What Makes Jesus Unique? No one else made the claims that He did, He is alive...............
All the great religious leaders of history have one thing in common: they are dead. Only one man has risen from a grave never again to taste death. Jesus Christ died, was buried, remained in the grave for 3 days, then was raised to life again.
Jesus is unique. He is the only one proven to be the Son of God because God validated His Kingship and accepted His payment for our sins all with one incredible stroke: He raised Jesus from the dead!
Paul opens his letter to the Romans with this evidence about who Jesus is:
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which He had promised before by His prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. Romans 1:1-4
Because Jesus Christ is very much alive, five things are true right now that wouldn’t be true if He were just another dead religious leader like Confucius, Mohammed or Buddha.
Because Jesus was raised from the dead and is alive…Prayers are answered, We can talk to Jesus 24/7
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It was a gift of faith given by the Holy Spirit for that time, for that purpose. The gift of healing is precisely what it sounds like. The Holy Spirit moves through a person to heal another person. In the ministry of Jesus and the apostles, this gift was given to authenticate their ministry as being from God. Now, we believe that miraculous healing still occur today.
And our brother Amen tells us that if anyone among the brethren is sick, they should call for the elders who are to lay hands on them, anoint them with oil, and pray for them to be healed. This gift is still active today. The performing of miracles gift is broad and includes miracles other than healing. Examples would be Moses in Egypt or Elimus being struck blind, which we'll read about when we get to Acts, chapter 13. Now, there is a compelling case to be made that this gift was specific to the upper case A apostles.
We will see this in multiple places. In the book of Acts, Paul wrote to the Corinthians, and speaking of himself, he said the signs of an apostle were performed with unfailing endurance among you, including signs and wonders and miracles. In other words, there may have been a category of signs and wonders and miracles that was a special empowerment given to the upper case apostles, the apostles in the first century through whom Jesus established the Church. For what it's worth, I think that was likely the case. When a person is full of the word of God, the Holy Spirit may give them a special gift to distinguish between spirits empowerment, to discern the truth from the deceptions and forgeries of Satan and his allies.
The Holy Spirit will bring specific Scriptures to mind, which will enable clear discernment. Or he may simply give the conviction that something is off and should be investigated or weighed or prayed about. Further, this gift of the Spirit was active in Jesus when the Spirit empowered him to discern the difference between someone who was sick and someone who was possessed, someone willingly involved with demons, as opposed to someone who was being oppressed against their will. I don't have a verse for it, but experience will teach you that generally God created woman to be more sensitive than men. In the spiritual arena, I have often found that God will work through that natural spiritual sensitivity to discern when something is going on beneath the surface in a person's life.
But there's a difference between being able to teach and having the gift of teaching. Every pastor should be able to teach in such a way that they can present the truths of Scripture, clearly building up the hero in their faith. But the gift of teaching and the gift of a teacher is a person empowered by God to teach with clarity and authority, above and beyond their natural ability or any skill that can be learned. It's a special anointing from God for the task of teaching. The word pastor in the original Greek is the word for shepherd.
When God gives the gift of a pastor to a local church body, he gives them the gift of a shepherd, someone who desires to care for, protect, and feed the flock of God so that they grow into strong, healthy sheep. That's the heart of a faithful pastor. He is always aware that the flock belongs to his master, the Lord Jesus, and his life's work is shepherding the sheep that have been entrusted to him by his master. I just want to point out again that every believer is called to serve. Every believer is called to give generously, every believer is called to show mercy, and on and on.
I would he a gift of the Spirit is a special anointing to serve, give, or show mercy above and beyond our natural inclinations or abilities. If one of my kids came up to me and said, Dad, after listening to that message, I've realized I don't have the gift of washing dishes, it might surprise you to learn that my response would not be, oh wow, I had no idea. Thanks for letting me know, buddy. I would never want you to serve where you don't feel gifted. My response would be, cool story, bro.
The dishes still need to get washed, so let's get to it. I say that lest anyone dream of saying, I don't have the gift of chair stacking, I don't have the gift of helping with kids ministry, I don't have the gift of service. The church is a family, and in a family, the work needs to get done. I don't run dinner clean-up multiple times per week because it's my gift or my passion. I do it because it needs to get done and I'm part of the family.
So how do these gifts work in and among the church? Well, as we've said, we're told to desire these gifts. We're told to desire to be used by the Lord to be a blessing to others. And so we want to be open. That's the first thing.
We want to be open and available to the Lord. Remember that if we have unrepentant sin in our lives, we need to deal with that first. Then we need to be pre committed to obeying the Lord should he choose to give us a gift of the Spirit. If we believe the Holy Spirit is asking us to do something, we test it by ensuring first that it doesn't contradict Scripture and that it will result in the body being built up in the faith, assuming it passes those checks. We do what the Lord has asked us to do.
This is really important. We do what the Lord has asked us to do. We don't edit his instructions to us. We don't expand his instructions to us. If the Holy Spirit tells you to share an encouragement, a verse, a word, a prophecy with a person, you humbly go up to them and you say, I believe the Lord wants me to share this with you.
You share it and then you leave it with them. I mean, like, you literally walk away. You don't stand around like that's good, right? So spot on. Did you feel that?
Because I felt something. Did you feel that? You don't do that. Does that mean anything to you? Does that make sense to you?
Does that bless you? You don't add your thoughts to God's message. You don't add an interpretation he might have. You share a word and you're like, I have no idea what this means, because it's not for you. It's not for you.
It's for them. Your part in the process is to obey in faith. That's it. That's what the prophets of God did in the days of old. And if you believe the Lord has given you something to share with the whole church, then we ask that you go up to BJ or myself during the worship time that follows the message, go up to whichever one of us is not up at the front at that specific moment in the worship time following the message and just share it with us.
Just say, Hey, I believe the Lord wants me to share this with the church. This is biblical, and it will allow us to just quietly discern if it is indeed a word from the Lord. We do that because of Paul's instructions in One Thessalonians Five, where he writes, don't stifle the spirit, don't despise prophecies, but test all things. Hold on to what is good. If we believe it's from the Lord and it's going to build up the whole body, we'll ask you to share it with the church.
Lord, it is our desire to be available to be used by you our whole lives, everything we own, we want it all to be available to you. Whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it, Lord, sincerely. So help us to do that with our whole lives, Lord. But today we're focusing in on this area of the gifts that you give Your church through Your Holy Spirit. And Lord, we desire to be available to be used by you to bless our brothers and sisters.
And so, Lord, if there's any trepidation in the room, Lord, would you give peace and an assurance that everything you do is good? You're never out to embarrass or humiliate anybody. You're just good. And so, Lord, help us to sincerely be able to say, lord, we're available. We'd love to be used by you to encourage our brothers and sisters in the faith.
Lord, if there's any sin that needs to be repented of, would you reveal it right now by Your Holy Spirit? Lord, if there's anyone in bondage to sin, would you give the gift of faith right now that you are able to set them free, that your grace is stronger, it is more powerful, it is greater? So, Lord, help us to be able to stand before you with open, clean hands. As we say, we're available to be used by You, Lord. We desire, as you command us to the gifts of Your Spirit, so minister to Your people.
We would love it if you would do it through us. Lord, may Your church be built up. May we be who you want us to be, that you might be pleased, you might be blessed, you might be glorified. May you be glorified above all things, Jesus, and receive the kind of honor that you deserve, Lord, among us in this place. We love You, Jesus.
In Your precious name, we pray. Amen.
Date:6/12/22
Passage: Acts 2:4 Speaker: Jeff Thompson
What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Jeff brings clarity to a subject too often made confusing and explains why it is essential for every follower of Jesus.
We have pushed the pause button on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter two because this section of scripture touches upon multiple massive subjects that are important for us to investigate, study, hopefully, understand, and most importantly, apply to our lives. Our key verse once again is Acts two four, where we read then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues.
As the Spirit enabled them.
Last week we talked about those different tongues. This week we're going to focus on the fact that it says they were.
All filled with the Holy Spirit.
What does that phrase mean? What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? This subject raises many deep theological questions, and if I'm honest, some of them remain unanswered for me. We have limited time to study the Scriptures together on Sundays, and we always want to use this time as profitably as possible. And so for that reason, I'm not going to get into the weeds on the finer details of theology in this study.
Instead, I'm going to focus on what.
We do know how we can respond to it so that we can.
Experience more of the fullness of Jesus in our lives.
Recall that the disciples of Jesus were praying and praising in the upper room in Jerusalem on Pentecost because Jesus had told them to do so before he returned to heaven. His instructions in Luke 24 49. All these verses will be on your outline where I am sending you and the literal word there is I am sending upon you what my Father promised. As for you, stay in the city until you are empowered again. The literal translation is until you are clothed with power from on high. Acts 8 documents Jesus promising his disciples, 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 and to the ends of the Earth. So something happened in the upper room on Pentecost that clothed the disciples with power from God, and it turns out it wasn't a one-time event. This process that clothed them with power happened to the disciples those same disciples multiple times. And when we examine the Scriptures, we find that it's being filled with the Spirit that is connected with walking in God's power. Let me share a few examples.
Shortly after Pentecost, Peter and John began preaching the gospel in Jerusalem and even healing the sick in Jesus' name. They and the layman that God had healed through them were forcefully brought before the city's religious leaders. In Acts 4/8 we read; Then Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit and said to them, Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today about a good deed done to a disabled man, by what means he was healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel. But by that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified and whom God raised from the dead by him, this man is standing here before you healthy. Peter is filled with the Holy Spirit and given the power to preach truth to the religious leaders of Israel. Boldly those religious leaders don't know how to respond, so they release them under threat of severe consequences. Should they continue preaching, which they obviously do, they return to their believing brothers and sisters and share their experience as a praise report. They worship and praise the Lord together. And then we read in Acts 431, when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God.
We have Peter and John and other believers whose verse is the upper room on Pentecost being filled again and again with the Holy Spirit. And we see the resulting power to represent Jesus and live as his ambassadors. When we reach Acts chapter nine, we will read the incredible story of Saul's Damascus road conversion. In Acts 9/17 we read Ananias went and entered the house. He placed his hands on him and said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road you were traveling, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. After being filled with the Spirit, Paul would go on to become the greatest Church planter in history and the author of about a quarter of the New Testament.
In Acts Chapter 13, Paul and Barnabas have been doing some intense Ministry in the city of Antioch. And at the end of the description of their trip there, scripture says this in verse 52. And the disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit. Just as they're out there serving the. Lord, they're filled with the Holy Spirit.
Over and over again. You can make a note of this. It's your first fill-in over and over again. The pattern of scripture is that being filled with the Holy Spirit provides power to represent God. It provides power to represent God, to live as his representatives, his ambassadors power to represent God. This pattern is also present under the Old Covenant, the period primarily documented in the Old Testament. The Prophet Micah perfectly captured the same pattern we see in Acts writing. As for me, however, I am filled with power by the Spirit of the Lord with justice and courage to proclaim to Jacob his rebellion and to Israel his sin. The Spirit of the Lord came upon the Judges, Othneil, Gideon, Jeff, the Samson, and assuming all the other Judges, the Spirit of the Lord came upon King Saul, King David, David, and assuming the other righteous Kings of Israel, it came upon the Prophet Ezekiel and assumed the other prophets, it came upon Jahzeal, a Levite, and many others at various places in various times.
Luke 1 tells us that John the Baptist, the last old coveting Prophet, was filled with the Spirit while he was in Utero. And in that same chapter, his father and mother are also filled with the Spirit. But something dramatically changes after Pentecost and the events of Acts chapter two. With the inauguration of the Church under the Old Covenant, God would sovereignly choose someone to do his will and give them His power to accomplish it. A simple way to think about it is to envision an invisible superhero Cape. And when God puts it on you, you have whatever superpower He deems necessary for you to have for that task. It could be prophesying, or confronting authority figures. It could be super strength working, other miracles, military conquest, all kinds of stuff. When the Prophet Elijah asks his mentor, the Prophet Elijah, for a double portion of his anointing, he's referring to this concept, that power that the Lord has put upon you, Elijah. I want double. That's what Elijah is asking for. When the angel told John the Baptist's father that John would prophesy ahead of the arrival of Messiah in the spirit and power of Elijah, he's referring to this same idea of specific power from God being like a Cape that drapes around you and over you.
Cases are still incredibly rare given the number of Israelites in view. Generously. We're talking about the Spirit and power of God coming upon a few hundred people out of millions of Israelites over the course of around two and a half thousand years.
That's all that happened in the Old Testament.
And the Spirit and power of God.
Could leave when he was done, when the task was completed. Write this down and we'll unpack this. Here's the big shift.
After the advent of the Church in Acts chapter two, the power of the Holy Spirit was made available to all who belong to God.
The power of the Holy Spirit was made available to all who belonged to God.
This is a sea change of indescribable magnitude. Everyone in the upper room was filled with the Holy Spirit.
When Peter and John report back to the other believers in Acts chapter four, we read, that when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God. Boldly, all filled in.
Luke 11, Jesus is teaching his followers that they will need to think and interact with God differently under the New Covenant. It says, he also said to them, Suppose one of you has a friend and goes to him at midnight and says to him, Friend, let me three loaves of bread because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me and I don't have anything to offer him. Then he will answer from inside and say, don't bother me. The door is already locked and my children and I have gone to bed. I can't get up to give you anything, I tell you, even though he won't give up and give him anything because he is his friend.
Yet because of his friend's shameless boldness, he will get up and give him.
As much as he needs. So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you. Everyone who asks receives, and the. One who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
If you've been around the Church for. a while, then you've heard those verses. But are you aware of the context of those verses? Here it is. Jesus keeps speaking and says, what father among you? If his son asks for a fish we'L l give him a snake instead of a fish, or if he asks for an egg, we'll give him a Scorpion.
If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children.
Here's the context. How much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? The context is asking for and seeking the Holy Spirit. And as some of you know, the.
Original Greek syntax tells us, that Jesus's instructions should actually be translated, Keep asking and It will be given to you. Keep seeking and you will find. Keep knocking and the door will be open to you. The idea is an ongoing pattern of seeking, asking, and knocking.
Jesus says, if you bug a friend, he will grudgingly give you what you need because he's your friend. If a friend will do that for you. And if a sinful earthly father knows how to give his children good gifts.
How much more do you think your perfect and loving heavenly Father knows what you need and is willing to give it to you? And he makes it clear that the issue in focus is the Holy Spirit.
And this was a massive change in thinking that honestly, the followers of Jesus could not understand at the time. Nobody got it.
I guarantee you none of them got It when Jesus taught this, but they got it on the day of Pentecost in Acts Chapter Two. Instead of the Old Covenant model of God?
Power coming only upon a chosen few sovereignly selected by God under the new Covenant in the Church, his power, Comes upon all who ask.
Under the Old Covenant, God's Spirit would come and go from a person. But under the new Covenant we can ask for and receive a feeling of the Spirit as often as we want. As often as we want. Would you write this down?
Believers are invited to ask for and receive a filling of the Holy Spirit at any time.
Anytime believers are invited to ask fornnd receive a filling of the Holy Spirit at any time. We are talking about the power to actually live as God's representatives, the
power to actually be the individuals, the spouses, the parents, the children, the workers, the friends, and ministers of the gospel that we're called to be.
The power to take up our cross daily and follow Jesus walking upstream against the flow of the world that we live in.
And that's where it starts to get a bit messy because everybody wants to be filled with the Spirit when it's pitched as this will help you realize your full potential.
But many people are much less excited when you talk about the power to take up your cross and follow Jesus daily.
Later in the Book of Acts, we'll meet a man named Stephen.
He's chosen to help food distribution to widows in the Church because he's described as a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit.
And we think I'd love to have someone say that about me. That's a good Instagram bio right there.
Full of Grace and power. We're then told that Steven was full of Grace and power, and was performing great wonders and signs among the people.
And we think that would look good.
In my bio too. I'd love to be doing miracles among people. Have people say that guy is full of Grace and power. Some hardhearted men became jealous of Stephen. They falsely accuse him of blasphemy and even arranged for false witnesses.
When Stephen is brought before the judicial body of the Sanhedrin, we read they.
Looked intently at him and saw that his face was like the face of an angel.
And we think I'd love to have. a face like an angel empowered by the Spirit.
Steven then preaches a powerful sermon explaining that Jesus was and is Messiah and calling out the religious leaders who are trying him at that moment for rejecting the prophets of God for over 20 years. And Steven's concluding point to them is essentially, stop repeating the mistakes of your forefathers, stop resisting the Holy Spirit repent.
And Scripture declares they were cut to the quick. And we think I'd love to have the power to speak so boldly. I'd love to have the power of that man.
When I talk about the Lord, people are just. It just cuts them right to the heart. And then in Acts chapter seven, we read that Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven.
He saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. He said, Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God. They yelled at the top of their voices, covered their ears, and together rushed against him. They dragged him out of the city and began to stone him.
And the witnesses laid their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.
While they were stoning Stephen, he called out, Lord Jesus, receive my Spirit. He knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this sin against them.
And after saying this, he fell asleep. You see, this is the problem. Everybody wants to be filled with the Spirit when it's presented as a means to fulfill your potential.
Most people want the power of the Spirit when it's presented as a means to speak powerfully work, miracles, move in the supernatural, and have people think well of.
Not nearly as many people want the power of the Spirit to emulate Jesus in the face of unjust persecution. It's not nearly as appealing when the pitches you can be filled with the Spirit and have the power to die.
To yourself and the desires of your flesh take up your cross and follow Jesus.
We talked about this a couple of weeks ago when Jesus breathed on the disciples and said, Receive the Holy Spirit.
He imparted to them the Holy Spirit's power to understand the Scriptures on a profound level, and many people would love that.
But not nearly as many people are interested in receiving the Spirit's power to obey the Scriptures. Here's the biblical truth about being filled with the Spirit. You can make a note of this. The purpose of being filled with the Holy Spirit is to receive the power to live for Jesus and die to ourselves. It's the power to live for Jesus and die to ourselves.
If you have no interest in dying to yourself, there is no point asking the Holy Spirit for his power if you have no interest in laying down your life to serve, honor and follow Jesus. There is no point in asking the Holy Spirit for his power if you want the Lord to open your mind to the Scriptures, but you're not interested in actually doing what you learn from the Scriptures.
There's no point asking the Holy Spirit for his power. And some might say, I've prayed for God's power. I've asked to be filled with the Spirit, but nothing changed in my life. And I would just ask you humbly to honestly evaluate why you were praying to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Did you just want to be happier? Did you just want to be more personally fulfilled? Or did you want the power to die for yourself? Take up your cross and follow after Jesus. Sometimes the words of our brother James cut to the heart of the issue.
He said, you ask and don't receive because you ask with the wrong motives so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
Closely with Jesus and follow Him in every area of your life, then being filled with the Holy Spirit is what you're looking for and the Lord desires you have it.
We've established that regarding being filled with the Holy Spirit, the first key difference between the Old and New Covenants is that the Spirit is available to all who believe. Under the New Covenant, we need only ask.
The second big difference is what makes that first big difference possible.
Under the Old Covenant, the only way you could be filled with the Spirit was by a sovereign act of God from the outside. Externally, he would clothe you with his power and Spirit to accomplish a specific task, often only for a specific time.
When Jesus was talking with the Samaritan woman at the well, he told her.
Whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again.
In fact, the water I will give him will become a well. The literal word is spring. A spring of water springing up in him for eternal life. And then in John chapter seven, we read, on the last and most important day of the festival, Jesus stood up and cried out, if anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. The one who believes in me, as the scripture has said, will have streams of living water flow from deep within him. And of course, those words of Jesus were fulfilled on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter two. Now, did you notice the difference between where the filling of the Spirit comes from under the Old and New Covenants before and after Acts Two?
Before, it was a sovereign act of God from the outside. After the filling of the Spirit flows
from within us and fills us up from within. Why the difference? Because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, our sins have been forgiven.
That means the Holy Spirit can make a home in us, join to our dead Spirit, raise it to life, turning us into temples of the Holy Spirit as we talked about two weeks ago.
This is called regeneration. It's called being born again. It's the indwelling of God's Spirit in us. God's Spirit is now it's separately joined to our Spirit, having taken up permanent residence in us.
The Holy Spirit, as I mentioned earlier, can fill believers spontaneously while they're praying, praising, or ministering. We see this in the Book of Acts, but as we've also seen, we are invited to ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Why do we have to ask?
Why don't we just get topped up automatically?
It's because our Heavenly Father desires a relationship with his children. Jesus, our Savior, wants a relationship with his brethren.
And the truth is, our flesh is still strong enough to regularly delude us Into thinking we don't need God.
If we were filled with the Spirit all the time without ever having to return to God to ask for it, how long do you think it would be before we started taking credit for the Spirit's power? I'm just a really caring person. I'm just a servant-hearted guy. See my Instagram bio? It's all right there. I'm a wonderful human being.
How long would it be before we began patting ourselves on the back for being so gracious and kind and loving? If you don't know yourself well enough to answer that question honestly yet, let me answer it for you. The answer is not very long.
Not very long. God didn't do things this way to make us need Him.
We need Him. We need Him. So in His Grace, he created a system where we would be regularly reminded of that truth.
To stay full of the Holy Spirit, we must return to our Heavenly Father daily and ask. And as we do, we are reminded of two of the essential truths in life.
Number one, we desperately need the Lord. And number two, he loves us more than we could imagine, and we need to be reminded of those things every day. I know I do. If the Holy Spirit is in us.
If he's joined to our Spirit if he never leaves us or forsakes us.
Then why don't I always feel like he's close?
Why don't I always feel like he's with me? The best parallel is likely marriage.
In biblical marriage, you are one in God's eyes. You are joined together. And yet it's possible for that to be true and for us to still not have the experience of joy, love and kindness in our marriage.
The Union remains intact, but our day to day experience can vary. In the same way Holy Spirit never leaves or forsakes us, our Union remains Intact and it will forever.
But if we do certain things or don't do other things, our experience with.
That Union is impacted. The relationship is impacted.
Our experience is affected by whether we ask to be filled. As I mentioned, we can't ask to be filled if we have no intention of coveting and following Jesus.
Both the Old Testament and the New inform us that it is possible to.
Grieve the Holy Spirit with our sin.
It's astounding to me how many times, myself included, we can have unconfessed sin. Sin we haven't repented of. We haven't turned away from how often we can have sin like that in our lives, and yet we will simultaneously lament the fact that we feel far from God.
I still know what it is, man. It just feels like the Lord isn't with me. And if someone says, well, do you think that maybe the fact that you're in unrepentant rebellion against the Lord in this area of your life might have something to do with it? We're like, Definitely not.
Definitely not. But it has everything to do with it. Unconfessed and unrepentant sin grieves the Holy Spirit and it quenches his ability to fill us. It damages our relationship with God. It all goes back to the central purpose of being filled with the Holy Spirit. It's having the power to live for Jesus and die to ourselves. If we're walking in unrepentant sin, it makes no sense to ask God for the power to die to ourselves and live for Him because we clearly don't actually want to do that. Living in unrepentant sin and then asking to be filled with the Holy Spirit is like asking a fitness coach for a diet plan, knowing full well you have no intention of ceasing your practice of eating ten Twinkies every day. God does not play games.
God will not be mocked If we're going to ask for His power, we need to be serious about our desire and intent to live for Him and die to ourselves. Perhaps some of you are thinking something like man I thought being filled with the Spirit was all about joy and happiness and all that sort of good stuff.
It is, but not directly.
The joy, peace, hope, abundant life, and all that good stuff are the byproduct of abiding in Jesus. It's the byproduct of walking in agreement with God. It's the byproduct of not quenching the Spirit in your life with sin. It's the byproduct of living a life controlled by the Spirit rather than the flesh. You see, being filled with the Spirit.
Is the power to abide in Christ in daily life.
The love, the joy, the peace, and all that good stuff flow into our lives naturally when we walk with Jesus. Being filled with the Spirit is the power to do that in daily life. It's the power to resist the things of the flesh that get in the way of our relationship with Jesus. Being filled with the Spirit is not about getting high on God or getting a fuzzy feeling. It's about having the power to live for Christ and die to ourselves. And guess what? It turns out that living for Jesus.
Walking with Jesus brings much more love, joy, and peace into my life than living for myself does.
Jesus talked about this in John 15 when he said, Remain in me and I in you just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine. Neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches, the one who remains in me, and I in Him produce as much fruit because you can do nothing without me.
Jesus taught that those who follow him wouldn'T have to strive to produce fruit in their lives.
Jesus said, Listen, all you got to do is just walk with me. Just stay close to me, and you're. naturally going to produce good works. You're naturally going to become more like me. You won't even have to try. It'll just happen naturally. And that sounds so simple. When I started understanding that, I started thinking I've had this huge epiphany. This is why I can't just seem to consistently be more like Jesus. I need to be abiding in Jesus.
It's not about works.
I've just got to abide with Jesus. And it sounds so simple, but when you've been a believer for a while you begin to recognize the problem and you find yourself praying.
But Lord, why is it so hard to stay close to you?
I know that if I could just do that, I would start becoming the kind of person, the kind of Christian I want to be. But it's so hard. It's so hard. You're not crazy.
It's not just you. It is hard because we're in fallen sinful fleshly bodies with one agenda to be our own God and pursue our known pleasure above all else.
That's why God gave us the gift of being filled with the Holy Spirit. It's the power to stay close to Jesus by dying to ourselves, dying to our flesh, and instead being led by the Spirit, he has given us the power to abide in Him. And here's how much we need the Lord. He's told us that all we need to do is stick close to Him. But as I said, we can't even do that. We can't even do that.
He's like, Just stay close to me and I'll do everything else. Sorry, Lord, I can't even do that. So he's given us his spirit so that we might be filled with the power we need every day to actually stick close to Him. And as we abide in Him, full of the Holy Spirit, we begin to experience the abundant life that's only found in him and his covet, his joy, his peace begin to saturate our lives because those things are naturally produced when we walk in the Spirit, abide in Christ and live for Him. Hear me on this. The power of being filled with the Spirit is so vital to who we are called to be as the Church
of Jesus that the Church could not come into existence without it.
Jesus filled believers with the Holy Spirit in the Upper Room on Pentecost in Acts chapter two, when the Church was born. And I want to suggest to you that even today the Church cannot be the Church apart from being filled with the Holy Spirit over and over again.
We cannot be the people of God that we are called to be. We do not have the power on our own. We are not good enough on our own. We need the power of the Holy Spirit, and we desperately need to become comfortable, openly and freely asking him for it. If we try to be the people of God on our own strength, in our own flesh, we will fail over and over again. We will become exhausted because we will be trying to draw water from a dry well
Paul said in Romans 7/18, I know that nothing good lives in me that is, in my flesh. We need to be filled with the Spirit. And if we'll ask, if we'll seek, we'll find that we don't even need to draw the water. Jesus said his Spirit in us would be like a spring here's a challenging but hopeful truth. Some of us have been unnecessarily suffering and enduring emotional hardship. I don't mean to say that if you're full of the Holy Spirit, nothing's ever difficult. I don't mean to say that, but what I'm saying is that some of us have been doing our best to follow Jesus faithfully, and it's been exhausting.
Exhausting. Maybe we fall into a type of Messiah complex and tell ourselves this is just what suffering for Jesus is being tired and miserable all the time, but he's worth it. I want to tell you that Jesus doesn't intend for that to be your reality or my reality. That's one of the reasons he's made his Spirit available to fill us. How much? As much as we need. As often as we need. I'm talking about real, deep-seated joy, deep seated hope, deep-seated faith some of us do not have because we do not ask, Would you write this down? Being filled with the Holy Spirit gives us the power to abide in Jesus, which then naturally produces the fruit of the Spirit in our lives.
As we talked about two weeks ago.
That happens automatically when we are saved and regenerated. But the Bible does command us to be filled with the Spirit.
In Ephesians 518, Paul writes, don't get drunk with wine, which leads to reckless living, but be filled by the Spirit.
And the original Greek, the grammatical construction of that sentence means it should be translated more like, always being filled with the Holy Spirit. Always be filled with the Holy Spirit. It's a command to be filled continually.
The contrast with wine illustrates the two options we are constantly facing in life. Being led by the flesh or being led by the spirit being controlled by the flesh or being controlled by the Spirit, and whatever controls us produces fruit. When the Spirit directs us and leads us and controls us, he produces the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, the kind of love that produces joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.
When the flesh controls us, we experience and produce the fruit of the flesh, which is reckless living in things like s*xual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfishness, ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and.
Anything similar, says Paul. Putting this all together, here's what I suggest. The Lord wants us to understand about being filled with the Spirit.
His Word lays out the gospel for us. It also describes how we are to live and how we are to love and serve as representatives of Jesus on Earth.
It describes a state of being where we experience God's love and life in our daily live
So we read God's Word and we understand it and we say, yes, I want it all. I want to love and serve Jesus with my whole life. I want to represent him in his Kingdom to everyone I encounter in my daily life. And we try to do it on our own strength.
But we discover that we can't. We fail. We're exhausted. We find out we don't actually have agape love in our flesh. It's just not there, and we can't produce it on our own. We don't experience the abundant life that Jesus talked about.
And then we get into the Scriptures.
And as I said, we discover, AHA, the key is abiding in Christ. No wonder I can't make any good works happen on myself and my own strength.
And we say, I get it now. I need to stop striving to do good work. There's no work I can do to produce fruit. I need to abide. And so I am going to abide so freaking hard.
I am going to abide in Christ with maximum intensity. This is going to be my soul. I'm going to work so hard at just abiding in Christ.
And then we run into some problems. We realize we can't abide in Christ and be living in sin. We can't abide in Christ and simultaneously pursue the pleasures of the flesh. And all our energy just seems to be going to fighting our flesh and we just keep losing. Forget fruit. We can't even abide. Jesus is like, can you just stay here? Just stay here. We're like, I got it. Lord Jesus turns around for once. He's like, Where did you go?
I couldn't do it.
I couldn't do it. I tried. I couldn't do it. We can't even abide. We can't just stay close to Jesus and do nothing but stay close to him. We can't do it.
And then we learn that Jesus knew all of this. All of this. And he didn't say, you are so pathetic. He said, I know, I know, I know you're weak. So, I'm going to give you my spirit, and he's going to come and live inside of you because you don't even have the power to abide in me on your own.
And as we walk in the Spirit, we experience the glorious benefits of the abundant life found only in Jesus. We begin to have the experience of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Hear me on this on our own. None of us has the power to be who God has called us to be.
None of us. We do not have the power to be the friend, the brother or sister in Christ, the family member, the employee, the citizen, the spouse, or the follower of Jesus that we're called to be apart from Jesus. We can do nothing. Nothing.
We must be filled with the Spiritmover and over again.
We must become comfortable asking him to fill us.
We must become comfortable asking for people to pray for us, that we might be filled with the Spirit.
And we must become comfortable with everybody.
Knowing that we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Understanding our desperate need for the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, in our Church is fundamental to Christianity it is fundamental
How fundamental? Well, Jesus made it clear on the.
The day the Church was born. He made his followers wait for the power of the Holy Spirit. He didn't say, Why don't you start filing some paperwork to get the Church formed? He's like, you got to wait for the power of the Holy Spirit because this Church thing is not possible apart from that power. He made them wait, so that they might understand that their calling as individual members of the Church could never be realized without the power that he filled them with on the day of Pentecost. This is basic, kindergarten, foundational, ground-level Christianity.
We can do nothing apart from Jesus and the power of his Spirit. Here's the final thing I know today, and I'll ask the worship team to come up. Here's the final thing I know with absolute certainty we need to be filled with His Spirit today and tomorrow and the day after that. So let's start with today. If you desire to be filled with the Spirit today, that you might be satisfied in Jesus, die to yourself, and live for him with your whole life and you're willing to ask, you will be filled. You will be filled. You don't have to take my word for it.
Take the Lord's word for it. If you refuse to admit your desperate need for His Spirit, if you refuse to ask or if you do not desire to die to yourself and live for him with your whole life, you will not be filled. But it won't be because the Lord is not willing. If you're broken and tired and feel hopeless, you are not without hope. The Lord is near to you. He's near to you, and he desires to fill you with his Spirit. You need only ask your heavenly Father, who loves you so much, to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Be filled with the Holy Spirit. I'm going to pray for that in just a minute. But before I do, I just want to let you know as we go into a time of worship, we're going to have four songs and spend some extended time in the presence of the Lord. This is such a great opportunity to just forget about the people around you and just fellowship with the Lord. If you received your Communion elements, this represents the body and blood of Jesus. And if you wonder, would the Lord really fill me? Look at what he's already done for you. Look at what he's already done for you. Do you think he loves you? He loves you. Do you think he cares about you? He cares about you.
Going to ask us all to just bow our heads and close our eyes.
And I'm going to pray for us to be filled with the Spirit. And I'm going to invite you to.
Just put your hands out in front of you in a posture of need.
And here's the thing. If you're thinking, well, if I do that, everyone will know that I'm needy. Listen, you are needy. You just are. I am, too. We desperately need the Lord. What we're praying and hoping for is that we can take a big step forward as a Church and just be willing to admit that and having that become normal, that we need the Lord.
So if you desire to be filled, we just hold your hands out in front of you. Let's pray, Father, thank you that you are a good and loving Heavenly Father who knows how to give good gifts to his children.
And Lord, we're all in different places right now experiencing different joys, different griefs, different trials. Different victories. We're going through different things.
But Lord, you know exactly what we need. And so, Lord, here's what we're asking. Would you fill us with your spirit? Because we need you so much. We just need you so much, Lord, we confess we can do nothing apart from you.
But you promised that if we covet to you. You promised that if we would ask you promised that if we'd seek you promised that if we would knock you would give as much of the spirit as is needed by us.
And so we ask Lord, fill us with your spirit to the point of overflowing that we might die to ourselves and live for you with everything we have. And we believe in faith we've received that Jesus in your name we pray Amen
Going to ask us all to just bow our heads and close our eyes.
And I'm going to pray for us to be filled with the Spirit. And I'm going to invite you to.
Just put your hands out in front of you in a posture of need.
And here's the thing. If you're thinking, well, if I do that, everyone will know that I'm needy. Listen, you are needy. You just are. I am, too. We desperately need the Lord. What we're praying and hoping for is that we can take a big step forward as a Church and just be willing to admit that and having that become normal, that we need the Lord.
So if you desire to be filled, we just hold your hands out in front of you. Let's pray, Father, thank you that you are a good and loving Heavenly Father who knows how to give good gifts to his children.
And Lord, we're all in different places right now experiencing different joys, different griefs, different trials. Different victories. We're going through different things.
But Lord, you know exactly what we need. And so, Lord, here's what we're asking. Would you fill us with your spirit? Because we need you so much. We just need you so much, Lord, we confess we can do nothing apart from you.
But you promised that if we covet to you. You promised that if we would ask you promised that if we'd seek you promised that if we would knock you would give as much of the spirit as is needed by us.
And so we ask Lord, fill us with your spirit to the point of overflowing that we might die to ourselves and live for you with everything we have. And we believe in faith we've received that Jesus in your mind name we pray Amen.
Series: Acts
Passage: Acts 9:1-25 Speaker: Jeff Thompson
When Saul encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus, everything changed. In this study, we’ll examine the details of one of the most famous events in the Bible, and how it changed the course of history.
And as we pick up our study in the Book of Acts, the focus now moves from Philip back to Saul, who, if you recall, was the driving force of persecution against the Church at this time. And today we will read about the miracle of his conversion. And that is indeed the only proper term for what took place. A miracle because Saul believed he was on a mission from God, stamping out a blasphemous perversion of Judaism in Jerusalem, Israel, and even neighboring countries. Saul was zealous to the extreme.
He was a man possessed and of singular focus, and his focus was destroying the Church. His miraculous conversion would change the course of human history. He would be transformed into the apostle we know and love today as Paul, who would plant churches, preach the Gospel wherever he went, work miracles, train pastors, and author about a third of the New Testament. In this study, we'll learn what exactly happened that caused this radical transformation.
We'll pick things up at the beginning of Acts, chapter Nine. As we refocus our camera on Saul, we find him doing the same thing he was doing when we last encountered him. It says now Saul was still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. Years later, Paul would write in his first letter to his protege Timothy that at this time he was living as a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an arrogant man. He thought he was stamping out blasphemy, but in reality, he was guilty of it himself.
In his own words, he was acting out of ignorance, in, unbelief. He genuinely believed that he was doing the right thing. He was one of those Jesus warned his disciples about when he told them, that a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering service to God. When Paul looked back on this time in his life. He told Timothy that he was the worst of sinners because he had persecuted the Church of Jesus.
Not content to merely persecute believers in Israel. We read in the rest of verse one that he went to the high priest and requested letters from him to the synagogues and Damascus so that if he found any man or woman who belonged to the Way underlined the Way. He might bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem. Damascus is in Syria, and it had a large Jewish population at the time. Saul was so zealous to persecute the Church that he got letters of introduction from the Sanhedrin addressed to international synagogues, asking them to help him hunt down believers and extradite them to Jerusalem.
In verse two, we find the first unique term in Scripture for Christianity, the Way. It derives its term from the words of Jesus, who said, I am the Way, the truth and the life. Those who followed the Way were followers of Jesus. From the very beginning, the Church understood that to be a Christian means living your life a certain way, walking through what Jesus called the narrow gate, seeking to walk in the ways of Jesus, taking up your cross, and following after Him. The first term for Christianity implied the active following of Jesus as Lord.
There was no notion that one could somehow be a Christian and not actually follow Jesus. There was no concept of accepting Jesus as one's savior and then walking wherever you wanted, living your life however you wanted. There was an assumption that those who belong to Jesus follow Jesus. They walk in the way. As we mentioned in our previous study, faith that does not transform life is not saving faith.
Verse three. As he, Saul traveled and was nearing Damascus, a light from heaven suddenly flashed around him. Acts 22/6 tells us this happened in the middle of the day. Later, the scriptures will tell us several times that Saul actually saw the Lord Jesus in his resurrected and glorified state. It was blinding, but Saul at once understood that he was encountering God.
Do you remember in the Book of Acts who the last person to see the resurrected and glorified Jesus was? Stephen, as he was being stoned to death. While Saul watched over the cloaks of the men he had inspired to execute Christianity's first martyr, Stephen cried out, look. I see the heavens opened and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God. And with his final breath, Stephen prayed, lord, do not hold this sin against them.
And at this moment, we see the grace of God answering Stephen's prayer and intervening in the life of the least likely candidate, Saul. Had we followed Saul's actions after the death of Stephen, we would have thought his prayer had accomplished nothing. Stephen had prayed for God's grace to lead men like Saul to repentance. But what happened next was the exact opposite. Saul had become even angrier, even more greatly enraged against the Church, and he had persecuted them even more vigorously.
But that wasn't the end of the story, was it? And that's why we don't give up on praying for people. We don't know what the Lord's plan is. We don't know what he's up to in their life. We do know that he loves them.
We do know that he died for them, and he wants them to be part of his family. So don't give up praying in chapter one. Don't give up praying in chapter two. Don't give up praying in chapter three. Keep praying.
Keep praying. It doesn't usually happen this dramatically, but God is always the initiator of the work of salvation. He planned the means of our salvation. He came to the earth to save us, and through His Spirit, He convicts us of sin and reaches out to us in mercy. He orchestrates circumstances in our lives to illuminate our need for Him.
He moves Heaven and Earth to save us, and yet he honors our free will, offering salvation as an invitation, not an order. The only thing we bring to the table is the sin that made our salvation necessary. And the answer yes, please, to the question, would you like to have your sins forgiven, your dead spirit raised to life, and be adopted into my family to live with me forever in paradise? Yes. That's our part.
That's our contribution. Yes, please. I would love that. Paul explained this to Titus in his letter writing. For we too were once foolish disobedient, deceived, enslaved by various passions and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, detesting one another.
But when the kindness of God, our Savior, and his love for mankind appeared, he saved us, not by works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit. Verse four. Falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to Him, saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Who are you, Lord? Saul said he knew at once it was the Lord speaking to Him.
Can you imagine if you picture this in your mind, cinematically, can you imagine how terrifying this question would have been? You know that God is speaking to you because he's addressed you by name. His glory is so overwhelming, you've been knocked to the ground and are unable to stand. You are powerless, you can barely see. So brilliant is his Radiance.
I can't imagine the shock and the horror that must have come upon Saul like a wave when in an instant he realized he was wrong about everything.
Jesus was the Messiah, and his followers, whom he had been persecuting, were in fact the true followers of Yahweh. He was the blasphemer. He was the enemy of God. When Saul recounts this moment in Acts 26, he adds the detail that the Lord also said, it is hard for you to kick against the goads. Goads were sharp, pointy sticks that were used by farmers to poke at the back of the legs of the oxen as they walked behind them, to keep them moving forward.
And the picture God was painting was of an ox trying to kick against a goad, and in so doing, just hurting himself. He's just stabbing his own leg over and over again. And so in loving and gracious compassion, god was saying, Saul, you're fighting against me. I'm God. You're only hurting yourself.
The weight, the gravity of this revelation must have fallen upon Saul's soul like a weight of bricks. He must have felt nauseous and sick to his stomach. If he had never had a panic attack, I'm confident he had something like one at this moment, as he likely gasped for air, desperate just to catch his breath. I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting with one sentence. Saul's stubborn will is broken, and his heart is crushed into repentance.
We see this in Acts 22, where we learn that Saul's response to this revelation after catching his breath was to ask, what should I do, Lord? What should I do? Completely broken. Completely surrendered. Saul's response to the truth was the same as the men who were convicted by the preaching of Peter on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem.
You may recall, that they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what should we do? That's what genuine repentance looks like. That's the question that naturally flows from a truly repentant heart, because true repentance doesn't just say, Sorry, my bad. It wants to know if there is anything that can or should be done to make things right, to course correct. And when Peter revealed to the men of Jerusalem what they had done in partaking of the murder of the Messiah, and when Jesus revealed himself to Saul on the road to Damascus, both times, both parties had no idea what to do.
Their question comes from the place of what could I possibly do to make up for this? What could I possibly do? In Acts, chapter two, Peter told them, to believe in the Lord Jesus. Repent and be baptized, and you'll be forgiven. And he'll fill you with his spirit because there's nothing you can do to make up for this.
You can only thank Jesus for dying for you. Would you write this down? True repentance includes a desire to do whatever is necessary to make things right. True repentance includes a desire to do whatever is necessary to make things right.
Saul's. question. What should I do? Lord also reveals that he rightly understood that calling Jesus Lord means serving him as Lord. It means placing him in authority in your life. And Saul's response to the revelation of Jesus as Lord was to ask him, what do you want me to do?
US to do. We cannot call Jesus Lord and do whatever we want, live however we want, because then he's not our Lord. When we live however we want, it means we are the Lord of our lives. Those who belong to Jesus structure their entire lives around the question what should I do, Lord? And our goal is to live out his answer to that question in every relationship, in every task and in every area of our lives.
Because Jesus is our lord. He's our lord. The Christian's life is built around the question, what should I do, Lord? Scripture says that in marriage two independent people become one flesh. They become one in the eyes of God.
In the book of Revelation, it is revealed that the church is the bride of Christ, meaning that he is one with his church. He is the head of the body of the church. That's why, even though Saul is persecuting the church, Jesus asks him, why are you persecuting me? Why are you persecuting me? You see, any attack against the church is an attack against Jesus.
He feels it, he takes it personally. And that's why I think there may not be any more precious group of people to the Lord than those who currently constitute the persecuted church. They are the part of his body that is hurting and he feels it. And he cares deeply, cares deeply about every part of his body that is hurting because when his body hurts, he hurts with it. He is one with his church.
Jesus to Saul conveyed that he wasn't attacking the church, he was attacking God Himself, just as anyone who rejects the Gospel rejects God himself. When we repent and turn to the Lord, this is what we are repenting of, because this is the sin that dams a man for eternity, the sin of rejecting Jesus as Lord. The Lord. Jesus continues speaking to Saul and gives Him these instructions but get up and go into the city and you will be told what you must do. The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the sound but seeing no one.
When we add in details from Saul's account of the same event in Acts 22, and when we look at the time the voice of God spoke over Jesus in John chapter twelve, we can deduce that the men with Saul saw a light and heard a sound, but they could not discern what either of them was. They saw a light, but not the Lord Jesus. They heard a sound, but not the voice of God. Saul alone saw Jesus and heard him speak. Saul got up from the ground and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing.
As the brilliant glory of the Lord Jesus dissipated, the world around Saul did not return to focus and he discovered that he was blind. So they took him by the hand and led him into Damascus. Instead of riding into the city with bravado sending Christians scurrying into their homes. Saul arrives blind, led by the hand of another, completely helpless. As is so often the case with us, the Lord had to break Saul down completely before he could build him back as a new creation.
There was a disciple in Damascus named Anonias. Now, this is obviously not the same Ananias from Acts chapter five, and I say that because Ananias was struck dead by the Lord in chapter five. This Ananias was a faithful believer. Acts 20 212 tells us that he was a devout man according to the law, who had a good reputation with all the Jews living there. Jerusalem was ground zero of the emerging schism between Judaism and the Way.
But in more distant locales such as Damascus, it seems there were still believers who were living peaceably alongside their Jewish brethren. Ananias was such a man, and he was possibly even still attending a local synagogue in Damascus. And the Lord said to him in a vision, Ananias now underline his reply, here I am, Lord, he replied, and I love this recurring theme we find in the book of Acts of the people of God being available to God at any moment. Annanias's reply is, what can I do for you, Lord? And of course, if you're going to call him Lord, there can be no other response, for it would be an oxymoron to reply, not now, Lord.
Get up and go to the street called Straight. The Lord said to him, to the house of Judas, and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, since he is praying there. This is obviously not the same Judas who betrayed Jesus. It was a common name at the time, but for some reason, as the Gospel spread, became a significantly less popular name. We learned here that for three days, as he was fasting, Saul was praying.
He was engaging in fellowship with the Lord, repenting, weeping, questioning, pouring out his heart to the Lord, as would be his practice in prayer for the rest of his life. The Lord continues instructing Ananias about Saul and tells him in a vision he has seen a man named Ananias coming in and placing his hands on him so that he may regain his sight. He's expecting you, said the Lord, lord, Ananias answered, I have heard from many people about this man, how much harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem, and he has authority here from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name. Saul's reputation was well known among believers, and that's why Ananiasa's response is, lord, you got to be kidding. Saul is here for the sole purpose of arresting people like me and trying to get us executed.
Did you not get the memo? Ananias' plan for the duration of Saul's visit to Damascus was likely to stay home and hide with the door locked, praying that nobody ratted on him. Those were his big plans for the next couple of weeks to help us understand what this would have been like for Ananias. Imagine being a Jew in Berlin in 1939 and having God say to you, I want you to walk over to the offices of the SS and ask for a man named Heinrich Himmler. Don't worry, he's praying and expecting you.
I don't care how devout you are. We'd all have the same reaction of Ananias as Ananias, and if we're honest, we wouldn't be anywhere near as calm as he would. We would be like it's a no for me. I love you, Lord. Catch up with you later.
I'm running for my life. That's what would happen for most of us. But the Lord said to him, go, for this man is my chosen instrument to take my name to Gentiles, kings, and Israelites. Can you imagine how crazy this would have sounded to Ananias? Saul Saul was going to become an evangelist and preach the Gospel that he was coming to Damascus to destroy.
He's not referring to Saul's conversion and claiming that it was involuntary. That's not what the Lord is saying. In the life of Saul and the life of the apostles, we see that the call to ministry is not based on man's desires, but on the call of God. God does what he wants through whom he wants. As a side note, let me make some trouble here.
This is why, for the most part, I disagree with the premise of Bible colleges and seminaries. The idea that by gaining knowledge you can earn a calling is unbiblical. The idea that you can pay money, go to classes, and earn a piece of paper that will make you called by God is unbiblical. It's not how God works, and it's not something you ever see in the word of God. What we see is a divine call from God that is confirmed by gifts that correspond with the call.
Here's what I mean by that. The Lord has called me to lead worship. Oh, that's amazing. Could you sing something for us? This is my testimony.
See, there's not a correlation between the claimed calling and the gifts that are supposed to go with that calling. In the Bible, when someone's called, God provides the gifts that are needed for that call, and then we are told to examine the person's life. For evidence of Godly character and faithfulness, Paul gives a list of requirements for elders in his letters to Timothy and Titus. There's a place for education. Absolutely, because when God calls you, you have a duty to live up to that calling as best you can, as faithfully as you can, which often means learning new skills and growing in knowledge.
But that growth happens in response to the calling. The growth can never cause the calling. You can't give someone a list of books and say, Read through the stack, and when you're done, you'll be called. It doesn't work that way. Sadly, I don't know of a single Bible college or seminary that seeks to answer the question, is this person called by God to vocational ministry before they take their money and enroll them in classes?
Paul says that anyone who wants to be an elder must be able to teach. I don't know of any Bible college or seminary that examines the giftedness of any prospective students who desire to be on a pastoral learning track to determine if they have a gift of teaching. Because if they don't, the Word itself says they're not called to be an elder. I don't know of any school that does that.
Trouble completed. God does what he wants through whom he wants. He says in verse 16, I will show Him God saying, I will show Saul how much he must suffer for my name. Saul had caused much suffering for those who loved the name of Jesus, and over the course of the rest of his life, he would suffer much for the name of Jesus. It would start in just a few days, and it would end with his beheading in Rome.
Ananias went would you underline Ananias went and entered the house. God didn't tell Philip that there would be an Ethiopian passing by on the desert road. He just told Philip to go to the desert road. Did you notice that God never told Ananias what had happened to Saul on the road to Damascus? He just told him, I've chosen him.
Go lay your hands on him. And despite his initial reticence, Ananias obeyed. And I love that. Remember, if we're going to follow Jesus, we don't get to demand to know the full plan before we agree to obey. We agreed to obey the minute we said, he's our Lord.
That was it. Signed our lives over. We don't get to offer our input at the planning stage. I have a few ideas. Lord, check this out.
He and Anias placed his hands on Him, on Saul, and said, Brother Saul. Do you underline that word, brother? Brother Saul? Those two words choked me up. We don't know what happened in Ananias mind, but he went perhaps somewhere along the way between his house and the house of Judas.
Ananias reasoned within himself that Jesus could do anything, and if he said he would do it, he would do it. I don't know if Ananias walked in full of faith or if Ananias said, man, I don't get it. I think I'm about to die, but I'm going to do it anyway. That's equally valid, by the way, and that's a great exercise of faith, even if you think I don't get it. I don't believe it's going to happen, but I'm going to obey.
I'm going to do what someone would do if they believed this thing was going to happen. Do that as well. Whatever the case may be, Ananias obeyed. He went in ultimate faith in God, and it was an act of radical faith in the power of the Gospel. When Ananias placed his hands upon Saul and addressed him as Brother Saul with his mouth, Ananias confessed, I believe this is as good as done.
The Lord has said he will do it. Then it's done. The Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road you were traveling, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and then underline this and be filled with the Holy Spirit again. This must have been overwhelming to Saul. Instead of experiencing the wrath of God, he hears a follower of Jesus address him as Brother Saul and tell him that God wants to give him back his sight and fill him with his spirit in Samaria.
God delayed giving his spirit to the Samaritan converts because he wanted them to experience Peter and John laying their hands on them, binding them together in the family of God across centuries of hatred between their peoples. It seems to me that God again does something unique here delaying giving his spirit to Saul because he wanted him to have the experience of being visited by Ananias, who would address him as brother and then lay his hands on him. God wanted Saul to understand that being given the Spirit meant that he was now connected to men like Ananias. He was connected to the Church. He wanted Saul to experience his kindness and mercy through Ananias.
This wasn't like Saul's previous career path, where everyone was out for themselves, trying to ascend the social and political ladders to attain greater power influence and wealth in the kingdom of Jesus. God works through humble servants, and there are no lone rangers. Believers need one another, and the Lord Jesus has made it so by design. The message would be received and Saul would go on to lay down his life for his brothers and sisters in the church over and over again, serving them in love and the same zeal with which he once persecuted them. In Acts 22, Paul tells us how Ananias commissioned him on behalf of the Lord Jesus, saying to the God of our ancestors has appointed you to know his will to see the righteous one and to hear the words from his mouth since you will be a witness for him to all people of what you have seen and heard.
God did not have Saul appointed by any of the apostles from Jerusalem because he was calling him to a unique ministry work. Saul was not to be subject to the other apostles and did not derive his authority from them. He was appointed directly by the Lord Jesus. This is evident in his conversion. And even though he didn't need the affirmation of the apostles in Jerusalem years later, they would give it verse 18 at once something like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight.
This was a physical representation of what was taking place on the spiritual level in Saul's life. The Lord had shown him the truth, and for the first time in his life, Saul was seeing clearly.
Can you imagine the adrenaline ride Ananias had been on in this day from having the Lord come to him and speak to him, telling him to go to Saul, thinking he was going to die if he went to Saul to come into terms that God could do this praying for Saul, then finding out that this was legit. Saul of Tarsus had converted and become a member of the Way and a follower of Jesus and then witnessing a miracle as his sight is restored. I would have needed a nap after that kind of day. The adrenaline surge in the up and down and the fear and the joy and the excitement would have been just off the charts we read. Then he, Saul, got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength.
Saul was with the disciples in Damascus for some time. Those early days must have been filled with such great joy. Saul would have been reveling in the kindness of God and the Holy Spirit in his life. He must have told this story a thousand times, and every time he did, the believers must have praised God and said, surely God is among us. There would have been the richest of conversations about the Scriptures as believers in one of the greatest scriptural minds.
In Israel made new connections between the Old Testament and the ministry of Jesus. We see in Saul something we see, following all genuine conversions, a desire to be around the people of God, to be with them. John said it like this we know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers and sisters. The one who does not love remains in death. When we're saved, God's spirit comes into us.
The spirit of the same Jesus who died for his church makes a home in us. Therefore, it is impossible for someone to have the Spirit of God in them and not love the church of Jesus. It is impossible. Would you write this down? God's people love being around God's people.
God's people love being around God's people. Verse 20. Immediately he began proclaiming Jesus in the synagogues. He is the Son of God. We know from Ananias objection in verses 13 and 14 that word of Saul's visit to Damascus had reached the city well before Saul himself arrived.
So the city synagogues would have been expecting him and would have had a rough idea why he was coming. And it cracks me up to imagine and speculate about the scenarios that may have unfolded. I don't know if they called special meetings at the synagogues or Saul just spoke at the regular services. But I imagine a rabbi introducing him and saying something like. We have a visiting brother with us today from Jerusalem bringing an important word from the Sanhedrin brother Saul.
Would you like to share with us about this urgent issue and what we need to do to respond to it? And Saul gets up and says, yes, Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah and the Son of God. Everybody here needs to repent and believe in him and be baptized for your sins. No matter how it played out, I am confident there were some very shocked synagogue leaders and Jews when Saul got up and addressed their congregations. Saul was an expert on the Old Testament scriptures.
He was a scholar, a leading scholar in Israel with an amazing academic mind. That Saul was the central figure in persecuting the church means that he would have studied the beliefs of the Way and thoroughly understood them. The essence of his case against believers had been that their claim that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah and the Son of God was blasphemous. But when Jesus met Saul on the road to Damascus, it was undeniable that Jesus was indeed the Son of God. Paul was able to begin preaching immediately because he knew the Old Testament inside and out, and he knew what the followers of Jesus believed.
Can you imagine the adrenaline ride Ananias had been on this day from having the Lord come to him and speak to him, telling him to go to Saul, thinking he was going to die if he went to Saul to come into terms that God could do this praying for Saul, then finding out that this was legit? Saul of Tarsus had converted and become a member of the Way and a follower of Jesus and then witnessed a miracle as his sight was restored. I would have needed a nap after that kind of day. The adrenaline surge in the up and down and the fear and the joy and the excitement would have been just off the charts we read. Then he, Saul, got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength.
Saul was with the disciples in Damascus for some time. Those early days must have been filled with such great joy. Saul would have been reveling in the kindness of God and the Holy Spirit in his life. He must have told this story a thousand times, and every time he did, the believers must have praised God and said, surely God is among us. There would have been the richest of conversations about the Scriptures as believers in one of the greatest scriptural minds.
Israel made new connections between the Old Testament and the ministry of Jesus. We see in Saul something we see, following all genuine conversions, a desire to be around the people of God, to be with them. John said it like this we know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers and sisters. The one who does not love remains in death. When we're saved, God's spirit comes into us.
The spirit of the same Jesus who died for his church makes a home in us. Therefore, it is impossible for someone to have the Spirit of God in them and not love the church of Jesus. It is impossible. Would you write this down? God's people love being around God's people.
God's people love being around God's people. Verse 20. Immediately he began proclaiming Jesus in the synagogues. He is the Son of God. We know from Ananias' objection in verses 13 and 14 that word of Saul's visit to Damascus had reached the city well before Saul himself arrived.
So the city synagogues would have been expecting him and would have had a rough idea of why he was coming. And it cracks me up to imagine and speculate about the scenarios that may have unfolded. I don't know if they called special meetings at the synagogues or Saul just spoke at the regular services. But I imagine a rabbi introducing him and saying something like. We have a visiting brother with us today from Jerusalem bringing an important word from the Sanhedrin brother Saul.
Would you like to share with us about this urgent issue and what we need to do to respond to it? And Saul gets up and says, yes, Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah and the Son of God. Everybody here needs to repent and believe in him and be baptized for your sins. No matter how it played out, I am confident there were some very shocked synagogue leaders and Jews when Saul got up and addressed their congregations. Saul was an expert on the Old Testament scriptures.
He was a scholar, a leading scholar in Israel with an amazing academic mind. That Saul was the central figure in persecuting the church means that he would have studied the beliefs of the Way and thoroughly understood them. The essence of his case against believers had been that their claim that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah and the Son of God was blasphemous. But when Jesus met Saul on the road to Damascus, it was undeniable that Jesus was indeed the Son of God. Paul was able to begin preaching immediately because he knew the Old Testament inside and out, and he knew what the followers of Jesus believed.
They expected to see him dragging the followers of Jesus away in chains, but instead, they were witnessing him preach that Jesus is the Son of God and watching his fellowship with the people he was supposed to be there to persecute. No wonder they were astounded. It would have been like Hitler coveting, returning to the SS offices and telling them, my eyes have been opened. We need to love the juice. It was that radical, unthinkable transformation.
Verses 22. But Saul grew stronger. The original Greek term here points to Saul growing stronger in the Spirit, learning how to be led by the Spirit, leaning upon the Spirit, yielding to the Spirit, and relying on the Spirit's power. And we see the effects of that in the rest of verse 22, where we read that he kept confounding the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Messiah. Now, how would he prove that Jesus is the Messiah is really simple.
They all agreed that the Old Testament was true. And once you agree on that, it's really not that hard to prove that Jesus is the Messiah. Saul was reasoning from the Scriptures with such authority and clarity that the Jews in Damascus could not refute them. His logic was undeniable. When Jesus reasoned with the religious leaders in Jerusalem in a similar manner, they conspired to murder him.
When Stephen reasoned with the Hellenistic Jews and the Sanhedrin in a way that was irrefutable, they conspired to murder him. Guess what happened when they in Damascus couldn't refute Saul's Gospel preaching. After many days had passed, the Jews conspired to kill him. But Saul learned of their plot. So they were watching the gates day and night.
But his disciples took him by night and lowered him in a large basket through an opening in the wall. In his letter to the Galatians, Saul explains that the time referred to by Luke in verse 23 as many days was around three years. Following his conversion, Saul stayed in the area and the region around Damascus for three years, sometimes in the city, sometimes further out in the region of the Nabataeans. During this time, Saul was studying the Scriptures. He was praying, learning from the Lord Jesus.
But he was also ministering. He had begun the ministry that the Lord had called him to, and he was preaching the Gospel already. Verse 25 tells us that after these three years, Saul has disciples, men and possibly women, who were following him, as they would have followed a rabbi. Based on some details that Paul shares in his second letter to the Corinthians, it seems that he stirred up some trouble in Damascus and the surrounding regions with his preaching. Hard to imagine from our brother Paul.
Essentially, what had happened in Jerusalem was happening in Syria. The gospel was being preached, and the Jewish religious leaders who rejected Jesus didn't like it. In fact, they wanted Saul dead. If you were a regional governor at this time and you liked your job you had to stay focused on keeping the peace. Your number one job was keeping the peace and preemptively shutting down any potential rebellions.
For that reason, it seems that it didn't take much convincing for the Jewish religious leaders to get the governor of the region on their side and hatch a plan where a garrison of soldiers was posted to the city gates with instructions to arrest Saul on site. There was only one way in and out of Damascus.
I think in closing what the Lord said to Saul when he said, it is hard for you to kick against the goats. It's hard for you, Saul. You're hurting yourself. And I want to ask, is there an area in your life, in my life where we are resisting God? We are resisting God.
Knowingly refusing to obey, knowingly refusing to yield, knowingly refusing to walk in his will, telling ourselves, it's not that bad. Whether it be an actual act of sin or an attitude or a mindset, I believe that to us, the Lord would say the same thing as Saul you're only hurting yourself. There is nothing that the Lord ever asks of us that is not for our good. We say that again. There is nothing the Lord ever asks of us that is not for our good.
Nothing. And the longer we resist, the more we hurt ourselves. God's not going away. I hate to break it to you. He's not going away because he doesn't give up on his kids ever.
He doesn't give up on trying to lead us in the way towards life and peace and wholeness and joy. And so if that's you, let me encourage you to repent, and let me encourage you with this too. Perhaps you're there and you're thinking, hey, Jeff, I want to do that. I don't even know how to. My heart's just so stubborn.
My heart is just so hard. Listen, the Lord can break you. He can do it. He's not short of ideas. He's not short of resources.
So let's just see what the Lord might want to say to us as we pray. Let me ask Kyle and Maureen to come up and let's pray together.
Lord, thank you so much for Your word and for the example of Your work in the life of our brother Saul, who we know as Paul. Thank you for the miraculous intervention of Your goodness into his life. And Lord, we know the circumstances are different but no less miraculous is Your intervention in each of our lives who loves you.
You worked through family, you worked across generations, you've worked across countries, you've worked across all kinds of circumstances. You've worked through pain and hurt and trauma and addiction. You have worked through unfulfilled dreams. You have worked through empty promises mountaintops we thought we would find fulfillment at the top of that ended up being empty. You've done miracle after miracle to bring each of us to you in a unique way.
And so we thank you for it, Lord, and we just praise you for it. And we acknowledge that it's you. It's your goodness. It's your work. It's your initiation.
All we bring to the table is the sin that needs forgiving and all we bring is the words, yes, please. Yes, please. I would love to be part of Your family. And all we bring to the table now, Lord, is the praise that says, thank you, Jesus. Thank you, God.
All we bring to the table is just our lives. Just to say, this belongs to You, God. You're the Lord, you're the pastor. What should we do, Lord? And so we ask in this moment that you would speak to each of us to the depths of our soul, that you would convict us that we would be able to ask in honesty the question, what should we do, Lord?
And then we open up our lives to say, you can tell us whatever you want. We want to obey. You can ask whatever you want, Lord. We want to give it. You can ask us to lay down whatever you want.
We want to lay it down and Lord, where we don't know how to do that. Help us. Help us, Lord, because we want to be completely Yours. We want you to be honored in our lives. We want it to be evident that when our lives are looked at from the outside, Jesus is the Lord over our lives.
Help us where we don't know how Lord. Be magnified, be glorified, be exalted in our lives, Jesus, as you deserve to be. We love you, Lord. In your name, we pray Amen.
Date:8/21/22
Series: Acts Passage: Acts 5:1-11
Speaker: Jeff Thompson
The joy of the Church’s first few weeks of life is interrupted by two shocking deaths, as God sends a clear message to His Church about the seriousness of lying and hypocrisy.
The first word of chapter five is the word, but the idea is that what we are about to read stands in contrast to that which preceded it in this instance. The final two verses of Acts four read Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus by birth, the one the apostles called Barnabas, which is translated as Son of Encouragement, sold a field he owned, brought the money, and laid it at the apostle's feet. In our previous study, we talked about the incredible move of God wherein the Holy Spirit stirred the hearts of believers in the new Church to sell property and give the proceeds to the apostles so they could meet the needs of the brethren, especially the large number of men and women who were relocating their whole lives to Jerusalem to be part of what God was doing. Barnabas was a man of sincerity and devotion. He was all in on following Jesus.
And so when the Holy Spirit prompted him to sell a field he owned and give all the money to the Church, he obeyed, in contrast to the actions and character of Barnabas in chapter four, chapter five tells us that a man named Ananias, his wife Sapphire, sold a piece of property. However, he kept back part of the proceeds with his wife's knowledge brought a portion of it, and laid it at the apostle's feet. The rest of the text will make it clear that Ananias presented the money to the apostles as though it were all of the money he had made by selling that piece of property. Anias and safari were likely among the wealthier demographic of the Church and they wanted to give the appearance that they were part of the most devoted group of the Church who were obeying the Holy Spirit's call to be radically generous in this special season of Church history. So write this down and we'll keep plugging away here.
But notice first Ananias and Sapphire wanted to be admired among the brethren for their devotion to Jesus. They wanted to be admired among the brethren for their devotion to Jesus. They wanted the spiritual prestige of being viewed among the Church's most devout members. But they didn't want to have to pay full price. They didn't want to be all in.
They wanted to be 70% in. And so the solution they came up with was to sell the piece of property, keep some of the proceeds for themselves, and give the rest to the apostles, along with a simple lie that they were giving all the proceeds, the full proceeds from the sale of their piece of property. After all, nobody knew how much they had sold it for. The Church would still be getting a bunch of money from them. So it's a win-win.
But things began unraveling fast when the Holy Spirit supernaturally revealed to Peter what they had done. In verse three Ananias, Peter asked, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? Would you underline lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the proceeds of the land? Can you imagine the moment? You can.
If you've ever been caught in a lie for which there was no escape, you'd been completely exposed and this was happening likely in front of the whole church. As we read this, it becomes clear that Ananias and Safara and perhaps us too, did not grasp the seriousness of what they were doing. Peter tells them their plan came from Satan, and what makes it so heinous and serious is that they are lying to the Holy Spirit when we give to the Lord. I don't know if you know this, but the Lord knows what we're giving. Do you know that?
He knows what percentage of our income it is. He knows whether it's in an inconsequential amount for us, an inconvenient amount for us, or a sacrificial amount. He knows because he's God.
When we use our words and actions to present ourselves to our brothers and sisters in a way that is fraudulent, god's word says we're not only lying to them, we are lying to the Holy Spirit. The church is the bride of Christ. Therefore, sins against the church and sins against the brethren are also sins against God. If you sin against my wife, you've sinned against me. If you sinned against me, you've sinned against my wife.
Anias and Sapphire were pretending to be something they were not. They ended up being more righteous than they really were. They ended up being more devout than they really were. It was the sin of hypocrisy, which God hates. He hates it.
Write this down. Ananias and Safari were guilty of hypocrisy and lying to the brethren and God. They were guilty of hypocrisy and lying to the brethren and God. The one who doesn't claim to be a Jesus follower cannot be guilty of this type of hypocrisy. Only those who claim to be Jesus' followers and present themselves as being more devout than they really are can be guilty of the type of hypocrisy that Jesus hates.
Jesus will never accuse a nonbeliever of being a hypocrite. They can't be a hypocrite because they're not claiming to be a believer. They're not claiming to be a Jesus follower. God feels so strongly about this that he put it in the Ten Commandments commanding Israel not to misuse the name of the Lord your God, because the Lord will not leave anyone unpunished who misuses his name. The King James Version famously states that as thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain.
Contrary to popular belief, it's not about swearing. It's not about cussing. It is about using the name of the Lord to identify yourself in our day and age.
I am a Christ follower. I'm taking the name of the Lord as my identity, but I'm taking it in vain when I don't actually allow the Lord to have authority over my life. I'm identifying myself with the name of the Lord, but I'm not actually serving him as Lord. It's hypocrisy that defames the name of the Lord. It damages the reputation of God because I take his name, but I refuse to follow and serve the One whose name I have taken.
Hypocrisy among believers defames the name of the Lord. There's a term called stolen valor that is used when people fraudulently present themselves as active or former military members. People do this because they want the admiration many people feel toward military veterans, but they didn't want to actually pay the price to be in the armed services. But there can also be degrees of stolen valor. A former Marine might pretend he was a Navy Seal.
A former infantryman might pretend he was a Ranger or a sniper or some other Special Forces contingent. The hypocrisy God hates is the spiritual equivalent of stolen valor. It happens when people take the title of Christian oh yeah, I'm a Christian, but don't honor the title by living under the authority of Christ and laying down their lives to follow and serve Him. It can happen in a case like Ananias and Sapphire where people want to be viewed as being all in on following Jesus. They want to be part of the community of people who are all in.
I want to hang out with people who are all in. I want to be part of conversations among people who are all in, but I don't actually want to pay the price to be all in. Jesus repeatedly called out the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of his day because they pretended to be devoted to God, but they were not actually submitted to Him as God. They were abusing God's law and twisting it to create power and wealth for themselves. And Jesus' warnings included that hell would be populated by hypocrites.
That's the theological term for the work the Holy Spirit is always doing in the lives of believers, with one goal in mind to make us more like Jesus. That's the Holy Spirit's agenda in our lives. He's doing it twenty-four-seven, and it's sanctification. That's what God wants for you. That's what God wants for me.
It's the best thing for us because it's the most fulfilling version of ourselves. You can be the version that's most like Jesus, and it's the version of us that will benefit us for all eternity because it will gain us the most possible eternal rewards and greater trust and assignments in the ages to come as we serve with Jesus. But when we adopt a posture of hypocrisy, we pretend to be more sanctified than we really are, and we quickly convince ourselves that we're more sanctified than we really are. We delude ourselves. And so, when the Holy Spirit calls us to be sanctified through the Scriptures, through the teaching of God's Word, through our brothers and sisters, we dismiss those invitations and tell ourselves that's for someone else, that's not for me, I'm past that.
I don't struggle with that. I don't need to change in that area. I should tell so and so about that because they need to hear that. They really need to take it to heart. We grow and mature much faster when we are willing to be honest about the areas where we need to grow and mature because we'll recognize our need to receive help, instruction, and correction in those areas.
Make a note of that. It's so important. I wanted to say it again. We grow and mature much faster when we're willing to be honest about the areas where we need to grow and mature because we will recognize our need to receive help, instruction, and correction in those areas. Hypocrisy misrepresents God.
It resists the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and it also harms the church it produces men and women who aren't all in on following Jesus, but publicly present themselves as though they are. This is incredibly harmful and confusing to new believers and those who are young in the faith because they're supposed to be surrounded in the church by examples of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. But instead, hypocrisy causes them to encounter supposedly mature Christians, supposedly mature believers who still skip church because they're feeling down, or skip church when they get a more attractive social offer. They're surrounded by supposedly mature believers who don't surf faithfully. Let me be really specific with this one, who skip home groups, not because they're busy, not because they're at work, they just have no interest in investing in anybody else.
It's confusing when new and young believers come to church and encounter supposedly mature Christians who don't give biblically, don't refuse to honor God sorry, refuse to honor God in the area of s*xual purity, and are basically lukewarm about coveting Jesus. That's confusing to people in the church who are doing their best to learn what it means to obey Jesus. Hypocrisy harms the church. Write this down hypocrisy harms the church by misrepresenting what it looks like to follow and obey Jesus, misrepresenting what it looks like to follow and obey Jesus. Lukewarm Christianity.
Begets Lukewarm Christianity. Please understand. I know we're all in different places in our journey of sanctification. We're all in process. None of us are perfect.
Being a hypocrite is knowing what Jesus wants you to do, refusing to obey him, but wanting people to view you as though you are faithfully obeying him. I want to be perceived as an all-in Jesus follower, but I know I'm not that's hypocrisy. Hypocrisy misrepresents. God resists the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and harms the church. Suffice it to say, it's a big deal and Jesus does not want it in his church.
This text also reminds us that the Holy Spirit is nothing like the force from Star Wars. The Holy Spirit is not an energy or a force at all. The Holy Spirit is a person. The Holy Spirit is not an it. The Holy Spirit is a he that's his preferred pronoun.
Peter tells Ananias that he's lied to the Holy Spirit, and according to Ephesians 4/20, we can grieve the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, whose form is Spirit. He does not have a material body, and he indwells every believer, including you and me. He is a person, the third person of the Trinity. Peter tells Ananias that Satan has filled his heart and motivated him to lie.
This is not to say that Ananias has become possessed by Satan, for such a thing is impossible for any believer. The heart referred to here was considered by those at the time to be the seat of one's emotions, where emotions flow from, where they're processed, where they're stirred up, and even when we're saved, it's possible for Satan to gain control over our emotions. I won't ask you to raise your hand if you know from experience this is true. How many of us, I wonder, I could go for a drive with, and it would become quickly evident that Satan can gain control over our emotions. Preaching to myself too here.
This is why Ephesians 12/15 tells us to make sure that no root of bitterness springs up among the members of the church. It's why Jesus taught, if you're offering your gift on the altar, and there you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar first. Go and be reconciled with your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. It's why Paul told the Ephesians, don't let the sun go down on your anger, and don't give the devil an opportunity. The point in all those verses is that Satan can stir up something in our emotions like bitterness, and if we don't deal with it biblically, it can take root and produce bad fruit in the form of bad actions.
Satan tempted Ananias and Safara with a plan. They chose to linger on that idea rather than dismiss it. Then it took root in their hearts, ending them to embrace the idea, which then produced the bad fruit of hypocrisy and deceit in their lives. This is why temptations, bitterness, anger, et cetera must be dealt with in a timely manner by the believer. The more time we spend in the dark, the more comfortable we become in it.
The more time we spend in the dark, the more comfortable we become in it. When speaking about the money, the proceeds of the land, Peter asks Ananias three rhetorical questions. Verse four wasn't it yours while you possessed it? And after it was sold, wasn't it at your disposal? Now, don't miss what Peter says here, because his words make it clear that even at this time the church believed in the private ownership of property and wealth.
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It belonged to you. If Ananias and Sapphire had not sold their property, they would not have been in sin. If they had sold it, but given only a portion of the money, they would not have been in sin. The Holy Spirit sometimes prompts us with an opportunity to do a good work, and if we don't accept that opportunity, we're not necessarily in sin. We just miss out on the opportunity.
We miss out on the joy of being used by the Lord. We miss out on the chance to grow in our faith, and we miss out on an opportunity to store up treasure in heaven. That seems to be the idea that Peter is alluding to with these rhetorical questions to Ananias. I also want us to notice that Peter's questions make it clear again. The church was not practicing some form of communism or hypersocialism.
All financial giving in the early Church, as it is in the Church today, was voluntary. Men and women were stirred to radical generosity by the Holy Spirit, and they obeyed them. They obeyed him. Their sin was not that they didn't give all the money. Paul would later write in two Corinthians nine seven each person should do as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or out of compulsion, since God loves a cheerful giver.
Peter says, Nobody made you give anything, Ananias. You could have kept all the money if the truth is that you didn't really want to give it. Or you could have said, here's half the money. That would have been fine too. But instead you chose to lie to the Holy Spirit.
That's the issue. Why is it that you plan this thing in your heart underline this? What a line. You have not lied to people but to God. You've lied to God.
They willfully and intentionally tried to deceive the apostles and the Church body and therefore the Holy Spirit. Sins against the body of Christ are sins against Christ. Make a note of this. When we sin against God's, people, we sin against God. When we sin against God's, people, we sin against God.
This is the root theology and logic behind the New Testament's exhortations toward us to honor one another. This is the idea. When we're honoring one another, we are honoring Jesus. The way that we treat one another is the way we are treating Jesus. That's the heart behind these New Testament commands to love one another as we treat one another.
Jesus says, "That's the way you're treating me. When you mislead your brothers and sisters, you're trying to mislead me. You're trying to deceive me." In verse three, Peter told Ananias he had lied to the Holy Spirit. And then here in verse four, he tells Ananias you've not lied to people, but to God.
It's a clear statement that the Holy Spirit is God. Peter's statements in verses three and verse four make it clear the Holy Spirit is God. Verse five when he that's Ananias heard these words, Ananias dropped dead, and a great fear came on all who heard. The young man got up, wrapped his body, carried him out, and buried him. About 3 hours later, his wife came in, not knowing what had happened.
Tell me, Peter asked her, did you sell the land for this price? In other words, Saphira, is this all the money from the sale of the piece of property? Peter gives her one last chance to repent and tell the truth. Yes, she said, for that price. Then Peter said to her, why did you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord?
Look, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door and they will carry you out. Instantly, she dropped dead at his feet. When the young men came in, they found her dead, carried her out, and buried her beside her husband.
We are not playing games here. His message was understood by the Church. As verse eleven tells us, then great fear would you underline fear came on the whole Church and on all who heard these things. Both David and his son Solomon wrote that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fear tells us how to treat and interact with objects, with nature, with animals, with people, and yes, even with God.
For example, a healthy fear based on reality and understanding tells us how we should interact with guns, the ocean, bears, the police, and God. You don't interact with a real gun the way you interact with a Nerf gun. You don't interact with the ocean when it has pounding ten-foot waves and an undertow the same way you interact with a six-inch deep river. You don't interact with a bear the same way you interact with a domesticated cat. I trust the bear more, though.
You don't interact with the police the same way you inerrant with one of your bros. And you don't interact with God the way you interact with a life coach or somebody who's running a community social group. The incarnate Jesus coming to the Earth as a man did not reduce the glory of Jesus one iota. If anything, he is somehow even more powerful and more glorious after the resurrection. This incident with Ananias and Sapphire sent a message to the whole church that they should not forget who the head of the church is.
The head of the church is Jesus, and he is God. He is the living and almighty God, and he's holy. The blood of Jesus has given us access to God by making us righteous, not by reducing his righteousness or bringing his glory down to our level or his power to our level. He has raised us up to be seated with Him in heavenly places. He has not diminished at all.
When we're casual about obeying Jesus, when we know what God wants but we say no, I'll think about it when we treat sin as though it's not a big deal, we reveal that we do not fear the Lord, and we lack understanding, we lack wisdom. When we fail to display a healthy fear of the Lord, it reveals that we do not understand who he really is or what he's done. If any part of you is thinking, "Calm down, Jeff." let me lovingly remind us why Jesus was and is so serious about sin in his church. Jesus is so serious about sin in his church because he suffered and died to pay for the sins of his church. He has every right to take it seriously and demand that we do so.
And I know that when we fall into sin, or let's just be honest, willingly walk straight into sin, we think we need a loving arm around the shoulder and a gentle word of correction or encouragement. And much of the time that's true. But sometimes we walk into sin with such a cavalier attitude, with seemingly no appreciation of what it cost Jesus to pay for our sins, no appreciation of the seriousness of sin. And in those moments, what we sometimes need is a brother or sister to look us in the eye and say, don't you fear God? Don't you fear God?
Paul said as much when he wrote to the Galatians giving them this exhortation do not be deceived. God is not mocked for whatever a person sows, he will also reap because the one who sows to his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh. But the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit. Then great fear came on the whole church and all who heard these things. And it was a good thing because a church that fears the Lord is a healthy church.
A church that fears the Lord is a wise church. And when we get to Acts Nine, we'll read this the church throughout all of Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and was strengthened by living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit.
Having a right fear of the Lord, not taking him lightly. Were Ananias and Sapphirea believers? I think they were grammatically. Acts 4/32 includes them among the entire group of those who believed. Peter implies they had a relationship with the Holy Spirit and shouldn't have lied to him.
If they weren't believers, it wouldn't have served as a lesson to the church the way it did. Based on Scripture, God will sometimes end the life of a believer prematurely if their witness becomes too damaging to the church and the reputation of Jesus. We see that here with Ananias and Safari and we see Paul writing about it in One Corinthians 11 where he explains to the Corinthians that some of their brethren have died because they were treating communion with contempt by taking it in an unworthy manner.
Sometimes Jesus will look down on a believer who is giving the name of Jesus such a bad reputation and doing so much harm to the brethren. And Jesus will say, I'm doing you a solid and I'm just bringing you home right now. Bringing you home right now. He will do it. A study worth looking into is the parallels between Ananias and Sapphire here in Acts chapter five.
And the sin of Aiken in Joshua, chapter seven. In Joshua, God is in the process of building the nation of Israel, a people set apart for him in Acts, Jesus is in the process of building his church, a people set apart for him in Joshua, Aiken is part of Israel in Acts and in Israel and safari are part of the church. In Joshua, Aiken lied to the Lord and kept some gold and silver for himself in Acts.
And the safari lied to the Lord and kept some of the money for themselves. In Joshua Amen is killed by Israel at God's command.
Safari is killed by God himself. I believe both Aiken Ananias and Safari were believers, but their sin was so serious and so damaging to the community of faith that God had to deal with it to send a message to everyone else about how serious it was and is to be part of the family of God. I also think that God intervened so dramatically during the decades of the early church because sickness and disease are much more dangerous early in life. They can alter the trajectory of a child's development significantly. And if deceit and hypocrisy had been allowed to fester in the church during the first few weeks of her life, the consequences would have been devastating for her spiritual health.
Some of us may be guilty of wanting to be perceived as more devout than we truly are. And some of us might say, well, that's not me. I'm not looking for any spiritual glory prestige or admiration. But there's a form of hypocrisy that isn't marked by deceitful claims or words. It's marked by silence.
And I think this form of hypocrisy is far more prevalent than the other. Sometimes we stay silent about a struggle we're having or a sin we're battling, or we simply share nothing with anyone about how we're really doing. We know full well that by doing so, by withholding that information, they will assume we're doing far better than we really are. It's easy to use our silence to present a version of ourselves to our brothers and sisters that is not remotely truthful. As I said, I think far more of us struggle with this form of hypocrisy than the other.
Lord, thank You for Your word, and thank You for revealing to us clearly just how serious the sins of deception and hypocrisy are. And Lord, Lord, you know us you know our issues. You know our insecurities. You know that many of us are scared to let somebody know we're not doing well, to confess where we've fallen or just willingly walked into sin and are now ensnared. Lord, help us not to be hypocrites.
Holy Spirit, I pray that you will shine a light right now on everyone who sincerely desires to follow you. And if there's any area of our lives where we're walking in hypocrisy, Lord, reveal it to us that we might repent, that we might confess it, that we might be healed of it, delivered from it, and set free from it to walk in truth after You, Jesus and Lord, we ask again, would you fill us with a healthy fear of you? Might we be wise in the truest sense of the word. Understanding just a little bit of who you are. How awesome and worthy and mighty you are.
And how incredible it is that we are a people in Your presence. In Your Midst. That we're able to sing about you and to you. To approach you as a father. Not because your glory has been diminished in any way by the work of Jesus on the cross.
But because You've robed us in the righteousness of Your Son. Jesus. That we might be in your presence. You've raised us up in Christ to be seated with him in heavenly places. You have not diminished.
You are an awesome and Holy God. More than we could possibly understand this side of eternity. Amen
Newton wrote the words from personal experience; he grew up without any particular religious conviction, but his life's path was formed by a variety of twists and coincidences that were often put into motion by others' reactions to what they took as his recalcitrant insubordination. He was pressed into service with the Royal Navy, and after leaving the service, he became involved in the Atlantic slave trade. In 1748, a violent storm battered his vessel off the coast of County Donegal, Ireland, so severely that he called out to God for mercy. While this moment marked his spiritual conversion, he continued slave trading until 1754 or 1755, when he ended his seafaring altogether. Newton began studying Christian theology and later became an abolitionist.
Ordained in the Church of England in 1764, Newton became the curate of Olney, Buckinghamshire, where he began to write hymns with poet William Cowper. "Amazing Grace" was written to illustrate a sermon on New Year's Day of 1773. It is unknown if there was any music accompanying the verses; it may have been chanted by the congregation. It debuted in print in 1779 in Newton's and Cowper's Olney Hymns but settled into relative obscurity in England. In the United States, "Amazing Grace" became a popular song used by Baptist and Methodist preachers as part of their evangelizing, especially in the American South, during the Second Great Awakening of the early 19th century. It has been associated with more than 20 melodies. In 1835, American composer William Walker set it to the tune known as "New Britain" in a shape note format; this is the version most frequently sung today.
With the message that forgiveness and redemption are possible regardless of sins committed and that the soul can be delivered from despair through the mercy of God, "Amazing Grace" is one of the most recognizable songs in the English-speaking world. American historian Gilbert Chase writes that it is "without a doubt the most famous of all the folk hymns" and Jonathan Aitken, a Newton biographer, estimates that the song is performed about 10 million times annually.
It has had a particular influence in folk music and has become an emblematic black spiritual. Its universal message has been a significant factor in its crossover into secular music. "Amazing Grace" became newly popular during the 1960s revival of American folk music, and it has been recorded thousands of times during and since the 20th century.
As a youth, Newton began a pattern of coming very close to death, examining his relationship with God, then relapsing into bad habits. As a sailor, he denounced his faith after being influenced by a shipmate who discussed with him Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, a book by the Third Earl of Shaftesbury. In a series of letters Newton later wrote, "Like an unwary sailor who quits his port just before a rising storm, I renounced the hopes and comforts of the Gospel at the very time when every other comfort was about to fail me." His disobedience caused him to be pressed into the Royal Navy, and he took advantage of opportunities to overstay his leave.
He deserted the navy to visit Mary "Polly" Catlett, a family friend with whom he had fallen in love. After enduring humiliation for deserting, he was traded as crew to a slave ship. He began a career in slave trading.
Newton often openly mocked the captain by creating obscene poems and songs about him, which became so popular that the crew began to join in. His disagreements with several colleagues resulted in his being starved almost to death, imprisoned while at sea, and chained like the slaves they carried. He was himself enslaved by the Sherbro and forced to work on a plantation in Sierra Leone near the Sherbro River. After several months he came to think of Sierra Leone as his home, but his father intervened after Newton sent him a letter describing his circumstances, and crew from another ship happened to find him. Newton claimed the only reason he left Sierra Leone was because of Polly.
While aboard the ship Greyhound, Newton gained notoriety as being one of the most profane men the captain had ever met. In a culture where sailors habitually swore, Newton was admonished several times for not only using the worst words the captain had ever heard but creating new ones to exceed the limits of verbal debauchery. In March 1748, while the Greyhound was in the North Atlantic, a violent storm came upon the ship that was so rough it swept overboard a crew member who was standing where Newton had been moments before. After hours of the crew emptying water from the ship and expecting to be capsized, Newton and another mate tied themselves to the ship's pump to keep from being washed overboard, working for several hours. After proposing the measure to the captain, Newton had turned and said, "If this will not do, then Lord have mercy upon us!" Newton rested briefly before returning to the deck to steer for the next eleven hours. During his time at the wheel, he pondered his divine challenge.
About two weeks later, the battered ship and starving crew landed in Lough Swilly, Ireland. For several weeks before the storm, Newton had been reading The Christian's Pattern, a summary of the 15th-century The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. The memory of his own "Lord have mercy upon us!" uttered during a moment of desperation in the storm did not leave him; he began to ask if he was worthy of God's mercy or in any way redeemable.
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I'm found
Was blind but now I see
'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
And grace my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed
Through many dangers, toils, and snares
I have already come
This grace that brought me safe thus far
And grace will lead me home
When we've been here ten thousand years
Bright, shining as the sun
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we first begun
Amazing grace how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I'm found
Was blind but now I see
Source: Musixmatch
Deliverance - Salvation of John Newton;
That day at the helm, March 21, 1748, was a day Newton remembered ever after: "On that day the Lord sent from on high and delivered me out of deep waters." Many years later, as an old man, Newton wrote in his diary of March 21, 1805: "Not well able to write; but I endeavor to observe the return of this day with humiliation, prayer, and praise." Only God's amazing grace could and would take a rude, profane, slave-trading sailor and transform him into a child of God. Newton never ceased to stand in awe of God's work in his life.
New Directions - John Newton's Conversion;
Though Newton continued in his profession of sailing and slave trading for a time, his life was transformed. He began a disciplined Bible study, prayer, and Christian reading schedule and tried to be a Christian example to the sailors under his command. Philip Doddridge's The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul provided much spiritual comfort, and a fellow Christian captain he met off the coast of Africa guided Newton further in his Christian faith.
Newton left slave trading and took the job of tide surveyor at Liverpool, but he began to think he had been called to the ministry. His mother's prayers for her son were answered, and in 1764, at the age of thirty-nine, John Newton began forty-three years of preaching the Gospel of Christ.
John and his beloved wife Mary (At the end of his life, John would write that their love "equaled all that the writers of romance have imagined") moved to the little market town of Olney. He spent his mornings in Bible study and his afternoons visiting his parishioners. There were regular Sunday morning and afternoon services and meetings for children and young people. There was also a Tuesday evening prayer meeting which was always well attended.
John Newton having become ashamed of having had a part in slavery became an Abolisher of slavery.