Mat 3:11-12; God Made an Infinitely Wealthy Family Held Together by Love.
length: 80:31 - taught on Jan, 7 2024
Class Outline:
Sunday January 7, 2024
"As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 "His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
Idea: Jesus’ baptism of the Holy Spirit is superior to John’s water baptism because it enters people into the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus is the judge of all mankind, therefore the only opinion of you that matters is His.
He has given all judgment to the Son, 23 so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father.
The Greek sentence sets a strong contrast by pairing the Greek words men and de, which is also used in MAR 1:8; LUK 3:16; ACT 1:5; 11:16.
Gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, "Which," He said, "you heard of from Me; 5 for John [men] baptized with water, but [de] you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now."
6 So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, "Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?" 7 He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; 8 but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth."
God’s plan for you is not unravelling eschatology, but using the power that will witness the gospel to the world.
Every believer is baptized by the Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation (ROM 6:3-4; 1CO 12:13; GAL 3:27; COL 2:12).
If you are a believer in Jesus Christ as your Savior, then the baptism of fire is not in your future. You have been baptized by the Holy Spirit at the moment you believed in Him.
If you are not baptized by the Holy Spirit, you are still in your sins. If you are, you are born of the Spirit, gathered into the barn (kingdom of heaven; what matters is who is there, so imagery of a barn is fine - we are Christ’s harvest, His first fruits), and the life of heaven is open to you. It is the most significant thing that has ever happened to you.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit is a rebirth that makes you a child of God.
But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. 24 Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. 26 For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
It is helpful to know the problem that arose in the Galatian churches. False teachers had infiltrated the ranks and began spreading lies that adherence to the Mosaic law was necessary for salvation; that men were justified by the law.
How could that be true when the baptism of the Holy Spirit actually clothed you with Christ?
For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
If the baptism of the Spirit clothes you with Christ, how can any work add to it?
And just in case anyone thought that God was particular about race, gender, or status …
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to promise.
You and I are not in danger of falling into the trap of thinking the Mosaic law is the vehicle of our righteousness, but in what ways can we think in the realm of the same error?
Believers lose their grip on the grace of God.
Your shield is not sinfulness or lazy Christianity.
You live abundantly knowing the extraordinary value of the gifts you’ve been given.
You are an heir by God (GAL 4:7).
But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, 5 so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. 6 Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" 7 Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.
The significance of being born under the law is that He showed that He was the only one who ever kept it. He is truly the only worthy man - the only righteous man. Then He died on a tree.
you hang him on a tree … (for he who is hanged is accursed of God).
God the Holy Spirit has made an infinitely wealthy family held together by pure divine love.
Why then, if this is so, so rare in the world, in fact, in the history of Christianity?
Worthless ABCs of the world pull us in.
We are ever in danger of returning to the elementary principles of the world, for they are all around us, all over the globe every day and the majority of the world thinks that they are normal life and long to have more of them. We are baptized by the Spirit for a grand purpose and the ways of the world are not it.
However at that time, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods. 9 But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? 10 You observe days and months and seasons and years. 11 I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain.
The baptism of the Spirit is a death and rebirth. The old world and the old nature (old man) is no longer our world. We have been set free.
Those who are not baptized by the Spirit will seek to pull you away (knowingly, but I think mostly unknowingly). Of course, you would have to be living spiritually, sanctified (Rom 6 baptism of the Spirit).
They eagerly seek you, not commendably, but they wish to shut you out so that you will seek them.
The truth of this is revealed by Paul with a brilliant OT example linked to his premise in this letter - the tent of Abraham. Abraham and Sarah had a scheme - ABCs of the world. God had a promise. Two women and two children who represent the baptism of the Spirit and the baptism of fire.
We were made on a promise and live by promises.
Hagar was the scheme, Sarah the promise.
Ishmael was the scheme, Isaac the promise.
And you brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29 But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also. 30 But what does the Scripture say?
"CAST OUT THE BONDWOMAN AND HER SON,
FOR THE SON OF THE BONDWOMAN SHALL NOT BE AN HEIR WITH THE SON OF THE FREE WOMAN."
31 So then, brethren, we are not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman.
We can’t cast out our flesh or the world, but we can believe who we are as a result of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Walk by the Holy Spirit - a life lived by faith in many promises from God.
What should this family look like? A family of love, support, challenge (stimulate one another), forgiveness, commitment, graciousness, care, wisdom, loyalty, and more. We will fail one another. It won’t be perfect until heaven, but the HS has made it now.
Persecution, the drawing away from living under the promises fracture the family. Corinth and Galatia were destroyed by it, all the churches were in danger of it, and since that is true, our church is in danger of it. God the Holy Spirit made a family who is a witness to the world (love) and is in return persecuted and attacked by the world. It is a test of our faith and our love.
Israel was and is a family.
Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. 8 The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "ALL THE NATIONS WILL BE BLESSED IN YOU." 9 So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer.
God made a family upon a promise to Abraham. The whole family (Israel and the church and the dispensations to come) are from him, more specifically, his seed through whom the promise was fulfilled.
A family made upon a promise is to live by promises.
If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.
If you are reborn by the Spirit …walk by the Spirit!
Wealthy family of love with Christ as Head and King.
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