"A Wrong View of the Spirit" (Acts 8:14-19)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/12/2017 3:10 PM

My Worship Time                                                              Focus:    “A Wrong View of the Spirit”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Acts 8:14-19

            Message of the verses:  “14 Now when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent them Peter and John, 15 who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. 16 For He had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 17 Then they began laying their hands on them, and they were receiving the Holy Spirit. 18 Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was bestowed through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, 19 saying, "Give this authority to me as well, so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.’”

            In these verses we see that the apostles came down to Samaria in order to do three things, once they heard that there had been some Spiritual fruit in Samaria.  I want to say first of all that there was great hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans and so this probably came as a surprise to the apostles, although it should not have for they were all with Jesus when the woman at the well became a believer and she was from Samaria.  The apostles came first of all to help Philip with the spiritual fruit that he had begun.  Next they wanted to give apostolic sanction and blessing to Philip’s work among the Samaritans.  Lastly they had come to make sure that the Holy Spirit had come upon these new believers.  I go back to a passage in the book of Matthew 16:19  "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven."”  Jesus as far as I can tell, gave Peter the ability to see to it that believers would be saved through his preaching, and this passage in Acts has always kind of confused me as to why Peter did not lead these people to the Lord, but I believe that when he came down to pray for them to receive the Holy Spirit that this answered my confusing.  In chapter ten we will see that the first Gentiles were saved through Peter’s preaching, and in chapter two we saw that Peter’s preaching caused the first Jews to be saved and become members of the church.

            I know that some believe that the Holy Spirit comes on a person after they are first saved, but that is not the case, for this was an isolated instance just as we will see later on when Paul runs into people who believed on Jesus because of John the Baptist baptism.  Romans 8:9 tells us “However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.”

            John MacArthur writes:  “Why did the Samaritans (and later the Gentiles) have to wait for the apostles before receiving the Spirit?  For centuries, the Samaritans and the Jews had been bitter rivals.  If the Samaritans had received the Spirit independent of the Jerusalem church, that rift would have been perpetuated.  There could well have been two separate churches, a Jewish church and a Samaritan church.  But God had designed one church, in which ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female,’ but ‘all (are) one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal. 3:28).

            “By delaying the Spirit’s coming until Peter and John arrived, God preserved the unity of the church.  The apostles needed to see for themselves, and give firsthand testimony to the Jerusalem church, that the Spirit came upon the Samaritans.  The Samaritans also needed to learn that they were subject to apostolic authority.  The Jewish believers and the Samaritans were thus linked together into one body.

            “Today, believers receive the Spirit at salvation (cf. 1 Cor. 12:13).  There was no need for delay after Jews, Gentiles, Samaritans, and Old Testament saints were already included in the church.”

Answer to yesterday’s Bible question:  “Two farthings [two cents])” (Luke 12:6).

Today’s Bible question:  “When Jesus rose from the dead, to whom did He first appear?”

Answer in our next SD.

12/12/2017 3:37 PM