Taking A Stand Series

At this, Peter rebuked Simon and told him "May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord. Perhaps he will forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin." Acts 8:20-23

II. Now… before we get into issue of Simon “selling his soul” we need to explore a couple of misleading concepts here in the text

If you didn’t look real close at this passage you might not see the most obvious problem. Has anybody seen the problem in this text I’m talking about?

(pause…)

That’s right… it tells us here that “When (Peter & John) arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.” (Acts 8:15-16)

Now… for those of you who don’t understand WHY that would be a problem, it would help for us to go back to Acts 2 and read what Peter told the crowd at Pentecost:

Acts 2:38 says: "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

In other words:

If you want to be saved:

Repent of your sins

And be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ

AND – when you do that

You shall receive forgiveness of your sins

AND the gift the Holy Spirit

BUT… in Acts 8 we have hundreds of people who responded to Philip’s preaching

They believe… they’re baptized and yet they don’t seem to have the Holy Spirit yet!

What’s the deal?

What complicates this is that… IF the Samaritans didn’t have the Holy Spirit until Peter & John then they would not have been saved.

Ephesians 1:13 “… you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit”

In fact Romans 8:9 tell us: “…if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.”

You CANNOT be a Christian if you don’t have the Holy Spirit

You CANNOT belong to Jesus without God’s Spirit dwelling within you.

So.. we this leave us with only two options:

1. Either the Samaritans were not saved until Peter and John came to Samaria (EVEN tho’ they had BELIEVED and were BAPTIZED)

2. OR, something else is happening here.

And of course… this is “something else”

Just a few facts here:

· Salvation was never given by the laying on of hands

· When you had hands laid on you one of three things was being done

1. You were being healed (ex: Luke 4 tells us Jesus healed by laying on of hands

2. You were being ordained to a certain responsibility – the church laid hands on Paul & Barnabas when they went off to plant churches - Ephesus & Colossae

3. You were receiving a special “outward” sign or expression of God’s Spirit.

Acts 19:6 tells us that after Paul baptized some men from around Ephesus: “… Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.”