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.
The gospel isn't the gospel without the proclamation of not
only the death and the burial. You got to tell him the rest of
the story. He rose again on the third day,
because without a resurrection there is no power in Christ's
death, is there? Only through the fact that he
truly was the Messiah. And he came and he died, He was
buried and he rose again according to the Scriptures on
the third day. This Jesus Goddess raised up
which we are all witnesses. The gospel can shine like a
beacon, but it's incomplete without the full truth.
In today's message, Pastor Clark unveils how the good news isn't
just Jesus's death and burial, but his resurrection on the
third day. Without that victory, his death
would hold no power. Scripture affirms he died, was
buried, and rose, proving he's the Messiah.
You're called to share this whole story, not just parts.
His resurrection is the heartbeat of your faith, showing
God's Immaculate and limitless power over death.
Now here's Pastor Clark in the book of Acts Chapter 2 with
today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.
I was praying Lord, I prayed it. The name I drop here will be of
some influence. I know, Officer such and such.
OK. He goes back to the car.
He probably called him up and said, you know, this character
by the name of Clark, you know? But fortunately, he let me go
and I was grateful. But I said, Lord, forgive me for
not paying it. I wasn't like, I don't think
intentionally wanting to put the pedal to the metal, but I was
sort of just daydreaming when I was driving.
You ever do that and the next thing you know you're going much
faster than you should be and you suffer the consequences.
But the whole idea is this idea of wine influence.
They think these guys are drunk. Paul teaches in the book of
Ephesians that the influence of alcohol has negative effects
when it's controlling us. That why we absolutely need to
be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.
And so in verse 14 and Peter, he stands up with the 11 I I I'm
encouraged with this and pastor Lewis I'm sure is too anybody
that's called to preach the gospel.
He's calling people that he can work in their lives to perfect
them for the work of the ministry, but he never looks
down and says well, I'm going to wait till such and such is
perfect and then I might use them.
We know Peter, shortly before this incident, was denying the
Lord right? He denied him three times, and
now he's chosen by God, the Holy Spirit, to bring forth the first
evangelistic message after this experience of Pentecost.
That should really encourage all of us that Peter was used to do
something that was remarkable by the work of God's Spirit.
So Peter, standing up with the 11, raised his voice and said to
them, Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be
made known to you, and heed my words, for these are not drunk
as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day.
But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel.
Now this particular section of Scripture in Joel is beginning
to show forth the whole economy of God until the 2nd coming of
Christ, when he establishes His Kingdom and the millennial reign
in Jerusalem. That's when this section of
Scripture will be completely fulfilled at that particular
time. But there is indicators here
that this is the beginning of this movement of God in the last
days. And the last days begin from the
day of Pentecost until the day of Christ return.
So we've been in the last days for several thousand years.
So that's because a lot of stuff's going on right now in
the world does not mean literally that tomorrow Jesus is
coming. And these are the last days.
This last day, phenomena and experience of world insanity and
crisis and evil dictators and rulers and sin and all the other
things that comprise human existence have begun in Genesis,
but in the Church age, they began at Pentecost.
The last days before Christ's second coming will be fulfilled
at His second coming. And so this is the prophecies
that are beginning to be fulfilled.
It shall come to pass in the last days, says God.
I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.
Your sons, your daughters shall prophecy.
Your young men shall see visions, your old men shall
dream dreams. And my men servants, and on my
maidservants, I will pour out my spirit in those days, and they
shall prophecy. And I will show wonders in
heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath.
Blood and fire and vapor, smoke. The sun shall be turned Into
Darkness and the moon into blood before the coming of the great
and awesome day of the Lord. And it shall come to pass that
whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
And that's the gospel, right? And the ideas of prophesying is
proclaiming the word of God, speaking forth the truth of God.
Men and women can do that equally as God empowers them.
You give a witness somewhere, you give a testimony.
It isn't for telling the future per SE.
That's a very rare thing because we got the future dictated in
this book, Genesis through Revelation.
We know what God's going to do and what's going to come to
pass. But prophesying is the ability
to, you know, exhort people, warn them, edify, build them up
and comfort them. That's the real true meaning of
prophecy. The apostle Paul said, I wish
all of you would. Prophecy meaning that you would
in your ministry, warn people, build people up and comfort
them. That's something that we should
all want to emulate, right? We should all want to have that
gift occurring in our lives to be useful to God.
Visions and dreams, people have them.
Sometimes they're caused by eating too much pizza the night
before. But I'm not negating the fact
that God can't speak through a dream or a vision.
But these things will increase in magnitude during the time of
right prior to the return of Lord.
Some of these phenomenas in the heavens haven't occurred yet.
Of course, some commentators try to tie these into what happened
when Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70.
It looked pretty traumatic when Rome sacked the city.
But this what is being depicted here and Acts is unlike anything
that the world has seen yet. And these signs will be
obviously near the end of the Tribulation, right prior to the
return of Christ of His second coming, when He establishes His
Kingdom and rules and reigns in Jerusalem.
And then Peter continues, Men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus
of Nazareth, a man attested by God to you, by miracles,
wonders, and signs, which God did through him in your midst,
as you yourselves also know Him, being delivered by the
determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have
taken by lawless hands, have crucified and put to death, whom
God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was
not possible that he should be held by it.
For David says concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before
my face, for he is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken.
Therefore my heart rejoiced and my tongue was glad.
Moreover, my flesh also my will rest in hope.
For you will not leave my soul in Hades, nor will you allow
your Holy One to see corruption. You have made known to me the
ways of life. You will make me full of joy in
your presence. Of course, this is the
fulfillment of what Christ experienced.
Men and brethren, let me speak in verse 29 freely to you of the
patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and His tomb is
with us to this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and
I knowing that God has sworn with an oath to him that of the
fruit of His body according to the flesh, He would raise up the
Christ as seed coming through David would raise up the Christ
to sit on the throne. He, foreseeing this, spoke
concerning the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not
left in hell or hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.
This Jesus God hath raised up, of which we are all witnesses.
The Gospel isn't the gospel without the proclamation of not
only the death and the burial. You got to tell him the rest of
the story. He rose again on the third day.
Because without a resurrection there is no power in Christ's
death, is there? Only through the fact that He
truly was the Messiah. And He came and He died, He was
buried and He rose again according to the Scriptures, on
the third day. This Jesus goddess raised up,
which we are all witnesses. Therefore, being exalted to the
right hand of God, and having received from the Father the
promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now
see and hear. So all this is ordained by God.
If you don't think God is in control, read this later on
slowly. God is sovereign.
When Christ had to die that terrible death.
This was preordained by God before the foundation of the
earth. There was no mistake even though
the Jewish people were guilty, as we all are because of our sin
of having Christ crucified. Nothing was out of control from
the throne room of heaven at at any time in in human existence,
nor will there ever be any time when anything is out of control.
And the purpose of what they're experiencing right now was also
ordained by God from the Father, the promise of the Holy Spirit,
which they are all experiencing right now.
He poured out this which you now see and hear.
This is all the work of a sovereign God, who has
everything under control. For David did not ascend into
the heavens, but he says to himself, The Lord said to my
Lord, sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your
footstool. Therefore let all the House of
Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you
crucified, both Lord and Christ. Amen to that.
Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart.
And this is the power of the Word of God through the vessel
of God, empowered by God, the Word.
When it goes forth, God promises it will not return void.
It will accomplish the purpose for which He sends it.
There's nothing you or I can do to invalidate the power of the
Word. We can reject it.
We can ignore it. We can walk away from it.
We can choose to not believe it. But it doesn't negate the fact
that the Word, from God's vantage point, will never come
back to him empty. It'll accomplish the purposes
for which He sends it, whether it's to save you today and to
cast you into the outer darkness through the preaching of the
Word. That doesn't accomplish is all
this. And He chooses through the
preaching of the Word to save some.
This is what He chose. This is the methodology.
He chooses us as people to proclaim the gospel to people.
And it isn't up to us whether they believe or they don't
believe. We're just to communicate it.
And when we communicate it, it has power.
Not your power, not my power, but His power.
And His word is anointed. His word is all powerful, and it
accomplishes the purposes for which He sends it.
So when they hear this, and perhaps when you hear it today,
and when I hear it, there should be a conviction in my heart that
God is true. He's pure, He's holy, He's
righteous. I need a savior or I'm a
Christian, but I need to get deeper in my ways and my walk
with God. I need to allow Him to take over
more control of my life. I need to surrender things that
are in the way and things that are quenching His spirit and
things that are grieving His spirit.
I need to allow God to remove anything in my life that's in
the way so that He can have His way with this short life that
He's given to each of us. So they're convicted.
Cut to the heart means there's a problem right here.
It's getting to me right here. It's one thing for it to get to
my mind and I think a little bit about it, and then I forget
about it. Later when it's here, it's doing
some surgery and it's beginning to cause something to change
internally. Something's happening.
Wonderful. At this point in time, they said
to Peter and the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what
shall we do? And that's someone who's aware
of the fact that they're lost and what they're hearing is
true, and now they need a solution, They need an answer.
And Peter says to them, repent. And repent means to turn from
one way of living and one position of life toward what God
says we should do, turn away from sin and turn to God.
Repentance is not beating yourself up in an altar and and
crying for three hours and hoping your emotion.
You think we'll get God's focus and he'll pay attention if
you're really all out of sorts or whatever.
No, repentance is like the guy in the pigpen that left his
father's wealth and and squandered it and he's finally
dead one day and the pigpen saying I shouldn't be here, I
shouldn't be living like this. It's crazy.
My dad, you know, he, I'm going back home.
This is not the way I want to live anymore.
He repented. He turned from the immoral way
of living and the and the self centeredness and the destructive
path of life and he turned and he started heading home toward
his father. Peter tells him repent without
repentance, without any turning, there is no salvation and only
God can see the heart. Whether it turns, of course,
God's the one that makes a hard turn too.
That's another mystery. And I'm going to get into all
that today. It takes a long time, but all I
know is that the simple gospel is the preaching of the crosses
of them that are perishing foolishness, right?
People that are on their way to hell, That's a joke.
You guys are crazy. But unto us who are saved, and
that's the majority of us here today, I'm sure it's the power
of God and the salvation to everyone that believes, right?
We've experienced this. That's why we worship.
That's why we come here and gather to worship Him and to
follow him. Repent and let everyone of you
be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of
sins. And you shall receive the gift
of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to
your children and to all who are afar off, as many as our Lord
our God will call. And so the simple gospel,
repent. Already I'm turning, I'm coming
to Peter with the other thousands of people, 3000.
I need salvation. I want to have my sins forgiven.
And so they're all lining up there and they're all going to
be baptized. The baptism is the outward sign,
the picture to those who are there that I am now a follower
of Jesus Christ. It isn't what saved them.
They were saved when when they were convicted and they
believed. OK.
And the the evidence of their belief was that they turned
toward God. And then the evidence in the
reality of the fact that they want to, you know, unite with
this new movement called the way the birth of the church.
They had to be publicly baptized.
And baptism was a death sentence for a lot of people because if
they saw you being baptized, they'd tie you in with what they
called was a religious sect and they would try to martyr you and
get rid of you. OK, Pretty hard to do when you
got 3000 people doing it at one time, though.
It was a quite, quite a powerful move of God.
And so they were baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. And, and you know, this isn't
that you don't some people I'm just going to baptize in the
name of Jesus Christ. No, Jesus said on the mouth
before he ascended. You baptize them in the name of
the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So this isn't like a different
kind of baptism, but it is focused on the Trinity being
baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
and what will happen whenever they are moved to do this work
of God in their hearts, God's doing the work of belief, Then
the evidence of their new life occurs, and the most important
evidence that they're truly born again is that they'll receive
the Holy Spirit. He'll come in and dwell in them
and he'll live in them and be with them forever.
I don't know how people can live these days life without the Holy
Spirit. The the tragedy, though, the
Church of Jesus Christ has tried to do his work without the Holy
Spirit, and that's why it's so anemic in the world.
And how can the work of God become more empowered by God?
It only can get stronger. I believe by us become more
desperate for a deeper walk with God, that our lies would by
God's grace, begin to become supernaturally empowered at a
different level than maybe we've experienced because we've let
things get in the way. We all have the cares of the
world. Look what's happening in the
world. If it's getting you offset and
all worked up, it's going to drain you spiritually.
The cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches.
If my whole life is focused on my wealth and I'm absorbed by my
material possessions, it's going to drain me spiritually.
And then the lust of other things.
Jesus says, 'cause His word to become not empowered.
So we can know this Bible inside and out.
We can know the truth, we can know the doctrine, we can know
the history. But if those three things are in
the way in any of our lives, then we are quenching the work
of God's Spirit in our lives and we're grieving the Spirit.
We, we wound, we hurt the Spirit.
You can hurt my feelings, I can hurt your feelings and that's
not good. But boy, you know, hurting God,
wounding the Spirit of God, very, very serious.
So my sin and your sin is what hurts our God.
So we want to become more surrendered.
We want to become more yielded. And you know, perhaps today you
might be inclined to come forward just you and the Lord
and say, Lord, these things are in the way of my life.
Now I want to publicly declare before you and before this
people. That I want to go deeper with
you. You can do it in your seat, you
can do it in front, you can do it in the car on the way home.
But somehow this coming to some kind of sense in your life that
you want more of God and less of yourself.
I know I do. I mean, this is something I
think about every day. This not when I'm preaching on
this on on a Sunday. How can I get closer to the Lord
and how can I become more of a blessing to him and to you guys?
That's my desire. We always remember His death,
His burial's resurrection, and I'd like to also think more
about this indwelling Holy Spirit that's in us.
If there's anything there today in my heart that's in the way of
His will for my light, that he would make it clear to me.
And, and I might not be able to resolve it today, but at least
my mind is aware of it now. Maybe because the Holy Spirit's
showing me. And then I can work on that
right in the days ahead with the Lord's help, I can see him help
me through what it is I need to to grow in.
And no, no guilt trips, no condemnation.
It's just this recognition of there's no end to how deep we
can go until we're out of this world.
And the Bible says then we'll see him as he is or we will see
him and be like him because we we shall see him as he is.
But on this side of heaven. It's a lifelong process, isn't
it, of becoming more like him. And it doesn't happen overnight,
but it does significantly happen when we come to these points in
our life where we decide to just say, Lord, I'm done with this.
I want to surrender that. Lord.
We're just so grateful for your patience with us, how much you
love us, how gentle you are to us, Lord, how you've convicted
us so many times that we didn't listen and we offended you, we
wounded you, we grieved you, we quenched you.
And it was stupid. Because Lord, you want to pour
out blessings, You want to bring living waters from your throne
into our hearts to be poured out to others.
And we so often, Lord, allow trivial things to to get in the
way. Self centeredness,
unforgiveness, bitterness, Lord's selfishness, our own
agendas, our own will. Lord, you know what we're like
and you still work with us. You still love us.
And so Lord, each of us today we to give to you whatever it is
that you're asking us for, to be willing to listen to you about
whatever it is you might want to show us.
So Lord, we can be prepared. Like Peter was that day.
Whenever you forgave him for the denial, you lifted him up.
You told him to get back up into the battle, and You empowered
him. You poured out your spirit upon
him and filled him. And Lord, he was a different man
than he was that night when he was trembling, denying you.
He spoke boldly. Lord, Your word and Your word
was effectual and the preaching and it brought many to
salvation. Lord, we know that You want to
use each of us in different ways, Lord.
So Lord, I pray for your people today that you would bless them
and encourage them and, and help them to see the, the growth in
their own life as they surrender to you.
Show them, Lord, your pleasure as they surrender certain things
and, and, and allow you to change them to become more like
you. That's that's the purpose of
your church. And we would become more like
you, Lord Jesus. So Lord, whatever it is,
whatever it is that's been brought to you today, Lord, we
just lay at your feet and we thank you.
We're so glad you joined us today on this edition of Living
Waters of Grace. Pastor Clark is teaching through
the Book of Acts, which is the only book that chronicles the
history of the early church immediately after Jesus's
ascension. It gives us a front row seat to
how the Gospel began to move outward, starting in Jerusalem
and reaching into the heart of the Roman Empire in just three
decades. A small group of frightened
ordinary believers became a bold, spirit empowered movement
that transformed the known world.
Acts is not just a history lesson.
It's a reminder of what God can do when His people are
surrendered, obedient and filled with the Holy Spirit.
Their perseverance still inspires us today.
May we follow their example and live faithfully for Christ in
our own time. We hope today's message
encouraged you. Living Waters of Grace is a
ministry of Calvary Chapel, Westmoreland.
If you're in the Greensburg, PA area, we'd love to have you join
us in person. Our Sunday service begins at
10:30 AM at 400 E Pittsburgh St. Unit 6B.
Be sure to visit calvarychapelonline.com to
confirm times and learn more. If you are in the Greensburg
area, you can listen to Grace FM on the new 91.7 frequency.
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Gifts can be sent to Grace FMPO Box 716, Greensburg, PA 15601.
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Thank you for tuning in and spending this time in God's
Word. Be sure to join us again for
Living Waters of Grace.