Christ is Life Podcast

If you have your Bible or a device with the Bible app on it, want to invite you to open it up to the book of Acts. The book of Acts will be starting in chapter one, verse one, and going through verses one through 11 in just a
moment. A
few weeks ago, I was listening to a podcast where a pastor was telling a story. He was telling this story about a woman who had had a dream. Well, it really wasn't a dream. It was a it was a nightmare. In the middle of the night, she has this terrible nightmare where she's being attacked by these, these two dark, demonic figures, and she's terrified for her life. She doesn't know why they're there and what's going on, and she's scared to death, freaking out, and all of a sudden there's this person of light that shows up in the room and just completely banishes the darkness with his presence. She figured that it was Jesus, but she didn't know much about him. She wasn't a believer, and so she was trying, in her dream, with this presence of Jesus being in it, and having banished these two dark demonic figures in the room, to make her way towards him to thank him. And she gets up closer to his presence, and all he says is, when you wake up,
repent,
the problem was she didn't know what repent meant. She didn't know how to do that, what to do, and so she wakes up the next morning, and her and her husband go immediately to church. They walk in the doors, they find someone and say, Hey, I need to know how to repent. I met Jesus in a dream last night, and he told me to repent, but I don't know what that means, and I don't know how to do it. Can you help me repent? And so the pastor takes that opportunity to share the gospel with them, to share about Jesus and who he was and what he came to do, how he died on the cross for our sins, how God raised Him from the dead three days later, defeating the power of sin and death forever, and that if they would just put their faith and trust in Him for salvation, that their sins would be forgiven, they would receive eternal life, he would come and dwell them and change them and be with them forever. And in that moment, they both did so. They both put their faith and trust in Jesus. They were baptized, and they've been being discipled in this church for the past six months or so. Incredible story of how the Holy Spirit spoke to someone in a dream to get their attention about him and then lead them to church where someone shared the gospel, where the Holy Spirit worked in and through them to share the gospel and lead them to Himself to the throne of Christ to receive that salvation. But that's not the only experience that we're hearing about these kinds of things. We're starting to hear more and more about how the Holy Spirit is revealing himself to people through dreams, through dreams here in the United States and in certain sections of it, and really through it in other parts of the world, in a very significant way. It just seems like the Holy Spirit is starting to do something where he's stirring things up in our world right now. It's not just through the dreams, though, and through some of those kinds of and it's through the preaching of His Word and through the sharing of the gospel from people who are in the church. I mean, other people are coming to know Him, not just here in the United States, but all around the world. I think I shared with you guys earlier in the summer in our attributes of God. Message series about how a Barna Research study had come out earlier in the spring, and they had revealed that there was about an overall 12% increase in Gen Z and millennials who had put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ and received him for salvation. And that was significant, because up to that point, it had been relatively flat. And in many places it had been going down. I mean, in some parts of the world it was becoming like Christianity was becoming non existence, and so all of a sudden there's these reports of this 12% increase in the number of people that are putting their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. Well, that was earlier this spring, sometime in April, I believe, is when that came out. And just this week, just this week, there was another Barna article that came out from some new research they did. And here was the headline of that millennials and Gen Z Christians are attending church more frequently than before, and much more often than our older generations.
Wow, incredible
and humbling for those of us who are part of the older generations. Here's what the article would go on to say, research reveals a surprising shift. Millennials and Gen Z are driving a resurgence in. Church attendance as reports emerge of spiritual interest, rising faith activity, signs of revival, including Barney's analysis of the recent rise in communities or commitments to Jesus. Church going frequency is another improving trend among millennials and Gen Z in the US, while overall church attendance Trends tend to have been flat in recent years, the return to church among the next generation stands out as a powerful sign of a rising
openness
to faith.
Yes, these
are the kind of things that we're beginning to hear reports about that not just is there a resurgence in people coming and attending church, but there's just this, this new spiritual interest that people have now. That doesn't always mean that people are becoming Christians. They're just open to spiritual things, spiritual conversation sometimes that leads to dark, demonic things when you're open to spiritual things, but there is an openness to learn more about the spiritual realm of things. There's rising faith activity. There's signs of revival, and as we said, there's more people who are committing their lives to Christ, who are putting their faith and trust in Him. Again, this is the kind of thing that we're starting to see happen throughout our world today. It just seems like the Holy Spirit is on the move right now, that he's stirring things up, sparking this spiritual renewal in our world today. And it's it's encouraging. It's exciting to see it. It makes me honestly think of little bit about the book of Acts, where we see the Holy Spirit come on the scene in the way that they moved in and through the early church powerfully, so much so that the kingdom of God began to grow, the church began to grow and transform The lives of so many people. And so because we see the Holy Spirit sparking this new spiritual interest in renewal among people today, because more and more people have had this spiritual interest right now, we are going to start a brand new series today that we are calling life in the Spirit. It's basically a sermon series on the book of Acts. But the reason we're calling it life in the Spirit is because you see so much life in the Spirit after the Spirit was given to the first disciples, apostles, and then as he transformed the lives again of so many within the church. And so this is going to be a verse by verse sermon series all the way through the book of Acts. Anybody know how many chapters are in the book of Acts? 28 this is not going to be a short series. I've never done a series this long before. I've preached an entire book of the Bible several times since being here and in other places, but they've been shorter books of the Bible. And when we've done longer ones, we've taken sections of it and we've gone verse by verse through certain sections of it. I've never done a sermon series this long. It may take us a whole year to get all the way through the book of Acts, but we're going to work our way all the way through it and move slowly and ask the Holy Spirit to speak and reveal His truth around it and what life in the Spirit looked like then, and revealing to us how that applies still to our lives today. And so I hope you're excited to explore this book with me and to learn more about the Holy Spirit. It's one of those things. I'm not going to say it. He being the third person of the Trinity, a person of God. The Trinity of God is sometimes labeled the forgotten God. We talk so much about God the Father and God the Son that we often ignore God, the Holy Spirit in his been labeled before the forgotten God. And so we don't want that to be the case, and we want to make sure that we understand more about the Holy Spirit and His role in our lives and how that plays out. And so let's jump right in. We're going to work our way through the first 11 verses today. Here are the first two says in my former book, Theophilus, I wrote to you about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. Now, right off the bat, I mean the second verse of the whole book. Here, we see a reference already to the Holy Spirit, which is what we're going to continue to see over and over again, but the first thing that we notice is that we hear this former book here. Now Luke, many of you know this, but Luke is the author of the book of Acts, and when he references this former book here, he's talking about the gospel that he wrote, The Gospel of Luke. It's one of the. Four books, the first four books in our New Testament about the life and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and and Luke wrote one of those, and he also addresses this book to this guy named Theophilus. Now we don't really know who Theophilus is. People take their best guesses. Some people think Theophilus was an unbeliever and that Luke was writing all these things about Jesus and these acts of the apostles that Jesus did in and through them to convince him of who Jesus was and to lead him to Christ. And other people believe that he was a new believer, and Luke was just trying to bolster his faith in some way. But the thing that's important for you and I about this is to not get caught up in just going, Oh, well, this whole thing is just for a guy named Theophilus. All right. That's certainly not the case here. It was common within this particular day in ancient writing that someone would dedicate a book to someone and expect them to read it, knowing full well that it was not intended just for them, but a wider audience. And then the other thing that we know is true about Scripture is that it's God breathed. We read that in another part of our Bible, in Second Timothy, and that's a reference to the Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit inspired the writers of Scripture to write the exact words down that they were writing so in that way, that God was revealing Himself to them through them to us today, which is the only way that we could really know God and how to relate him, if he takes those particular steps. So Luke, this is kind of a continuation of his gospel. And notice what's really kind of stands out here, and you probably already noticed it is he says I wrote about all that Jesus
began to do.
In other words, what he's saying in my former book, I wrote about all those things that Jesus began to do there, but now I'm writing about all the things that Jesus is continuing to do, even after his death and after his resurrection and after His ascension, because he's writing about this until the day that he was taken up to heaven, and then going to be talking about the events after that. And so this is what we need to see right off the bat in the opening lines of Acts. This separates Christianity from all of the other world religions right here and there. Because in a lot of ways, what we see here is that there were, were people who were the founders of other religions, who who had lived and they carried out their ministry while they were alive, but then they died, they didn't go on and continue to do anything after they died. They just did stuff when they were alive. And Luke here is referencing that Jesus's ministry did not stop that. Because Jesus is alive and because he sends the Holy Spirit, he continues to be on mission in and through them, and doing things in and through the church, and anything in and through you and me today. And so this is what we see, right off the bat about Luke and his purpose in writing, and what he was kind of up to. And now we see, as we continue in verse three, he goes on and says, after his suffering, which, of course, is a reference to his his death on the cross. So after his death on the cross, Jesus presented Himself to them, to the disciples, and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of 40 days and spoke about the Kingdom of God. Now I don't know if you've had this happen to you, but if you've ever talked to someone about Christianity who maybe isn't a believer. Sometimes people will say things like, you know, I just don't know if I can believe in something that requires a blind faith. Like, like, there's no way to really know if there's a God, he's invisible and whatever. And so it just seems like it's this, this blind faith, if you will. But what we see right here is that Christianity is not a blind faith. I mean, right off the bat, Luke is saying that Jesus appeared to the disciples to offer them demonstrable proofs, like that he had really risen from the dead, that they could feel him, touch him, see him, you know all of those particular signs to reveal him. The evidence was clearly apparent. In other words, there were there were proofs. It was capable of being logically proved. And so when you see and talk about Christianity and try to understand it, know that it is not a blind faith. It is a faith that is based on logic and evidence, and that's one of the things that we draw out, even as Luke is writing in these opening pages of this book of Acts, he goes on now tell us about one of those particular times that Jesus was teaching the disciple. That he had just referenced before. It says, On one occasion, while he was eating with them, while Jesus was eating with the disciples, He gave them this command, do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father has promised, which you have heard me speak about, For John baptized with water, but in a few days, you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. And so he's meeting with them just before ascending and going back to heaven, and he's telling them to wait, to wait on this gift. Now the gift we know is the Holy Spirit that He references down here. But the other thing that you noticed when I read was that he says, hey, just in case you guys forgot, I've spoken about this to you before. I mean, Jesus had a number of things to teach them and said to them over a three year period. And so now, after those three years and His death and His resurrection, and just before that, he's going, Hey, you heard me speak about this, that gift that I told you about is about to be here. Just wait a little bit longer. It's the Holy Spirit. Well, where do we see that? Where do we see Jesus talking to the disciples about that? John, chapter 14, he records what Jesus was teaching them there, and he says, I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever, the Spirit, the Holy Spirit of Truth, the world cannot accept him, he says, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him for he lives with you and will be in you. And so at the time the Holy Spirit was with them, but the Holy Spirit wasn't in them. So he's pointing them to in the future, there was going to be this new thing that would come the Holy Spirit would no longer just be with them, but it would actually be in them, and that would transform and change everything. And so he says, Hey, remember, I've taught you about this, right? This is what we're learning about in Acts. And so wait on that particular gift. Now. He gives us a little bit more teaching around this gift and what is coming. He says, For John, baptized with water, but in a few days, you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Well, what in the world does that mean? What is the baptism of the Holy Spirit? I mean, we just had water baptism that we celebrated right up here. Is that the same thing? Or is that something different?
Well, one of the things that we see right off the bat is he certainly makes sure that we know it's different than John's baptism, John the Baptist and the baptisms that were experienced then those were, those were kind of like preparatory washings. He John the Baptist came to prepare the way for Jesus to get people ready. And so this was like a preparatory kind of washing. It was a statement to say you were ready. You're getting ready for God to come. He would say, Repent. The kingdom of God is near. It's he's coming, right? But the baptism of the Holy Spirit is different than that. It's also different than the water baptism, the what we call believers baptism, which we'll see more about as we go on and study more about the book of Acts. You heard me reference up here that water baptism is a picture, a symbol of the work that Jesus does to cleanse us of our sins and to give us new life in him. So again, then what is the baptism of the Holy Spirit? It's one of those things that you may have heard. You may have heard people talk about it before, and sometimes people talk about it in a way where it's like something that happens to you after salvation, and they'll go, have you been baptized by the Holy Spirit? Like I know you put your faith and trust in Jesus, but have you been baptized by the Spirit? And it's the second thing that's happened, but that's not really what we're talking about here. That doesn't it happens at the moment of salvation. Now we have the privilege of being able to live on the other side of all that Jesus is saying here in the sending of the Spirit. And so when we look at Scripture and the New Testament, scriptures, and even what was prophesied in the Old Testament, we can get a little bit more of a picture of what all happens when the Holy Spirit comes this baptism of the Holy Spirit. That happens, one of the things that happens, first and foremost, is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes to live inside of you the moment that you put your faith and trust in Jesus. This was prophesied all the way back in the Old Testament, in Ezekiel, 3627 he says, One day a day is coming when I will actually put My Spirit, God, the Holy Spirit, will live in you the moment we put our faith and trust in Jesus. That happens. There's a cleansing from sin. That happens because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, and because God raised Him from the dead when. The Holy Spirit comes. There's this washing away of all of our sins, and you are forgiven for all of your past, present and future sins. There's a regeneration that happens. There's you're born again. This is what Jesus talked about in John Chapter Three with Nicodemus, the moment the spirit comes to dwell in you. You're regenerated. You have new spiritual life that did not exist before. We say this sometimes, but your biggest problem before being a Christian wasn't that you would become a better person or a more moral person. You needed an actual resurrection. Your spirit was dead and needed to be raised to life. You needed to be regenerated, and you can't do that to yourself, no matter how good of a person or how well you get your act together and make better decisions in your life. When we're baptized by the Holy Spirit, there's a death that occurs in Romans 63 it says, Don't you know like Paul's writing says, You gotta know this, you got to know that when you're baptized into Christ, you died with Christ, and that you were raised to new life with him, and now you're in this spiritual union with Him, like like you and him are one. He shares His spiritual DNA, so that in Christ, you become holy, you become righteous. He shares those attributes with you, not to the degree that he carries them, but he shares those, and that's part of this new identity that you have in your union. But you're not just united to Christ through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. You're united to the body of Christ. You're united to the head, but you're also united to all the other body parts. First, Corinthians 12 talks about the baptism of the Spirit and being baptized into the body, you are becoming in union with Him. And then, as we'll see a little bit later, in this section of Acts, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, you get power for mission. Did you know believer in Christ, that all of these things right here happened to you the moment you said yes to Jesus. I mean, no matter how old you were, no matter what you were going through in life, whether you really understood everything there was to know about the Christian life, if you simply understood that you were a sinner and you needed Christ for salvation, and you reached out to him and said yes to Him, all of that has happened to you, even if you didn't feel any different at all the moment it happened. And that is why we need to to know and understand these kinds of things. Because so much of the discussion in church, sometimes and with Christianity, a lot of times, that's out there in our culture, is about all the things that we need to do to try to become more like Jesus, rather than the work that Jesus did to already make you like him, you can now live from a different place because you're in a different place, because you are a different person. Now we live out of what we believe about ourselves, and so if you didn't know this to be true, it's going to be hard to live out of the new self that you've become, until you at least become aware. So when Jesus is teaching them about this baptism that was coming, this is what he was saying was going to happen, and why it was so important they needed spending three years with Jesus. I mean, can you imagine three years with Jesus, Christ, the eternal Son of God, and all the stuff that he taught them along the way? And that was not enough.
It wasn't enough.
You have to wait, wait until the holy spirit comes. And then when these things have happened, then things will be different. When we talk about life in the Spirit. What this whole series is about, it starts with baptism of the Holy Spirit. And if you've never put your faith and trust in Christ, you can be baptized by the Spirit, if you'll put your faith and trust in Him for the forgiveness of your sins, and the Spirit will come dwell in you, and it will change things in your life forever. Jesus shares this with the disciples. Wait until you're baptized with the Holy Spirit, and they get confused, right? He's taught them about this before, and you kind of get that sense because of what we see Luke report next. It says, Then they referring to the disciples gathered around him, Jesus, and asked him, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? They're expecting a political kingdom, a territorial kingdom, a national Kingdom. In other words, Jesus, Are you about to kick Rome's butt and become king? Get them out of here. That's what this is all about.
It's not what it's all about.
When we see. At through what Jesus says next, he said to them, it is not for you to know the dates or the times the Father has set by his own authority. Now notice when we read that that Jesus doesn't deny that that's going to happen. He just says, Now is not the time. There will be a day whenever this kingdom that they were referring to would happen, does actually happen the second time that Jesus comes back, but he's making sure that they understand and know that this is not what is going to happen now. What's going to happen now is that he is going to build a spiritual kingdom, and we see that through what he says in verse eight, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. In other words, Jesus, again, says, No, I'm not going to build a national, political or territorial kingdom, but I'm going to build a spiritual kingdom, and I'm gonna start with you, when the Holy Spirit comes on, you're gonna have power to carry out this mission. And then I'm gonna be at work in you and through you, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to make sure that this spiritual kingdom, first and foremost, grows right here in Jerusalem, where you guys are at. And I'm gonna work so powerfully that people are gonna come to know you, and then you're gonna see me begin to take you, and all those who have are part of my kingdom now, and it's going to be in this spread. And the spiritual kingdom is going to grow into Judea and Samaria. And after we do that, and more and more people come to know me, and my spirit goes in them, and they receive that power too. It's going to start to go all the way to the ends of the earth. When you look at Acts, chapter one eight,
this is the whole book of Acts in one sentence.
You want to know where we're going, what the whole book of Acts is about acts. Chapter two through seven is all about the power of the Holy Spirit, working in and through the disciples to be His witnesses in Jerusalem and to grow this spiritual kingdom that he's talking about in Judea and Samaria. Acts chapter eight through 12 is where we see him working in and through the disciples, the apostles and all those who come to know Him, and then all the way to the ends of the earth acts 13, all the way through the end of the chapter, or the book 28 here is what ends up happening. And so as we walk through this series together, and you kind of notice, oh, we're in Acts chapter four, where you go, Well, we're still in this section where he's using them to be His witnesses in Jerusalem. And you know about where it is that we're going now, the other thing I want to highlight here before we move on is that when Jesus references the Holy Spirit coming, he says, you will receive power. Power, let's be honest. Is all one of those things that, in one way, shape or form, we're all looking to get. We want the power. We want power in our lives, over other people in our relationships. We want power in our marriage. We want power over our kids and everybody else in our family. We want power in our business or in this world and people to know us, and a lot of times that can even necessarily be from good motives, but we want the power, but notice what the power that he's talking about is for here, because it's not just for the disciples. It's for us as well. When you get to the book of Acts, chapter 28 you'll notice when we get there, there's no real hard ending. And the reason that there's no hard ending is because the Jesus, the work that Jesus is coming to do that he says he began and he was going to continue to do, doesn't stop. He just continues to do it in and through the church today. And so this isn't just true of the apostles, but this is true of any one of us. When we put our faith and trust in Jesus, we receive power for what
mission.
We receive power to be a part of Jesus' mission, to take the gospel to the ends of the earth to make sure that no one misses out on the grace of God. When you and I think about the Holy Spirit, maybe I won't include you. Sometimes when I think of the Holy Spirit and we start to talk about those kind of things, my mind can go to places that don't necessarily associate with this. We think of the spiritual gifts. We think about charismatic churches and expressions and spirit filled all of these things. And I love the way that Tyler Statton actually writes about this in his book called The familiar stranger, about the Holy Spirit. Here's what he writes. He says, Some use the term spirit filled to refer to churches most active in their gathered worship, communities, enthusiastic in their praise, wild in their worship, and charismatic in their practice. But maybe, just maybe, we've gotten it backwards. Maybe. The Spirit filled community is the one most active in their scattered worship. The life of the Holy Spirit sends us out in power, commissioning us to live in a way that spreads rumors of another world.
Jesus gathers us together. He's done so this morning, he's gathered his family, the church, his sons and daughters, together for worship. And the Holy Spirit dwells in us, and he's present in this place, and he's working through us to bring glory and honor to his name. And it's important that we do this, and you'll see the Apostles in Acts two as an expression of the Holy Spirit living in them, making this important for their lives as well. But after he's gathered the church together, he scatters the church. He sends us out with that same power, commissioning us to live in this world in a way that talks about the good news of Jesus Christ, inviting others into the kingdom with us. And there's all kinds of unique expressions of that. You don't have to get this idea in your head that you got to go stand out on a corner with a bull horn and yell at everybody coming by and say, Repent or burn, or you're going to spend the rest of your life in hell. It's a unique expression of you and all of the people that you're involved in, and how the Holy Spirit works in and through you. But this is one of the things that I just want us to kind of latch onto and not miss. That when we talk about the Holy Spirit and His power, it is certainly going to be a blessing and a benefit to us in a number of ways, but the primary thing that we see here is that he's putting that spirit of power in us to be a part of the mission with him, to participate in the spread of taking the gospel to the ends of the earth. And what? What a privilege to be able to be a part of something so important. I mean, I hear people say things time from time to time, like, you know, I just don't really matter much. I don't really get to be a part of anything that's that important, and I'm not really that special. Well, the God of the universe thinks a little bit differently about that and about you like he thinks that you're so special and valuable that He created you to be a part of sharing his mission of taking the gospel to the ends of the earth. Could you have anything more important to be a part of than that? You are valuable. You matter, and you and I get to be a part of things that really do make a difference in this world and for all of eternity, as the Holy Spirit and His power works in and through us. Luke finishes up this section and says that after he said this, he was taken up, taken up before their very eyes and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly, two men dressed in white stood beside them, Men of Galilee, they said, Why do you stand here looking into the sky, this same Jesus, who has been taken or who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven. In other words, Jesus is coming back again. Jesus is coming back again, and at that time, he will be coming for those of us who are part of the church, not those who attend a church on a Sunday, those of us who have put our faith and trust in Jesus for salvation, those of us who have been baptized by the Spirit and are in union with Him and are in union with the body of Christ, he's coming Back to get us and on that day, listen, our mission acts one eight
will stop. It's
gonna be a great day. It's gonna be a great day in one way, because, you know, we're gonna get to go and be with Jesus and be with Him forever. But it's also gonna be a sad day because some will not be a part of our spiritual family and enjoy heaven with us. But it doesn't have to be that way, because, as we said earlier today, there is more and more evidence that the Holy Spirit is on the move right now, that he's stirring things up in unique and different ways, going to great lengths to reveal himself to other people through the Holy Spirit. And guess where the Holy Spirit lives inside of you and me. So all of this stuff that we see him doing and hearing reports about out there somewhere is the same Holy Spirit that dwells in me and that dwells in you today we're. Share it. We get to be a part of whatever it is that the Holy Spirit is being is doing right now in our world that's stirring all of these things up in such a powerful way and leading to more and more people coming to to know him and experience Him in a very real way. And so the question becomes, if we're sharing life in the Spirit together, which we do have. Then are we open and available to what he's doing in our life? I mean, I mean, listen, what is the Holy Spirit doing in your life right now? What is he stirring up in you? Who is he trying to reach through you. Who does he want to serve and love through you? Who is it that he wants to tell about Jesus through you? My prayer is that the Holy Spirit is putting someone on your heart that he's leading you to this week, in your school, in your neighborhood, in your place of work, where you work out whatever it is and whatever that looks like through the unique expression of You.