Sealing of The Holy Spirit, Part 5

Driving home: When someone who is still very wet behind the ears spiritually comes up to you... and tries to convince me that I ought to seek a specific baptism in the Spirit with speaking in tongues on the basis of a few poorly quote…

The analogy of God tearing down the scaffolding of the old economy and bringing in the structure of the new is used to explain why the Book of Acts is difficult to interpret, as it records a transitional period.

Now, the problems arise basically because the book of the Acts takes place in a time when God is tearing down the scaffolding of the old economy, and bringing in the structure of the new in its fullest expression. We do not believe that the Bible teaches with the dispensationalists, that God's dealings are in terms of hard, fixed, vertical categories, and that there is no sustaining dealings of God with His people. We believe that the people of God are basically one in every period of human history. Romans chapter, I mean Ephesians chapter 2, shows that new truth has come with regard to the un...

7:37 - 9:01 Read in full sermon

Driving home: When someone who is still very wet behind the ears spiritually comes up to you... and tries to convince me that I ought to seek a specific baptism in the Spirit with speaking in tongues on the basis of a few poorly quote…

Martin recounts an anecdote about a spiritually 'wet behind the ears' Pentecostal student who tried to convince him to seek a specific baptism in the Spirit with tongues based on poorly quoted Acts texts, illustrating the ignorance of misinterpreting Acts.

Or should we seek to reproduce that by God's grace, or call upon God to reproduce it in us? And this is why interpreting the book of the Acts is a difficult thing. And therefore, when someone who is still very wet behind the ears spiritually comes up to you, as I had one chap do in this Pentecostal Bible Institute where I was preaching a few weeks ago, and tries to convince me that I ought to seek a specific baptism in the Spirit with speaking in tongues on the basis of a few poorly quoted texts out of the book of Acts, it's merely the height of ignorance. The Lord gave me compassion on him, a...

9:35 - 10:41 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin details the conversion of Cornelius's household in Acts 10-11, emphasizing that the Spirit fell while Peter preached the gospel of forgiveness through Christ, not a 'full…

Martin summarizes the first 33 verses of Acts 10 as 'God's dealings to get a reluctant, nationally prejudiced apostle into the presence of some Gentile dogs whom God was purposing to save,' highlighting Peter's initial reluctance to preach to Gentiles.

In the first 33 verses, we have a record of how God got a reluctant apostle into the presence of somebody, some Gentile dogs, for whom he had gracious purposes of salvation. If you were to summarize the first 33 verses, that's it in a nutshell. God's dealings to get a reluctant, nationally prejudiced apostle into the presence of some Gentile dogs whom God was purposing to save. And so he gets them together.

17:50 - 18:23 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin answers why the Spirit is given in conjunction with the gospel: because the gift of the Spirit is the purchased blessing of an exalted Lord. He cites John 7, Acts 2, and…

Martin quotes a line from the hymn 'Rock of Ages' ('Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross, I cling, foul I to the fountain fly, wash me, Savior, ere I die') to illustrate the sinner's posture of faith in Christ alone for salvation and the Spirit's gift.

Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law and his bearing the curse of that law has made it possible for the gift of the Spirit to be given to the believing child of God. And so then, the gift of the Spirit is given not because we come to the Spirit in absolute obedience and earnestly, but because the Lord Jesus by his absolute obedience has purchased that gift for us and is given to us graciously, not when we come as those who've attained some great measure of self-purification and can say we've met the conditions for the baptism of the Spirit, but we've come in the words of the hymn, ...

37:04 - 38:31 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not use this teaching as an excuse to be indifferent to the work of the Spirit, but understand that all further work and ministry of the Spirit is based upon and derived from what God established at the threshold of s…

The analogy of a five-dollar bill compared to a million-dollar inheritance is used to explain that the present sealing of the Spirit is just an 'earnest' or 'down payment' of the greater blessings of future redemption, emphasizing that 'the best is yet to come'.

That seer is union with Jesus Christ. And men are united to Christ vitally and personally experimentally when they are effectually called through the gospel. And when that gospel is preached and believed by the faith which God Himself creates in the heart of a sinner the Spirit is given as gift as divine seal authenticating that man as a child of God identifying him as a child of God preserving him unto the day of redemption. The Lord willing in our next study we'll look at verse 14 what we might call the further implications of the sealing where Paul says this divine sealing which has come to...

47:10 - 48:39 Read in full sermon