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      LIVING UNDER THE NEW COVENANT       
Study #24: The Day of the Pouring Out 

"By grace you have been saved through faith...it is the gift of God, not as a result of works..." - Ephesians 2:8-9 
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 Dr. Bill Miller                                      Volume XIX Number 8                             February 21, 2016 
      
 
Greetings in the Name of Jesus and welcome to the PLN Sunday Night Bible Fellowship!
 
Welcome back to our ongoing discussion on the subject of life under the New Covenant. For the past five weeks we've been focusing on the role of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Christian believers, and in particular He's the member of the Godhead who SPEAKS to us to teach and LEAD us through life to accomplish God's plans and purposes. Sometimes He teaches us by the personal illumination of His written Word but He also SPEAKS directly to us continuously on a personal level Spirit to spirit. Indeed, our experience under the New Covenant is supposed to involve connecting to His SPEAKING by faith as we make choices and decisions in the process of life.
 
Now as we've already discussed, the Holy Spirit has ALWAYS been on the earth. In the Old Covenant He was the member of the Godhead who spoke to people just as He still does. He even spoke one time to all of the Israelites from Mount Sinai near the beginning of their forty years of wandering in the wilderness (Exodus, Chapters 19 and 20). But they were AFRAID of what they heard and asked Moses to be the one to HEAR God's SPEAKING in the future on their behalf (Exodus 20:19). So thereafter, the Holy Spirit did all His SPEAKING to Moses while leading them through the wilderness as a pillar of cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night. And for all the ensuing years until Jesus came to earth, He only spoke to particular people, mainly the Prophets of the Old Testament to make known through them what He wanted done in Israel as they prepared for the coming of Messiah.
 
From Resurrection to Pentecost
 
With the coming of the New Covenant the manner in which the Holy Spirit carries out His ministry changed significantly and it's important that we understand what happened. Keep in mind that before the crucifixion Jesus had already told His disciples that after His departure He would send them a HELPER who would GUIDE them into all truth and DISCLOSE all things that the Father had for them (John 16:7-15). And so, in the days following the RESURRECTION Jesus appeared to His disciples and gathered them together a number of times to show them He was ALIVE and to speak to them many things about the Kingdom of God that they were going to need to know. He also told them to stay in Jerusalem and wait until they had been BAPTIZED with the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:3-5).
 
Now the word BAPTISM means to be immersed or submerged into something. John the Baptist IMMERSED people in water, Jesus and His disciples had been IMMERSED in water. But a new kind of BAPTISM was about to be made available that had never happened before. In one of those gatherings after the RESURRECTION, Jesus told His eleven remaining disciples that they would soon be BAPTIZED with the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5) in order to receive new POWER that would make it possible for them to be His witnesses even to the remotest part of the earth (Acts 1:8). Let me repeat that point: THEY WERE TO RECEIVE SPECIAL POWER BY BEING BAPTIZED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT. They were ALREADY water-baptized believers with more than three and a half years of training in the Word taught BY the Word Himself, but THEY STILL NEEDED SPECIAL POWER TO ACCOMPLISH GOD'S PLANS AND PURPOSES UNDER THE NEW COVENANT.
 
There are fifty days between the Sabbath of the Passover Week and the next Jewish Festival which is called the Festival of Weeks (Leviticus 23:16). PENTECOST is the Greek name for that festival derived from the interval of FIFTY days. During those fifty days, Jesus was crucified, resurrected, taught His disciples during the forty days following the resurrection (Acts 1:3) and ascended into heaven (Acts 1:9-12) with some days, perhaps a week or so, remaining before PENTECOST. Following His Ascension into Heaven, the disciples (now Apostles) went to Jerusalem to wait as they had been instructed continually devoting themselves to prayer (Acts 1:14). The only other thing they did as they waited was to cast lots in faith asking God to choose through that means a replacement "to occupy the ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside" (Acts 1:23-26) so that the number of Apostles could be returned to twelve and fulfill Old Testament prophesies in the Psalms (Psalm 69:25, 109:8 and Acts 1:20). The name of the new twelfth Apostle was Matthias (Acts 1:26) and they were now ready for the Day of Pentecost.
 
The Day of Pentecost
 
We're about to enter a whole realm of controversy within the Body of Christ that has gone on for centuries and still goes on to this day. In my opinion it would be really, really great if we could all just set aside our manmade traditions and go by what the Bible actually says about all the things pertaining to the Holy Spirit and His role in the New Covenant. One of the biggest sources of divisiveness is that believer groups tend to develop whole "immutable" theologies around either something they've experienced in the natural that seems to contradict Scripture, or they've come upon personal illumination that tries to "explain" (add to) the Bible. If you've never heard the voice of the Holy Spirit, it doesn't mean He's stopped speaking because there are NO scriptures that make that point. If you receive a personal and even prophetic illumination through your Bible, it doesn't mean that the Holy Spirit has stopped speaking to folks and only works now through the written Word, because there are no scriptures that say that. And it also doesn't mean that your personal illumination is for the entire Body of Christ as if it were new Scripture. Sorry but if I can't EASILY find your belief in the Word of God, then I will reject is as Scripture and reject the related theology even though for all I know it may turn out to be Truth. In the meantime I will need to hold off bringing it into my belief structure until either I receive my own personal illumination about it or Jesus has come back to verify it for me.
 
With that said, the Book of Acts in Chapter Two tells us about the fulfillment of the promise Jesus had made to His disciples that He would soon send a HELPER. Here are the main things the Bible actually says about the "arrival" of the Holy Spirit to take up His implementation of the New Covenant (Acts 2:1-21):
 
1. On the Day of Pentecost the Apostles were still waiting and praying in one place when there suddenly came a NOISE like a mighty rushing wind. It was a NOISE, not an actual wind and it filled the whole house where they were gathered.
 
2. After that there appeared divided clumps or groupings (cloven tongues) of a manifestation that looked like fire and that positioned themselves (rested) over each person.
 
3. Then they were each FILLED with the Holy Spirit as the Baptism that Jesus had told them about IMMERSED (fully enveloped) their entire person.
 
4. At the same time they began to speak with other tongues (languages, ways of speaking) as the Spirit was giving them utterance. Therefore, they were speaking in other languages, different ways of speaking. It was not their own language and it was not the same language that they all spoke.
 
5. It wasn't the Holy Spirit speaking through each of them and it wasn't the Holy Spirit who moved their tongues for them as they were speaking. But it WAS the Holy Spirit who gave each of them the means for saying with their own mouths what He wanted said.
 
6. As they went outside speaking their diverse languages, the people who were gathered there in Jerusalem to celebrate The Day of Pentecost from every nation under heaven were able to hear about mighty deeds of God in their own languages. The Bible doesn't say the Apostles spoke in those languages, it says the people HEARD them in their own languages and there were many languages to be heard. Just go by what it actually says, it doesn't need to be clarified.
 
Soon, the Apostle Peter began to preach, three thousand people got saved and we learn that what they were experiencing was the OUTPOURING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT that the Prophet Joel had foretold would occur in "the last days" (Joel 2:28). Please note that the OUTPOURING was on ALL mankind meaning that all people, i.e. ANY person could have access to His BAPTISM if they would call on the Name of Jesus to be saved. (Acts 2:14-21). Note also that those who DO access it will be able to prophesy, see visions, dream (prophetic) dreams and have WONDERS following them. This isn't just for special prophets of God like under the Old Covenant. No, under the New Covenant ALL believers can do these things if they want to because they have access to the OUTPOURING of the Holy Spirit. Please read this carefully for yourself and if you need to, you can go and look for the verses that say Joel's LAST DAYS have ended. But you will NOT find any!
 
In conclusion, if the original Apostles of Christ needed the Holy Spirit for the power they needed in their ministries, so do I. And, so do you. Why does the Body of Christ have so little power for anything anymore? Could it be that it's because we ignore the Holy Spirit in most of our churches and in our busy, important little lives? Could it be that tradition has tried to convince us that we ONLY need the written New Testament to help us figure out what to do in life even though there are NO scriptures that say that anything has changed since the Day of Pentecost? Yes, I am grateful for my written Bible and I read out of it EVERY day. But I really, really need to ALSO be able to hear directly from the Holy Spirit who by faith gives me access to powers that are greater than the Old Testament prophets themselves could have ever imagined. More next week!
 
Thanks for joining our discussion tonight. We'll be looking for you again NEXT Sunday night on February 28. In the meantime may the Lord bless you with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3), pushing you to VICTORY in every area of life!
 
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Sinners' Prayer
 
If you've never invited Jesus to be your Lord, you can do so today by believing and saying out loud the following simple prayer:
 
Jesus, I declare today with all my heart that I believe in you and I believe that God raised you from the dead. I acknowledge that my sins have been forgiven for all time and I ask you to come into my life today and be my Lord and Savior. Thank you for salvation and eternal life.
 
If you were sincere as you prayed, God has already come into your life and you're a new creation, a totally new species recreated in His image. Now ask the Lord to lead you to a good faith-based, bible-teaching church where you can be equipped to fulfill your potential in the Kingdom of God.
 
When you get a moment have someone help you look up the following scriptures because they confirm what you've done by saying this prayer and believing what you said:
 
Romans 10:9
2 Corinthians 5:17
Ephesians 2:8
 
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