Did You Get The Gift he Sent?

Matthew 3:11-12  “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to untie; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”


I love scripture because it has indeed been a light unto my life. God's Word has turned me and changed me and moved me in ways I describe in a few lines, but I look back knowing I would not be the man I am without having fallen in love with a marvelous woman and a marvelous book, and the most glorious Lord of my life. That being said I do weigh certain things in scripture differently than others. The words of Jesus are weighted highly of course, and most of all the last things he said to his disciples. I also value more the words and events we find in all four gospels because they must have been foundational to the faith in order to have been repeated across the cultures and geography of the whole region. All the authors heard these words and they were important enough to include in their accounts. These words of John the Baptist are found in all four gospels slightly different but close to exact. He later says to some of the disciples that Jesus was the one to whom he was referring.


He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit!!! John baptized with water for repentance but could not baptize with the Holy Spirit. In our baptism we receive the baptism for repentance and the baptism with the Holy Spirit. One of our problems as a church today is we seem to see John's baptism clearly while the baptism with the Holy Spirit is ignored, and yet that is pictured as the more important baptism by John and by Jesus. He tells the disciples after the resurrection not to leave the city until they had been baptized by the Holy Spirit. You too were given the Holy Spirit as a gift at your baptism but have you personally received the gift, or is it a present that you have never unwrapped?


Seldom do we recieve a gift that will touch our lives with immeasurable blessings that has a greater blessing in it for so many others around us. The Holy Spirit is given to sanctify us or to transform us progressively into the image of Christ through our sharing of the Holy Spirit's gifts with our family, friends, and neighbors. The Holy Spirit's presence in us actually grows as we freely give his grace away.