MAY 28 2017 | The Giant Series S1E2 | Part 1

Sea Change Church · The Giant Series S1E2 · "Part 1" · Elliott Stearns · May 28, 2017
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Hey, be seated if you would. Great to have you all here on this beautiful Sunday in La Jolla and great to have this memory as we look back to all those that have come before us and fought for this nation. Interesting about so many of the hymns that we know, there was a lot of controversy going on about the hymns back in the day because some preachers went and found the bar songs that were being sung and they went and took the lyrics that everybody, not the lyrics, but the melodies that everyone had.

Everyone knew. And then they put Christian lyrics to them. And this is one of the things that your hymns, your ancient, not ancient, but your classic hymns come from. It was a big controversy. How can you bring secular into the church? And now it's so funny. It's like you have the same people saying, well, you know, we only want to sing these hymns not knowing that these were, a lot of these were classic bar songs that they just changed the music to. So funny how the church works these days and how things go.

Hey, I want to make a mention of a brand new couple who have just been married. Devin and Eden Bryant. Would you please stand up, please? Where are you? Oh, Devin's not there. I got Eden. Devin's not there. Welcome, Eden. Sorry, I should make sure that your husband's in the house next time. Good to have you guys. We did their wedding. With that said, our missions pastor, Joe, who is a phenomenal theatrical reader, is going to be reading the scripture. Missions pastor, Joe Brandy, come on up, buddy, and take us away.

Thank you. The scripture's short, so there won't be much theatrics, but the scripture should be in your bulletin. It should be behind me, too. We have Pastor Adams, normally the main preacher. Awesome. Come back. You won't hear him today, but you've heard a little bit of his personality and his style. And a strong believer in the word of God and Jesus, so that's what we're about. Elliot Stearns is preaching today, and he faithfully, I don't know, how many years, Elliot, have you taught the Bible study on Sunday mornings?

Or a Bible study? Four or five years, Sunday morning, loves the word of God. This, a guy that meditates on the word, and you can just ask him something, he's just thought about it, and you just want to place yourself around people like that. He's going to bring the word, and let me read the word. And now, Lord, look upon their threats, and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant, Jesus.

And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and continued to speak the word of God with all boldness. This is the word of the Lord. Thank you so much. That song choked me up. It's not the way to begin a sermon, but thank you so much. Anyway, I'd like to add something with regard to Memorial Day, with Pastor Jim's permission here.

I want to bring out a chair that I see over here. And I just want to place it here. Because I learned that when the military gets together for certain functions, they always put an empty seat at the table. And that empty seat represents those who have fallen in battle for the sake of this country. And we want to think about them today. And there's a number of veterans here.

There's a number of them in the service. And we honor those. And we salute all those that are in that chair. Thank you. So let us pray again. Lord Jesus, we ask that your truth march on today. That you conquer the powers of darkness. And that you bring forth your kingdom a little bit more in our hearts today. In Jesus' name. Amen. Now, if you have the notes in front of you, I just wanted to say that if you put them away while I'm speaking, that's just fine with me.

I prefer your rapt attention on me more than on these. But also trying to follow a sermon with reading, my sermons with reading notes is kind of like trying to ski with a map. You might miss something, you know, like a tree. Last Good Friday, I gave a sermon regarding the two earthquakes on Good Friday and on Easter. There was a literal earthquake on Good Friday.

There was a literal earthquake on Easter. And there was great symbolic importance of those two earthquakes. I call this message the Pentecost earthquake. But look as hard as you can. And you won't find an earthquake on Pentecost recorded. Nevertheless, shortly thereafter, as Joe read there, there was a shaking of the house after Peter and John and the others were brought before the Sanhedrin.

And there was a trial because they had had the gall to heal someone in the name of Jesus in the temple shortly following Pentecost. And again, it shows that whenever God moves, the earth moves. All right. And we've got the Lord is going to march on with his truth in the doing of his will. So Pentecost, as Pastor Adam said, occurs this following Sunday in the church calendar.

And we're getting so we're giving kind of a week of preparation for that. It also says in the notes there, but don't look that Pentecost is this coming Wednesday. Well, how can it be Wednesday and Sunday? Well, the Jews go through the biblical calendar, new moon calendar. And so they're celebrating their Pentecost, which they call Shavuot or Feast of Weeks this coming Wednesday night and through Thursday.

So since Pentecost, a lot of people think, oh, that's a Christian feast. No, it's a Jewish feast that the Lord fulfilled when he sent the Holy Spirit upon the church on that day. So we want to think about that. The what was the purpose of Pentecost? I have three divisions here. The purpose or what happened there on that said in May 24, 33 A.D., we think.

Then what's the purpose for you? And then finally, we want to look at receiving the Holy Spirit in our lives. The purpose of the Holy Spirit, Jesus said, was to to become witnesses of him. Remember, he was crucified and he rose from the dead. And then he was with the disciples for 40 days. He ascended into heaven and for 10 days. But for the 10 days before Pentecost, he said, now abide in Jerusalem.

What's Jerusalem mean, by the way? City of peace. He says, abide in the city of peace until that promise of the Father is sent down upon you. And he said, when the Holy Spirit comes and when the Holy Spirit has come, you shall become witnesses of me, both in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth. The question is, what is a witness?

A witness is not someone who just talks about something. A witness is someone who has actually participated in an event. And so to become a witness of Jesus Christ, it's important that to one degree or another, we be something like Jesus. And so we know him. We abide in him and he abides in us. And we have an experience with him. And to be a witness of him says, we can say to people, look, I know Jesus.

And this is what he's like. And so we're a testimony of him. Not just talking about him, but in a sense being like him. And it's interesting to read that when Pentecost occurred, the Jews, just like a lot of modern churches, they had a lectionary. Now, that's not a term that some of us are familiar with. A lectionary is a set of readings that are read at certain times in the year.

And the churches have them. The Methodists have them. The Episcopalians have them. Catholics. But also the Jews had them. And way back then, they had them as well. And one of the scriptures that was read on the day of Pentecost or Shavuat was this one, Ezekiel 3, verse 12. And that one says, Then the Spirit took me up and I heard behind me the voice of a great rushing saying, Blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place.

And what's the story? What happened on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2? Suddenly there was a sound of a what? A rushing mighty wind. And it's nice to think that at the very time when the Holy Spirit fell upon the disciples in the house there, that the priest was reading, there was a sound of a great rushing. Now, a lot of people think that the house that's mentioned that filled the house was the temple because the temple is always called the house of the Lord.

So you imagine the disciples were in the house of the Lord. And the priest is reading about a sound of a great rushing. And suddenly there really is a great rushing. And the Spirit filled all of them. And tongues of fire came upon their heads. And they began to speak mightily of the glory of God in a multitude of tongues to all who were present there.

Now, I want you to think about this. I want you to sort of think about the devil for a moment, okay? Jesus was ascended up to heaven. And the devil had had a terrible time with Jesus. He tried his best to destroy him. He did destroy him. Then he had the gall to get resurrected. He's sitting at the right hand of the Father. And the devil is thinking, well, this is terrible.

On the other hand, he says, listen, Jesus is up in heaven at the right hand of the Father. All authority and power in heaven and earth is his, okay. But his ragtag, motley group of disciples are still here on earth. And I'm still prince of the power of the air. That's right. Right? And John says that all the world lies under the influence of the evil one.

Right? So he still had that influence. He still controls the thinking and the culture of the world. He still controls the governing authorities. He's sort of in control of the media of the day and so on. So he's probably thinking to himself, okay, this is terrible. Jesus is up there, but they're down here. I think I can manipulate things. I can get the rulers of this age.

I can get the rulers and we can put a pressure on this. Maybe we can stop this thing in its tracks. Then came Pentecost. It ruined everything. Suddenly, instead of having to deal with one Jesus, the devil has to deal with 120 many Jesuses. 120 who were filled with the Spirit like Jesus was. Who spoke of the kingdom of God, who preached the kingdom of God like Jesus did.

Who ultimately are able to do signs and wonders and miracles like Jesus did. Pentecost made hell of hell. If hell was hellacious before that, it was really bad then. Suddenly, the devil had to deal not just with this one Jesus, but with 120 testifiers of Jesus, filled with the Spirit of Jesus and talking about Jesus and talking about the glory of God, performing signs and wonders.

What is he going to do? Not only that, by the end of the day, it wasn't 120 witnesses of Jesus. It was 3,120. A few days later, it was 5,000 more. And multitudes were being added daily to the church as such as should be saved. This is a problem for the devil. I won't sing what is the stones, the Rolling Stones had a song, Sympathy for the Devil. I'm not asking for that.

So the devil has a problem, and the only power he has left is the power of the lie. All authority in heaven and earth is with Jesus. But he can still tell a good lie. And so he's going to make the church the enemy. He's going to manipulate all the powers that he possibly can to destroy the church. Do whatever he can. And when he finally realizes that he can't destroy the church, he's going to do the next best thing.

He's going to, what the Scripture says, sow tears. He's going to do whatever he can to divide the church, to cause schisms, to cause doctrinal differences, to cause fighting within, a house divided what? Cannot stand. And so to a certain minor degree, we do have to tip our hat to the devil because in large, in some measure, he has succeeded. The Lord, as we just sang, his truth is marching on.

And the Lord knows how to deal with that. The devil's intention is to get us to form or practice a form of godliness, but deny the what? A power thereof. And that's in the Holy Spirit. There's a story of an old man who, someone in raggedy clothes, he goes into a, he goes into a, goes to a big church in a big city, and he climbs up the steps, and he comes to the, there's a couple of sentinels at the top of the steps, and this church, and they say, what are you doing here, old man?

He says, I've come to worship the Lord. And the sentinel says, I'm not sure this is a church for you. Why don't you go back and see if God really wants you here. Why don't you pray, see what he says. He says, the man agrees. So he goes back down the steps and goes home, and the next Sunday, he comes back at the steps. And the man says, the sentinel there says, you're back.

Did you do what we said? Did you pray to see if the Lord wanted you here? The man said, I did. What did the Lord tell you? He said, keep trying, son. The last 20 years, I've been trying to get into that church myself. The disciples, when the people saw the disciples go into their town, they said, those who have turned the world upside down have come here also.

Whenever the Lord moves, he shakes, and he turns things upside down. And I want to try to explore what is it that the Holy Spirit should mean to you? What is the purpose of his coming into your life? And to do that, I want to go back three years in Jesus' ministry before Pentecost. Let's go back to the story that we find in John chapter 4. Jesus goes from Judea or Jerusalem area up to, he's on his way up to Galilee, and he needs to go through Samaria, and he stops at a little town called Sychar.

You familiar with this story? And he has a conversation. He goes into the town, and he sits by a well, Jacob's well, and he has a conversation with a woman there. Now, Jacob's well, we know, was a well that was probably about 80 to 100 feet deep, carved out of solid rock. Quite an engineering feat, actually, and really quite deep. And he has this conversation with the woman, and he asks for a drink.

And he says, give me to drink. And she responds, why are you a Jew asking me for a drink? Because the Jews don't have anything to do with the Samaritans. And Jesus replies, and he says, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that's asking you for a drink, you would have asked of him, and he'd have given you what? Living water. Living water was a term that was used for free springing water.

He would have given you living water, and here he's next to this well, 80 feet deep. You've got to lower this bucket, go all the way to the bottom if it was a bucket, and then bring it back up again in some small measure. And he has this conversation, and he goes on, but he brings out that you can have living water. Now we're going to go to three chapters further into John, and Jesus defines what that living water is.

On the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, he stands, and he shouts out to the crowd, and he says, whosoever is thirsty, let him come to me, and drink, for as the scripture says, out of his innermost being will flow rivers of what? Living water. But this spake he of the Spirit, which had not yet been given, he said. And so we're tying those together, and Jesus is talking about the power and the refreshment and the nature of the Holy Spirit that he could offer to this woman.

and we need to ask, what kind of town was Sychar that was there? Oh, a couple extra scriptures there I should have brought out. Water is such a symbol in scripture. It's a very powerful scripture of the Holy Spirit and of the refreshment that the Holy Spirit brings out there. In fact, every chapter of the Gospel of John with one exception, and even there there's an illusion, it talks about water in some degree or another.

Isaiah 58, 11 says, The Lord shall guide thee continually and satisfy thy soul in drought and make fat thy bones and thou shalt be like, what? A watered garden whose springs of water, what? Never fail. Just like to the woman. This water that I will give you will be a spring of water, he later says, springing unto eternal life. And 1 Corinthians 12, 13, Paul says, We've all been made to drink of one's spirit.

What kind of town was Sychar? And what did Jesus, what was he doing in this particular town at this time? What was the meaning of what he did? I'd like to just let you know something, that the word, before we get to the meaning of Sychar, what Sychar represented, this story, the reason I'm going back to John 4 to talk about the Holy Spirit is that this story really illustrates to us one of the key elements, if not one of the main characteristics of the Holy Spirit that is so sweet and so wonderful, and that is the name koinonia.

The spirit is the spirit of communion and fellowship. And the meaning of the word Sychar, I was thinking of getting a drum roll or something, but anyway, the meaning of the word Sychar is drunken. We could call it drunk town, okay? City of wine, okay? Sot city, or something like that, okay? Okay. When you think about it, you know, a lot of cities in the United States have nicknames, right?

What's New York? Big Apple or New Orleans. What? Big Easy, right? Chicago? Windy City. How about Las Vegas? Sin City, okay? Well, Sychar was kind of the Sin City of the age, okay, or that area, right? You've got to look at the context here. This city was a city of sin, a city of drunkenness. When it says in John 4 there at the beginning, it says, and they had to go through Samaria and they came to a village or a town called Sychar.

Why didn't they just say they came to Sychar? Because they came to a city that was called Sychar, a city that had this nickname, that had this reputation, that had this culture. And Jesus walks right in the middle of it and he sits by the well and he has this dialogue with this woman. It was really a city that could have been just as well called loneliness.

So why do people indulge in drink and drugs and sex and all of the rest of it? Why? Because they're, what? Lonely. And what do you think this woman, this single woman coming up to that well was feeling? What did he say? He said, go call your husband and she said, oh my God, I don't have a husband. And he said, you said right. You have five husbands and the one you're with now is not your husband.

In other words, you've been trying again and again and again to assuage the empty, dark, desolate feeling within to try to get something and someone who will, who will take away that, that feeling of loneliness and that feeling of desperation that you're feeling within. and they keep failing. This was a town of license and loneliness. I picked up a book by Elizabeth Elliott recently called, just by that name, Loneliness.

She writes this in the book. In order to get to the hotel dining room, we, her husband and her, she remarried, have to walk past the disco bar. The noise is too loud to tell whether it's music or what. The smoke is too thick to see who's up there making the noise, but in the twirling, mirrored lights, we can see the writhing shapes on the dance floor, male or female.

I can't always tell by their dress. They're not touching. Their hands are moving back and forth in the air in front of them. Their bodies gyrating, shaking, grinding. Occasionally, one bumps a shoulder to remind another that he or she has a partner. A knot of men stands near the door. Four women sit sideways on bar stools, legs generously displayed, elbows on the bar, hands drooping over the rims of glasses, eyes ceaselessly scanning the room.

There is loneliness in the eyes, the acute loneliness one senses in a crowd seeking one soul who might respond to their glance. It's Saturday night. It's where the singles come in this cow town west of the Mississippi. We pause, watch the scene for a minute, go on by. We sit in the dining room thankful for quiet, thankful that we did not join the lonely crowd.

We have others, excuse me, we have each other and it's for life. Why do they come? It can't possibly be for the food or for what passes for music. They haven't got dates. They're lonely hunters. What else do you do in cow town or in New York on a Saturday night if you're lonely? so you can't get to it. The most important thing is to do to go to the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the home of the healing