Living Waters of Grace 09.18.25

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.

The gospel isn't the gospel without the proclamation of not

only the death and the burial. You got to tell him the rest of

the story. He rose again on the third day,

because without a resurrection there is no power in Christ's

death, is there? Only through the fact that he

truly was the Messiah. And he came and he died, He was

buried and he rose again according to the Scriptures on

the third day. This Jesus Goddess raised up

which we are all witnesses. The gospel can shine like a

beacon, but it's incomplete without the full truth.

In today's message, Pastor Clark unveils how the good news isn't

just Jesus's death and burial, but his resurrection on the

third day. Without that victory, his death

would hold no power. Scripture affirms he died, was

buried, and rose, proving he's the Messiah.

You're called to share this whole story, not just parts.

His resurrection is the heartbeat of your faith, showing

God's Immaculate and limitless power over death.

Now here's Pastor Clark in the book of Acts Chapter 2 with

Acts 2 · chapter mention

today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.

I was praying Lord, I prayed it. The name I drop here will be of

some influence. I know, Officer such and such.

OK. He goes back to the car.

He probably called him up and said, you know, this character

by the name of Clark, you know? But fortunately, he let me go

and I was grateful. But I said, Lord, forgive me for

not paying it. I wasn't like, I don't think

intentionally wanting to put the pedal to the metal, but I was

sort of just daydreaming when I was driving.

You ever do that and the next thing you know you're going much

faster than you should be and you suffer the consequences.

But the whole idea is this idea of wine influence.

They think these guys are drunk. Paul teaches in the book of

Ephesians that the influence of alcohol has negative effects

when it's controlling us. That why we absolutely need to

be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so in verse 14 and Peter, he stands up with the 11 I I I'm

encouraged with this and pastor Lewis I'm sure is too anybody

that's called to preach the gospel.

He's calling people that he can work in their lives to perfect

them for the work of the ministry, but he never looks

down and says well, I'm going to wait till such and such is

perfect and then I might use them.

We know Peter, shortly before this incident, was denying the

Lord right? He denied him three times, and

now he's chosen by God, the Holy Spirit, to bring forth the first

evangelistic message after this experience of Pentecost.

That should really encourage all of us that Peter was used to do

something that was remarkable by the work of God's Spirit.

So Peter, standing up with the 11, raised his voice and said to

them, Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be

made known to you, and heed my words, for these are not drunk

as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day.

But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel.

Now this particular section of Scripture in Joel is beginning

to show forth the whole economy of God until the 2nd coming of

Christ, when he establishes His Kingdom and the millennial reign

in Jerusalem. That's when this section of

Scripture will be completely fulfilled at that particular

time. But there is indicators here

that this is the beginning of this movement of God in the last

days. And the last days begin from the

day of Pentecost until the day of Christ return.

So we've been in the last days for several thousand years.

So that's because a lot of stuff's going on right now in

the world does not mean literally that tomorrow Jesus is

coming. And these are the last days.

This last day, phenomena and experience of world insanity and

crisis and evil dictators and rulers and sin and all the other

things that comprise human existence have begun in Genesis,

but in the Church age, they began at Pentecost.

The last days before Christ's second coming will be fulfilled

at His second coming. And so this is the prophecies

that are beginning to be fulfilled.

It shall come to pass in the last days, says God.

I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.

Your sons, your daughters shall prophecy.

Your young men shall see visions, your old men shall

dream dreams. And my men servants, and on my

maidservants, I will pour out my spirit in those days, and they

shall prophecy. And I will show wonders in

heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath.

Blood and fire and vapor, smoke. The sun shall be turned Into

Darkness and the moon into blood before the coming of the great

and awesome day of the Lord. And it shall come to pass that

whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

And that's the gospel, right? And the ideas of prophesying is

proclaiming the word of God, speaking forth the truth of God.

Men and women can do that equally as God empowers them.

You give a witness somewhere, you give a testimony.

It isn't for telling the future per SE.

That's a very rare thing because we got the future dictated in

this book, Genesis through Revelation.

We know what God's going to do and what's going to come to

pass. But prophesying is the ability

to, you know, exhort people, warn them, edify, build them up

and comfort them. That's the real true meaning of

prophecy. The apostle Paul said, I wish

all of you would. Prophecy meaning that you would

in your ministry, warn people, build people up and comfort

them. That's something that we should

all want to emulate, right? We should all want to have that

gift occurring in our lives to be useful to God.

Visions and dreams, people have them.

Sometimes they're caused by eating too much pizza the night

before. But I'm not negating the fact

that God can't speak through a dream or a vision.

But these things will increase in magnitude during the time of

right prior to the return of Lord.

Some of these phenomenas in the heavens haven't occurred yet.

Of course, some commentators try to tie these into what happened

when Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70.

It looked pretty traumatic when Rome sacked the city.

But this what is being depicted here and Acts is unlike anything

that the world has seen yet. And these signs will be

obviously near the end of the Tribulation, right prior to the

return of Christ of His second coming, when He establishes His

Kingdom and rules and reigns in Jerusalem.

And then Peter continues, Men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus

of Nazareth, a man attested by God to you, by miracles,

wonders, and signs, which God did through him in your midst,

as you yourselves also know Him, being delivered by the

determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have

taken by lawless hands, have crucified and put to death, whom

God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was

not possible that he should be held by it.

For David says concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before

my face, for he is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken.

Therefore my heart rejoiced and my tongue was glad.

Moreover, my flesh also my will rest in hope.

For you will not leave my soul in Hades, nor will you allow

your Holy One to see corruption. You have made known to me the

ways of life. You will make me full of joy in

your presence. Of course, this is the

fulfillment of what Christ experienced.

Men and brethren, let me speak in verse 29 freely to you of the

patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and His tomb is

with us to this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and

I knowing that God has sworn with an oath to him that of the

fruit of His body according to the flesh, He would raise up the

Christ as seed coming through David would raise up the Christ

to sit on the throne. He, foreseeing this, spoke

concerning the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not

left in hell or hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.

This Jesus God hath raised up, of which we are all witnesses.

The Gospel isn't the gospel without the proclamation of not

only the death and the burial. You got to tell him the rest of

the story. He rose again on the third day.

Because without a resurrection there is no power in Christ's

death, is there? Only through the fact that He

truly was the Messiah. And He came and He died, He was

buried and He rose again according to the Scriptures, on

the third day. This Jesus goddess raised up,

which we are all witnesses. Therefore, being exalted to the

right hand of God, and having received from the Father the

promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now

see and hear. So all this is ordained by God.

If you don't think God is in control, read this later on

slowly. God is sovereign.

When Christ had to die that terrible death.

This was preordained by God before the foundation of the

earth. There was no mistake even though

the Jewish people were guilty, as we all are because of our sin

of having Christ crucified. Nothing was out of control from

the throne room of heaven at at any time in in human existence,

nor will there ever be any time when anything is out of control.

And the purpose of what they're experiencing right now was also

ordained by God from the Father, the promise of the Holy Spirit,

which they are all experiencing right now.

He poured out this which you now see and hear.

This is all the work of a sovereign God, who has

everything under control. For David did not ascend into

the heavens, but he says to himself, The Lord said to my

Lord, sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your

footstool. Therefore let all the House of

Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you

crucified, both Lord and Christ. Amen to that.

Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart.

And this is the power of the Word of God through the vessel

of God, empowered by God, the Word.

When it goes forth, God promises it will not return void.

It will accomplish the purpose for which He sends it.

There's nothing you or I can do to invalidate the power of the

Word. We can reject it.

We can ignore it. We can walk away from it.

We can choose to not believe it. But it doesn't negate the fact

that the Word, from God's vantage point, will never come

back to him empty. It'll accomplish the purposes

for which He sends it, whether it's to save you today and to

cast you into the outer darkness through the preaching of the

Word. That doesn't accomplish is all

this. And He chooses through the

preaching of the Word to save some.

This is what He chose. This is the methodology.

He chooses us as people to proclaim the gospel to people.

And it isn't up to us whether they believe or they don't

believe. We're just to communicate it.

And when we communicate it, it has power.

Not your power, not my power, but His power.

And His word is anointed. His word is all powerful, and it

accomplishes the purposes for which He sends it.

So when they hear this, and perhaps when you hear it today,

and when I hear it, there should be a conviction in my heart that

God is true. He's pure, He's holy, He's

righteous. I need a savior or I'm a

Christian, but I need to get deeper in my ways and my walk

with God. I need to allow Him to take over

more control of my life. I need to surrender things that

are in the way and things that are quenching His spirit and

things that are grieving His spirit.

I need to allow God to remove anything in my life that's in

the way so that He can have His way with this short life that

He's given to each of us. So they're convicted.

Cut to the heart means there's a problem right here.

It's getting to me right here. It's one thing for it to get to

my mind and I think a little bit about it, and then I forget

about it. Later when it's here, it's doing

some surgery and it's beginning to cause something to change

internally. Something's happening.

Wonderful. At this point in time, they said

to Peter and the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what

shall we do? And that's someone who's aware

of the fact that they're lost and what they're hearing is

true, and now they need a solution, They need an answer.

And Peter says to them, repent. And repent means to turn from

one way of living and one position of life toward what God

says we should do, turn away from sin and turn to God.

Repentance is not beating yourself up in an altar and and

crying for three hours and hoping your emotion.

You think we'll get God's focus and he'll pay attention if

you're really all out of sorts or whatever.

No, repentance is like the guy in the pigpen that left his

father's wealth and and squandered it and he's finally

dead one day and the pigpen saying I shouldn't be here, I

shouldn't be living like this. It's crazy.

My dad, you know, he, I'm going back home.

This is not the way I want to live anymore.

He repented. He turned from the immoral way

of living and the and the self centeredness and the destructive

path of life and he turned and he started heading home toward

his father. Peter tells him repent without

repentance, without any turning, there is no salvation and only

God can see the heart. Whether it turns, of course,

God's the one that makes a hard turn too.

That's another mystery. And I'm going to get into all

that today. It takes a long time, but all I

know is that the simple gospel is the preaching of the crosses

of them that are perishing foolishness, right?

People that are on their way to hell, That's a joke.

You guys are crazy. But unto us who are saved, and

that's the majority of us here today, I'm sure it's the power

of God and the salvation to everyone that believes, right?

We've experienced this. That's why we worship.

That's why we come here and gather to worship Him and to

follow him. Repent and let everyone of you

be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of

sins. And you shall receive the gift

of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to

your children and to all who are afar off, as many as our Lord

our God will call. And so the simple gospel,

repent. Already I'm turning, I'm coming

to Peter with the other thousands of people, 3000.

I need salvation. I want to have my sins forgiven.

And so they're all lining up there and they're all going to

be baptized. The baptism is the outward sign,

the picture to those who are there that I am now a follower

of Jesus Christ. It isn't what saved them.

They were saved when when they were convicted and they

believed. OK.

And the the evidence of their belief was that they turned

toward God. And then the evidence in the

reality of the fact that they want to, you know, unite with

this new movement called the way the birth of the church.

They had to be publicly baptized.

And baptism was a death sentence for a lot of people because if

they saw you being baptized, they'd tie you in with what they

called was a religious sect and they would try to martyr you and

get rid of you. OK, Pretty hard to do when you

got 3000 people doing it at one time, though.

It was a quite, quite a powerful move of God.

And so they were baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy

Spirit. And, and you know, this isn't

that you don't some people I'm just going to baptize in the

name of Jesus Christ. No, Jesus said on the mouth

before he ascended. You baptize them in the name of

the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So this isn't like a different

kind of baptism, but it is focused on the Trinity being

baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

and what will happen whenever they are moved to do this work

of God in their hearts, God's doing the work of belief, Then

the evidence of their new life occurs, and the most important

evidence that they're truly born again is that they'll receive

the Holy Spirit. He'll come in and dwell in them

and he'll live in them and be with them forever.

I don't know how people can live these days life without the Holy

Spirit. The the tragedy, though, the

Church of Jesus Christ has tried to do his work without the Holy

Spirit, and that's why it's so anemic in the world.

And how can the work of God become more empowered by God?

It only can get stronger. I believe by us become more

desperate for a deeper walk with God, that our lies would by

God's grace, begin to become supernaturally empowered at a

different level than maybe we've experienced because we've let

things get in the way. We all have the cares of the

world. Look what's happening in the

world. If it's getting you offset and

all worked up, it's going to drain you spiritually.

The cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches.

If my whole life is focused on my wealth and I'm absorbed by my

material possessions, it's going to drain me spiritually.

And then the lust of other things.

Jesus says, 'cause His word to become not empowered.

So we can know this Bible inside and out.

We can know the truth, we can know the doctrine, we can know

the history. But if those three things are in

the way in any of our lives, then we are quenching the work

of God's Spirit in our lives and we're grieving the Spirit.

We, we wound, we hurt the Spirit.

You can hurt my feelings, I can hurt your feelings and that's

not good. But boy, you know, hurting God,

wounding the Spirit of God, very, very serious.

So my sin and your sin is what hurts our God.

So we want to become more surrendered.

We want to become more yielded. And you know, perhaps today you

might be inclined to come forward just you and the Lord

and say, Lord, these things are in the way of my life.

Now I want to publicly declare before you and before this

people. That I want to go deeper with

you. You can do it in your seat, you

can do it in front, you can do it in the car on the way home.

But somehow this coming to some kind of sense in your life that

you want more of God and less of yourself.

I know I do. I mean, this is something I

think about every day. This not when I'm preaching on

this on on a Sunday. How can I get closer to the Lord

and how can I become more of a blessing to him and to you guys?

That's my desire. We always remember His death,

His burial's resurrection, and I'd like to also think more

about this indwelling Holy Spirit that's in us.

If there's anything there today in my heart that's in the way of

His will for my light, that he would make it clear to me.

And, and I might not be able to resolve it today, but at least

my mind is aware of it now. Maybe because the Holy Spirit's

showing me. And then I can work on that

right in the days ahead with the Lord's help, I can see him help

me through what it is I need to to grow in.

And no, no guilt trips, no condemnation.

It's just this recognition of there's no end to how deep we

can go until we're out of this world.

And the Bible says then we'll see him as he is or we will see

him and be like him because we we shall see him as he is.

But on this side of heaven. It's a lifelong process, isn't

it, of becoming more like him. And it doesn't happen overnight,

but it does significantly happen when we come to these points in

our life where we decide to just say, Lord, I'm done with this.

I want to surrender that. Lord.

We're just so grateful for your patience with us, how much you

love us, how gentle you are to us, Lord, how you've convicted

us so many times that we didn't listen and we offended you, we

wounded you, we grieved you, we quenched you.

And it was stupid. Because Lord, you want to pour

out blessings, You want to bring living waters from your throne

into our hearts to be poured out to others.

And we so often, Lord, allow trivial things to to get in the

way. Self centeredness,

unforgiveness, bitterness, Lord's selfishness, our own

agendas, our own will. Lord, you know what we're like

and you still work with us. You still love us.

And so Lord, each of us today we to give to you whatever it is

that you're asking us for, to be willing to listen to you about

whatever it is you might want to show us.

So Lord, we can be prepared. Like Peter was that day.

Whenever you forgave him for the denial, you lifted him up.

You told him to get back up into the battle, and You empowered

him. You poured out your spirit upon

him and filled him. And Lord, he was a different man

than he was that night when he was trembling, denying you.

He spoke boldly. Lord, Your word and Your word

was effectual and the preaching and it brought many to

salvation. Lord, we know that You want to

use each of us in different ways, Lord.

So Lord, I pray for your people today that you would bless them

and encourage them and, and help them to see the, the growth in

their own life as they surrender to you.

Show them, Lord, your pleasure as they surrender certain things

and, and, and allow you to change them to become more like

you. That's that's the purpose of

your church. And we would become more like

you, Lord Jesus. So Lord, whatever it is,

whatever it is that's been brought to you today, Lord, we

just lay at your feet and we thank you.

We're so glad you joined us today on this edition of Living

Waters of Grace. Pastor Clark is teaching through

the Book of Acts, which is the only book that chronicles the

history of the early church immediately after Jesus's

ascension. It gives us a front row seat to

how the Gospel began to move outward, starting in Jerusalem

and reaching into the heart of the Roman Empire in just three

decades. A small group of frightened

ordinary believers became a bold, spirit empowered movement

that transformed the known world.

Acts is not just a history lesson.

It's a reminder of what God can do when His people are

surrendered, obedient and filled with the Holy Spirit.

Their perseverance still inspires us today.

May we follow their example and live faithfully for Christ in

our own time. We hope today's message

encouraged you. Living Waters of Grace is a

ministry of Calvary Chapel, Westmoreland.

If you're in the Greensburg, PA area, we'd love to have you join

us in person. Our Sunday service begins at

10:30 AM at 400 E Pittsburgh St. Unit 6B.

Be sure to visit calvarychapelonline.com to

confirm times and learn more. If you are in the Greensburg

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

Please pray about supporting this outreach.

Gifts can be sent to Grace FMPO Box 716, Greensburg, PA 15601.

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Thank you for tuning in and spending this time in God's

Word. Be sure to join us again for

Living Waters of Grace.