Acts 2:42-47
Isaac Hill preaches Acts 2:42-47.
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Thank you for that prayer. Good morning. If you will open your Bibles and turn to Acts chapter two, we are going to be in verses 42 through 47 this morning. As you are headed there. If you don't know me, my name is Isaac. I get to serve as one of the pastors with Mill City.
And if you do know me a little bit, you know that I have a slight nerdy bone in my body. Just a small one. And that I like the Star Wars universe. And so maybe I chalk it up to that was the sci-fi series that captivated me as a young child. Makes sense, laser guns, laser swords, spaceships, intergalactic travel. It's great.
And as I got older and I got to enjoy the films more for their stories, I often would wonder as you come to the end of the series and know Disney did not continue the canon. It ended with George Lucas. But as you got to the end of the series and if you're not a nerd, the series ends just like every other story that's told. The bad guy loses and the good guy wins. And there's this great big celebration over this galactic evil empire that has fallen and they celebrate and roll credits. And I've always thought, like, what do they do?
Like, what comes after? And there's this big climax that's great and wonderful and celebratory. And then there's something after. And last week, if you were with us, we were in a big climactic moment. Peter preaches the gospel at Pentecost and 3,000 people in an instant are transformed in the spirit to trust in the gospel of Jesus. 3,000 people.
I grew up in Gaston. I was looking this week. Gaston has a population of about 1600 to 1800 people. Two Gaston's worth of people in an instant in this one city of Jerusalem are transformed by the gospel. And it's wonderful. It was great to slow down and to think about that.
But if you're like me, you ask the question. What was next? The sun went down and then it came up the next morning. And here are these 3,000 plus people in Jerusalem that traveled there for Pentecost. What do they do? What does it look like?
What are the markers that define this new thing that hasn't ever existed before? Well, thankfully for us, Luke, who's the author of Acts, he writes, of course, the whole book is writing about this church beginning, but particularly in Acts chapter 2, these 6 verses, he's going to give us a big, powerful summary statement where he gives us defining markers of what the church is. And then he's going to paint the picture of what this looked like. And so that's what we're going to do this morning. We got to read the verses earlier. I'm going to pray, and then we're going to dive into our text.
So we thank you for the word, the way that it shows us what you've been doing throughout all time and the way that it teaches and instructs us about who you are and the life that you're calling us into. So would this morning get to be a small part of that? In Jesus' name, amen. So what we are going to do is we're going to look at the first verse, which is verse 42, we have this morning. And Luke is going to say, four defining markers that define the church. And then the rest of the verses, they're going to paint a picture.
And my hope is that that's what we'll get to do. We will get to see the picture that is painted for us. So let us begin in verse 42. This is what Luke writes.
And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (Acts 2:42 ESV)
So as Luke is trying to capture what was it like at the beginning, he says that the early followers of Jesus, the early church as it's being birthed, devoted themselves to four things.
And the first thing he says is the apostles' teaching. So the word apostle, it simply just means sent one or messenger, but it also develops into a title, a title for the 11 faithful disciples of Jesus who were with his ministry. And then also you have the addition of Matthias that we looked at in chapter one. But those are the apostles. They were sent and commissioned by Jesus to be the ones who laid the foundation of the church who built the church from the beginning. Think about Jesus' words to Peter that he's going to be the rock on which he builds the church.
These are the apostles. And this is what they did. What they did is they taught. This is the primary means by which the church came about and was built was through teaching. And so when Luke says that they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, he's referring to these apostles, these 12 men, and the things that they taught specifically about the word of God. And for them what that would look like is that would look like the Old Testament.
They had the Old Testament scriptures. And of course these apostles, they did ministry for years with Jesus. And they would also be taking the Old Testament, think about the last couple weeks. Peter took the Old Testament and he pointed it to Jesus. So they would be taking the Old Testament, showing how it found its fulfillment in Jesus, and then they would be taking Jesus' teaching and saying how that transforms people and provides the new covenant in the work that Jesus did.
And so that's what the apostles' teaching was, and that's what the church devoted themselves to, the apostles' teaching. And next he says that they devoted themselves to the fellowship. That's a fairly common word, especially in church circles where he used to the word fellowship. I don't know if we've ever slowed down to really think about it. The word actually has a lot of breadth to it in terms of all the types of things that it's trying to cover. We get fellowship out of, we also get the idea of community.
So we have community groups, we're a gospel-centered community. It's the same idea of fellowship. And simply what it's getting at is this idea of all the ways in which life is shared. So any way that you can think that your life is shared with other people, that's fellowship. That's what it is. And so Luke is saying that the church was devoted to that.
It wasn't devoted to, okay, what cool day at Pentecost? See you guys, head it back. Now they were devoted. They devoted themselves to each other, to a life shared together. That's the second thing. Third, he says that they were devoted to the breaking of bread, the breaking of bread.
Now this is in two categories ways to understand what he means here. First, it's very simple. It means eating. That they were devoted to breaking bread at the table and eating together, eating a meal. This is what these people did. And then also the second way of understanding is that there's a very particular meal that is given to the church, which is very important.
And we know it as the Lord's Supper. This is the meal that Jesus gave us specifically for the purpose of remembering him and the work that he did on the cross. And so they would have, as the early church, been devoted to breaking bread and then also specifically breaking bread in the way that Jesus had given them to remember the truth of who he is and the life that was purchased by Jesus and his work. So that's the third thing. Fourth, they were devoted to the prayers. So contextually, all of these people that are in Jerusalem are Jews.
Right. So they've come for Pentecost. That's a Jewish celebration in Jerusalem. So at the beginning, all these people are Jews. They would have had their normal regular rhythms of prayer that would have ebbed and flowed with the seasons. And then the next chapter, chapter three, we're going to learn that Peter and John go at the hour of prayer to the temple.
So they would have had time specifically. So they would have been used to the idea of praying. But now they would have kept that up and it would have been infused with a new sense of the truth of who Jesus is and what he's done. And that would have informed the way that they were praying. And then, of course, it would have bled out into the rest of their lives that their whole lives would have been devoted to the fact that we are in complete and utter dependence upon the Lord. And we want his will done and all these different things in our life, not our will done.
And so these are the four things that marked the church that they were specifically devoted to. And Luke went out of his way to Mark those down to write those down for us. And now what we're going to see in the coming verses is Luke is going to start to draw it out. He's going to start to paint a picture for us and a couple sentences, a couple ideas. And that's what I want us to do this morning. I want us to give in a little bit to our imagination, to go there, to be there, to see it, to feel it, to taste it.
So let's go to verse 43. And to all came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. So as we'll get to see throughout the whole book of Acts, there are many wonderful, miraculous things that the apostles get to do. I mean, we're talking Jesus works and then to do some crazy stuff like healing people, raising people from the dead. There's miraculous jail breaks. One of my favorite ones that I'm looking forward to getting here, whoever teaches it, they call, makes a guy temporarily blind.
No, he didn't heal him from his blindness. He makes him temporarily blind. It's crazy looking forward to hearing it talk. So this is the kind of stuff that was happening. And this is the apostles who are doing this work. Remember once again that Jesus is the one who sent them.
And this is Jesus's. This is the Lord's way of stamping his approval of the message that is going forward with what the apostles are teaching. So let's paint this picture a little bit. Like I said, in chapter three, Peter and John, they're headed on their way to the temple. And what we learn is that they come across a guy who's lame. And apparently he's been out at the temple gate for years that people know him.
But we don't get his name. Let's call him Bart for the sake of our imagination. But Bart has been out at the temple for years. He can't walk. He can't work. Can't make money.
He needs help. He has to ask people. Peter, John, are coming by and he makes, you know, Bart and Peter make eye contact. And Bart is really hoping that Peter is going to give him something. You know, we've got a special connection going on, but Peter goes, I'm sorry, buddy. Empty pockets.
I don't have anything. But what I do give you in the power of Jesus, get up and walk. And he stands up. All of a sudden he's experiencing this wonderful thing. And boy, oh boy, does he take advantage? Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.
I can walk. I can walk and move around. And Peter and John, they're as best buddies now in life. Most wonderful thing. It's now Peter and John and Bart. This is the new trio that's got going on.
And so Peter and John, they're going into the temple and it says they've gone into pray. And you got this kabari. He's like, yes, the praise of the Lord. This is wonderful. This is amazing. He's hugging up on Peter and John.
It's wonderful. And of course this draws a crowd. He saw me jump around. That was silly to look at. Imagine this guy come jumping in the temple and jumping around. And these people come along.
They're like, when the world is going away? That's Bart. I've seen him there for years. He's been stuck laying on the ground, just asking for help, all his life. What is going on? And then Peter and John, they come and what do they do?
Just like before, they proclaim the name of Jesus. They proclaim the gospel. And it says that more people come to faith that they are in all of what God is doing in miraculous works to heal a man. And when it's paired and accompanied with the message of the gospel, it moves forth powerfully in the spirit. This is what this looks like at the beginning. This is what this looks like as the church is beginning to be formed.
Let's continue on verse 44. And all who believe were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And so this language of together, all things in common, the picture we're getting here is unity that they belonged to one another. They didn't see themselves as isolated individuals anymore. They were together.
They saw themselves as a part of something greater, as a part of a family, a community. Once again, remember the context of the situation, most of these people who are in Jerusalem who respond have come from far off lands. So it's not like some guy from Crete traveled all the way over the Mediterranean, got in Jerusalem for Pentecost and then was moved powerfully by the gospel of Jesus. And then was like, all right, see y'all next to your Pentecost, I guess. Bye. No, it says it.
They were together. They shared together. They belong together. I also imagine, you know, I can see a picture of a guy who traveled from a far off land and maybe that year nobody else in his town was able to make it to Pentecost. He was just kind of alone, had to make the long trek by himself. And now he's here in Pentecost and whatever Jerusalem's version of a motel six is, he's just there, a grimy room, flickery light, just kind of gross all by himself.
And then all of a sudden he's amongst this great crowd of people and he hears what looks like a Galilean speaking his own tongue. And he's proclaiming a message about this guy named Jesus and he's the Messiah and all of a sudden something starts to boil within you and yes, that's yes, that I surrender to that Jesus is the one he's the Messiah. And now all of a sudden he belongs to these 3000 other plus people who are there and no longer is he in the motel six, he's in the grand plaza. This is the neighbor's guest room, whatever that is, I don't know, but they're sharing it together. They belong together.
They're not alone anymore. This also translated to the way that they thought about their stuff. It wasn't their stuff anymore. It wasn't their belongings anymore. They just lived open handedly. If there was need, boom, done, taken care of.
Once again, I mean, you can see the picture so clearly. I don't know. Imagine there's a bread maker and that's how he makes his living. He makes bread. Well, to make bread, you got to have wheat, you got to have water. And to get those things.
Well, we don't live in modern. There's no Jerusalem Amazon. Okay. You got you got to have some way to transport that stuff. So he's got a cart.
He's got a mule. He's got to go out to the farmer so he can get the wheat. And then he's got to go to the well so he can pull the water every day. What happens if his mule gets sick? You can't make it. So this guy, his mule, maybe get sick.
Maybe it dies. He's got no way and he's wondering, how am I going to make it? I got enough wheat to maybe make it another three weeks to make bread and make money, put food on the table for my family, but I don't. Then what? I don't know what I'm going to do. And I don't have enough to go get another mule.
I just don't. Well, then he finds himself in a large crowd and he hears this Galilee and speaking in his own language. About this person named Jesus. And he gives in. He says, yes, that's what I want. And then he belongs to this crowd of 3000, you know, before he didn't really want to bother people.
You know, you just kind of you help yourself. That's kind of that's the lane you stay in the Lord helps those who help themselves. I just kind of buckle down and I do. I don't really share with other people, but all of a sudden something's new now. And he's with these new group of people, this new community and all of a sudden he feels, you know, I think I'm going to tell him. Oh, yeah, I just can't get.
I can't get my supplies anymore. My mule is he's done. He's just out of commission. Can't work. One of the people sitting around the table goes, Oh, my God, I got 10. You can have one straight up.
Boom, take care of. And this guy's like, what? You would just give me a donkey to haul my car so I can. What? This is what it looked like for them. That they were together that they belong to each other that they lived as family that if there was a need, it was just taken care of.
And this goes on to the next verse verse 46. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts. Praising God and having favor with all the people. And so he mentions the temple that day by day, they were attending the temple together now temple is in Jerusalem. And oftentimes, I think when we hear the word temple, maybe we're familiar enough, we think about like the really holy like inner place, right? Like we think that.
But the temple actually was like a huge compound and it had a really big courtyard, like massive. It could hold lots and lots of people. If you know of any accounts in the gospels where it says Jesus goes to the temple and he teaches or anything like that, that would be the space he would be in. He would be in the big courtyard. And the church went from like 120 people that could kind of get in a room somewhere to 3000 plus people. Like if they were going to get together, they got to have a big place to meet.
And this is it. They go to the temple courtyard and they gather together as a church. And what are they going to do there? Well, like I said in chapter three, it's the hour of prayer where they're going to the temple. So they're going to pray there.
They said they were devoted to the apostles teaching. That would have been a perfect, beautiful place for the apostles to be teaching and declaring this. I mean, they went from having to teach 120 people to having to teach 3000 people about this Jesus guy and what it was all about. They were getting there in that space. They were gathering and clumping people up to try to teach about this man Jesus and how he affected what they understood about the Old Testament. And so they would gather together in this temple, but it also wouldn't just stay there, right?
He says they would also break bread in each other's homes. That it wasn't just like a thing that you would go do like kind of religiously that the temple kind of has like a religious mindset, but your home is your home. It's your place. That's where that's like, that's like your domain. But now it's wide open and you come in and you sit down and you break bread with me.
You share a meal with me that they would have gathered together in the temple and they would have scattered into each other's homes day by day. I can just imagine that like every single night, there's somebody's home that is just keeping the neighbors up because they're just, they got people over and it's just loud and festive and wonderful. This is the image that comes to my mind that they're together and said they did it with glad and generous hearts that this wasn't like a, okay, this is the new way. This is Jesus way. We're, okay, lock in. We're doing this thing.
Come on. No, join. Yes. Jesus is great. Y'all are great. Let's be great together.
This is what happens as the spirit moves amongst these people in Jerusalem as the gospel transforms them and they belong to one another and they're committed to one another and it says that they had favor with all the people. And surely this would include inside the church, but this would also be out. I mean, once again, we're talking about the, the quantity of people of two small towns inside of one city in an instant transformed their lives. And there's miracles and signs and wonders and they're eating people's homes that gather in the temple. There's no way that there's anybody in Jerusalem who, who haven't at least heard if not seen some of what's going on.
And specifically what he says is that they have favor and that makes sense. Now we'll get to some of the kind of tensions that arise amongst the religious leaders of the day. But if you're just an average Joe and you're just head down. Life is a struggle and you just grind until you die and that's you. And then all of a sudden these people around you start to have a walk about them and they start to have a talk about them. That's filled with life and purpose and joy and they're together and there's peace.
There's not a bunch of bickering and strife. That seems pretty inviting. And if I have any need you just meet it. I imagine the needs would start being met in the community as well that they had favor amongst all the people that this is what this early community looks like. Now I want to slow down for a second specifically on the breaking of bread.
The fact that they ate meals together. We looked at it. We saw it in the big four category and then we also seeing it played out here. Now be honest with you. I've always found it funny that in this passage as Luke is describing what the early church looked like. He says they devoted themselves to eating.
That's what they did. They devoted themselves to eating a meal together. Like if I were to ask you, okay, go down. I want you to sit down. I want you to write out. What does it look like to follow Jesus?
Would you ever think on that list to write eat food with other people? I pray read my Bible, my 10 church. I eat food with other people. No, but it shows up right here. That one of those spiritual things you can do is eat a meal with somebody. And in a way, it doesn't make sense, but also in another way it does, doesn't it?
Who do you eat with? Well, you eat those people you love, which you care about. That's why you share the table together and you don't eat with the people that you don't really like. I was reading a little bit of statistics this week in preparation for this. And there was this survey done of over 200,000 US adults that was specifically trying to ask about meal stuff. And the one question that I had paid attention to was honed in on was, had you eat in a meal with somebody the previous day?
So how, like how many meals had you eaten with somebody in the previous day? And 25% of that 200,000 plus number people said they hadn't eaten a meal with anybody the day prior. Now, you have to be careful with statistics and blowing it up too much. But it's kind of jarring that a quarter of the large people that were surveyed said that they hadn't eaten one meal, not a single meal with another human the day before. That's the cultural moment we live in. And you know the difference.
Okay, totally. There are times where you just have to eat on the go. A meal is not about like really a meal. It's just about like fuel yourself so you can do whatever's ahead of you. But you know the difference and you've experienced the difference.
Like when you are eating by yourself, you probably either either distract yourself with some kind of screen or you feel really sad. Because you know that that's supposed to be like a shared space. You know the table is designed to have more than one chair. You don't go sit in a desk to eat. You sit at a table and that's chairs and there's a reason there's a purpose for it. Those of you that don't know my wife and I, we adopted our first child about a year and a half ago.
And so he's now at the point now he's more like toddler age. He's got it. He's holding his own. He's testing the bounds of everything. Anyways, he's eating well enough. We can sit him in his own chair and we can sit around the table.
We can eat before when it was just she and I. We gave into the classic American grab dinner and stuff and sit in front of TV, whatever. But you know we're starting to sit around the table starting to enjoy it. And we, the other day I was coming home late after working out. I was just behind. I was like 10 minutes after they had started dinner and I, you know, I make my plate.
I sit down at the table. I come from family custom of you pray before and you hold hands together, which we did some people out, but we hold hands together and then we pray and then we eat. And so I sit down. They were already going. So I just figured out and hop right in whatever I sit down and Leo goes.
Oh, yeah, I knew that would get something. But he holds his hand out. I didn't think twice about it because my son holds his hand out of all sorts of things. So I just think he wants attention of some kind, but my wife goes, he wants to pray and I was like, oh, do we pray and you can stay a prayer. And we say amen at the end. He goes, that's his amen.
But this is the, this is what table fellowship you all know what it is. This image of us sharing together. And it's this idea. As well that there's peace between us. If I sit beside you or I sit across from you and we eat together, we are at peace and we are one. And this gets to happen in this community, not because all of a sudden they've decided to throw aside their differences, but because of the gospel of Jesus that has transformed their lives and set them free from sin.
Do you see the difference? This is what Luke closes with. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who are being saved. And so the spirit continues to work, continues to transform parts and minds with the message of the gospel. Do you see, this is what the Lord wants. It doesn't say that, and these people went around and they scrounged up anybody who would come and listen to them, pull them together into a room and force them to be a part of this thing.
No, says the Lord added to their number that what the Lord desires is for more people to hear and respond to the gospel of Jesus that they can be set free from the power of sin. That's what he wants. And that's what he's doing here in this early community, welcoming more and more. You think that around here, there's new faces and you don't really know anybody. Imagine here this time now, 3,000 people day one, a couple weeks later, 2,000 more people get added, we'll get to read about that later. On Wednesday night, you know, you show up for that, you all decide on Wednesday nights when you show up to eat, you meal at this guy's house in Jerusalem.
And one Wednesday night, you eat with some people and the next week you show up and there's 20 new faces, you haven't seen them before. This is what this is like, there's just more people, but it doesn't matter, that's joy, wonderful. Praise the Lord that the Lord is rescuing and redeeming people from their sin. And so this, this is the picture that Luke is painting. And as I was meditating on this passage for today, I was trying to think through, what would this look like today? Like if Columbia were Jerusalem and we were the beginning, what would this look like?
What would show up? And one of these times as I was contemplating this and trying to think through, I was walking through our lobby and I was coming down the hallway. And I don't know if you ever noticed, we have these little like collages of photos that are put up. And I started looking and I got, and I got caught up and captured in moments that were photographed of the years of our church. I've been here for 13 years and I got to see glimpses into each of it. And I began to see it.
I began to see it. I took some, I took some of those photos and put them here while I say, I ask Katie to go in the archive and find some. But this is our church. I realized that I began to see fellowship and community. That I saw serving one another and meeting needs. I realized that I began to see breaking bread together.
I saw as we gathered a symbol that the temple to praise and make much of the Lord. I saw that very old picture and wondered, I don't know who those people are. I saw as we were dedicated to prayer, writing on the very walls that are down there. I saw as he added to our number. Do you see it? Do you see it?
Yeah, it was a final. If you see it, do you know what you're looking at? Looking at the spirit of the living God as he transforms the hearts and minds of us. And we now belong together. That is what you are looking at. I think we have a tendency to think that spirituality lives in the clouds.
That we think that what the Christian life is calling us into is to ascend into some heavenly space which we define as feeling of. The realness. Spirituality is following Jesus. And this is it. This is the church. And so what I'd like to do with our closing minutes here is I would like to consider what this does mean for us as a church.
We're in a unique moment in time in history where we as a church believe it or not in 17 weeks. We are sending and planting Oak Ridge church out in Lexington. Yes, whoever that was. I tried to find the number that would like punch and hit most in weeks was the best one. There are going to be people who stay and send from the Mill City side and they're going to be people who go with the Oak Ridge side and we're going to ask ourselves. What do we do?
What is this supposed to look like? I've never done this before. Well, I hope 10 years from now. We'll be able to look back. And we'll be able to say that we were devoted to four things. We'll be able to say it with confidence.
We'll be able to say that we were devoted to the apostles teaching or in other words, we were devoted to the word. Now let's slow down once again. Let's not live in the world of a serial spirituality. Let's bring it down to real practical. What does it look like? To starters, real simple easy one.
Here we go. Right here. Do you know what we're doing? We're devoting ourselves to the word. This is it. If you thought that it was all full of giggly feelings, maybe it's not.
Maybe it's just us sitting in a room, gathering around the word of God and understanding what does it look like. This is it. What a blessing. If you don't know, I don't actually often teach. I'm not the main teacher here. I work in other zones, Chet and Spencer, who are out on vacation this week and they're mainly teaching.
But do you know what a gift and a blessing it is that we have two men that week in and week out devote themselves to deep study and meditation on the word. They come and they present that before us that as a community, we could engage the word of God. What a gift. And then for us, that doesn't just stay and remain here in this room. We don't walk out of that door and drop the Bible. No, we take it with us.
And what do we do? We gather in groups and we have a group discussion time where we begin to ask the question. That's an amazing message. What does it mean for me? Where does the word of God hit me and speak to me in my life? And we begin to discuss that out together.
And we live in an unprecedented time in history and which eats in every one of us at every moment of every day has unfettered access to every single word of God that he's spoken to us in his word. So 10 years from now when there's another Isaac standing here speaking. Would we be able to look back with confidence and say we are devoted to the word. Will we be able to also look back and say that we are devoted to fellowship. That we're devoted to one another. And I think we're good at this, but this is also really hard because culturally we're not set up well.
You're supposed to be isolated and live for yourself and your own dreams, your own ambitions, your own whatever. It's all about you, you, you, you, you, you, you. But it's not us. And once again, let's pull it back down into reality. Okay. We have community groups of reason.
We say it every Sunday for a reason because we are devoted to fellowship. Now, certainly the community group meeting time is not the entirety of fellowship, but it also isn't less than it. When we gather every week, I didn't know if you know this, but when you gather every week and somebody's home with your fellow believers in this church, you are being devoted to being the church. It's that simple. And in those spaces, what gets to happen? You build relationships.
Maybe people that you never talk or meet to before. You have a shared bond in the work of Christ that bridges gaps. Maybe in that space, there are needs that are met. You know, I think about, I love that we do a give project where every December, we all rally together. And it's a big thing and we all see it and we all see the stuff that's going into it all that kind of stuff. But have you ever slowed down and thought about the fact that in each and every one of our groups, there's somebody who has a need.
We all have need eventually. There's somebody who has a need. You've never heard about it because somebody in our church already stepped up to the plate and met the need. That's the church. That's what the gospel does to us. May we be able to in 10 years look back and say with confidence that we are churches devoted to fellowship.
May we also be able to say that we are devoted to breaking of bread. I mean, come on people. May we be able in 10 years to look back and say that we are people devoted to eating at the same table. How much more mundane does it get than that? This is why in our groups, literally half of the time is just eating a meal. You just share them together.
Do you know that that does something deep? I would also say that if the only time that you've ever had a meal with our church families at a group time, you're missing out. These people eat other times of the week. We'll get to participate in a moment, but maybe we also be able to not just say that we ate food together because that is a beautiful and wonderful thing. But will we say that we are devoted to the reason why?
Because of the cross of Christ that broke the bonds of sin that separated us. It separated us and him and it separated us. And that's been absolved in the person of Jesus. And a meal is a time of remembering that. And we're going to get to do that in a very specific meal, the Lord's Supper, that He's given us here in a moment. In 10 years, may we be able to look back and as two churches say we are devoted.
To the breaking of bread. And lastly, would we be able to say that we are devoted to praying? I'm so appreciative of in the last couple of years some shifts to our group content, some shifts on Sunday morning. And I think about prayer nights in our groups. That's actually one of my favorite nights. I appreciate the ability to study the Bible.
I appreciate all the other things we do. And maybe it's that it just was a thing that felt missing and so I appreciate it more. But a time when we just slow down, do you know in praying that you're not doing anything? You bring no power to the table when you pray. You bring nothing except need. Do you know that's why we pray?
Father, would you? Would you? Would you? Would you? And we just get to be dependent upon the only one who's ever done anything worthwhile in our lives ever. And we do it here on Sunday morning.
Raz just prayed over us. We prayed collectively. I'll be honest with you, that was hitting me. I'm in a season of just head down grinding and I'm going, oh my word, I'm missing you, Lord. It's because we gathered and we prayed. What a mercy.
This also includes praising together. We're so blessed as a church family to have so many people that can be up here. I don't know if you know it, but most churches don't have like revolving teams of people that get to come up and play. Like you might be here four weeks in a row and not see the same person up here playing music. That's about to change, but... We get to praise, but it's also not confined to here in this space, in this room.
Praising is a posture of life to exalt him, to come low and exalt him. In all things, whatever we're blessed with, thank you, Lord, because I know that every good and perfect gift, it's from you and you alone. Who else can I praise? In ten years, may we, as two churches, be able to look back and say we were so dependent, so dependent that we were dedicated. We were devoted to people of prayer. So this is what it looks like.
If you ever ask the question, really, yeah, but like what is the church really like? What's it supposed to be? There you go. Or maybe you're looking at your life. It's a busy life. And you're hearing this stuff and it sounds inviting, but also I got a lot going on already.
I don't know if I can add all that, because that's a lot. I'll be honest with you. It is. But do you understand that the gospel transforms? Transforms means to be made new, to be made into something new, something different. So it's not looking at the way that was in figuring out how can I add this Jesus church stuff in on the side.
It's okay. I know this is what I was, but I now see what Jesus is offering. Jesus, how do I live where it's all about you? How do I bring my whole life under you? Because you're king. You went to the cross and you absolved the guilt.
You freed me. I was a slave. Sin owned me. I had nothing, no power, anything that could take me out from under its grip. But at the cross, you freed me and you rose to give new life and you sit as king.
How can my life come under you? The band's going to come back up as we continue in this time of being the church. We're gathering and doing the things in church and we get to devote ourselves right now. We've been devoting ourselves in praising and prayer and fellowship and sitting under teaching from the Word. This is it. But we get to also right now devote ourselves to the breaking of bread.
As a church, we're about to take communion. The Lord's Supper. It's a meal. It's supper. Now in our setting, we just have kind of small tables with a couple of things because there's a lot of us.
It'd be a real big table in the middle of the room. But we're coming to the table together. And we get to share our meal together, reminding ourselves of Jesus and His work. That's what brings us to the table. And so as we come up, if you feel the Spirit at work convicting you, go to Jesus, go to the cross. Don't sit in the feelings of conviction.
Rejoice. For the cross has covered it completely. This is a meal. We can come rejoice at the table. And as you come up and you take, not in solemnness, but in joy, I want you to take a moment and look around. I understand we normally we stand in a line because we're trying to be efficient and get to the table and get stuff.
I want you to see each other. If you want to have a conversation on the way up to the... Don't you know that's what you do at a table? This is a meal. Let us remember and proclaim Jesus, the one who bought us the right to come to the table. And may we come together and enjoy.
I'm going to read from 1 Corinthians to prepare us to come to the table. And if you need, there's gluten free in the back corner over there. Read from this word what Paul writes about this meal. And when I'm done and you're invited to come, come to the table together as a church, as those who belong to Jesus.
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11:23–26 ESV)
Let's eat.
Acts 2:22-41
Chet Phillips preaches Acts 2:22-41.
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. It's good to see y'all this morning. If you will grab a Bible, go to Acts chapter two. We're working our way through the book of Acts. It's on page 1054. If you have one of these black Bibles, if you grab one out of the seat in front of you. Sometimes you're at work, y'all got the radio on, or you're at the house, TV's just playing, and then there's this moment where broadcast just stops, gets quiet for a second. Maybe that gets your attention a little bit, but then you hear, and when that is over, I'm all ears. They got us. We're all listening. If you're at a work site, it's like, hey, shut up. And you're listening. You're waiting for that robot to come on and tell you whether or not this is a test of the emergency broadcast system or the emergency broadcast system broadcasting some sort of emergency. You're listening. You're
waiting to see what's happening here. It's got your attention. It works perfectly. It's the best set of noises for getting our attention. We're trained to listen. And there's this moment where we're all ears, and that's what's happening right here in the book of Acts is that the Holy Spirit fell on 120 believers, men, women, different ages, and then began to speak through them so that they are proclaiming the mighty acts of God in a language that everyone's understanding. And it tells us that people are bewildered. They're amazed. They're astonished that this is happening. And then they're asking, what is going on? And in this moment where everyone's eyes are on them, when all they've closed their mouths, they're listening, they've given them full attention. Peter begins to preach and he's going to tell them, here's what's happening. And so we kind of stopped midway through last week and
we're picking back up where Peter has said that what's going on is the Spirit has come, prophecy is being fulfilled, and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And then he's going to point at Jesus and say, this is the message. So what we're seeing this morning as we walk through this is the message of Christianity. That's what Peter's about to proclaim. So, church family, if you're like, I don't know how to share the gospel with people. I don't exactly know where to start. I don't know how to walk through that. Peter's about to walk through exactly how to proclaim the gospel, how to tell people the good news of Jesus. And if you, this is your first Sunday with us. Your friend's been saying, you should come, you should come, you should come, you should join me in my group. You should come to this thing. You should come to this. You finally showed up. This is what they
want you to hear. Because Peter's about to tell you exactly how to be saved. He's about to tell you how to come to know the Lord. If you've been checking things out for a while and you're trying to wrap your head around, what is this all about? This is what it's all about. So we're going to walk through this morning. And in some ways, what Peter's going to do is he's going to tell them what is going on. He's going to tell them the what of the issue. Then he's going to tell them why. And then he's going to tell them what they should do with that. So in some ways, this is going to flow with what, so what, why does that matter? And then now what, what do we do with that? And so we're going to walk through that kind of in this sequence, and we're going to hear the gospel, which is the message that the church has to proclaim. Pray with me for a moment as we begin. Lord, we ask that as the
gospel is proclaimed, as it was proclaimed and received on Pentecost, that it would be proclaimed and received this morning, and that your spirit would go to work and that you would help us to hear the essentials, hope of Christ. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so he just got done saying, all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. And that's verse 22. He says, men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst as you yourselves know. So he begins with the life and ministry of Jesus. That's the starting point. He says, Jesus, who y'all know, Jesus, who, you know, God attested to him. God co-signed Jesus by performing miracles. So this first bit of the what is the life of Jesus, that it's through Jesus and his ministry on earth that they see that God is at work in him,
that he raised the dead, that he gave sight back to the blind, that he cleansed the lepers, that he ministered and healed and cast out demons. And he's saying, y'all know about this. And y'all, we do. Jesus globally is known as a prophet, as a teacher, as a healer, as a miracle worker. He comes to us through history that way. That's how contemporary historians, that's the contemporary historian Josephus, who was writing his Jewish antiquities in 90 AD, wrote about him. He refers to him as Jesus. He says he was a doer of wonderful works. He writes about him as a person that they understood had performed miracles. And so that's where Peter starts. He says, as you all know, y'all all know, Jesus traveled around. And for many of these people who were Jewish people who would have come, Jesus would have been around to their town. They would have gone out to him. They would have known somebody
who had been healed by him. They may themselves have been healed by him or interacted with him. So he says, y'all know. So he starts off with the life of Jesus. Then he goes to the cross. Verse 23, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. So he says it was the definite plan and foreknowledge of God that God was working out his sovereignty in it. He holds up the sovereignty of God in the crucifixion of Jesus. And at the same time, he says, you did it at the hands of lawless men that they handed him over to the Romans. So the men who aren't under the law, the Jewish law. So he holds up human agency, human culpability and God's sovereignty. And that's the way the Bible holds that up all the time. Just so you know, people are like, well, is it God's will? Does God oversee everything? Is God
sovereign? Yes. Well, then am I responsible? Did my choices matter? Yes. Well, how does that work? I don't know. The Bible just holds those up as true. It works in a way that God understands how it works. He oversees it. But Peter holds up both of those and says that Jesus was crucified, that he was dead. He's been delivered over and crucified. So he says this Jesus that you know about, he was crucified. Y'all killed him. Verse 24, he goes from life to cross to resurrection. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it. Death could not keep Jesus. It was not possible for Jesus to be held by death. I read a quote that I thought had vivid imagery. I want to share with y'all when I was reading this earlier. It's by George Bertram. He says, the abyss can no more hold the redeemer than a pregnant woman can hold the child in her body.
Couldn't keep him if it wanted to. Jesus rose from the grave. So he proclaims, Jesus, who y'all know about, you know about his life, you know about his ministry. He was crucified and then he rose from the dead. He's going to keep going. It was not possible for him to be held by verse 25 for David says concerning him. As soon as you can quote King David in the Psalms, he says, I saw the Lord always before me for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken. Therefore, my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced. My flesh also will dwell in hope for you will not abandon my soul to Hades or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life and you will make me full of gladness with your presence. He says, brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day. So David writes,
you're not going to abandon me to Sheol. You won't let me see corruption. He reads that and he goes, um, I can confidently tell you that David is dead and that you can go visit his grave. And he's still there. So he's going to say, David can't be talking about himself. Verse 30, being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up. And of that, we are all witnesses. So he says, David was just speaking prophetically. It's Jesus that wasn't left in Sheol. It's Jesus who didn't see corruption. He says, I can tell you about two graves right now. I can tell you about two tombs. One of them has King David still in it. The other one had Jesus for a little while and
is not there anymore. You can go visit both. One of them will be empty. That's what he's saying. He's saying this is prophetic proclamation and we've seen him. We saw him alive. So Jesus Christ who God co-signed through miraculous works was crucified, was dead, was buried and rose again. That's what he said. But then he doesn't stop there. He says, and he ascended to heaven. Verse 33, being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the father, the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. So he says, Jesus is now seated at the right hand of God. And Jesus is now the one who has sent the spirit, meaning that Jesus has been brought level with God. Verse 34, for David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies, your footstool. So
he says, Christ has been glorified. He's been exalted. He's at the right hand of God. He will rule and reign from that position. That's the what, when they say, what is going on? What is happening here? He says, listen, y'all know Jesus, you know, his ministry, you know, his life, you know, his miracles, you know that you killed him. Well, he rose from the dead. He's ascended to the right hand of the father. He is now lifted up, exalted in the heavens. And he is the one who has sent the spirit to empower the church right now. And as they're watching the spectacle, it's co-signed by the work that's happening through the spirit. Something miraculous is happening. And he is saying, I'm telling you where that's coming from. It's coming from Jesus. Who's raised to the right hand of the father, who's sent the spirit to perform this. Jesus. That's the what. But now he's going to answer the, so
what, what, why does that matter? And he says, verse 36, let all the house of Israel, therefore know for certain that God has made him from both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. We wrongly act in our culture like atheism is neutral. Like that's the default position for humanity. So that atheists a lot of times will kind of hold this like, well, of course I can be an atheist in the political sphere. I can be an atheist in the public sphere because that's neutral, but you're trying to push some idea on me. But the reality is the vast, vast majority of all humans in human history. And even on the planet now believe that there is a God believe that there's some sort of some other thing going on, believe that there's some kind of a creator. And he is saying to these Jewish people, God has made him both Lord and Christ that Jesus is now in the position of Lord and Christ. That's
the, so what, that he's Lord and Christ, meaning as Lord that he rules. He's in a position of authority. He's King. And as Christ, he's the hope of salvation. So let's consider those for a second. If someone declares themselves to be King, you don't, just by the nature of that declaration, you don't get to remain neutral. Like if a King and an army rolled in and said, I am now the King of these lands, you couldn't go, Oh man, that's neat. Like good for you, but I'm not like really political. That's not my thing. Like I'm busy. I got kids. I'm not really paying attention to that kind of stuff. So like, you just go be King, just King it up with these other people or whatever. And like, but let's just consider me Switzerland. I'm not involved. It's not how Kings work. You don't get to be neutral. You can be in rebellion or you can surrender. Now, if you meet someone at McDonald's and they
tell you they're King of the world, go ahead and rebel. You know, I wouldn't submit to that one. Show me a little, like do something first, prove it a little bit, buy me a cheeseburger. Well, that'll be a good start. Like, so you can look at Jesus and just go, I don't believe he's Lord. I don't. And Peter's declaring that he is. Peter already said that the day of the Lord is coming. He positioned us between the hope of salvation and the day of the Lord. He's saying one day you'll know if you want to say, well, I'll wait and see. You can wait and see. That's what he's saying, but you'll find out that he's Lord and that you were wrong and it'll be too late at that point. But Jesus has declared himself as Lord, which means that our response to him is to surrender or to rebel. There's not a neutral position. He's either your King or you're running out of his kingdom. You're trying to fight
your way out of it. There's no middle ground. And you actually, if you'll think about it, you'll see that that's how a lot of people approach Jesus. They have Lordship issues with him. So maybe you've been talking to a friend or maybe heard somebody on a YouTube video or whatever, and they'll say things like, well, I don't like this part about Christianity. Or they'll ask you, what do y'all believe about this? You'll say, hey, come to my church. They go, what's your church believe about this? And what they're having a discussion with you about is there's an area where I am in charge. And if God agrees with me, then I might come listen and participate. But if he doesn't agree with me, then I'm Lord and I don't have to listen to him. That's what that is. Culturally for us right now, sexual sin is a big one in that category. Most people in our culture are fine with the stuff Jesus says
about money. They like that. He says, be generous. They like that. He says, be good to the poor. They like that. He says, be open-handed. They might not practice it, but they're fine with it. They don't ever go. What does he say to be? Does he say to be nice to the poor? And you're like, yeah. And he's like, I'm not coming. No, people don't do that. Now they might show up and not be kind to the poor. They may keep a hold of their wallet and that's a different issue. It's a different obedience and lordship issue. But what happens a lot in our culture is someone goes, what's he say about this sexual sin? What's he say about this orientation? What's he say about this? What's the Bible have to say about that? And what they've held up is I'm not willing to surrender there. But can I help you out? If Jesus rose from the grave, if he actually is seated at the right hand of God, the creator,
that's the first thing to answer. That's the first question to ask. If that didn't happen, you don't need to submit at all. If he didn't rise from the grave, if he's not seated at the right hand of the father, then you have the, you don't need to even ask any of the other questions about where he stands on things. But if he rose from the grave and if he's seated at the right hand, then everything is surrendered and you have to find out all the stuff, but you follow it. We walk in obedience with all of it. We don't get to pick and choose. That's just how it works. We trust him with all of it. We surrender all of it because he's Lord and we do what he commands. But he's not just Lord. He's Lord and Christ. Christ means he's our hope of salvation. He's the Messiah. He's the one who came to rescue. He's the one who came to give hope for people. How beautiful is it that when Peter gets
everybody's attention, he doesn't say, I'm so glad you're here. Let me give you the five keys to living. Let me give you the threefold path. Let me tell you the 10 rules you need to follow. That's what happened at Mount Sinai was the 10 commandments came. The law was given, but that's not what happens here. He proclaims the work of Jesus, the person of Jesus. This comes to us as news about something that Jesus did, not something you're supposed to do. If the primary point of Christianity was for you to be a good person and for you to get your life together and for you to do what's right and for you to fix yourself, that's what would be proclaimed here. That's not what's proclaimed. What's proclaimed is y'all know Jesus? He died. He rose. He's King. He's pointing us to a person and the work that Jesus has done. And Christ means he's the hope of salvation. He's the one who paid for sin so
that we could have rescue. He's the one we go to. So yes, he's Lord, but if he wanted to just be Lord, he would not have died. He can roll in and kill everybody. He tells Peter that when he's getting arrested, Peter tries to fight and he, he stops him and he's like, dude, if I wanted to fight, I would not use you. I have 12 legions of angels that will do what I say to them at this exact moment. 12 legions. That's like 72,000 angels. In the old Testament, one angel killed 184,000 people in one night. If that angel was average, Jesus looked at Peter and said, if I just let angels do it, they could kill everybody on earth in about 30 minutes. That's not what I'm here for. He's not just Lord. He's Lord and Christ, meaning that it's through him that we have a hope of rescue because he went to the cross first to pay for sin, to pay the debt. He did this on Passover when the Jewish people for
years had celebrated that there was a Passover lamb that saved them from death, that they were not clean on their own. They had to have blood that stood between them. They had to have a sacrifice on their behalf and they would paint this on their doorframe and they would stay behind it so that the, the, uh, angel of death would pass by. That's what happened in Egypt. And that's when he, Jesus dies as this picture of it's his blood that stands between us and death. He's the Christ. He's the hope for salvation. He says this, this is verse 36, let all the house of Israel, therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. If you want to know how to know God, if you want to know how to have salvation, it is through Christ. It's through Jesus who is Lord and Christ. That's the way to the father. And he says this Jesus whom you crucified. Now
not all of the people here practically participated in the crucifixion of Jesus, but he holds them all guilty. And I think that still applies to us that Jesus died for your sin. That's what Paul says that he, he gave himself up for me. He died for your sin, for the lies that you've told for your pettiness, for your angry outbursts, for your theft, for your wickedness, for your depravity, for the things that you've looked at online. He died for that so that you might have a hope. He says he was, you crucified him. And so the other thing that we need to know is personal guilt. Understand that without Jesus, you stand guilty. That's the so what? Why does it matter? It matters because he's Lord and Christ and you're guilty. That's why it matters. Verse 37. Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what should we do? Which
is the question. It's the question you should be asking. Well, if that's true, if he really did come live that life, if he really did die that death, if he really did rise, if he really is at the right hand of the father, and if really he is Lord and Christ, what do I do? How do I respond to that? And it says they're cut to the heart. And I just want to point out that if your approach to Christianity has only ever been in your head, like it's a set of rules to follow, like it's some precepts you learn. If it's only ever been in your head, it's like a cultural thing. You grew up in it. Your family grew up in it. You're Christian by default. You hear somebody say sometimes, yeah, I was born Lutheran. I don't know what that means. Yeah, I've been Presbyterian my whole life. You've been in a Presbyterian church your whole life, and I guess you can be Presbyterian, but are you a Christian? I
talked to someone one time. I said, I'm a Christian. I was talking to people being a pastor. He said, oh yeah, I'm a Christian. My uncle used to be a deacon in a Baptist church. What? Did he cough on you at Thanksgiving? What are you talking about? It's in you. There's been a time when you suddenly saw your sin, and you knew you needed Christ, and that without him you were hopeless, or you don't have it. Because it's not just something we mentally approach. It's something that we surrender to Jesus as king, and he welcomes us and rescues us, and it's personal, deeply personal. It is the most personal thing that will ever happen for you. And they're cut to the heart, and they say, what should we do? And so Peter's going to tell them, now what? What do you do with this? And Peter said to them, 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. So he tells them to repent and be baptized, and then he tells them that Jesus will forgive their sins. He just told them, you killed Jesus. He says he'll forgive you. That's why he died. That's what he came for. He'll forgive your sins, and you'll receive the gift of the Spirit. Meaning that he'll come dwell with you. He'll come claim you. He'll come keep you. He'll come make you his own. That if you'll repent and be baptized, you'll place your life in Jesus, and he'll take you, and he'll forgive you. It's not earn something. It's being forgiven of something. It's surrender. It's lay your arms down. It's come be rescued. So what's repent? Repent means to turn, to surrender, to quit following your own way, to quit making your own choices, to quit assuming that you're right about things, to quit following after sin. It means to
change, and to go to Jesus and surrender. And it's not a work. You're not fixing yourself. You're laying everything down, and you're coming and saying, I need forgiveness. I need mercy. And then he says, be baptized. baptized. Which if you've ever seen a baptism, if you've ever seen one here, we put up a portable baptismal right there. But in Christian baptism, someone who's already a Christian baptizes you. You go down backwards. In Jewish baptism, what they would have understood was, there was a baptism, but it wasn't for Jewish people. It was for proselytes. It was for people who were coming in from the outside. And they would wash themselves. So they would come in, they'd wash themselves, and they'd say, I'm cleaning myself up. I'm going to start being Jewish. I'm going to, it was kind of an entrance rite. But it was only for those who were outside. It wasn't for Jewish people. He
looks at them and says, you need to be baptized, which to their ears would be, you're on the outside, but you can come in. You're outside, but you can come in. And Christian baptism, you don't baptize yourself, because you didn't clean yourself. You didn't wash yourself. He washed you. So you go backwards because you're dead and buried with Christ. And you rise again as someone helps you, because it's Christ. The church is a stand in for Jesus, that you're dead and buried with him, and that he pulls you back up to life, and that you didn't wash yourself, but it's something that happened to you. So they say, you need to be baptized in repentance, and in the name of Jesus, that you can be welcomed in. If there was someone there that morning who said, I'm already in. I'm good. I don't need it. Then they're out. Those who come to Jesus and say, I'm in, are out. And those who come and say,
I'm out, I need you to let me in. All of them get to come in. So if you think you're good enough, if you think you're holy enough, if you think you're right enough, if you think you've already done it, and you don't need Jesus, then if you say, I'm in, you're out. But if you'll come to him and say, without you, I'm so far. I'm so gone. I'm so lost. I'm out. I need you to bring me in. Then everybody gets to come in. That's what baptism is. It's that you get to come into Jesus. You get to be washed. You get to be made new. You get to rise to new life. And you get to follow Jesus. And every single one of them is supposed to do it. He says, repent and be baptized, every one of you. So if you're in this room and you've never repented, you need to repent. And if you're in this room and you've never been baptized, you need to be baptized. Because it's the thing that everyone is supposed to do.
verse 40. Oh no, verse 39. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord, our God, calls to himself. If you're in here this morning and you're going, I'm so far away from this. I'm so far away from following Jesus. I'm nowhere close. He says that's who it's for. It's for all who are far off. If you're like, I've been so out, I've been so angry, I've been in so much sin that you don't understand how far away I am. I couldn't be further away. He says, yeah, that's who it's for. And what I would ask is, do you feel him calling you? Do you hear it? Do you want to come? Do you want to be clean? Do you want to be forgiven? Do you want to be rescued? Do you want to be right with God? Then you can come. And there is no too far away. He says it's for all who are far off. Who the Lord calls to himself. Verse 40. And with many other words, he
bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, save yourselves from this crooked generation. I want to take a moment to consider that many other words, he bore witness and continued to exhort them. I've heard people say before, I don't know why sermons take so long. Look at how short Peter's sermon was in the book of Acts. And it's like, he didn't read the rest of it. He said a whole lot of other stuff they didn't write down. He used many other words. But what I want to point out is that if you're a Christian, now this is the gospel, this is the whole thing. The life of Jesus, his ministry, the cross and death, the resurrection, the ascension, he's Lord and Christ, you're personally guilty, you need to repent and be baptized, that's it. You can take the book of Acts, if someone says, what do you believe? How does someone become saved? How does someone become a Christian? You can say,
let's go to Acts chapter two. I'll walk you right through it. And you can use many words and exhort the people around you to believe. Sometimes we have this idea that I'll be a good enough person. They'll see my life and they'll come to know Jesus. Honestly, they might look at you and go, well, if that person can do okay, then I can do okay. And they'll think somehow it's in you. It's not in Jesus. You've got to point them to Jesus. Some of you think, I'm so messed up, I can't tell people about Jesus. Y'all, that's one of the best times to point people to Jesus. That's the whole reason I follow him. If he doesn't forgive sinners, I wouldn't be here. If it was about me being good, I wouldn't trust him. My hope is in him. Some of you say, well, I told him one time and now, it's like, no, many words. Exhort them, encourage them, say, I want this for you. I want you to believe this. I want
you to know this. I want you to trust him. We're supposed to tell people this and trust the spirit to work and trust the father to call, but we're supposed to talk. And sometimes it takes many words and sometimes it takes exhortation. And he also said, save yourselves from this crooked generation. And I want you to know we exist in a crooked generation. We're surrounded by sin. We're surrounded by anxiety. We're surrounded by despair. Some of you, that's all you live in is anxiety and despair. All you live in is depression. All you live in is sin, sexual sin, financial sin, consumerism. We are, our culture is anti-Jesus. And if you're stuck in that right now, save yourself from it. Run to Jesus. Ask for rescue. Ask for help. Don't stay stuck in the cultural current where he says, wide is the path that leads to destruction and narrow is the way that leads to life. Come to Christ. The
reason it's narrow is because it's only through him. Don't continue to head towards destruction just because that's what everybody else is doing or just because that's the path you're already on or just because that's the easiest thing to walk in. So those who received his word were baptized and there were added that day about 3,000 souls. 3,000 people believe, trust in Jesus, repent, and are baptized. The day that the law came, 3,000 Israelites died because they were in rebellion and the law bore down on them. And the day that the gospel is proclaimed, 3,000 are brought into eternal life because there's a hope of forgiveness and there's a call to life. They responded. I'm going to pray and then the band's going to come back up and we're going to take a moment to respond to this this morning. Father, we ask for your mercy and we ask for a move of your spirit that we would trust you and
that we would respond. That we would not ignore your call to repentance, ignore the call to life, and that we would not harden our hearts against the move of your spirit that we would listen. You'd give us ears to hear that you would soften us so that we might not stay in our sin, stay in our despair, stay in our anxiety, stay in our own lordship, but that we would surrender and that we would find life and hope. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. As the band comes back up, there's going to be some people who are going to stand around the room, around the back and around the sides. We've got a couple of ways that we're going to respond together. Father, if you would say that you're a Christian, but you can't remember the last time you told anybody about Jesus, if you'd say, I'm a Christian, but you can't remember the last time you cared to share the hope of an eternal life with those
around you who are perishing, I want us to repent. In a moment, I want you to respond. I don't know if that's right where you're at, if that's taking a knee there, I don't know if it's coming up to the front, I don't know if that's going and talking to somebody, but I want you to talk to the Lord and say, Lord, there's people I know that need to know this and help me. Help me to be a witness to the hope of the gospel and not keep this to myself. Help me to not hold on to excuses as to why I can't or why it won't work. Help me to trust the work of the Spirit. But if you belong to Jesus, let's be people who tell others about Him. Let's not be ashamed of Him. If you would say, I'm a Christian, but there's areas in your life where you just aren't surrendered to the Lordship of Christ, you've just told Him you can't come here. You don't get to deal, you don't get to deal, you don't get to
tell me how to talk. You don't get to tell me what to do with my anger. You don't get to tell me what to do with my money. You don't get to tell me what to do with my love for another person. You don't get to tell me this relationship is off limits. You don't get to tell me if there's a spot where you've looked at Him and just said, hey, look at me. I'm in charge. You need to repent. You need to get on your face and say, you're King. My only hope is in you. And if you've never trusted in Jesus, if you've never come to Him and said, I need forgiveness, I need you to save me. If that's never been something where you've gotten on your face and you said, I need you to take me and make me yours, pay for my sin, I need to rescue. Peter says, all those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. That anyone who comes to Jesus and says, I need your help, He will not let you down. He will not
let you go. He will keep you. You will be forgiven and you will receive the promise of the Holy Spirit. If you've never repented and been baptized, you need to do that. So in a moment, there's going to be a few people standing around the room. If you need to go talk to somebody, go talk to them. If you need somebody to pray with you, go pray with them. If you need to grab someone from your group or your group leader, but we're going to respond. We're going to do what these 3,000 did where they heard it and they listened and they responded. If the Spirit is calling you, if you feel the Father drawing you, don't fight that. Come. Let's pray. Lord, we ask that your Spirit would be at work and that we would respond. That you would help us to listen to you right now. We ask this in Jesus' name. I don't know what you need to do, but respond.
Acts 2:1-21
Chet Phillips preaches Acts 2:1-21.
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. If you will, grab a Bible and go to Acts chapter 2. We're working our way through the book of Acts, and we have reached the moment we've all been waiting for. Well, if you haven't been waiting for it, the disciples have, because they were specifically told to wait for this moment.
So Jesus tells his disciples, you're going to be my witnesses to the entire world. You're going to reach the world. Wait. You will be clothed in power when the Spirit has come. Wait for the Spirit. You've got a global mission.
Wait for the Spirit. We read it together a moment ago, but he tells them, you're better off if I leave. So the disciples are waiting for something, someone, waiting for the Comforter to come who is better. They're better off with the work of the Spirit than with Jesus. So you've got to know they're waiting for power, and they're waiting for him to send the Comforter that he said he was going to send, and he told them it's going to be better.
So you know they have to be waiting with some significant anticipation. We saw them last. They were together praying, awaiting the work of the Spirit as they're going to be empowered to do what they've been called to do. So if you will, we're going to start this today. Chapter 2, verse 1. We're going to work through the first bit of what's going to happen on Pentecost, and next week we'll get to spend more time in it.
But here we go. When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. So that they is the 120 followers of Jesus. Pentecost is a Jewish feast. It's one of the three pilgrim feasts, meaning that all the males that were Jewish were meant to come to the temple. So there's three of those.
So Jerusalem is packed out. They're here on the day of Pentecost. So for a Jewish believer, this would read like if you said, and it was the day of Christmas, like it had come. They were all together. Like your brain would register what's going on. This is one of the pilgrim feasts.
Now, Jesus was crucified on Passover. Which is a pilgrim feast that celebrates that when God was rescuing the people out of Egypt, he gave them a lamb to sacrifice and to put the blood on the doorframe. And then the angel of death would pass over their homes so that they'd be protected by the blood of the lamb. Jesus dies on Passover. Then there's the Passover Sabbath.
And then on the first Sunday after that Sabbath, they practiced the beginning of first fruits. Where they would wave a sheaf before the Lord of the first fruits of the hope of a harvest to come. That's the day that Jesus Christ rose from the grave. At the beginning of first fruits. When there's this acknowledgement to God that there's a harvest to come. Then they wait seven weeks, which would be 49 days to start the feast of first fruits, which starts on the 50th day.
That's why it's called Pentecost. So on Pentecost, you have the feast of first fruits or Pentecost or the ingathering, which is the harvest begins. And that's when the spirit shows up on the church on the day of Pentecost. God had his people practicing for years and years and years and centuries, these feasts and then Passover beginning of first fruits, first fruits. He begins to line up what he's doing and what the promise has been as the mystery is revealed in Christ. And so we're on the day of Pentecost.
They're together, which would be very normal for them to be together. They're praying. And the spirit is going to come as he begins to gather in his people as the first fruits of of what he's doing in salvation. And suddenly, this is verse two, there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. So it's not a mighty rushing wind.
It's a sound like a mighty rushing wind. And I don't know that it comes from heaven. So it descends on the house that they're in and it fills the house. This sound does. And I don't know if you've ever been in your house when there was a mighty rushing wind and you hear it. It roars.
It shakes your house. I was on a practice field this past week, and a natural phenomenon happened. I don't know what it was, but there was this noise. That was not the best impersonation of it, but it was like that. Like some sort of, it was like, is an airplane landing here? Like, what is happening?
And then there was a dust devil, and then all the trees shook, and it was for like 14 seconds, and it was wild. Like, everybody just stopped and was like, are we going to die? Is this going to be cool? What's going to happen? And it was an insane noise, and that's what he's saying, is there's this noise that just suddenly rips through like a mighty rushing wind, and it fills the house because the Spirit has come. And divided tongues, as of fire, appeared to them and rested on each one of them.
It's interesting that it says divided tongues, meaning that they had one source, but then they divide, and it's like fire, as of fire. So he's trying to describe it. What did it sound like? Sounded like a mighty wind. What did it look like? It looked like tongues of fire, little flames.
Went and rested on each one of them, the 120 that are here. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. This is the Holy Spirit of God, that at times in the Old Testament would fill somebody, but then withdraw. That at times would empower somebody and then withdraw. That at times, and this was for prophets. This was for Judges.
This was for unique, special moments. And all of a sudden, the Spirit comes and fills all of them. And it says, they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. In other tongues, there's just another way of saying other languages. Verse 5, Now, there were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. So this is a pilgrim feast.
That makes sense. They've all gathered here. And we're about to see that as the Spirit fills the church, and this is what we're going to get to look at as we walk through this morning. We're going to see in a picture, in the first moments of the work of the Spirit, what the work of the Spirit is in the church. We're going to see in these first moments of what the Spirit does when the Spirit descends and fills the church, we're going to get a picture of what it looks like as the Spirit fills the church and continues to lead the church in work. So it says, all these were here, and it says, And at this sound, the multitude came together, and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.
It's not clear what the at this sound is, whether that at this sound is the rushing wind, or if at this sound is 120 people who are going to be declaring the works of God. That's what's happening. They're beginning to speak in other tongues, and they're declaring the mighty works of God. And so if you would love to read a bunch of commentaries and hear them argue with each other, you can. But there's not a real consensus on, is the sound the wind?
Is the sound the people? But there's a sound, and there was a wind, and now there's a bunch of people testifying, and a whole bunch of people have gathered around. And it also seems like that the 120 people did not stay put in the house they were in. So the Spirit comes, and they go, because by the end of this interaction that we see at the day of Pentecost, there's thousands of people standing around listening. So it's likely that they made their way to the temple, or they were near it when this happened.
But they are proclaiming the works of God, and it says, verse 6, at this sound, the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. It's not perfectly clear. It's possible that out of the 120, they were getting different languages at different times. I think it's more likely, the way it says it, that they're each hearing them speak in his own language, that they were all speaking, and the language was universally being translated to whatever their language was. So the recipient's language is what they're hearing, because they're each hearing them speak in his own language.
Verse 7, and they were amazed and astonished, saying, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language? So they didn't look like they had come from somewhere else, they looked like they had come from Galilee, somehow identifying markers of being Galileans, or they're talking to each other at some point, so maybe they're figuring it out, but they start going, wait, wait, wait, wait, these are all Galileans, how are we each hearing them? And then it's going to tell us where they're from. It says Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus in Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, Egypt, and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes.
So that means non-Jewish people who have converted to Judaism, Cretans, and Arabians. We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. All right, I want to show you all a slide. There's a little map. Well, I want to, but I may not get, there we go. That's just all the places they just mentioned.
Now, I know y'all have seen maps like that on news. This one's like not a bad map. It's not mad. It looks intense. That's just all the places. So it's just kind of helping you get an idea of where all these people had come from as they pilgrimed here.
And they're from different places and language and people groups. They would have been trying to get by. Some of them would have spoken maybe some common languages. Some of them are having a hard time and they suddenly hear all these people speaking in their language and they're bewildered. I want to point out, make four observations really quickly of this part of what's happening that I think we should register. One, if you're familiar with the idea of speaking in tongues or you heard that there are churches that speak in tongues or whatever, mostly that's referring to what Paul's going to talk about later in Corinthians.
It's a speaking in a language that the hearers at the moment don't understand. And so he's going to say that there needs to be an interpreter present. He's going to give some qualifications for how that would work. And that is a spirit-empowered gift that Paul's talking about. But that's not exactly what's happening here because what's happening here is they're speaking in a language that they understand.
So they're all proclaiming the mighty Acts of God and the hearers are hearing it in their own tongue, in their own language, which I don't know if you've ever traveled to another country. If you don't speak that language, it becomes white noise to you. It's just chatter. And then suddenly you hear someone speaking your language and your brain registers it, specifically if you're from America because whoever was speaking English is speaking way louder than everyone else there for some reason. But you register it.
And so they're hearing all of a sudden this language in their own tongue and they're registering it. The second thing I think we ought to recognize is the individuality of the work of the Spirit. If you were the only Cretan there, it didn't matter you heard it in your tongue. If you were the only person from Arabia there, it didn't matter you heard it in your tongue because the Spirit is working to claim individual people and is jumping barriers in order to do it. So sometimes I think we will put in our head, yeah, God loves me, Jesus loves me, and we make it this real general thing.
It's like He loves me because He loves everybody because that's who He is and that's true. But it's not the whole truth because the Spirit works to speak to you in a way that you'll understand to help you grab the idea and the hope of the gospel. And that's what the Spirit's doing on day one is reaching out to individual people that they might hear the Word in a way that they don't have to try to translate but they just register them. It's the language their mom spoke. It's what they grew up with. It's how they think.
And the Spirit speaks right into that. A third thing I think we need to see in this is that there's a reversal of Babel taking place on the day of Pentecost. So the story of the Tower of Babel comes after the flood. Everybody speaks the same language. It's in Genesis chapter 11 if you want to go read it. And they say, let's make a name for ourselves.
Let's build a tower to heaven. Let's ascend to God. So you start making bricks to build this tower to ascend to God. God comes down. He investigates this and then he distorts the languages. He gives them all these different languages to make them spread out and do what he told them to in the first place which was to be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the earth and to not glorify themselves but to be his image bearers and glorify him across the face of the planet.
So he confuses the language and they spread out because there's a language barrier now and it says that they're bewildered. That's the word that Genesis uses and that's the word that's used here. They're bewildered in reverse here because they're hearing it in their own language. And what God is doing is the opposite of Babel. Babel is let's get together, let's glorify ourselves and let's ascend to heaven. And the hope of the gospel is that God descends from heaven, joins us, not that we join him but that he joins us, that he takes on flesh, that he dies, that we might have a hope of salvation, that he humbles himself rather than us exalting ourselves.
And there's this reversal of this picture of Babel that's taking place because of the work of Jesus. And I feel like I need to say this. I think some of you have walked into this building this morning with the hopes of Babel. What I mean by that is life's hard, things are going on, you got some stuff going on, you got some family trouble, you got some problems, you realize you're seeing some of your own sin and you've started saying to yourself, I'm going to get it together. I'm going to show up, I'm going to start reading my Bible, I'm going to hear what it says and I'm going to start doing the things I need to do.
So tell me what's the first rung on the ladder, I'll do that, tell me what's the second, I'll start building the tower, I'll start climbing up, I'll get more and more awesome and eventually I'll attain God. I'll be one of the good ones. That's Babel. The slow exaltation of yourself. That's not the hope of the gospel. That actually won't work.
The hope of the gospel is that Jesus comes to us in humility, he comes to us, he takes on our flesh, he takes on our sin, not that we take on his godliness, but that he takes on our sin and that he dies in our place for our sin so that we might have hope in him and then through that exchange he gives us his godliness but it's not something we climb up for, it's something he climbed down for. That's the hope of the gospel. I say this periodically but I would remind you again that when we get to heaven, if you stand in the glorious kingdom and we praise the name of Jesus, we will not shout and sing our own name. You will not be there to the praise of your own glorious goodness.
I'm not going to hand out song sheets and there's a blank that says your name here. That's not how this works. We're going to praise Jesus for his glorious work. That's the hope. So there's a reversal.
The spirit is undoing the work of Babel and reaching across all these lines and that's the other thing I think we need to see and understand about Christianity and understand it was a day one thing. Y'all, the spirit could have done this however he wanted to. So they could have spoken a language that everyone understood but that's not what happens. The language that is spoken is each individual language because what the work of the Lord does is it redeems people groups. It doesn't erase people groups. It crosses into people groups but it does not make us one big amalgamous thing.
We don't become one special type of person and we erase all these differences. No, the gospel and the hope of the gospel jumps across those lines, jumps into those languages. That's why John sees that beautiful picture in the book of Revelation where it's every tribe and tongue and people and language. How does he see that? Well, they look different. That's how he sees it.
And when the gospel begins to spread it jumps across these lines. Y'all, the hope of the gospel has moved around the world and it doesn't say, it doesn't show up and say learn this language, become this type of person, change your clothes, turn into this sort of thing. No, it jumps and it redeems the type of person that you are. And then God in his work redeems people groups and we're all there together and all of the glorious parts of culture and humanity are there too. So hair type, melanin level, how fast or slow you like your music, how spicy you like your food, it's all going to be there as the Lord redeems it.
So if you like stream music and bland food, okay, that stuff makes it to heaven. If you like the beat to hit on one and three, you like some spicy food, that's there too. And somebody tell me that southern food was bland. It's like, first of all, soul food is southern food. So no.
Second of all, butter is a flavor. Third, shut up. Sugar's a flavor too. But the work of the spirit is to jump, to claim, to redeem and it's beautiful. And that we actually display the goodness of the hope of the gospel, not when we all become one thing, but when all of us in our distinctions come together because there is one thing that brings us together and that is Christ and it can go across everything else. And that happens on day one.
Verse 12. It says, and all were amazed and perplexed saying to one another, what does this mean? But others mocking said they are filled with new wine. So Peter, in a minute, it's going to, just a moment, he's going to stand up. He's going to preach the first gospel proclamation sermon. He's going to address those two things.
Them saying, what does this mean? And the people who said they're filled with new wine. There's this miraculous work of the spirit and there are people who go, nah, I know what's going on here. And what they say is that they're drunk. That's their, that's their response. My, my, my guess is that probably the people who it was easiest for them to say they've been drinking are people who have the same language already as the people proclaiming the message.
That would be the easiest person to just go, nothing's what's happening here. They have the heart language of Peter. They're hearing Peter speak it. It's nothing special feels special to them. The other people are talking to each other. They're, they're going, they're speaking my language and this person's going to speak in my language and they're going, wait, how is that happening?
They're going back and forth. They're all going, no, that's clearly my, and it's like they're, they've started putting together something miraculous is going on. And there's a group of people who see this miraculous work of the spirit and go, nah, which I'll tell y'all is personally one of my favorite things to do is to just not believe stuff. I love it. Come tell me something you're excited about. You saw on Instagram, I'm not going to believe you and I'll feel great while I do it.
I'll just go, nah, it didn't happen. Nah, that's not real. That's crazy. And I feel real smart while I do it. It feels real smart to immediately be able to tell that whatever you told me is wrong. I love doing it.
It's my favorite thing. And there's a type of person who will consistently just say, this isn't real. And there's a type of person who will see even miraculous works of God and go, nah, there's got to be another explanation for that. Nah, that's staged. No, that's fake. No, that's not happening.
Something else is going on. And I would warn you against being the type of person who has never seen any evidence for God whatsoever. And really all you mean is you've never seen evidence for God that you couldn't immediately disregard because you don't consider things anyway. But there's a group of people who are on Pentecost. The Spirit is at work and 120 people to proclaim miraculously and they go, nah, and they say something that doesn't even really make any sense. They're drunk.
What? Whose party trick is that? I get a six pack in me and I can suddenly speak Russian. That's not, that doesn't make any sense. You don't have like, yeah, my uncle can do that. We just make him drink on the airplane so he can get us through customs.
That's not how it works. You don't, you don't do this. And so Peter immediately, he just responds to that and then he's going to respond to the second question which is a more legitimate question which is what is going on here. But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them. Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. For these people are not drunk as you suppose since it is only the third hour of the day.
That's his response. It's 9 a.m. guys. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel. He's immediately moved on from that and he's moving to the second question which is what's going on here. This is what was uttered through the prophet Joel and Peter is about to give empowered by the spirit the first gospel proclamation. He's going to go to the Old Testament to do it.
Good spirit empowered preaching goes from the text to Christ. And that's what he's going to do. He's going to take the text and he's going to show Jesus out of it and he's going to be empowered to do it and we're going to look at the first part of this today and then we're going to spend the rest of the time next week all of next week in his sermon. But he says this. This is what's going on in prophet Joel and it says in the last days it shall be God declares. Okay.
Peter just said we're in the last days. He says this prophecy is being fulfilled in the last days. So I don't know what your eschatology is but I would like to add into it that the last days began at the resurrection ascension and the descending of the spirit on the church we have entered into the last days. So kind of like at a football game when everybody does this Peter starts his sermon off by going we're in the fourth quarter. we've entered now we're just awaiting the return of Jesus. So in the last days the spirit has come and here we go.
In the last days it shall be God declares that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy. He says this is what Joel told us was going to come. It's come. The spirit is poured out on everybody. It's not just special people now for special moments. It's all the people and he's going to get to it's all the people who trust Jesus because that's who it fell upon the 120 that had followed Jesus.
It's all of them. He says men and women young and old poor like any group you'd want to exclude. He doesn't even know how true this is because in his brain it's all Jewish people. Later it's going to be Gentiles and they're like what? Okay then they go with it. They're like well if the spirit will do that then the spirit can do that like we're not who do we we're not going to tell God what he can't do.
But it's everybody. Y'all I think they might have had in their mind that the the 12 were waiting for the coming of the spirit and they they pick Matthias and they say you're going to have to fill this slot. We read about that last week. You're going to be a witness with us but who's witnessing now? All 120 of them. Even the guy with three names who was first runner up to being the 12th Joseph Barsabbas and Justice like he has all three of those names.
He's proclaiming the gospel now. He's witnessing now. He's speaking as empowered by the spirit now. Mary the mother of Jesus is standing in the streets of Jerusalem empowered by the spirit proclaiming the news. Jesus' younger brothers are standing in the street. Mary Magdalene is standing there right now articulating the gospel to someone from another country who's there and they're hearing Mary Magdalene proclaim the mighty Acts of God because the spirit has gone to work in the church.
Who is empowered by the spirit everyone who belongs to Jesus. Who is equipped for the work of the spirit everyone who belongs to Jesus. Who gets to proclaim this message everyone who belongs to Jesus. Peter says you're seeing prophecy fulfilled. It's happening right now. Verse 18 even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy and I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below blood and fire and vapor of smoke.
The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes the great and magnificent day. There are some who read into this and say that's a proclamation for what's coming more at the end. There are others who are going to read into this and say yeah but some of that's already begun. When Jesus was being crucified there were signs of blood. When Jesus was being crucified the sun failed to give its light. There were signs in the heavens above.
When Jesus was being crucified there was an earthquake. Some of these have already begun but they're going to continue and there's going to be these signs as it prepares for the great day of the Lord they're going to continue to be shown. So Peter is saying we're in the final days, we're in the last days, the spirit has come and we're working our way towards the day of the Lord. The day of the Lord is the day when God sets everything right. It's the day of judgment. It's the day of giving an account.
It's the day when debts are paid, when secrets are revealed. That's the day of the Lord. the great and magnificent day. A lot of translations will say the great and terrible day. Terrible like Ivan the Terrible. He wasn't named that because he was the worst Ivan. He was called Ivan the Terrible because he was powerful, mighty.
Which, if you were like on a football team or you cheered for a football team and there was a guy named Ivan the Terrible on the team, you'd be glad he was on your team. You would love Ivan the Terrible, you would wear shirts that said Ivan the Terrible. That's what it is, it's this powerful day, this magnificent day or this terrible day. It's a great day that is coming, this day of judgment, this day of recompense. Every time you've ever looked at a situation and said, who's going to fix this? Every time you've looked at a situation and said, are they going to get away with this?
Do they just get to do that? Is nobody going to stop them? Every time you've been in a situation and you've said, will this ever end? You've in your heart longed for the day of the Lord. You've longed for the day that he shows up and he sets everything right. You've longed for justice.
You've longed for someone who knows what to do to fix this. The problem with the great and terrible day of the Lord is that you're part of the problem. So though we long for it when we face injustice, we also are a part of what makes the world worse. And we stand. The final days have been inaugurated. We are waiting as the spirits at work in the world for this day of judgment to come.
And you've lied. And you've stolen. And you've cheated. And you've finagled things so that they would work out to your benefit. And you, when you've had other people in your power, have finally gotten your revenge on them. And you, when you've been the person who oversaw the schedule, set it up as best for you as you could possibly do it, when you had the chance to be selfish, you were.
When you had the chance to take something and no one knew, you did. When you had the chance to whisper about somebody because it was enjoyable that it was their secret and not yours, you did. We've been a part of making the decay and the sin and the evil and the brokenness in this world spread. And the day is coming when there's no more hiding. And the day is coming when you will stand before the glorious king and you will be laid bare. So Peter stands up and he says, the spirit's here.
Joel told us this was coming and we're walking towards the great day of the Lord. That's where we're headed. That's what's happening. And then he says, “And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” That's the hope of the gospel in a line. And everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. This is where the spirit is taking this message.
It's going to proclaim to us the hope of Jesus. so that on the great and magnificent day of the Lord, when he returns, it is justice and judgment or it is grace and mercy and rescue. That's the day of the Lord. Like the sound of sirens. If you're in the middle of committing a crime and you hear sirens, it's time to go. But if you're the one who's called because there's people in your house, it's a sweet sound.
It's music. That sound of a hope, of a rescue. And so those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. And it says everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. You say, you don't know what I've done. Oh, but I know who saves.
You don't know how sinful I am. I know how precious the blood of Christ was. I know that Jesus will not stand before the Father and go, that one asked for my help and I failed to deliver. That one needed me to cover their sin, but I just couldn't do it. That one asked for forgiveness and I forgot. That will not happen.
Because no one will be put to shame who calls on the name of the Lord. Everyone will be saved. If you call out to Christ and say, I need your help, I need your forgiveness, I need your hope, and I need when you return, that to be the most joyous day, not the most horrific day. He will. Because of who He is and what He does and what He's like and how good He is. And the Spirit went to work so that everyone could hear that.
So that everyone could know that. There's something interesting that happens here that I feel like we would do poorly if I didn't point out. Where it says in verse 21, it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. In the book of Joel, Lord there, if you go look at it, there's going to be capital L-O-R-D because it's the divine name Yahweh. It's the Most High God, Lord God. Now when they would have said it, they wouldn't have said His divine name, they would have said most likely Adonai, they would have put in a placeholder that would be translated Lord.
But I want you to see that from the very beginning, Jesus, as the Spirit empowers the proclamation of the gospel, is not just Lord as in King, but He is Lord as in God. There are whole religions and sects that will tell you that the Trinity is an idea that came in later, that this was made up later, that it was imported by the church later, that it was man-made somehow, and that was not how Jesus was understood, this is ten seconds into the first sermon empowered by the Spirit, and it's already saying the Lord that you're going to call on the name of is Jesus, and that Lord is not just Lord as in King, but Lord as in God, King. That's how the church has understood Jesus since day one, as the King and Lord of all, God Almighty, who says that nobody's ever seen God, but Jesus Christ has made Him known, He's the perfect imprint of His nature, that He's come to dwell among us, that all the fullness of God dwells in Christ bodily, and that He came to rescue and redeem us, and our hope is in Jesus, God King, who joins humanity, who dies so that we might have hope, and when He says He saves, He saves, and when you place your hope in Him, He rescues. If you're in here this morning, and you're trying to climb the Tower of Babel, if you're in here this morning and you're trying to save yourself, I would invite you to call on the name of the Lord, and say, I need Jesus to rescue me.
If you're in here this morning, and you're at the bottom, and you understand, I have no hope, I can't do this, I've tried, then come to Jesus, praise His name, call on Him for help, and He will help. That's the point of the work of the Spirit, to empower the church to proclaim that message. We say this every week, that there's hope in Jesus, and there's judgment coming, and that we're sent to proclaim this message. So church family, the Spirit is in you to tell people, and the Spirit is in you to work as He sees fit, to overcome obstacles and objections. You say, I don't know how to do it, I don't think I'm good enough at it.
The Spirit is. You just get to walk in faith. And if it doesn't work out, if they mock, there were some there who did. There's always going to be some who do. That's up to the Spirit. That's not up to us.
We get to walk forward in faith, we get to proclaim in faith, and we get to trust in faith that He will save, that He will redeem, that He will work, and that the only hope is Christ. So the Spirit goes to work in the church. He empowers every believer to proclaim the message. He jumps past boundaries to proclaim the hope of Christ. And we're going to see next week as He continues in that. Let's pray.
Lord, we ask that Your Spirit would be at work in us to proclaim the hope of the gospel. Lord, we ask that Your Spirit would be at work in this room to help those who do not know You, who are far from You, or who misunderstand. That they can come to You. That they can trust in You. That they can surrender their work, their effort, their pride, their glory, their sin to You. And that everyone who calls on the name of Jesus will be saved.
In Your name we pray. Amen.
Acts 1:12-26
Spencer Cary preaches Acts 1:12-26.
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
My name is Spencer and I am one of the pastors here. We are continuing through Acts 1. We're going to finish out the first chapter in verses 12 through 26. I'll be on page 1053 in those black Bibles. If you want to grab one of those and follow along, the text will be there. So, it has been said from this general area that I have bad taste in movies by certain people who remain nameless. First off, it's false. I have a pretty wide variety in taste in movies. I like popular movies. I like some superhero movies. I like some Disney movies. I like all kinds of movies. There is a category of movies that I get criticized for liking: the more artistic, weird type of movies. One of those is a movie that came out a few years ago called The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
It's awesome. It's great. It's a Coen brothers movie, which if that means nothing to you, it means you probably won't like this category of movies. But they basically shot this movie, which was like a bunch of short stories. It was a Western setting, but it was a bunch of disconnected stories. You had one kind of story and there was a part, and then it kind of moved to another story, the little mini-part, and then another story, then another story, and that was it. And you could try to tie together some thematic kind of threads that could be pulled through them, but they were just a bunch of different short little stories put together, and it was nice. I say that to say, that's kind of what this morning is going to feel like.
This whole last part of Acts chapter 1 is a bunch of just mini-parts. Typically when we isolate passages that we're going to walk through, you can kind of see some themes that are pulled through, some main ideas. And then every now and then we get a collection of little stories, little pieces like this, that you just kind of go one at a time and look at, and they're nice each to look at and their own right. So that's what we're going to do this morning. This is all kind of sandwiched between two massive events. In fact, two of the biggest events in the Bible. So last week we're in the Ascension. So Jesus ascends and then commission, he commissions his church and then ascends, and then next week the Holy Spirit will descend.
We're going to see Pentecost. Those are two of the biggest moments in the Bible. And in between that, we've got a few of these little mini-parts that we're going to walk through. So I want to help us see four different things this morning as we walk through this text. The first is, is we're going to look at the original leaders and notable figures from the early church.
The second thing we're going to see is the importance of prayer. The third thing we're going to see is the lingering tragedy of Judas Iscariot. And lastly, we'll see a leadership void filled. So we're going to see these four things. And then we're going to see how this applies to us in our current season. So let me pray for us and then we'll walk through this together.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the good news of the gospel that saves us, that claims us, that sets us apart to be a people who are obedient to the Great Commission and in all things seek to please you. God, we look at passages like this that articulate wonderful truths that we need. And I pray that we would have ears to hear them this morning as we seek to walk out of here. It's not just hearers of the word, but as doers of the word by the power of the Holy Spirit. And as we pray, amen.
All right, pick up in verse 12. It says, then they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day journey away, 13. And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room where they were staying. Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas, son of James. All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer together with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.
Okay. First thing I want us to see is these original leaders and notable figures that are here in the early church. They just witnessed the miraculous ascension. And they're doing what they were told to do, which is to go back to Jerusalem to wait for the Holy Spirit to come upon them. And then what we get here is a list of disciples with a notable absence, which is Judas Iscariot, which we'll get to in a moment. So I want to look at these disciples first. I think it's helpful for us to not just skip over, sometimes you get a list of names and you just, I just want to skip on to the next thing. I think it's helpful for us to sit for a moment and consider these are the disciples who became the apostles, the leaders of the early church.
And our faith, the reason we're in this room is because they were obedient to what Jesus called them to do in leading the church. So I think it's helpful for us to recognize them and to take a look at them for a moment. So I want to look at this list of disciples first, starting with Peter at the top. So here are the 11 disciples. Should be on the screen behind me. We'll go one name at a time. Peter, who is called Simon Peter. This is the same Peter who makes the confession that Jesus is the Christ. And then Jesus says on this rock, which is what Peter, his name now means, rock, I will build the church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. That Peter becomes one of these central leaders.
He's not the sole leader, but he becomes one of these central leaders in the early church. We see this in the early part of the Book of Acts, especially. So we've read about Peter. He's one of the most popular disciples, his denials, all of that. He also was widely considered to be the disciple behind the Gospel of Mark, that he was the main source for Mark's Gospel that John Mark wrote. Then you've got John. John's the only disciple who was at the cross when Jesus Christ died. He's the only disciple that didn't abandon Jesus. He's the disciple is described as the disciple whom Jesus loved. John wrote the Gospel of John, first John, second John, third John and the Book of Revelation. His brother is James.
So James, the brother of John, and this really this list of three at the very top, these are the three disciples who spent the most time with Jesus. When you see he had the 12 and then he also had the three that he spent time with. And James is the brother of John. He is the first disciple and apostle to be martyred, to be killed for his faith. We're going to see that in the Book of Acts. And there are a lot of repeat names that happens in their culture. So a lot of James's. So we're going to have to differentiate in a moment. But that's James, the brother of John. The fourth is Andrew. This is the brother of Peter. The fifth is Philip. This is a, he's from the same hometown as Peter and Andrew.
That's Bethsaida. Then we have six, which is Thomas, who I would argue gets a bad rap because what is the nickname that we get to Thomas? He's doubting Thomas. I don't think that's really fair. He had one moment of doubt. You can read the rest of the Gospel of John. There are other moments where he displays faithfulness, but we all remember his worst moment when he doubted Jesus. But also in history, he is the one that took one of the ones who took the Gospel first to India, all the way to South India. I was, my daughter is on a new soccer team and I was getting to know one of the parents and trying to be missionally engaged with some of the different parents on the team. And there's a man that I met who's from South India.
He's actually from the province where Thomas went to. And he's Hindu. And I got to talk to him this week about our Christian faith and how Thomas was the one who went down there. And there are Christians that still exist in South India today because Thomas was faithful. Number seven is Bartholomew. I'm going to be honest, we don't know much about him. He doesn't have a lot of dialogue in the, I'm sorry, he doesn't have any dialogue in the Gospels, no dialogue in the Book of Acts. And in church history, it's possible that he was the one that led and took the Gospel to Armenia, which is fun fact, one of the only still majority Christian nations in the Middle East. So sometimes that you have unsung heroes that aren't written about in history.
I think Bartholomew would probably fit into that category. His faithfulness not recorded, but probably there's a massive effect that came out of his faithfulness. Number eight is Matthew. That's the tax collector, turned follower of Jesus Christ, one of the most hated people in his culture. Jesus claims him, brings him with him and he wrote the Gospel of Matthew. Number nine is James, son of Alphaeus. So this is a different James, son of Alphaeus, sometimes called James the Younger. So sometimes called James the Younger, which he was differentiated from James the brother of John. Ten is Simon the zealot. He likely belonged to a national sect, a Jewish national sect called the zealots who were trying to overthrow the Roman government by force.
So he left the zealots and then joined Team Jesus. And then number 11, Judas, son of James. This is Judas who also goes by the name Jude or Thaddeus, which is probably something that he needed to do, given the name that he had and what it kind of shared with someone else that you don't want to be associated with. Kind of like being born in the 30s, unfortunately, and being called Adolf. You just, you got to choose a new name. You got, you got to go a different direction. It's the name that an unfortunate time in history, and he later becomes Jude and Thaddeus. So that's the top, that's the 11. That's the apostles of the church. And then we get a mention of the women in Jesus's family. It says together with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus and his brothers.
Okay, so that phrase, the women encompasses a list of women who were faithful in following Jesus Christ all the way to the cross. When most of the disciples cut and ran and cowardice and fear, the women did not and they followed Jesus all the way to the cross. This would have been Mary Magdalene, the Galilean woman who was afflicted by seven demons and Jesus cast those seven demons out. This would have been Joanna, the household manager for Herod who had money and helped support the mission of Jesus in those three years and was at the empty tomb to discover with Mary Magdalene. The empty tomb where Jesus rose from the grave. This would be Mary, mother of Jesus Christ. The mother of Jesus who raised him, who prepared him for his ministry.
So then there are other Mary's that were involved in this. This would be the woman who followed Jesus faithfully. And then it also mentions Jesus's family, so not just Mary, but his siblings. Mary went on to have other kids with Joseph, and we get a few of them here. We get James. So James, he's going to be later. We're going to see the book of Acts. I know a lot of James's. You've got to be careful, depending on who is who. He's going to be a bigger figure later in the book of Acts, a notable leader in the book of Acts. Also wrote the book of James, which we just read from in our liturgy this morning. Joses, also called Joseph, that would be named after his daddy. Simon and Jude, who wrote the book of Jude.
And then Jesus also had two sisters who would have been here. So you have 120. We're going to learn this number in a moment. Followers of Jesus that have followed all the way back to Jerusalem as they wait for the Holy Spirit. And it's good for a moment to pause and recognize these early followers that our faith gets built upon.
Okay. Number two, I want to look at the importance of prayer. Because buried in that list, it says all these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer. So it says they were devoted to prayer. Didn't just say that they had a few prayers. It says they were devoted. Like if you've ever seen a kid who ends up falling in love with an instrument and they devote themselves to it and they practice and they practice and they practice and they practice or a kid that falls in love with a sport and they devote themselves to the game and they practice and they practice devotion. This is giving yourself to something with energy, with time, with desire. They devoted themselves to prayer. Christ ascends to the right hand of God, the Father, gives him this grand commission and they pray.
They were literally told they were going to take the gospel to the nations in that 40-day period. They heard multiple commissionings telling them to go make disciples. They were told to the nations to every people. They were told Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth. They had this big task that God had given them. And it says they prayed. They devote themselves to prayer. And I think that's really important for to sit in because I think that I think if Jesus came back and gave us an extra special commission in America, I think they came back and said, I want you, the American church, take the gospel to every single town in America. But I want a gospel-centered church in every single town.
I think if we heard that, I think that our next move after he was gone would be to start planning and start strategizing. I think there'd be lots of meetings. I think Lutherans would have a synod, Presbyterians would have a Presbyterian General Assembly, Baptist, we'd have some committees, no doubt, some task force. We come up with like, you know, the most workshop title for the type of mission movement we're going to see America 250 explosion, 2.0 exponential, etc. We'd find a way to brand it and make t-shirts for it. And we'd plan and we'd strategize and we'd think and we'd meet. And I think that we'd neglect to be devoted to prayer. I think we think about all the different ways that we could reach people as opposed to falling on our faces before the Lord and pleading before God to do a mighty work.
You know who prays? Weak people. Weak people pray. People in need pray. People in need of God to do something that we cannot. That's who prays. And the early church, these men and women understood this. They heard the task. They knew it was ahead of them to an extent. They understood it was huge and they prayed because they knew without God they could not. This church would not advance without God. So they prayed because weak people who know they cannot do it pray. It's one of the things that Thomas Watson, the old Puritan once said. He said, prayer as it comes from the saint is weak and languid. But when the arrow of a saint's prayer is put into the bow of Christ's intercession, it pierces the throne of grace.
And it's like, yeah, because prayer, the words we say, they're weak for weak lips. When they are put into the bow of Christ, our intercessor, our mediator, the one who offers up our prayers to the throne room, they're powerful. And we should take a cue from our disciples from these early followers, especially us, as we're about to plant a church in January. We're about to send out a pile of people. It's like we should pray. Because I know my tendency. I know that all the wrong initial instincts will come to the surface. We got to recruit. We got to think. We got to have meetings. We got to make sure that all these things are taken care of. We checked all these boxes as opposed to the primary energy and believing that the primary energy should be in prayer.
Asking God to do a mighty work. So I don't think we should miss this. As we go to plant a church, and if you look at church history, where there have been revivals, which are just moments in time where hundreds and thousands of people in a general area just start coming to Christ when the Spirit does a unique work. When you study those and every one of those, what preceded those was devotion to prayer. So we should be a people devoted to prayer. And we should see that and their actions here. It's that mini-episode. The next mini-part we're going to see is Judas, the lingering tragedy of Judas Iscariot. So when it says the 11 here, mentions these 11, what's glaring in the absence there is there's a missing 12.
Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, is now dead and gone, and he needs to be replaced. And we're going to read how they replaced him. But I don't want to miss that what was felt, certainly in that moment, was a lot of pain. That the awful tragedy of this betrayal of Jesus is just it's hanging in the air as we're going to see in a moment. And we should consider that because listen, if you follow Jesus Christ long enough, you're going to see people who were excited about Christ, who sang all the songs, who seemingly were on fire for Jesus in so many ways. And then years go by and they leave the faith. And I think about the people that I've walked with who have left the faith and not just left the faith entirely, but have become enemies of the faith, enemies of Christ.
Vocally attacking Jesus Christ and his church. And those when I think of the day they hurt. And I don't think they're quite as painful as what they felt with Judas, who literally betrayed Jesus in a way that we do not see today. So let's walk through this as they're getting ready to replace him. I want us to see this. This is verse 15. It says, in those days, Peter stood up among the brothers, the company, the persons was about all about 120 and said, brothers, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke before him by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus. For he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry.
So a couple things to note. In a moment, we're going to see what scripture he's referencing from the Old Testament. It comes from Psalm 69 and 109. But also don't want us to miss. This is just one of the clearest pictures of how we get the scriptures of how the scriptures are inspired. It says, which the Holy Spirit spoke before him by the mouth of David concerning Judas. And that's just that. That's how we get the word of God. The third member, the Trinity, the Holy Spirit speaking through human agents, people, God's word that we have now. And I just think that's a beautiful picture of inspiration that we have here that the chief author of scripture, God foretold the betrayal of Judas a thousand years before.
Then we get to verse 18, which is a parenthetical, a brief little note reference articulating this painful tragedy. Verse 18. Now this man, this is Judas, acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness. And falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their own language, Akeldama, that is field of blood. So that is graphic. And also, when you read the Gospel of Matthew, different. It's actually different than how Matthew records this story. The differences are that Matthew talks about him hanging himself. Doesn't mention anything about him being burst open. Doesn't mention that he fell headlong.
It doesn't mention when Matthew's talking about the field of blood, he more connects that to the betrayal of Jesus and the blood money that he took, as opposed to Luke who's connecting it to this graphic scene. Now, when you encounter two different things like this, side by side, Chet mentioned this a few weeks ago when we were finishing up Second Samuel, that there's this Western instinct within us to just be very suspect and go wait and to actually be distrusting of what's happening there, as opposed to, which is what I think what we should do, is kind of excitedly ask the question, why are they different? Why are they what's going on here? And the reason is that both Luke and Matthew are emphasizing different things.
They're keenly aware. These stories are circulating. These these Gospels are circulating. They understand the differences and their accounts, but they're purposely emphasizing different things. Matthew's emphasizing betrayal and the shame and guilt that he felt Luke is just emphasizing judgment. Thematically, they're just telling the same story from different angles to articulate different theological ideas. Now, I think we should, though, try to piece this all together. So I want to do that for you in a moment. How do you actually line these up side by side? So here, here, I think is what some of the good options to line these up. I think what happened is that Judas fell headlong, which is a poetic description of hanging himself by suicide.
So I think that's a poetic description of falling headlong. I think the rope was around his neck. And I think at some point, after this, it was a graphic scene, as Luke described, with his bowels on the ground below. Now, I had the distinct pleasure of reading. I got deep in the weeds of this week. And I read an NIH study, which is a National Institutes of Health study. I read the NIH study on what happens to bodies that are decomposing as they're hanging. And this is actually quite common. It's super gross, but it is quite common for bodies to bloat. It's quite common for scavengers and insects to come. And it's quite common for it to be graphic after a few weeks for things to fall out below. So that's an option that you can read in this passage.
You can also look at this and realize the region that this was in. This was in the region of Akeldama, which is in the Hinnom Valley. It's a rocky cliffside. What also happens sometimes with people who hang themselves after a few weeks, the body does drop and ends up becoming a graphic scene. And this would have been on cliff rocks. So it's graphic, but I think it's helpful sometimes when we have different stories, different narratives to kind of do the tough work, even sometimes when it's difficult to line them up and see that actually these two stories come together and they are very much compatible. And what Luke is trying to do is emphasize the judgment that was put upon Judas and how awful it was and how sad it was.
This is someone they knew, a friend for three years, who betrayed Jesus, who ended up like this. And that pain is still felt and it's lingering. And they need to replace him. And as you continue to read this, get past the parenthetical reference of what happened to him, you pick up in verse 20 and Peter is going to recount from the Psalms what was foretold. Peter keeps saying, he says, for it is written in the book of Psalms. May his camp become desolate and let there be no one to dwell in it and let another take his office.
Okay, so that's Psalm 69:25 and Psalm 109:8 being quoted from the Old Testament to show the prophecy that this was going to happen. That both judgment came upon him for what he did and also they needed to replace him. That they needed to get back to 12 leaders again, which leads us to that episode is done to the final mini-episode here, part four, the leadership void filled. So in accordance with Psalm 109, they needed to fill this leadership void and Peter gives some qualifications for who can step into the place that Judas left behind. So he continues his speech in verse 21. He says, so one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us, one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.
Okay, pause there. There are kind of three different qualifications that he gives for who can take the place of Judas. The first is that he must be a man. Now, sometimes in the New Testament, they can use different Greek words, which can mean both men and women or brothers and sisters. So adelphoi is the Greek word, it can mean brothers and sisters and anthropos is the word that can mean men and women. So sometimes if you look at your ESV, you'll see a footnote at the very bottom and it'll say men and women or it'll say brothers and sisters. This is not one of those times. The word that was used there exclusively only means man. It's a very specific designation. Jesus purposely chose 12 men to lead the church.
He could have been countercultural at the time. He was countercultural and he could have chosen women, but he did not. He chose a man, 12 men to lead the church. And that is because by God's design, as you see through the rest of the New Testament, God has called qualified men to lead the church. That is part of God's complementarian design for leadership in the church.
Now the rest of the New Testament teaches this, that this is something that is new or that you aren't comfortable with. As pastors, we are more than happy to sit down with you and walk through the scriptures and help you see some of the arguments that are bound up in this. But this is one of the reasons why it says, it uses that word and it says man. The second is that he must have been with them from the beginning of Jesus' ministry. So from the baptism, when John baptized them onward, he needs to be a witness to what Jesus did with him for three years through to the cross and the resurrection, to witness the life, death, work of Christ. And the third thing is that because he witnessed all of this, he needs to be the kind of man that will witness, that will declare the gospel.
Someone who witnessed the resurrection, the fact that Jesus Christ is alive and because Jesus Christ is alive because he conquered the power of death of the resurrection, nothing is ever the same. And that's the truth that we hold as Christians, that if Jesus Christ is alive, then nothing by comparison matters in life. Everything should center and revolve around that reality. And it should be the kind of man that believes that and will testify to what he has seen in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So he gives those three qualifications, then two men are put forward, verse 23. And they put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also called Justus and Matthias. And they prayed and said, you Lord who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.
And they cast lots for them and the lot fell on Matthias and he was numbered with the 11 apostles. So two men are suggested, they're praying, devoted to prayer. And then they cast lots, which in Bible times is essentially flipping a coin and trusting God in the process to choose whether it'll be heads or tails. We don't know exactly how the lots work. There's a lot of theories as to how it worked, those casting straws or anything of the like, but that is what happens. And it was prevalent throughout the Old Testament. This is the only instance where God's people do this in the New Testament. Now, pause for a minute, that begs a very fair question. Why don't we still do this? A couple of years ago, we're starting to plant a church, we're figuring out which one of our elders, which couple of our elders is going out.
Why didn't we just cast lots, let the lots fall where they may and break up the team and go different places? It's a fair question that gets asked. Why do we not still practice this today? And I think there's a couple of reasons that I find to be satisfactory. Some will argue that in the very next chapter, the Holy Spirit descends upon the church. And because we now have God at work within us, it's no longer necessary. So we seek the Lord earnestly in prayer as a unified people to decide which way we should go on any given matter. And I think that's a pretty helpful argument for why we don't practice lots, casting lots today. Also, another argument is that when you read about casting lots in the scriptures, it's always described.
It's not prescribed. And that's when you're trying to interpret scripture, sometimes there's a helpful category to look at. Is it just being described, meaning we're reading about a thing that happened, or was it prescribed, meaning this is commanded for us to do? And we don't see in the New Testament where we're commanded to cast lots. And this is the only time that they cast lots as the church. So I think the combination of those two arguments help us understand that there's a reason why we don't cast lots today, that we simply are just the people who are to pray, to seek the Lord, and help him, or help, seek him as he helps lead in God the church and where we're supposed to go. That's helpful to think as we think about this passage.
They end up choosing, the Lord ends up choosing, Matthias, he fills the void. And now all their leadership is in place as they get ready for the next phase, which is chapter two, the Holy Spirit descends upon the church.
Okay. So we have four different mini-episodes, which are hitting four different aspects of truth that I think are helpful for us to reflect. And I want to consider those as we close, specifically for the season that we are in. As we are getting ready to plant Oak Ridge, as we're getting ready in January to send out 60 plus people from our church to go to Lexington and to start a new church. I want to come back and hit these four and understand them for the place and the time that we're in. And they're important. So let's go back to the first one, the original leaders and notable figures. What I think is helpful about this to consider is that the church is and has always been led by people. People play a significant role in the church.
Think very practically for a moment and logistically. These 120 followers have been following Jesus for three years. This was a traveling ministry. And guess what? Only twice that we have recorded, did Jesus do a miraculous work where he fed all of them, which means that outside of that miraculous work, a pile of people needed to eat a few times a day. And when you travel with a bunch of people, there are logistics involved in that. It takes people to go and find food and to gather meals together. It takes supporters to fund that, to go and pay for the food. It takes people to go. I mean, if you're traveling from town to town to town, you have a place to sleep. And sometimes you're going to find lodging and sometimes you're going to find campgrounds.
We don't know exactly how it worked, but it took people to move this forward every step of the way. We read at one point, one of the things that Judas is accused of and is guilty of is that he was the one who managed the money and he stole from the money, which means they had a system of collecting gifts and offerings and making sure that it was used. So there are a lot of logistics that went into all the way up to right now. They're getting ready to wait for the Holy Spirit. They're in Jerusalem and that's what? It's 120 of them in a smaller place. There's one up a room. I don't know how it all worked out, but it took logistics because it took people to do those things. And I say all that to say again is that every Sunday morning as we come together as the church to worship, because we are obedient to the book of Hebrews when it says we don't neglect the gathering of the saints, but when we come together here on Sunday mornings, y'all, it takes a lot of people to pull this off.
I mean, there are kids sitting. We choose as a church, just give you a little behind the curtain scene on this. We choose as this church and the way that we have kids involved in ministry to actually have kids sitting.
Now there are churches that do not do that at all, which means that every child back there would be in this room right now. Okay. And that's a fine choice. That's fine for the churches that have that condition to do that. We don't choose to do that. We choose to have the gospel taught on their level as they get older and more mature to be able to sit in this worship gathering and learn. But that takes a pile of people on volunteers and guys, if I went like page by page, oh, I couldn't do it because it would take someone who knows the ins and outs that ministry way better like Isaac or Katie. But if they were up here and they went page by page to every aspect of what it takes to pull off Sunday mornings, you would go, boy, oh boy, I need to jump in and help like at least once a month.
This is, this is insane. There's a lot of work and it matters because we want to teach the kids in our church, the gospel. We want to have ordered worship in this space every Sunday morning. And beyond that, we have people who do hospitality. We have people who do safety. We have people in that booth every morning. We have people on the stage every morning. We have a pile of people who give themselves away to make sure that we can come together for worship. And that happens also in groups because we have group leaders who give up time and energy and effort who come to trainings that we do throughout the year. We have leaders in training who go through different types of discipleship to help be helpful parts of group.
You get the person, maybe in your group who handles the group me and make sure that, you know, it's not just pizza every week. That takes people. People are part of the church who do the work. And I want us to see ourselves in it, especially in the season where we're going to be needed to step up. It takes people to advance the kingdom. It takes people to make much of Christ. That's the first thing I want us to see. The second, I hit this one a little quicker, is the importance of prayer. As I said earlier, I think like right now we're getting ready to send out Oak Ridge. And it's going to take people that are committed to a bunch of different things. And Mike and Isaac are helping see all that happening.
We're over here figuring out how we're going to be when they're gone. But we, y'all, if you're not praying, I hear this, if you're not praying pretty much every day for what's happening over the next few months, I want to encourage you to change that. I want you to pray every day. We need to be a people that are devoted to prayer because what the work that awaits, what Oak Ridge is getting ready to go out and do, y'all, it's hard. But you listen, I don't know if I've ever heard of a church planning story. We're like, we went out and it was all easy and it was great. And like everyone was happy all the time. Like no one had opinions that like tried to wreck everything. Like it is not, I've never, never heard that story.
Maybe it exists. Maybe we'll be the first. I don't know. But given the way their history goes, I think it's going to be really hard for them. And we should pray for them every day up into and beyond. And if you're at Oak Ridge, you should pray for us because we've talked about this. We're going to have a lot of work to do when you're gone. And I'm so stinking excited about it. But boy, oh boy, we should be on our faces because we think we're going to strategize our way out of the situation we are deceived.
Now the power is bound up in coming before the Lord in prayer. All right, I've done enough. The lingering tragedy of Judas is scary. What can we learn from that as we're getting ready to be in this season that we are? Judas' leadership serves as a cautionary tale. There's a reason why when you look at the qualifications for elders or pastors in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus chapter 1, that the majority of them, the overwhelming majority of them are character based. There's a reason. And that's because it matters immensely. It's the most important element of leadership in the church. There are too many stories of pastors who fall to greed, sexual sin, domineering leadership, dishonesty. It's one of the reasons that we take elderships so slowly that Mike Goble has been an elder in training for years now.
And it's because we are taking the time to evaluate character over seasons because it matters immensely to be tested and to be ready. Character matters. And Judas is a cautionary tale of this.
Now, some people will point out. They'll say, well, you know, Jesus Christ chose 12 and then one of them still failed. And I understand what they're saying in that. I think it's a little more complicated than that statement on its face, that there's God's sovereign plan at work in mysterious ways that are thousands of years in the making. But on its face, it is Jesus Christ chose a person that he poured into for three years to watch him betray him, sell him out for 20 pieces of silver. And today still God raises up men who genuinely they love the Lord. And they're obedient to his calling and they faithfully oversee their calling for years and then in a season of weakness, they fall and they fail.
And every time that hurt, every time that happens, it hurts. And some of y'all have come from church backgrounds where you've been a part of that and you've seen it, it's painful and it hurts. And on top of that, there's an extra layer that hurts when it's just more ammo for the cynics and the scoffers on the outside to be like, yeah, that's right. Church is a bunch of money-hungry, perverted hypocrites and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't know why I went deep Southern there, but that's just it. And it hurts. And the truth is there are failures of leadership that happen in every aspect of humanity. And it does hurt when pastors fall. The enemy seemingly uses the sharpest knives to attack the people who lead God's bride, the church.
And that's why, as we're getting ready for this season, you should pray for your pastors. You should pray for Mike and Isaac as they are going out to oversee this church plant. So fourth, this is our last one: the leadership void filled. We are going to have opportunities across the board for each and every one of us to step into and lead there also. It's not just that we need future pastors, though we do. We need people to step up in every single part of our church: Kid City, hospitality, you name it. God is the God of order, and he's ordered our church in a manner and he's led us to structure our church in a way that it requires people to step into places and to own all those different aspects of leading.
And many of you have an opportunity to do that. It's an exciting season for our church. We are pumped about sending out this church plant. We are pumped about the work that they had to do, and we are excited about the work that is left here. So we need to understand that God calls his people to step into places and lead. So we should be a people right now in this season that are praying, that are seeking the Lord, and are trusting the Holy Spirit to equip us and to call us into areas that may be uncomfortable, and may be a little scary, but we're willing to be obedient because the mission matters. Because ultimately we want to be a church that keeps multiplying healthy churches. We want to be a church that keeps reaching people.
We want to be a church that continues to pull out the baptismal pool right here and watches people enter into the water and testify that Jesus Christ is Lord. We want to be a church that fulfills our small part in the Acts story. But that means we all get to step up and do it.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you might help us in this part of Acts to be considerate of all of these things that we would see. The church is made up of people, ordinary people, that we would see the need to be on our faces in prayer, that we'd see how important it is to have leaders who display character and that we would fill all the voids that are getting ready to hit. All for the sake of us first experiencing you and the power of your death and resurrection and the gospel at work within us and the overflow of that being something we then declare to others as we seek to make disciples in our city. In Jesus' name, amen.
Acts 1:6-11
Chet Phillips preaches Acts 1:6-11.
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Additional context: Watch Spencer Cary's short Trinity summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHOmb2RXdL0
Optional deeper dive on EFS and the Trinity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPJtJwWluy0
Transcript
There are moments in life that you remember that are seared into your mind, whether because they were wonderful or terrible, moments of triumph or heartbreak, moments of deep, deep sadness or deep, deep joy. You remember where you were. You remember what was happening. You remember what you were wearing. You remember who you were talking to. If you will, grab a Bible and go to Acts chapter 1.
We're going to see the disciples in their third of one of these moments in a very tight window of time. So the disciples had been following Jesus. He had been teaching them. So he was a rabbi. But then he starts performing miracles.
So he's more than a rabbi. He's a prophet. But then they realize he's more than a prophet because he's not just doing some of these things. He's not just saying some of these things, but he's raising the dead. He's performing these miracles and he's fulfilling these promises. And there's this hope that he's more.
He's not a prophet. He's the prophet. He's the Messiah. He's the Christ of Israel. He's the one who's going to come redeem Israel, throw off other rulers and governments. He's going to set the people free.
All the promises are going to be fulfilled in him. What an exciting time. Then he's betrayed, arrested, condemned, beaten, mocked, murdered, dead, buried. And all the hope of who he was. If you can imagine the heartbreak and the confusion. How could the Christ die?
How could the Messiah die? How could we be so wrong? How could we have been so confused about this? How could this play out the way it's playing out? And so the disciples would remember. They'd remember what they saw.
They'd remember him on the cross. They'd remember him in the garden. They'd remember him weeping and sweating drops of blood. They'd remember him arrested, beaten. They'd remember him wrapped. They'd remember him buried.
It's in their mind. And then three days later, he appears to them alive. The tomb is empty. When they first hear the news, they think this is crazy talk. But then he appears to them and they see him alive.
And it's not just like once. And it's not just like a rumor. We're told at the beginning of Acts, they see him by many proofs over the course of 40 days. It becomes a reality to them that he's alive. Some of you were shocked that you got the job. But 40 days into the job, you're not still shocked.
You're showing up. You're doing the work. It's become normal. You understand it. And that's the situation we find them here. Now it's absolutely shocked that he's risen from the grave.
But now it's become a part of life. They're seeing him. He's talking to them. He's proving it. He's teaching them he's here. But the resurrection of Jesus is seared into their minds.
And this morning, we're going to read about the ascension where Jesus is talking to them. And then he just ascends, it's very cleverly named. Into heaven. He's talking to them. And then his bodily, he just goes away. And that's the third moment that's going to be clearly seared into their minds.
So we're going to read this whole text and then we're going to work our way back through it. We're going to try to see some of the theological realities of the ascension. And we're going to see the practical nature of it for us as a church, for the church and then for us as a church. So we're going to see Jesus ascend and we're going to see him send. If we want to make this sound more like a sermon, he's going to ascend and send. Or we're going to see the exaltation of the ascension.
And the expectation of the ascension. That's a good one. All right, here we go. Let's read Acts, Chapter one, verses six through eleven. So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?
He said to them, it is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven, as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.
Take a moment and let's pray. Lord, we ask that you would help us to understand this text. We ask that you would help us to be faithful to the reality of your reign and return. May your Spirit be at work in us in power, in Jesus name. Amen. All right.
Verse six. So when they come together, they ask him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And he said to them, it's not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. So they had planned their thinking he's going to overthrow the Romans. He's going to inaugurate the kingdom. It's going to happen.
He dies. Then he rises. And so in that time, as he's teaching them again, they go now, now are you going to do it? Now, are you going to overthrow the Romans? Now, are you going to set up the kingdom? Now, are you going to restore power to Israel, which is part of the prophetic promises of what the king is going to do.
So they're not far off in the idea of something that the king is going to do, the Messiah is going to do, but they've still missed what Jesus had come to do, which was to offer forgiveness of sins. And so they ask, are you going to do that now? He doesn't say, no, he says it's not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. Which, you know, how often do we still want to ask this question? When is Jesus going to come back? When's it going to look like?
When's he going to set it up? When's all this going to be over? We want the answer to this question. But we shouldn't spend a lot of time on it. There shouldn't be whole ministries devoted to it. There's a book that came out in 1988 or it came out before then, but it was called 88 reasons.
Basically, the title was 88 reasons why Jesus is going to come back in 1988. If you hadn't had a chance to read it yet, I don't want to ruin it for you. But he did not. Sales really plummeted in 1989. We shouldn't spend whole ministries and time on this question. If the disciples don't get to know the times and seasons set by the authority of the Father and John, one of the disciples is going to write the book of Revelation as God reveals all this stuff to him.
If they don't get to know, let's focus on something else. And we're going to see, he tells them what to focus on. He says, but so he says, don't spend your time on that. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. He tells the disciples, they're going to be empowered by the Spirit.
He's told them what we read last week to wait until the Spirit comes, until they're baptized in the Spirit, then to go. And he's reminding them, you're going to be empowered by the Spirit and then you're going to be my witnesses. So the Spirit is going to empower them to do the work that he has for them, which is to witness to the world. Now, when you get a job, they give you the equipment for the job. You're in high school, you got you a sweet job, that cold stone creamery. You get to meet a lot of people.
It's nice. You're doing something fun, which is handing ice cream. Like how could they be mad at you for this? You just hand them ice cream and maybe you get free ice cream. You don't know you're at orientation. You're hoping fingers crossed.
Fingers crossed, ice cream is part of the gig. And they're like, here, this is your hat. So you don't get hair in the ice cream. Sounds fair. Here's your apron. So you don't get ice cream on yourself.
Sounds fair. Here's your scoop so that you can scoop ice cream. Right? Here's your Glock and your Bulletproof vest. What? Immediately you'd be like, I'm going to let, I'm going to let, I didn't mean to interrupt you.
It's my first day. I'll let you finish, but, but real quick, but also real quick. What? What, what happens at this Cold Stone that I haven't seen at the other Cold Stones? Because you get the equipment, you get equipped for the work. The Holy Spirit empowerment is for the work of witnessing.
The Holy Spirit is going to come. They have to wait on the Spirit. They're not supposed to get started until the Spirit comes. But when the Spirit comes, they're going to witness. And if, if you're not a Christian, if you're here trying to figure this out, if somebody's brought you or invited you, they've been bugging the snot out of you. And you're like, Oh, fine.
You ran out of excuses. I'm so glad you're here this morning. But before you understand the Bible as the word of God, which we do believe it is, and we logically get there, but before you take it as the word of witnesses. That the New Testament is delivered as witnesses. They saw these things. They saw, they heard Jesus teach.
They saw him perform miracles. They saw him brutally murdered. They saw him buried. They saw him after the resurrection. They saw him lift up into the sky. And then they went and told people about it.
And they wrote it down. Do you know that most of everything you believe on the word of witnesses, your understanding of history, your understanding of science, people say, trust the science. What you mean is trust the scientists, the people who did the work. Somebody's, some of you have reported two people this week. You know what I heard? And you're just, you're just quoting some dude from a YouTube video and you're like, you know what they're up to and you're saying it like it's fact, but you're just basing it off of a witness.
I'm going to show y'all a picture. Y'all recognize this picture? Who's that? Who's the tall guy in the middle? George Washington. Do we know what he's doing?
He's crossing the Delaware. Yes. Now y'all know that's not a photograph, right? We don't have any photographs of Washington. How do we know he crossed the Delaware? Now this is Christmas.
He was like, Hey, you know what I think they're doing on Christmas celebrating Christmas, but they're in the wrong country. So let's shoot them. That's what he did. Now, how do we know he did this? People witnessed it and told us about it. I doubt he stood like that, but it's cool in the picture.
They witnessed it. That's how we have information. That's how we have history. And that's how this comes to us is that they went as witnesses to proclaim this message. And before you understand the Bible as God's word, you need to at least take it as the word of witnesses and it has been examined, cross examined, cross, cross examined, cross, cross, cross, cross, examined, cross, cross, cross, cross, cross, cross examined. People don't want this to be true and it holds to the test of time.
So he says, you're going to be witnesses. And he says in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the end of the earth, which is just kind of an outline for the book of Acts. Holy Spirit is going to come. They're going to start in Jerusalem. They're going to move to the areas around Jerusalem, Judea. They're going to move to Samaria where the Samaritans are that they don't like.
And then they're going to move to the ends of the earth. And it doesn't seem like the disciples wrapped their head around at this moment that he doesn't just mean to the Jewish people in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth. Because when Samaritans believe and receive the Holy Spirit, they're like, what? That's allowed. And then later Gentiles do and they go, what? That's even worse.
Is that allowed? They have a discussion and they decide that if God did it, then it's probably okay. Like they have a council where they discuss that. But this is going to spread. It's going to expand. They're going to witness further and further out until it reaches the ends of the earth.
And we're going to see is the book of Acts just kind of Spencer talked about it last week, but it's going to it's going to work. And then it just kind of doesn't really end. It's kind of stays open ended. And that's because the work has continued to go to the ends of the earth. Verse nine. So he says, you're going to go be my witnesses.
This is his last commissioning. We have the great commission and then there's commissionings that are listed in all of the gospels. This is his final one. So last thing he says, and it says, and when he had said these things as they were looking on, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. Okay. So he tells them they're going to be his witnesses and then he just leaves.
He goes into a cloud, which is a picture of being welcomed by heaven. It's just going into glory. Sometime later when you're standing outside, just stand and try to picture that from him. What that would look like. He's talking to you and then he just leaves. And when he does this, there's the beginning of some fulfillment of prophecy.
There's this picture that's from the Old Testament that's happening here and that we're going to see continue to be fulfilled. But it's Daniel seven. He says, I saw in the night visions and behold with the clouds of heaven, there came one like a son of man. He looked like a person and he came to the ancient of days as God the Father and was presented before him and to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away in his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. Now that is a bold claim for someone who looks like a person.
That he's going to exist forever. He's going to live forever. That all nations, all peoples, all will start like that's that's bold. He's actually getting things that should be ascribed to God. But then we see, oh, that's this is God in the flesh who ascends.
This is him. He's this is when he looks at the Sanhedrin. He says, you'll see me at the right hand and coming on the clouds with power. He's quoting this and they see the beginning where he's taken up into the cloud and it's like, oh, this is this is him, the son of man. So I want to consider for a moment some of the theological realities around the ascension and we could we could spend weeks on this.
We're not. We're going to move fairly quickly through some of the things that you need to understand. They're going on here in the ascension. The first one that we should consider is that Jesus's role as the suffering servant is complete. His role is the suffering servant from Isaiah who by his wounds, we are healed. The chastisement of us was placed on him when Jesus on the cross and he says it is finished.
His work in humility is finished. His work in suffering is finished. This is where Philippians says that he took on the form of a servant taking on the likeness of men and that he was humbly to the point of death. That's completed. He's exalted now, which is the second part of the reality of the ascension is that his role as a suffering servant, his role in humility is completed and he is taken up into glory, into exaltation that he now reigns as a king, as the king. Psalm 110.1, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.
Or Ephesians 1 when it's picking up this idea, talks about the power of God. It says that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him his head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. So Jesus is exalted to sit at the right hand of God, to reign as king, to sit on the throne of David, to have a dominion that lasts forever.
To begin this kingdom, he's raised into this. So his role as a suffering servant is completed. He is exalted as a king and he is now beginning or fulfilling his heavenly ministry. And we're going to see the New Testament talk about this, what Jesus is doing now. He reigns, he rules, but he also intercedes. So Romans 8 says this, talking to Christians, he says, who is to condemn?
Christ Jesus is the one who died more than that who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. So that Jesus, in his position of risen Christ, at the right hand of the Father, intercedes on behalf of all those who've placed their faith in him. He says they're one of mine. And when the enemy accuses and says, you're a sinner, they fail, they're broken. Jesus says, no, they're covered by the blood. They belong to me.
This is what Hebrews says. Consequently, he, that's Jesus, is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him. So the only way to draw near to God is through Jesus. And if you draw near to God through Jesus, you were saved to the uttermost, which isn't a word you use very often, probably. Probably. Someone's like, how was work today?
And you're like, it was hot and I sweated to the uttermost. And you're like, don't say stuff like that. You could just say hard, like, I don't need all that. But this is a place that you probably should memorize it. How are you saved to the uttermost? What about this thing?
Yeah, that's covered too. All the way, completely covered, all the way to the uttermost, to the very edges of anything that you could come up with. If you've drawn near to God through Christ, you are saved completely and fully and forever. He's able to save those who draw near to him since he always lives to make intercession for them. For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens. He is exalted, risen, and always lives to make intercession.
That's the third reality. The fourth is that he will return. We're going to consider that one more in a moment, but I want to take a second as we consider these ideas and say, what does that mean for us? Those are realities for Jesus. What does that mean for us? Well, his role as a suffering servant is over, which means that the work necessary for you to be saved has been completed.
That all of the work needed for you to be made right with God has been accomplished through the blood of Christ. He's exalted as King, which means it is fitting and right for us to gather and sing to him. It's fitting and right for us to pray to him. It's fitting and right for us to obey him and submit our lives to him. It's fitting and right for us to understand him as exalted and glorious. And it is out of place and incorrect.
Whenever you hear anybody say, well, if Jesus does return, here's what I'm going to say to him. It's like, no, he was humble once. He will reign in glory ever after. Every knee will bow. Every tongue will confess. Everyone will praise Christ, whether they want to or don't want to.
They will see him reign. That's the reality. So we worship him. We honor him. We glorify him and we proclaim him. Third, who is there to condemn you?
If you've trusted in Jesus, who can condemn you? If you've trusted in Jesus and his precious blood has paid for your sin, who is there to accuse? He intercedes for you. This is the way John puts it in John 1. He says, my little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ, the righteous.
That Christ stands at the right hand of the Father and says, they belong to me. I paid for them. And no one will be put to shame. They trust in Christ. His payment will always be sufficient. He'll never get overdrawn on that account.
Fourth, he will return, which means we await his return. And that's what we're going to see happens in this rest of this passage. So it says, verse 10, while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes. OK, so we're to understand by the way that's written, those are angels. There's two keys in the text. It's called men, so they look like men.
But the word behold is a is a surprise word. It's like suddenly look. That's what that's what it's saying. And it also tells us what they're wearing. They're wearing white robes. It's not a normal thing for Luke to do when he's writing in Luke or the Book of Acts to just tell you what outfits people have on.
So it's significant that he points it out. He's not just like him. Paul went out to preach and he was wearing this fancy little blue number. Like he just doesn't do that. It's irrelevant. But here it's relevant because suddenly there's two men in white and the white there could also be like shiny, glowy, like so suddenly there's angels present and these angels are going to say something to them.
Here's what they say. Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. So we await his return. He will return the same way physically. Jesus is bodily resurrected, bodily ascended and will bodily return.
But what the what the angels say to the disciples, as I was thinking about this, it almost feels like it doesn't line up. Like I say Tuesday, they ask the question and they make a statement and they don't seem like they fit well together. So their question is, why are you looking up into heaven? And their statement is Jesus will return the same way you saw him. Now it says as he went, they were looking up into heaven.
It feels like they have a really good answer as to why they're looking up into heaven. Like just an immediate like good answer. Like for the angels to appear, God sends his angels, his messengers, and they don't come to just do frivolous things. We have to assume they've got a good purpose in being here. But their first question is, why are you looking up into heaven?
Which is like he, because he just, he was here and he went. It would be weird if they didn't almost like if he started to go off and they were like, all right, cool, let's get out here. Like, no, you would think. Watch him. Watch him. And then the angels say he's going to come back the same way, which almost seems like it gives you a reason to keep looking up.
Right. Yes, he went that way. He's going to come or look, we're looking for him. But Christians aren't supposed to stand staring into heaven, waiting for Jesus to return. So imagine with me for a moment that you're a child.
Your mother says to you and your siblings, or you by yourself, I don't know. I always had siblings. There's always a little crew of people getting told things at my house. Says, I'm going to the post office. And when I come back, this house better be clean. Boom.
And you may be standing by yourself or with your little team. Staring at the door. And let's imagine your dad walks in and he says, why are you staring at the door? You know, she's going to come back. What's he implying? Get to cleaning.
You weren't lit. You didn't hear her post office. Ain't that far away. So when the angels show up and they say, why are you staring up into heaven? He's going to return. What they're saying is, didn't he tell you to do something?
Didn't he just he just told you what to do? Don't you all have something to do? And I think this would have begun to make so much sense of all the places where Jesus told the disciples parables, which are stories to this effect. There's a master and he puts his servants to work and he leaves. He told this parable over and over and over again. He told this parable over and over and over again in different ways.
And then he comes back when the servants don't know he's coming. Blessed are those servants he finds working when he comes back. Blessed are the servants he finds doing what he told him to do when he comes back. Or he'll say the inverse. Woe to those servants who have decided he's not going to come back and have started doing whatever they want. Jesus told that parable all the time.
There's this picture of there's a master who's given you a task and then he says a lot. He's going to return when you don't expect. And he says the Son of Man will return at an hour you don't expect. He's going to arrive suddenly and we should have known that was going to happen and be at work. That's what the disciples said. He's just left.
And the angels say, get to work. So the church, because we expect the imminent return of Jesus, is at work doing what he called us to do. His imminent return does not slow us down. It speeds us up. The potential return of Christ does not hinder the work. It propels the work.
And the church has been sent to be witnesses with Jesus. And the church has been sent to be witnesses with Jesus. And the church has been sent to be witnesses with Jesus. And the church has been sent to be witnesses. We say this every week, except for when we're commissioning missionaries or group leaders. But every Sunday, when we're finishing our time together, we'll do it again today.
We say the hope of the gospels in Christ. Jesus has done the work of salvation. He's going to return and judge the world. There's the world is broken and marred by sin. But there's hope in Christ and the plan for that message to go forward that you can be saved by Jesus is the church.
The church is plan A. There is no plan B. Jesus talking to his disciples. There's at least 11 here. We know there's 120 to get together and pray later. So somewhere between 11 and 120.
And he says, you're going to be my witnesses. You're going to take over the world. This message is going to go to the ends of the earth. And then he leaves. And he expects his church to do it. Spencer showed this slide last week.
It's cross the ascension, the return. This is not to scale because we have no clue when the return is. But you're somewhere between those two points. We're going to take communion today and communion is a commemorative memory memory practice for us where we say we're in between those two poles. We're in between those two poles. We're in between the cross and when he returns and we're proclaiming the cross until he returns.
And we're in this spot where we have something to do until he returns. This is this is why we talk about we want to be everyday missionaries. Like when we say we're a gospel centered community on mission or we want to be a gospel centered community on mission. I'm going to let you all in on a little secret. All we're saying is that we're a church. That's all that means.
We're just trying to put some handles on it. We're trying to put some words to it. We're a gospel centered community on mission. But that's all churches everywhere for all of time should have been centered around the gospel should belong to each other into Jesus and should be on mission to see other people come to knowing. That's that's right here. That continues.
When we talk about being everyday missionaries what we're saying is it's okay that you live here. You're allowed to live in Columbia or to Cayce or West Columbia or Irmo. That's good for Hopkins for some reason. That's good. But you're to be a witness.
Olivia is in my community group. She just got back from three months in Cyprus. She was talking about that one of the things that happened while she was there was right at the end. Was there someone she'd been building a family she'd been building a relationship with and they got invited to a party. And she said that they told her while they were at the party. We've been here for over a year and we've never been invited to anything.
And they were just thanking her and saying that she had good friends and they were glad to be there. And I'm listening to that and I can't I couldn't help but think we're surrounded by people who that's the that's true for them to. And I've lived I've lived in this neighborhood. I've lived in this neighborhood. For five years I've never been invited to anything. I've worked at this job for 10 years.
I've never been invited to anything. I've gone to this gym. I've never been invited to anything. There's people who do not have relationships do not have friendships. We live in one of the saddest loneliest environments in the history of humanity. And we have a king who's made us family.
Lord help us and forgive us if we don't go talk to our neighbors. We're to be witnesses. I want you to reframe what your life looks like. There's a reason why we don't do a ton of stuff in this building because the mission isn't in this building. We gather to exalt Christ. We gather to encourage.
We gather to pray. But then we go. I've had people before say things like it's so hard to work at my job because I'm the only Christian. I believe that is hard. That can be hard. But I also want to go.
You mean to tell me Jesus has already infiltrated an unreached people group right here. Jesus is at work among a group of people who don't know him. He's got you there. Are you praying. Do you see the opportunity. Do you see the beauty of it.
Some of you are in class just surrounded by pagans. Praise Jesus. Start praying. Start making friends. Some of you work jobs like that. Some of you are in neighborhoods like that.
Some of you are like my neighbors don't want me to talk to them. It's true. But it's also not completely true. Completely true. It's going to be completely true for some of them. But some of them are just uncomfortable by the idea.
I tell this to our like our host team and our church family. If somebody shows up on a Sunday if you're an introvert and you show up to a church on Sunday. This is your first time here. You walked in going please don't talk to me please don't talk to me please don't talk to me. Somebody almost made eye contact you. And then they were looking at somebody behind you.
You sit. You get up. You leave. You get in your car and you go. Nobody talked to me. What kind of place was that.
There are neighbors who you go say hey to and they almost have a panic attack. But they need people to talk to them. So many of you your story of becoming a Christian is that you are harassed by friendliness. They just kept talking. I couldn't shake them. We kept being on the same shift and they wouldn't shut up.
They wouldn't leave me alone. They kept inviting me to stuff. I can't. It's like the dumbest person I've ever met. Couldn't take a hint but they kept inviting me to things. I finally had to go.
And then at some point you were like oh praise Jesus. I see how good he is. You stood here and got baptized and you said thank you so much that you would not leave me alone and that you would not stop telling me this stuff and you would not stop harassing me. And you're going to stand in glory in front of the King of Kings and you were going to praise him as tears roll down your eyes as your heart beats more than it's ever beat. And it's going to be because somebody was a witness. And Lord help us that we go tell people about how good Jesus is and we don't waste time.
I wonder sometimes if the angels appeared to us if suddenly there were two men in white and they said what are you looking at. What are you doing. Don't you know he's coming back. We've got work to do and we've got such glorious news to share. And if you're like OK I got to do that but I don't know how I don't know how. Well he told you how the empowerment of the Spirit.
Do you know there has not ever once ever been in the history of the church. Someone who went and told somebody about Jesus and that person placed faith in Jesus where Jesus wasn't there and the Spirit wasn't there. It's never once happened. There's never been a solo Christian who's gone and done anything because they only ever are able to work in the empowerment of the Spirit. Not once ever has there been a solo Christian who's ever done anything because Christ is with his church in the empowerment of the Spirit. And when you walk on that floor when you walk down that hall when you walk into that classroom when you walk into that gym you walk in the power of the Spirit to do the work he set before you.
And if it doesn't work today OK the Spirit didn't move in power today but that's up to the Spirit. And if some of you got it I've never felt the power of the Spirit. I'm willing to bet you've never been witnessing. You haven't been doing the job. We're equipped to do the work. The Spirit is at work when we're doing the work he's empowering us for the work.
And there's never been a time where he hasn't shown up and done what he wanted to do in those moments. We just get to move forward faithful and they won't all believe but some will and we're supposed to go because the gospel is wonderful news. It's the fragrance of death to those who are perishing but the fragrance of life to those who are being saved. And we're the fragrance of Christ everywhere we go. And some people don't like it but some people do and the Spirit goes to work and they come to know him. And it was absolutely worth it.
And there's not another thing that you'll do on earth that is worth as much of your time as this. Let's not stand waiting for him to return. Let's be actively at work doing what he's called us to do to the glory of Christ. Let's pray. King Jesus you are high and lifted up. You are exalted above the heavens and in you we have hope not in our morality not in our work not in our effort but in you and only in you even in our sin.
We just get an advocate Jesus Christ the righteous. So we praise you. And Lord may we tell others about you. By the empowerment of the Spirit may we go. May we witness. May we see clearly those around us who need to hear.
Lord let us coach little league. Let us be in the gym. Let us join a book club but let us do it as missionaries who see the value of proclaiming the gospel. And Lord may your Spirit move in power for your glory. In Jesus name. Amen.
Acts 1:1-5
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Spencer. I am one of the pastors here. We did it you guys. We made it through 2 Samuel. 1 and 2 Samuel.
And now we're in the book of Acts. So if you're new to our church, we typically, not exclusively, but the majority of what we do is we walk through books of the Bible. And we're gonna go verse by verse, passage by passage. And we're in Acts chapter 1 today. As we begin the book of Acts, we'll be in this for the next season. We're in the first five verses of the book of Acts.
That is on page 1053, 1053 in your black Bibles. The main text will be coming from the Bible. So we will hold a Bible and read that with this. There'll be other texts. They'll be on the screen. But we're gonna introduce the book of Acts because it is wise when you jump into a book to have some context for what you're actually studying.
So I want to point out three things as we begin to introduce us, I think, well to understanding the book of Acts. If you grab a study Bible, like the ESV study Bible, you open it up before we start reading a book. If you're gonna study it, you're gonna see different introductory elements. And I'm gonna give you three that kind of help us frame our time together in the book of Acts. Genre, author, and purpose. So let me hit those very quickly.
It's important to first know the genre because not all scripture is the same. You don't read Proverbs like you read the Psalms, like you read Genesis, like you read the Gospels, like you read the epistles, the letters in the New Testament. They are all, they come from different genres. So it's important to understand what you're reading before you jump in. The book of Acts is historical narrative. Functions like the Gospels in that way.
It's historical narrative. It's a bunch of stories that tell the story of how the church began starting in the first three decades of the church is what the book of Acts and 28 chapters covers. So from around 33 AD to around 60 to 65 AD, we're gonna read a bunch of stories and teachings that shaped the church early on and that we get to be shaped by as well. So it's one of the longest books in the New Testament. The Gospel of Luke is the only book that's longer and we'll be in it for a bit. So the second thing that is helpful to know is the author.
And the author is Luke. So Luke was inspired by God to write this. So let's introduce ourselves to Luke. We don't know a ton. Here's what we do know. Luke was likely Greek.
Okay. He may have been Jewish, it's debated, but if he's Jewish, he's very what you would call Hellenistic, meaning he's very Greek influenced. So he's Greek. What we also can see from the letters of the New Testament is he's likely a doctor. So likely a physician like Mike Goble who was just standing here leading us in prayer.
He's a doctor. It's also clear that he's an historian. He was tasked with the job of both telling an orderly account of the Gospel in Luke of Jesus Christ and his life, his ministry, his death, his resurrection and the book of Acts, which tells the story of the early church. So some will say that Paul wrote most of the New Testament. It's actually not true. When you go by word count, Luke actually was inspired to write most of the New Testament because Luke and Acts is longer than all Paul's 13 letters combined.
Fun fact. Three, purpose. Okay. Why is the book of Acts and our Bibles? Why did God inspire it? Why was it so important that it became an essential part of what's called the New Testament canon?
What is the official books of the New Testament? Why do we have this? That's what we get to look at today. One of the things that's clear when you read the book of Luke is that there's this foreshadowing of the inclusion of the Gentiles. So that's basically, I would assume everybody in this room that comes from a non-Jewish background.
There's this foreshadowing that the Gospel is going to go to the nations and that we're going to be included. And the book of Acts is going to show us how. How we are brought into the household of faith. So we're going to see this. We're going to look at the values and the witness and the Gospel that spread all that comes out of this. We're going to look at key figures like Philip and Peter and James, the brother of Jesus Christ, and Paul.
We're going to look at all of this. And when you actually, if you look at a Bible and you go to Acts, oftentimes they're going to have the subscript that we have from the earliest manuscripts that says Acts of the Apostles. And if you read that, it may lead you to believe that this book is primarily about the work of the apostles. But what we're going to see is this book is primarily about a God rescuing his people and his rescue plan for the nations. And then even more of the point, one of the things that makes Acts so unique and so essential is it gives us the most comprehensive window into the third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.
We're going to read a lot about the Holy Spirit. No book in the Bible mentions the Holy Spirit more than the book of Acts. It would be wrong to say that this book is only about the work of the Holy Spirit, because God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son are both present and loom large in this book. But there's no other book in the Bible that gives us a more upfront window to the work of the Holy Spirit than the book of Acts, which makes this very helpful for us as we want to be a Spirit empowered people and the season that we're in trying to be missional and planting a church. So we're very excited to be able to walk this book together.
And what we're going to see today and these first few verses and what we're going to see throughout this series can be summarized in this sentence, the Holy Spirit in God's church taking Jesus to the world. That what we're going to see is the Holy Spirit in God's church taking Jesus to the world. So let me pray and then we'll walk through this introduction together. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the good news of the gospel that we just sang about, that we just prayed for, that we just recited from the Scriptures. God, I pray that you would help us be, have open eyes to see how you started your church and what it's built upon.
And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, go to verse one. In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach. So let's pause there.
Out the gate, there should be some questions that jump off the page. Who's Theophilus? When did you do all this, where you dealt with all the things that Jesus began and taught? And that is why understanding Acts, it's very helpful to have a working general knowledge of the book of Luke. The gospel of Luke helps us understand the book of Acts. Luke functions very much like a part one and Acts functions very much like a part two.
So what I want to do a little bit today is to go to the book of Luke and to help us see a little bit of how this helps us understand Acts. I want to go to Luke chapter one. This will be on the screen. You can look up here and hold that place in Acts because we'll come back to it. Luke chapter one says, many have undertaken to draw up an account of these things that have been fulfilled among us just as they were handed down to us by those who were, who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you most excellent Theophilus so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
So this is very similar to the introduction to the book of Acts. Who is Theophilus? We don't know for sure. We know that his name means lover of God. Theo and Phyllis, those are two different Greek words to come together, lover of God. It is very likely that he was a wealthy Christian who put the money forward for Luke to do the work of gathering all these reports.
It takes time and energy and effort and money to go and travel throughout all of the New Testament world and to put together what is the gospel of Luke? What is these stories that tell us about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ? And we should be familiar with that concept because we know today they are investigative reporters, that they make their living, they get paid to go out and do investigative work and put together reports from Bob Woodward and his work all the way to reporters like Christopher Rufo today. They are all types of different people that get paid to put together reports.
And that is what Luke was. He was an historian who got paid and traveled to go and put together this gospel of Luke that tells us about Jesus Christ. And what I appreciate about Luke is that he's not only just giving us a bunch of facts about Jesus, he does the work of organizing it into a story. So when you read it, like the other gospels, it has story arc. So most stories, the gospels, stories in the Bible and stories that you go and you watch in the movie theaters, most stories have a general story arc.
There's an introduction, there's rising tension, so there's going to be some different plot things that happen. There's rising tension, there's a climax, and then there's resolution. That's the majority of stories. And when you read the gospel of Luke, there's an introduction to who Jesus Christ is. He was born. And then all of a sudden, very early, you see the rising tension as he's ministering and establishing and teaching the kingdom of God.
He's got the tension with the Pharisees and the religious leaders. And there's this tension that builds all the way towards Jerusalem where Jesus Christ is crucified, where he is resurrected. And then there's this resulting action, which is the commissioning of the church. And I appreciate that because it makes reading the gospels a lot of fun. It helps us see that he's a good storyteller in pulling all these stories together for us to see. But buried in the end of the gospel of Luke, in what we just read a few minutes ago, is a bit of a cliffhanger.
And I also appreciate the art of a cliffhanger. My oldest recently has gotten really into books. She loves reading. And what happens sometimes is that she'll come down tired. And she's like, I'm so frustrated because I just want to go to sleep. But every chapter, there's just this cliffhanger.
And I just have to keep reading. And it's like, I love that you love reading. We're going to have to learn to live with a cliffhanger for a bit because you actually need to go to sleep. But cliffhangers do that. They kind of leave something lingering that draw you into the next part. And that's what's the genius of the end of the gospel of Luke.
And I want to go back to what we read just a few minutes ago so that we can see that. You get the very end of Luke, chapter 24, verses 44 through 49. This is how the gospel of Luke ends. Then he said to them, this is on the screen, these are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Okay. That's what we call biblical theology.
That's the reality that the entire Old Testament, all of it points to Jesus Christ. And he sang it. Listen, law, the prophets, Psalms, all of it points to me. Verse 45. Then he opened their minds to the scriptures, which is Jesus Christ, opening their minds to understand.
46, And said to them, thus it is written that the Christ should suffer, and on the third day rise from the dead. 47, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed and is named to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things, and behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you, but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high. So Jesus points to the climactic work, his death, his resurrection. And then he tells them in verse 47, really a preview of what is ahead. He nods to, you're going to go and preach.
It's going to be the message of this gospel of his life, death, and resurrection. You go preach that there's going to be a call for repentance of sins. They're going to experience forgiveness that washes and covers us. This is what you're going to proclaim, and that message is going to the nations. You are going to be witnesses of this. But first, you're going to go to Jerusalem, and you're going to wait, because power is going to come from on high.
Wait for the promise of the Father. It's coming, but you go into Jerusalem first, and that's like the cliff thing. Oh, wait, what? And it's like, oh, I want to know more about that. And here's the good news. You don't have to wait a year for part two of the movie to come out.
You can just flip over the book of Acts, which is what we're in. So go back to verse one. Now, we have a good working knowledge of what Luke is doing in the gospel of Luke. Pick up in verse one, the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, verse two, until the day when he was taken up after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. Which just for a moment, I appreciate that what is clear is that when Jesus is teaching his disciples throughout his ministry, the Holy Spirit is present with him, teaching his followers.
Verse three, he presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God. Okay, so there's a period of time between Christ's resurrection and his ascension, which is what we're going to look at next week is when he ascended to the right hand of God the Father. That period of time is 40 days. So in that 40 days, when you look and read the end of the gospels and you pick up in this part of the book of Acts, we don't get all likely of what Jesus did during that period. We can tell that he appears to them at various times.
He's not with them every second, but he appears to them and what he's doing is he's preparing them. He's teaching them the kingdom of God and he's preparing them for what awaits them. He appears to them in Jerusalem. He appears to them on a mountain in Galilee. He appears to them on a lake in Galilee and he's doing the work of preparing them for what's next for the unfolding plan to reach the nation. So he's preparing them, but also what I like in this passage is it points out that he's also establishing that he is alive, that there are witnesses who have seen Christ.
That's why Paul in 1 Corinthians, he points out that there are 500 people at one point that saw Jesus in the flesh. So Jesus is both preparing his church for what is ahead and establishing I am alive through all types of eyewitness accounts that we read in the scriptures. So he's in the period of preparation preparing them for what's next over that 40 days and now he's here verse 4. And while staying with them, he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, you heard from me for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.
So Jesus is getting ready to ascend, but he tells them you're going to wait. You're going to wait in Jerusalem. You're gonna wait for the promise of the Father and that's foreshadowing what we're going to see the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the church. You're gonna wait for the Holy Spirit to come upon you. Now at this point, it's very likely Jesus has taught them all about water baptism from the moment that he's baptized until now.
And they should have the understanding at this point that baptism is the new covenant sign that you belong to God. But what they're going to learn is that faith does not begin with water baptism. It doesn't begin with water that faith begins with fire. That faith begins with fire that comes upon you when the Holy Spirit changes you into a new creation in Christ Jesus. When you believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, the baptism of the Holy Spirit overtakes you and changes you into someone who is new that you belong to Jesus Christ. And then you enter the waters of baptism to declare that you belong to him, which is why we as good Baptists baptize after someone is converted to Jesus Christ.
That's what he's giving a nod to here at the end of this verse five. So he's telling them they need to wait. You're gonna go to Jerusalem and you're gonna wait for the Spirit to come upon you. And then you're going to begin to see this wonderful redemption plan that's going to unfold. And the rest of the book of Acts is how that plan unfolds. God in his people with them, bringing them into his mission to reach the nations.
And I personally am very thankful that God brings us out of the stands and into the game so that we get to participate with our God in doing the most important eternal work there is. Around this time every year, I get excited because football is not far away. Okay. I love football. It's my favorite sport. I like other sports.
Football is my favorite. I like how in August as the first game approaches, how delusional I get into thinking I will convince myself by the end of August that Lenora Sellers may be a Heisman candidate for the University of South Carolina. It's going to happen. I can convince myself of that delusion while also know I can't wait for the disappointment. It's going to be so exciting. I hold those two intention simultaneously and I get excited because I love watching the Gamecocks.
I love watching us take on like blue blooded SEC programs like Kentucky and Mississippi State on the SEC Plus Network where we usually play. I just I look forward to it. I like pro football. I like watching. I'm a huge Indianapolis Colts fan. I love watching every season.
I was like one time we won the Super Bowl in my entire life and I enjoy doing it. I love watching it. But let me tell you something. When I play football, I had way more fun. When I got to play football growing up, I mean Friday nights were way better than Saturday mornings in the stands. Friday nights in the field were far superior to ever watching something on TV or being there in person to watch it.
No, it was a lot more rewarding, a lot more fun to be in the game playing. And what I appreciate about our God is that this wonderful redemption plan that He has given us, that He's unfolding for us, we get to participate in. That we get to wait for the power of God to come upon us and we get to be obedient to where He calls us to go. We get to see the spirit change people's lives. Guys, there's nothing more wonderful in this world than declaring the good news of Jesus Christ to someone who does not believe. And then God goes to work in their heart, brings them to faith in Jesus Christ.
And then 10,000 years from now, you are standing in the presence of Christ with that brother's sister because you leveraged your life now for eternity. There is nothing more important. There's nothing more glorious. There's nothing more wonderful. And none of that happens unless the Holy Spirit is present. None of that happens unless the Spirit goes to work.
We're like little kids that just want to get in the game and we're like three feet tall and we want to dunk a basketball and we can jump two inches off the ground and we're dreaming up just I want to dunk it and then we get picked up and we get to participate. And that's what the spirit does in us. He works in us in a way where we get to be a part of this, the Holy Spirit in God's church taking Jesus to the world. That's what all of this is about. And that's what we're gonna see throughout the book of Acts. The Holy Spirit in God's church taking Jesus to the world.
I just want to give you a preview of what's ahead. I want us to see how this this theme of the Holy Spirit and God's church taking Jesus to the world, how it shows up all over the place. Because we'll work through Acts 1, then we'll get to Acts 2. And in Acts 2 we're gonna see at the festival of Pentecost where all the Jews are coming in to celebrate that at the right time the Holy Spirit will descend upon the church. And then Peter who, think about this, just six weeks before that was denying Jesus Christ repeatedly, stands up what we'll see at Pentecost and preaches a sermon where 3,000 plus people, their eternity has changed and the church begins.
And then we're gonna watch from Acts 3 to Acts 6 as the church explodes in Jerusalem. The Spirit working in profoundly wonderful ways as people are being changed. And with that comes what Jesus promised. That if you declare the good news of Jesus Christ, you will be persecuted. You will suffer and they do. And as the church begins to declare the good news of Jesus Christ and powerful, wonderful things begin to happen, the church begins to be persecuted.
And that comes to the head in Acts 7 when Stephen, a servant of Jesus Christ, is declaring the gospel and he's murdered and martyred for his faith. And then we'll see how the Spirit uses that. Because the Spirit uses that to expand the church further. When we get to Acts 8 we'll see how this plan is unfolding because they're gonna spread when they're being persecuted into Samaria, into Syria. And now the gospel is spreading. And then we'll follow this as Acts 10 to Acts 12 we'll see the finally how the Gentiles are included and how God works in that.
We'll see in Acts 13 at Antioch when the church is commissioned and Paul and Barnabas are sent to go and take the gospel to Asia Minor into Europe and the gospel begins to spread from Acts 13 to Acts 20 all over from Turkey to Greece. The gospel begins to go everywhere. And then as we finish the book of Acts we're gonna see in Acts 21 to 26 when Paul is giving a defense for the gospel as being persecuted, being imprisoned, and that he uses his imprisonment for the gospel to go forward. He uses imprisonment to get the gospel to Rome. He's like I want to get to Rome. So I'm gonna be in prison and that's where I'm going.
And then Acts 27 there's a shipwreck and then Acts 28 he finally gets there. And what I love about Acts 28 is when he gets there guess what there are any Christians there. That's what God does. He keeps working in lots of different people. But you keep reading this the Holy Spirit and God's church taking Jesus to the world.
You keep following chapter after chapter after chapter and then all of a sudden you get to 28 you get done reading it and it just ends. It's like Luke just dropped the pen and said I'm done. It's the wildest thing. Go read through the book of Acts. I encourage you guys as we start this series go read through the whole book. And you get to the end and it's just like this isn't complete.
And we know that Luke knows how to write a story because you can read the gospel of Luke and you can see such compelling story arc and how it and it just that's not we just have this rising tension and it just stops. He just quits writing and it's clearly so incomplete. It's not like any other book in the Bible just stops. And the question that should linger is why. Why? Why is it just that?
And the answer is because the story isn't finished. Acts continues. The story isn't finished. The gospel is still trying. We're still taking the gospel to every tribe nation and tongue. The story isn't over.
The church keeps going. Years ago there were some clever Christians that came up with a church network name called Acts 29. Which was brilliant. But it was a statement on it keeps going. That we are living and Acts continues. That the story continues.
And it does. It continued in the first century as the gospel spread from North Africa to as far as Spain over to India and to Asia. The gospel spread as of the next few centuries as the church began to be further established as they were once a persecuted minority. Faith becomes a majority faith in the Roman empire. And the church begins to grow and to expand and that eventually you follow the centuries and centuries later that there were some Christians who were being persecuted for their faith by the established church of England. And they say we want to go to this new place called America.
And they travel to America and that kind of starts a big wave of Christians moving and pastors moving and missionaries moving to America. And eventually you saw land in this state where they start churches from the coast up to the upstate. And eventually at around the early 1900s people came to this part of the river and they began a new church. First Baptist Church of Casey. And this church ministered for a century and then all of a sudden another church started up in the area of Mill City Church. And then a few years later we merged together as one church, Mill City Church.
And the spirit is still at work taking Jesus to the world. And what I love is that if you've ever read a book, you ever watched a movie that leaves the ending ambiguous? That leaves a cliffhanger? Instead of getting frustrated, what I like to do is I like to dream a bit. I like to imagine what actually is going on and what could be. Like if you watch the movie Inception, you get to imagine does the top fall or does it keep spinning?
And you get to dream a bit about what that can be. If you read a book like The Giver, you get to imagine does he make it? Did he die in the snow or did he make it to experience reality? Whatever story has this ambiguous ending that is unclear, you get to dream a little bit about what that gets to be. And when you read the book of Acts, what I want us to do is I want us to dream a little bit. When we walk through this series, I want to dream about what can be.
That if the Holy Spirit is at work in the church to take Jesus to the world, then let's dream a little bit. Because I'll tell you something, we dreamed for years about doing what we just prayed about earlier. For years we dreamed about planting a church. We want to multiply this church. We want to expand to a different part of the city. And then finally God put the pieces together.
And if you've been here the last six months, you remember to hear this story. And I'm excited about sending out Oak Ridge. I'm excited about our little small version of Acts continued that we get to do. I'm excited that Mike who is just standing up here and that Isaac get to head out with right now it seems like 60 of y'all counting to go and take the gospel to a very strategic place on exit 51 to reach that part of Lexington that expands all the way into Gilbert and as far as Leesville. Like I'm pumped about that. But if we do that and we go, yes, we did it.
We nailed it. We accomplished it. Then we missed it. If we think we've arrived at this, if we think that Jesus Christ's blood was poured out and wrath came upon him, that he conquered death at the resurrection, that he ascended to the right hand of God the Father to be king over all of creation, that the Holy Spirit descended upon the church for just Mill City in Oak Ridge. We missed it. So we need to dream a little bit.
We need to dream about what can be. Dream about how God can continue to work because we got work to do. I'm gonna put up a timeline that'll hopefully help visualize this. You can go to that slide. Christ ascended almost 2,000 years ago. Like literally we're getting close to almost literally 2,000 years ago.
Okay. At some point he's promised he's going to come back. He's going to return. Now you go to the next slide. I don't know where we are in this timeline. Don't get hung up on this.
If you were in the book of Revelation, it's clear that you know we don't know where we are in this timeline, but we're somewhere in the middle of this. Now this expands for thousands of years. We've got a small place in that timeline where we have work to do until he comes back. And we should dream about what that gets to be. Because here's the deal. We've talked about this and we'll keep saying this, that once we set out Oak Ridge, everyone has work to do.
There's no neutrality in how this is going down in January. Oak Ridge is going out and they've got work to do. And everyone who's staying here, we have work to do. So I want you to dream. How are we going to be obedient to the call to go and make disciples? How are we going to do that in our version of the Acts-continued story?
What are we going to do? I want to give you some considerations for how you should think of this. Some of you need to start taking your faith more seriously. Some of you come on Sundays and you go to a group and or hopefully both. But what it has largely been is a time for you to be filled up.
And don't miss something. We want we want you to be filled up. We want you to grow in maturity. But maturity in Christ is not just consuming and being filled up. It's pouring out. That God fills us so that we might multiply ourselves into others.
That we might make disciples. The great commission is to make disciples. And some of you need to press into maturity. You get the wonderful opportunity to do that. You get to go deeper into the Bible, deeper into the discipline of prayer. You get to help you have a zeal for evangelizing, for sharing the gospel with your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers.
And then I hope you get people that are coming around that don't know Jesus or just new to Jesus and you get to sit with them and point them to who Jesus Christ is and say, come follow me as I follow Christ. There's no better way to use your life than for the sake of helping others know Christ. And you get to. And this next season, you get to be a disciple maker. Some of you will have the opportunity to become a leader in training in your group. And you should take it and you should want this because community groups are the means by which we advance the mission in our city.
Okay. Our groups are how we reach our city and our group leaders, you can talk to them. Leading a group is wonderful, but it's also quite difficult at times because the good work that God calls us to do is difficult. That's told to us. And what you get to be as a leader in training is not only grow in knowing more of Christ and maturity, but you get to be a helpful and healthy part of your group. You get to breathe life into your group that when everyone just opts out last minute and the person who was supposed to bring the meat just says, I got the sniffles and I'm out.
But you're just like, I'm okay. Well, I'm jumping in. What do you need? That you're going to be a helpful part of your group. And some of you should aspire to them. You should want that.
You should want to be a leader. You should want to say, hey, come follow me as I follow Christ. And I want to follow you as you're following Christ. We should want that. There's another thing I want to point out. And when I say this, this is autobiographical.
When I led a group, it's reality in my group. Now, I already told my group leader, I'm like, this isn't, this is, this is not just us. This is widespread, but I want to put up group content for a moment. All right. This is last week's group content. This is second Samuel.
We have five different versions of group content that show up. It's typically this format. If you're not in a group, you should be in a group and you'll see this and it's pretty great, but there's a gospel centered section. There's a community section. There's on mission section. Something that I've noticed that happens in not just my group, but in a lot of groups is that we will love discussing the Bible.
We will love getting deep. We'll get the community and everyone has updates and we'll share and we'll talk. And then all of a sudden it's like time to leave and kids are going crazy and someone hurt themselves. And, and, and, you know, because they ran into the wall or something downstairs, not a, not an adult, but a child. And then it's on mission and it's like, ah, we should do it, right? Yeah.
Cool. All right. Let's go home. I'm not going to ask you to show your hands, but how many times does that get buried? That's an afterthought. And it's like that, that needs to come to the foreground.
There might be weeks where it's just like, ah, you know what? I love, but let's, we're eating a meal. Let's, let's, let's share some life updates. Let's, let's have some time for this. Let's not miss this because we have friends and neighbors and coworkers who we need to understand the eternal situation that right now they are journeying towards an eternity under the wrath of God because of their sin.
And the church is plan a for advancing. You are the person that God has put in their life to tell them Jesus is better, that, that eternity is real and God wants you and is for you and desires you. And it's you. And we need to remember that because what could happen when you get to a church of our size is that you can get comfortable and you can think there isn't a need, but there is. And we can't miss that for a moment. So some of you, some of us need to regain our missional hustle in this season as we dream about what we could be in this Acts continued story.
Some of us, some of you need to step up and serve. We've run some Numbers that are out of retreat. We kind of looked at all this stuff. There are 58 members of our church who currently do not serve in any capacity. Now there are some folks who have very, very real legitimate excuses, members of our church who have legitimate excuses for why that cannot happen.
But there's a lot that don't. And here's the problem. There's 58 members of our church right now who've set in their commitment. They're committed to serving the church, but they're not serving in any capacity. When we send out Oak Ridge, there's going to be that number drops to 54. Now that tells us a couple things.
First Oak Ridge is about to go out with a bunch of people who've served for years. And what Mike and Isaac are going to tell you is guess what? There's more where that came from. You got more work to do there. But what that means for us is that we're losing a big part of our church that has served for years.
Like if I put up a chart right now, which I don't have, but if I put up a chart of all the different areas that people serve in our church and I just put in bright colors all the different people who've committed to go to the Oak Ridge church plan and the next slide, after they're gone, it just gets real dark. And it's because we will have opportunities for everyone to pick up a shovel and go. And I'm excited about that. I think you should be too excited about the opportunity to step into Kid City and breathe life into it, to our kids excited to step into hospitality and into groups and a bunch of different ways and to serve and to hustle and to grind because Jesus Christ is worth it.
He's worthy of our worship and our service that is worthy of the gospel going forward. We're going to have a variety of ways that we get to dream. And I want you to dream. I want you to have personal dreams where you pray about this. I hope the series of Acts opens that up for you. I've got some.
I want to share one of just one that's personal to me. That I feel called to this land and in this area. All right. That wasn't always the case. At one point when I went to seminary, I was like, I'm never coming back. I said it out loud.
I'm never coming back. And I came back. Let me tell you something. I love this people. I love this place. Okay.
My family history, they came over like 300 years ago to Pelion and they like never left. Like Pillion, West Columbia, Casey Lexington, you draw a triangle and my people have posted up in that area for 300 years. And I personally, I want this part of the Midlands, I want the Midlands to see scores and hundreds and thousands of people come to Christ. Because there's so, I know you think there's, there's lots of people that are, there's lots of churches that there are thousands of people in and around you that do not know and are not following Jesus Christ. And what I'm also seeing is that there are a lot of churches in our area that are dying as a statistical fact.
There are a lot of churches in our area that are running in the red financially, that if they lose a few members, they're losing a big part of their church. They're physically dying. They are like a roof replacement away from just, it just have to shut the doors. My personal dream right now is that I want to see men in this church aspire to the office of overseer elder pastor. I want to see men in this church who want to step up and become pastors and pastor churches in this area over the next 10 years that need to be replanted, that need to be revitalized, that need life again. And right now there's a massive pastor shortage across the country.
There's a massive pastor shortage. There's a bunch of boomers who are retiring, who are dying, and it's not being filled with younger generations. So what I want to see is men in this church. I want you to pray some dangerous prayers and I want you to ask, do I need to be the kind of man of character that says, follow me as I follow Christ as I shepherd the people of God here or somewhere else? And that's my personal part of the dream. And for the next 10 years, I want to see that happen all over the city.
I want 50 years from now the Midlands to look dramatically different in churches because for the next 10 years, we leveraged our time, our energy, our money, and our people to send out pastors and teams of people to go and make more disciples in this city. And I want it to go further because it's been a few years since we have sent a missionary to the foreign mission field. It's been a few years and there are unreached peoples that get the smallest amount of resources and people. And some of you need to go and you don't need to be here in five years. And some of you need to have a conversation with Ben Johnson at 1040 Hub with Tim.
Where's he at? Tim Rice over there, who works with IMB. We got missions, opportunities, good Lord. I'd love to see someone go to the nations, but we're going to have to pray and we're going to have to dream and we're going to have to own our part of the Acts-continued story. So in this next season, let's dream a little bit.
Let's pray some dangerous prayers. Let's let the Holy Spirit work in a way that gets us in the game. Let's be obedient even when it feels risky, even when it feels uncomfortable. Let's own our part of our very small part, but important part of the story of the Holy Spirit and His Church taking Jesus to this city and the world. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, I pray that You might work in us in this season to stir us towards faith and trusting You. And the fruit of that would show up in beautiful, eternal ways. God, that first means that in this season there are people that do not know You that need to. There are people in this room who do not know You, have not surrendered their life to You, do not see You as Lord, and they need to. And I pray that You open their eyes to who You are and a baptism of the Holy Spirit would take over their lives. God, there are folks in this room that are going, that are going with Oak Ridge, and I am so thankful for their obedience to go, to be uncomfortable, to take risks.
Lord, may You bless their labor, and may there be people in the kingdom of God a thousand years from now because they were obedient to go. And God, may You stir in us. May You give us a hustle. May You empower us for the good work that You have right here and beyond for years to come. In Jesus' name, amen.Transcript
Giving and Sending
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
So well good morning my name is chet i'm one of the pastors here if you will if you have a Bible grab it go to acts chapter 11. we have every year around this time we do a three week give series and so i'm excited that we get to to start our give series today and announce our give project when i first when we first moved here we moved from lynchburg virginia to here to plant a Church felt called to plant a Church in this area i got a job with sears i had been working at sears in lynchburg i got a job with sears here.
Because i want to be a part of a company that was on the rise and really get in get in on the ground floor and i apparently wasn't that good of a salesman because the store i worked at here shut down but um i i got to work in the hardware department and uh right around leading up into into thanksgiving we would put up uh artificial christmas trees and so our whole like half of the hardware department was filled with an artificial christmas tree lot.
And so i got to be a christmas tree salesman and the people who purchased christmas trees from sears some of them were pleasant some of them you know had peace and joy and holly jolliness most of them however did not i did not know that christmas tree shopping was this stressful or frustrating but i learned people would walk in they'd be looking around i'd walk over and say hey my name's chad it's nice to and they'd say hey this is a six foot tree.
But i need it in eight feet it's like oh well okay let me let me see what i have they they'd say things like um uh these are all balsams i need a fur well all of ours are plastic so um okay i'll see what i can do i had a lady one time she said yes do you have any trees that twinkle and i said um how about how about that tree she said no that that tree is flashing.
Then i was like oh well then well then no we don't have any trees that twinkle um maybe squint take your glasses off i don't know i don't have to tell you one time a lady said you have this tree and i said yes i'll go check in the back and see if we have it and she said you better so i just never came back that's that's not true but people who are buying christmas trees are scary and and it makes sense after i thought about it.
Because you know how you're sitting at your house and you think i'm in a terrible mood and i'm very frustrated i want to go buy a christmas tree that's not that's not what happens the the reason they were there was to celebrate something worth celebrating and i actually think it's a really good picture of what happens to us culturally around this time of year we have something worth celebrating we have something glorious and delightful and joy-filled and hope-filled and then we american it we consumer it and we make it this stressful frustrating has to be about perfection and living up to some ideal and earning something christmas is about our lack of perfection our inability.
To live up to the ideal our complete hopelessness it's one of the reasons why we celebrate with lights because we were in darkness and a light has shown joy has dawned we have something worth celebrating and feasting for but we end up turning it into some sort of a consumer nightmare a beautiful picture of that is is black friday we have a day devoted to thankfulness followed by a day devoted to consuming and getting more and having more and earning more and it's.
And so we end up taking something worth celebrating we make it stressful and so one of the things that we do as a Church family is we have our gift series where we intentionally fight that in our souls that we intentionally as the Scriptures say that where your treasure is they were your heartbeat also that we intentionally take our treasure and send it out the door we intentionally take our treasure and put it towards things that God cares about so that in this season we remind ourselves actively and aggressively and intentionally where our hope lies and what the purpose of this season is.
See the reality for us as we enter into this gift series and as we as Christians enter into this holiday season is not the question for us is not do we like christmas because i think we do i think we enjoy it i think there are times where we where we calm ourselves and we delight in the things that are to be delighted in but i think the question for us is do we believe it when you see a nativity scene is it just cute is it just quaint or is it jaw dropping shocking and glorious that the.
God of the universe would become a baby that he would put on flesh that he would suffer and die so that we might have hope does that captivate our hearts you see because if this christmas is true if it's real if Jesus Christ really came to redeem sinners as he really came to rescue us out of darkness if he really came because there is eternity at stake and we are incapable of saving ourselves then yes we have a lot to celebrate we have a lot to be joyous over.
But we're also called to give up our lives for something that matters that's eternally urgent if we really do believe that he's our only hope and that all those who call in his name will be saved which means that all of those who don't won't and so as we enter into this season we don't want to just enjoy christmas we want to believe it we want to have the reality of God redeeming sinners saving wicked people like you hopeless people like us captivate our hearts.
So that we might follow him faithfully genuinely and as if we really believe this so let's pray and then we're going to read in the book of acts some people who are doing that and then we're going to get to join with them as we introduce our gift project for the year so let's pray God we thank you that because of the incarnation because you became a man so that you might save humanity we thank you that we have hope we thank you that we have something worth celebrating that we have joy that cannot be taken from us that cannot be bought by us.
But that was bought by you and say lord i pray that we would be a people who genuinely believes that and celebrates like we believe it help us to respond in generosity and obedience and faithfulness and lord as we study your word today help um may your Holy Spirit uh captivate our hearts and call us into something more in Jesus name amen so we're in the book of acts today and we're going to be looking at the early Church and so this is believers who have been captivated by this idea who have placed their faith in.
Jesus that he died that he rose again that it was God who had come to join us and to rescue us and to redeem us this idea was not uh normal to them they did not grow up with it it was not something that they were used to it was not something that they had celebrated their whole life this idea came to them as news as new information that they might place their faith in it and their hope in it and follow him.
And so that's what they're doing and sometimes i think they have the benefit of that that for those of us who maybe grew up in the u.s or grew up in the south and this becomes normal when it is not normal that God would become a human that he would die that he would rise from the grave that's not mundane that's not ordinary but i think sometimes we we get so used to it we fail to see it with the eyes they.
See it with and so i hope that we would as we read this today so we're reading about the Church in antioch and we're going to start in verse 25. so uh the the Gospel is uh proclaimed people believe and then there's persecution and then they scatter and as they scatter they go telling this message so they're run out of town literally but as they go they start telling this message to anyone who would hear it's not true to to jewish people who would hear.
And then they they eventually start telling gentile people which is good news for for i think pretty much everybody in this room and they also started right now in antioch they told hellenistic jews which were jewish people by blood but that had adopted a whole lot of greek culture and these hellenistic jews believe and the jewish jews are a little surprised so they send barnabas to go check it out they're like go go see and check and he shows up and he's encouraged he's excited they really believe they've placed faith in.
Jesus and so he celebrates with him and then it says we pick up in verse 25 it says so barnabas went to tarsus to look for Saul now if you're familiar with Paul it's the same guy they're calling him Saul here went to tarsus to look for Saul and when he had found him he brought him to antioch for a whole year they met with the Church and taught a great many people and in antioch the disciples were first called Christians.
So barnabas and Saul are teaching the Church in antioch and they're teaching much of what we would probably see in Paul's letters later which is explain to them what it means to follow Jesus that if this is true what does that mean for your life if he has come to redeem if he has come to save if you are rescued by grace alone by faith in Jesus what does that look like how does that affect you what do you do what do you not do and it's all coming out of a response to the Gospel.
So the message of christianity is not here are the things you need to do and then you can have the Gospel these baptisms were not i finally got my life together now i'm a good person you can see me get dunked in water that's not what this was that's not the hope we have if if the video had said that i just wanted to show everyone i'm great we would have all jumped up and said time out no no no no you don't get to be baptized and even.
If your head goes completely underwater don't even count you're just wet because that's not what this is that's not the hope we have the hope we have is that Jesus redeems sinners that we're broken we can't save ourselves and so he's proclaiming this message and he's telling them this is what it looks like for this to lay claim to your life verse 27 now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to antioch and one of them named agabus stood up and foretold by the spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world this took place in the days of claudius.
So prophets come in the Church to prophesy uh the word of God and to foretell that there's going to be a famine how the baptist feeling right now you okay with that Bible stressing you out a little bit so there are prophets in the new testament Church that are empowered by the spirit to proclaim to tell what's going to happen in the future and they do and God empowers this and they they tell them that there's a famine coming and so it says that they told that this would take place.
And then i love that it says it took place in the days of claudius luke's writing the book of acts and he's just showing his work he's like they told there was going to be a famine and it was this specific famine that took place like if you want to look it up look under claudius you'll find him that's what he's doing so the disciples determined everyone according to his ability to send relief to the brothers living in judea and they did.
So sending it to the elders by the hand of barnabas and Saul so let's follow this timeline Gospel is proclaimed there's hope in Christ you can be redeemed you can be saved they believe Paul and barnabas come and teach and help explain what that means and what that looks like then they find out through prophecy that there's going to be a famine there's going to be a natural disaster there's going to be something that comes over the land that makes food scarce and prices high.
And so they just decide as a Church hey we're going to send money to Jerusalem where that's going to be hard hit and they give they send relief according to their ability and this is something the Church has done forever that as uh the Gospel changes our hearts it changes our wallets because as Jesus says our wallets are tied to our hearts so one of the best ways to tell what you love is to see what you spend money on one of the best ways to tell what you care about what you're motivated by what you desire what you want to defend is to.
See what happens with your wallet and so one of the best ways for us to push our heart into places is for us to actively choose to send our money there example if you were going to watch a soccer game you would be uh not interested and that offends a handful of you but for most of you you would be not interested for like seven hours there's no time on the soccer game by the way it just goes and goes they don't tell you.
But if you put five dollars on it or if you do what i do and you bet egg roll station on it because that's the only bet i make egg roll station you'll suddenly care you'll have moved your heart just a little bit just a piece of your heart if it's egg roll station a large piece of your heart but that's that's reality and so that's one of the things that we know is that when we send our money it goes towards things we care about as our money goes.
So do we care like uh my wife and i we had ugly carpet we were annoyed with our ugly carpet but we didn't love our ugly carpet and when our children spilled things on our ugly carpet we didn't care we've replaced some of that carpet and i didn't realize that that was going to make me love carpet and care about it and dislike my children we're talking about painting some of our walls and i had to re-explain this to my wife i said.
Okay we can paint them and i think we should because they look bad but as soon as we do we're gonna suddenly care that our children are holding markers and running down the hall like this why would they do that but we're going to care because that's what happens and so because Jesus has changed our hearts it's not just that we send our money so that we'll care but it's because he's changed our hearts suddenly we're free suddenly we respond in a way differently than we used to this is what he tells the Church in corinthians is he's talking about this exact idea of giving up money he says this in.
Second corinthians 8 9. for you know the grace of our lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich yet for your sake he became poor so that you by his poverty might become rich that's the Gospel was infinitely rich rich doesn't cover it it's a placeholder word that hides a whole lot of things but he was infinitely rich infinitely glorious infinitely welcomed infinitely worshipped and he became poor it's a song we just sang that he created the world by speaking.
Now he's mute he's going to have to re-learn language he's going to have to be static and he's going to have to learn how to grow and he's become so small and then he's ultimately gonna be crushed he's gonna die he's gonna give up his life and he's gonna do that so that by his poverty we might become rich so then Paul keeps going because he's trying to to raise some money for some issues that are going on that they need to raise some money to to give it's a very similar situation we.
See in acts 11 he says for i do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened but that as a matter of fairness your abundance at the present time should supply their need so that their abundance may supply your need that there may be fairness so he's calling them to give money and he's specifically saying the same thing we just read in acts 11 which is they gave according to their ability so he's saying to them i'm not saying that you shouldn't pay rent.
So they can pay rent i'm not saying you shouldn't eat so they can eat but i am saying you've been blessed so let's give you're rich right now so let's give because he who was rich became poor so that through him we who are poor might become rich now i love this i think this is a helpful rule this is one of the reasons why we don't in Christian giving we don't do amounts we don't do you have to give x amount of dollars or whatever we we talk more about percentages we talk more about what are you capable of giving that we would give what we're able to give.
But that we would respond with generosity with sacrificial giving that it would affect how we live you see one of the things that we do as americans is we artificially inflate our need we'll say things like yeah i'm just barely paying my bills and my bills are a very large house three different video subscriptions the internet two vehicles a cell phone some magazines two things i forgot i had signed up for but i'm getting billed for right now we've artificially inflated our need and the reality is that we live like kings and queens and there is a call.
For us to intentionally live under our income so that we might be generous we might be ready to share and so he's saying that those of you who have need to to give and that's what they said according to their ability so the disciples determined those who are following Jesus every one according to his ability to send relief to those who are in need this is something the Church has done forever and we're going to get a chance to do today uh chapter 13.
Verse 13 let's keep going in the book of acts so this is we've jumped ahead a little bit a few chapters but that's because uh we're following the story of antioch and so we've read the story of antioch name in the book of acts in chapter 12 it talks about some other things and then it comes back to antioch and it says now Paul no hold on yeah but i lied about what chapter is give me a second this is going to bother me yo fine i won't find it in the Bible oh one through four i just have it typed up wrong here we got it.
Now that we're in the Church at antioch we'll edit that so later when you listen to it online or watch it it'll seem that was like it was great we won't now that we're in the Church at antioch prophets and teachers barnabas simeon who was called niger lucius of cyrene minion a lifelong friend of herod of the tetrarch and Saul while they were worshiping the lord and fasting the Holy Spirit said set apart for me barnabas and Saul for the work to which i have called them.
Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off and so we get to see the generosity of the Church in antioch in two ways one is financially and two is by sending people some of their best people the people who had actually come and taught them for a year straight the people who had helped found this Church and lead it they sent them away and they sent them away because they were obedient to the to the voice of the spirit they listened to the.
Lord and sin and that's one of the things that the Church does that we send financially to help support those in need we we help with the poor we help with believers in other areas and then we send people there are some people called to go and there's some people called to send and i love the way this is written it's not Paul and barnabas saying hey we were supposed to go do this it's the Holy Spirit saying set apart for me barnabas and Saul.
For the work to which i have called them he told the Church set them apart he told the Church these people are supposed to go and the Church is supposed to set them apart the Church is supposed to send them out and we see that as the Church sends them out they care for them financially as they go so before i get to announce our gift project for the year i want to ask these questions i want us to see something in this text really quickly i want you to.
See that God sees and calls specific people for specific tasks that they're praying they're listening and God says these two names not sin two not hey we need some he says sin barnabas and Saul for the work i have uh called them to set them aside for it now are we praying and listening enough to know what he set us aside for some of you are in here and you're like i don't know what he wants me to do when's the last time he fasted prayed and asked him when's the last time you laid it all on the table and you said.
Lord my wallet my time my life my career my relationships the yours what do you want from me can i tell you something i think he'll answer i think it'll be good i think it'll be terrifying i think as soon as he answers you might be like oh no okay i don't i'm gonna go eat a meal and quit praying about this i'm gonna quit fasting and praying it may feel overwhelming at first but these are the kinds of prayers he answers i think sometimes we're just really comfortable with things looking normal.
For us but i think we need to begin to ask lord what do you want from me my job's yours what do you want it to look like my time is yours what do you want it to look like my life is yours what do you want to look like see that's us believing what we say we believe at christmas that Jesus came to rescue us that he owes us nothing because he gave us everything by grace we haven't earned anything.
So that he would owe us anything and so now we are his we've been bought with a price and we owe him everything and so we come to him we ask what do you want what would you have for us so he sets aside specific people for a specific task and the Church is told this and the Church gets to help send and it's a dangerous thing when we listen and obey this begins the missionary journey of the Church that Paul would be sent to plant churches and that the Church would spread through the work of Paul and through the suffering of Paul that.
God had an intentional design for Paul and barnabas that he would see his work done and the reality is he's placed you where he's placed you and he's given you what he's given you and he's equipped you with what he's equipped you and we need to start asking lord what do you want from me and what do you want from our Church okay so it's our gift project and we're gonna spend the next three weeks trying to raise some money for two things one primarily the.
Second one's like a bonus thing you're welcome we have the opportunity to get behind chris and danielle rocky as we prayed about what our giving our gift project would look like this year we began to ask the lord what would he want us to do we felt called to to help them finish out their support so we had the distinct pleasure of God specifically telling members of our Church family to move to to pack up and go and just so you all know that was a labored thing.
For them that chris and daniel came they have two daughters parker and maggie who are six and nine but they came and chris said he was feeling called to Church planning wasn't really sure he wanted to pray and investigate this and he wanted us to pray and investigate it with him and with his family and they came here to try to see what that would look like the more he prayed the more he started saying i don't think it's domestic Church planning i don't think it's in the u.s i think we're supposed to go overseas the more he said that the more his wife was like i'm gonna i'm gonna keep praying.
Because danielle wasn't super excited about that but God knows what he's doing so if you got to know their family danielle is a spanish teacher chris ran a a home renovation and home building company called house healers he mostly showed up to places that were messed up and helped fix things and God specifically began to work in them and told them to go to honduras and to el progresso and to join with this specific team in el progreso hope through him to join them and what they're doing and they felt confirmed in that and terrified and sad and excited and we felt confirmed and sad and excited just as i'm sure this Church felt confirmed.
In the book of acts that antioch they were sad and excited they were like we don't know what the lord's doing but we know he's doing this we don't know what his plan is but we trust him and we're going to miss y'all but they set him aside for the work so i want to show a video one of the uh i'll talk kind of as this video plays here in a second but we'll start it all right this is coming into june 22 another community we working.
So they're in el progresso um it's kind of base of operations forum and in el progreso they do uh kind of a food ministry and some different ministry with with homeless people and then they have a couple of places that they go to and they also minister and this is june 22 that's the name of the town it's named june 22 after the the date when they kind of organized themselves as a town and it's kind of up in the mountains it's a little bit further away from them.
But they go there and they do some vacation Bible school stuff with children and they do um a feeding ministry they take food up there and it's it's a pretty impoverished town but about 40 homes are there they have a president of the town and they they do some ministry there with them we're going to get to see kind of an area where they do some ministry there's a couple other places campo yano they do some work there and um just felt called to this area felt called to join um hope through him and to to help start churches to help serve people and specifically just felt like the.
Lord was calling him to be there and chris wanted to train some people to lead house churches what christianity is there there are some faithful Christians and believers there but there is a good bit of religious legalism some you have to be good enough to earn this and so chris felt burdened to just proclaim grace that God redeems those who cannot redeem themselves and that he's good to us in our sin that he's hoped for us in our darkness and so this is this is june 22.
And so that was kind of their plan going and you could already see the lord at work that uh in his grace he was sending them somewhere that spoke spanish so that uh danielle could speak the language and he was sending one person who taught spanish and three people who don't know spanish and so maybe she could also help teach them and so i asked how that was going and he said it was going okay but the wearing masks makes learning spanish harder.
But this is the area they went to but that the plans got changed a little bit on them uh because of the fact that right after they got there two hurricanes came through so hurricane edda came through and hurricane iota came through and kind of adjusted what they were planning on doing but in just a second you're going to get to see they're coming kind of the end of this and there's going to be a section where they're doing some what they normally do in this area which is getting to spend some time with the children hey mel city um here we are at june 22.
You'll see this is a lot different than campoyano because we don't have our own building to be in we just kind of sit here on this little overhang right next to the kitchen so they're cooking rice and beans over there and they're going to do birthday gifts for all the children and so she says that they were learning that some of the children had moved and they were also trying to catch up on all the birthdays they had missed from covid and that's kind of their plan their plan originally was that.
But then as i said the floods came through and i want to show you this this is uh june 22 as well hey guys so we were finally able to get out to june 22 one of the communities that we work in the road was pretty terrible but we were able to to get through with some uh four wheeling a lot of spots washed out and kind of going back and forth on different sides of the road but we made it through flip the camera around here.
So we've we've muted the rest of it but this is uh that's that neighborhood we just saw him pull down that's the whole area the main road is right over there that and he'll be on it in a second we'll see the kind of the route that they took getting in this is after the first hurricane the second one was worse than and that we don't have any footage from when they went back out but the water was up over completely over that house that you.
See right there they said they were evacuating and putting some of their stuff on this berm up here and that people came and stole some of it but that whole area has just been under water and as they were trying to to get back going they got hit by another hurricane and so our give project this year is to do exactly what we just read in in the book of acts first to send and to send well we want chris and danielle to be able to stay in country to be completely provided.
For they're about a thousand dollars a month short of their financial goals so the first thing we want to do is try to raise that extra thousand dollars in monthly support so that they are uh set for the year and don't have to raise any more support we actually looked and i told chris i said you know you see the lord at work here that he sent them there and chris was thinking he was going to do Church planting work and maybe he will eventually.
But God sent a house healer when there's a lot of houses to heal you could i told him i said if the lord doesn't know what he's doing he really lucked out on this one which is a joke because he knows what he's doing but that we want to help chris be there we want to help danielle be there we want to help make sure that's the where they're living now so they've all across the top of this they just went up and started putting tents um and waiting.
For the water to go back down and waiting to go back and see kind of how they're going to be able to rebuild so the first thing we want to do is for us to intentionally put into our budget to help chris and danielle stay in country we have the opportunity as we mentioned earlier with the lottie moon christmas offering that's for international missions through the southern baptist and that's so that the they don't have to raise support but chris and danielle felt called and they felt called to go and to go quickly and i think we.
See now why and so we want to help make sure that they don't have to keep raising support and so as a Church as the lord has called them to be missionaries from among us we want to help make sure they can stay and the way to do that will be to go to hope through him.org spencer's going to walk us through this in a minute and to put in a gift and to put that you want it to recur monthly and to figure out what that means.
For you some of you that's five dollars and that'll be uh what you can handle some of you it's 50 some of you it can be 250. some of you may look at this next year and you go you know what i'm going to do i'm going to drive a worse vehicle and every time i get frustrated with my vehicle i'm going to pray for some missionaries that are working in another country to proclaim the Gospel that i say i believe in and i'm going to do that.
So that instead of having this payment i can send money some of you are going to have slower internet some of you realize that the person you're dating is expensive and you're going to be single for a year so you don't have to pay for extra meals and gifts for the sake of mission i don't know what it is i don't know what the lord's calling you to do but i do know that we need to pray we need to ask we need to.
Listen the first thing we want to do is we want to raise what will end up being twelve thousand dollars but it'll be monthly we want to raise a thousand dollars a month for them so that they're fully met their needs are met financially so they can just be there and working so they can be full-time doing the work that's going to be full-time work on top of that this is the bonus one if you were like 1000 a month is nothing to me i have tons of money.
Well we're glad you're here and we've got good news for you they also need money to help rebuild june 22. and so for anyone who wants to give to that we would ask that you would prayerfully look at supporting them monthly so that we can keep them there and working but then on top of that we can give to to the work they're doing at june 22 they said that they think they can rebuild a house for about thirty five hundred dollars.
Now thirty 3 500 is not a lot for a house most of us you can't renovate your kitchen for that but these people are living on a berm under a tarp and they think they can go back in and rebuild the houses they want they might say they said it might cost a little more if they're able to figure out how to build them on stilts so that next time it comes through like this it won't be as bad but they're looking to to rebuild about 40 homes that's what they think they're going to end up having to do and they're committed to trying to get that work done.
And so if we have the money to help support that we want to help that as well but first we want to keep the rockies in country and we want to do this not because we have to that's not the good news of the Gospel just pay a certain amount of money per month and the lord will save you the good news of the Gospel is first really bad news you can't save yourself you cannot be good enough you are not good enough you have fallen desperately short.
But unto us a son is given unto us a child is born and all people in darkness has shown a great light and we get to celebrate like other people celebrate when there's joy at a harvest we get to celebrate because we've been redeemed we've been brought out of darkness and we've been set free and that nothing can claim us or take us now we've been purchased with the precious blood of Christ and we are free and we have eternal hope and we get to joining joining him in his eternal mission towards things that matter let's pray.
God we thank you for your grace we thank you for your goodness towards us we pray that we would listen that we wouldn't just think through what we could do but we would ask you what you want from us we would ask you what you have for us that we might join you in things that ultimately matter and that our hearts might look like we truly believe the good news of the Gospel we thank you that we have something to celebrate at christmas and we pray that you would bless this gift project as we try to support your Church on the other side of the globe in.
Jesus name amen