This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark
Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,
County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
When a soul comes to faith in Jesus Christ, it's a work of the
Holy Spirit. Matter of fact, the Bible tells
us that we can't make that happen.
We're not even the ones that come.
He draws us. He draws us to Himself.
He softens our hearts. He gives us the ability to
reason and have logic and He speaks to our minds and our
hearts and presents the truth and then we, the receiver to we
reject it. Any good gardener knows that you
can't just bury some seeds in your backyard and expect to get
fresh produce out of it. It takes lots of work spread out
over the course of a growing season in order to receive fresh
fruits and vegetables for you and your family to consume.
Well, in today's message, Pastor Clark reminds you that the Holy
Spirit is a Master Gardener, but instead of tilling the soil of
the earth, he tends to the souls of humanity.
Every heart is fertile ground ready to hear and respond to
Jesus. Now here's Pastor Clark in Acts
chapter 19 with today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.
I knew when I was 20 years old that I needed a miracle of some
sort to Get Me Out of the pattern of life I was living and
I hated it. I would go to bed at night and I
would this be in such despair and depression and
discouragement of my addictions to so many different things that
were not right. And it wasn't till Jesus Christ
came into my life and I was given the gospel and I realized
that He died for my sin to save me and to forgive me, but also
to free me from my sin. That's the big missing
connection. Sometimes when we preach the
gospel, we tell people to believe on Jesus.
He'll forgive you of your sin. You go to heaven and you don't
have to worry about going to hell and he loves you and all
those things are true. But you have to 1st realize that
you're a Sinner and that you need to turn from your sin.
That's called repentance. And that you need Christ to do a
miracle in your life so that you don't stay stuck in your sin,
Right. And whenever Jesus does that
work, when we're born again, we are given his nature.
Even though we still have this old nature trying to take over
every once in a while, we have a new nature.
We have a new life. And not only that, the Holy
Spirit comes into our life to live in us at the time we're
born again. And when he's in US, he gives us
the ability to live a completely different life.
Amen. We're not perfect, but we're
certainly not the way we used to be, right?
Certain things bother us now that never used to bother us.
And there's certain things that we used to do that we detest
now. And there's no longer, we, we no
longer can do them. That's the work and the power of
the Holy Spirit. So these people that Paul's
speaking to, they have this desire to believe, but they're
missing these key ingredients. They're missing the power of the
cross and the and the resurrection, and they're also
missing this power of the Holy Spirit, God the Holy Spirit,
because they haven't received him yet.
And so Paul says to them, John and verse 4, indeed baptized
with the baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they
should believe on him who would come after him, that is on
Christ Jesus. So they were prepared to believe
in the Messiah. Apollos preached the fact that
John proclaimed the baptism of repentance, being prepared for
the one who was prophesized in the Old Testament to be the
Messiah. OK, but the Messiah has now
already come. He's been crucified, He's been
buried, He's been resurrected, and the Holy Spirit came down
upon the Church in the 2nd chapter of Acts at Pentecost to
begin to dwell inside the life of the believer.
For the first time in the Old Testament.
The Holy Spirit came upon people and then He would take off when
they offended Him or they sin. The the the power of the Holy
Spirit. Even in the the times of gospel
when Jesus was walking, the Spirit was working in and
through Christ. And Jesus even said that the
apostles at one time received the Holy Spirit and he blown on
them the the wind of the Spirit and they they sensed the
presence of God. But there was no indwelling of
the Holy Spirit until Pentecost. This is the great teaching of of
the book of the Acts, the power of the Spirit God, the Holy
Spirit coming to indwelled in US and to stay in US and to be the
guarantee of our salvation and the reality of our experience
being real until the day that we're taken out of here.
So Paul said, yes, John and Dee baptized with the baptism
repentance, saying to the people that they should believe on him
who would come after him that is on Christ Jesus.
So they're already in man, they're like ready.
OK, so when they heard this, they were baptized in the name
of the Lord Jesus. They were baptized in the name
of the Lord Jesus. Many of you, I trust, hopefully
all of you who are born again have been baptized in water.
Baptism does not save you, but it is a confirmation that you
have been saved because it's the first sign of obedience after
you become a believer for Jesus. They go into all the world and
preach the gospel into every living creature, baptizing them
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
And hello, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age.
And baptism is, is an awesome thing when you get baptized and
some of you, I've had the privilege of baptized, baptizing
and you come out of the water, smile and it's just like, it's
just a blessing cause you're doing what it is that Jesus told
us to do. That's the first sign after you
become a Christian that I want to follow you Lord.
And when you're baptized, you're identifying with his death as
you go into the water, his burial, and then as you come out
of the water, his resurrection. You're affirming, I believe that
Christ Jesus is my Lord, that he died for my sins and he was
buried on the on the 3rd and he rose again on the third day
according to the Scriptures. And how, how awesome is that,
you know, to be able to identify with the with the Lord Jesus.
A matter of fact in the book of the Acts, when people were
riding down on their carts and their horses and all that kind
of stuff, they could always tell that something was special was
going on when they saw people being baptized in the water.
And they would say those people are of the way, the way of the
cross, the way of Jesus, as he's the one that says I am the way I
am the truth, I'm the life. No man come to the Father but
through me. And so this is an exciting time
for these people. Now they're they're they've been
baptized in the name of Jesus. And when they heard this, they
were baptized in the name of the Lord.
And when Paul had laid his hands on them.
And this is really important to understand.
The laying on of hands is a wonderful ministry and blessing
that we can all do for one another.
You pray for someone you you you're compelled to lay hands on
them. There's nothing empowering in my
hands or your hands, but it's, it's a sign of a blessing and a
sign of contact that you just want to bring comfort.
And the Bible talks about the, this movement of the Holy Spirit
through the elders and the leaders of the church that if
any are sick among you, let him call upon the elders of the
church that they may anoint them with oil and pray for them and
they lay hands on them, pray for them.
And sometimes there's healings that occur.
Sometimes God chooses to bring healing, but there's no
guarantee that healing comes every time we lay hands on
someone or every time we anoint someone.
The Bible tells us in First Corinthians 12 that the Holy
Spirit gives gifts, gifts of healing, gifts of all kind of
things in the Bible, that He does these things severally as
He wills. Not as I will, not as you will,
OK, but as God wills. But in the apostles, they were
special group of people. There's no more apostles.
Now some people claim to be apostles, but there is no
apostles in the sense of what was ordained by Christ.
Apostles had to be eyewitnesses of Jesus Christ in his life
physically. OK, that was the first and it
gives the signs of the apostles in in Hebrews.
They were gifted to do miraculous signs and wonders.
This was the sign of authentic apostles.
And so Paul had something different in his ministry
because whenever he laid hands on people, there was Apostolic
authority. A matter of fact, Timothy was
said, stir up the gift that is in you that was given to by the
laying on of hands, not anybody else's hands, but the apostles
hands. OK, now you and I have spiritual
gifts. All of us have gifts in here
today, and they were given to us at the moment of our salvation.
Some of us have one gift. Some of us have more than one
gift. And because we have a gift or
more than one gift doesn't make us any better or any less than
anybody else that's in the body of Christ.
God gives us these gifts for the reason of giving Him glory but
also accomplishing His will, right?
The gift of teaching, and many of you have that in here.
It's just not a pastor gift. Women have it.
Men have it. Anytime you have the ability to
communicate the word of God in a way that people understand it
and can grow in it and grow by it and be blessed through it, it
is evidence of God's gifting on your life.
Doesn't make you any more spiritual any more powerful, any
more of a blessing. It's just the way it is.
Some of you have more of a calm down gift of like say the gift
of helps and you're always looking at how you can help
people and you're behind the scenes and you're doing this and
you're doing that and you just never sit down.
You're always busy wanting to bless someone and help them.
My wife has that gift. She's just unbelievable.
We go somewhere to someone's house for dinner.
She wants to do the dishes is at their house.
It's just well, no, no, you sit down, you're a guest.
You no, no. And if you tell her no, then
you're bumming her out because that's her gift.
She wants to to bless you that way, you know.
So if you want to make a nice dinner, invite us and you don't
want to do dishes, call us, send, send.
You'll do the dishes for you know, no, I'm not.
I'm sitting in there Gab and that's what I do my gifts Gab
right. But but anyway, it's just, it's
just fun to know that every one of us in here have these
spiritual gifts today. I didn't give them to you.
You didn't give them to me. They occurred when we got saved.
Now what happened when you and I got saved?
It's really important to realize, like if I said to you
today, have any of you received the Holy Spirit since you
believe that's sort of like a that's a like a bad question to
ask because if you're saved, you've all received the Holy
Spirit. The Bible tells us in Romans
8-9, if anyone has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of
his. So you can't be a Christian
without the Holy Spirit and the baptism.
There's one baptism, 1 Lord, 1 faith, one baptism, one God and
Father of all who is above all and in all and through all.
It tells us, tells us that in the book of Ephesians, First
Corinthians 12/13 For we are all baptized by 1 Spirit into the
body of Christ. So you are placed, you're
baptized by the Spirit, and you're put into this
supernatural body of people who have believed the Gospels for
all time since the beginning to the end, and that's the body of
Christ. We are baptized a moment, we're
born again by the Spirit of God. And then in Ephesians chapter
one, verse 13, and I need to clarify these things because
unfortunately there's a lot of bad teaching out there regarding
these kind of things. I had people come to me and say,
you know, they, they believe, but they haven't received the
Holy Spirit yet. I said, well, who told you that?
You know, Pentecostals, unfortunately wonderful people
love the Lord, but they really got some mixed up teaching on
the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. And some of you've come out of
that. I came out of that.
So I I sort of could write a book on what not to do, what not
to believe regarding God, the Holy Spirit.
But it tells us in Ephesians chapter one, verse 13.
This is a wonderful verse underlined in your Bible.
In him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the
gospel of your salvation, in whom also having believed, you
were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is a guarantee
of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased
possession to the praise of his glory.
And that a wonderful verse, the moment you believe you were
sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.
So what's happening here in Acts is that there's this movement of
God through the work of the apostle, and this is what occurs
to them in this experience. Not every time an act, not
everybody spoke in tongues when they received the Holy Spirit,
but at Pentecost they did. And the gift of tongues at that
time was not senseless Babel. These were literal languages
that all those different ethnic groups of people in that time,
at that day were able to hear the word of God and their own
dialect. That's wild.
I mean, these people that were given this gift, they didn't
know what they were saying, but say you were, you know, your
language was, I don't know, Turkish or Greek or whatever,
and you never had learned those languages as one of the people
who were given the gift of tongues at Pentecost.
And you're, you're worshipping God.
You're, you're speaking this language that you don't even
know what it is. But someone right beside you is
getting saved because they're hearing the Gospel in their own
dialect, their own tongue, this miraculous.
And so it wasn't, it wasn't senseless Babel.
It was a literal, literal languages.
But anyway, so Paul is then going to lay hands on them.
He lays hands on them. The Holy Spirit came upon them.
And this is the Greek preposition of the word FP.
You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.
And I'll talk about that in a second here.
And they spoke with tongues and they prophesized.
Now the, the word prophecy wasn't like, well, I'm going to
tell you the future, what's happening, you know, five years
from now or 100 years from now or 300 years.
The ability to prophecy is to be able to speak in a way that
you're edifying the here, building them up in their faith,
comforting them and exhorting them, warning them to follow
Christ. Paul said, I'd rather all of you
had the gift of prophecy. It's one of the most powerful
gifts because it's multitasking at the same time.
It's comforting, it's edifying and it's exhorting.
And so they had these gifts and these men, there was about 12 of
them and all. And so they go into the
synagogue and they spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and
persuading and concerning the things of the Kingdom of God.
So Paul, wherever he had a chance, he went in the
synagogue. He was approved and accepted
because he was a member of the Sanhedrin.
He was a Pharisee of Pharisees. All those things are passe now
because he had come to Christ. His whole agenda and going to
the synagogue was to tell people the gospel.
And they couldn't shut him up because he was welcome to go in
there. Now eventually people would get
tired of hearing what he was saying and they would begin to
get uptight as it says here in verse 9.
But when some were hardened and did not believe, but spoke evil
the way WAY, the way of the Lord before the multitude, he
departed from them and withdrew the disciples reasoning daily in
the school of Tyrannius. So Paul knew that there was a
period of time that they weren't going to deal with this anymore,
and he was going to take them somewhere else, especially the
new believers. Hearing all these conflicts and
these complaints and these arguments, whatever, Paul knew
he'd eventually have to get him out of there.
Now, what's important to realize here is that these new believers
are filled with the Holy Spirit. They're empowered by God, as was
all those in the early book of Acts, Pentecost.
We're empowered by God to do what it is that God compels us
to do, to help people, to pray for people, to teach people.
You're empowered by God to study the word of God because the Holy
Spirit's the teacher. When you sit down with your
Bible in your home, wherever you are, and you start reading and
maybe you're confused, say Holy Spirit, explain this to me, show
me. Reveal the truth.
He will. He's the teacher.
He's the teacher here today through a knucklehead or a
donkey. He can speak through anybody,
can he? It's not the vessel, it's the
Spirit of God that does the work and does the transformation.
And so this wonderful person, and he is a person.
God the Holy Spirit desires to have more of you.
He wants to control you and direct you, guide you and bless
you, protect you, lead you and to use you.
Any move of God that's happened since the beginning of Genesis
to the end of Revelation has had the instrumentality of God, the
Holy Spirit at work in the miraculous.
When the soul comes to faith in Jesus Christ, it's a work of the
Holy Spirit. Matter of fact, the Bible tells
us that we can't make that happen.
We're not even the ones that come.
He draws us, He draws us to Himself.
He softens our hearts, He gives us the ability to reason and
have logic, and He speaks to our minds and our hearts and
presents the truth. And then we either receive it or
we reject it. This is the work of the Holy
Spirit. He comes to convict the world of
sin, of righteousness, of judgement.
And He's doing this 24/7. And so Paul, he starts the first
Bible college here, the school of Tyrannius.
Tyrannius was a philosopher, and he used this facility, this
building to teach people philosophy.
Supposedly between the hours of 11 in the morning till 4:00 in
the afternoon, it wasn't being used.
So Paul developed a friendship, and he said, yeah, you can use
this. And so Paul set up shop there.
And for two years, Can you imagine going and sitting in
Paul's teaching? For two years you lived there in
Ephesus. And where you going today?
Well, I'm not missing Paul today.
I'm going down to hear more. And you be down there and be be
so grounded and so aware of all these wonderful truths that we
study and read about today. He studied and he taught, and he
reasoned daily, it says, in the school of Tyrannius.
And this continued for two years that it all who dwelled in Asia
heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.
Now whenever we have opportunity to be in certain sections of the
Scripture, I think it's important to pause for a minute
and think a little bit. This church, Calvary Chapel, has
been established by the Holy Spirit, not me or Cindy or
anybody else. Matter of fact, this is the last
thing I ever wanted or ever thought about doing in my life
is being a pastor. I fought it for a good many
years and we attended Calvary Chapel of Philadelphia.
Wonderful church or a church plan out of there.
And we came out here and we looked and we went to churches,
try to find a church that teaches the Bible and we
couldn't find any. Hard to believe, nice churches,
nice people, but like, where's the word of God?
And we got conditioned to get acclimated to this kind of
church where the word is being taught line upon line, precept
upon precept, the way it's written, book by book, the way
God intended it. So we, we planted the church,
Calvary Chapel. It started in the late 60s,
early 70s in Costa Mesa, CA. It was a little church called
Calvary Chapel run by a pastor, by a guy by the name of Chuck
Smith. And, and Chuck had been in
denominations he'd come out of really not aberrant, but the
really extreme Pentecostalism and, and all the hype.
And he just got tired of that. And he started reading and
studying Spurgeon and Martin Lloyd Jones.
He started getting grounded and, and when this this church was a
bunch of this uptight people that were legalist and
judgmental and self-righteous and they thought they had it
together and everybody else didn't and they didn't want
anybody in the church. It wasn't like them.
Well, lo and behold, the hippies start coming and the Jesus
movement is birthed through Calvary Chapel.
So churches maybe having 2025 people starts having hundreds
upon hundreds upon thousands upon thousands until the church
got to be so small, too small for what God was doing, they had
to put a tent up. So over 2 years, every night
thousands of young people were ushered into these tents out of
their Pagan, immoral, godless lifestyle.
And I was one of them. I, I wasn't there, but it
happened to me on the East Coast.
And there was this move of God's Spirit drawing people all across
the world into Jesus Christ to be saved.
And we were born again. And 1700 Calvary chapels around
the world right now, still being birthed, and all because of the
work of the Holy Spirit. We need another Jesus revolution
today. We need the Spirit of God to
compel people in Greensburg and Latrobe and Irwin.
I don't know why I'm in this church today, but I was drawn
here somehow. That's what happened to these
young kids. They'd be in that tent.
A lot of the guys went down there because there's a lot of
cute girls down there. But after they got down there,
they started hearing the word and the Holy Spirit started
convicting them and the, and the music was so alive.
And, and there's this middle-aged guy, balding
middle-aged guy, Chuck Smith to just get up there and just teach
the Bible like we're teaching it today.
And those kids would hold on to every word of that Bible.
And then eventually they wanted to go out and tell others.
And so these other churches were birthed.
Thank you for listening to this edition of Living Waters of
Grace. Pastor Clark is teaching us
about the book of Acts in this series.
Acts is a powerful and unique part of Scripture, not just
because it records the spread of the gospel geographically from
Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, but also culturally.
Acts shows us how the message of Jesus moved beyond its Jewish
roots and began to reach the Gentile world.
What started with Peter leading a small group in the Upper Room
became a global movement with Paul taking the gospel to
cities, synagogues, and marketplaces across the Roman
Empire. Acts captures this vital
transition and reminds us that the good news of Jesus is for
all people in every place. May we be inspired to carry that
same gospel boldly into our world today.
Living Waters of Grace comes to you from Calvary Chapel,
Westmoreland. If you're in the Greensburg, PA
area, you can listen to Grace FM on the new 91.7 frequency.
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716, Greensburg, PA 15601 also invite you to join us in person
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