Living Waters of Grace 11.20.25

This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark

Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,

County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he

continues teaching through God's Word.

When a soul comes to faith in Jesus Christ, it's a work of the

Holy Spirit. Matter of fact, the Bible tells

us that we can't make that happen.

We're not even the ones that come.

He draws us. He draws us to Himself.

He softens our hearts. He gives us the ability to

reason and have logic and He speaks to our minds and our

hearts and presents the truth and then we, the receiver to we

reject it. Any good gardener knows that you

can't just bury some seeds in your backyard and expect to get

fresh produce out of it. It takes lots of work spread out

over the course of a growing season in order to receive fresh

fruits and vegetables for you and your family to consume.

Well, in today's message, Pastor Clark reminds you that the Holy

Spirit is a Master Gardener, but instead of tilling the soil of

the earth, he tends to the souls of humanity.

Every heart is fertile ground ready to hear and respond to

Jesus. Now here's Pastor Clark in Acts

Acts 19 · chapter mention

chapter 19 with today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.

I knew when I was 20 years old that I needed a miracle of some

sort to Get Me Out of the pattern of life I was living and

I hated it. I would go to bed at night and I

would this be in such despair and depression and

discouragement of my addictions to so many different things that

were not right. And it wasn't till Jesus Christ

came into my life and I was given the gospel and I realized

that He died for my sin to save me and to forgive me, but also

to free me from my sin. That's the big missing

connection. Sometimes when we preach the

gospel, we tell people to believe on Jesus.

He'll forgive you of your sin. You go to heaven and you don't

have to worry about going to hell and he loves you and all

those things are true. But you have to 1st realize that

you're a Sinner and that you need to turn from your sin.

That's called repentance. And that you need Christ to do a

miracle in your life so that you don't stay stuck in your sin,

Right. And whenever Jesus does that

work, when we're born again, we are given his nature.

Even though we still have this old nature trying to take over

every once in a while, we have a new nature.

We have a new life. And not only that, the Holy

Spirit comes into our life to live in us at the time we're

born again. And when he's in US, he gives us

the ability to live a completely different life.

Amen. We're not perfect, but we're

certainly not the way we used to be, right?

Certain things bother us now that never used to bother us.

And there's certain things that we used to do that we detest

now. And there's no longer, we, we no

longer can do them. That's the work and the power of

the Holy Spirit. So these people that Paul's

speaking to, they have this desire to believe, but they're

missing these key ingredients. They're missing the power of the

cross and the and the resurrection, and they're also

missing this power of the Holy Spirit, God the Holy Spirit,

because they haven't received him yet.

And so Paul says to them, John and verse 4, indeed baptized

with the baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they

should believe on him who would come after him, that is on

Christ Jesus. So they were prepared to believe

in the Messiah. Apollos preached the fact that

John proclaimed the baptism of repentance, being prepared for

the one who was prophesized in the Old Testament to be the

Messiah. OK, but the Messiah has now

already come. He's been crucified, He's been

buried, He's been resurrected, and the Holy Spirit came down

upon the Church in the 2nd chapter of Acts at Pentecost to

begin to dwell inside the life of the believer.

For the first time in the Old Testament.

The Holy Spirit came upon people and then He would take off when

they offended Him or they sin. The the the power of the Holy

Spirit. Even in the the times of gospel

when Jesus was walking, the Spirit was working in and

through Christ. And Jesus even said that the

apostles at one time received the Holy Spirit and he blown on

them the the wind of the Spirit and they they sensed the

presence of God. But there was no indwelling of

the Holy Spirit until Pentecost. This is the great teaching of of

the book of the Acts, the power of the Spirit God, the Holy

Spirit coming to indwelled in US and to stay in US and to be the

guarantee of our salvation and the reality of our experience

being real until the day that we're taken out of here.

So Paul said, yes, John and Dee baptized with the baptism

repentance, saying to the people that they should believe on him

who would come after him that is on Christ Jesus.

So they're already in man, they're like ready.

OK, so when they heard this, they were baptized in the name

of the Lord Jesus. They were baptized in the name

of the Lord Jesus. Many of you, I trust, hopefully

all of you who are born again have been baptized in water.

Baptism does not save you, but it is a confirmation that you

have been saved because it's the first sign of obedience after

you become a believer for Jesus. They go into all the world and

preach the gospel into every living creature, baptizing them

in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

And hello, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age.

And baptism is, is an awesome thing when you get baptized and

some of you, I've had the privilege of baptized, baptizing

and you come out of the water, smile and it's just like, it's

just a blessing cause you're doing what it is that Jesus told

us to do. That's the first sign after you

become a Christian that I want to follow you Lord.

And when you're baptized, you're identifying with his death as

you go into the water, his burial, and then as you come out

of the water, his resurrection. You're affirming, I believe that

Christ Jesus is my Lord, that he died for my sins and he was

buried on the on the 3rd and he rose again on the third day

according to the Scriptures. And how, how awesome is that,

you know, to be able to identify with the with the Lord Jesus.

A matter of fact in the book of the Acts, when people were

riding down on their carts and their horses and all that kind

of stuff, they could always tell that something was special was

going on when they saw people being baptized in the water.

And they would say those people are of the way, the way of the

cross, the way of Jesus, as he's the one that says I am the way I

am the truth, I'm the life. No man come to the Father but

through me. And so this is an exciting time

for these people. Now they're they're they've been

baptized in the name of Jesus. And when they heard this, they

were baptized in the name of the Lord.

And when Paul had laid his hands on them.

And this is really important to understand.

The laying on of hands is a wonderful ministry and blessing

that we can all do for one another.

You pray for someone you you you're compelled to lay hands on

them. There's nothing empowering in my

hands or your hands, but it's, it's a sign of a blessing and a

sign of contact that you just want to bring comfort.

And the Bible talks about the, this movement of the Holy Spirit

through the elders and the leaders of the church that if

any are sick among you, let him call upon the elders of the

church that they may anoint them with oil and pray for them and

they lay hands on them, pray for them.

And sometimes there's healings that occur.

Sometimes God chooses to bring healing, but there's no

guarantee that healing comes every time we lay hands on

someone or every time we anoint someone.

The Bible tells us in First Corinthians 12 that the Holy

Spirit gives gifts, gifts of healing, gifts of all kind of

things in the Bible, that He does these things severally as

He wills. Not as I will, not as you will,

OK, but as God wills. But in the apostles, they were

special group of people. There's no more apostles.

Now some people claim to be apostles, but there is no

apostles in the sense of what was ordained by Christ.

Apostles had to be eyewitnesses of Jesus Christ in his life

physically. OK, that was the first and it

gives the signs of the apostles in in Hebrews.

They were gifted to do miraculous signs and wonders.

This was the sign of authentic apostles.

And so Paul had something different in his ministry

because whenever he laid hands on people, there was Apostolic

authority. A matter of fact, Timothy was

said, stir up the gift that is in you that was given to by the

laying on of hands, not anybody else's hands, but the apostles

hands. OK, now you and I have spiritual

gifts. All of us have gifts in here

today, and they were given to us at the moment of our salvation.

Some of us have one gift. Some of us have more than one

gift. And because we have a gift or

more than one gift doesn't make us any better or any less than

anybody else that's in the body of Christ.

God gives us these gifts for the reason of giving Him glory but

also accomplishing His will, right?

The gift of teaching, and many of you have that in here.

It's just not a pastor gift. Women have it.

Men have it. Anytime you have the ability to

communicate the word of God in a way that people understand it

and can grow in it and grow by it and be blessed through it, it

is evidence of God's gifting on your life.

Doesn't make you any more spiritual any more powerful, any

more of a blessing. It's just the way it is.

Some of you have more of a calm down gift of like say the gift

of helps and you're always looking at how you can help

people and you're behind the scenes and you're doing this and

you're doing that and you just never sit down.

You're always busy wanting to bless someone and help them.

My wife has that gift. She's just unbelievable.

We go somewhere to someone's house for dinner.

She wants to do the dishes is at their house.

It's just well, no, no, you sit down, you're a guest.

You no, no. And if you tell her no, then

you're bumming her out because that's her gift.

She wants to to bless you that way, you know.

So if you want to make a nice dinner, invite us and you don't

want to do dishes, call us, send, send.

You'll do the dishes for you know, no, I'm not.

I'm sitting in there Gab and that's what I do my gifts Gab

right. But but anyway, it's just, it's

just fun to know that every one of us in here have these

spiritual gifts today. I didn't give them to you.

You didn't give them to me. They occurred when we got saved.

Now what happened when you and I got saved?

It's really important to realize, like if I said to you

today, have any of you received the Holy Spirit since you

believe that's sort of like a that's a like a bad question to

ask because if you're saved, you've all received the Holy

Spirit. The Bible tells us in Romans

8-9, if anyone has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of

his. So you can't be a Christian

without the Holy Spirit and the baptism.

There's one baptism, 1 Lord, 1 faith, one baptism, one God and

Father of all who is above all and in all and through all.

It tells us, tells us that in the book of Ephesians, First

Corinthians 12/13 For we are all baptized by 1 Spirit into the

body of Christ. So you are placed, you're

baptized by the Spirit, and you're put into this

supernatural body of people who have believed the Gospels for

all time since the beginning to the end, and that's the body of

Christ. We are baptized a moment, we're

born again by the Spirit of God. And then in Ephesians chapter

one, verse 13, and I need to clarify these things because

unfortunately there's a lot of bad teaching out there regarding

these kind of things. I had people come to me and say,

you know, they, they believe, but they haven't received the

Holy Spirit yet. I said, well, who told you that?

You know, Pentecostals, unfortunately wonderful people

love the Lord, but they really got some mixed up teaching on

the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. And some of you've come out of

that. I came out of that.

So I I sort of could write a book on what not to do, what not

to believe regarding God, the Holy Spirit.

But it tells us in Ephesians chapter one, verse 13.

This is a wonderful verse underlined in your Bible.

In him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the

gospel of your salvation, in whom also having believed, you

were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is a guarantee

of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased

possession to the praise of his glory.

And that a wonderful verse, the moment you believe you were

sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.

So what's happening here in Acts is that there's this movement of

God through the work of the apostle, and this is what occurs

to them in this experience. Not every time an act, not

everybody spoke in tongues when they received the Holy Spirit,

but at Pentecost they did. And the gift of tongues at that

time was not senseless Babel. These were literal languages

that all those different ethnic groups of people in that time,

at that day were able to hear the word of God and their own

dialect. That's wild.

I mean, these people that were given this gift, they didn't

know what they were saying, but say you were, you know, your

language was, I don't know, Turkish or Greek or whatever,

and you never had learned those languages as one of the people

who were given the gift of tongues at Pentecost.

And you're, you're worshipping God.

You're, you're speaking this language that you don't even

know what it is. But someone right beside you is

getting saved because they're hearing the Gospel in their own

dialect, their own tongue, this miraculous.

And so it wasn't, it wasn't senseless Babel.

It was a literal, literal languages.

But anyway, so Paul is then going to lay hands on them.

He lays hands on them. The Holy Spirit came upon them.

And this is the Greek preposition of the word FP.

You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.

And I'll talk about that in a second here.

And they spoke with tongues and they prophesized.

Now the, the word prophecy wasn't like, well, I'm going to

tell you the future, what's happening, you know, five years

from now or 100 years from now or 300 years.

The ability to prophecy is to be able to speak in a way that

you're edifying the here, building them up in their faith,

comforting them and exhorting them, warning them to follow

Christ. Paul said, I'd rather all of you

had the gift of prophecy. It's one of the most powerful

gifts because it's multitasking at the same time.

It's comforting, it's edifying and it's exhorting.

And so they had these gifts and these men, there was about 12 of

them and all. And so they go into the

synagogue and they spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and

persuading and concerning the things of the Kingdom of God.

So Paul, wherever he had a chance, he went in the

synagogue. He was approved and accepted

because he was a member of the Sanhedrin.

He was a Pharisee of Pharisees. All those things are passe now

because he had come to Christ. His whole agenda and going to

the synagogue was to tell people the gospel.

And they couldn't shut him up because he was welcome to go in

there. Now eventually people would get

tired of hearing what he was saying and they would begin to

get uptight as it says here in verse 9.

But when some were hardened and did not believe, but spoke evil

the way WAY, the way of the Lord before the multitude, he

departed from them and withdrew the disciples reasoning daily in

the school of Tyrannius. So Paul knew that there was a

period of time that they weren't going to deal with this anymore,

and he was going to take them somewhere else, especially the

new believers. Hearing all these conflicts and

these complaints and these arguments, whatever, Paul knew

he'd eventually have to get him out of there.

Now, what's important to realize here is that these new believers

are filled with the Holy Spirit. They're empowered by God, as was

all those in the early book of Acts, Pentecost.

We're empowered by God to do what it is that God compels us

to do, to help people, to pray for people, to teach people.

You're empowered by God to study the word of God because the Holy

Spirit's the teacher. When you sit down with your

Bible in your home, wherever you are, and you start reading and

maybe you're confused, say Holy Spirit, explain this to me, show

me. Reveal the truth.

He will. He's the teacher.

He's the teacher here today through a knucklehead or a

donkey. He can speak through anybody,

can he? It's not the vessel, it's the

Spirit of God that does the work and does the transformation.

And so this wonderful person, and he is a person.

God the Holy Spirit desires to have more of you.

He wants to control you and direct you, guide you and bless

you, protect you, lead you and to use you.

Any move of God that's happened since the beginning of Genesis

to the end of Revelation has had the instrumentality of God, the

Holy Spirit at work in the miraculous.

When the soul comes to faith in Jesus Christ, it's a work of the

Holy Spirit. Matter of fact, the Bible tells

us that we can't make that happen.

We're not even the ones that come.

He draws us, He draws us to Himself.

He softens our hearts, He gives us the ability to reason and

have logic, and He speaks to our minds and our hearts and

presents the truth. And then we either receive it or

we reject it. This is the work of the Holy

Spirit. He comes to convict the world of

sin, of righteousness, of judgement.

And He's doing this 24/7. And so Paul, he starts the first

Bible college here, the school of Tyrannius.

Tyrannius was a philosopher, and he used this facility, this

building to teach people philosophy.

Supposedly between the hours of 11 in the morning till 4:00 in

the afternoon, it wasn't being used.

So Paul developed a friendship, and he said, yeah, you can use

this. And so Paul set up shop there.

And for two years, Can you imagine going and sitting in

Paul's teaching? For two years you lived there in

Ephesus. And where you going today?

Well, I'm not missing Paul today.

I'm going down to hear more. And you be down there and be be

so grounded and so aware of all these wonderful truths that we

study and read about today. He studied and he taught, and he

reasoned daily, it says, in the school of Tyrannius.

And this continued for two years that it all who dwelled in Asia

heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.

Now whenever we have opportunity to be in certain sections of the

Scripture, I think it's important to pause for a minute

and think a little bit. This church, Calvary Chapel, has

been established by the Holy Spirit, not me or Cindy or

anybody else. Matter of fact, this is the last

thing I ever wanted or ever thought about doing in my life

is being a pastor. I fought it for a good many

years and we attended Calvary Chapel of Philadelphia.

Wonderful church or a church plan out of there.

And we came out here and we looked and we went to churches,

try to find a church that teaches the Bible and we

couldn't find any. Hard to believe, nice churches,

nice people, but like, where's the word of God?

And we got conditioned to get acclimated to this kind of

church where the word is being taught line upon line, precept

upon precept, the way it's written, book by book, the way

God intended it. So we, we planted the church,

Calvary Chapel. It started in the late 60s,

early 70s in Costa Mesa, CA. It was a little church called

Calvary Chapel run by a pastor, by a guy by the name of Chuck

Smith. And, and Chuck had been in

denominations he'd come out of really not aberrant, but the

really extreme Pentecostalism and, and all the hype.

And he just got tired of that. And he started reading and

studying Spurgeon and Martin Lloyd Jones.

He started getting grounded and, and when this this church was a

bunch of this uptight people that were legalist and

judgmental and self-righteous and they thought they had it

together and everybody else didn't and they didn't want

anybody in the church. It wasn't like them.

Well, lo and behold, the hippies start coming and the Jesus

movement is birthed through Calvary Chapel.

So churches maybe having 2025 people starts having hundreds

upon hundreds upon thousands upon thousands until the church

got to be so small, too small for what God was doing, they had

to put a tent up. So over 2 years, every night

thousands of young people were ushered into these tents out of

their Pagan, immoral, godless lifestyle.

And I was one of them. I, I wasn't there, but it

happened to me on the East Coast.

And there was this move of God's Spirit drawing people all across

the world into Jesus Christ to be saved.

And we were born again. And 1700 Calvary chapels around

the world right now, still being birthed, and all because of the

work of the Holy Spirit. We need another Jesus revolution

today. We need the Spirit of God to

compel people in Greensburg and Latrobe and Irwin.

I don't know why I'm in this church today, but I was drawn

here somehow. That's what happened to these

young kids. They'd be in that tent.

A lot of the guys went down there because there's a lot of

cute girls down there. But after they got down there,

they started hearing the word and the Holy Spirit started

convicting them and the, and the music was so alive.

And, and there's this middle-aged guy, balding

middle-aged guy, Chuck Smith to just get up there and just teach

the Bible like we're teaching it today.

And those kids would hold on to every word of that Bible.

And then eventually they wanted to go out and tell others.

And so these other churches were birthed.

Thank you for listening to this edition of Living Waters of

Grace. Pastor Clark is teaching us

about the book of Acts in this series.

Acts is a powerful and unique part of Scripture, not just

because it records the spread of the gospel geographically from

Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, but also culturally.

Acts shows us how the message of Jesus moved beyond its Jewish

roots and began to reach the Gentile world.

What started with Peter leading a small group in the Upper Room

became a global movement with Paul taking the gospel to

cities, synagogues, and marketplaces across the Roman

Empire. Acts captures this vital

transition and reminds us that the good news of Jesus is for

all people in every place. May we be inspired to carry that

same gospel boldly into our world today.

Living Waters of Grace comes to you from Calvary Chapel,

Westmoreland. If you're in the Greensburg, PA

area, you can listen to Grace FM on the new 91.7 frequency.

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716, Greensburg, PA 15601 also invite you to join us in person

this Sunday at 10:30 AM at 400 E Pittsburgh St.

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Grace.