Acts 1:4–5 And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
We find ourselves still within the prologue, or introduction, to the Book of Acts: these opening five verses. To connect the dots with last week’s message, I want to begin with a deeply encouraging summary of Acts from the Bible commentator Albert Barnes:
Acts contains unanswerable evidence of the truth of the Christian religion. It’s a record of the early triumphs of Christianity. Within the space of 30 years after the death of Christ, the gospel had been carried to all parts of the civilized, and to no small portion of the uncivilized world. Its progress and its triumphs were not concealed. Its great transactions were not ‘done in a corner.’
It had been preached in the most splendid, powerful, and corrupt cities; churches were already founded in Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, and at Rome. The gospel had spread in Arabia, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, and Africa. It had assailed the most mighty institutions; it had made its way over the most formidable barriers; it had encountered the most deadly and hostile opposition… It had traveled to the capital, Rome, and had secured such a hold even in the imperial city as to make it certain that it would finally overturn the established religion and seat itself upon the ruins of paganism. Within 30 short years, it had settled the point that it would overturn every bloody altar, close every pagan temple, bring under its influence the men of office, rank, and power, and that ‘the banners of the faith would soon stream from the palaces of the Caesars.’
All this would be accomplished by the instrumentality of Jews, of fishermen—common men. They had neither wealth nor armies nor allies. With the exception of Paul, they were men without learning. They were taught only by the Holy Spirit, armed only with the power of God, victorious only because Christ was their Captain. Its success never has been, and never can be, accounted for by any other explanation than that God attended it.
Their success will stand until the end of time as an argument for the truth of God’s plan—that shall confound the unbeliever and sustain the Christian—with the assured belief that this is a religion which has proceeded from the almighty and infinitely benevolent God.
I so love the phrase he used: “God attended it.” This is all of your Christianity, beloved! God attended it, and because He did, you were made alive forevermore.
Last week we considered three things: the centrality of Jesus Christ in the book of Acts; the fact that the Lord of the Church chose weak and sinful men to labor in His kingdom; and the truth that what was about to happen would usher in a whole new era. Keeping those in mind, we now come to see something of what is soon to take place: “…you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now” (Acts 1:5).
That promise of the Father is our focus here, and we will consider it in three parts: the Promise, the Place, and the Power. My aim is first to clarify what this baptism with the Holy Spirit is, and then to show why it is necessary. Let’s begin with a bit of history.
I. The Promise
Acts 1:4 And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father…
Luke is connecting two significant and rather obvious dots here: Acts 1:4 and Luke 24:49. The two verses share much of the same language, come from the same author, and serve as bookends of sorts to his two volumes.
Luke 24:49 “And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”
In Luke 24, Jesus Himself is speaking. In Acts 1, Luke summarizes the order Jesus had given to His apostles. Both verses speak of the same command and the same promise: these disciples must wait in Jerusalem until the promise of the Father comes.
But what is this “promise of the Father,” and how can we be sure? We will have to cheat just a little and jump ahead to Acts 2, where the apostle Peter answers the question for us as he begins preaching to those gathered on the day of Pentecost. He tells us exactly what the promise of the Father is. All that the crowd was seeing and hearing that day—the mighty rushing wind, the divided tongues of fire, each person hearing the disciples in his own language—Peter explains this way:
Acts 2:16–17 But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: “And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams…”
This prophecy, a direct citation of Joel 2:28–32, was given some 500 years before that glorious day in Acts 2. Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, points to it to explain the events of that Pentecost Sunday.
And saints, the Joel passage is no isolated mention of this “promise of the Father” in the Old Testament. Truly, this is the great New Covenant promise! Many of the prophets of old spoke of God pouring out His Spirit on His people in a future and very significant way.
Isaiah prophesied of it:
Isaiah 44:3 “For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.”
Ezekiel predicted it as well:
Ezekiel 39:29 “And I will not hide my face anymore from them, when I pour out my Spirit upon the house of Israel, declares the Lord GOD.”
Zechariah likely did also:
Zechariah 12:10 “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.”
Most recently, in relation to the timeline of the Book of Acts, the last and greatest of the Old Testament prophets spoke of this coming promise:
Luke 3:16 John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
We know John’s words belong to this same promise because Acts 1:5 clearly alludes to them: “…for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
Going much further back on the biblical timeline—way back—to a far earlier prophet, I firmly believe we can even see this longing in Moses:
Numbers 11:29 But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!”
In addition to these Old Testament prophecies, there is a glorious foreshadowing of this day as well. We should see the dedication of the temple in Solomon’s day as a type or shadow of what would one day happen according to the promise of the Father. In 2 Chronicles 7, as soon as Solomon concludes his prayer over the people of Israel, fire falls from heaven, consuming the burnt offerings and sacrifices, “and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.”
When we fast-forward to the pages of the New Testament, it becomes clear that the redeemed—those united to Jesus—are the temple of the Holy Spirit:
1 Corinthians 6:19 “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?”
The glorious events surrounding the dedication of Solomon’s temple, then, foreshadow what would take place roughly 1,000 years later among those living stones, the 120, in Acts 2.
So there’s a bit of a history lesson. Now, how about a brief geography lesson?
II. The Place
The other repeated element in Jesus’s instructions to the disciples involves the place: “But stay in the city…” (Luke 24:49). We know this city is Jerusalem, both because it is named in verse 47 and because Jerusalem was the location of the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the ascension that followed forty days later. In Acts, Luke makes it all the more clear: “…he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait…” (Acts 1:4).
Without lingering here, it seems worth noting that God had intended all along for Jerusalem to be a place of significance.
Psalm 48:1–2 Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised in the city of our God! His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion, in the far north, the city of the great King.
Even Joel’s prophecy, quoted by Peter in his Pentecost sermon, concludes with a Mount Zion connection:
Joel 2:32 And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the LORD has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the LORD calls.
It is Jerusalem—the city of God, the city of David—that serves as the starting point. Out of this place the gospel will both travel and transform! And so it is here, in the city of God, that these servants of God will wait in dependence on God for the promise of God to come.
Now that we have the context of both the promise and the place, it is time to consider what this baptism actually was.
III. The Power
Acts 1:5 “…for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
There it is: “baptized with the Holy Spirit,” a phrase that has caused much confusion over the last hundred-plus years, since the birth of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement. We need to lay a little groundwork to rightly understand this seldom-used biblical phrase.
For starters, it appears on only four occasions.
The first comes from the mouth of John the Baptist, just before the scene where he baptizes Jesus. We read it in each of the four Gospels (Matthew 3, Mark 1, Luke 3, and John 1), including the Luke 3:16 passage quoted above.
The second is Luke’s own recounting of John the Baptist’s words in Acts 1:5, our text.
The third is similar to Acts 1:5 and significant in its own right—essentially a repeat appearance of what we see in our passage, this time with Peter speaking:
Acts 11:16 And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’
In Acts 11, Peter is reporting to the church at Jerusalem how he had preached the gospel to the Gentiles gathered at the house of Cornelius, and how God had powerfully visited that preaching with salvation as well as the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
The fourth and final appearance comes from the pen of Paul, writing to the Corinthians:
1 Corinthians 12:13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
This verse is significant for understanding the baptism of the Spirit from a doctrinal viewpoint rather than the historical perspective we find in the other instances. Paul is telling us what being baptized with, or in, the Holy Spirit means.
The analogy Scripture so often uses for this baptism or outpouring is water being poured out on plants. It’s a picture of a real drenching, an immersion, much like the way we view the ordinance of water baptism. And Paul points out that being baptized with the Holy Spirit marks your union with both Christ and His church: “baptized into one body.”
This happens in the new birth, at the moment of conversion; it is a singular event. At the very start of the Christian life we are united to Christ, sealed by His Spirit, and adopted by God. We are made new creatures, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, and we become sons and daughters. This is my baptism with the Holy Spirit, and it is yours if you are in Christ!
And yet, something special and unique is happening in the book of Acts. Something unprecedented, something new, something that happened once for all time. Just as the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the ascension were one-time events, so also what transpired on the day of Pentecost was a one-time event. I know many have claimed to experience their own modern Pentecost, and many others have hoped for such an outpouring. But that is not God’s intention, saints.
So when we read in Acts 1:5 that the disciples “will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now,” we need to understand it as having special significance for that unique occasion. The 120 gathered in the upper room, faithfully and expectantly waiting for the promise of the Father, were already believers! At the close of Luke’s Gospel they are rejoicing, worshiping, and obeying Christ. For them, the baptism with the Holy Spirit represented something particular to their role in redemptive history.
But what was it? What did it represent? Luke’s writings make it clear:
Luke 24:47–49 “…and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”
Gospel proclamation (verse 47) by these witnesses (verse 48) will only succeed if God empowers them (verse 49). For these dear saints, on this unique occasion, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit like never before was needed if their gospel proclamation was ever to succeed.
This understanding is further cemented when we come to the guiding text of the entire book of Acts:
Acts 1:8 “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Power, brothers and sisters! This is the baptism with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Yes, God attended it. God gave of His Spirit. The church of Jesus Christ is an empowered church!
Ongoing Fillings of the Spirit
I need to clarify one further thing, and it is certainly important for us today.
When we are united to Christ in salvation, we experience our own baptism with the Holy Spirit. He takes up residence within us. He empowers us to slay sin and serve Christ. He sheds abroad God’s love in our hearts. It is experiential—felt and known. We are sealed unto the day of redemption!
But this is not the only experience of the Holy Spirit we are to seek. The buck doesn’t stop with the baptism in the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t stop there for you and me today, and it didn’t stop there for the saints in the book of Acts either. Remember, they are examples to us of what it looks like for weak, flawed, and sinful people to live for Christ in a hostile world. Those 120 men and women, apostles and disciples, experienced something entirely unique on the day of Pentecost—you bet they did! But their experience of the Holy Spirit, and their need for further empowerment, didn’t end that day.
This again is where Acts is so helpful to us. Think of the language Luke uses throughout the book for further outpourings of the Holy Spirit:
- Acts 2:17 “I will pour out my Spirit”
- Acts 4:8 “filled with the Spirit”
- Acts 6:5 “full of faith and the Holy Spirit”
- Acts 10:44 “the Holy Spirit fell on them”
- Acts 19:2 “receive the Holy Spirit”
- Acts 19:6 “the Holy Spirit came on them”
One of my favorite scenes, in which fresh empowering was both needed and received, comes in Acts 4:
Acts 4:31 And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.
All of us know by experience our ongoing need for fresh empowerment. But the New Testament goes further than arguing from experience: we are actually commanded to be filled with the Spirit.
Ephesians 5:18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit…
The verb “be filled” is a present imperative, which means this is a New Testament command for ongoing, repeated fillings of the Holy Spirit. That should shape our praying! For the New Testament goes on to show us, in a hundred different ways, our utter need of the Holy Spirit’s help and power to do anything useful for Christ.
This is where I want to linger, dear ones. Every true believer has the Spirit of God dwelling within them; Scripture’s testimony is ever so clear here.
John 14:17 “…the Spirit of truth…You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”
God’s Spirit is in and with us! But not every believer lives as a vessel filled with the Holy Spirit.
Our perspective here really needs to change. I want you, my brothers and sisters, to be informed—hence this emphasis on doctrine—and I want that information to inspire and fuel heart change. But I also want you to be liberated to pursue fresh fillings of the Holy Spirit. I hope to forever squash the notion that this is Pentecostal or charismatic, or somehow “fringe,” “strange,” sensational, or mystical. We love the Word, don’t we? I have endeavored to open the Scriptures so that, in seeing what we’ve seen, we would hunger for such power—not power for power’s sake, and not power for our own sake, but power to serve the Lord Jesus sacrificially.
I want you, dear ones, to think along these lines. Pray accordingly. Hunger for the Spirit’s enabling power, long for fresh outpourings, and keep stirring one another up to this kind of thirst. You don’t merely need help to remain faithful; you need power to remain fruitful. The Christian life is the faithful and the fruitful life, isn’t it? Don’t you long to be more fruitful for Jesus? Don’t you yearn for your life to count in Christ’s kingdom? If you do, you must see that divine power is necessary. There’s nothing optional about it!
What we must take away from Acts 1:4–5 is that without this empowering of the Holy Spirit, these Christians had no hope of success. Stated positively, only by being “clothed with power from on high” could they be effective witnesses and fulfill their commission from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus’s ministry began this way: you remember the Spirit descending like a dove and resting upon our Lord. And the church’s ministry began this way, with the Holy Spirit descending and resting upon the 120 gathered that day.
We need the Holy Spirit to descend upon us, saints. We need that same kind of enabling power!
I appreciate the way Derek Thomas puts it: “The ministry of the Holy Spirit is to empower and enable for the tasks of the kingdom of God. These 120 impoverished disciples manifested no sign of being church planters and martyrs. Yet the Spirit will change all of that. He always does.”
He always does! God attended it!
See and feel the necessity of being filled with the Spirit, brothers and sisters. Begin asking the Lord daily to clothe you with His power and fill you with His Spirit. In and of ourselves, our prospects of fruitfulness are only bleak. Filled with the Spirit, the possibilities are both extraordinary and endless. Can you imagine what God could do with a church full of saints filled with the Holy Spirit?
Be often asking, saints. Be often asking. For Jesus assures us:
Luke 11:13 “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”