By John Foll, 11/12/2016.
Peter said, “And we are witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Spirit, whom
God has given to those who obey Him.” Acts 5:32 NASB.
So obedience to God is the condition for receiving the Holy Spirit! There is a true Holy Spirit, and there is a counterfeit. How do you know which Holy Spirit is the real Holy Spirit? If you are obeying God in what He has revealed in the Bible, or if you want to obey Him, He will give you the help you need and the continued desire to obey Him in everything He has said. If there is any resistance to what God has said, you can be sure that this soul does not have the full outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Acts 7:51-53. If someone is disobeying any of God’s commandments willingly from the Bible, you can be sure that they don’t have the Holy Spirit. The fake outpouring of the Holy Spirit is ‘another Gospel’ (2 Corinthians 11:4), and can never satisfy the soul’s longing for peace, love and purity that God placed inside of everyone. God never compels any, but only those who want to love Him, and want to serve Him and obey Him, will be given the Holy Spirit in full. Sometimes the soul doesn’t want all of this when it first starts out, but just wants to be clean and pure before God, but the heart will be given the desire to love Him, and serve and obey Him, once the soul starts to cooperate with Him, and decides that they love Him more and more! This is the sign that the Holy Spirit is taking up residence in full in their heart! There is no compulsion, but there is a very sweet, strong desire to serve and obey God once you get the Holy Spirit in full! There is a sweet joy in communion with God that none but those who have experienced it can ever know or understand. This helps the heart to submit and completely surrender to God. Then what joy and love and peace will flood their soul! Then no trouble or perplexity will ever be able to dim their love for God!
Peter was brought back to the Council and the high priest at
Jerusalem by the captain of the guard in Acts 5:26-28, after God had delivered
him and the Apostles miraculously from prison (Acts 5:18). “When they had brought
them, they stood them before the Council. The high priest questioned them,
saying, ‘We gave you strict orders not to continue teaching in this name,
and yet, you have filled Jerusalem with
your teaching and intend to bring this man's [Jesus’] blood upon us.’” Acts 5:27-28 NASB. But Peter was filled with the Holy Ghost when
he told them: “But Peter and the
apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than men.’” Acts 5:29 NASB
and “And we are witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who
obey Him.” Acts 5:32 NASB.
What was Peter
referring to when he said that the Holy Spirit is given to all that obey Him?
Obeying God in every way. In this instance Peter was referring to the
command by Jesus to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth (Matthew
24:14; 28:19-20; Acts 1:4-5, 8-9), but more specifically in this circumstance it
was: “But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the gates of the prison,
and taking them out he said, ‘Go,
stand and speak to the people in the temple the whole message of this Life.’”
Acts 5:19-20 NASB. Now ‘the angel of the Lord’ can refer to God or Jesus
Himself (one example of many is Genesis 22:15), but it can also refer to an
angel, but the command by the angel of the Lord for Peter to preach to the
people in the temple the words of life was a command from God none the less.
The rulers and high priest of Israel didn’t want the Apostles to preach the news
of Jesus dying on the cross, because it put them in the spotlight as murdering
Jesus, the Prince of Life! Obeying God is not just the command to preach the
Gospel to the whole world of God’s love, but is also for every word contained
in the Bible, for all of it is love for the human race, because God is love,
and all of His words are love! 1
John 4:8. Jesus Himself said, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but by every
word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’ Matthew 4:4, which was a quote
from one of the books of Moses (i.e. the Law), Deuteronomy 8:3. Thus to obey Jesus or God, means to obey
every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God in the Bible. But this
is the Law of love, as Jesus stated in Matthew 22:36-40! Jesus came not to
do away with the Law, which is to love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and all your mind, and all your soul and to love your neighbor as yourself, but
to fulfill it. He came to provide a way for us to keep the Law! “Do not think that I
came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to
fulfill.” Matthew 5:17 NASB. And
in Acts 1:4-5, 8-9, Jesus tells His disciples to wait in Jerusalem, until they
receive the promise of the Father for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit! Once
they received this power from God, the Holy Spirit, they then had the power
from God not only to preach the gospel of Jesus and His Father’s love for the
world and salvation (words of life, Acts 5:20), but to live a holy life for God and to keep His law. This
ability to keep God’s Law of love was prophesied in Jeremiah 31:31-34, where
God promised to write His Law of love in the hearts of His people, so that all
of them from the least to the greatest of them would all know Him; and He would
forgive their iniquity, and He would remember their sin no more! Thus we see that obedience to God
and the desire to obey Him in everything He has commanded, is the
requirement for the full outpouring of the Holy Spirit!
The idea that we can
have the Holy Spirit, but not obey God in all that He has commanded in the
Bible is another gospel than what Jesus, Peter, John and Paul preached, and another
spirit! This another gospel is a lie from the spirit of the Father of lies,
not the right spirit! The right Spirit brings obedience and peace, but the wrong spirit tries to get you to disobey God and bring you no peace.
“But I fear, lest by any means, as
the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be
corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not
preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have
not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might
well bear with him.” 2 Corinthians 11:3-4 KJV.
Those that love God will not get deceived by ‘another
gospel’ from ‘another spirit’, and will want the real outpouring of the Holy
Spirit, not the counterfeit.
In the same way as
the Apostles were to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father for the
full outpouring of the Holy Spirit, so we too in our day are to wait before
the Lord for this full refreshing of the Holy Spirit, by making our heart right
with God and with others by confession of all sin. Yes God has promised
the Holy Spirit to all Christians who would repent and receive Him! Acts 2:38-39. Then we
will receive this wonderful power too, and we will have the full outpouring of
the Holy Spirit to help us keep His Law, and to proclaim His love to the world!
Pray for it, seek for it, yield your heart to God for it, and
you will be richly blessed with peace, love and joy, and the desire and the
power to obey Him!
#Holy #Spirit #Obey #Peter #Witness #Witnesses #Apostles #God #Counterfeit #Know #deceived #Law #true #Love #commandments #conditions #eternal #life #another #gospel
