Acts 19:2-7 He said to them, Have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed? And they said to him… Christ and His work are not the whole of Christianity: this is the main truth of the lesson, negatively put. Its positive statement: The manifestation of the Holy Spirit is essential to Christian knowledge, experience, and efficiency. The teaching and power of Divine truth culminate in the gift of the Holy Spirit. Read from the twenty-second verse of the second chapter of Acts. With masterly speed Peter lifts tier above tier the stately fabric of the new doctrine: the manifestation of God in the flesh, the crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, exaltation at the right hand of God; but he crowns the whole by declaring, "Having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear." The experience was repeated to the Church in each crisis, each new beginning sanctioned by a new baptism. When Samaria received the Word of God, Peter and John came down and prayed for them, and "they received the Holy Ghost." Wider opens the door for Gentiles at Caesarea, and "the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the Word." The movement which made Antioch a new centre of the Church was started by men "full of the Holy Ghost." In the first missionary venture, in Cyprus, it was "Saul filled with the Holy Ghost" who turned heathen to believers. But to Ephesus this experience had not yet come. We can partly account for the deficiency of their knowledge. Paul had stopped at Ephesus on his way to Jerusalem and preached but once, yet so impressively that they besought him to remain. But he must hurry on to the feast. Priscilla and Aquila seem to have done nothing to carry on the work, perhaps knew nothing of it, as the apostle seems to have left them before going to the synagogue. Then came Apollos, with all his gifts, yet knowing nothing of Pentecost. If he had learned more from Paul's two friends, he seems to have departed immediately to Greece. But imperfect work is not unblessed. The apostle returning found the little group of believers as a faint, clear flame in the darkness of that luxurious, superstitious city. But he missed in them that subtle something, not easily definable, but inevitably perceptible, which marks the spiritual life. The gift of the Holy Spirit is essential to understanding and realising Christian truth. This truth is tremendous beyond all other offered to the human mind. Yet who sees it or feels it in proportion to its majesty? It is as though the eye were dazed, the ear stunned, by the awfulness, and fail to give natural response. Even passing acquiescence may not issue in lasting acceptance. That is not a normal use of the faculties; knowledge should produce conviction. It is the express office of the Spirit of God to enlighten the mind and inflame the affections of a willing soul so that truth may become real and controlling. His work is supernatural, but not unnatural. It restores a lost sensibility, couches a blinded eye. He finds already in the mind itself a certain power of breaking through upon realities which have held themselves secluded. What boy has not groaned over some new principle in mathematics? At first, all is mist and mystery. Then he acquires the rule by dint of memory and the process by mechanical imitation. But after hours, months it may be, suddenly the heart of the hieroglyphic opens out like an exquisite flower blossoming in a mummy's hand, and he revels in the poetry of mathematics. But in spiritual things this slowness of intellect is further crippled by spiritual incompetence. Sin creates a positive incapacity. "The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not." Paul himself had proved this. He had known of Jesus of Nazareth, but only as one to persecute. Then came in a flash both vision and blindness; and after this the messenger sent, "That thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost." The same is true of spiritual emotions. What incitements to feeling we have here! the Infinite Deity of absolute holiness; the Incarnate God; the Crucified One; the great white throne, judgment, conscious eternity. No adjective can delineate their impressiveness. Yet myriads of thinking, feeling beings who never question them as facts heed them less than dreams. The granite headlands of Cape Ann fling back the tidal waves of the Atlantic as lightly as the ripple caused by a leaping fish; and these hearts cast off the truths of their own eternal destiny more lightly than the gossip of a neighbour or the feigned sorrows of a drama's heroine. If God Himself has any power at command which can restore to the soul its normal response, let those that love their fellow men, let the blind and deaf themselves, cry aloud, that they may be touched to live. If the unsaved themselves are thus unmoved, the more should those who have the gospel have the power of the Spirit. Oh, the Ephesian believers in our Churches! converted but powerless, believing somewhat, but knowing not the power of the Holy Ghost! But a strange comfort lies in the fact that only God Himself can supply such lack of power. Not by training and struggle the power comes, but by humble asking what He is more ready to give than are earthly parents to bestow good gifts upon their children. We look out with new vision, sweep a new range of achievement. Then open before the mind the truths that can save such a soul, the deep truths, the saving truths. Christ appears wonderfully glorious and His Cross past expression. Then we understand the meaning of atonement. All the unseen becomes the real, and the conviction of its reality and necessity stirs in the soul a new touch of power, to which hearts that were dry and hard yield like frosts in spring, for the breath of the Almighty is blowing free. This is service indeed, life indeed! Spirit is more than speech, unction than action. We are not told how the effects of this baptism showed themselves in the Ephesian Church, but we know how Paul wrought among them in the power of the Spirit. "At all seasons, with all humility of mind, with many tears and trials, teaching publicly and from house to house, pure from the blood of all men as not shunning to declare the whole counsel of God." So must every soul be endued with power from on high, that it may do the work of Christ. I. WE LEARN THAT THE CHRISTIAN LIFE INVOLVES A DEVELOPMENT. The popular mood of these days gives us conversions without sense of sin, union with the Church without separation from the world, activity without meditation and deep joy of communing with God. We must neither discredit these experiences nor rest with them. Though born of the Spirit, we are not born full grown. The Christian life has stages, sometimes marked off by sharp experiences, then gliding one into another, realised only as past; one as sunrise with one sparkling instant when the glittering disc touches the horizon; another, stealing up in clouds, unrecognised until we find full day around us. Each stage has its own explanation, vindication it may be, but only for the sake of the next. It is a camp, not an abiding city. Despise not the day of small things, in others, in yourself. Neither speak slightingly of experiences unknown to your own life, if sanctioned by the Word of God. God makes the caterpillar but for the destiny of the butterfly. A soul not growing towards God may well be puzzled at the wearisomeness of endless existence. II. The duty grows out of the truth: DO YOUR BEST WHERE YOU ARE, PRESS ON FOR BETTER. Never hold back effort because you know it must be imperfect, incomplete. If you have but one chance, seize it, as Paul his one Sunday at Ephesus. The good seed will not perish. Some Apollos will come to water it. God will give increase. The other side of this duty encourages those who feel oppressed by their own imperfect understanding of the truth. Do your best with what you have, and God will do His best for you. As Paul solemnly asked the Ephesians, this lesson comes to us today with its insistent demand: "Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed? Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?" Considerate and patient is the question. It does not deny that we are believers, or discredit what we have received, but it does require of us yet more. It comes to the unsatisfied Christian, whose conversion was a bare act of will or a blaze of emotion; in whose later experience obedience is ungraced by spiritual joy or appears as alternations from cold to hot, vibrating about a general lukewarmness, distasteful and profitless. Pray for the Spirit. It comes to baffled workers and unanswered suppliants. They use God's own truth, their purpose is loyal, the effort unshrinking; but they yet wait their Pentecost. It has its message for those who do not believe. It faces the "moral man," who accepts the Commandments and even thinks to rule his life by the Sermon on the Mount: whose conduct we admire and whose spirit we praise; with whom we find no fault, yet in whom we recognise a subtle and unmistakable lack — that he may ask for the Spirit. This abiding presence and mighty power of Deity is that manifestation given latest, to complete all that has been given before. (Charles M. Southgate.) Parallel Verses KJV: He said unto them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. |
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