2nd February 2025

New Testament Heroes 5 – 02/02/25 - Martin Mowat

Readings: Matthew 3:1-3, 13-17 and Acts 1:12-17, 21-26 

Last time we left the disciples waiting in Jerusalem.  Philip has just read us their names.  They had been joined by the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and by his brothers, and they were praying.

The women had always been believers, but as far as we know, his bothers hadn’t.  As is so often the case with siblings, his four brothers, whose names were, James, Joses (or Joseph), Jude and Simon, had been sceptical.  But I can only imagine that if his words and his miracles hadn’t persuaded them, his resurrection and his ascension certainly had.  Well, when you think about it, they would, wouldn’t they? 

But let’s start by talking about my heroes for this week?  Two men who, both because of, and despite, all that was going on, allowed their names to be put forward to complete an awesome task, that of replacing Judas Iscariot as the twelfth apostle.

There was a church to be built, but there was huge opposition from the powers that be. 

Neither of these men had been in the group of Jesus twelve closest followers, but, almost certainly, they knew him personally, they had heard his preaching and teaching, they had seen his miracles with their own eyes, and if there were any that they hadn’t seen, they’d heard about them, directly or indirectly.

There was not an iota of doubt in their minds about who he was. And having heard the Sermon on the Mount that we talked about last week, and that, quite coincidentally, Lectio 365 has been talking about this week, they knew about the kingdom.

But they knew, too, that the Jewish and Roman authorities had schemed together and brutally brought about an end to Jesus, and his ministry, in the hope of quashing the movement once and for all, thereby putting a definitive end to his church, even before the first stones had been laid.  These were scary times! 

A man called Joseph, who was also known as Barsabbas and as Justus, was one of them. "Barsabbas" is Aramaic and means "son of God's will" or "son of Sabbath" so it was probably a nickname, meaning that he devoutly observed the Jewish Sabbath. Joseph was his real name, but like many at that time, he also had a Roman name, and that was Justus. 

The other was called Matthias.  But the Bible doesn’t really tell us anything else about either of them.  

In Christian tradition, Justus went on to become Bishop of Eleutheropolis, a Roman city some 53 km southwest of Jerusalem, where he died a martyr. As for Matthias, after being filled with the Holy Spirit with the other apostles on the day of Pentecost, he is said to have gone to preach the gospel in Judea and Colchis, at the eastern end of the Black Sea, where he too was crucified.

As you know, it was Matthias who was chosen, but they were very brave men, both of them heroes in my book.

Let’s move on. 

"For John baptised with water, Jesus had said to them, but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." Acts 1:5 

"Not many days from now …" It would be exactly ten, but we haven’t quite got there yet. 

While we’re waiting there’s something that we need to understand, and that is what the Bible means when it talks about “baptism”, and more specifically, what the people that Jesus was talking to would have understood him to say.  

If you look it up in a dictionary it’ll tell you something like this. It is “the Christian religious rite of sprinkling water on to a person's forehead, or of immersing them in water, symbolizing purification or regeneration and admission to the Christian Church. In many denominations, baptism is performed on young children and is accompanied by name-giving.”

You may have noticed the word “immersing” there.  The origin of the word “baptise” is the Greek word “baptizo”, and it means, quite simply, to immerse. 

This is why some denominations and churches practice baptism by total immersion.  Pertinently, it’s what John the Baptist practiced and what Jesus himself subjected himself to, as we heard from Brigit in our second reading. They don’t attach any relevance to the sprinkling of baby’s foreheads because firstly it’s not immersion, but more importantly the baby hasn’t made his or her decision to become a Christian. 

Baptism has always been, they insist, intended to be a public declaration of a change in direction, by someone who has personally accepted Jesus as their “Lord and Saviour”.

I appreciate that this may not be what you have been taught about baptism, and we are a non-denominational church.  But as I’ve said before, and will doubtless say again, it’s important for us to distinguish between what the Bible says, and Christian tradition that has been established subsequently. 

Importantly though, baptism is something very spiritual.  Our hero Luke described Jesus’ baptism this way: When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

Do you see the Trinity again? Jesus, God the Son was praying, God the Holy Spirit was descending “like a dove”, and God the Father was speaking aloud so that everyone could hear.

OK. That’s fairly straight forward.  So, what then is the Baptism of, or in, the Holy Spirit?  You might think that I’m being unnecessarily pedantic, but actually it’s quite important.

As the word baptism implies, and as I’ve just explained, it’s a drenching, a total immersion, or a filling.  Not a sprinkling.

As we’ll hear next week, when the day of Pentecost arrived there was a noise that sounded like wind, there was fire which appeared, divided, and settled over the heads of each of those present, huddled fearfully in what may well have been the upper room where they had had the last supper.  Neither of those phenomena, to my knowledge anyway, had appeared before.

And then there was speaking in tongues, which on that occasion, manifested itself in such a way that the onlookers from at least 15 different people groups were able to understand them. 

I think that it’s relevant to notice here that this was an overflowing.  These men and women, after 10 days of waiting faithfully in prayer, now experienced something so all-encompassing, all-enveloping, all-xxx, that they couldn’t help but praise God with their voices and what came out of their mouths wasn’t just an unintelligible babble.

People in Pentecostal churches have similar experiences even today.  Charlotte and I have belonged to such churches, and visited others, but we don’t have time to get into that now.  

Suffice it to say that this “experience of being filled” is not the same as what happens when we “get saved”, when we first put our faith in Jesus, when we first accept him as both Lord and Saviour, when the Holy Spirit comes into our hearts, indwelling us, and begins his work of “sanctification” in our lives.  Again, this might seem academic and somewhat pedantic, but it’s something we need to bear in mind as we move forward in this series.