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 the 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’s 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
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