Person and Work of the Holy Spirit lesson 22

pray so hard because you're so spiritual that your eyes hurt when you open them and you can't see anything? No. I see chuckles on about everybody's face. You didn't pray hard enough is what I'm trying to tell you. as I get my vision back from blurry. I'm just kidding around. All right. So we are on lesson 22. We're on the person in the work of the Holy Spirit. So 22 lessons we've spent working through this topic, and it's been been amazing. We're at the place where we're talking about spiritual baptism today.

And so in the book, it's page 118 through 121. For those of you that have that, we're going to be following several paragraphs and having some conversation around that. I'm going to try to share my screen here in a little bit. So if that's OK and not too jarring, I'm going to share a couple of diagrams and see how that goes. We'll get to that in a moment.

Just let me know if you can see them. So question number one, what does Rideout say nearly always signifies baptism? That's a catchy one. That's right, Cheryl. So let's think about what we're talking about here. We're talking about not only the baptism that we see, and I'm going to say New Testament and Old Testament for a reason for now. I'll clarify in a moment. In the New Testament, we see a type of baptism. We actually see two. This from a New Testament perspective we have baptism usually we think of what?

Water immersion or maybe the sprinkling, you know, so we have we have this concept of there being water involved and in the Old Testament Where where was baptism pictured in the Old Testament? That Russ Oh Technical difficulties. OK, no worries, no worries. So the question is, what what do we see in the Old Testament by way of baptism? Where do we see baptism in the Old Testament? Moses. Yeah. OK, why? How is that? Why is that baptism? They called it. That's what they called it. Sure enough, there it is in 1st Corinthians 10 to write. So 1st Corinthians 10 to says they were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

When I heard this for some reason, and I just heard it probably maybe 6 years ago. Meaning I hadn't read this closely to think about what this was meaning. It probably was like devotionally read. It just didn't sink in. But it's actually during the Law of Grace series that we did years ago now, where this distinction became very, very clear in my mind. And it changed a lot for me in terms of just understanding the Bible. you know, understanding the context of where baptism is being discussed. And, you know, that's part of a good Bible study skills is to, you know, we often say that context is key, right? Context, context, context. And for some reason, reading it, baptized into Moses, that phrase just didn't catch me until more recently in my life.

But they were baptized in the cloud and in the sea. So what happened for them? How were they baptized in the cloud and the sea? What's the story? They were slaves. Go ahead. Where did he go? He's back. He gone again. All right. So you have slaves. You've got Pharaoh, his dictatorship over the slaves. So Israel at this particular point in time was enslaved to the Egyptians and they were led out, right?

So by the cloud and through the sea. And all of the details that are there and all the spiritual lessons that are there, you know, are so important. But we want to focus on this one specific thing. They through the process of crossing the sea and being led by the direction of the Lord through the cloud, they were baptized.

What happened physically? They went from where they died, they died, they died to Pharaoh, they died to slavery, slavery and were baptized into the law under the law. Eventually, so yes, you're exactly right, eventually into the law, but they crossed that sea. And when they crossed that sea led by Pharaoh, and you're exactly right, they were. put it, it was a spiritual perspective and a physical release of being, having been in slavery. It was a picture of what we would call death, just like you talked about there, Jimmy. So they died to slavery. They died to the rule of Pharaoh and they entered into the land.

Right. And everything was perfect from there. Right. No. No. But one thing that changed that couldn't change again was this relationship. All of a sudden, they were introduced into a new place, right? So we have the Israelites moving across the sea into the land that they're being led to by Moses. But that picture is not just a picture of being set free from slavery. It's a spiritual picture of what they were now put into relationship with.

And they were put into relationship with the head of a system, right? And what was that system to be? Jimmy, you said it, law, right? So they were baptized from slavery in Egypt into being introduced and put in relationship with Moses and all that his headship over them would entail through the law. Does that make sense?

I would maybe challenge the law initially because there was the Red Sea, then there was the journey, then there was Mount Sinai, then there was Kadesh Barnea, where they refused to go into the promised land. But there was a timeframe between leaving Egypt, going through the Red Sea and Mount Sinai. I don't know how long it was, maybe a couple, three months, when Moses went up and got the law. So initially, I don't think they were aware. No, they weren't. They didn't have it. They didn't have it. And that's why I put the to come in around eventually into the law. And so, yeah, there was that period.

And what was interesting is that we oftentimes think of law and grace as being equally stark contrasts, and they're not. And this is also a very important lesson that I learned, just kind of bonus here, is that there was grace during the law. Yes, there was. So, but there's not law during grace. That's right. So what's interesting is that grace was present through both law and the period of law and the dispensation of grace.

We want to call it that way, the stewardship of grace. But yet grace was present in the law, right? And so during that period where the Israelites across the Red Sea and we're in transition to having received the law on Mount Sinai, they were walking in grace. right? They were walking in grace through that, and they had opportunity there, but it led to a constant state of grumbling.

Well, that's not the purpose of today's lesson, but what we see here is that with baptism in the Old Testament, you have a placing into a relationship, an introduction to a new place, and I think that the idea of introduction to a new place is very, very evident in the idea of seeing Israel actually crossing. They were introduced into a new physical place, and that's the way it was for Israel.

It's about the place. I would add one thing to that, too, is that it was set up just like our baptism is set up. There's no going back. Okay, I got a good one there. I got a good one there. Hold that thought. So what about John the Baptist? He baptized. I mean, he was kind of like the superhero of baptism. He had it in his name. Well, I think you were... Was that too much? I'm just kidding around.

He was, you know, 450 years, and he's the first prophet to come on the scene in all that time. And Judaism had gone through so much transition that it was not recognizable as the same thing that Moses got on the mountain. And so John the Baptist was going back and saying, wait a minute, here's what Judaism really is. And if you identify with that, I want you to be baptized so that you can demonstrate publicly that you agree with what I'm saying as opposed to what the Pharisees are saying.

Yes. I think that's interesting because what you're seeing is that they were not baptized into faith in Christ, were they? No. No. We're going to talk about that more later. They were baptized into discipleship. Right. They were disciples in the technical term, right? They were marked. Their badge was I am a disciple of Jesus, whom I believe to be somehow some way connected with this Messiah that we've been studying all about in our scrolls for all this time. I don't understand all the details. I can't imagine how confused they were. But they essentially were were branded with this discipleship as a result of their baptism. And it's interesting.

Did John baptize more disciples or to Jesus? John did more more people disciples, more disciples. Yeah. John for one. Let's look at John for one. Somebody read it when you got it. Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were. Yeah. Thanks for reading too.

So interestingly, here you have the Lord Jesus making disciples, but yet he was not doing the baptizing, right? Jesus is making disciples and this badge of discipleship was placed on all those who were baptized, but were they introduced into the church? Was that the relationship that they were placed in? I don't think so because John the Baptist identified Christ as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, but that was obviously before that event happened. So he had pointed out to his disciples that Jesus was the Messiah. And even later on, though, John got a little nervous and sent a message to the Lord Jesus and said, are you the one or do we need to look for somebody else? Right. Because things weren't going so well. Disciples were dying. And so. Sorry. Go ahead, Miles. I was going to say, the baptism that John was doing and Jesus' disciples were doing, that was a ritual baptism. I mean, like Mike mentioned earlier, you know, baptism being identification, right?

It's like, I remember listening to his audio, you know, talking about the sword being plunged into the water, right? It's like an irreversible change to the chemistry of the metal or the structure. So what they were doing there was an outward kind of declaration of, you know, I identify with what you're saying or what you're teaching, whereas the baptism that happened with Israel through the sea, that's a real baptism, right? A real spiritual baptism, just like our baptism into Christ.

I was just thinking it's interesting that when Israel was baptized into Moses, it was a grace operation. They just followed the clouds through the sea, right? God provided that entirely and it identified them with Moses, but it wasn't until they got to Sinai that they realized what it meant to be identified with Moses, right? So it's a lock-in, just like when we're baptized into Christ, it's just faith in what Jesus did on the cross, total grace operation. even begin to learn what it means to be in Christ until, you know, down the road or whatever. But our identity changed at that moment, just like when Israel walked through the sea, they were no longer identified with, you know, their slavery in Egypt. They were saved by grace at that, through that operation. I don't know, just a couple of thoughts. Oh, it's very good. What I'm going to do is thank you for sharing that for sure. That's super helpful. It sets up this next.

I'm going to try to share my screen. And can you let me know how you can see it in the class? I would assume that everybody else can see it pretty well. Yes. We've got two monitors. JD, one of them has you, and the other one has the chart on it, but it's pretty small. Yeah, I'm going to walk us through it. So this is a chart of time. That's why you can't see it, because it zooms in and out like that. Phil, you can tell us about all of them. I'm going to zoom in. So what we're looking at here is a chart that illustrates time.

So this is eternity passed over on the far left. And you have the beginning. And as you move across the chart, the alpha, the creative ages, then you move into the realm of angels, I'm sorry, the age of angels, man, then you get into Israel, zoom in a little bit further, you get into Israel, then you get into the church, you go through tribulation, millennial reign, Christ, then you move to the omega and eternity future, the age of ages. So that's what that's explaining.

And then along the bottom are biblical events that took place that happened during each of these ages. So what I'm gonna do is just take us on a little time journey and talk about this from a perspective of baptism. So we see that baptism doesn't take place in the age of the angelic government, doesn't happen during the age of innocence, prior to the fall or the age of consciousness, after the fall. It doesn't happen during the age of human government.

Where it begins is actually after the age of promise and moving into the age of the law. So you'll notice that age of promise. Can we see that OK? Ish. So we have Israel. This is still the Israel is broken down to the age of promise, age of the law, and then the age of incarnation, which is Christ's birth, right?

So it was actually at this point where the Egyptians the plagues attack the egyptians and the release of the israelites into uh... the land through the red sea so we have to see baptism taking place in israel at the beginning of the age of law then as we move across to see okay we've got the incarnation the birth of christ and we see the age of the apostles within this church we also see the age of the local church The person in the work of the Holy Spirit operates largely for us in terms of this study in this church age, right?

So remember, baptism is one of the responsibilities that the Holy Spirit has. So we don't want to forget that we're not just talking about baptism as something that happened as an introduction from, you know, from Egypt into the land. We're not just talking about it as an introduction of, I identify with this man named Jesus as the Messiah, and I'm a disciple of that. And we're not, you know, we're not just looking at those areas. We're looking at what happened when we moved from that age of Israel to the age of the church during the age of the apostles, there was baptism.

And so the Holy Spirit, and we know this event right here, right? We have the birth of Christ, the death of Christ, resurrection, and then we have the day of Pentecost. And what does that signify for us? How did that change baptism? That's when the church began. And so the baptism baptized us into Christ and into his body, the church. That's right. So it's at this particular point, at Pentecost, where the age of the apostles began to baptize through water immersion.

Is the Zoom bothering you guys at all? Is there anything I can do better? Well, we're watching it on a TV monitor, small, but it's not on the main screen. Can you pull it way back out just for a minute? I can send this to you. I don't know where it came from. I think Roy gave it to me, but I cannot for the life of me find who gave it to me or who made it. DeeDee, while they're looking at that or trying to figure that out, Nick's trying to get it up on the projector here. Just going back even further, just another thing.

When you were talking originally and Mike, so was it Grace as we define it during Moses' time? Was it grace or was it mercy? We define grace as unlimited blessing, blah, blah, blah. Not blah, blah, blah, but sorry. Is that the same grace? And the reason why I ask that is that Galatians, all this, you cannot mix law and grace. Any law negates grace. So I was wondering, when we say there was grace during Moses' time, is that the same as what we thought?

Yeah, it's a really good question, so I'm going to answer it this way, I think. First of all, I think grace and mercy are two sides of the same coin. And when we say that, we're not referring them as to something abstract, right? They're the characteristic, the very nature of the Lord himself.

And so what we're asking is, was God expressing his personal grace in the same way for Moses and the Israelites as he did post death, burial and resurrection? The answer is no, because from a human perspective, we don't understand, they didn't understand grace in the person of the Lord Jesus yet. So did they receive grace in the same way? No, because they didn't understand all that we now understand looking back to what the person, the character of grace is. Just the term, I hadn't really thought about that. You were talking about that grace was evident in Moses. Through that, I just think that's more mercy in God's characteristics, not graces.

We know it. Yeah, I mean, trying to, I guess I'm thinking that's what covenant, covenant theology tries to bring us back under law and try to mix grace with it. And you know, it's, it's Galatians. It's clearly if you mix any law with, with grace, it negates grace.

Yeah. I make a comment. Yeah, go for it. Yeah. I was just going to say, is it fair to say that grace was present during the period of the law and the way that it showed up was Joshua wasn't saved through the law or by the law, but he was saved from God because he believed, and that was the aspect of grace that was present when the law was present as well. Absolutely. J.D.? Yep. I would disagree. I think it's the same grace, and I'll tell you why. If the definition is unlimited and unmerited blessings.

What did the Jews have to do to get from Egypt to Mount Sinai? They just had to walk. Everything else was provided for them, everything. Food, shelter, security, escape. And when they got to Sinai, then Moses went up and the law was brought down to them. But even then, it wasn't a matter of them not getting what they deserved. It was a matter of God's grace just taking care of them through the journey. And that's exactly what we expect Him to do now. That it's God's grace that we live under and live in, and we expect Him to take care of us in the journey.

But I guess I'd look at, you know, when he gets further, he's on the mountain, and he's coming back down. What are all the boys of Israel doing? That's right. Dancing around, you know, the golden calf and get swallowed up and, you know, all sorts of things. Well, it's like God coming down and you're at a hockey game. What's the difference? It's the same thing. The Jews were back in the world system. We're back in the world system. We sinned, they sinned.

What did he do? First of all, I wanted to wipe him out. Moses told him, nah, you don't want to do that. You want to exhibit. So he said, okay. And actually the second set of tablets was way more gracious than the first set. So let's combine some of the things that I'm hearing both of you say there. Excuse me. First of all, grace is a person.

It's the attributes of God himself, right? So grace doesn't change. Let's just get that straight, right? God doesn't change. God's grace does not change. It's who He is. He's a gracious God. It's also connected to his love, right? But it's balanced by his righteousness, his justice. So you have love, but you have balance with justice and righteousness and holiness. So those attributes, whether it be sovereignty, righteousness, you go on through all the omnis and he doesn't change. He's a gracious God. But what does change is man's understanding of that. So we call it progressive revelation, right?

The revelation of God in His grace was not fully revealed to them in the same way. I think what Jimmy was saying is right. It was revealed to the degree that they could place faith in the God who saves. They knew that the God of Jacob was the God that they served and they trusted him by faith. It was credited to them as righteousness. That gracious act of salvation by faith through grace is consistent.

It's just that the progressive revelation, the knowledge of that good news was made more clear throughout the apostles age and then into the local church age. Right? So grace doesn't change, but man's understanding of it through progressive revelation does change. And so when we're being baptized, we have a much more clear picture of what is happening for us because we are in a different stewardship. We are in the age, the operating system of grace and specifically the local church age. Right.

So what does that mean to us as believers? Let's look at question number two. I'm going to I'm going to leave my screen up here because we'll come back to this in just a moment. But let's look at question number two. It says, what did water baptism of new Christians signify? So we talked about this as being a a introduction to a place. What was distinct? What was that distinct place that that we as believers in the church age after the death, burial and resurrection of Christ? and then Pentecost. What is that? What place is that for us? Acts 2, 4, 1, 2, 41. Then they gladly received his word, were baptized, and the same day they were added about 3000 souls. What were they added to? Why is it being counted?

The church. OK, does everybody agree the body of Christ? Yeah, the body of Christ. Yeah. So these were Jews. Okay, they were Jews, they were also Gentiles, and it was being spoken of in different places, Samaria and Philippi, wherever the gospel was received, there were people that were being baptized, and on that same day, they were added to, and they were added to a Christian economy that we understand as the church, the local body of Christ, right? Does that make sense? So when we look at this chart, can you see this now with mankind being the outer circle? Is that big enough for everyone? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So you have Israel, right? Then you move into, you have believers in Israel, and those are the believers that what? What did believers in the nation of Israel, what did they have to do? They had to believe the promises that God made to them. Exactly. And as a result, they were credited righteousness. So you have believers in Israel, and then you have the period of the church, which we just talked about, beginning with Pentecost.

It was then displayed outwardly through water baptism, but inwardly, what was going on in their belief system? What had changed about their beliefs? Well, one of the things that changed was that it went from promises to facts. In other words, in order to become a Christian, your faith was based on something that was already an accomplished fact rather than a promise.

And so the second thing about that is, is that rather than under the old system where God demonstrated grace, but it wasn't the operating system, the operating system now is grace. It's totally under the environment in which a believer, a member of the body of Christ lives and functions, totally under grace. And there's no requirement for him to enhance his position in Christ at all. You get it all at the very beginning. You may not realize it all or walk in it all, but you have it all. That's right.

Yeah, and I think one of the important points, and I'd maybe like to redo this chart with some additional things that changed, because we could look at this exact same thing from the lens of grace. And one of the things that Les was telling me just a minute ago was about the fact that you could draw a circle around this entire thing. I think this speaks to Courtney, your comment, is that God's character doesn't change. Grace is present. throughout all mankind. But the nature of that grace is progressively revealed to man.

And so you're right. When we get into you have Israel, you have the believers, believers, believers within Israel. What are these believers over here, by the way? Just as a interest to see what you think. What are these believers? I said again, what are the believers on the far right outside of the church and still in the realm of believers?

He believes in the person and work of the Lord Jesus. Is he part of the church? In the orange color, the dark orange color? Yeah. He is the church. I think that those believers are believers from Israel and potentially believers outside of Israel that believed in God and his you know, because the church, I think you're referring to believers from Israel and believers from mankind potentially. If you're talking present day, there's only two kinds of human beings, the saved and the lost, that's it. Yes, you're right. But we're talking about baptism, right?

We're talking about being introduced into a place. So these are places. And that's what I'm trying to focus on at this point. So it's a bit of a trick question, and it has to do with you actually being able to see the chart probably even better. But the idea is that you have believers in Israel overlapping. Those are all believers.

Some of them were in the church. Some of them were not in the church, right? They were under the law, and they were believers. Maybe they were even put to death by the law. Maybe they were put to death by the law, but they were alive in their belief in the promises that were made to them. So they were saved. They were credited righteousness, even killed by the law.

So those are the believers over here to the left that overlap with Israel. And then you have the church, which is where we are, and you have believers that are after the church. And that's where I was trying to get to. The church does have a beginning and has an end. And that's the place that we're being placed into. And we're referring to it not only as a, we're not talking about a physical place, but a place of identification. We are now identified with certain things as the local body that the rest of these groups of mankind were not identified with. Yeah, those believers in the larger area, they're the ones that believe during the tribulation. They are not placed into the church. The church is gone. It's in heaven. So they are then baptized into, like Israel, when they believed back then, same thing. That's exactly right. That's what I was trying to get to. Thanks, Cheryl. That helps.

So what we're saying is that the purpose of the Holy Spirit and the role of baptism, there's a lot that goes on with what the Holy Spirit does. Regeneration and dwelling. He baptized and then he seals. So the person of the Holy Spirit is actively involved in baptizing groups of mankind over the period of history. Specifically, we looked at Israel and they were being placed into freedom from slavery. And we see the baptism of discipleship with Jesus and John the Baptist and the disciples during the apostolic age or prior to just prior to and then we see being baptized after the after the the Pentecost event. We see men women being baptized all over the world, Jew, Gentile, Samaria, Philippi, all over the place being placed into and numbered by the thousands into a local church body. The body of Christ is what we see the scripture speak of. It's not only a local church body, but who is the head? Christ. You're placed into the very body of Christ.

And we're going to talk more about that in the next class. But one of the things I wanted to get clear was just that mankind is being placed into different identifications over periods of time, and it's based on his faith. That would be something that Courtney would be able to go into much more in depth, but what do they have to do? They believe, and as an outward result, they show their badge of discipleship. They show their hope in the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. And eventually, we are baptized during the local church age as an outward sign of what has happened inwardly of being placed into the body of Christ.

And so we're going to talk a little bit more about that. One of the things, Mike, you mentioned is that you can't go back in these baptisms. There's no going back. So what we'll do is we'll pick up there next week and talk about that one way into it.

One thing I was going to interject maybe is another way of saying it is like with Abraham, Abraham believed God and was placed into righteousness. or baptized into righteousness. It's the same placing. Because Abraham was a believer, but he wasn't in Christ. Right. Absolutely. It's a very important distinction. One second.

What about eternity future though? God will never cease to be gracious, but is there a need for grace in eternity? Okay, so one question that Les just asked me, and we're going to put this on the shelf for next week as well, but it's a head-scratcher. Is there grace in eternity future?

Absolutely. Okay, but don't you jump to conclusions. Maybe more specifically, God will always be gracious, but how is grace evident? What's the need for it? Is there a need for it? Let's stop there. Don't answer, Mike. We don't have time. All right. Good to see all your faces. Let's pray.

Father Howie, thank you for this morning and the opportunity to see how through different stewardships of time, we operate in just a thankfulness to understand the grace that we now live in. For those of us that are believers in this age, having been baptized, through your death, burial and resurrection, we know that that's not just something that saves us from the power of sin, but from the presence and the penalty of sin and that positionally we are placed in the body of Christ safely with you as our head, our our Savior. And so Lord, we just thank you that we are able to understand how the Holy Spirit seals us and sets us apart uniquely as having been identified with you and your history. And as we look to what that means for the old man and how that introduction into a new place and its inability to go backwards, how that affects us on our daily life. So Lord, again, we do thank you for this time. We just pray for the next hour that it would illuminate the hearts and minds through your spirit to your word. It's in your name we pray. Amen.