AUG 23 2015

Sea Change Church · Adam Stadtmiller · August 23, 2015
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Acts 1, 1 through 8. In this book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up after he had given the command through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them after his suffering of many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God.

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 when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?

And he said to them, it is not for you to know the 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 Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. I want to just say a prayer for you. Father, thank you so much that Pastor Adam is back.

We thank you that you did watch over us as a church while he was gone and that you watch over us at all times. We just pray that he would speak today as if we're the oracles of God, clarity of message, and then open up our ears to hear that we would be changed people as we walk out of here today. Thank you for good fellowship. Thank you for great people that we can fellowship with on Sunday.

And thank you for your word coming to us right now in Jesus' name. Amen. Hey, well, thank you for those prayers while we were gone. I want to share one story. We were praying for safety, and we had a whole bunch of it on the roads and different things. On my birthday, the day after we did the whole renewal of the vows, I wanted to go horseback riding.

So we went to this place to go horseback riding. It was just basically trekking. And we got Lily on it. She rides a fair amount. I don't ride at all. I've had really bad experiences with horses, okay? Not good. So they've bolted on me twice. Once I fell off when I was five, and my foot was stuck in the stirrup, and I got drug around. Yeah, pretty tense.

Yeah, insane. So I think I'm going to break this, okay? I'm going to break it. These horses are not going to, like, intimidate me. I'm a 46-year-old man now on my birthday. Who's the boss? Me or the horse, okay? Right. So they gave me this horse. It was the size of, like, a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It was, like, massive, okay? Immediately, I'm uncomfortable, okay?

We go trekking around. It's about an hour-long trek. And Lucy's on this horse, and Lily and Carrie, and we're going. We're going to line about eight people. And if you've ever been before, they always have a person in the front and a person in the back. And the person in the front who works for the company or whatever it is, the kind of the pace that they keep is the one that everyone kind of follows, right?

And then the, if they go fast, we all go fast. So they started galloping. And I'm like, this isn't part of what I paid for. Like, it was a Groupon. I didn't say gallop. It wasn't Gallop-on. It was a Groupon. We start galloping. What's it? It was trotting. It was, okay, it was a trot. All right, so it was trotting. It was a full gallop, okay? Snowy River.

Anybody seen Man from Snowy River? So what they didn't tell me is my horse didn't like my daughter's horse, Lucy. Lucy is eight, just turned eight years old, the week before we left on the trip. My horse bites Lucy's horse, which causes Lucy's horse to bolt, okay? Now, if you ever want to feel completely inadequate, be on a horse when you don't know how to ride a horse and watch your daughter bolt full speed into the, yes, okay, full speed into the forest, seven years old, letting go of the reins, holding onto the saddle, okay?

Yeah, full on, okay? The lady in front, she cannot take off to go rescue my daughter, which the Groupon certificate did not say. Okay? Because if she takes off, everyone takes off, and then it's like a Wild West movie. I'm freaking out. I lose sight of my daughter around the bend, okay? She's eight, okay, on this horse, gone, down the way. And she's going, ah, ah, ah, and I see her going, okay?

Prayer. I'm immediately praying, okay? The gal from the back comes flying by. She's whipping the thing. It was just awesome. Next thing I hear, we're about, how long was she gone? 12 hours? It felt like 12 hours? It was probably 25 seconds, 30 seconds. We hear, I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. It's all good. Okay? And I see a little bit of her through the forest.

She grabbed the mane of the horse. It wasn't a pony, a horse. And pulled the mane. I guess that's what you're supposed to do. I didn't know that. So she did that. Completely stopped the horse. We were able to rescue her, save her. They put her back on, say, getting in. She takes off again, okay? The second time. This time she grabs a tree, okay? It's hanging in the tree, all right?

They did not offer our money back. We made it in. They changed her horse to a smaller pony, and we made it in. So thank you for your prayers. That was exciting. Let me say that the church that started when Jesus left for heaven and sent his Holy Spirit here was on a similar ride and adventure, okay? If you read the book of Acts, it is like Peter and John and all these guys got on a bunch of wild horses and took off, and they did not know what they were doing.

And if you read it, it's a powerful adventure. The book of Acts is an adventure about a group of people who came together to become a church. And what I love about the book of Acts is in the book of Acts, we are introduced to two brand-new characters. And they've been somewhat mentioned before throughout the Scripture. But the first and probably most prominent character that you see in its fullness is the Holy Spirit.

Got to love the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit really knows how to make an entrance, right? I mean, the Holy Spirit makes this entrance upon this group of believers. Now, we call it a church. But a church, and one thing I want to talk about as we go through the book of Acts, is the church is you. We tend to have this idea that, you know, when you talk about churches, well, they have this worship leader and this pastor or the children's ministry is really good.

I think we're missing the point, and I think we're doing a disservice to what the church really is. Because as we will see in the Scripture here, the church is you. The church is a bunch of individual people that are called specifically to do the things that Jesus did. And to do the things, to carry on doing the things that he did. And so, as we read this book, I want to put us, I want you to put yourself in the story.

In the same way we did in the Gospel of John, put yourself in the adventure of the book of Acts. Church is an adventure. By the way, right now, I think we are living in times that equal what the church in Acts was seeing in the first century. We are living in some exciting times to be a believer. I know it's very easy to think the sky is falling, and I will agree that the world is terminally ill.

The world is terminally ill, but I want to say also that as believers and followers of Jesus that we have the cure. And it's not a placebo. It is the real elixir. It is the real prescription that brings healing to this world. And I got to experience that with so many people on this adventure that we took as we were traveling. So many people got to share the love of Jesus.

I want to tell you, I'm out of the closet, okay? The whole seeker-sensitive guy, you know, I was told to be in the 90. I'm just out of the closet. People say, why are you so happy? Because Jesus loves me. I just tell them. Like, you know, everyone else is out of the closet. I'm out too, okay? I'm out of the wardrobe. It's actually a walk-in wardrobe.

Okay, I'm out. I love sharing authentic faith with people. I love telling people about Jesus and the reason for my hope. And I had so many people, and I know you've experienced it too because you guys are a great church and body of believers, that said to me, like, man, you're just, the gal at Starbucks I met, her name was Eva. She worked at the Starbucks in Ealing.

At the end of, I just talked to them. You know, some of the best evangelism is a smile. Try it. Just smile at people. Like, people don't smile anymore. Just ask them questions about themselves, generally being interested in people. I found the more I realize that Jesus is interested in me, the more I am interested in other people. I remember she said to me, at the end, she goes, what do you do for a living?

I got to know. And I said, well, I'm a pastor. She goes, you're a pastor. Really? I never would have thought that. I said, ah, that's a trick. I snuck up on you. She didn't know I was a pastor, you know, and I was coming. She just wanted to know. She goes, what is, what's the reason for your hope? I spent two hours talking to a Jehovah's Witness, a friend of ours, he was the nanny from Spain, and he was in a park.

We had such a great conversation. I got a text this long from him. He was 21 years old. The guy knows his Bible. I got to say, one thing I really respect about Jehovah's Witness is how much time they put into knowing the Bible. I don't think, and he had said to me, you're one of the first Christians that I've met that actually could speak back to me with actual scripture.

I thought that was really interesting that he said that. He talked about a couple of different churches. He says, you know, I talk to people, and they just don't have any understanding of what the word is. I said, that's one reason we need to know our Bibles. But he wrote me a beautiful text, 21-year-old kid. He says, hey, I'm just a young kid.

I know you're a pastor, but I just want to thank you for being able to speak humbly and in a way that presented Jesus, and I really respect your relationship with Jesus. We were going to try to get together again. We didn't. But it was a time with the Holy Spirit where we were able to have conversation and talk, and hopefully you were doing that because you're the church.

This is not the church. The ministries are not the church. I want to say you're the testimony. You are the gospel. You are the curriculum. You know, a lot of people ask me, what curriculum are you using in your children's ministry? And I think it's important that we have curriculum. But I want to say Lisa and Kim are the curriculum. They are the curriculum.

Kai and Bev and you others, the people that are in the kitchen, we are the curriculum. We are the very history, the fabric of the church. And the book of Acts is a beautiful story of an adventurous church. I want to say this is an adventurous church. If you've been here for the last year and a half, as we have grown, I'm excited to see what God is doing.

I'm excited to see him weave the history of our church here. And I'm excited to see what we're doing in this little corner church as you go out and change the world. And so we have these new characters that are introduced. One is the Holy Spirit. We're going to talk about the Holy Spirit. And we're also going to take some time throughout this series on the book of Acts to experience the Holy Spirit after the service, to have some time to come forward and have maybe, you know, be laid out of hands and to really press into the things that Jesus and that the first church did.

And the second that we see, that we see introduced is the person of the church. And I've mentioned that. It's a new character. You know, the people of God had been mentioned before. But now we have this word here, church. We have the word where God is doing something unique. And when a group of believers come together, they not only become the body, the actual body of Christ.

You get that. That we, because the Holy Spirit lives in us, we are the representation. As if Jesus never left. You see, Jesus left. But what he left behind was us to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And that group, that indwelling, the people that have been indwelt by the Holy Spirit form a body. The body of Christ. But another word for that is church.

And so we're going to be experiencing this church. But also, I want this book to challenge us as a church. I want us to look at this as a church and say, where are we going? What kind of people do we want to be? What kind of church do we want to have? You see, one of the things I love about this church when I hear other people, and maybe many of you are here today.

You're new. The church, I mean, the pews are getting more full if you've noticed that. One of the reasons is it isn't I hear because, hey, you've got these great programs going on. Matter of fact, we're still figuring out our programs. I think our programs are pretty fledgling. You know what I mean? Even our mission stuff, we're just kind of getting it off the ground again.

You know, our children's ministries, we finally got a check-in system. I mean, there's so many things that I would consider a little bit rustic in regard to our programs. But I'm cool with that. Why? Because of our people. There is a love that I've experienced in this congregation and in you and in the care that you have for one another. And are we perfect?

No. Do we step on each other's toes? Most definitely. But there is a love here, and that is the church. And so when we talk about the church, I want you immediately to think from this point on as we go through this scripture or through this book of people. When we say the church, think of people. When we talk about La Jolla Christian Fellowship, don't think about the pastor who speaks.

But think of us as a people group. And so that is one thing that I want to talk about. The two new characters that we're going to look at. The church and the Holy Spirit as we go through it. Now as we look, we come to the disciples that are asking the question. And you'll see the title of the sermon on the top of your notes. What do we do now? How many of you ask yourself that question on a regular basis?

Okay. That is the core question of my life, by the way. On a regular basis, I'm asking myself, oh my goodness, what do I do now? What's interesting is like an answer has become for me so often I just got to pray. When my daughter took off at a gallop, okay, running through the woods, the first instinct, well I wanted to get off and run, but my first instinct was to pray.

I said, God, you're in charge of this. You know, that could have gone really bad. That could have gone really bad. And I thought to myself, you know, there's been people before, maybe some of you have experienced things like this. You come home without your daughter when an experience happens like that. It was funny and afterwards we're very proud of her and she got a little ribbon for being able to do that.

But it was, you know, it, it, it, it, um, really a blessing that God protected her. And when I don't know what to do, I want to say that the thing that I do is often now is my response is to pray. You know, um, somebody said to me the other day, you know, well, it looks like you landed on your feet again. You always land on your feet. I'm thinking, what a joke.

I feel like I'm hanging on by a, a hair, my hair's getting thinner. Okay. I don't know if any of you, like just, I didn't think you could see that with a microscope. You know what I mean? I'm hanging on by a thread of grace. I get that. People say, oh, 18 years. That's a, a thread of grace. Our marriage is a thread of grace. There's great days. It's easy to make it feel, but it takes, maybe if you've lived a little bit of life, you realize that one in one thing that you didn't expect that happens in a day can change everything.

Have you realized that to this point in your life? I realize that the one thing that can happen, I'm back to grace. That's one thing I want to speak about is this is a church in Acts that has the hallmarks of grace upon it. The grace of God. And so we see that. So we go back to prayer. And if you look at the Acts, the thing that they did is they were, put yourself in their position.

They had been with Jesus for three years. Three and a half, or three years, about three and a half powerful years of ministry. They believed that Jesus was going to restore the kingdom of Israel. Their whole idea was if we can get the government right, then the rest of the world will be okay. By the way, Christians still think that. Okay? Right.

If we can get the government right, if we can get the right person in office, and we can restore the government, then God's kingdom, then everything's going to be sorted out. I want to say that hasn't worked for multiple thousands of years, and it's not going to work now. Not that we don't want godly people in government. Not that we don't vote.

Not that all those things. But the answer is not the next person who's going to get into government. And if you're focusing on that, and it's ruining your day on a regular basis because of the paltry candidates that we have surrounding us on a regular basis that we see, I would say don't be discouraged. Look up. Because the book of Acts ushers in a new kingdom and a new king that is God himself.

And that is the answer that the church speaks about. And so the disciples are saying to themselves, are you going to restore it? And eventually, they finally get on the right page with Jesus. Because Jesus cared about Israel. Jesus cared about the governments and these different things that were happening. But he wasn't about restoring the kingdom of Israel at that time.

And finally, as you see, as you read through the book of Acts, as they even ask in this story here, and as you'll see in verse 6. Let me read it. So when they had come together, they were asking him. This is Jesus showing back up after he had been resurrected. Lord, is it at this time now that you're restoring the kingdom of Israel? I bet he just rolled his eyes.

Like, really? Oy vey. Oy vey, guys. Jewish reference there. And he said to them, it's not for you to know the times or epics which the Father has fixed by his own authority. You know there are certain churches and Christian ministries that make it their entire business to figure out the times and the epics that the Father has set by his own authority.

Anybody seen that? Okay. I think it's important that we need to be aware that God is on the move and things are happening. But Jesus said that these things, don't concern yourself with these things. Concern yourself with what? Loving people. With sharing the message of salvation. I want to say if there's a hallmark of this church, it is to give people the thing that is going to save them through eternity.

The love of God. The death of Jesus on the cross. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead. That he is coming back to rescue you because he loves you. Because he cares about you. Because he's a great God that thinks you're the best thing he ever created and wants to spend eternity with you. That's the message. And if we are going to err on any message, it's going to be the message of Jesus Christ crucified and coming back again.

We're going to talk about revelations. It's there for a reason. But when it comes about, we're not going to make it our business to figure out the times and the epics. Because Jesus told us not to. Does that make sense? If I'm rearranging your theology right now, I apologize. Kind of. So we see the disciples here are experiencing the shock and awe of Jesus being gone.

How many of you have experienced that as of recently? Where you feel like Jesus just isn't in the mix anymore. I say Jesus, for some reason, is in the business of doing little escape routes from our lives. Little vanishing acts for the purpose that you can get to know him a little bit better. You see, he never leaves. Okay? But our perception of whether he is carrying us along the way oftentimes become muted by the circumstances.

Does that make sense? And so regularly we find ourselves in a position or in a situation, me on a weekly basis, if not a daily basis, where I'm saying, I'm in over my head. I don't know if any of you have felt in over your head. But I oftentimes feel in over my head. I have no, let me just tell you this. In my own power, I have no ability to be the lead pastor of this church.

I do not have enough gifting. I do not have enough moxie. I do not have enough determination, patience, whatever it is, you know, enthusiasm to be the pastor of this church, to be the lead pastor. I just don't. I cannot do it on my own strength. I could fake it. I could probably build something that looks cool and whatever. But would it be doing the work of the Holy Spirit in the community of La Jolla?

I know I couldn't do it. It is a thread of grace that keeps me going every single day. And it is the power of the Holy Spirit and the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. And so they're asking themselves what to do. Let me say, here was the answer. And as you read through the passage, this is what Jesus told them to do. When you get to the point where you don't know what to do, when Jesus feels like he's not on the scene in your life, it says this.

Wait for the Holy Spirit and get back to the business of doing what Jesus did. That was it. That was the game plan. Do you understand that when the disciples got back together after Jesus ascending into heaven, they had no game plan. Other than to go to an upper room to wait and to pray. And there was people outside that were trying to kill them.

There was no game plan. Peter didn't get up and say, okay, now we're going to be reaching Samaria. And in 2,000 years, there's going to be this thing called the internet. We're going to have to figure out that because it's going to be really stressful. And all these things are going to be happening. And we've got to figure out how we're going to get to Macedonia.

There was no game. Do you get that? How many of you need it? Don't raise your hand. How many of you need a game plan before you can have peace? I'm not saying that we don't want to make plans. You know, the Bible talks about, you know, if we don't plan, then things can fail. But in the end, the core of the scripture says that all plans are established by who?

God. I'm not saying we don't plan. We have vision for this church. We have all these visions. I think that stuff is super important. But it's always secondary to one thing. Waiting upon God to move. Calling upon him in prayer. Knowing that he is more important than your plans. And at any time, he can change the plan because the plans, I have found, always change.

And so what was the game plan? They went back. They got in an upper room. It says they gathered regularly for prayer. And they waited. And what happened? They were indwelt by the power of the Holy Spirit. Let me just say, if you're in a place right now where you don't know what to do, where you've come to the end of your wits, whether it be in your relationship, whether it be with your finance, whether it be with your health, let me encourage you to go lock yourself away, wait on the Holy Spirit, and pray.

And ask God to intercede. Because that's all that they did. And they waited on the Holy Spirit. And they just waited. And he, by his perfect timing, didn't make them wait very long. Because as we'll see, as we get to Acts chapter 2, the Holy Spirit comes with an entrance and he comes in power. And as soon as you have the Holy Spirit in the mix, everything you do becomes exponential.

Do you get that? Everything becomes exponential. Everything becomes quantified. Everything becomes magnanimous. Everything becomes glorified. Everything becomes, I can't think of another adjective, but it does. The Holy Spirit has to be a part of it. And they went and waited for the Holy Spirit. I want to say there's a lot. It is possible to be a believer, to be sealed with the Holy Spirit, but not to be walking in his fullness and his power.

And we see that in the scripture. And we'll talk about that as we go through it. Let's look at verse 1 as we get there. And I know what time it is, and I'll be banging through these pretty quick as we go through it. But the thing that stuck out to me first, when I came up with the answer to the shock and awe of Jesus being, feeling like he has gone from your life and you don't know what to do, came from this verse 1.

He says, the first account, this is Luke speaking, the first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach. Whoa. As I stopped there and I looked at it, the thing that stuck out to me was began. And I thought, why didn't he say did? Why didn't he say did? Because if he said did, there would be a completion to the work.

But when we see in the book of Acts that it says that the first account I compose about all that Jesus began to do gives us the assumption that there's more to be done. But Jesus is gone. So how is this going to happen? Let me give you the answer. You. You're the curriculum. You're the answer. You're the worker. You are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

You are the hope of the church, the hope of the gospel, the hope of salvation, Jesus Christ message in you. And I had never seen that before in the scripture. And so all of a sudden I realized that the book of Acts is a completion of what Jesus began to do. And I want to say that it began with that first church and it goes on to today, to this afternoon, to the things that you will do this evening, that we are continuing the work that Jesus began to do.

I want to say, so I came up with this answer. You wait on the Holy Spirit and then get back to the business of doing what Jesus did. I want to say, do you know what Jesus did? That's the key. That's why it's so important to be in love with the gospels, to be in love with Jesus, to be in love with people. You know, Jesus was in love with people.

He just loved people. Four years ago, I began to pray, God, help me love people more. I want to say, I just, I was pretty grumpy before then. I just wouldn't, really wouldn't ask him any questions. My wife would say, why don't you ever ask anybody else a question about themselves? Because I'm my favorite topic. That's why. I'm my own little Facebook, man.

I don't know if anybody else resonates with that. I don't want to be too authentic. But about four years ago, I just said, God, I just want to love people more. You know what God began? I didn't even, I didn't really see it coming. It just began to happen. And as some different suffering things went on in my life, and I began to relate to people more and their sufferings, I just began to like, people are interesting.

You know, you know what? There's a lot of, you can read about all these people in the newspaper. And if you read the newspaper on a regular basis, all you're going to see is the worst of people. But I found out as we were traveling, and especially as I come back here, people are cool. You know, we all have our little things about us, but people are God's handiwork.

And the God stamp of his image is upon them. And Jesus loves people. And we as a church want to love people as well. And so we begin to do what Jesus began to do. And I want to say today, go out and do what Jesus did. Just go be Jesus on the street. Take it to the street. Christ began, you'll see in your notes, Christ began a work that we are to complete.

And he finished a work that we are now to access and leverage. Let me just say this. He began a work that is not completed, while at the same time completing a work that we are to leverage. You see, when Jesus was on the cross, when he died, what did he say? It is what? Finished. He completed a work. So why does Luke then come in the book of Acts and say the work that he began?

Because Jesus says it is finished. Because he was completing a work in the midst of, and a work of drawing us back into relationship with the Father. That once we ask Jesus and believe in him in faith and believe that he is God. This is one of the things my friend, the Jehovah Witness friend of ours, we had a little bit of a difference in. Not believing that Jesus is God.

And so we had a conversation for about an hour and a half about that. But the Christian Protestant understanding is this, is that Jesus is not only the Son of God, but he is God himself. We had a beautiful conversation about it. And I got to understand Jehovah Witness thinking a lot more. It didn't change my thinking. But at the same time, we had a really good conversation.

When Jesus died, he completed that. And when he completed the work of the separation, building a bridge, a separation, the gap between God and man that was created by sin in the first chapter of Genesis, when we see that, that Jesus died on the cross, he fulfilled it and he completed it and he sealed that work and it was finished. And he opened us up to a power and to a kingdom now that, as Hebrews says, now when you pray, you don't have Moses go pray for you and then come back and give you an answer.

We can boldly go before the throne of God. Do you know if someone would go into the temple before, what would happen to them? They would die. Because they could not stand in God's presence because of that separation unless God allowed it through sacrifice and one person would go in. People have often said to me, man, wouldn't it be great to be Moses?

Wouldn't it be great to be Moses just to be able to go and look at the Lord and be able to see him face to face? Moses would, he would die to be like us, to have the Holy Spirit live in him? Do you get that? He got to see God face to face as a friend sees another friend. The scripture says, he didn't have the Holy Spirit live in, I have the Holy Spirit in here.

God dwells within us. You don't go into the temple to see God is what he did. You become the temple of God. Do you get that? You see, the Holy Spirit, when he seals you through salvation, you actually become the living temple of God in the body of Christ. And so Jesus completed this. John 14, 2, Jesus said, truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also greater works than these he will do because I go to the Father.

And so Jesus says that we are completing a work that he began. He says that we're going to go on to do greater things. But then, like I just said, he talks about now we have the ability that since he has completed the work of salvation to leverage the entire resources of heaven. Let me say that again. How many resources does heaven have? 612? 432?

Infinite. Heaven is infinite with the amount of peace. God has no lack. As a matter of fact, it's not even quantifiable because there's no measuring stick in heaven. Although in the scriptures it talks about, for our help, it measures heaven. It says how long it is and why. But when it comes to God's infinency, infinency? Is that a right word? How infinite God is.

There is no measuring to the amount of love he can give to you. To the amount of peace. To the amount of hope. To the amount of care that God can have. And when Jesus completed the work on the cross, we can access all of that now and you can leverage that now as a church. The Holy Spirit now is your co-laborer that when you begin to work, that he comes alongside you and takes the little things that you can do and quantifies them.

And here we see it in Ephesians 1.3. Blessed be the God of our Father, of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with how many spiritual blessings? Every. How many? Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Here's what's happened. Now you can go on to complete the work of Jesus with complete access to all the power of Jesus. That's powerful.

Moses did not have that. Okay? Before the Holy Spirit came, we did not have that. Let me say, that's the reality. As a believer, if you have asked Jesus to save you from your sins, that you believe in his resurrection and the work he did on the cross and believe that he was God, that you now have access to all the power of the Holy Spirit. And so we see him, the Holy Spirit, making his entrance after that.

Well, what should I look for and what can it look like? When the Holy Spirit comes upon people and comes upon a church, here's one thing I want to talk about. What should it look like? I think we really need to be careful with this question. And look how I worded this. What should that look like when the Holy Spirit comes upon a church and a people?

Or what can this look like? Here's where I think we run into problems. When we get an idea of if a church is filled with the Holy Spirit, then it must look like this. It's got to have this going on. And if this isn't going on, then it's probably not filled with the Holy Spirit. And if this isn't going on, then it's not filled with the Holy Spirit.

What I would say is, what can it look like? What can it look like when a church is filled with the Holy Spirit? Because oftentimes we tend to allow individual people to be different and to be Christians and not say they all have to be the same. But oftentimes we will say that if a church needs to have certain characteristics, and I believe that there are some characteristics that a church needs to have, and we'll talk about that.

But some would say that if everyone in a church does not speak in tongues, then it is a representation that they have not been filled with the Holy Spirit. I would say that that is not true. First Corinthians tells us that that is not true. And we'll get into the gifts of the Spirit as we do this walk through the book of Acts. But what I want to say is when we look at Acts, the church in Acts, we have to realize one thing, and this is central.

It was a unique church. And every church in the world that has come after it is not supposed to look exactly like it did. Okay? There are people who believe that you need to look exactly, that this was the most perfect church in the world, because it was the first one, and that every church needs to look exactly like this. We even have certain churches that are set up on that model.

I don't think it's bad if your church looks like this. I think it's awesome. But the church at Jerusalem was a unique church, different from the churches you'll see in Corinth, different from the church at Philippi, different from the church at Rome. And this is one thing that I have learned, is that just like God has given churches, or excuse me, people, different personalities to express the beauty of who he is.

I believe that every person, God creates them uniquely, to express the beauty of who he is. Enough people could never be created to express all that God has in his infancy, to share with us about him. Kai shares with me bits about who Jesus is when I spend time with him. There's something about him and about Bev, that I see Jesus in them, and experience God in a new way.

And in the same way that each person is different, I believe that God does the same thing with churches. Excuse me. I believe that the churches can have different personalities, and not all be the same, and they don't all have to be the same. And so, where one church might be a church that is totally focused on acts of service. You see this church, and you see the beauty of God in their acts of service.

And the Holy Spirit is working powerfully through a church that does acts of service. Another church is completely into, perhaps, prophecy, or the things of the Spirit. Not all churches need to be into those. Other churches represent God's spirit of evangelism. Have you seen this before? That you go to different churches, and each of them represent a difference in the Holy Spirit.

What I want to do is give the freedom for different churches to be who God calls them to be. I want to say, at La Jolla Christian Fellowship, who is God calling us to be? And do we have to look exactly like the church at Acts in order for that to happen? I would say no, but there are some things that need to be common. Turn your notes over, if you would, to the back.

I want to read Romans 12. Romans 12, 4 through 5 says this, For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function. So in Christ, we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to it from all of others. Each of us has different gifts according to the grace given to each of us. If yours is prophesying, then prophesy according to your faith.

If it is serving, then serve. If it is teaching, then teach. If it is to encourage, then give encouragement. If it is giving, then give generously. If it is to lead, then do it diligently. If it is to show mercy, then do it cheerfully. I want to say that I believe that churches, since they are made up of individual people, fall under the same category as this.

There are certain churches that are gifted with evangelism. I want to say that all churches should be evangelizing. You get that. But there are certain churches that just seem to have an anointing, right? There just seems to be an anointing where people are getting saved there on a regular basis. There's other churches that are teaching. They're just teaching churches.

They're so good at teaching. And God has just blessed them. And we see this. There's a diversity. And what I want to do is give freedom within the body of Christ for churches to basically excel in what God has blessed them to do. Because you look at the Salvation Army. What do they do? They evangelize, but they serve the poor. The Salvation, it is an amazing church.

Are they a church that is known for their, you know, prophetic understanding of the word? Probably not that much. But thank God for the Salvation Army. I look at the Vineyard and what happened with the Vineyard Church. I was a pastor at the Vineyard and how they brought worship in. John Wimber, was he the best teacher in the world? I don't think he was the best teacher in the world in regard to teaching and exegeting the scriptures.

But when it came to releasing the power of the Holy Spirit, when it came to bringing in a new brand of worship in the 1980s, God anointed them for that. So often we look at other churches and say, well, you know, they're off on this. They're good at this, but they're off on that. So we just write them off. As opposed to saying, maybe God has a larger picture of the quilt of his church.

And we allow them to focus. Now sometimes we can get so focused, obviously, that we miss the point that Jesus is Lord. And we can get so much into doing the thing that we're doing that Jesus gets pushed off to the side. I think that's the challenge for every church, ours included. You look at Chuck Smith from Calvary Chapel. Calvary Chapel, what a great Bible teaching church.

They are so, I was part of Calvary Chapel. They are known for Bible teaching. And that's okay. The book of Acts, and this is just a theological understanding as we go through, is a story about one unique church that blesses other church. It was a sending church. It was a church that sent missionaries. They were so good at that. But every church doesn't have to be like that.

And as we found out that they weren't. But they do have three essentials, and then we're going to land. The three essentials are this. First is that they were a baptized church. Go to the scripture, Acts 1, 5 through 8. It says that they were baptized, not only being baptized in water like Jesus, but then there was a secondary baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Let me read this. Let's go with verse 2. Jesus had given orders by the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. To these he also presented himself alive after his suffering by many convincing proofs, appearing them in a period of 40 days, speaking them things concerning the kingdom of God. And gathering them together, he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for which he had promised, 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. Jesus talks about a secondary baptism, that basically there is a sealing of the Holy Spirit that is unique to salvation, that when you believe in Jesus Christ, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit and you become indwelt with the Holy Spirit. Does that make sense?

Every single believer who has believed on the name of Jesus has the living Holy Spirit in their heart. They are sealed for heaven. Their name is written in the Lamb's book of life. But then for some reason, which I don't understand, there seems to be this secondary baptism, which is an infilling, an indwelling, an empowerment that basically gives believers the ability to be more like Jesus than they would by just trying to be as good as they can being sealed with the Holy Spirit.

Does that make sense? That we need the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to actually do more than Jesus did. And I want to read what the baptism, I thought this was a great example or a great definition of what it means to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. The baptism of the Holy Spirit occurs when the Spirit of God becomes on a believer. The Holy Spirit fills the believer's mind with a genuine understanding of truth, takes possession of the believer's abilities.

A lot of the times that happens through submission. And imparts gifts that qualify the believer for service in the body of Christ. When a person accepts Jesus as his or her Savior and Lord, the Holy Spirit dwells inside of him or her. But believers also need a baptism of the Holy Spirit. Now, this does not mean that you are less than, this does not mean that, you know, I've been in churches before where there's like this level and like, okay, well this person, they're not filled with the Holy Spirit yet, okay?

Or if they don't have the gift of tongues, they haven't really reached the level. I don't believe that there's levels. But I believe that God wants to empower you. I believe that God wants to take your gifts and just supernaturally charge them. I had been following Christ, I think when I was 12 years old, I made a commitment to Christ. The Holy Spirit worked in my life.

It was powerful. I had great experiences with the Holy Spirit. When I was 21 years old, I had an experience where I just said, you know God, I've been kind of living half for you and half not and something happened in God's timing. I want to say it's God's timing but it's also our desire. And I don't want to say what that looks like. I don't want to say, well you're going to have this happen, you're going to have that happen.

I believe that in Montana right now, there is an 85-year-old secretary sitting at a Mennonite church desk who's been licking stamps and answering phones for 65 years, who doesn't speak in tongues, who doesn't preach on the corner, who is incredibly filled with the Holy Spirit and has been operating under his power for years and is filled with the Holy Spirit.

I believe it can look like that. I believe it can look like the guy who's out, as I met in Scotland, they have a thing called the street pastors. So cool. Their church has a ministry where they have these jackets that look like police jackets and they're called street pastors and they have hats that say street pastor and they go out at 10 o'clock on Friday and Saturday night until 2 in the morning and they take water and they take maps and they take Alka-Seltzer and bus fare and they go walk around and they stand on corners in groups of three and then as people come by partying, drunk, whatever, they say, hey, I'm a street pastor and the people come up to them and they pray for them on the street, make sure they get them home, get them rides and they're out there preaching the gospel and they're praying for people and seeing people get healed.

I believe it can look like that. I can believe it can look like our surf church who comes and they have people here that they're bringing surfers to Christ to know God. We're here on Thursday nights. It can look so many different ways. It doesn't mean that you have to shake. It doesn't mean you have to fall on the ground. When we get into what the, saying what the Holy Spirit has to look like, we are in dangerous territory.

But I will say, it will mean that you're going to love people more. It will mean that you're going to feel probably more of a closeness than you felt before. It will mean that you're going to be able to do more beyond your own normal abilities. So they're baptized. They're empowered. And I got to close it down. And finally, maybe I'll come back in on this next week.

They're a witnessing church and they're in Jerusalem and Samaria and they're a witnessing church. These are the three. I won't preach the rest because I feel like I've run out of time. But it's a baptized church. It's a baptized church that has empowerment to do more than they could ever do. And a witnessing spirit excited to share the gospel. Are you excited to share?

I'm excited. I love sharing the gospel. Love it. I'm not embarrassed to share. I used to be embarrassed. Oh, what am I going to think about? I don't care anymore. I just don't care. Like I just, I love sharing the gospel. There's a fervor to share the gospel. We've got a long time. This is a, there was a kind of a long setup, but I had to set this book up as a church built up of individual believers that are empowered, baptized with the Holy Spirit.

Now, today, as we have worship, I'm going to ask the worship band to come forward. If you do not know whether you have been baptized by the Holy Spirit, I'm going to invite you forward. Okay? And we're going to worship as we worship. As we do that first song, I'm going to invite you forward. And then we're going to spend some time worshiping. After that, I'll close the service and we'll see what the Holy Spirit wants to do.

If you want to be empowered, you say, I don't know if I've been baptized by the Holy Spirit. Or if you don't know if you even know Christ, you want to come forward. I'm going to ask you in a moment to come forward. We'll have some people come forward. In the Scriptures, they laid hands on people. That was one of the first steps. We just let the Holy Spirit come and see what He wants to do.

So if you're not sure, through this book, we're going to give time for that. We'll release the service after that so you guys, we can go eat and have our potluck. But some of us will probably want to linger here and see what the Holy Spirit wants to do. Thank you. Are we going to hear what the Holy Spirit wants to do?