The Message
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Let’s recap: Promise of the Holy Spirit —> God was at work, God was going to be doing the work through them, and God was going to complete the work.
Tonight, let’s hone in on the God doing the work through them, and through believers
Here’s what we want to remember as we walk through this tonight.....we all have a responsibility, and we’re going to see what that is
But as believers, we all have the promise of the Holy Spirit, we’ve all been given that.....
And just like the disciples, there should be evidences of this in our lives
Last week we talked about how the Holy Spirit evidence itself in the fact that the believers were speaking in “tongues”, and people from 15 different countries heard them speaking in their own language
Now, I don’t know about you, but that hasn’t happened to me, I’ve never been able to speak so that someone from another country would understand me.
How about you? Has this ever happened? Probably not
And honestly, we don’t hear of this type of thing happening too often anymore.
I think some of it may have to do with the ability we have to communicate across language lines almost instantaneously thanks to the internet and translating tools
So what we don’t want to do is think that we have to imitate every act or gift that the early believers were given.
Like me and skateboarding
The same can be said of healings. Are they possible, absolutely, because I don’t see anything in Scripture saying that gift has been completed.
A quick promo: tv evangelists who do healings are a hoax. People like Benny Hin who are millionaires from the “healings” they perform are not Scriptural
But anyways, I say all of that to remind you that there should be evidences of the Holy Spirit in our lives, but don’t think it has to be speaking in tongues or healing people
The Fruit of the Spirit
Galatians 6:22, “ 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”
So the spirit should evidence itself in our lives through love, joy, peace, patience, etc.......
Proof
How do we know if we are living in the Spirit? Good question!
People will take notice
Remember last week in , if you look at verse 12 and 13, when the believers were acting in the Spirit, what did the people say? How did they respond?
Well, they responded 1 of 2 ways, and these are the exact responses we will get as well:
Interest
They mocked and ridiculed. They hated them
Mocked/Hated
Let’s talk about this for a minute.
Jesus told us people will hate us, there is proof of it all through Scripture, culminating with the death of Jesus Christ, which happened 50+ days ago in .
The quicker we understand that this will always be the case, the better followers of Jesus we will become.
Think with me, the disciples just watched with their own two eyes Jesus Christ be crucified for showing love, joy, peace, patience kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.....
We can only read about it, they physically watched it and went through the hours of torture of Jesus Christ
Do you think they understood hatred of the things of God? You bet they did.
But what did they do? They received the Holy Spirit and in boldness left the comfort and safety of the upper room and went out into the streets with a message of love, joy, peace, patience, etc.....
The disciples could have shrunk back at the thought of mocking, at the thought of hatred, at the thought of death
And so I repeat to you, the quicker we understand that this will always be the case, the better followers of Jesus we will become.
In saying that though, not everybody will hate our message that we are carrying.
In fact, when we live lives full of the Holy Spirit on display, people will ask, “What does this mean?”
For instance, we are going to be serving our community next month, in what we have decided to call “The Leaf Rapture”.
Where the leaves are going to be caught up
And the plan is to serve some elderly people in our church, and their neighbors
And do you know what could happen, their neighbors could respond with a “What does this mean?”
But regardless of the response, what do we do? How do we respond?
And that brings us to the title of our lesson tonight, called “The Message”
Because how we respond when we live in the Spirit is more important than the act itself.
There are a lot of people who are not believers who do nice things for people each day, who help each other out.....so our response to “What does this mean” or “Why are you doing this” is so vital.
, we talked a little bit about Peter’s response, but I want to hone in on a couple sections of his response to point out something to you
Starting in verse 22, “22 “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— 23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. 24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.
And in verses 29-33, “32 This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. 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.”
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
And finally verse 36, “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.”
Peter referenced Jesus many times in his message, in fact 10 times in total in the verses we looked at, 18 times total in verses 14-41
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.”
Now track with me here, the disciples had/were currently doing something no one had seen done before, and people were amazed and in awe of what they were doing.
They had 1 of 2 choices to make at this moment
They could have responded with a “Look at me” or a “Look at Him”, a look at me or a look at Him
Peter stands up and he points to Jesus, he points to the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. He points to the fact because of Jesus Christ they were witnesses
Pretty much…the Gospel was at the forefront of their response to the work of the Holy Spirit.
We’re going to come across people in the book of Acts who did not respond this way, and instead chose the “Look at me” response, and it’s not a pretty picture.
People like Ananias and Sapphira and Simon the Magician
But I don’t want to spoil the story for you (hint, you can read for yourselves)
Peter preached Jesus, and that’s what we’re going to see through Acts, is the gift of the Holy Spirit is evident in the believers lives, and almost always Jesus Christ is right there on the lips of the believers
See, we too have a choice to make when we allow our lives to be used by the Holy Spirit
We have to decide if we are going to respond with a “Look at me” or a “Look at Him response”
Do you guys remember when we did Random Acts of Kindness a while ago, where we went out and just did kind things for people (that’s a fruit of the spirit by the way)
But remember what the goal was, what we said to the people when they responded, “What does this mean”? I remember my group’s tagline as we’d buy candy bars for people was “we just wanted to let you know that we love you and God loves you.”
Could and should we have been a little more bold in our proclamation of Jesus, most definitely. But the whole goal of that was to point to God and say, He loved me so I love you and I want you to know about Him.
Remember how you guys felt afterwards though? Some of you may have hated it, but a lot of you responded with how good you felt, myself included
And that’s great. We should feel good when we are living for Him.
We should have a job
That’s what we have to guard against though. Feeling good can often lead to pride, and when we let pride creep in our motives become no longer “Look at Him” but “Look at me”
When we were in Virginia, one of the ministries that I absolutely loved being a part of was praise team. I got to play bass, and I had a blast doing it.....
But do you know what I often did, “I’d come home and I’d tell Savannah, ‘So and so said I sounded great today’ or ‘Our electric guitarist told me I killed it today during worship’.”
See what I mean, I outwardly was even “leading worship” but inwardly my heart and mind would often become about “Look at me”
So what we can learn from the disciples is huge tonight:
Through the Holy Spirit, we can and should be impacting people’s lives daily
When we do that people will respond, sometimes positively, a lot of times negatively
But regardless of the response of people, we always have a message to proclaim:
Are we going to proclaim Jesus Christ?
Or are we going to proclaim ourselves?
Look at , “37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” 38 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. 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.” 40 And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.”
Do you see what happened when Peter and the believers chose to respond with “Look at Him”?
People’s eyes were opened to their need for a Savior
and
People’s lives were changed by the work of their Savior
We’re not talking a small number here, 3,000 people were saved and baptized that day.
By the way, can you imagine watching 3,000 people be baptized. That had to have taken forever! We did 4 the other night and it took 10 minutes!
But peoples lives were changed through the work of the Holy Spirit (God doing the work) and by the responsibility and decision the believers took to proclaim Christ!!!!
Listen guys, just being good people is not enough. Just doing the right things is not enough. Just loving people is not enough.
But when we pair those things with the gospel and knowledge of the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross, awesome things will happen.
says this, “so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”
God’s promise to us is that the proclamation of Him, the response of “Look at Him” will not be worthless, and will not return empty.
Will we always see 3,000 people get saved because of our work and proclamation of Him? Most likely no. If that was the case I’d be out of a job.
But we can rest assured that God is at work, and God will continue the work through us, and God will complete the work.
So how are you going to physically and verbally proclaim Christ this week?