What is the connection between speaking in tongues and the Holy Spirit?
Hi, welcome to today's Little Lesson. Thank you so very much for joining me.
I hope you've also seen the three previous Little Lessons because we started talking about speaking
in other tongues, a very biblical subject. If you are just jumping in here in the middle, well, I
just advise you to stop where you're at and try to find the other three videos that precede this one,
and watch those first, because we're building Little Lesson by Little Lesson.
So I want to talk about the connection between speaking in tongues and the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. He, not it, is God,
and who wouldn't want to get closer to the Holy Spirit? Anyone who's a Christian, they've already
experienced the work of the Holy Spirit in being born again. The new birth, being regenerated,
born of the Spirit, Jesus said. That's the work of the Spirit, and anyone who
has believed in Jesus, they've been born of the Spirit and the Holy Spirit indwells them.
But that's not the only experience that the Lord wants us to enjoy.
There are subsequent in fillings or baptisms in the Holy Spirit that we can read about in the
book of Acts. And Paul wrote to the Ephesians and he said, "Be filled with the Spirit." Well,
if they already were filled, he wouldn't have ever said to them be filled. And in fact, in the Greek,
the verb tense is something that we really don't have in English. It says something more equivalent
to be being filled with the Holy Spirit. And so it just implies an ongoing, never ending process of
being filled with the Holy Spirit. And he goes on to say speaking to one another in
psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.
Those are ways that we get subsequent fillings of the Spirit by ministering to the Lord in worship
and prayer. And he inhabits the praises of his people. And that's an indication that we're being
filled with the Holy Spirit, when you enter into God's presence and worship and praise him and
sing out hymns, and those spontaneous songs that come forth from your heart,
true expressions of love for God, worshiping him in spirit and in truth. As Jesus said,
you get some filling of the Holy Spirit
with that. And everyone who's experienced that knows what I'm talking about. All right.
So what's the connection between the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues? Well,
it's fairly safe to say, although we have to have some caution, that speaking in tongues
is one of the initial evidences of being filled or could say being baptized in the Holy Spirit.
And we're going to look at some scriptures today and in future lessons that will bear that out.
But let's go to the Bible. What do you say? And again, my motivation is pure love for you.
So if you're a theologian who's watching this and you're just getting hot around the ears
and you just can't wait to get to your class so you can refute it in front of your seminarians,
just look at yourself in the mirror and say you're in need of another dip, because why get mad
over the Bible, over something that is thoroughly biblical and get angry at someone like me,
who's trying to help you experience all that God has for you. So don't get mad.
So we jump out of the gospels into the book of Acts and Luke who wrote the gospel of Luke,
wrote the book of Acts. And he writes to this guy named Theophilus, which
a lot of folks think is just representative of any hungry soul. The name Theophilus, Theo, God,
Philo, phylo, whatever, love. So it means lover of God. And Luke writes the first account I composed,
Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach. The implication is that Jesus...
now I'm going to talk about the things that Jesus continued
to do and teach through his church by the power of the Holy Spirit, until the day when he was taken
up into heaven after he had, by the Holy Spirit, given orders to the apostles whom he had chosen.
So Jesus is the head of the church. He doesn't give suggestions.
He doesn't really ask us to do anything. He gives orders. He gives commandments. It always irks me
when I hear preachers say that Jesus is asking us to... no, no, no, Jesus doesn't ask anyone
to do anything. He commands them. He's the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. And he gave orders,
Luke wrote, to the apostles, and listen to the order that he gave him and see if it
has any application to you or application to the church, in general.
To these he presented himself alive after his suffering by many convincing proofs, appearing
to them over a period of 40 days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.
Wouldn't you like to know everything that Jesus said during those 40 days? I sure would. But Luke
was led by the Holy Spirit, really to highlight only one thing basically, we could say, that Jesus
said during those 40 days. And so no doubt, Luke highlighted what he felt was supremely important,
above all else, of all the orders, of all the revelation, of all the instruction,
of all the information that Jesus imparted during those times,
those many times that he presented himself alive to his apostles over those 40 days.
Luke thought here's one thing that's more important than anything else.
Gathering them together, Jesus commanded them not to leave Jerusalem. So this is a commandment.
He's not asking. He's commanding. Don't leave Jerusalem until.
So there will be a time you should leave. But until that time, stay in Jerusalem. He
commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised,
which he said, you heard of from me. This is something I've already talked to you about, for
John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit, not many days from now.
And that wasn't an exaggeration. It was just a few days later. He spoke to them over a period
of 40 days. And the day of Pentecost would have come 50 days or so after Passover. So maybe just
6 to 10 days from then. But you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. So not many days from now.
And, of course, he told them that when they received the Holy spirit, that they would then be
his witnesses. So it was very clear. The Holy Spirit was going to help them to do the job that
he wanted them to do. And that was to spread the gospel. For anyone today to think that we don't
need the Holy Spirit, as much as those guys needed the Holy Spirit to do what God wants us to do,
you'd have to be very foolish to think something that silly. To think that, well, these guys
needed the Holy Spirit, baptism, but we don't. You can't be serious. That would be prideful.
John, Peter, James, Matthew, they needed the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but we don't know. No,
no. Jesus said this is so important. Luke said this was the most important thing that Jesus
said to them. Don't leave Jerusalem until you've been baptized with the Holy Spirit.
So we're out of time and we'll have to pick up right here next time, but it just gets better
and better and better. Loving this. And I hope you'll stick with me because there are going
to be a lot of you watching who right now, you're a Christian, you're hungry for more
of the Holy Spirit. And you're going to receive a blessing from the Holy Spirit and you will be
baptized in the Holy Spirit, and you'll have the accompanying sign of speaking in
a language you've never learned. Something you can use every day in your personal prayer life.
All right, if you've never been to heavensfamily.org,
please check us out and please consider getting involved. Every Christian is
supposed to be involved in caring for the least of these. That's the sign that
we're among the sheep and not the goats. And that's why Heaven's Family exists, is to relieve
the sufferings of the least of these and advance the kingdom of God. So heavens, the word heaven,
the letter S, the word family, dot O-R-G. Until next time, may the Lord richly bless you.