Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Last time in Acts...

Paul traveled around, brief aside with Apollos, then pick up Paul’s story.

Why do you take medicine?

You get sick, go to the doctor and when they figure out the problem they give you a prescription for a medicine that will address the problem.

Sometimes the’re some negative side-effects of taking medicine, but we take medicine for the overwhelming positive benefits.

We want the good side-effects of medicine that bring healing and wholeness, even if we have to put up with a few other issues along the way.

The thing is though, if you never take the medicine, you don’t get any potentially bad side effects, but you also never get the good ones either!!

Have you ever taken medicine?

You know, you go to the doctors and they find out what’s wrong with you, and, after some analysis they figure out what the problem is and give you a prescription for medicine that is intended to help you, to heal your illness.

SO, you pop down to the pharmacy, eager to get better, keen to get rid of the problem that is affecting your life for the worse.

Once you have your medicine, you start to take it, expecting that it will improve your situation, to heal your body!

But sometimes, when you’re taking the medicine you will have some unexpected side effects - it might make you drowsy, or wide awake.

It might affect your bowels, or make you break out in a rash!

This medicine you take to address one issue, may have a multitude of side-effects, some for the good, some that are not as nice.

But, we’re willing to keep taking the medicine for the good it will do for us in the long term!

Today we have a passage that tells us about the side-effects of sharing the Gospel in .

When the Good News of Jesus Christ is shared with people, things happen!

Some gospel side-effects are great!

Some gospel side-effects are unexpected bonuses!

Some gospel side-effects are not fun, but we’re willing keep sharing the Gospel for the long term benefit.

We’re going to step through the passage this morning to see the gospel side-effects, and the main thing that this passage will teach us this morning is that we must share the Gospel and watch God work.

SO...

Gospel side effects may include four things!

The first side-effect is...

Main Question: What are the side-effects of Sharing the Gospel?

There are four!

1.

We get the Whole Gospel for a Full Faith (v1-6)

In verses 1-6 we are given a short story about what happens when Paul shares the Gospel with folks who haven’t got all the pieces for faith yet.

If you remember a couple weeks ago, Paul had traveled through Ephesus on his way back to home in Antioch via Jerusalem.

While he shooting through Ephesus they asked him to stay a while longer, but he declined the offer.

While Paul was on his way home we heard a brief story about a fellow named Apollos who was a preacher and teacher.

He was a switched on guy, but he didn’t have all the pieces for full and accurate faith.

So, Priscilla and Aquila took Apollos aside and he humbly received further instruction so that he was better equipped to share the Gospel.

After that, Apollos went out with the church’s blessing to the region around Corinth.

And this is where our passage picks up in ch19 with Apollos in Corinth and Paul on his way back to Ephesus:

<show map> So Paul has been on foot traveling through modern inland Turkey.

On the way he was visiting areas he has previously visited and churches that he has planted on previous trips.

Then he gets back to Ephesus, and there he finds some disciples who were in a similar boat to Apollos in the previous chapter - they were missing some vital information that they needed in their faith.

Why were they this way?

Dunno.

Maybe they had learned from Apollos before Priscilla and Aquila helped him out.

Maybe they had heard from some other traveling preacher or from John the Baptist on a trip to Judea.

They look like believers to some degree, but Paul wants to suss out how much they knew and how mature their faith was, so he starts questioning them: Look at v2-3

So we have here some people who are learners, they are disciples, but they’re missing something.

They don’t have the right components to be quite saved.

They were close to Christianity, but they weren’t over the line yet.

Close but no cigar.

And the proof that they’re not saved yet?

They haven't received the Holy Spirit.

Throughout Acts the sign that salvation is given to someone is that they receive the Holy Spirit.

We get plenty of examples of people who were seeking God, but they weren’t quite over the line, like Cornelius, or the Ethiopian Eunich, or .

Then when they receive the Good News about Jesus in faith, they’re baptized and the Holy Spirit is poured out on them, often with supernatural signs.

Acts is a time of transition between the old way of belief to the newer and fuller faith in Jesus Christ, and God used supernatural signs to definitively support the message of the Gospel.

And this is what happens when they hear the Gospel about Jesus in this passage, they receive it, they’re baptized and they receive the Holy Spirit.

Look at v4-7:

These folks were essentially living in the Old Testament, still waiting for the Coming One, the Messiah.

Then Paul turns up and tells them that Jesus has arrived, so they enter into the New Testament faith.

They went from a baptism of expectation, to a baptism of fulfillment.

(F.F.

Bruce, Acts, NICNT, p387).

Its like pregnancy.

We have several mothers amongst us, so it’s an apt analogy.

When a woman is pregnant we say they’re “expecting.”

A pregnant mother lives in expectation of the child which is coming.

The child is the fulfillment of the expectation.

The child is the fulfillment of the expectation.

And once the child has arrived, the pregnancy is over.

It may be looked back on with joy or displeasure at the discomfort, but once the child is here there is no more pregnancy, it’s done away with.

It’s over.

The expectation gives way to the reality.

These disciples in Ephesus, were still living as though pregnant when the child had arrived.

On hearing the Good News that Jesus had arrived, they took the sign of faith which is baptism and entered into salvation, then they received the Holy Spirit.

And God poured out his Spirit in a special way to show them that the deal was done!

on hearing that they weren’t quite there yet, took the sign of faith which is baptism and entered into salvation.

No they had arrived, and they received the Holy Spirit.

And God poured out his Spirit in a special way to show them that the deal was done!

Paul shared the Whole Gospel so that they could have a Full Faith.

They had a car with no wheels, a house with no doors, a pizza with no pineapple.

They had DOS while Windows 10 had arrived.

They had part of Christianity, but not the whole enchilada.

Acts 1

In these Last Days God has poured out His own Spirit, something far greater than

They had received a baptisim of expectation, whereas they needed the baptism of fulfillment in the name of the Son (Father & HS too).

Everyone gets the spirit: Jews, Gentiles, Samaritans, men, women...

Some people around the traps like to point at this passage and make an argument that there are two kinds of baptism: the physical baptism into Christianity, and then there’s a secondary baptism of the Holy Spirit.

But this is rubbish.

a) As we’ve already noted they lived in a time of transition where the mystery was being revealed, where the New and Old testament order’s overlapped.

They had received John’s baptism as the culmination of the old way, but they hadn’t entered into the new.

The assumption of the Bible is that if you have been baptized, you have received the Spirit.

And that is how Paul talks: “have you received the Spirit?”

No? “Then what were you baptized into?”

There is an inseparable connection between faith, baptism and the Holy Spirit.

The connection is so close that sometimes these things seems to overlap.

As we’ve already noted they lived in a time of transition where the mystery was being revealed, where the New and Old testament order’s overlapped.

They had received John’s baptism as the culmination of the old way, but they hadn’t entered into the new.

They had DOS while Windows 10 had arrived.

Not a secondary baptism, a first baptism into the faith.

They lived in a time of transition where the mystery was being revealed, and they had received John’s baptism.

“In a word, they were still living in the Old Testament which culminated with John the Baptist” (John Stott, Acts BST, p304).