All right, yes, you can applaud her thing.
All right, if you're watching online this morning, we're
thrilled that you were here with us.
If you're joining us, right, right.
Live right now at 11 O 9 or later today or in some weeks to
come. We're glad that you found us and
we want to invite you to come and worship with us at North
Life Church at 115 E Main St. Our services are at 9:00 and
10:30 and would love to see you sometime soon.
All right, I have a like a little bonus to my message this
morning. I'll call it that.
It's a bonus. I knew of what is happening this
Friday and I wanted to tell you about it.
And I don't have my flyer, but that's OK.
You can grab one on your way out.
And we were going to make sure Missy was going to make sure
that we didn't run out. So Laurel, maybe if you make
sure the Flyers are in the back about the Freedom of religion
day. Now, you probably don't know
this, but if you do, great. But if you don't, I want to tell
you about it starting in like 1992 there then George W Bush or
no George Bush, the original 1 was president and he declared
that this Friday, this particular week, this Friday
every year would be declared Freedom of Religion Day.
Now you know that we as Americans, we celebrate free in
our in our, in our, our constant.
It's not our Constitution, but the First Amendment gives us
many freedoms, but it gives us the freedom of religion.
OK, now it's the freedom of religion and not the freedom
from religion. And some people have gotten this
backwards. They think, wow, we're free from
like having any religion or any faith in our schools or in our
public places, etcetera. So some try to interpret it that
way, but it's not, it's not freedom from religion, it's
freedom of religion. It's freedom for us to express
our faith. And this is true of our faith as
Christians and uniquely about our country is that if you're
not a Christian, you still have freedom to express your
religion. OK.
This is a foundation of the United States.
And wrongly, some people think that all, you know, there's
supposed to be separation of church and state.
Maybe you've heard that separation church is not
supposed to be in anything that is government or state.
That's a fallacy. It's bull.
It's not true. Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter.
It wasn't in the Constitution or in any of the amendments.
He wrote a letter where he suggested the idea of of
separation of church and state. But it wasn't to protect the
state. It was to protect the church
because they're coming from Great Britain where the Church
of England controlled everything.
So they say, OK, separation of church is saying freedom of
religion. That's, that means that we can
practice our religion. We have that freedom we have, we
have this freedom of religion, right?
And it's been fought and sometimes it's attacked.
But thankfully our, our founding fathers had wisdom in the way
they set up, I believe inspired by God.
So we have freedom of religion and that means that our kids can
express their faith in school and at our workplace and in
other places. We don't have to hide our faith.
And I will tell you that that should be celebrated.
So every president since Bush, this means Clinton and Bush 2,
Bush W, if you will, George W and then Obama and then Trump
and Biden. Every year you could see it.
I have it printed on the back table.
You could take it home with you. Every year a president makes a
declaration. So they declare this Friday,
Freedom of Religion Day, every president.
OK, so the president of this is that, hey, on Friday, just take
a minute and say God, thank you, thank you for our freedoms and
be mindful of it. Now I knew I was going to
encourage you to just be grateful and I have this handout
that gives some history of freedom of religion and some of
the quotes from presidents. But then this came up the sun
this week. I ran into this yesterday of all
things. And so I thought I want to share
this with you. So this is the Glen Arbor Sun.
This is a newspaper locally. OK, so this article caught my
attention for other reasons too, but it says, watch this.
This is a really great headline, right?
And the Glen Arbor Sun, it says allegations of youth grooming.
Now, when you hear allegations of youth grooming, what do you
think? Somebody sexually grooming a
child to abuse them, right? A predator.
All these are predators in Glen Arbor.
Oh my gosh, man, I want to know about this.
And so watch this. It's the Leland Planning
Commission heard nearly three hours of impassioned public
comment on Wednesday, January 7th at their monthly meeting,
which had been moved to the Northport Public School
auditorium to accommodate a crowd that numbered in the
hundreds, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
You can go read the article. Let me tell you what happened,
OK? There's an organization in the
Leland School, and it's called Youth for Christ.
It's an internationally recognized, solid, wonderful
ministry. And they meet in the Leland High
School and some people got up arms about it and they're like,
they're in that school and they're proselytizing and
they're grooming, and I can't believe they're doing this.
It's like they have the freedom to do this.
Our students have the freedom to express their faith and have
Bible studies and everything in their school.
And So what happened is some people got up at arms about
they're like, these people are grooming in the schools.
We got to put a stop to this. And, and not that I have an
opinion. Thank you.
I don't want you to think I have an opinion about this, but of
course I have an opinion about this.
So what happened is the youth for Christ in Leland grew so big
that they've decided they wanted to meet outside of the school
because so many kids are coming. Isn't that exciting?
So, so many kids are excited. So someone in the community
wanted to violence. They wanted to donate space and
watch this. This is very important to us as
a church. This this person wanted to
donate space and like an industrial park for the youth
for Christ group to meet and people met at the town meeting
to fight it because I said, well, that's zoning.
It fights, you know that it's not zoned religious or religious
place. It's a it's a industrial, it's
an industrial space. So we can't allow these kids to
meet there. So what happened is Youth for
Christ sent their attorneys in. Why?
Because we have freedom of religion, right?
And So what happened is the newspapers can have their
headings where they're like, yeah, grooming in the high
schools. And you're like, we've got to
fight that. No, it's youth for Christ.
And why is this important to us as a church?
Because do you know that the city of Gaylord graciously
allowed our building that is in a commercial zone to be rezoned
nonprofit freedom of religion, right?
So that means that our city graciously doesn't get taxes
from our, from our zoning, right?
And the Gaylord Art Council next door, they're also a nonprofit.
They're in a commercial place. And so this is important because
you need to be aware that every so often our freedom of religion
gets attacked. It's happening right now in
Leland, not far from here. Youth for Christ is a valid,
reputable, honorable Christian organization.
And for them to rise up and say they don't want them in their
high school. Sorry.
We have freedom of religion and every president declares it to
remind us of it. And it happens this Friday.
Is it OK that I've shared this? Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait,
wait, wait, wait. Hold on a second.
Let me ask you that one more time because you missed a really
big opportunity. Is it OK that I shared this?
Do you like that I share this? Yes, thank you.
So on Friday, don't forget to celebrate and just say, hey,
God, I want to be mindful of my freedom of religion.
I don't take it for granted. You can pick up a sheet in the
back that has some information about and can we pray for the
Youth for Christ group in in Leland?
Would you like to do that with me?
All right, let's take a minute. God, thank you for Youth for
Christ. What a legendary, enormously
great organization that has LED thousands and hundreds of
thousands to you. And while this organization is
being misrepresented and attacked in Leland, we pray for
favor for them, wisdom. And we pray that God in humility
stand for righteousness. And that God, we pray that our
freedoms of religion, that our forefathers, we believe inspired
by you, we pray that you would protect their freedoms in our
backyard not far from here. We lift them up to you in Jesus
name. And everyone loudly said, Amen.
All right, if you have your Bibles, please take them and
turn to the book of Acts. And we're going to be in Acts
chapter 13. And we were in Acts chapter 13
last week. And purposefully even weeks and
weeks and weeks ago, I knew that I was going to connect what we
did last week to what we're doing this week.
OK, So let me set it up for you. This is Acts chapter 13.
This is the early church. Jesus has ascended to heaven.
It's been crucified, buried, resurrected.
He was with his disciples for 40 days and then he now is ascended
to heaven. And now the church has exploded
at the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit comes to be in and
with them. And this is a church called
Antioch. It's an Antioch, and Paul and
Barnabas are part of the church. And we saw this last week.
I'm going to show it to you this week and we're going to look at
it from a different angle. Chapter 13, verse 2, it says
while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, this past week
we have been fasting and this morning that we're worshiping
the Lord and fasting. The Holy Spirit said, set apart
for me, Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called
them. Then after fasting and praying,
they laid their hands on them and they sent them off.
We are fasting and praying and worshipping, and this morning we
got to pray for Mariah and send her off.
We're trying to be a New Testament church in the context
of these disciplines, sending out missionaries, praying,
fasting, worshipping, all of that.
This morning I want to talk to you about the Holy Spirit.
Quite simply, I'm going to talk to you about the Holy Spirit.
Let me pray for us, God, thank you for your presence.
Holy Spirit, You are here with us and we've worshipped you in
song and in giving and just being together.
And now we we open our hearts and our minds.
We're attentive to your word and we pray God that you would speak
to us greatly. We're eager and we're ready.
And Jesus name and everyone loudly said Amen to remind you
we do have teaching. The notes are available on the
back table. If you want to grab those, you
can grab those during the teaching or on your way out.
I encourage you to make use of those this morning.
Now last week I talked to you about fasting and faith.
Not just fasting, like to lose weight or fasting as a way of
kind of a restart for the year. But last week we looked at
length about what it means to fast, deny yourself of something
for the purpose of giving more attention to prayer and to our
relationship with God. And we see that the New
Testament church was doing this in Acts and throughout
Scripture. And so we wanted to take time
this week and and to pray and fast.
And this morning what I want to do is I want to show you that of
course in the story we talked last week, praying and fasting
is a part of the early church. But now I want to show you even
more hopefully profound, is that the Holy Spirit is part of the
early church. It's God as the Holy Spirit is
the enormous part of the Acts story, and the part of the
gospel is a part of Scripture all the way through.
But particularly in the book of Acts, we start seeing how the
Holy Spirit operates in us when we come to faith in Christ.
So in the next couple weeks, we're going to be focusing on
the Holy Spirit. And I and I hope to bring you
several things. We're like, oh, I, I didn't know
that or I didn't look at it that way.
I didn't see it that way. And my hope is that we will
grow. The goal is to grow in our
relationship with God by growing in our understanding of the role
and the personality, if you will, of the Holy Spirit.
Now at our church, I just came up with this this week.
So this is going to be new, but I think it's going to become
part of our culture. I want, I have a new saying and
the saying is going to be trust the tangent.
Can you say this out loud with me?
Can you say trust the tangent one more time?
Say trust the tangent. Now, why do I say this?
Because most, I think most a lot of preachers or teachers, they
teach in points. Point #1, now point #2 and now
point #3 and you know, I can go have lunch, right?
I don't teach that way. If you've been here for a while,
you know, I don't teach with points.
Instead, I've, I've finally coined it.
I tend to teach with tangents. What do I mean by that?
Well, I'm always disciplined to give you a title, like by rhythm
was when I teach, I'm like, OK, here is what we're going to talk
about, and I give you a title. And when I was in seminary Bible
school, they taught us, OK, good preaching is you tell people
where you're going. It's the title, and then you go
there. And then when you're done, you
tell them where you've been. Have you ever been in the sermon
and the message in this church service where the preacher said
he was going to go over there, but then half what you were
like, he never got there. Where is he?
I have no idea where he is. Now, I must admit that sometimes
when I teach with my tangents, I might get some place and you
might lean over to your wife and go, where is he going with this?
I don't know what he's doing and just wife, just go.
Just trust the tangent. He's on one of his tangents.
But no, I will get back. And not only that, the tangents
are in your notes. So it's not by accident.
It's an intentional tangent. Why?
Because I teach with tangents. So trust the tangent.
So that means this morning what I'm going to do is I'm telling
you I want to talk about the Holy Spirit in the context of
the church at Antioch and what the Holy Spirit looks like in
the local church, what it looked like in the story of Paul and
Barnabas. That's where I'm going to.
So just trust my tangents as I get there.
OK, You good with that? Yes.
OK, Now so tangent number one, somebody people say point number
one, I say tangent number one. OK, I have a fair criticism
about modern worship songs and my fair, my fair tangent
criticism of a lot of modern worship songs is that, and I
don't want to sound like an old fart, you know, but we're just
doing that. Is that a lot of the songs now
that are coming down the worship Pike, if you will, they sound
like songs that that are like a guy could sing to his
girlfriend, right? Have you heard any of these
songs? They're like, I love you so
much, you're so beautiful. And it's I just want to be with
you and. It's all this stuff and like,
these are the types of songs that a lot of churches are
singing to the Lord. And it's just like, and again,
not that I have an opinion, OK, but but I'm just thinking these
songs are like they're just not. But I think the church should be
singing, right? So at our church, I'm very
committed. And watch me on this.
You didn't know I did this, but watch.
And in the weeks to come. And if I miss a week, then come
and say, Kurt, what's going on? But but if you go back week
after week after week, every week, we'll have one song at
least that feels like a creed. And when we find these songs, I
tend to put them in the rotation.
We sing them often. So this morning we sang the song
by Phil Wickham and some friends.
It's called I believe, right? And so watch this.
The lyrics were I believe there's one salvation, one
doorway that leads to life, one redemption, one confession.
I believe in the name of Jesus Christ.
I believe in the crucifixion. By his blood I've been set free.
I believe in the resurrection, Hallelujah, his death.
His life is death, defeat. Does that sound like a song you
can sing to your girlfriend? No, it's not right.
So we intentionally sing songs that sound like Creed.
So then the course of that song, all praise to God the Father,
all praise to Christ the Son, all praise to the Holy Spirit,
right. We get around and we have a
couple other songs, several other songs.
I'm always looking for songs like this.
A friend of mine has a record coming out this year and he sent
me like the the demo of and I'm like, we're going to do that at
our church because it's another one of these Apostle Creed like
songs. So how many of you grew up in a
tradition of a church where you said the Apostles Creed?
Anybody wave at me really high if you did.
OK, so you grew up saying the Apostles Creed, right?
And it was part of your worship liturgy every week.
It's part of it. And what is liturgy?
Well, liturgy is just the rhythm in which you do a service,
right? So we have liturgy at our church
and you might even say we're a liturgical church.
Why? Because liturgical churches tend
to say creeds every week and they have certain things they do
every week. So we have we sing songs and we
sing a creed like song every week.
So you can when someone asks you about North life, you can say,
well, our church is liturgical. And by that what do you mean?
It's like, well, we tend to sing songs that are creed like that
have great truths in them, right?
Listen to the Apostles Creed. It says I believe in God the
Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the
Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius
Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead on the third day.
He rose again. He ascended into heaven and is
seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again
to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit. There it is again, the holy
Catholic meaning unified Church, the communion of the Saints, the
forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and
the life everlasting. Amen.
I want you to know there's a Church.
We are intentionally committed to traditional theology, creed,
like theology. And even though it might not
look like a like maybe a Lutheran or Methodist, our, our,
our Lutheran brethren and Methodist brethren, we love them
so much. We celebrate their way of
worshiping. Ours is just a little bit
different, but we adhere to the same creeds and doctrine.
And because of that, we're unified.
Now what I want you to see is that in our songs and in our
creeds, we mention it's in our theology, it's in our doctrine.
We mention often the Holy Spirit, and we mentioned Jesus
and we mentioned God the Father. So as Christians, maybe this is
a new term. It'll be an old term to many of
you, but as Christians, we are Trinitarian.
In other words, we believe in the Trinity.
What is the Trinity? Well, the Trinity is the belief
that God is 3 in one, three, and one.
And this is very important in the ancient world because in the
ancient world and in the world in which we live now, the world
had many gods, many, many, many gods.
And some religions will say, well, you know, there's lots of
ways and lots of gods and lots of gods.
And so God appears to Abraham and then to Moses and throughout
the Old Testament. And then Jesus comes along in
the same way, proclaiming this is the way, the only way, and
he's God won. But God has three different
personalities. We use that word personality.
So you'll see the God is 3 in one person sometimes.
Don't be confused by that because God is God, not a human
being, a person. But it's letting you in on the
truth that God has three unique personalities.
And I'm going to get around to why that's so important to a
Christian, but let me just keep on packing it for you.
So we're Trinitarian and we believe that God has three
distinct personalities. He's unique in three different
ways. And so and, and the three ways
are equal in importance. And I think a lot of Christians
miss this. Maybe they think, well, the Holy
Spirit is kind of like down here and like the Father's here.
Maybe Jesus is like, well, because Jesus is the Son, maybe
he's under the Father and the Holy Spirit under Jesus.
No, that's heresy. As Trinitarians, what we believe
is no God is 3 equally distinct personalities in one.
And if you're going to know God and walk with him as a
Christian, then understanding the role of the three different
distinct personalities of God becomes vitally important.
And many people who follow Jesus and who are Christians, they
kind of get the concept of the Father.
And they get the concept of the Son, Jesus, the King, the
reigning one, the Lord, the Messiah.
But often we tend to put the idea of the Holy Spirit kind of
down here as a support. Or maybe you were around a
tradition where people talked about the Holy Spirit or the
Holy Ghost. But they were what I call
granola types. Do you know what a granola type
is? It's someone who's like a fruit
or a flake or a nut, right? So maybe around some Christians.
And they were like, oh, we're all about the Holy Spirit, but
they were as weird as all get out.
And a lot of stuff they were into was like they were over
emphasizing some things, some things that were not necessarily
as important as other. And we're going to get into this
in the weeks to come, so get ready.
But maybe we're around somebody. And they talked about the Holy
Spirit, but it LED you to believe It's like, yeah, the
Holy Spirit thing. That's kind of weird.
And so I'm kind of going to stick over here with the Father
and the Son. I get the Father and the Son,
but the Holy Spirit, it's weird or it's lesser or and we miss
how vitally important it is to understand the role of the Holy
Spirit of our lives in our lives.
So this morning I want to just as an introduction, I want to
just continue unpacking like, what does it look like for us
now in following God through Jesus?
What does it look like with this Holy Spirit thing?
OK, and I say thing, but really the personality God, the Holy
Spirit is God. OK, Now there's a there's a
heresy called modalism. And I just want to mention this
briefly, I'll get more into it in weeks to come, but modalism
is an ancient heresy that the original church fought.
And the modalism heresy was that that God appears like in three
different modes. And the idea is that OK, God is
God, and at one point God is the Father, OK, when God is being
Father, he's Father. OK, But then God has to take off
his role as Father, and now God is Son.
OK, God left heaven, He came to us and now got his Son.
But God can only exist in one personality at a time.
So now he's Son. And then Jesus goes back to
heaven and he did talk about that the Holy Spirit would come.
So now God is here as the Holy Spirit.
But it gives the idea that God can only do one thing at one
time. And this is where the
illustration that that the Trinity is like water, right?
Maybe you've heard this illustration, It works for
children to kind of illustrate what the Trinity is like, but it
breaks down in some ways. Every breaks down.
It ends in heresy, really. So the idea is that, OK, water,
it can be ice or fluid or steam, but it can only be one thing at
a time. So you could say, oh, that's
what the Holy Spirit is, our God, the Trinity is like, it's
all three. It can be all three, but no, God
is all three at one time. So watch this.
Jesus could be being baptized and he's praying to the Father
and then the Holy Spirit descends when he's baptized.
So now you have Jesus existing. This is God.
Here's Jesus, here's always Spirit and here's God the
Father. They're all three interacting at
the same time. And I know this is this is a
challenging concept. I just want to introduce it to
you that now and we'll tackle it more than weeks to come.
But just knowing that, okay, God the Father is here, Jesus, yes,
God reveals himself as the Son and the Holy Spirit, but all
three can be interacting at the same time.
We're not into God dividing himself up into mode.
So we're not into modalism. OK, now again, more than weeks
to come, but I wanted you to know that the creeds mentioned
the Holy Spirit, the Apostles Creed are songs, the Bible a
great length. And so we're going to study the
Holy Spirit for the next several weeks.
And I've got lots and lots to tell you now, why is this
foundational and why is it so important?
Our understanding of the Trinity?
Because our understanding of the Trinity, watch this, it's big.
Our understanding of the Trinity and the Holy Spirit as the Holy
Spirit, as God reveals himself as the Holy Spirit.
Our understanding of the Holy Spirit dictates our relationship
with God. And maybe you've heard, Oh yeah,
some people have like father issues.
Maybe sadly and tragically, they were abused by their father.
And so they can't relate to God as Father.
I mean, that's a real thing. It's a tragic thing.
And and then some people go, well, I like the Jesus side of
God because I could relate to Jesus and I like his teachings.
And I and I read the red letters in my Bible and I've drawn to
those. Some people are that way.
And so they're like, well, I'm going to really kind of lean
into the Jesus side or I'm going to lean into the Father's side,
right. But what I'm telling you is that
you don't get to pick if you want to have a relationship with
God now and you want to flourish in your relationship with God,
then the option is here on earth with the life that we have the
the way that God has set it up, you're supposed to be
interacting with the Holy Spirit.
And I'm going to show you why I can say that OK, and why it's
really important. So here's The thing is that if
you're following Jesus and you don't get the role of the Holy
Spirit in your life, then you'll miss a flourishing spirit LED
life. And I don't want to do life
without being spirit led and spirit filled and aware of the
Holy Spirit's role in my life. Now, because I knew we were
coming this way this Christmas. We really, we emphasize this
every Christmas, but particularly this year, we
really emphasize week after week that Jesus is the fulfillment of
Old Testament prophecies. They called him Emmanuel, God
with us. He's prophesied this way.
He's called this way in the Old Testament when the Angel Gabriel
comes to Mary, he says, and he will be called Emmanuel.
And Emmanuel means that God is with us.
So again, this Christmas, we just emphasize it every week.
God puts on human skin, God comes, he's with us.
Jesus is God revealed with us. But what is the Holy Spirit?
I'll tell you John 1416 through 17, Jesus is going to talk much
to the disciples, his followers about the Holy Spirit.
He's going to drop clues over and over and over again.
In verse 16, you watch, Jesus is talking about the Father and
He's talking about the Holy Spirit all in one, their God all
in one in verse 16 of John 14. And I will ask the Father, and
He will give you another helper to be with you forever.
Now what's happening? Jesus knows that He's going to
ascend to heaven and he's going to go back to being with the
Father. And so he's saying to the
disciples, hey, listen, I'm going to send you a helper, and
I'm going to pray to the Father, and he's going to send me the
helper. And the helper will be with you
forever. He's about to leave.
The Holy Spirit's going to come and be with you forever.
Even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because
it neither sees Him or knows him.
You know him, for watch, this is big.
You know Him for He dwells with you and will be in you.
Now in the Old Testament, you see the Spirit of God talked
about a lot, but the Spirit of God is with when Jesus comes,
he's with and then Jesus says you know him and he's coming and
he's going to be in you. Do you see that progression with
Jesus is walking with them, but he's saying the comforter who
the helper is going to come. He's going to be in you in the
spirit of the truth in the world cannot receive.
He dwells with you and will be in you.
I ask you to trust the tangent. We're going to get back to Acts
13. We're going all the way back
there to the church in Antioch. Jesus is Emmanuel, He's God who
dwells with us. But he says the one who's
coming, he's going to be in you. Now how confusing would this
have been to the disciples because watch this.
Jesus had been prophesied about and he finally shows up and he
is the Messiah. And not only is he the Messiah,
but they walk with him for three years now he's resurrected and
he's with them for 40 days after the resurrection.
And he's with them. Can you imagine Jesus, Emmanuel
with them after the resurrection for 40 days?
And in these 40 days, he's talking about he's, he's
alluding to the fact that I'm going to pray God will send the
helper, the spirit of truth. And he's dropping Nuggets to
them that, that, that, that he's going to be leaving.
He's no longer going to be God with us.
And Luke continues to tell the story.
Luke 2444, it says. Then he said to them, these are
my words that I spoke to while I was still with you.
Watch this. It's just over and over and over
again this theme. And he said, I was with you that
everything written about me in the law of Moses and the
prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.
And then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.
He supernaturally goes, opens their mind.
Remember The Karate Kid movie? And in my generation, it was wax
on, wax off, right? How many remember wax on, wax
off, right? The new generation.
I haven't seen the movie, but I'm told it's like, put the code
on or put the code off or something, right?
Somebody help me with that. What is it in the new movie?
Nobody's seen it. What is it?
Take the code off.
Somebody told me this. OK, So because I was saying in
the guitar lesson one time, I'm like wax, like wax on, wax off.
And the young person, huh. What are you talking about?
I'm like The Karate Kid movie. And they're like, I don't get
it. OK, so, but remember in The
Karate Kid movie, right, he has them wax in the car and waxing
off right? Now, Why am I doing this stupid
thing? This is so dumb.
This is so stupid until the karate and he's like waxing and
he's doing the wax on, wax off thing.
And it's like his mind's open. He's like, oh, it was for this
reason. Whoa, right.
So Jesus kind of does this with the disciples.
He's been telling them all this stuff and they don't understand
why am I waxing on waxing? Oh, Jesus wanted to keep talking
about the Kingdom, keep talking about the helper that's going to
come. And then Jesus is like, and it's
like he makes the Scriptures make sense to them, right?
That's what happens here. It's like they've been confused.
But then he makes things clear to them.
And he said to them, this is written that the Christ should
suffer on the third day, rise from that, and that repentance
for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name
to all nations beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things.
He's like you read it that it would start in Jerusalem and
then the the good news of God's love and grace and mercy and
forgiveness is going to go out from Jerusalem and go to the
whole world and the disciples are going to be the start of it.
And Jesus said, behold, I'm sending the promise of my Father
upon you, not with you, but upon you, but staying in the city
until you are clothed with power from on high.
So Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit to come and he's
talking in these terms. He's going to be in you.
He's going to be with you and in you and upon you and you're
going to be clothed in. I mean to get ready, I'm going
to leave. But someone else, the Holy
Spirit God is coming. And they must have been
confused. And he let them out as far as
Bethany. And after the 40 days he was
with them after the resurrection and lifting up his hands, he
blessed them every. It's not just my truth.
So of course, it's a Christian tradition at the end of a church
service, it's, it's right that the, the minister, the pastor
should say a blessing, right? So every week when I say a
blessing over you, it's just, it's, it's in the tradition of
Jesus. Jesus is like ending this time
and he says a blessing. But when Jesus is saying a
blessing over them, he starts to ascend up to heaven.
So you can imagine it's like, may the Lord bless you and keep
you and may he turn his face to you.
And then Jesus starts to like ascend all the way up into the
heavens. While he blessed them, he parted
from them and was carried up into heaven.
God with us is no longer God with us.
Now Jesus is away. He parted from them and we see
that. We don't see this at the end of
Luke's story. You actually see this in Acts.
I don't know if you know this, but Luke's gospel.
So the book of Luke and then the book of Acts, Luke writes both
of them, and I call it dovetailing.
He dovetails his story. The end of Luke is the beginning
of Acts and he kind of tells parts of the same story.
Have you seen some of The Avengers movies where they do
that like 1 movie at the end of the one movie and then you're
waiting, it's a cliffhanger and then the next one kind of starts
right at that exact moment. But they kind of tell both parts
of the story, right? So that's what Luke is doing.
So Acts 1 is the dovetail of the end of Luke and Acts 11.
Luke says in the first book, oh Theophilus, that's who he's
writing to. I have dealt with all that Jesus
began to do and teach until the day when he was taken up.
So the end of Luke and the start of Acts is Jesus taken up.
In other words, Emmanuel, God with us is no longer God with
us. And here's The thing is that
you'll hear people talk about I walk with Jesus, Jesus take the
wheel. You know what, when I'm driving,
I don't say Jesus take the wheel because Jesus isn't here.
He's in heaven. But who is here with me?
The Holy Spirit. I'm not attacking the I mean,
the song is great. I love the song, but I mean,
theologically it bothers me, right?
Because it should be like Holy Spirit take the wheel.
You know, it's like, so now the Holy Spirit is with us.
That's the end of Luke and the start of Acts.
So in the first book, so until the day when Jesus was taken up
and after he'd given the commands through the Holy
Spirit, the apostles whom he had chosen.
Then in verse 3, it says he presented himself alive to them
after suffering, meaning Jesus by many proofs appearing to them
during 40 days and speaking about the Kingdom of God.
He's telling the end of Luke again.
And then while staying with them, verse four, 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. Jesus said you'll be baptized,
you'll be immersed, He'll be in you, on you, you'll be clothed
in him. He where Jesus said I'm dwelling
with you, He's going to dwell in you.
So in verse 6, when they come together, they ask him, Lord,
will you at this time restore the Kingdom?
This is when they're still with Jesus.
Before his sins, they were still confused about the Kingdom.
They thought Jesus was going to kick the Romans out.
He's going to set up an earthly Kingdom.
No, he's leaving and him leaving means that God and now he's
going to come to be with us as the Holy Spirit, not in a
different mode, but they're interacting at the same time.
But now the Holy Spirit where he used to be with us and the Old
Testament. Now we are going to now be the
temple, the Tabernacle of God and the Spirit of God is now
going to be available to be in US and with us.
Verse 7 Jesus said to them, it's not for you to know the times of
the season that the Father right the the the Trinity.
They talk about each other has fixed by his own authority.
But verse 8, but Jesus is saying you will receive power when the
Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in
Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria to the ends of the
earth. And when he said these things,
as they were looking on, he was lifted up.
So again, it's dovetail. He's lifted up at the end of
Luke now He's lifted up at the beginning of Acts.
And a cloud took him out of their sight.
And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, 2 men
stood by them in white robes and said, men of Galilee, why do you
stand? Look at the end of the heaven.
This Jesus who was taken up, who's not with you anymore.
He's not Emmanuel, God with you anymore.
He's been taken into the heavens and he will come in the same way
as you saw him going to heaven. Watch.
So Jesus ascends and they stand there waiting and the thinking
is that maybe they thought he's coming right back, right?
They still missed it. No, he's going to go away.
The Spirit of God now is going to come and be in you and with
you on you, clothed, clothed with you.
And, and now you're going to leave Jerusalem and the whole
world generations are going to hear the message of God's love,
the gospel because of the Holy Spirit and the power that is
going to come into these disciples.
And that power is still available to us.
Now I want you to see in the context of this, the progression
of the biblical narrative. In other words, what do I mean
by that? I mean the story of the Bible
this week. Chuck, who was in the first
service, he reached out to me in the middle of the week and said,
hey, what, what, what like Bible do you recommend for kids and
certainly parents? I think that we should put
Scripture in our kids in in Sunday school.
We're certainly teaching your kids to memorize Scripture.
We want them to do that. But here's The thing is that
often people just want kids to memorize Scripture.
We're committed as a church for your children learning the story
of the Bible. And even if you're new in faith
or even if you've been in faith for a long time, it might do you
good to go get just like a little children's Bible like for
1/3 grader and read it and and just to get OK, wait a minute,
wait a minute. This Oh yeah.
This is the story of the Bible because God reveals himself in
the Bible in story. It's story.
It's not just a list of do's and don'ts.
It's the story of God. And what is the story of God?
The story of God is this from Genesis to Revelation.
The story of the Bible is God with us, God, OK, God being with
us, like we interacting with God.
That's the story of the Bible. So in Genesis what happens is
God is there at the beginning. I won't read it to you for the
sake of time, but in the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth and the Spirit of God, dimension of the
Spirit of God is there and he's hovering over the waters.
And then in Genesis 3, we jump forward and we're like, OK, God
creates Adam and Eve and he's in the garden with them.
And you get the idea that God is with them in Eden.
And that's the that's the thing. It's like God created the
garden, puts Adam and Eve in it. They're tending the garden and
in Eden, God and man are together.
Well, what happens tragically, Adam and Eve disobey God.
They eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and
the relationship that walking with God, being with God is
broken. What happens after they sin
verse 8 and says, and they heard the sound, watch this, I want
you to get this and they heard the sound of the Lord walking in
the garden in the cool of the day.
And you get this, you get this impression that Adam and Eve
were familiar with the sound like what was the sound of God
walking in the garden in the cool of the day?
Well, they knew that sound so like they're familiar with the
sound of being with God and all of a sudden they hear the sound
of God coming to be with them. And by the way, what if if God
is walking in the garden is making sound?
And this would arguably what we call Christophany, It's like an
appearing of Jesus. God is showing up as we think,
as God in bodily form is Jesus. So Jesus is there God walking
with him in the garden. And the man and his wife hid
themselves from the presence of the Lord and God among the trees
of the garden. The Lord God called to the man
and said to him, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound
of you in the garden, and I was afraid.
So here's what I give you is that this idea of like the sound
of walking with God, they had it, God coming and walking with
them and the sound of God being with them that they were
familiar with, they could hear his footsteps and him coming to
be with them. And now they're afraid.
And So what does God do? Does he kill them?
No. This is a curious thing.
God puts them out of the garden. And why?
Well, because when they ate from the tree to the knowledge of
good and evil, it just it's now sin and presented and they're
going to live eternally. They can live eternally.
It's the long story theologically, but they can live
eternally in the garden. And if they stay in the Garden
of Eden eternally minus relationship with God, walking
with God, then the Garden of Eden becomes like a hell.
Because if they're not with God in the garden, then being absent
of God and relationship with God and walking with God, now that's
hell. So God does something good to
them. He puts them out of the garden
and he puts an Angel cherubim on like in the gates of the garden,
and he's so they can't get back in.
It's punishment. No, because if they get back in,
they're forever without God and that's hell.
So God keeps them out of the garden and they start dying.
But that's OK because God has already said that he has a plan
and he's going. That's the story of the Bible
where God is going to restore walking with him.
God with us. They're God with us in the yard,
in the garden. Now we're separated from God,
but the Spirit of God is going to be there.
And then God starts his plan with Abraham and Moses.
And it's the story of the Old Testament where God is restoring
this idea of being with him and walking with him.
And so he prophesized. It's like, I've got this plan.
I'm going to redeem you. I'm going to buy you back.
And it's all those who went
before us and all those who will go after us.
God has his plan. So the plan is, I'm going to
send myself, I'm going to be with you.
And when I come to be with you, then I'm going to give my life
for you and I'm going to redeem you.
I'm going to surprise. Satan, he doesn't know it's
coming and then it's able to storm the gates of hell.
Jesus does. He takes back the keys of the
Kingdom of hell. All I mean, he conquers sin and
death. He does all his stuff and he
comes back to the disciples and he's with them for 40 days.
But that's not the end because if Jesus stays that way, then
he's only with those disciples. And the plan is not that God is
just going to be with a few. The plan is that God with this
sense of like walking in the garden and being with, it's
going to be for all who want to come.
All of us are going to be able to have relationship.
We're all going to be able to get back to the sense of like I
hear the sound of God walking in the garden and I get to go be
with him. Of course, that's eternally, but
it doesn't. It's not the other side of
eternity. We get it here now.
And that's the story of Pentecost and the story of the
Holy Spirit. It's no longer God with us like
a few. Now it's God in US, All of us
who want to receive the Holy Spirit, God in our lives.
Now it's God in US. And that's the story of the
Bible. It goes sad in Genesis, but it
goes great in Acts. Now what I want to show you, I
want to get back now in Acts chapter 13, it's a long tangent,
but here we go. The church at Antioch.
This is post Pentecost. If you know the story of Acts
chapter 2, Jesus said go, wait. And the Holy Spirit's going to
come, the helper's going to come and, and he does and they snig
comes on them and it says it's like fire on them, you know, in
a good way. And and they storm out of this
upper room that they're in and they go preaching in the streets
during during the Pentecost festival.
And they're declaring and other languages the message of God's
love through Jesus. And, and they're preaching it
right. And the church is launched.
OK, then watch. What does the church look like
early on? It looks like the church in
Antioch. And this is what I want our
church to look like. While they were worshipping the
Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, all the sudden it's
the sound again of us being with God.
And how did the Holy Spirit say, I don't know, did did someone
have a prophetic word? I don't know how the Holy Spirit
said, but I do know this is that in, in, in Genesis, God's with
them, God's with them. And now the church in Antioch,
it's just while they're worshipping and praying and
fasting and praying, it's like, wow, God speaks.
It's the sound of being with God again, and it's so beautiful.
And it's not just for the church, it's for us as
individuals. So this is the arc of the story
narrative. They're separated from God.
They walk with God. They're not with God.
Now, the church in Antioch, it's just the norm, but they worship,
they pray, they fast, and the Holy Spirit speaks to them and
the Holy Spirit speaks to them. They do things like we did with
Mariah this morning. They blade hands on Paul and
Barnabas and they sent them out. This is what the church should
be looking like. We're interacting with God like
Adam and Eve did in the garden. And the Holy Spirit is the one
that enables us through this is God now revealed to us as the
Holy Spirit. And here's where a lot of
Christians, again, they miss it, right?
So in the weeks to come, I'm going to talk for weeks to come
about the Holy Spirit. So what does the Holy Spirit do?
What are the gifts? What are the fruits?
Like what you know, what about blasphemy and the Holy Spirit?
What about all that stuff, right?
I'm going to get to all that, right?
And here's The thing is that a lot of people, again, I'm going
to teach on this because a lot of people don't understand the
Holy Spirit. I understand this and it's true
in the early church. This is Astor in Acts chapter
19. So this is 6 chapters after the
church at Antioch. It's like the garden.
They're walking with God and God speaking to them.
But here's some Christians, disciples, followers of Jesus,
and watch what happens. This is Paul and it says, and it
happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, so in the city of
Corinth, Paul passed through the island, the inland country, and
he came to Ephesus. You know, the New Testament,
there's a book called Ephesians that there's a church there.
And Paul writes a letter to them, right, called a letter to
the Ephesians. So Paul's in Ephesus and he
comes up there. He found some disciples.
These are followers of Jesus and and they're proclaiming their
faith in Jesus in in far off lands.
And he said to them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you
believed? And they said, no, we've not
even heard that there is a Holy Spirit disciples of Jesus.
And they're like, we don't know nothing about this.
Now, are they, are they saved? Yes.
Are they Christians? Yes.
Are they disciples of Jesus? Yes.
But when it comes to the Holy Spirit, they're like, we're
close. We don't know anything about it.
And here's The thing is, I think there's so many Christians today
that are Christians. They've, they've said, I want to
surrender my life to Christ, but they don't understand the role
of the Holy Spirit in their lives.
So when you say, are you a Christian?
Yes, yes, I, I, I, I go to church and I read my Bible and I
give and I do all these things and I serve.
And then you say, do you know about the Holy Spirit?
Do you know about the power of the Holy Spirit and how the Holy
Spirit is in US and how we get to walk with him like Adam and
Eve in the garden? Like do you know about this?
You're like, I have no idea what you're talking about.
A lot of Christians are like this.
Or they'll go. They told me that when I got
saved, I got the Holy Spirit. Yes, you did.
When you got saved, yes, the
Spirit of God came to dwell in you.
It's true, but if you don't know the fruits of the Holy Spirit
and the nature of the Holy Spirit and how the Holy Spirit
interacts with us, I'm going to tell you in the weeks to come,
all of these things that the Holy Spirit does, how God
interacts with us now is the Holy Spirit.
I'm going to get to all that. So if you, you live your
Christian life, you could be saved, you're a Christian,
you're going to be eternally with God, all of that.
But if you live your life going, I'm a follower of Jesus.
I'm all about Jesus. I'm all about Jesus.
Jesus is up in heaven going. I'm up here, the Holy Spirit is
with you. I went away, I was God, I was
Emmanuel, but now the Holy Spirit and you're like Jesus
speak to me and Jesus is like the Holy Spirit is there to do
that. Now it's the Holy Spirit.
So you have to learn how to interact with the Holy Spirit
because that's now how it is. We're in that period of time
where God now is with us and in US.
And Jesus is not just in one place now God is.
Jesus has a sin in heaven. So the Holy Spirit can't be
everywhere to all people, but there are New Testament types
gone. Having you heard of the Holy
Spirit. So I don't want you to be a part
of North life Church and someone says, hey, do you know about all
the things that the Holy Spirit could do You know like like you
know how you can you can pray and when you pray, do you know
you're supposed to pray to the Holy Spirit?
Did you know that Well, Jesus said when you pray, say father,
right. We pray to father, but OK, but
there are other places. I'm going to show you how you're
to interact with and speak the Holy Spirit.
We'll get all that in the weeks to come.
So my hope is that as you grow in your understanding about the
confusion that you might have or the hang ups that you might
have, again, maybe you've seen churches that were like Holy
Ghost churches, right? The Holy Ghost churches.
And it was like, I don't get that.
OK, well, does that mean all that is, all that they believe
is not available? Their churches are like, because
we don't want to have anything to do with that, Then we're
going to be over here. We're all about the Father and
all about the Son and the Holy Spirit thing.
I don't know, man. Well, I'm going to show you
scripturally, you don't get to go that you don't.
That's not the route you get to take.
You want to walk a flourishing, powerful spirit like Christian
life. Then we want to grow an
understanding of how God is revealing himself and the
Trinity. And right now the part of the
Trinity that is most available to us is the Holy Spirit.
So just end with some questions. Did you know about the Trinity?
Maybe it's new. The concept of the Trinity might
be new to you. And like the in Acts chapter 19
where like Paul's like, did you know about the Holy Spirit?
Maybe you're like, I don't know that I know about the Holy
Spirit. They didn't either.
And Are you ready to go for a deep dive in the Holy Spirit in
weeks to come? Good, Very good.
So Jason's going to come and we're going to sing.
Now. What I love is I love this song
became so popular a couple years ago and we signed here many
times. But we're going to end with
this. And the idea is that you go, oh,
yeah, I've sung that song many times.
But then you're like, wow, I guess I didn't understand the
way that, wow, what this song means when it says Holy Spirit,
you're welcome here. Oh, I guess I didn't understand
what I was really saying. Like sometimes you might think,
oh, the Holy Spirit is the present.
Oh, it's the Holy Spirit. Is that like goosebump feeling
that I get right? If you come to church, I hope
that there are times you're like, man, sometimes people just
move to tears. They come to church and they're
like, oh, wow, I feel the presence of God.
And he said, oh, that's the Holy Spirit.
No, that's not the Holy Spirit. It's not the, it's not totally
the Holy Spirit. It's the Holy Spirit moving in a
way. We're like, I sense God, I feel
God. I can't explain it, but I feel
God. No, that's not what we were
chasing after. When we say Holy Spirit, you're
welcome. It's not like God.
Bring the good vibes, right? No, we're saying God, Holy
Spirit, you are God, you are God.
And we're saying, come Holy Spirit, you're welcome in our
lives and in me. Can you stand for me?
I'm really looking forward to the next couple weeks.
And if you know somebody that comes to our church and they
missed it, let them know. Go listen to the podcast to get
ready for next week. I've got like, well, I won't
even tell you how many weeks because I don't know yet.
So we'll see how it goes, but we're going to sing this before
we go out. Let us experience the glory of
your presence. Let us become more aware of your
presence. Let us experience the glory of
Your goodness. God, in the weeks to come, Holy
Spirit, we pray that you would reveal yourself to us and new
and deep ways that we may walk with you.
As Adam and Eve walked in the garden, let it become a familiar
sound, the sound of you among us.
And before you go, I want to say a blessing over you, if you
prepare your heart to receive this blessing before you go.
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you, and may he make
his face to shine upon you. And may the joy of the Lord that
is unspeakable and full of glory, may it abound to you.
And may the peace of God that passes all understanding may
surprise you in the midst of all of the challenges that life
brings. And then may the mercies of the
Lord, in other words, the forgiveness of God, that is new
every morning. May it be especially new to you
now and your mornings to come. And now may the Lord Jesus
Christ guard your heart and your mind.
You are salt and you are light. Go now and be salt and light
unto the world. You are blessed.
We'll see you again