Welcome to Truth for Life Over the next few weeks, Alistair Begg will be exploring the trials the Apostle Paul endured on his final missionary journey to share the good news of salvation.
We begin today in Acts chapter 19 where we're considering 12 almost Christians the Apostle Paul encountered in the early church. Now we'll pray together before we study the Bible. We'll just use our favorite new ancient prayer. Lord, what we know not, teach us. What we have not, grant us. What we are not, make us.
For Jesus' sake. Amen. We've read from Acts chapter 19 this morning because I have decided now that instead of continuing to bounce around in the Acts of the Apostles, and instead of going back to chapter 1 and verse 1 and trying to make our way through the whole 28 chapters, we are going to pick up the story from the commencement of Paul's third missionary journey, which is essentially what we have here, back into 18 a little bit, but 19 is fine. And we're going to follow Paul all the way to the end of the journey. Our purpose in this is clear. It is in order that some may come to hear the good news and believe and become followers of Jesus, and so that others who actually believe might be better equipped to share the good news with those who as yet do not believe in Jesus. I came across a phrase in a paraphrase this week that was a paraphrase of Paul's words to Timothy in his final letter to Timothy that we have in the New Testament, where he says to him, Through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. He's explaining his mission and what God has chosen to do with him. And the paraphrase contained the phraseology, spreading the message loud and clear to those who've never heard. That is essentially our raison d'être. Those are our marching orders from our commander-in-chief, the Lord Jesus Christ.
So that is why we have export models from Parkside and various parts of the world. That is why we anticipate the day when a huge crowd, a crowd so huge that no one will be able to number it, will gather around the throne of God in heaven, and the people will be from every nation and language and people and tongue, and they will proclaim the fact that salvation belongs to the Lamb who sits upon the throne. Now, this morning, in the time that we have in launching this journey in the footsteps of Paul, we're going to look just at the first seven verses. They're not easy verses. I'm going to give you my best on them.
I remind you that you're sensible people. You're supposed to examine the Scriptures to see if these things are so, and I'm anticipating that you're going to read your own Bibles, not only now but later, and think many of these things out. In these first seven verses, we have the record of Paul's encounter with a group of approximately twelve men—you will notice the vagueness of verse 7—a group of approximately twelve men to whom we may refer as almost Christians. Almost Christians. Some years ago, we had a study here at Parkside when we gave an address to the almost Christian. And on that occasion, a number of people in the providence of God actually turned to the Lord Jesus and became his followers and his servants, and we rejoice in that. And here this morning, we have the opportunity, as a result of looking at this passage of Scripture, of being reminded again that not all who profess to be followers of Jesus are followers of Jesus. That not all who pay lip service to the things of Christianity necessarily are familiar with its truth.
And it is apparent from this passage and from human experience that very often we are very poor judges of the spiritual condition of other men and women. Indeed, Paul, upon his initial encounter with these folks, actually took them for disciples. It's apparent, as you read Luke's record here, that he found some disciples, and then he asked them these questions. But as you read on, you realize that they weren't disciples at all. So Paul moves into Ephesus, and he encounters these men who appear to Paul to be disciples. Now, you understand that what Luke is doing is he's writing this narrative from the perspective of Paul, and he's, as it were, looking over his shoulder, and he's saying, Paul came into Ephesus, and he meets these fellows, and they appeared to him to be disciples. He just describes them in this way.
Why? Well, presumably, because they were involved in Christian things. Presumably, because they were using Christian terminology. But instead of Paul simply assuming that on the strength of their Christian activity and their Christian terminology that they were actually true believers, he has a couple of questions for them. Now, interestingly, he asks these questions.
Luke doesn't tell us why it is that he feels he must. Was it something about their demeanor? Was it something that they had said? Was it, as he spent just the initial time with them, he began to get the feeling in his spirit that although these people had the right lingo and although these people were in the right framework, that perhaps they weren't even true disciples of Jesus at all.
Now, there is, incidentally and in passing, a lesson for us in that. You'll remember that Paul says when he writes to the Corinthians that they are to examine themselves to see whether they are of the faith. In other words, that there are certain external identifying features of the life of genuine Christian discipleship.
And where these aspects are absent, then the individual must seriously consider whether their profession is real or not. Jesus himself had adopted the same approach, hadn't he? He said, If a man loves me, he will keep my commandments. So one of the clear indications is that obedience is an indication of genuine conversion. And we could go through a whole host of those.
We won't. John, who listened to Jesus teach, writes not only a gospel so that by means of the things written, his readers might come to believe that Jesus is the Christ and that by believing this, they might have life in his name. But he then goes on to write three letters. And in the first of these three letters, he provides, if you like, three signs that would give to the professing disciple an assurance that they really were genuine believers, genuine followers of Jesus.
It's not my purpose to try and do a tangential exposition of 1 John, but I'll give this to you, and you can then go read the five chapters of 1 John and see whether what I'm telling you is really there. But he gives to them these identifying marks of assurance. Number one, a true obedience. A true obedience.
There's no surprise in that. After all, this was what Jesus said with frequency. And John writes, and he says, If somebody professes to be a follower of Jesus but does not obey his commands, then there is no reason to believe their profession. Secondly, they would be marked by a true belief—that their belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, as Son of God and as Savior, as risen from the dead, as the ascended Lord and the coming King, as the Messiah of Israel, and so on, that all of those things would all be part and parcel of the genuine believer's belief. In other words, they wouldn't just have some vague association with Jesus, some vague notion that there was a Jesus and that he was who he claimed to be.
No. But their belief system was absolutely focused. And thirdly, that those who were the genuine disciples would be marked by the kind of love that doesn't say, Oh, I really love God, and then at the same time hates the brother or the sister in Jesus. John actually puts it categorically when he opens up his letter, and he says, This is the message we've heard from him and declare to you. God is light. In him there's no darkness at all. If we claim to a fellowship with him, yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.
That's a fairly straightforward statement, isn't it? If I claim to a fellowship with God who lives in unquenchable light, and yet my routine activity of life is to walk consistently on the dark side, then I'm lying to myself and everybody else, and I do not belong to the truth. But if I walk in the light, as he is in the light, I then have fellowship with my brothers and sisters, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son purifies me from all sin. When I walk in the light and I realize the darkness that remains in my soul, when I realize how easy it is for me to mess up, how interested I am in wandering from God's ways, instead of retreating to some formal external activity, I retreat to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, where all of my sins find their answer.
"'These are the marks,' says John." And presumably, Paul, when he looks at these individuals—and of course, we can ask him someday when we see him, but he must have had something similar in mind for him to move from his initial reaction, assuming that they are disciples, to the questions which follow in turn. It's not very politically correct to ask questions about people's beliefs. It's more politically correct to assume that if anyone believes anything about anything, they must believe it correctly and all is well. It's such a bunch of bunk, and it's so pervasive that if we're not careful, we might begin to believe that as well. It's like believing that no matter what way you exit from this driveway, no matter whether you go north, south, east, or west, driving your car, that you will all arrive at the same point.
It doesn't make any sense at all, and it just isn't true. Sometimes it takes others to reinforce this for us. During the week, in the mixture of mail that I received, both snail mail and email, I had an email which began, "'Dear Alistair Begg, I wonder if you are a genuine Christian.'" And so I was intrigued.
I thought this maybe had come from my wife, but it hadn't. But as I read on, the letter went on at some length, and the person was asking me to really examine things to see if I was a true believer. And I was intrigued. I had to keep reading the letter.
I didn't know where it was coming from. And then eventually, the fellow played his hand. And right into the second page, he says, if you will read the Book of Mormon, not seven times, but seventy times seven, you will discover who Jesus truly is. And he went on to say, and I pray for your soul that you might discover genuine truth and everything else. Well, actually, I was glad of the letter.
I was glad of the clarity. He obviously has listened to the radio program Truth for Life. He's decided that what we're saying on Truth for Life is not something that he can sit with as a Mormon.
Good. The message must be getting out. It's not politically correct to refer to Mormonism as a cult, but it is a cult, as is Jehovah's Witness, as is Christian Science. They are deviant aberrations of truth. They are not true Christianity. And while the Christians are unprepared, many of them, to call the line from our side out, I was delighted to know he was happy to call it from his side in.
And as my son sometimes says, I want to write to him and say, hey, write back at you. If you will read the New Testament and leave aside Joseph Smith's ramblings, then you may also discover that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and by believing you may have life in his name. I like the clarity of it.
It's good. It calls it, doesn't it? Now, the same kind of clarity then had to be in the mind of Paul when he meets this little group, and they are apparently in the discipleship framework, and then he systems of, no, I'm not sure that they actually are. And so he asks them two questions. Number one, in verse 2, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?
That's a fascinating question, isn't it? Now, you need to ask of the question, why would he ask the question? Well, he asks the question on the basis that he recognizes that the true believer has received the Holy Spirit, that it is impossible to be a true believer absent the indwelling power of God's Spirit.
We had that taught to us actually last Sunday morning, and very helpfully so. In other words, in the back of his mind are the words of Jesus in John chapter 3, when in speaking to a religious man who had all the accoutrements of spirituality, if you like, in contemporary terms, Jesus said to Nicodemus, I tell you the truth. No one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to the Spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, you must be born again. The wind blows wherever it pleases.
You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. Now, the same truth is what Paul describes for us in Romans chapter 8, when in speaking of genuine faith, he says, You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And that's a big if. You see, the question is not if you're interested in the purpose-driven life, if you're interested in adding structure, religious framework to your existence, because you recognize that it seems to go along with a cohesive view of the universe, and it's sort of helpful to family life and so on.
All of those things are good. But the real question is, does the Spirit of God live in you? And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. It's that categorical.
It's that crucial. Without the Spirit of life within us, our bodies are dead. We cannot sing, we cannot walk, we can do nothing at all, absent that indwelling Spirit within us, the Spirit of life itself, which animates our existence.
And in spiritual terms, what Jesus is saying is, in the same way that you were born, an event over which you had no control, which ushered you into an existence that you had been unprepared for, and into a world in which people spoke strangely to you until you finally learned the language and became part of this big community, so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. They are ushered into a world that they really had no preparation for. They encounter a group of people who say all kinds of strange things, look down at them as they were, little baby Christians saying things like, justification, sanctification, glorification, glorification, glorification. And the person says, I don't know what this is. What are they all about? What is this about? And then all of a sudden, one day you find yourself looking down into a baby Christian going, glorification, justification, sanctification, glorification.
And the person says, what is all that? It's the same process. But these people were almost Christians. They weren't Christians. The Spirit of God did not live in them. And if the Spirit of God does not live in you, says the Bible, you do not belong to Jesus. It's an amazing question. Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? And the answer is as striking as the question. In fact, the answer might even be more striking. No, we haven't even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.
Wow! That takes it up a notch, doesn't it? I mean, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?
No, absolutely not. In fact, we don't really know much about the Holy Spirit at all. We hadn't heard. My best explanation of this is that what they are actually saying, in essence, is that we have no knowledge of the Holy Spirit in the Christian sense of the term. We have no knowledge of the Holy Spirit apart from John's prophecy concerning it, but we did not know that John's prophecy has been fulfilled. If you like, they did not realize that what Jesus promised in John chapter 7 had in Pentecost actually taken place. You remember in John chapter 7, Jesus is there for the feast in the temple? And on the last and greatest day of the feast, he stood and said in a loud voice, If anyone's thirsty, let him come to me and drink. And whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.
It's an interesting picture, isn't it? So into the desert and into the parched nature of human existence, there is a power implanted that issues in this overflow of a life that is engaged with God. What did he mean by this? Well, John tells us by this, he meant the Spirit whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time, the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. Now, my best guess at this is that these folks hadn't understood that that expectation made there by Jesus had been fulfilled in Pentecost.
And they're very honest in their response. No, we don't know anything about the Holy Spirit in these terms. So Paul gives his follow-up question. What baptism did you receive? Well, they said, John's baptism. Whatever John said was what we did. What had John said? John said, I am here as a voice crying in the wilderness. And I urge you to turn away from your sins and get in the tub and show everybody that you're prepared to turn away from your sins by getting in the tub. Not the tub, but you know what I mean. In the pond, in the pool, in the water. Get in here and show everybody that you're turning your back on all of this. And while this was going on and people were becoming the disciples of John, another person begins to make his journey, as it were, across the horizon, and some of the disciples of John begin to go and follow this other fellow, and other disciples come to John and say, Hey, John, you're starting to lose some boys.
There's a big drift over the river, too. Jesus from Nazareth has got quite a following. And what did John the Baptist say? He said, Fine. I'm a voice crying in the wilderness. I'm actually here.
I'm preparatory. I'm not the bridegroom. I'm the best man. My job is to stand up, speak up, and shut up. I'm only here in order to say, Here!
Here he is! I'm a voice crying in the wilderness. I'm a light that shines for a little while.
I am a finger that is pointing. And if you look across there, you will see the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Therefore, if he is the sin-bearer, then he is the answer to your sinful heart.
And you have said, I am interested in turning from all of my sin. How is it to be forgiven? It is to be forgiven in the one who is the Lamb of God.
Now, somehow or another, this little group in Ephesus had part one, but they didn't have part two. They had never understood that Jesus came to blot out their transgressions. That Jesus is the one who can give somebody a fresh start and a clean page and a new opportunity. That Jesus is the one who by his death was bearing the condemnation upon him, God's condemnation on sin, making it possible for those who trusted in him to live without condemnation, on account of what Jesus had accomplished. And when that divine transaction took place, then not only was the individual's status changed and they became the sons of God, but the individual's experience was transformed, because God the Holy Spirit came to live in their lives.
And they were new. And they knew they were new, not because they had embraced an externalism, but because they had new desires. They had new interests. We're learning about the marks of true conversion on Truth for Life with Alistair Begg.
We'll hear the conclusion of the message tomorrow. Alistair has titled our study in the book of Acts, For the Sake of the Gospel. This is the remarkable story of how the message of salvation in Jesus spread from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria and many other places after Jesus rose from the dead.
If you'd like to dive deeper into this amazing story, let me encourage you to request the book we're offering. It's Nancy Guthrie's recently published book titled Saved, Experiencing the Promise of the Book of Acts. In the book, Nancy explores the saving work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Jesus followers after his resurrection and ascension. As you read the book, you'll track your way chapter by chapter through the Acts of the Apostles as Nancy offers insight and commentary about how the Holy Spirit transformed the lives of these first Christians. In particular, you'll take a close-up look at Peter's missionary work in the first part of the book and then Paul's work in the second half.
Nancy explains how the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on those who put their faith in Christ was a watershed event in human history. Ask for your copy of the book Saved when you donate today to support the Bible teaching ministry of Truth for Life. Go to truthforlife.org slash donate or call us at 888-588-7884. And if you'd rather mail your donation along with your request for the book, you can write to us at Truth for Life.
Our mailing address is post office box 398000 Cleveland, Ohio 44139. Thanks for studying along with us today. So how can we tell when someone's profession of faith is genuine? Join us tomorrow to learn the clear universal evidence. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
