Turn with me to the Book of Acts. A couple of weeks ago I was in
the Book of Acts, and I'm going to be dabbling in the Book of
Acts throughout the next year or two, off and on. It's not one of those letters,
it's not one of those narratives that you just go through verse
by verse and three or four years later you've tackled Acts. Acts
is one of those things that you go to as needed. Of course, we read it and we
should read all of scripture. But the book of Acts is not a
prescriptive thing. It's not something that Luke
wrote so that he could command the church. Matter of fact, the
Gospels aren't for that purpose at all. This is one of the malpractices
of the Christian faith, is that we see a sentence, we say that
it's in the Bible, ergo it's biblical, and therefore we must
apply it to our lives in lockstep. That's not the case. And taking
the book of Acts, which is a historical record of the account of the
apostles after the ascension of Jesus, is for our benefit. It is for us to learn what God
did to establish the church. But some people say, well, this
is really about the acts of the Holy Spirit. No, it's the acts
of the apostles. Jesus Christ has done the work
of establishing his church and Luke has written about it so
that the church and unbelievers alike may know what took place. And so when we find something
that we may think we should start to mimic or model, we must also
find that teaching and that instruction and those commandments in the
New Testament letters. Because it is in the letters
where the elders and overseers of the church are taught how
and what to do. And then the church there is
also commanded through the apostles teaching on what we ought to
be doing. But we live in a day where the
Christian faith is just a dime a dozen. this faith, that faith,
the other faith. Gospels are everywhere, false
gospels are everywhere, even amongst what we would call orthodox
people. You can find all sorts of hairy
mess, garbage. But at the end of the day, God's
Word stands true. And it's very simplistic. It's
very easy to just read it and absorb the material. The problem
is when we as a culture have decided we define it. As Brother
Trey prayed earlier, it's not about what James thinks the Bible
is trying to say. It's about what the Bible literally
is saying. And of course, everybody, what?
Everybody claims that. Oh, it's biblical. My view is
biblical. The Word of God says. Yeah, but does the Word of God
say to apply it the way we apply it? God has purposed that those
who believe by His power, by His grace, in His promises concerning
His Son for His people are to be understood and known as the
brethren. Brothers and sisters, in the
faith, in Christ Jesus. To be found in Christ is a promise
of the Father. It is a promise of the Father
we call the Gospel, which is an extremely historically manipulated
word, but it basically comes from the idea of God's spell,
God's speak, good news, good report, good story. The word
literally means good story. So when we hear of evangel, or
evangelon, which would be the transliterated Greek iteration
of the word gospel, it means the story, the good story or
the good report. And so the gospel is a report
given by God, established in the days of old, in the day of
creation, where God imposed His sovereign grace in the lives
of the first family who, when left to themselves in every circumstance,
as all humanity would do and as all humanity has done, will
fall into sin and rebellion. That only He can create light
from darkness, only He can create chaos, I mean order out of chaos,
only He can create something from nothing. Therefore, the
gospel is the picture of Genesis, the creation account. The creation
account is the picture of the good report of God's sovereignty
in the salvation of a people that he would create for himself.
And so when we look at these things, we need to keep in mind
that we come together as the church because it is what God
has prescribed. We see it in the New Testament letters. Every
single one of them supposes, and I would say that imposes,
a great understanding that we are obligated to be in the fellowship
of the church. It is not an option. It's not
if we feel like it, if we've got nothing else to do, if we're
not tired. It's an obligation. It is a greater
obligation than the job you do tomorrow morning. Why? Because it has eternal consequences.
It has life consequences for other people. We are responsible
by the promises of God to be together as a people so that
our needs are met spiritually and physically according to the
promises of Scripture. And there is no such thing as
pocket camaraderie, remote, online intimacy. It does not exist. If you think that exists, then
find somebody on Twitter, make them your spouse, and never see
them. Yeah, I got a wife somewhere. You see, it doesn't work like
that. The children are born, ship them off to some foreign
land, and put a remote camera in front of them. Hey baby, how
you doing? You getting so big? How old are you now? Alright.
You got something on your face? Wipe your face. Can't wipe your
face. The church is so important that
it is the way God has chosen to reveal His glory. the body of Christ together in
local proximity and local promises through the local means of grace,
as for those of you who know what I'm saying when I say that. God has revealed himself through
us. Our togetherness, our one anotherness, our intimacy. Not our cultural stands, not
our political platforms, that's hogwash, that's all of the enemy,
folks. all of the enemy because it takes away from the sovereignty
of God in picture. It doesn't matter about what's
going on in the world. What matters is, is our God sovereign? And if so, we ought to live in
a way that proves and shows that we trust in His sovereignty,
that we've been granted by His great good promises, the Spirit
of Christ that lives within us to help us, the paraclete, the
one that comes alongside, the helper that helps us walk and
trust. together. There is no such thing
as an individual believer who is not outside the will of God. But yet, the Lord's will be done. Why the emphasis so much on the
local church? That's my job. That's what I'm called to deal
with. That's the point of my life. I get up every day and
as much as I want to try to focus on other things, the Spirit of
God just drives me back to you. Prayer and purpose and everything else. So here
Luke writes two pieces of literature. And let's go to the book of Acts,
first three verses. It's all I'm gonna deal with
today. Beautiful church, part five-ish, I guess. And I'm gonna
establish a lot of things that you may
not see today, but we may unpack them or we may just let them
sit as they are. But I want you to see how to
read the Bible today. How to apply it, how to just
let it take a breath in and simply see it and what it says and then
let it refer to itself in kind. Dr. Luke, the physician. In the
first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began
to do and teach until the day when he was taken up after he
had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom
he had chosen. He presented himself alive to
them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during
forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God." Here it is. How long has it been
since you read the introduction to the book of Acts, the Acts
of the Apostles? Well, what does Luke do? Well,
there's several things that we need to see that not only he
does here, but also in his gospel. One, he refers to the first writing,
the first book of his writing, which is his account of the good
report of Jesus Christ. He calls it what it is right
there. I've dealt with all the things that Jesus began to do
and teach. I've already written to you,
O Theophilus. Now the word Theophilus means
the lover of God. We're not intended to know who
he is or find him on the history line or find him in other places. We're not intended to go around
and learn deep things about Theophilus, but what we do know is that he
was indeed a wealthy man and he was indeed someone of great
importance because he commissioned Luke
to tell him about these things. I mean, let's go to Luke's gospel
for a second. In as much as many have undertaken to complete a
narrative of the things that have been accomplished among
us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and
ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to
me also, having followed all things closely for some time
past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus,
in order that you may have certainty concerning the things that you
have already been taught. Now think about that for a second.
Here is Luke writing to this most excellent Theophilus, this
leader of men, this prestigious person. who he has already shared
the gospel with, and in order for him to solidify the questions
that Theophilus probably proposed, he said, I'll tell you what I'll
do, Theophilus. I will write a whole gospel account. I'll
write a full good report. See, the good report of Luke,
right? I'll write an entire good report of everything concerning
Jesus' actions and teaching, and I will present it to you.
And after he was done with that, Luke realized by the Holy Spirit
that there is more to be said concerning something as important
as the gospel. And what is it? The church. The
point for which Christ came. The point for which the Lord
said, let there be light is to create the local, visible, living
church. You see? It's why God created all things. To display all that He is and
reveal everything that He wanted to reveal concerning Himself
by creating a people for Himself. Folks, we say, Soli Deo Gloria. We talk about to glorify God.
To glorify God, we think that's done in our singing, in our spirit,
in our emotions, in our feelings. It's done in the presentation
of our lives together as a people simply submitting to the doctrines
of Christ in their application to show the world that is extremely
perplexed by us a love that is not of this world. Any preacher of righteousness
who neglects the teaching of and to the local visible church
is a negligent buffoon. Dogma gets us in trouble sometimes,
but that's the attitude of Christ and his apostles. You do not neglect the full counsel. It's not about theological answers
and systematics. It's not about language studies
and church history. I love all those things. I love
them all. But I love a lot of other stuff,
too. The question is, do you love Christ? And if you say yes,
then you love His church. Good, bad, ugly, pretty, correct,
incorrect, truth and error. You love His church. So here, let's unpack a few things
about Jesus. Because the gospel is a narrative
about Jesus. And beloved, I'm going to say
that. I've said it a thousand times over because, you know, I'd love to
preach through Luke, but then I'd have to neglect John. But if we take the gospel of
Luke, Gospel of John, Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Matthew, and
we just bind it together just by itself and we throw it out
on the sidewalk and by some sovereign purpose of God, a six-year-old
child who can read picks it up off the sidewalk and sits under
a tree and reads it from start to finish. God in His business
will convert that child as He wishes. Without any further explanation,
without any more diving into the depths of theological things,
without anything else, God of the Spirit Himself will convert
His people through the hearing of His good report about His
Son. And you don't have to read the
whole Gospel. There's this strange, bizarre Gnosticism that goes
around the world The antithesis of is this strange mysticism
that goes around the world, and the mysticism says, oh, we don't
need the Bible, we don't need to talk about that, just live,
love, and laugh, and hee hee, oh, you're a believer now, of
what? That's nonsense. But yet, regeneration is mystical.
It is the work of God the Spirit, through the natural means of
his word being spoken and heard. And then it's also in this weird
Gnosticism, which is a seeking of knowledge. We are so inundated
with information that some people think they're converted because
they have the right information. What a legalism! Talk about a
new law. Man, would the Pharisees have
loved to get their teeth into that one and smash the head of
the people and bring them under bondage. That's why so many people have
a love affair with their salvation experience. It's their greatest
idol. I remember the time when I got saved and I came to know
this. Your salvation isn't about what
you know, it's about Christ knowing you. Your salvation isn't about
what you've done or how you've appropriated the information
you've gathered or even what God the Holy Spirit has done
inside of you to make you understand it. That is nothing but work.
Your salvation is according only and always and forever the death
of Jesus Christ on the cross according to the promises of
God before the foundation of the world. He said, let there
be light. Jesus says, I am the light and
this is why the world exists. That my people will see me for
what I am because I have shown myself to them. Yes, it's about righteousness.
It's about justification. It's about imputation. It's about
sanctification. It's about all these great English
words that did not even exist in the world when the Bible was
written in any form whatsoever, ever. But yet those silly little
goofy words are the catalyst for many of the world to know
they are of Christ. Bull. Christ. Luke says, I wrote to
you, O Theophilus, already dealing with the vital importance of
life. All that Jesus began to do. And all that Jesus began to teach. You see that? When we see Acts,
and we saw it a couple of weeks ago when I was preaching, we
saw What? We saw that the first church,
the early birth of the people together in intimacy, they devoted
themselves to the apostles teaching. They devoted themselves to the
teaching of what Christ did and what Christ taught. And if either one of those two
pillars are missing, the church is not the church and the believers
are not the believers and there's an incomplete and inconsistent
knuckle-headedry that creates havoc in the world. Because when
we are not sitting comfortably in the perfection of Jesus Christ
and His teaching and His work of justifying a people, in His
work of redemption, then we are free to elaborate in our little
minds all sorts of creative ideologies. Well, I wonder here. I wonder
there. I wonder how. Let's posit the
hypotheticals of hypotheticals of hypotheticals and see what
God must have been like or if he was like this, maybe here.
Guys, it's nonsense. That's not the faith of a child,
that's the faith of an idiot. The faith of someone who is thinking
that our thinking or that our faith or that our belief systems
are the catalyst through which God will do His work and apply
His redemption. No, God applies His redemption
to us and we are called to learn about the person of Jesus. How many professors have I sat
under through the years? How many papers have I read and
written? I can't tell you the hundreds,
maybe thousands through the years of people who were unconverted,
who were confessed atheists, but could articulate the gospel
of grace as if they were God's right hand man. Because it doesn't
take conversion to articulate material. It doesn't take a supernatural
work of some divine entity for us to understand what we read
and apply. If our children can understand
chemistry, if we can teach complex mathematics to third graders.
Beloved, there are children who are three and four years old
who are composing complex piano pieces. who in their mind, without
anything out here to listen to, are notating 15 and 20 staff sonatas. And we don't think it's possible
for people to be able to work within the context of a biblical
framework of information. Don't feel like you're safe from
the wrath of God because you are smart in your doctrine. And don't dare do what the Pharisee
did and say, I thank God I'm not dumb like this guy. That
you've shown me the truth and I've got all the information.
Don't be like that either. God propitiate for me. That's what the publican says.
Satisfy your wrath for me. Provide, my son, our God will
provide for himself a sacrifice. Jesus is the point of the gospel. Jesus is the point of the church.
Jesus is the God that came into the world. What is it that Theophilus
is being reminded of here? What are you being reminded of,
beloved? All these things that Luke has already told Theophilus. And I don't know if you really
spent some time in the Gospel of Luke, but I'm going to tell
you right now, it'll well your soul with tearful joys. I mean, you think about it for
a second. Jesus Christ came into the world. How? Through the promise of God the
Father throughout millennia. How? By a young woman named Mary.
A virgin. And the Spirit of God came upon
her and she conceived. Jesus Christ wasn't conceived
in human ways. Jesus Christ didn't appear into
the world through human intimacy. Jesus Christ, the God of creation,
came into the womb of a woman that He created and was human
by the Spirit of God. Took on humanity. I got some
hot takes on that, but now's not the time. And I've been warned. Don't pull the scabs off. But
beloved Jesus Christ, Luke wrote about Him. He said He's coming
to the world according to the promise of God. He's coming to
the world through this woman who praised the Lord. He came
into the world that He made through the means through which He made,
but it was divine work. He entered into the world in
the moment that he saw fit, stepping out of his divine prerogative,
taking on humanity, the creator God of the cosmos, being a zygote,
divinely created in the uterus of a young woman. What is that? That's part of the good report.
In fact, that's the foundation of the gospel. It's not the law.
The law is this guilty verdict. The law is not gospel. It's death. The law came a long, long time
after the gospel. The promise of redemption is
for God's people in spite of them. And then Luke goes on to
teach Theophilus other things. He talked about Zachariah and
Elizabeth and the forerunner that would come and the spirit
of Elijah. It's not reincarnation, folks. It's not the point. If
I come in the spirit of unity, I'm coming to seek out unity.
I'm coming to do that which is unifying. If I come in the spirit
of love, I'm doing that which is beneficial for all, fair to
all, right and good for all. I'm not like Cupid's ghost. His name shall be John. John,
the one who is going to be talked of for years and comes back into
the scene. And you know about John. And
John is the one who says, Behold the Lamb of God that takes away
the sins of the world. Behold the man of whom sandals
I'm not worthy to untie. Behold. You know what he was
saying there. I'm not even worthy to wash the
feet like a slave of this man Jesus. This man, Jesus, who came
to the world and who disappeared into obscurity because that is
the will of the Father, and then at the age of 30 comes back out
into the world that John, the miracle son of Elizabeth and
Zechariah, the cousin of Mary, that when Mary got news from
the angel that she was with child, she walks into the household
of Elizabeth who was nearly, what, six months or so pregnant? I don't know the timeline off
the top of my head. And the Bible says that filled
with the Holy Spirit, the embryo of John left with the joy of
the Lord in her belly. She felt the joy of God Almighty
inside of her flipping around because this man was in the presence
of his God. The incarnate Son of God, Jesus
the Christ. This is the good news, the good
report, the good story of this crazy idea that the God of heaven
would come into the world through this divine supernatural way
that He may be the redeemer of His people, His gathered ones,
the church. I reveal all that the Father
is in myself, Jesus says. All that the Father gives me
comes to me. All that I am saying is what
the Father was saying. All that I am doing is what the
Father was already doing. Everything that I'm doing is
the revelation of my Father to you, my people. And we want to
make the church a secondary, of secondary importance. Oh please,
please. We're not doing it right in our
cultures. But beloved, it doesn't matter
if we're doing it right or not. We better learn to be more correct. Jesus said a whole lot of stuff.
He did a whole lot of things. He came and at his first miracle,
he takes ceremonial washing jars of water that were there for
show anyway, of a show of piety, and he turns them into wine,
showing, as we saw in John's gospel, that he is the greater
bridegroom. He doesn't even take credit for
his work. He gives the credit to another,
the one who failed, the one who did not provide for his family. because he loved Lazarus, he
stayed an extra few days, that Lazarus might die, that it would
not end in death, but that God would be revealed for himself,
glorified, that's what that means, and seen for who he is in the
death of Lazarus, when Jesus Christ came into Bethany and
said, remove the stone, and they said, oh no, Lord, he'll smell. Jesus says, remove the stone.
And by the command of God, this God-man said, Lazarus, come out
of there. And Lazarus, bound from head
to toe, stood at the door of that tomb. And Jesus says, unbind
him and let him go. And the theologians of that day
met that afternoon, and they said to themselves, we can't
fight against this guy. He has the power of life. Let's
kill him. Talk about blind stupidity. But it was the will of the Father
to strike him, to crush him. Jesus died. Jesus, for three and a half,
four years, preached the righteousness of God, preached the kingdom
of God, preached against the established self-righteousness
of the culture, preached grace upon grace upon grace, called
himself the Son of God, called himself the Son of Man. He ate. He used the bathroom. He wiped
his backside. He was thirsty. He was tired. He sweated. He probably stubbed
his toe a few times. He was truly man. And by the will of God the Father
to save His church, Jesus Christ was arrested, acquitted and crucified. Oh, what a story, what a hallmark
moment of such a kind and gentle and loving man that did nothing
but good, that healed people. Man born blind. Who sinned, Lord,
that that man was born blind? Him or his parents? I don't want
to preach John again, but you know what that implies. And Jesus
says neither. This man was born blind that
God may be seen for who he is, that the glory of God may be
revealed. That which is blind can see, that which is lame can
walk. The pool where the paralytics
laid with the rumor and the myth of the angels touching the water
and the first one in gets healed and all this other kind of stuff.
The paralytic with no one to help him move, Jesus says, do
you want to get healed? I don't have anybody to help
me in the water. I've been here 38 years. 38 years. We can't last eight
minutes in the drive-through. 38 years I've been here and I've
had nobody to help me get in the water and Jesus commands
him. He doesn't discuss things. He
doesn't get this man's theology right. This man is living in
a world of darkness and blindness and depravity. This man is dead
spiritually. This man is putting his hope
in all sorts of myths. But God the Son, Jesus the Christ,
Messiah, said to him in commanding state, Stand up, pick up your
mat and walk. And the man stood up and picked
up his mat and walked. He did what he could not do by
the command of his Creator. He did what he should not do
by the command of his spiritual authorities by taking up his
mat. And then he showed the world by going to them. And what do
they say? Not, oh, Brother Bill, you haven't
ever walked. We've seen you decaying by the
pool over there. Look at your legs. Look at your
walking. They see him walking in with
his bed under his arm, which is like a beach towel. And they
immediately say, who told you to pick up your bed? That's against
the law. I don't know, but I had no choice. This is the Jesus. The things
that he began to do. The things that Luke was writing
about. To prepare a people for himself
in righteousness so that when Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles,
we would understand the work of Christ continues. Jesus himself then taught a lot
of things. He says, what? You will do greater
things than these. That's why people need to learn
to read the Bible and its prescription and know the difference in what
we're instructed to do versus what we're reminded to know happened. But Jesus died. Jesus died. And that death accomplished
our joy. That death accomplished our redemption.
That death satisfied the wrath of God. And of course, I don't
want to get into the philosophy of understanding the eternality
of God beyond time. He created it, but it's necessary
sometimes when we start to dig or lay awake at night. But God is not change, He is
not learning, God is always forever and always has been the same.
His decrees don't have a beginning and an end, they are eternal.
Everything about God is always and everything God desires is
done already. Paul establishes this in Romans
chapter 8 where he uses even glorification in the past tense
and I can even argue theologically just as we saw in Psalm 27 this
morning at the beginning of our service, is that there is a sense
in which we are standing glorified this very moment. Because it
is done. So the first couple who were
promised the seed of the woman to crush the head of serpent, covered by the blood of the true
lamb, clothed in a new righteousness and a new skin, Those first people are a picture
of grace through the finished work of Christ, just like anyone
today who comes to believe in what Jesus did, to trust in what
Jesus did. And the story continues that
after the third day, or on the third day of his death, that
they went to see his body and continued to prepare him, and
he was not there. And the angel of the Lord, the
messenger of God, as the women are looking into the tomb and
weeping that someone has stolen the body of their Lord. He asked
the question, what are you looking for? He's not here. And then
later, Jesus himself appears to them, right? Go tell them that I'm alive.
Just like he came into the world through his divine creative power,
he came out of the grave in the same way. And this is the story, the report
of Christ. This is nonsense to the logical
mind. This is ridiculous. This is mythology.
This is no different than, you know, all these other gods and
goddesses and weird things that we've heard through the ages.
It's like Gilgamesh or Harry Potter or any other hero who
dies to save the good from the villain. Jesus dies to save the villains
and call them good. And so it's very logical for
us to have conversations in the world like a guy like Theophilus
and his great honor and great wealth and great power and great
prestige and people look at him. So if Theophilus began to start
having some weirdness about him following around these Christians
who are so zealous that they're walking away from their lives
to be together, it's not prescriptive, it's historical. necessary then. One might say, well, you know,
theophilus has got a lot to lose. But yet he wanted to know. And
Luke spent a lot of time, as a matter of fact, if you take
the totality of the New Testament just in volume, Luke wrote most
of it in volume. If you've not read Luke's gospel
and Acts of the Apostles in the last while, it's one of the longest
reads you'll do. So here we have this gospel now,
this Jesus, this God who becomes man through divine work, then
does a lot of miracles and teaches a lot of things, then dies, then
comes back from the dead. Oh, Theophilus. It doesn't end
there, remember? It doesn't end there. He did
a whole lot of other stuff until the day he was taken up. And
then he taught a whole lot of things. He gave commands. I want you to think about this. This is a sermon on the sufficiency
of all Scripture for our joy. Because Christ is our joy. He says, then Christ, verse 2,
he gave commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom
he had chosen. Now think about that for a second. So people argue, well, you know,
I don't necessarily think this book of the Bible is authoritative
or Paul was talking here because they're not reading it. They're
picking out verbiage that suits their own agenda. Beloved, don't
do that. Don't read Acts chapter 2 in
a vacuum. Don't read Romans chapter 1 in
a vacuum. Read the letters, read the instruction,
hear the tone, the timbre, understand what God has commanded us through
the apostles. Listen, when other than a very
few exceptions, when an apostle has written something that we
call scripture, it is a command from Christ himself. It's non-negotiable. I don't have to obey Jesus for
salvation. I'll let that rest there in a
simple sense to say, nah, you don't have to follow everything
he tells you to do and live correctly and love correctly. But you're worthless if you don't. And the foundation of all this
submission to his authority, to his good report, to his finished
work is to be a church. to be a people for His glory. Why? Because that's how He chose
to reveal Himself to His people, through His people. And then He gave commands through
the Spirit to the apostles that He chose. These men, in none
of their writings say, you know, when I was about 14, I just thought
to myself, you know, I think I'd like to be an apostle. Think
I'm going to be a disciple of Christ? I'm going to be a preacher.
That's the problem with today's world now. Everybody has a little
theological chops and they think they're called to the ministry.
Folks, theological chops do not make a man qualified for the
pastorate. It is a divine call that he cannot
stop. It is a divine call that only
God himself can remove. And it is about loving God's
people through the teaching of the apostles for the sake of
our joy and teaching the body to do that which we've been instructed
to do so that our joy is complete and the honor and glory of our
Father is established before men. And that's in a nutshell. And then secondary to that, we
have a responsibility to our neighbors and to our enemies. Secondary. But it's still a responsibility. Next week I'll talk a little
bit more about this particular statement. But the depth of our
theology is evidenced by how we love our neighbor. And I can prove that Jesus and
John and Paul And James and Peter, just off the top of my head,
emphatically press that into the church. And Paul emphatically
presses that into Timothy as an elder so that James Tippins
can understand one of his primary purposes as a pastor, shepherd,
overseer is to defend the church against nonsense in application
as well as doctrine. Patiently, lovingly, kindly,
gently, long-suffering. God's in charge, not me. If He
wants to wait a year before He helps you see things clearly,
that's fine. If He wants to show you before you get out of here
and you have a hallelujah moment, that's fine, too. Jesus Christ is alive. He is alive. Verse 3 of Acts
1, He presented Himself alive. He ate. He drank. He wasn't a ghost. He wasn't
a spirit. His body came back from the dead. He presented Himself alive after
His suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days
and speaking about the Kingdom of God. He taught a lot of stuff. And beloved, that's why we're
here, to learn about what Jesus taught, to learn about what Jesus
did, and to live accordingly, to live according to the commands
of Jesus for His people. It's all or none, sweetness.
We can't pick and choose, and it starts with being together
on the Lord's Day in its minimum. It starts by being in the Bible,
not on YouTube, not on sermon audio, not through a commentary,
not through a study. Those things are additions. And sometimes they become the
main meal. I call them the aroma. of the Christian faith. It's
not walking into a restaurant, smelling the food, giving them
$100 and walking out. Folks, we need to eat the bread
of life. Be in the fellowship of the body
and come in the context of having read the Bible throughout the
week. What part of the Bible? Just pick a New Testament letter
and read it. Read it every single day, read the same chapter or
two every single day and be in that discipline. And then all
of a sudden things will begin to make sense. Things will start
to unfold. We will start to see a little
bit more emphatically what Christ has done and what Christ has
taught. The kingdom of God. This is what Jesus talked about.
People have made their entire theologies focused on this kingdom
mindset. People have made their entire
politics focused on this type of thing. Their economics focused
on these types of things. This is not the point of Christ.
There is nothing that will remain but Christ and his people. for
the glory of God. That's it. Everything else, every
other kingdom, every other picture, every other shadow, every other
nation, even the United States, especially the United States
of America, none of it will remain. None of it will remain. It's
all part of God's grand design. The kingdom of God is comprised
of a people because that is the wisdom of God. The Kingdom of God is about a
people. And the Kingdom of God is about
a people who have organized themselves under the prescription of Christ
Himself through the teaching of the Apostles that we may reveal
Him through our learning and living. And that we would not stray from
those things. And the Kingdom of God is at
hand. It's not about eschatology, the
study of last things. It's not about the end of the
world. It's not about a new world order. That's just nonsense.
That's ridiculous stuff. That's smoke and mirror. That's
part of the Thessalonian, what Paul would say, a great deception. Don't get bogged down in that
garbage. It's simple. It's about Christ and his people.
Because Christ and those who he has saved, Reveal the Father. Reveal His
love and His purposes. And we could go on and on and on. Let's look at verses 4 and
continue here for a second. And while staying with them,
Jesus ordered the disciples, the apostles, not to depart from
Jerusalem. But listen to this. Because we
all have the question, right? Well, then now what? What are
we to do? Well, we are to be disciplined
in the practices of the prescription of Christ for His people in the
orderly way, according to the Scripture. He ordered them not
to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the
Father, which He said, You heard from Me, for John baptized with
water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many
days from now. See, Jesus, as He told His disciples
before His arrest, He said, I will send my Spirit. The Spirit of
Christ. Jesus worked and operated by
His power, by His Spirit, God the Holy Spirit, in the world
through signs and wonders. And now by the same Spirit of
Christ we live and sit this day, born of God, not by our will,
decision and intelligence, born of God by His Spirit. Our trusting, resting hope, which
is faith, is a gift of God by the Spirit. And sometimes it's
inexpressible. And depending on where we are
intellectually and our ability to dive into certain things,
we may never have theological chops to match the academics
of the world. And that is perfectly beautiful. Beautiful. I didn't say anything
about false Christs, false Gospels. Folks, those things are not on
my radar because I don't care. Because that is blasphemous for
me to spend my time worrying about all that crap when that
is the normal promise of God from the world. There will always
be falsehoods. Whoop-de-doo! God is sovereign! Hallelujah! I'm okay. I'm okay. It is okay! Because Christ has purposed We're
not the warriors. We're the slaves. We're not pulling
out swords. We're washing toes. You see? Calm down, man. Let's just rest. That's a good word for me lately.
Rest. I think it's all right. Let's
just rest. Nap time. We'll go to a two and a half hour service.
We'll sleep for 90 minutes. So verse 6 of Acts 1, when they
came together, let's just keep for a second. They ask him, Lord,
will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel? See how
their focus was? Kingdom of God, kingdom of God.
Oh, Israel's coming back, the temple's coming back. Woo-hoo-hoo!
We're going to have our people back together. We're going to
really be somebody. We're going to be the sovereign
grace community. Duh. We're going to be the Baptists. We're going to be the Evangelicals. It is not for you to know times
and seasons, but for the Father as fixed by his own authority.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon
you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria
and to the end of creation, end of the earth. And then they looked
and he floated up off the ground into the heavens and vanished
before them. Don't you think about that. What
is the call of the apostles and what has the apostles then written
by their narratives and histories and good report gospels and their
letters for the body of Christ and that is that we are his witnesses. And modern day evangelism is
as backward as a three-toothed crocodile, as worthless as a
toothless lion. We offer the gospel, we make
opportunities for salvation. This is nonsense. The gospel
is a proclamation of who Christ is and what he did and what he
taught. And the power of God the Holy
Spirit has called his people to be his witnesses. What does
it mean to witness, to be a witness for Christ? Be as He calls us
to be. Proclaim His teaching and live
according to His instruction. Jesus is the point. Jesus is
the gospel. Jesus is the Savior. Jesus is
the God of glory. Let us learn that our joy is
Christ. And that when we see our joy
waning, it's because we are not witnessing nor being the witness
of Christ in the world. And by his grace, may we see
the power of God in us. Let's pray. We thank you, Father, for the
truth of the gospel and for your love for us, your people. As
we depart from this place today, Lord, let our hearts continue
to be together for the sake of your name. Father, teach us.
Help us to grow deep in our understanding of truth. And deeply in love
with one another. For only when we love each other
are we able to say we love you. In Christ's name, we pray. Amen. you