The Spirit is in me for me, but He's on me for you.
He comes upon me to clothe me in power
and express Himself through these different spiritual gifts.
So today we're going to talk about something called the baptism in the Holy Spirit
and speaking in tongues.
We've been in this series about developing our prayer life
and how we can strengthen ourselves in the Lord
and even finding time every day to connect with Him
and grow in friendship with God.
So this is one of my favorite things to talk about
because I think that praying in the Spirit or praying in tongues
has been one of the key ways that the Lord has grown me
as an intercessor and even as a friend
and someone that hears His voice and prays effectively.
So I want to talk about what this idea is,
the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
You might have heard of this before, you might not have,
but really when we look in Scriptures, we actually find three baptisms.
And usually, you know, people talk about water baptism
and we understand mostly what that's about
as a symbol of being dead to sin and then raised to life in Christ.
But there's actually two other baptisms that we see in Scripture.
The first baptism is when you get saved.
The Holy Spirit baptizes you in Jesus.
This is in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 13.
So this is talking about when you got saved,
the Holy Spirit actually baptized you into Jesus.
When that happens, the Holy Spirit comes to life inside of us
and we become a new person.
A second kind of baptism is the water baptism.
This is where a disciple actually baptizes you in water.
So maybe you go to your church and they have a baptism service
and someone asks you about your faith
and then they baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
So when you look at Luke 3.21, it says,
So even Jesus was baptized in water by John the Baptist.
In water baptism, what's really happening is the old man is being cut off.
That's what it's a symbol of.
But I also think there's actually a spiritual reality to this water baptism
that enables us to continue to grow as disciples of Christ.
Or you can look at Matthew 28.19. It says,
So that's talking about water baptism.
But there's also a third baptism.
And in this baptism, it's actually Jesus who baptizes us
in or with the Holy Spirit.
So some people say the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
My mom was an English teacher,
so I get really particular about what kind of prepositions we're using.
Really, this isn't the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
That's the first one we talked about,
where the Holy Spirit baptized us into Jesus when we got saved.
But this is the baptism in the Holy Spirit or with the Holy Spirit.
You can think of the same way you were submerged in water.
You're being submerged or covered with the Holy Spirit.
It even says in Scripture that you're being clothed in power.
What's happening is you're being filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit,
and you're receiving power to walk in your new life in Christ.
So there's an enablement and an empowerment and a release of grace that takes place.
It doesn't automatically happen when we're saved.
It's actually a separate occurrence from salvation.
Now, this can get kind of confusing because several Scriptures say
that when we got saved, we were sealed with the Holy Spirit, and that's true.
And a great example is in John chapter 20,
when Jesus has, after he's raised from the dead,
he comes to his disciples, and it says he breathes on them
and says, receive the Holy Spirit.
And I believe that was really their salvation experience
where they received the seal of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
And what I like to tell people is the Spirit is in me for me,
but he's on me for you.
He comes upon me to clothe me in power
and express himself through these different spiritual gifts.
It's actually, this baptism is mentioned in each of the four Gospels.
To kind of remember, Matthew and Luke, it's in chapter 3.
Mark and John, it's in chapter 1.
I'm going to read Matthew 3.11.
This is John the Baptist speaking.
He says, I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance.
So he's talking about salvation and then baptism in water,
turning from our old life.
But he who is coming after me, he's talking about Jesus,
is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
So this is something that Jesus does for his disciples.
He loves to baptize us in the Holy Spirit and with fire
so that we can be empowered to walk out a Christian life
the same way he did.
These three baptisms are mentioned all throughout scripture
in Acts 2, 37 through 39.
These men ask Peter, what shall we do?
He says, repent and let every one of you be baptized
in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins.
So get saved, repent, get baptized in water
for the remission of sins.
And he says next, you shall receive the gift
of the Holy Spirit for the promise,
he's referring to the gift of the Holy Spirit
as the promise, is to you and to your children
and to all who are far off, that's us,
all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call.
So if he's called you, the promise of the gift
of the Holy Spirit is for you as well.
In Acts 8, when all of these people believed Philip
as he was preaching, Simon also believed
and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip
and was amazed, seeing the miracles
and signs which were done.
And when the apostles who were at Jerusalem
heard that Samaria had received the word,
they sent Peter and John to them,
who when they had come down, prayed for them
that they might receive the Holy Spirit.
For as yet, he had not fallen upon none of them.
They had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
So they had only been saved.
They'd only been saved and water baptized,
but they hadn't received this promise gift
of the Holy Spirit coming upon them.
And then in verse 17, it says,
then they laid hands on them
and they received the Holy Spirit.
So this thing took place later
when the disciples came to those believers.
Acts 19, while Apollos and Paul were at Corinth,
they found some disciples and they asked them in verse two,
did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?
So they're asking, did you receive this gift
that we've been seeing even the Gentiles receive,
the promise gift of the Holy Spirit?
And they said, we have not as much heard
whether there is a Holy Spirit.
I'm like, man, that's how I feel
because the way I was raised,
I didn't even hear about the Holy Spirit.
I didn't hear about the power of the Holy Spirit.
I didn't hear about healings and miracles
and speaking in tongues and signs and wonders.
So I feel like these people
that had come to Christ in Ephesus saying,
we hadn't even heard about the Holy Spirit.
So then Paul says to them, into what were you baptized?
They said into John's baptism.
So he's checking out their salvation.
And Paul says, well, John indeed baptized
into a baptism of repentance,
saying to the people that they should believe
on him who would come after him, that is Christ Jesus.
When they heard this, they were baptized
in the name of the Holy Spirit and watch this.
And when Paul had laid hands on them,
the Holy Spirit came upon them
and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.
So we see this occurrence where Paul laid his hands
on these people and they began to express
with the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
So I'm not gonna tell you, well,
you have to have this certain spiritual gift
as an expression of the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
And if you don't have this,
and you're not really baptized,
I think we're getting a little bit too religious
about these things when we put those stipulations.
But you should be operating in the gifts of the Holy Spirit
if you're a believer, they're available to you.
Why would you wanna live your life without good gifts?
You know, if God wants to give the power
of the Holy Spirit to you,
I wanna receive it for my own life.
So here's another example of these three baptisms
in 1 John 5, verses seven and eight,
says, there are three that bear witness in heaven,
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit,
and these three are one.
And there are three that bear witness on earth,
the Spirit, the water, and the blood.
And these three agree as one.
Look at this, the Spirit, the water, the blood.
The blood, it's talking about when you received Christ,
you received this baptism into the body of Christ,
the blood.
When you got baptized in water, the water.
When you get baptized in the Holy Spirit, the Spirit.
Look at 1 Corinthians 10.
Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware
that all our fathers were under the cloud,
all passed through the sea,
and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.
And Moses is this archetype of Christ.
And if you read the rest of that passage,
you can see how Paul is giving an Old Testament example
as a foreshadowing of what was going to take place
for believers in the new covenant.
They were going to be baptized into Moses, into Jesus,
when they got saved.
They were going to be baptized in the sea.
That's water baptism.
And they're going to be baptized in the cloud.
That's the Holy Spirit baptism.
Even if you look in...
Exodus 30, I'm not going to read this whole chapter to you, but it describes the order
of worship in Moses' tabernacle.
And it followed the pattern of these three baptisms, even as a foreshadowing.
Before you could enter into God's presence in the Holy of Holies, the first thing you
did is you would have your sins cleansed through blood sacrifice, that's salvation.
Then you would wash yourself in a laver with water, that's symbolic of water baptism.
And then you would be anointed with oil.
That's the baptism in the Holy Spirit, this clothing and power.
So we see this pattern happening throughout scripture as a foreshadowing of what it's
like to live the Christian walk.
Even Jesus instructed the disciples not to leave Jerusalem until the promised gift of
the Father was given to them.
These are the same people he breathed on and said, receive the Holy Spirit.
So there's this separate thing that Jesus is encouraging them to wait until they've
received this promise.
Look at Acts 1, 4-5, being assembled together with them, he, Jesus, commanded them not to
depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father.
And he said, you have heard from me, John truly baptized in water, but you shall be
baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.
So that is what the promise of the Father.
Remember Peter was saying, you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, for the promise
is to you and your children.
He was remembering what Jesus has said to them.
This promised gift of the Holy Spirit, this promised clothing and power, this promised
anointing and enabling to walk the Christian life is for anyone that would believe if you'll
ask for it.
So the Holy Spirit is a gift and he also gives us gifts.
First Corinthians 12, 7-11, Paul writes to the Corinthian church, he says, the manifestation
of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all.
See that's what I'm saying, like the Holy Spirit is in me for me as a comforter, as
a guide, as a teacher, as a leader into truth, but he's on me, the manifestation of the Spirit,
the visible outward gifts is on me for the profit of all.
See God wants to use me to minister to others and he does that through this baptism in the
Holy Spirit.
He goes on, he says, for one it's a word of wisdom, to another a word of knowledge,
to another faith, to another gifts of healings, to another the workings of miracles, to another
prophecy, to another discernment, to another different kinds of tongues, to another interpretation
of tongues, but one and the same Spirit works all these things distributing to each one
individually as he wills.
So these things are available for you.
Maybe you're sitting here listening to this and you've never heard that there was a baptism
in the Holy Spirit, that there is a promised gift of the Father that we're intended to
receive, that Jesus, even after the disciples were saved and multiple times through the
books of Acts, after people were saved, they received this empowerment, some through the
laying on of hands, others just by asking Jesus, baptize me in the Holy Spirit, give
me this spirit and fire baptism that you promised that was going to come after John's baptism.
Maybe if that's you and you've never heard of that, this is something that you can ask
the Lord for today.
Have you experienced all three baptisms?
Have you given your life to Christ, baptized into the body of Christ?
Have you been water baptized so that the old man is cut off of your life and you're raised
to life in him as a symbol of your faith, but also an enablement and a public confession?
Have you received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, this coming upon you of power and
the manifestations of gifts?
If not, you can pray this with me today.
Lord, I thank you that no matter where I am in my journey with you, you always want to
give me more of your Holy Spirit.
Please fill me to overflowing again today.
Jesus, I ask you to baptize me in the Holy Spirit and with fire so that I can have power
to live a life that honors you.
Amen.