us in our own lives today?

How about the fact that our spiritual conversions may be radically different? My coming to Jesus and yours don’t have to be the same or even follow the same pattern. What matters is that when we believe, we are immersed in the Spirit! And the details of how that manifests can be different too.

We can’t compare our experience of faith to another to see who is more “right”. We can’t require that other people have the same kind of experience in the same kind of way either.

What we CAN do it watch for evidence of the Spirit in people’s lives. How can we do that? By watching for fruit produced by the Spirit acting in someone’s life.

Galatians 5:22-23

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.[13]

The specific details aren’t what matters. These things are. And, frankly, it’s more about how WE are seeing them grow in our own lives than it is about what we see in others.

One last thing we can and should understand from this passage. Doing everything right doesn’t mean we’ll get along with everyone. In fact, it seems to promise the opposite! Opposition will arise, but our job, as Followers of the Way of Jesus, is to continue to live out the ideals of the Kingdom by moving on. We aren’t asked to stand and fight or to crush our opponents. We are to share the fruit of the Spirit, not the hostility and anger raised by fractiousness. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Doing right is more important than being right. Climb the mountain with Jesus on it, not any other.

Amen?

[1] The New International Version. Zondervan, 2011, p. Ac 19:1–2. [2] The New International Version. Zondervan, 2011, p. Jn 3:30. [3] The New International Version. Zondervan, 2011, p. Ac 19:1–2. [4] The New International Version. Zondervan, 2011, p. Ac 19:1–2. [5] The New International Version. Zondervan, 2011, p. Ge 1:2. [6] The New International Version. Zondervan, 2011, p. Ac 19:3. [7] The New International Version. Zondervan, 2011, p. Eph 1:13–14. [8] The New International Version. Zondervan, 2011, p. Jn 1:26–27. [9] The New International Version. Zondervan, 2011, p. Jn 1:32–34. [10] The New International Version. Zondervan, 2011, p. Ac 19:4–5. [11] The New International Version. Zondervan, 2011, p. Ac 19:6–7. [12] The New International Version. Zondervan, 2011, p. Ac 19:8–10. [13] The New International Version. Zondervan, 2011, p. Ga 5:22–23.