Live Free with Josh Howerton - Is the BAPTISM of the Holy Spirit a REAL Thing?! (What the Bible ACTUALLY Says) | Live Free with Josh Howerton

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Pastors Josh, Carlos, and Paul unpack Paul’s words to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1 and trace his transformation from a fearful young leader into a faithful, courageous pastor. They also compare the major Christian views of baptism in the Holy Spirit, explain what changed between the old and new covenants, and discuss why every believer should continually seek the Spirit’s filling. In this episode, you’ll learn: How Christians should respond to wars, disasters, and uncertainty Why fear should never become the controlling force in your decisions How Scripture—not feelings—helps you discern God’s direction The differences between cessationist, Pentecostal, and charismatic views What the Bible teaches about receiving and being filled with the Holy Spirit How the Spirit empowers believers for holiness, courage, and ministry Stand firm. Think biblically. Live free. Don’t miss our most recent bonus episode, An ISLAMIC Takeover is Coming…Here’s what Christians Should Do. Watch now: https://youtu.be/RWY9GPDqor8 💬 This week’s giveaway: Comment HAT 🧢 Want a Live Free hat of your own? Visit LiveFree.shop 📲 Looking to grow deeper in your faith? Check out the Lakepointe App to access our Discipleship Guide, daily Bible reading plan, and more. Text APP to 20411 to download

Some people get tripped up and they think until I become nearly sinless, I'm never going to receive the gift of the spirit. And I would just point out, it's called a gift, brother. We're going to talk about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. What is it and how do you get it? There is one God and there's one story of salvation that he is writing. That's a continuous thing from Old Testament to New Testament. Well, hey, Lifree Nation, before we jump into the episode, this podcast is recorded right here at Lake Point Church in Dallas, Texas. But the Liv Free Nation is spread all over the country and all around the world.

If you've been watching and thinking, man, I wish I could be part of something like this, we want to invite you to take a simple next step, and that is join us for church online. Every weekend we stream our services live on YouTube, Facebook, and our church online platform, and it's more than just watching a service. There are a live host in the chat,

prayer teams ready to stand with you, and people all around the world worshiping together in real time. And so whether you're exploring the faith, coming back to church, or just looking for a place to start, church online is a great way to jump in and experience what God is doing here at Lake Point. We would love to see you in the chat this weekend.

And now, enjoy the podcast. Let us kick this big. Let us keep this big. Well, hey, welcome back to another episode of the Live Free podcast. My name is Carlos Arraswin today. I am excited because I'm here hanging out with two great men of God.

I'm here with Pastor Josh Howardton and Pastor Paul Cunningham. Woohoo. What's up? Coming to you from Lake Point Church in Dallas, Texas. And today we're gonna have a great episode. Pastor Josh, I'm excited for this one. Me too, but we've been commandeered by the Mormons. Okay.

You went ahead and went there. He went there quick. That's a joke. We'll explain that you're in a second if you don't know what we're talking about. That escalated quickly. In addition to what you just brought up, we're going to be addressing today, 2 Timothy chapter 1. God did not give us a spirit of fear or timidity. We're going to talk about that.

We're going to talk about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. What is it and how do you get it talking about... Or is that a thing? Or is that even a thing? There's a lot of people who are like, hey, man, not sure that's a thing. That just happened to salvation. We ask people on Instagram to submit their questions and literally it's like, would you submit questions on the baptism of the Holy Spirit?

Literally one question was, what is it? Okay, there you go. Continuities and discontinuities between the old covenant and the new covenant in the Bible. Very nerdy. And of course, talk dirty to me. And it gets better.

We're going to be asking. It took me a second. We may actually have to edit that out. You're talking to Paul, right? We're also going to be asking, should Christians try to legally stop mosque from being built in their city? Okay, I'm just going to go ahead and give a quick, like, buckle your seatbelt.

I know, you know, let me just, we're going to talk. I spent an inordinate amount of time this week trying to get my head around this question. So let me just get this out the gate. I need you to listen with open mind when we get there. We may have time to get to it this episode. We're going to do our best. There's a lot there. That may need its own episode.

And I'll just let listeners know. The reason we're doing this, we're not trying to like, I think some people are like, dude, you guys keep talking about Islam. Well, it's like, A, we live in Dallas. That's like a thing here. And B, it's like, if people don't know, there was just a national news story came out of McKinney, just a few miles from us. Future McKinney campus coming in the next little while.

Good news? Yep. Maybe, maybe. It is. But I don't think I'm, anyway, let me just keep on it. And so it became a national news story because there was a massive, I mean, I think about a thousand people at a city council meeting, protesting, opposing the building of a pretty significant at Moss site. We're going to talk about a lot of us here in a second.

Became a national news story because despite all the opposition, city council approved at 7-0. And so then, dude, this is a major question Christians are getting is should Christians legally organize to try to stop a mosque being built in their city? Or, and here's the tension, I'm going to go ahead and pull my punch and give the tension. or religious liberty is an explicitly Christian concept. Like that's our thing. We're a religion of invitation, not in position, and First Amendment and all the things were made by Christians. So how should Christians think about that?

And there's a lot there. So we'll see what we can do. I have a couple questions about that. It's going to be fun. So either on this episode or the next one or a bonus episode, because there's quite a bit that we're going to be covering as well. Hey, a couple of things I want to celebrate here at Lake Point. Mr. Josh, we just came from at the movement.

movies and man, how did you feel this weekend? Well, we can't, so this weekend was our first week, not at the movies. That's right. So we came out of the series. We started last week, obviously we started Fight the Good Fight. This week's week, too. Bro, honestly, I was so proud of our church because, you know, we kind of did the thing, hey, for four weeks, we reach wide, now we're going deep.

And it's just verse by verse through Second Timothy. Let me brag on the people Lake Point. Everybody knew coming into this week, here's all we're doing. We're deep diving and verse by verse in Second Timothy. And it was our first week ever. non-holiday, non-ATM, over 30,000 people in person. I'm at the Rockwall Campus, obviously, both services on Sunday. Stairs are covered with a bunch of college students with Bibles in their laps.

And, dude, it was stinking awesome. So that was last week. And then, partly because of Live Free Nation, we told everybody to go get these little crossway Second Timothy journals. So not only did we sell out all the ones at Lake Point. we sold out Amazon We broke Amazon We broke Amazon

We sold Amazon's like What is going on with this Man popularity in this This random $7 We sold out all of Amazon So sorry to everyone And we'll do our best

To see what we can do for you We need to figure that out In the future whenever we You know Have people buy things from Amazon Like it's going to be a thing Well we actually had like an emergency meeting afterward and realized

We're going to change our strategy Because between legpoint and live free when we say stuff like that like 250,000 people go looking for it. But here's what I love. I love that. Everybody listening, everybody at Lake Point loves the Word of God. That's what I love. People came hungry. They came hungry. Yeah. They did, man. Hey, also, if you are listening to this and you're in the DFW area, part of the Life Free Nation, come hang out as well. We always love to meet people from all over the place. Every single week, we do a giveaway. So comment hats on YouTube or Spotify, and maybe even chat Gipalcy might sign one.

And, you know, it's going to be a special one. We'll see. Also, subscribe on YouTube or Spotify as well. Thank you for supporting to download the Lake Point Church app. How many of those hats have we given away? You may know? I'm curious. Thousands?

Thousands? I don't know the answer to that. We don't know that. But I do know that if you want to download the Lake Point app, you can just go ahead and text the word apt to 20411. How many people have texted? And so it's going to be great. Okay.

So on that note, Pastor Josh, I have a question for you. But that's not the question that I usually ask. It's a different one. Oh, okay. You brought up a Mormonism at the beginning of this episode when we were saying hi. So let me... Wait, do we have a picture of the announcement? Hang on, Trinity.

I'm going to send you a picture of the announcement. Can I pull it up? Is that weird if I do that? No, you can pull it up. All right, go ahead and keep talking. So this is what resulted in many. We're going to call them frequently shouted questions. For the, like, the...

Oh, can you pull it up? No, no, go to... Hang on. I'm going to send you the one I'm talking about. There's one now. Look at that guy. Okay, so for the one or two people that... What a punchable face.

I'm joking. I'm joking. Hey, bro. I know. I know the story behind that. Hey, we got a podcast to recording. Sorry.

Hey, for the people that actually have no idea what we're talking about, Pastor Josh, why are you bringing up the Blaze media? Okay. So we just, so this announcement became public this week. this announced you know and well I won't go there and so essentially this is what was announced

and first of all let me just say wait we're reading it for the people that I'm not reading that you're going to read that I got you bro I got you bro let me just say America's fastest growing Christian voices joining Blaze Media Blaze TV staff it says Josh Howardton Lake Point Church pastor and host

of Live Free joins Blaze Media to share the gospel and apply scripture to the issues of the day and that is exactly what we're doing Okay. That's exactly what we're doing. First of all, I would just like to say, we did not tell them to say, fastest growing Christmas. No, we did not. It's like, it's why I didn't want to read it. But this resulted in, we've got a, it's called a distribution partnership. Is that the right thing to say? With Blaze, where they're starting to put live free on their platforms. And this resulted in a significant number of, we will call them frequently shouted questions. That's right. So we would like to dispel some frequently shouted questions. And then we'll actually talk. about the Bible and it would be great. Let me start with the first one. In mosques. Pastor Josh, you're now. No, you have to shout them. Oh, okay. They're frequently. Okay. You ready? This is going to be really interesting. Pastor Josh, you are now working for our Mormon. He can't even do it. He can't even

do it. He can't do it. That's like a fake show. So first of all, let me just, all, all, number one, I'm not working. I'm working for Lake Point Church. I'm not, we're not, we're not employees of the blaze. This is a distribution. partnership. Essentially, they came to us. And we've, by the way, we've had people approach us before about potentially acquiring the podcast or, hey, you know, could we put it on our networks? And we just didn't feel awesome about it. And I'll talk about why here in a second. All this is, is they are putting our content on their platforms. That's number one. So I'm an employee of one, I have one employer, Lake Point Church, the elders and the people of Lake Point Church. Number two,

a lot of people don't know this, dude, but I realized this this this week. amidst the frequently shouted questions. First of all, let me just say, I have met Glenbeck. Dude's awesome. I was thinking loved Glenn Beck. He was amazing. But he doesn't own the Blaze anymore. So, in fact, I talked to the CEO this week of the Blaze,

and both the current ownership group and the board is entirely comprised now of Bible Believe and Christians. So that's my answer to your frequently shouted question, Carlos. Well, you know what? You know what? Okay. The cab is got back. Oh, you know what? I got another one.

Shout it. Shout it, Pompador from El Salvador. After this partnership, Pastor Josh, you're going to be distracted. You're a pastor. Yes, I saw this a lot this week. This was a frequently shout of question. Literally, we're not doing anything different. We're just recording the podcast like we've always done, and then they're putting it on their channels.

So literally, the exact same amount of time that goes into the Bible teaching and the production of Live Free is the exact. same thing we'll keep on doing. Except more people are going to be listening to the Word of God. Okay, that's great. More people hear the word about this. But there's one more. Pastor Josh, you're also aligning with a political organization. What are you doing?

No, that's just not true. So, first of all, again, this is a distribution partnership. They're just going, hey, would you take, can we take live free and put it on our platforms? And for us, we're going, more people hear about Jesus, more people hear about the Word of God. All that's great. We also, no one, anywhere, and this was a part of us just making clear, and they had no problem with this. They were like, hey, we don't want you to change anything. We're not changing absolutely anything.

No one has editorial control over anything that we do. In fact, they just love what we're currently doing. We're going to keep doing that exactly what we're doing. So Lake Point works and has partnerships with tons of organizations. Are you talking like tons of organizations? So when we partner with the organization, really we're not, that's not us endorsing everything that comes out of any organization. When we order food from a restaurant, that's not us for a catering thing. That's not us going, we now approve of everything, every employee of that restaurant ever said.

No, this is just us going, hey man, more people hear the life-saving message of Jesus Christ and hear the Word of God preached. That's all that is. But will you still be able to... You literally, you can't shout. Well, man, I'm being mindful of the people listening in the car right now with the family. Will you still be able to talk freely about the Bible? Yes, that's all we do.

So again, nothing whatsoever changes about the pod except more people see it. That's great. What I've heard to some people is basically, I watch Seinfeld on multiple stations that they syndicate the show that they did not create. They just syndicate.

Same thing, like, sometimes you have radio shows that it starts in one city and then other radio stations elsewhere. They distribute it. They syndicated. That's all that's happening here. That's great. That's great. That's all I got. Hey, good job with the frequently shout. Thank you, bro. Semi-shouted.

Hey, dude, can I ask you something about your neck of the woods? Yeah, sure. Your neck of the woods? I don't know if I'm allowed to say that. Yeah, go ahead. I'll allow it. I'll allow it. Right. Right. There was something pretty significant happened in Columbia, South America, last week or so. Yeah. Catch me up.

So, okay, so Columbia some days ago had this, like, massive earthquake. I think it was like 7.4. And by the way, if you've ever been in an earthquake, I have, it's really scary. Obviously, there's like buildings falling, you know, the ground literally shaking. Like if you ever been in one, it's like apocalyptic. And that happens. 7.4 is a big deal. And so what a lot of people are asking right now is why does it seem like there's so many different earthquakes happening like literally all over the world? Like you see this in like Venezuela, obviously this happened in last month.

There's like two earthquakes happening. Mexico, Japan, Indonesia. These are like massive earthquakes. And what I want to do is I want to help you think biblically about. this so it's interesting when you look at scripture there's only one time that jesus actually specifically explicitly addresses earthquakes and the one time he does it it happens in the context of the end times and the return of jesus and so let me just read it matthew 24 7 and 8 it says for a nation this is jesus speaking in the context of the end time and his return he says for a nation will

rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom and there will be famines and there will be earthquakes in various places all these are but the beginning of the birth pains so this full This photo right here, Train, if you can pull it up. This photo right here, it is an image showing the 10 earthquakes that have been over 7.0 and above in magnitude, which is devastating. That's Mexico, Japan, Venezuela, Indonesia. Again, more than just numbers,

this is like literally people dying, buildings falling apart. A lot of these countries are not even ready to sustain that damage. This is literally what Jesus said 2,000 years ago would happen. Like there would be earthquakes literally in all a bunch of different places. And somebody might be hearing this, and be like, yeah, okay, but there's always been earthquakes. There's always, this has always happened. And that's true, but we haven't always had

these amount of earthquakes in the context of literally everything else that we're seeing right now happening and unfolding in our world. And so let me just give you another one real quick. Wars and rumors of wars is what the Bible says. So studies show today that in the last four to five years, there's been an increasing number in quote, active armed conflicts involving government.

2025 set an all-time record high since World War II. In 2026, the amount of the amount countries that were involved as well in conflicts outside of their own borders nearly doubled in the last 20 years and according to the same report it says quote global peace is at its lowest level since 2007 and again this is just one more example of so much more we could keep going but here's the point i want to put on my pastor head on when people see and by the way this is not the last one you will probably see more of these for for the rest of the year like a significant earthquake and things like this when you see stuff like that earthquakes wars persecution the insanity happening out there

us, Jesus said this would happen. And he said, when you see these things, what you need to understand if you're a Christian, like you need to be reminded, this is literally what Jesus said would happen before. He said, hey, I'm going to be back soon. I'm going to return soon. Now, if you're not a Christian, what you need to understand is, like, this should scare you. It means that you need to know, like, Jesus spoke about birth pains, and this is just a beginning of something that's going to get worse.

But what's interesting, a lot of people don't know this, that if you are a Christian, in the same verse where Jesus is speaking about the end times and what's going to happen, he literally says this, Matthew 246, and you will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see that you are not alarmed. And so if you are a Christian and you are seeing all this chaos, what you need to understand is Jesus is saying, hey, you believer, you should not be afraid because this is actually a divine plan that is unfolding. And so, again, the world is expecting catastrophe,

but Christians are expecting Christ to return. the world is expecting tragedy but Christians know that Jesus is still on the throne and we don't put our faith in possibilities we put our faith in a person and his name is Jesus so Lord Jesus please come soon

Amen, amen Carlos okay bro that's how do they doing down there do you know? We sent some resources I think yeah and the same with Venezuela I mean better I mean again there's rescue mission there's a lot of effort some countries are a better

position to their infrastructure the thing with all these countries they don't have the infrastructure that we have necessarily here in the U.S. So, again, the damage is significant. We partner with Convoy of Hope. Yeah, that's right. And they're the ones that get in there. So, yeah, yeah.

That's great, man. Yeah. Pastor Josh, now I do have a question for you that you're somewhat familiar with. What did it make into the sermon? A lot, dude. I'm excited about this right here is what I love having the podcast because for real, dude, there's this thing. Hey, by the way, great job this weekend. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll be honest. This is a little thing. I don't know. if it's just like trends or age. It's the older I get, dude. I just really don't like any sermon series. This is not just preaching through a book of the Bible.

I don't know what that is. It's just like the best, man. I don't know. I don't know. There's just something about it for me. I'm excited about this. This is why I'm in the podcast. There's one thing in particular.

I've been like trying to get into a sermon for like, uh, it's probably been three years. And I can never do it. I've been like, okay. I at least have the podcast now. There you go. So I'll get there in a second.

So a couple things. First of all, this sermon, second to the two, and we picked up in verse six, and then we went down all the way to the end of the chapter one. We're just going verse by verse of the book. What this is, is this is Paul's exhortation to young Timothy. Remember Timothy's young. Paul probably picks him up. He's around 15.

Starts a disciple on him. Takes on a whole bunch of mission trips, that kind of thing. What we know, everybody's got what the Puritans used to call a besetting sin. what we know about Timothy from context clues is his besetting sin was fearfulness i don't want to say cowardice he makes Timothy makes too many decisions that are like courageous to call him like cowardly decisions but i'll give some context here's why bible scholars think this um you have 14 times very interesting you go through second to me 14 times paul encourages timothy and by the way 14 times, if you're looking at the camera, this is 14 times in just this.

So it's like, that's it. It's literally, it's like front and back one and a half pages. So 14 times in this one little book, Paul says something like endure suffering. 14 different times, endure suffering. Number two, I'm going to read it here in a second. He tells Timothy, you have not been given a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, love, and of a right mind. by the way, I got thoughts. I'm interested to see if you guys think the same thing.

I got thoughts on what that means. There's theories on what that means. I am very, I am very, very convictional about what I think that means. So he says, hey, Timothy, you have been given a spirit of fear. Number three, you have, he says in first Timothy, things like, don't let anybody look down to you because you're young, but set an example for the believers. So it just seems over and over like Timothy struggled with fear. Okay.

Now, there was a good reason for this. So let me just, I'm going to toss some pictures up here. So this is the kind of stuff where it's like, one, you start figuring out, hey man, the Bible really happened. Number two, it just starts like, I don't know, the Bible goes from black and white to color. And so I'm going to show some pop some stuff up here. So Paul leaves Timothy eventually in Ephesus. Timothy becomes a pastor of Paul's favorite church in Ephesus for a long,

a long time. You can still go to Ephesus today. I know Paul has never been anywhere over there before. but it's not in Israel. It might change something. It will change. Are we allowed to say that? I mean, I almost hesitate to it.

I'm going to jinx it. God willing, two and a half weeks. God willing, two and a half weeks from now. Listen, that's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. Don't be timid.

That's right. Okay. God willing two and a half weeks from now, be on the ground there. Don't let anybody look down on you because you're bald. I said an example. Wow. I'm sorry, let's keep going. I went very personal.

I'm sorry, dude. I got a, my hairline screen, I just, I don't know, it just came out. Let's keep going. So, Paul leaves Timothy in Ephesus. Ephesus is, it's not in Israel. It's in modern day Turkey. That's a whole, by the way, that's a whole other, the Islam conversation. So now it's in a Muslim country.

used to be like the center of Christianity by the way it's the of every site I've ever been to now there's like more significant sites like dude when you're standing at Galgotha it feels more significant but as far as like just archaeological impressiveness there ain't nothing like Ephesus

it's the stinking coolest thing I've ever ever ever seen so this is when I did that series Letters of American Church and this is me standing in front of the library at Ephesus it's thinking cool, man. Because archaeologists, they took all these ruins and reconstructed it accurately. So, like, those are the actual original stones of the library of emphasis.

So when I'm showing you these pictures, I'm going to give a little context. What you need to do if you're a Bible reader is, like, I'm going to show you, the Bible actually mentions some of these specific places. So if you go to Acts 19, it says that when Paul and Timothy, so Paul's got Timothy with him in Acts 19, It says that Paul, quote, lectured from day to day in, quote, the lecture hall of Tyrannis. Some people think that the lecture hall of Tyrannis was either synonymous with the library or underneath the library. So it starts being cool because you're reading, you're standing there at Ephesus. You're reading these verses and you're like, bro, this is literally where this verse is talking about.

Yeah, man. Okay, so what happens in Ephesus, massive outpouring in the spirit. I'm going to show evidence that in a second. there is actually really cool there is uh archaeological confirmation of the outpouring of the spirit that happened in ephesus that is all over ephesus it's one of the stinking coolest things i'll show out here in a second so lecture hall at tyrannis all right now so they plant to church um then you read in act 19 this is your homework if you're a live free nation listener you go to x 19 and it says so many people get saved i told the story last week that the uh there's the temple to artemus and

they got all the idols that they're making, all that stuff. So right next to, go ahead and show that next picture, right next to the library, if you're standing in front of the library, looking to the right, is the agora. Okay, so the agora just means Greek marketplace. So when you're reading in Acts 19, the silversmith and all these dudes making the idols,

all that's happening literally right there. So this is where this happening. By the way, if you look at this picture on the left side, I didn't take it very good, on the left side of the picture just out of the frame, there is still evidence of what would have been a first century synagogue that most people think, if I remember correctly, turned into a meeting place for the local church, underground, underground church, okay? So the igora's right here. So when all that stuff happens,

people get taken to Paul and Timothy for preaching the gospel and hey, we can't sell our idols anymore. Bro, that's literally happening right there. Okay. Now, if you look, go to that next picture. So here's the, I'm standing in the agora, but I'm looking to the right of where I was talking about earlier. You see that crane in the background? That's original. No, I'm not. That's a joke. What they're doing right now is they're reconstructing some of the theater that Acts 19 mentions.

All this is going to make sense here in a second. I'll explain why I'm saying this. So that the Bible literally says I'm going to read it to you. So in verse 29, there's all the. big, you know, the riot because Paul and Timothy are causing their economy to get uprooted. Verse 29 says, the people seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul's traveling companions from Macedonia, and all of them rushed into, and then it says the theater. The theater is right where that, so I'm just trying to get it in your head.

The theater is where that crane is because they're reconstructing it. And I'll go to that next picture. This is the theater. All of it's still there. I mean, like, bro, basically the whole city where Timothy is the pastor when Second Timothy is written, the whole city's still there. So that's the theater. When you read Acts 19, that's legit. There is no doubt whatsoever.

That's where this happens. They try to kill Paul right there. Little fun fact, that thing has a greater seating capacity than the AAC. So, I mean, it's thinking big. Now, this is just one thing I love about the Apostle Paul. He's surrounded by an entire theater full of people want to kill him. and Paul essentially goes, sounds like a good time to preach. Yep.

He just like, so here's what you get, and I'm going to get to this in a second. Paul is the most fearless man in the New Testament. I actually really believe that. Paul is the most fearless man. And Second Timothy, he's discipling maybe the guy that struggle with fear the most. So this is happening right here, okay. Now, you got to remember all this. So Paul's that, he is that dude.

He's like, man, sounds like good time to preach. If they kill me, they kill me. Okay, that's just how Paul rolls. Now, he tells Timothy, hey man, over and over, hey Tim, don't be afraid. You be a man of fearlessness and conviction. And what we know about Timothy is he does it.

I really, I love it so much. Timothy becomes that man. Timothy stays there. I'm going to get to this in a second. Church history tells us that he lives there from when he's young. Church history tells us he died somewhere around when he was 80. I'm going to tell you this story here in a second.

He was supposedly martyred for his faith when he was 80 years old. And Timothy becomes the man that Paul encouraged him to. There is such a massive outpouring of the spirit in Ephesus. Church history tells us it was probably outside of Jerusalem, the largest New Testament church was in Ephesus. What's really awesome, dude, is there is still evidence today all over the city of Ephesus of Timothy's pastoral work. So, you know, we call it the Icthus.

We call it the Jesus fish. That's what we see. The Icthus was not originally the Jesus fish. Okay, that's not what, the Icthus. Bro, this is amazing. Originated in Ephesus under the pastoral leadership of Timothy. Oh, I didn't know. It's amazing.

If you go to Ephesus today and you're like, you don't even need some Christian guide to tell you this. You'll see this little symbol everywhere in the city. Pull that up. This is, if you're standing in front of that theater, I took this picture, it's right in front of the theater. Okay?

So basically anywhere in Ephesus where Timothy's pastoring, they would have these little booths, like a little farmer's market vibe. And you'll see, now, originally, on the left of the picture what you're seeing there

are the Greek letters. I'm going to make a fool of myself here. It's Eota, Kai, Theta. What's the Y looking one? No, no, the Y-looking one. Last one's Epsilon. The Y-looking one.

The Y-Locin one. I think the Y one is Epsilon. Oh, that's the Y-U-S-L-D-Sat. Thank you, thank you. That's right. That's a capital sigma. That's right. It looks like an E. It's capital sigma. And then that's the, okay. Now, what you got here, that little symbol that looks like a wheel with a spokes, bro, that's the original, Icthus. It wasn't originally, and here's what I mean. So, Icthus, all that is, Ictheus is the English transliteration of the Greek letters, Iota, kai, theta, epsilon, sigma. All that is is ikthus. Okay, those are the letters. And, bro, check this out. Now, I'm going to ruin this, and I might get up out of my seat, but just do your best here.

So, the Iq-so, so Timothy's the pastor, the church keeps growing. Apparently he disciples, somebody disciples the Christian business owners. Hey, you're going to get in trouble, people find out if you're a Christian. So here's what I want to do. We want Christians to help other Christian businesses, by the way, we should still be doing that. That's a really good idea. And what he does is he apparently, in that city, it's a lot of people. became a thing where the Christian business leaders, they would etch that little sign in front of

their little Agora booth. And it was a signal to the other Christians, hey, this is a Christian, you're safe here. And what that is, bro, is, okay, if you look at it. So, man, I hope, if you're just listening, you need to pop over to YouTube so that you can see just this segment, because it's so stinking cool, man. So that little symbol, I'm going to get up, and I know this is annoying, but I want you guys understand. No, then they won't be able to hear me, will they? No, they won't. Ah, daggummit. Okay. So you see that basically, if you take the middle

spoke with the top part, that's the I, then you have this, look, there's the Kai. Yeah. Right? Then look, there's a theta all around with just the line across. Then you got the Y thing, that's the Upsilon, the Upsilon there, the Y thing. And then the Epsilon is just if you take just the right side of the Icthus, the just the right three. Oh, I see it. Yeah, you see that? So, bro, they, And what those letters stand for, Iota, Kai, Theta, Upsilon, Sigma, is Iesus Christus, Theos, Huian, what's the word for Savior? Or Lord, Lord, Lord. That'd be Curias.

Yeah, that'd be Curias, yeah. But what it stands for is Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior. So what's the Savior? I'll look it up. Look it up. That'd be great. Look at that. Look at that.

I want to get that right. And so all over the city. So this is Timothy what became a fearless, spirit-filled preacher. There's a revival in the city. And to this day, bro, you can still go to the city and see the evidence of Timothy being a faithful, fearless pastor. Now, here's what we know. Soterre. Soterre.

Yeah. So-Tere. Stants for Savior. Savior. Yeah, yeah. Which, by the way, fun fact for listeners, Greek word soter means salvation. Yep, yep. Okay.

Which, by the way, is where we get the theological term soteriology. which means just study of salvation. That's right. So there's your little fun fact. That's great. That's fun to do. I got that right. You know that.

I got that. I'm insecure after you. I took a dig at Paul. I felt guilty. You've forgiven? I forgot. Oh, thank you. You got you back in the most gracious way possible.

I made fun of my own baldness earlier with the residents. That's true. I told him the story of Elisha and the two bears. Sorry, that's another thing for another time. Now, here's what we know happened in Timothy's life. and then we can talk about fear real quick and then we can talk about mosque real quick.

Church history tells us this was this is one of those things that's like it's one of those, hey, this is probably true. We don't know, certainly true, but probably true. In the 300s, church history records, I'm just going to read it to you,

that Timothy remained as Bishop of Ephesus. By the way, fun fact, not only was Ephesus that Timothy pastored Paul's favorite church, most people think, Church history and tradition tells us that Mary the Mother of Jesus ended up being a church member at the church at Ephesus and the Apostle John. Because Ephesus is, I think, the geographically closest New Testament church to the Isle of Patmos, which is where the Apostle John was exiled and he wrote the book of Revelation. Revelation.

By the way, for our listeners, this is a little thing. make sure you never say Revelations. That is not the title of the book. It's not. And if you say that, then you out yourself is not knowing that's not the title of book. I'm pretty sure I've said revelations. I know, that's okay.

I wonder if you said at the beginning of this episode. Did it? I don't know. I don't think so. No, no, no, no. Yeah, man. I will say in Spanish, Revelation is literally translated the apocalypse.

The Apocalypse. Apocalypse. Well, is it the official title of Revelation is people just say the apocalypse. of John. The apocalypse. And apocalypse, it doesn't mean in times, it just means you're revealing. That's right.

Yeah. All right, let me go back to the book. It's fine. I like our little tangents. So becomes Paul's favorite church, marry the mother of Jesus and the apostle John. This becomes their home church.

They become members of this church, according to church tradition. This is how Timothy dies when he's 80. Now remember, this is the kid that was the scared kid that Paul has to be like, hey, Tim, don't be afraid. Hey, buddy, don't be afraid. Timothy remained as Bishop of Ephesus after Paul's death.

In his old age, tradition says he was about 80 during a pagan festival called the Categagia, linked to the cult of Dionysus or Artemis slash Diana. Those are the Greek and Roman names. Revelers were engaging in wild idolatrous and violent processions through the city, wearing masks, carrying clubs, and committing public immorality and violence. Timothy confronted them, urging them to turn. from their idols to the true and living God. And let me just say, dude, here's what I love.

The spiritual son grew up and acted like his spiritual father. Yeah. So I have a feeling in a moment like that. Timothy remembered, well, I know what my spiritual father did. He stood up in that theater that's right down the street and he thought, seems like a good time to preach the gospel. And Timothy, when he was 80, he saw the same thing. And I think, you know what I ought to do?

seems like a good time to stand up and preach the gospel. The crowd turned on him and attacked him, beat him with clubs and stones, and dragged him through the streets. The streets you just saw with your very own eyes in those pictures, he died from his injuries. Some accounts say that he lingered for two days, suffering before he died.

And let me just say, well done, good and faithful, Timothy. So awesome, dude. So awesome. So good. So the whole book is just Paul going, hey man, let me disciple you, Timothy, and you have a besetting sin. Let me disciple in that besetting sin. And it becomes helping him with his fear. So this whole passage we were preaching was about the fear stuff. Now, I can go wherever you. I'm going to go on this. But there was a lot that didn't make it in. And that's the context. Yeah. So I want to ask you this, Pastor Josh, there is a particular section in this text that you shared that talks about the gift of God, which is in you through the lane of the hands. You have a particular theory about what is that gift specifically? Okay.

Yes, I do. Okay. And before I explain it, I will say, there's kind of two views on this, and I think I might be in the minority of you, but I'm like ten toes down on this. I think Paul disagrees with you, but go ahead. It's okay if you do. It's seriously okay if you do. And so this is one where it's like, hey, second or third tier issue, not hurt my feelings.

But, dude, I really, I spent the first day and a half, sometimes in sermon prep, I'll just get obsessed with like one thing. And it's just doing something for my soul. And so for the first day and a half of sermon prep, all I did was just study that little phrase. All right, well, let me do this. Okay. Let me back up. So let's read that verse. Yeah.

It is 2 Timothy. 116. Paul says, for this reason, and the this reason is, hey, Timothy, your mama and your grandmama, they prayed for you. For this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. And here's the big verse, for God gave us a spirit not of fear, I love this, but of power and of love, and of self-contact. control. Let me just riff on this, and then I'm going to get to what I think that. I'm just going to cut to the chase. I think that verse is talking about Timothy's, and I don't care what you call it. Some people will call it Spirit baptism. Baptism of Holy Spirit. Some people will just call it being filled with the Spirit. Our Presbyterian friends might call it unction.

I like that word. I think it's specifically talking about Timothy's baptism in the Holy Spirit. And I'm going to explain why I think that here in a second. I've never heard that before. And again, I think I might be in the slight minority view, but dude, I think when I'm done, I think I can win you. But let me just say a few things about this. Cermon was really about fear. Let me just differentiate a couple things. And then I want to get to the thing. I've been waiting for three years to get into a sermon. I couldn't. First of all, it says we have not been given a spirit of fear. Let me just say there's a difference between feeling scared and a spirit of fear. I think the Bible differentiates between those two things.

Scared is just feelings of fear. Scared's fine. Scared's normal. Honestly, scared keeps you alive when a bear is chasing you or there's lightning outside. Scares, that's fine. Like God gave us emotions for a reason, scared's fine. And then what the Bible says is sometimes when you're scared, what we do is in the face of feelings of fear, we take steps of faith. The Bible calls that courage. That's wonderful. We need to be people of courage. But there's a difference between feeling scared and what I think Paul is talking about here when he says a spirit of fear, okay? Feeling scared is like, it's feeling,

I kind of, you will use this language, feelings that are on you. It's on you. What you can never do is let the fear get in you and begin to control you in the way that the Holy Spirit is designed to control a Christian. That's what I think Timothy is saying.

There are times of your life, I have definitely had times in my life when this happened, where fear moves from being on me to being in me. and all of a sudden the role that the Holy Spirit is supposed to play, and I'm supposed to walk by the Holy Spirit, I'm supposed to be led by the Holy Spirit,

and all of a sudden, dude, I just look up, and honestly, I'm walking according to my fear. And I'm being led by a spirit of fear. And if you're looking at your life, and like if you're a listener right now, I would ask you in the next 30 seconds just to say, Lord, if this is me in any area of my life, will you show it to me when he says it?

If you're looking at your life, and you start to realize, wait a second, fear is actually the thing that's telling me what I can do and what I can't do anymore. Huh. Man, actually, I'm a slave to fear. Maybe fear is telling me where I can go and where I can't go. Fear is, what about this? Fear is telling me when I can sleep and when I can't sleep.

Fear is telling me what I can do with my money and what I can't do. Or things like this. if you ever get to a spot in your life where you're realizing, bro, fear is actually telling me when I will obey God and when I won't obey God, well, you're no longer controlled by the Holy Spirit. You're being controlled by an unholy spirit, the spirit of fear. And that's what Paul's talking about here, okay?

And I'll just say, and I don't have time to do this, I listed in sermon prep this week, every single one of the greatest blessings God has ever given me, and I have never received a blessing God has given me that was not on the other side of some kind of fear. Getting saved, getting baptized, dating Jana, deciding to adopt kids, deciding to come to Lake Point,

stepping into my calling as a preacher, is very interesting to me. Every single one, every single one of the great blessings God has brought me were on the other side of some fear. The reason for that is, fear in my opinion is the number one thing that the enemy uses to keep you from everything God wants in your life. Yeah. And dude, so let me just prove this. And bro, this is the thing.

I've been waiting like three or four years to get into a sermon and I can never find a time until now. Come on. Boom. Okay. So, bro, kick this big. Let's kick this big. So bro, check this out. So a few years ago, when I went to Israel, I will refrain from joking. We went over to Cesarea Philippi. Now, Cessaria Philippi, bro, this is so stinking awesome. This is one of those things when you're done, you're like, the Bible's amazing. So Cessaria Philippi, Carlos, that's where Jesus pulls the disciples out into the dead gum middle of nowhere. There's nothing out there. Like, for real, you're out in it. It's a one stoplight, hick town kind of thing. and that's where Jesus apparently points at some rock

and he goes, hey, I will build my church and the gates of, and this is very interesting. It does not say the gates of hell. What does it say? The gates of Hades.

Okay, now bookmark that. There's a reason for that that most people, they'd never see this. So Jesus apparently points to some rock. I wonder what rock. And then he goes, the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. Now,

when you go out of Sestri of Philippi, at the bottom of Mount Hermann, there is one spot and one spot only that people are like, this is probably where it was because this rock formation is there. Go ahead and toss it up here, okay? It's the only spot around there

where there's some prominent rock location. Now, dude, here's what it's nuts. So this is the bottom of Mount Herman. Now, you got to remember, it's first century, this is Greco-Roman empire with all the Greek and Roman gods. Now, dude, the tradition at that time

when Jesus is alive, is that, and again, we're asking this question, why does Jesus walk all the way out into the middle of nowhere where there's nothing else around there to do the, on this rock I will build my church, the gates of Hades will not prevail against it? So it walks all the way out,

finds this one rock and goes, points at the rock, and goes, the gates of Hades will never prevail against my kingdom. Now, Greco-Roman Empire, Greco-Roman gods, the tradition was at that time, this spot right there, that cave at the bottom,

bottom of Mount Herman, was the dwelling place in their minds, do you know this? Of Pan. Of Pan. Of the Greek Roman God, Pan, which, oh, by the way, was associated with fear, which, oh, by the way, is where we get the English word, panic. To this day, where we get the English word panic is from their belief that any time you saw the God Pan, that you would just be consumed by an iraqqqq. rational, controlling spirit of fear.

And bro, Jesus walks all the way out to that dead gum rock. Points at that rock, people are terrified of pan. They're being controlled by panic. That's what's gone on their head. And Jesus points at that rock, and essentially he says, on that rock, I'm gonna build my church.

I'm gonna, essentially, I'm a dunk on that God. On this rock, I will build my kingdom. And what he was saying is, the God of Pan, the God of Panic shall not prevail. Why? Because the Prince of Peace is here. You will no longer be controlled by a spirit of fear, but by a spirit of power and of love and of a right mind. Because when you know the Prince of Peace, you can have peace. Bro.

Isn't that nuts? Dude, I've been wanting to get that into a sermon forever. That was amazing. Wow. So that's the whole thing that's going on in this passage without the scriptures is the unholy spirit does fear. The Holy Spirit does faith and peace. That's what's going on. Okay.

Paul, any thoughts on that? No. No. I'm not going to add to that. You know, it's like, no, I will say this, dude. Can I just, let me just, brother, man, there's so many things you didn't make it in the sermon. It's going to actually kill me not to do all this stuff. But the podcast will get too long.

I will just say one other thing on this. I think of people want it. All right. We'll see. We'll see. It depends how it feels. One thing I will say is there is something that Christians say to each other a lot, that they don't know it. I think Christians are accidentally discipling each other into being disciples of Satan, and I'm not joking. So, bro, here's all just, here's a warning that I will give you that if you don't get over this thing in your head, you ain't never going to be led by the Holy Spirit. Christians will do this thing. It's one of those smart, dumb things, smart Christians believe, where they'll say, hey, man, you're trying to discern what the will of God is. Here's all you need to do. ask yourself, do you have a peace about it? And if you have peace about it, then it's from God. And if you don't have a peace about it, it's not from the Lord.

And I always just, when I hear that, I always just wanted, will you please shut up? And here's what I mean, dude. I'm always like, bro, have you read your Bible? Like, when you look in a Bible, when people are taking steps of faith to follow God and be led by the Spirit, they almost never are fearless and just tranquil. Like Moses is that he's so scared he's stuttering. You've got Jesus in Gassimony. There's just sound like a spirit of, I have a peace about going to the Christ.

He's sweating blood. His capillaries are exploding because he's overwhelmed by anxiety and fear. He's like, God, if you do anything else except this, would you do it? He's like, I didn't just, you know, do you have a peace about it? I can do this all day. When Joshua's being encouraged to take over the nation of Israel three times, what do they say? Three times. Fear not.

Be strong and courageous. Fear not. Be strong and courageous. Be strong and courageous. Be strong and courageous. Why? Because Joshua felt weak and afraid, weak and afraid, we can afraid. So what I say is, bro, when Christians disciple each other by saying, hey, man, here's

how you know if it's of the spirit. Do you have a piece about it? What you're accidentally doing is you're discipling people to put fear into the driver's seat of their life, watch for any time they have fear. And if you have fear, don't do the thing. And oh, by the way, guess who puts fear in you according to scriptures? Satan. So you're accidentally Christianizing the concept of people being controlled and reverse engineering their decisions by a spirit of fear. So here's what I would say to Christians, man, if you want to figure out if something is God's will fear,

life. The question isn't, do you feel a piece about it? The question is, has the word of God spoken about it? Yeah. That's the question. And then, dude, you're going to have times when you look at it and you know what the Word of God says or what the Spirit of God is led as led as you to do, and your knees are going to be buckling and shaken and, you know, you're going to have those moments. And you decide to plant your feet firmly on the Word of God and move forward any way in faith. That's what it looks like to be led by the Spirit. That's good. That's great. And I think with both of these things, one thing that didn't come into my mind. I think it was a watchman knee who first talked about this. We talked about there's three things. There's facts, there's faith, and there's feelings.

And you've got to get them in the right order. Do this thing. It's like the thing that should go first in life are the facts. The facts of who God is, the facts of what God has done and who he is for me. And so the idea is like whenever God speaks to people and says fear not. By the way, you don't tell people to not fear unless there's something to be afraid of. Like ever. So when he's talking to Joshua, they're going into the promise land and facing battle. So there was reason to be afraid. But then what does he do? He doesn't say because Joshua, man, you're good enough and you're strong enough and gosh darn it. You can do it. No, he says, for I am with you.

He puts his eyes on the facts. And then there's faith. There's the question of, am I going to put my faith and believe the facts and trust the facts? And then feelings are supposed to be the caboose that come along. Because what you've said earlier, fear is just a feeling. And peace, by the way, is just a feeling. Man, are they good or there in terms of the peace? Yeah, is it bad if the fear is there?

Yeah, but that's the caboose. And the decision you're going to have to make is, is, hey, when you're facing fear or any kind of emotion or lack thereof, am I going to put my faith in my feelings or I'm going to put my faith in my facts or in the facts? So you've got to get them in the right order. And then guess what? When you put your faith in the facts,

your emotions will eventually catch up into fall in the place. But they've got to be the caboose of your life, not the engine of your life. That's great. Yes. So you said facts, faith, and feeling. Exactly. So I guess it is true.

Facts don't care about your feelings. That's actually, yeah. All right. Let me get some more. We're going to do a the, well, I want to get to the theology of what I think this verse means. Because there's like layers to this thing. And then Paul, I want you to do here in a second. There's two things I want you to talk about.

Because this is going to dovetail into two concepts. They're a little Bible nerd geeky. It's theologians call it continuity and discontinuity between the old covenant and the new covenant. Another way to say that is the rural, dumb, Kentucky kid way to say it is, what's the difference between New Testament and the Old Testament? Yes. It's like, that's how I would say it. But Old Covenant, New Covenant, discontinuity, and continuity, because that's going to relate

to what I'm talking about here in a second. And then, just to be honest with people who are listening, there are, we're going to talk about some people call it baptism in the Holy Spirit. Some people call it filling with the Holy Spirit. Some people say one baptism, many fillings. I don't care what you say. But there are different views on this, and I want you to talk about what those views are, where some of the denominations fall, and some of the, some of the that kind of stuff. Yeah. What do you want me to do?

Do you want me to kind of talk about, give my theory on what this means, and then we do, okay. I'm sorry, I've been talking for a long time, man. You're good, bro. It's great. All right, let's keep going. All right.

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And now, let's go back to the podcast. So here's the debate in verse 6 and 7. I didn't have time to get into this and sermon. This is literally, I almost made the whole sermon this. I'll just be honest. I decided on Tuesday not to. So Paul again says, for this reason I remind you to fan and defame the gift of God. Here's the question theologians about Bible scholars ask.

What gift of God is he talking about? There's a few theories here. Is he talking about the Big G gift of the Holy Spirit? or is he talking about a little g specific gift of the holy spirit preaching or prophesying or is he talking about um timothy's commissioning as the pastor so like the moment when the elders placed their hands on him and commissioners past which one of those three is he talking about and then it goes on to say this which is in you through the laying on of my hands for god gave us not a spirit of fear but of power or love and self-control now i'm gonna give uh i'm gonna give i got four

reasons, I actually think he's specifically talking about the New Testament Big G gift of being filled with the spirit. And just if you're, if when I say this, it kind of triggers you a little bit and you're like, what? Just hang with me. I'll explain what I mean and what I don't mean. And I'm talking about something that happens to you subsequent to your salvation. Okay. So let me explain why I think this. All right. Number one, he specifically says this came quote, with the laying on of hands. Now, there are multiple things the laying on of hands represent the Book of Acts. Paul and Timothy are commissioned initially through the laying on of hands out of the church. Was it Antioch?

Paul and Barnabas. Paul and Barnabas, yeah. The church of Antioch. Yeah, laid in hands, basically commissioned them as missionaries to go out. And that became the New Testament pattern for how you essentially ordained is the word that we use in the modern church. Recognized the Holy Spirit was setting somebody apart for an office in the church. By the way, to this day, if you go to an ordination service at a church, you're going to see the elders or a bunch of people lay their hands on somebody. They got that from the Book of Acts.

Yep. Okay. Now, but frequently in the Book of Acts, the laying on of hands is something that is done to confer the Big G gift of the filling with the Holy Spirit in somebody. I'll do these real quick. This happens in Acts 8. It says this. Then they, quote, laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. This is whole Simon the sorcerer deal right there.

When he saw that the spirit, quote, watch this, was given through the laying on of the apostles' hands. Then he offers the money and he tries to buy the gift. You're not allowed to do that. Then this happens again in Acts 9. So Ananias departed and entered the house. This is when Paul is actually, it's after Paul's salvation, I believe.

This is when Paul is filled with the spirit. So Ananias entered the house where Paul is And quote Laying his hands on him He said Brother Saul The Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road By which you came

Has sent me to you So that you may regain your sight And be filled with the Holy Spirit One more time, Acts 196 I'm coming back at this later in the pod And when Paul had laid his hands on them The Holy Spirit came on them So number one, I'll do this quick

You got laying on a hands Paul says, whatever this gift was came to you by the laying out of hands. Number two, he calls it a gift. I'll just point this out. When Jesus in Luke 11 is talking about the father giving the gift of the Holy Spirit to those who ask, he uses the language of the spirits coming on your life as a, quote, gift. I'm going to read it to you. This is Jesus.

Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead, or if you ask for an egg, we'll give him a scorpion. If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good. gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit? So the Holy Spirit is being mentioned as a gift. That's clue number two. Clue number three. He says to Timothy, fan into flame. Now dude, it's hard for me to get. Now these context clues start stacking up. Bro, like everywhere in the New Testament, fire and flame is the dominant visual representation of the spirit coming on somebody. In both Matthew 3 and

and Luke 3, John the Baptist, says that Jesus will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. Acts 2, Spirit falls in the apostles. He comes as, quote, divided tongues of fire. First Thessalonians 519, people miss this. It says, hey, do not quench the spirit. And the Greek word when it's talking about quench, that's literally the word that it uses that you would like use a little spray to quench a fire. So you got that now. You stack those up.

I think you're already there. But then number four, I'll just point this out. notice the flow of the verses. He goes, hey, you haven't been given this spirit. This is not the spirit you got, spirit of fear. You've been given this spirit, power, love, self-control. Those are all things in the New Testament that are specifically associated with the spirit's presence in his life.

So I think the very obvious flow is, hey, not this spirit. You've been given that spirit. And really what I think he's doing is he's going back to the example of Peter. And I think he's going, hey, Pre- Holy Spirit, pre-Peter being filled with the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, he's running away from little toddler girls. And then post-filling of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, Peter's standing in front, by the way,

of the same people who crucified Jesus, and he's just planting his feet, saying with his chest, you killed Jesus, judgment is coming, you need to repent and be baptized, or there's going to be hell to pay. Like, that's literally what he's... So I think you stack those up.

I don't know how to see it any other way. I think Paul's specifically talking about Timothy's whatever phrase you want to use, Spirit, baptism, filling the Spirit. Now, really quick before we go any farther, Paul, can you real quick? Because talk real quick about the different views. Do you want to do the different views here on baptism in the spirit, filling a spirit? Because I need to acknowledge there are different views. on this that are kind of emotional for people.

I'll just get that out there and I'll let you take it. Before I guess, I'll say some of the other views that we threw out because of like, it could be Timothy's ministry, it could be the big gifts of the Holy Spirit like himself. The hard thing is you can make a great argument for any of those. And all in the spiritual gifts, it's like there's great data for each of them. When we go into this, what I would say is, is even if it were any of those other two, I think we would all agree that receiving fillings or a filling of the Spirit would make those more effective.

That if you're a spiritual person and it was this ministry, that's going to make him more effective. You see that in Acts 4, by the way, where it says all the apostles were gathered together after Pentecost had already happened. The Spirit fills them, and then they go out and preach the word with boldness, it says, and they see a lot of fruit.

So what I'm saying is when we get to this in a second, I think even if it didn't happen, I mean that, I think we'd all agree that being filled with the Spirit would make ministry or your spiritual gift more effective, right? That makes sense. Very obviously. Okay, I'm just saying. So that's right.

Even if you disagree with your interpretation, we can still get to what we're about to say. So yeah, so Spirit baptism. So let me say a few things, and then I've got three views. There's actually like six or seven really minor views, but I try to put them in three camps to make it simple. So if you hear this, well, that's not exactly what I believe. I'm sorry, I tried to get it as simple as I could.

But this is a classic area, and you kind of already touched this a few places, where people can use different words for the same thing. Oh, yes. Or they use the same word for different things. And so what ends up happening is we go back and forth and in circles, arguing we may actually agree with each other in most stuff. or we talk past each other. And so there's going to be a few places where I'm going to have to give some nuance of saying,

hey, some people call it this, some people call it that. That being said, let me give you three big views. Hey, I got another charter table for you this week. I've got another one three. The quality of this podcast just went up again.

Oh my gosh. I've got another one for you. And again, this is something that we can include in our guide that people can get so they can look at this later. So three views. You've got what's called it.

And I'm going to name them and then I'll walk through them. Cessationist. Number two, classical Pentecostal. And number three, charismatic continuationist. Fancy, fancy terms today. Cessationists, here's what, and by the way, all of these positions agree, this is what they all agree on, that the moment you're saved,

you receive the Holy Spirit. Going to take a pair of scissors to get that out of the Bible. And by the way, it's a misconception that Pentecostals don't believe that. They say, oh, they don't believe that you fully have the Holy Spirit. They say, no, you have the indwelling Holy Spirit. So every one of these views agrees that at salvation, you have the Holy Spirit residing within you. Here's the places they disagree. A cessationist would say every true believer is baptized in the spirit at conversion. So spirit baptism happens at conversion. They would point to 1st Corinthians 12 where it says, for just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the

body, though we are of one body, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit, we were all baptized into one body referring to the church, and we were all made to drink of one spirit. And so they would say spirit baptism happens at conversion, and there is no later second stage experience whatsoever. If you ask them, well, hey, what does it mean to be filled with the spirit? I'm like, oh, that just is really about growing an intimacy with God through worship and obedience, but not necessarily an experience. And they would say that speaking in tongues is a gift that is no longer available today. So if you're wondering, why do they call them cessationist? That word simply means cease.

That gift has ceased today. Go ahead. And frequently what primarily the cessationist view will be is that, quote unquote, speaking in tongues or the Greek word is glossolalia. Yeah. They'll kind of go like, hey man, that really only referred to other languages. Like missionaries speaking in other languages. Now, the problem, this isn't what this podcast is about. Your problem with that is First Corinthians 14, but that's a different conversation. Yeah, it's a really, really big issue. So again, so someone up their view, they would say every true believer is baptized in the spirit at conversion.

There's no later experience that you have, and speaking in tongues is no longer available. Now, the opposite of this would be a classical Pentecostal view. That's view number two. They would say, believer receives the spirit conversion, but spirit baptism is a distinct, subsequent experience that happens later, and it is accompanied by speaking in tongues. That is the sign that you've been baptized in the spirit, is that you have spoken or have spoken in tongues. That's the primary, is that the assemblies of God view. Yeah, that would be like an assemblies of God, like, again, more of a classical Pentecostal view, but I want to, I want to differentiate something here. A lot of times people will say Pentecostal and charismatic and think they're the same thing. They're not the same

They're not the same thing. That's the key for when we get to point number three. Pentecosts would say, no, like speaking in tongues is the sign that you have received the baptism of the spirit. A charismatic would not necessarily say that. That's right. So the argument they have is this is Jesus promised to the apostles that they would receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But he said that to them after they were already believers and had the Holy Spirit. Yes.

That's their argument. They would say they already believed. They had been born again. They had the Holy Spirit. And then he said they would be baptized. And that's what happened. Also, they would point to other places like you talked about that you gave references to, which is, hey, these other people like in Acts 8, and Paul had already believed, but then

they received the Holy Spirit afterwards. They'd say, hey, there's other places in Acts where this seems to happen. You want to list some others or the big ones that you're going to give? I'll wait a second. Okay, okay. Okay. And then, but they would say is that, hey, speaking in tongues of companies, it happened at Acts at Pentecost.

It happens other places where people had already believed, and then they spoke in tongues, that this is the ordinary sign. then you have a third view that this is almost kind of, I hate to call it a middle ground, but kind of a mediating view between those two. And it is this, a charismatic continuations would say every true believer receives a spirit conversion, yet they can also receive later feelings that don't have to be accompanied by speaking in tongues. So it's say, hey, you can't have later experiences. The difference with the Pentecostal would be, they say you don't have to speak in tongues

in order that to be legitimate. Here's the thing with them that I would say is some charismatic continuationist would use baptism only to refer to conversion. Others would use it for the second feeling that usually is really powerful and they would say you've been baptized. I'm a person. I personally only use baptism typically for salvation. I don't quibble with words over it because usually when people use that language, they mean the same thing I mean. It's a good example for using different terms, but we mean the same thing. All right.

Anything you want me to double-click on or hit or respond to on any of these, you think that's pretty good? So let me get this. So the classic Pentecostal view, like, for instance, the assemblies of God, I think of the official doctrine of the assemblies of God, it talks about speaking in tongues is, quote, the initial physical evidence of being baptized in the Holy Spirit. Isn't that right? It's right. It says something like that. So basically, every single time there is never a case in which you are filled with a spirit and do not speak with speaking in tongues in general. Yeah.

If you've been baptized in Spirit. That's right. Babism in Spirit. Okay, yeah. Hang on. And I didn't respond to these, but I can give you examples of where we disagree with some of these views. I didn't really lay out where we would land on it yet. I don't know if you want to go there or say, hey, here's what we disagree.

I think we're in the same place. I think we're in the same place. I'm in number three, for sure. Number three is where I'm at. I'm for sure number three. You want me to respond to why we would disagree with Pentecostas of the idea? Because we would agree with them that you can receive. We would probably use the word feelings.

But again, you know not the same way. Hey, some people call them baptisms. We have feelings. We mean the same thing. I'm number three. I would just disagree with Paul on the, he would say, baptism language for conversion only. I would be the guy who would say the second part of that charge. It says other calls, the first feeling of the spirit after conversion and baptism of the

spirit. That's kind of where I would. We all got to be wrong somewhere. That's great. I'm just playing. If you want to, I can explain why I don't use that term, but it's not the biggest thing now. Here's why we would lovingly disagree with our Pentecost, the brothers and sisters, that speaking tongues does not have to happen. And it really all is found. I could go to a bunch of places, but to me, 1 Corinthians 12 is the big thing. First off, it says that we all. So here he is assuming that all of them have been baptized. Every single person he's talking to. This, by the way, is why I do only use it for salvation, because if you're baptized into the body of Christ, I think that could only happen at your salvation. But here's a

big thing at the end. Paul's going to ask some rhetorical questions. And he's basically, he's saying, hey, everybody has different gifts and assignments, but man, we all matter in the body of Christ as we serve this common good. He's going to ask some questions starting in verse 209. Are all apostles? What do you think is his assumption if they're going to answer? The implication is clearly no. No. Are all prophets? No. Are all teachers? No. Do all work miracles?

No. Do all possess gifts of healing? No. Do all speak with tongues? No. That the implication is clearly no. Yeah. If every rhetorical question to this point has been the answer is expected to be no, it's hard to believe that all of a sudden speaking in tongues, the answer is yes, of course, because you've been filled with the spirit and you've been baptized. No, so we would lovingly disagree with Pentecostals and say, hey, we do believe in subsequent feelings of the spirit that are powerful and necessary for more effective ministry and life transformation. but speaking in tongues does not have to accompany that. Yeah. Yeah.

Like Carlos down, growing up in South America, was charismatic continuationist or classic Pentecostal the more dominant viewer experience down there? I grew up in an assemblies of God for sure, number two, classic Pentecostal. Yeah. So, I mean, it was a high, high emphasis on praying towards asking God to give everybody the gift of tongues. Okay. Now let's get, like, let's go one layer deeper, get a little more nerdy. So the reason this is a big deal is Theologians will talk about, and this is where I want to click on real quick, and I want to talk about this.

And honestly, man, I just want to tell a couple stories. This right here is Theologians to talk about Old Covenant and New Covenant, continuity and Discontinuity. In other words, if you were one of the people of God, covenantal people of God in the Old Covenant, what is different about? your experience with God as a new covenant, people of God, versus the old covenant. So this gets into old covenant, new covenant. There are things that possess continuity. Yep.

And there are aspects of the two covenants that possess discontinuity. And a lot of times that's where I think people get a little confused and that specifically comes to bear on our theology of the spirit. So do your little thing. Oh, no, this is, I mean, number one,

there's a lot of places of continuity discontinuity. Actually, in prepping for this, I looked up trying to see if I could find an image. And a guy listed like 25 things and I'm like, we ain't, ain't nobody got time for that. So we ain't doing that. So I'll list a few things of continuity, things that are still the same. Man, there is one God and there's one story of salvation that he is writing. That's a continuous thing from Old Testament to New Testament. This one actually surprised people. In both the Old Testament, New Testament, people are saved by grace through faith. Yes. Specifically, the New Testament says through faith in Christ.

So like just for listeners to be really clear, people under the old covenant were saved by faith in Jesus Christ according to this book of Galatians. Yeah, Galatians, yep, before they knew it. Because there's sometimes this conception of, oh, in the Old Testament, you just had to be a really good person. And the New Testament is all by grace. You can pull up that verse. Yeah, I think maybe Galatians 3 or 4. Glacians 3 is what I think. And so, yeah, so it's just, no, people are saved by grace through faith.

Now their faith is demonstrated in different ways in the Old Testament and the Holy Testament. That's the same. The moral commands of the Old Testament are still in place. So all the command of the more moral commands. We're going to talk about this when we talk about mosques. Yeah. But in the old covenant laws, theologians, especially in the reform tradition, have typically divided the commands of the Old Testament into three parts, civil, ceremonial, moral.

Exactly. Civil would be laws governing how the specific nations. state of Israel, functioned. Ceremonial would be the priestly law, sacrifices, that kind of things. And then moral laws, it's like, honestly, it's like things like the New Testament. Like, these are binding moral things that reflect the character of God. Exactly. They reflect God's character.

God's character doesn't change. They're still in place. Galatians 3, 6, and 7. Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. No, but there's another one. It specifically says that Abraham, it implies Abraham had faith in Jesus.

And somehow. He was looking ahead. Now, that might be a little bit of Hebrews if we pull in Hebrews 10. Oh, maybe Hebrews 10, but we're thinking about and connecting the dots between them. But no, but to your point, this is why a lot of people don't realize this, the command to love your neighbor is yourself. What book do you think that's found in originally? Well, people would say the Gospels.

And they are. But Jesus is quoting Leviticus. That's right. And there's also laws on Leviticus that we don't observe because, and this will get starting into discontinuity, is that when Jesus came and he fulfilled the law, there were things that are still in place because they reflect God's unchanging character, but there's things not in place because they're knowing or needed, such as the purity laws.

All right. Some discount. I got the verse six. It's really good. And the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed. Yeah.

So, bro, it's like just for listeners. It's fascinating. It is sometimes in a Sunday school class, people are accidentally sharing ignorance. Yeah. And they'll kind of say like, man, the Old Testament, we were saved by works. And in a new testament,

were saved by faith through grace. Wrong. Do not, Pascoe, do not collect $200. We're specifically told we're saved by faith and faith in Jesus Christ. Abraham heard the promises of God given to him that were pointing forward to Jesus and it was faith in promises pointing to Jesus

that saved him and everybody else. That's right. Let's keep going on. So making specific places of discontinuity. In the O Testament, there was sin just like in the New Testament. And how they had to deal with that was through sacrifices,

through priests who made those sacrifices and then at a temple. This is an example of where when Jesus came, because he's where the whole story was going to, he fulfills all the promises and all the shadows that are in the Old Testament. We no longer have those sacrifices, the priest and the temple,

because Jesus was the one who was the sacrifice. He's the high priest because he actually offered the sacrifice of himself. And we no longer have to go to a temple to get this done because now the church is the temple of the living God. So these are examples in the sense of, hey, there's continuity, and there is a sacrifice.

There's discontinuity because we don't only have to go and make animal sacrifices because Jesus fulfilled it by sacrificing himself. Let me give a few other things, because again, there's a many, but I'll end on the Spirit, because this is actually a really important one. In the Old Testament, the sign of the covenant is circumcision. In the New Testament, it's baptism. So there's continuity, there's a sign, discontinuity in what it is. But here's a big one on the Spirit.

Guess what? The Holy Spirit didn't wait until Pentecost to make it. is like a rival. No. He was active in the Old Testament. In fact, it says that people were filled with the Spirit in the Old Testament or that the Spirit rested on them. But here's the key. It was for specific people or for specific task. Usually the idea of a king or a prophet was the one who is filled with the Spirit. Although it's cool. Actually, one of the first people who describes it as is Bezal and O'Hileg and O'Hiliat. I read that. That was in my Bible reading this week. The people, I love it. They're the contractors of the tabernacle. People behind the scenes job,

which is a cool little sermon in and of itself there. That even the people do. and the behind the scene stuff. What changed at Pentecost is what some people called the democratization of the spirit. Instead of the spirit only resting on and anointing a few people with gifts and using them for ministry, now it's on everybody.

Oh, yes. Because at Pentecost, it goes on everybody. And in the Old Testament prophesying to this, it says, my spirit will be poured out on all flesh. It doesn't mean literally every human being, but it means all kinds of different people and all people who believe in Jesus. Yeah.

This is a big deal. So like, all right. like this dovetails, this is one of those things where it's like, you have a Bible inception moment and a bunch of stuff comes together in one moment, and you're like, what? Okay. So this is one of those. So if you read Exodus, one of the interesting things about Exodus is God gives his law.

So this is going to make all sense here in a second. You know where I'm going. It's amazing. It's one of those Bibles thinking amazing. So God gives the law at Sinai. Uh-huh. And the law, this is really important. It's written on tablets of stone.

And it's, the law is, obviously, it's outside of the people. And when you read Exodus, honestly, the big lesson of the book of Exodus, if you zoom out is it's kind of like, dagum, it doesn't matter what I can do. They can't obey my loss. Like, doesn't matter what I do for them. They just, they can't, they literally can't do it, okay? Now, so then you get the prophecies that the spirit's going to indwell, all guys, people will be poured out on all flesh. Okay. Well, then you fast forward, and bro, I'll be honest, I think this is arguably the most misunderstood

passage in the entire Bible, and I'm not joking. Christians use it all the time. I think most of the time they got no idea what actually means. So in Matthew 5, Sermon of the Mount, Jesus, it's the verse, you've heard it a million times. Jesus says, if your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. Now, let me give you a little hint. When the law was originally given outside the people, we're on a mountain. When Jesus is preaching the sermon on the mount, we're on a mountain.

Okay, now we got our first little hint. All right. Now, what usually people think when they read that passage is they think, hey man, you know, if I'm really struggling with sin, I need to be willing to commit a quote unquote radical amputation

to get any sin out of my life. And let me just say, that's true. That's true. I do not think at all. That's what Jesus is saying in Matthew 529. Okay, and here's why I say that. A couple clues.

Literally the verse before that passage, Jesus says, if anybody lus, they have committed adultery in their heart. Then when you get to the end of the Sermon of the Mount, I can't wait, I'm going to preach it next year. You get to the end of the Sermon of the Mount, Jesus summarizes the entire Sermon of the Mount with a tree fruit analogy saying that,

man, people tend to try to fix the fruit, you know, what's coming out of their lives. but he's gone, man, actually everything comes from the root of what's in your heart. And he's gone, that's the whole point of the sermon in the mouth. Okay, now, let's put all this stuff together. You got Exodus. They get the law, it's outside of them, and they can't obey the law. Now we're on a new mountain under the new covenant.

The spirit is poured out inside of and on top of all of God's people, okay? And Jesus is going, and man, they're in a guy in a world that hasn't felt this down deep in his soul at some point in his life. Jesus is going, hey, I want you to imagine that there's a guy who's just ate up with lust and he can't stop. And the guy essentially goes, you know what, I'm going to cut off the part of me that causes me to sin. And so, you know, I don't want to be weird or whatever, but, you know, he commits a lustful act and he cuts off, so he cuts off his hand. And then he notices, man, but I can still lust with my eyes. and so he gouges out both of his eyes. But then he realizes, you know what, man,

I can still go places in the city and hear lustful things. And so then he chops off both of his ears. And then the guy's just so overwhelmed with sorrow for his sin that he realizes, you know what, even still I can walk to places where lustful things are happening. And then he cuts off both of his feet. And the guy keeps chopping off body parts and he realizes, no matter how many parts I cut off,

I can't cut off the part of me that causes me to sin. And what Jesus is saying in the sermon on the mount is he's saying, in order to do that, you're going to have to cut out your heart. And then he's gone, and I can do that for you. Wow. And Jesus is applying an Old Testament prophecy about the discontinuity between the old covenant and the new covenant. Because in Ezekiel chapter 36, deep cut, bro, deep cut.

In Ezekiel 36, God is prophesying about the blessing of the new covenant, and he says this, I will give you a new heart. And how is he going to do it? I'll put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit in you. and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws, and I will be your God.

That is what the spirit does. Is where I, bro, check this out. Let me go one layer of deeper. So at the original, all Pentecost means, people get tripped up on Pentecost, those weird people who flames and speaking in tongues and gold dust and weird crap. That's not what I mean. All Pentecost, it just means 50th.

It's a Pente. It's 50th. And it's saying that the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, it happened 50 days after the giving of the law, after Passover, right? Yeah, Passover, because it celebrated the giving of the law. That's it. Pentecost was the feast where they celebrated the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, which happened 50 days after the original Passover.

So this was, Pentecost was an old covenant feast. Okay. Well, bro, check this out. There is a huge significance to the fact that the Spirit of God falls on all flesh for the first time on the day of Pentecost. Because check this out. At the original giving of the law at Mount Sinai, check this out. There was a loud noise, a cloud descended, there was fire. And God wrote his laws on tablets of stone. in the new covenant at the day of pentecost check this out there was a loud noise a rushing like mighty wind the cloud of the spirit descended divided tongues as of fire fire fall god wrote his law on men's hearts and oh by the way check this out at the first pentecost in the old testament three thousand people died and at the Pentecost in the New Testament, 3,000 people were saved. That's it, bro.

The Bible's amazing. So this is what the Spirit does, is he's poured out inside of every Christian, everywhere, empowering you to live free, hashtag, to live free and walk in the righteousness and commands of God. And with that, and the Old Testament, it was just Moses who got to be there. But that, and I'm looking at Acts 2,

and it says, divided tongues of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. It's the democratization of the spirit doing a new work through anyone who's a believer in Jesus. And it connected back, because I know we connected this again to that, man, fear and overcoming that. So they were filled with the spirit at Pentecost in Acts 2. But again, just two chapters later in Acts 4, they're facing persecution. I didn't give that context earlier. They are being persecuted. They're gathered together in a room and probably being a little afraid. And they start praying. They say, oh, sovereign Lord, and they're starting to recount some things.

And then it's talk about these men who had already been filled with the spirit. Pentecost had already come. It says, oh, they were filled with the spirit again. They already had the spirit. And yet they were filled again, a subsequent filling. And that's when they went out and they preached their word. And it says, with boldness. So the way they overcame, this is we're connecting it back to your thing in Timothy.

The way they overcame is it got flamed again. And then you got fanned into flame again. Bro. Let me make this practical because obviously that's a lot of helpful with theology. I just don't realize people are aware of how big of a deal that is, which you just said. The fact that the presence of God himself dwells in you. And then when you look at the Old Testament, that's not how it was,

but it is how it is today. There was somebody said this, I thought it was interesting, this illustration where, like, you know, we're all going to get to heaven one day. And we're going to have an opportunity to have some very interesting conversations with, like, you know, Moses. And we're going to be like, Moses, tell us about the time that, you know, you were there and leading the people of God. And part of the Red Sea, you saw God do some crazy miracles.

they were going to meet David and we're going to be like, David, you got to tell us the story. You're in front of Goliath and you're so young and the stones. So how did you feel? And then, you know, Elijah, my goodness, you know, showdown with the bail and all the prophets. And then at some point, those guys are going to look to you and they're going to be like, but wait a minute.

Bro, you lived in the time where like the presence of God himself was in you and you had the fire of the Holy Spirit inside of you and you were a Baptist in the Holy Spirit. And like you tell me what did you do with your life? I went to church when it was raining. And we were going to say things like, man, well, you know, I posted a Bible verse in my social media feed. You know, I try to once in a while, maybe I served in church.

Maybe I was really brave and, you know, maybe I went to church a couple times a month. I don't know. I try to be a good person. And I think the point is, man, we don't desire to be filled with the spirit enough. and we've been offered this opportunity to the Bible says be filled that which literally means hey you continuously seek to desire to be filled with the power of God living inside of you to be bold to preach the Bible to preach the gospel to let other people know to let your light so shine before amen that they may see your good words and glorify the Father in heaven to literally change the whole

world for the glory of God and and I just don't think we realize how big of a deal with that is that's right man it's good dude let me let me let me um let me say really I'm going to make a quick case for why I believe that this is something Christian should seek to experience subsequent other salvation. And then I give a couple examples, and then we can see if we got time to talk about mosques or McKinney, whatever is going on. So first of all, just point to something. First of all, if you're ever going to read a book, this is a top five,

literally a top five, changed my life book in my entire life. Martin Lloyd-Jones, old dead Presbyterian guy. It's called Joy Unspeakable. power and renewal in the Holy Spirit. Fun fact about Martin Lloyd-Jones, because his denomination was historically cessationist when he wrote this book, he founded a printing...

What is it called? It's called... Is it called Purit in Paperbacks? What's it called? Who published a sucker? Oh, deadgummit. This is a sticker on it. I can't see.

But literally, the publisher he founded would not publish his own book about this because it's explicitly continuationist. Yes. this is a little fun fact. So if you're going to read something about what we're talking about, that's the best one, in my opinion. Like, top five books, change in my life.

Two things that are interesting about this. Martin Lloyd-Jones points this out. So it's interesting. It talks about charismatic and, you know, Pentecost like stuff. Martin-Loy-Jones is like a Puritan Presbyterian. Like a British, highly educated doctor of Puritan Presbyterian. He points out two things, in addition to some other things.

One, he points out that the New Testament uses the language of us being, quote, sealed with the spirit. And his point is, hey guys, a seal is something that is visible. He's like, this can't be referring to something that you won't even know if it happened to you or you won't even know if it happened to somebody. It's a seal. It's visible. The other thing he says is he uses this analogy. Martin Lloyd-Jones thinks Romans 8 when it says, we've been given a, for you no longer slaves to fear, but you've been given a spirit of adoption of sons by which we cry, Abba Father.

Martin Lloyd-Jones thinks that is referring to the experience of being filled with the spirit, baptized with the spirit. He uses the example of, you probably heard this before, of like a kid walking along the sidewalk with his dad. Yeah. And then there comes a moment where the dad just randomly just is overwhelmed love for his kid, picks him up in a big embrace,

bear hugs him, twirls him around, sets him down. and he's like, he asked the question, in that moment, was the kid anymore a son of his father before then? And they're like, well, no, this is the same. He's like, no, but he experienced his sonship in a new way in that moment. And Roy Jones says, that's what the baptism of the spirit is. It's the moment that the father essentially picks you up in a felt, visible embrace. And he caught, this is, by the way, there was somebody who had a unique experience with the spirit at my church in Nashville.

And bro, this dude was like a brand new Christian, and this is what he said. He said, it felt like being attacked by love. And I was like, bro, you don't even know it. It's like, D.O Moody's. You just Romans ate this thing. You didn't even know it. So here's what, you know,

I don't want to belabor this. Let me just do this real quick. The pattern of the New Testament, in my opinion, first of all, I agree with Paul. Going to take a pair of sisters to get out of the Bible. You receive the spirit at salvation. Without the work of the spirit, you would not even have believed.

in Jesus. So I'll just let that sit. But I do think the pattern of New Testament is, you know, kind of three experiences. You got the Holy Spirit baptizes us into Christ. This is what happens at salvation. First Corinthians 1214. In one spirit, we're all baptized in one body. Second experience, a disciple baptizes you into water. Matthew 2819. You see what I'm doing there. This is what preachers do. It's good. Go therefore make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Third experience, Jesus, I'm going to say, fills us with the Holy Spirit. I think that's what Matthew 311 is talking about.

I will baptize you with John, the Baptist says. I will baptize you with water for repentance. He who's coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. Now, what some people do, I'll just point this out that oppose what I'm saying right here. It's like, well, he was talking to the 12 disciples,

and they had a unique thing in Acts. That's impossible. that happened in Matthew 3. The first disciples aren't even called until Matthew 4. He's not talking to the 12. He's not talking to the 120. He's talking about everybody. So I'll point that out.

So, and then let me give a couple, a couple quick examples. Ephesians 518, talking to people who are already Christians. Yep. Says, do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the spirit.

talking to people who are already Christians. So if your theology does not allow you to look at a person that's already saved and say, hey, brother, you need to seek to be continually, continually over and over filled with the spirit. If your theology doesn't allow that, your theology doesn't allow for Ephesians 518. Okay, you have the example of the disciples. So I'm going to do this real quick. You got the disciples obviously, everybody knows about Acts 2 when the disciples are

filled with a spirit. People forget that is after John chapter 20. It says this, on the evening of that first day of the week when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus, he does the little, he operates through the wall and says, peace be with you. Again, Jesus said, peace be with you. As the father has sent me, I am sending you. And with that, he breathed on them. Obviously a word for spirit is Numa, means spirit, breath, or wind. Jesus breathes on them and says, receive the Holy Spirit. So the filling of the Spirit in Acts 2 happens after the disciples receiving the Spirit in John 20. There's no way to get away from that.

There's some subsequent experience happened. There's no way to get away from that. And then you've got in Acts 1. You got that, again, Acts 1, 4, and 5. But while he was eating with him, he gave this command, do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift. My father promised. Again, this is after the disciples have received the Spirit in Acts 20. He's going, hey, there's still more.

You need the gift, my father promised, and a few days you'll be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Last one, I'll just, golly, I could do so much here. Jesus, people say, okay, three things, saved, baptized, filled with the Spirit. Was Jesus saved? Well, that's a trick question. Saved means to be born again. He didn't need to be born again because he was born right to first time. That's right.

It's in nature. Okay, but then baptized, obviously baptism of Jesus. and then right after the baptism of Jesus, in all four Gospels, it's at least mentioned, he's filled with the Spirit. And I'll just point this out, Jesus never preached a sermon,

never did a miracle, never raised anybody from the dead until after the coming of the Spirit on Jesus' life. So I'll just say this, man, if Jesus needed the Spirit, how much more do you need the Spirit? And then, man, gosh,

there's so many other things I could do. It's the pattern all throughout the Book of Acts. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Briefly, let's make it practical. If somebody's listening to this they're like, okay, but what do I do now? What would you say?

Yeah. A few things I would say. So it is interesting in the book of Galatians. Here's another reason, dude, that I would say, man, when somebody is filled with the spirit like we're talking, it's a unique, discernible experience you have. In Galatians, Paul says to them, hey, he's trying to prove to them, salvation is not by works it's by faith and he says hey let me ask you a question did you receive the spirit by works or by believing with faith i just want to point this out unless that experience

with the spirit was something visible felt and tangible that doesn't make any sense so galate the book of galatians assumes some sort of experience with the spirit there was a before and after experiential thing in their life great point I'll just point that out, okay? So what I would say is, man, it's not that hard. So one, I will say some people get tripped up and they think, man, you know, I need to become, I need to work really hard. And until I become nearly sinless, I'm never going to receive the gift of the spirit.

And I would just point out, it's called a gift, brother. Amen. There's a reason it's called a gift. And really all you need to do is Jesus said, the father loves to give good gifts to his kids. What you need to do? You need to believe with faith that your Heavenly Father is a good dad that loves to give good gifts to his kids and then ask, seek, and knock. And I'll just say something like this. You might just pray this. My experience was that I began to study this doctrine and it was almost like an agony. I do not know how to describe it other than an agony,

like an agony to have whatever that was just enveloped my life. And I entered a season of just begging God in prayer and some fasting. It's like, whatever you got on offer, I want it. Yeah, that's great. And I'll just say something happened to me. And I was in a car in a mall parking lot. And dude, something happened to me. And I just started literally crying out in a car, God, if there is anything you got an offer that I haven't got yet, I want it.

And that, something happened to me. I don't know what to say. But you might pray something like this. You might just pray something like, Father, I ask in the name of Jesus Christ that you would fill me with the Holy Spirit from the top of my head to the souls of my feet, everything you have on offer. want. I want everything you have for me. Thank you for the good gifts that you give. And then believe by faith that your Heavenly Father is going to give that to you. Just go for. Ask pray and wait. That's what the early church did in Acts for chapter one. They devoted

themselves to prayer. And then in chapter four, they received the, says the ground was shaken. Actually, no, they were gathered together and they were shaken and they were filled with the Holy Spirit. And then Ephesians chapter 5 also says, hey, as you do that, by the grace of God, walk in the spirit. Ephesians chapter 5 says walk as children have to lie and do not get drunk for that is debauchery but then be filled with the spirit. Pastor Paul, would you pray? Wait, wait, wait. Before you do that, I want to say one last thing. Yeah, please. If somebody's listening and you're ambivalent and honestly, man, you got a spirit of fear about even seeking this thing. I want to say one last thing to help you understand how important this is. I do not want the

podcast to end without me point this out. All right. Trinity, Will you throw up that I want to show you there is something happening in the global church today that demonstrates visibly how significant this is? All right. So here's what you're looking at. This is, I screenshot of this a couple years ago, this is a chart charting the decline in attendance in America in all of the major Christian denominations in America. Now, if you just kind of survey this thing, kind of it nets out to like a negative. it's about 20, 25%

over the last 20 years. But I have intentionally excluded one denomination. And I'll just get it on the table. This is not the denomination to which I belong. But I have intentionally excluded one denomination. Throw that other chart up there with it on there. It's the AOG, it's Assembly of God. This is the kind of what you'd say

is the spirit-filled denomination. And in that same time frame, it's plus 51%. Everybody else down 20-ish percent plus 51 percent. And I will just say this to you. There is a reason I think that's the thing. I'll also note this. In my experience the pastor, the whole deconstruction movement, like kind of became sexy to deconstruct your faith and apostatized and I'm reexamining everything.

I'll just say this, dude. Does it happen to people in every stream? Absolutely. I'll just say this. It does not seem to happen to people in spirit-filled streams of Christianity to the same degree. And here's my theory on why. if an argument got you into Christianity, then a better argument can get you out. But you cannot argue somebody out of an encounter with a living God.

You can't do it. That's right. And so, dude, I just ask, seek, and knock. Paul Cunningham, we pray for us. Love too. God, in faith, I just want to say on our behalf here at the table, on behalf of everyone listening to this, we do not want anything less than what you have for us. thank God we just want to admit that far too often we have settled for so little when you have so much to give

and so Lord we are right now we just want to come to you and ask and seek and knock would you fill us with your holy spirit we thank you for giving us your holy spirit salvation we thank you that because that we are sons and daughters of god but would you now fill us Lord for greater transformations so we become more than men and women that you want us to become that you saved us become but also so that you might use us might use us might use us mightily in this generation in our world and our families and our friendships every sphere you've put us fill us Holy Spirit to that end. Would you drive out any spirit of fear that is in us? Would you make us bold men and women

who can be used mightily in your hand? Yeah, we love you. It's your name we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen.