More

This morning, let's talk about more.

So here's the reality: the scriptures, the Bible, right, never assumes something.

What it never assumes is that you will have any issue loving yourself.

It never assumes that.

It always is going to assume that the natural propensity of mankind is this hyper self-absorbed love that focuses on their own good and benefit.

What the Bible does is work to help us understand that the right posture that man should take is to actually love God and to love their neighbor.

And it understands and helps to show us that it is through the power of God, the gospel of his son Jesus, and the empowering application of redemptive work by the Spirit that enables us to actually do that.

Love God and love our neighbor.

And so we're going to be trying to really understand how we are dependent upon the power and work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and how do we work with that power to be able to foster that love within our life?

We want to be able to love the things of God, what God calls us to love.

Because if we're honest with ourselves, in our society, everything is vying for our affection, right?

Everything wants us to put our love upon it.

And then you take the natural propensity of man to be self-absorbed, we then cast our affections upon the wrong things.

And so we have to work to understand and discipline ourselves to know what has God called us to love and how do we express that love through our lives.

You can probably think through some type of your part or season of your life where you discovered through pain and sorrow that your affections were in the wrong thing.

Right?

Maybe your affections were in sports as you were growing up, coming through high school.

You thought for sure that that was gonna carry you on into something, right?

You were gonna become something as you did this.

Then all of a sudden it just kind of went away, got taken from you.

Maybe there was pain or sorrow.

Maybe there was an individual who you thought was gonna be the one, right, to really make you uh uh whole and complete in the ways in which you so desired to be.

And then when that didn't work out, there was pain, sorrow, right?

All of this brokenness that followed it.

Maybe it was a career, maybe it was uh an educational choice, maybe it was uh you name it, right?

We've all learned hard lessons when we've put our love and affection into the wrong things that fail us.

So God calls us to put our love into the right things, ultimately in Him.

And so as we look through this series, here's what we need to do: we need to focus our efforts, disciplines, strivings on learning to love the things of God.

To endeavor on such a journey, though, we have to work to understand how we might accomplish that, right?

So if that's kind of the purpose of the series, then we really have to ask, well, how are we going to accomplish such a task?

And I want to give us three kind of guiding principles as we set forth on this sermon series to help us navigate how we might actually foster those loves within us.

The first guiding principle that we have to look at is revelation.

Revelation.

Now, not the book of Revelation, right?

Not four horsemen of the apocalypse or blood moons or something of that nature.

All those are great in some way, uh, but revelation as a theological principle.

What this means is that we serve a God who has revealed himself and has given us truth of which we can rightly know him and submit in following his ways.

All of the Christian faith is really banked on this premise.

Has God spoken?

If so, through what means?

And if so, do we have access to that?

Right?

Has God spoken?

Through what means?

What's the accessibility?

If God has truly spoken, if we really serve a God who has revealed himself, rather than remaining concealed or veiled from our knowledge and understanding, if we serve a God who has revealed himself, then we have to ask, by what means has he revealed himself?

And we have to look at the scriptures as the primary way of which God has authoritatively revealed himself to us.

He has given us truth.

And the beauty of God's sovereign hand throughout antiquity is that those scriptures have been preserved for us that we might have accessibility to them to truly know and understand God.

There is no work in all of literary history that is more accessible and that is more proven than the scriptures.

By tens of thousands of copies of the scriptures throughout antiquity have we been able to affirm and assess and have confidence in that we have handed down to us what is truly affirmed and asserted as God's revelation or his revealing of himself to his people.

There is no other book in all of antiquity that even holds a candle to what the scriptures have for us.

And so if God has spoken, and if God has spoken through the Bible, and we have accessibility to it, then what we have is an obligation to seek to understand it and to submit our lives to it.

These are necessary realities of serving a God who has revealed himself.

If we simply serve a God who's concealed himself, well then guess what?

Speculation is our best possible reality.

If God has remained cloaked or veiled, then your guess as to what God is like or what he's called us to love or how we should love is just as good as my best guess, right?

Because all we're doing is we're working in speculation.

And so therefore, truth is ambiguous or hyper-relevant, uh relative, and so your truth is your truth, and my truth is my truth.

And how many have heard that within the language of culture recently?

There are some places where your truth is your truth, like pineapple on pizza.

It's your truth.

I also agree with that truth, and I think that it's my truth also.

However, we're really talking about preference, not authoritative objective truth when it comes to should we put pineapple on pizza?

That's a much different question than who is Jesus.

And so we have to submit to the reality that we serve a God who has revealed himself.

And in that, God has revealed where to place our love, how that love lived out should look, and we bear a responsibility to both submit to that truth and foster it in our lives.

As we look at the letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to young Timothy, the lead pastor of the church at Ephesus, he pins this word in 2 Timothy 3, chapters 16 and 17.

He says this, all scripture, so let's stop right there, all scripture.

There is no New Testament at this part.

So when Paul is writing this in history, there is no canon or collective of New Testament letters that we have been able to insert as part of the scriptures.

Paul is fundamentally talking about the Old Testament uh Torah and scriptures that has been revealed through the prophets of old.

Okay?

So Paul's talking about OT here, but it is incorporated into New T in the New Testament in our understanding of revelation, doctrine, truth.

So all scripture is breathed out, inspired by God, and profitable or beneficial for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in what?

Righteousness.

What does righteousness mean?

Righteousness righteousness means the right way in which we should live.

So what is the scriptures beneficial for?

Training or discipline us in the right ways of which we should live.

Now, what's the end result?

That the man of God may be complete, whole, equipped for every good work.

Well, what is that good work?

That good work is distilled down to love God and love your neighbor.

So all of the scriptures, the revealed truth of God that we have, is beneficial for us to walk outrightly the ways of which we should live in the ways that which we should love God and love our neighbor.

And we see this, right?

God has spelled this out for us.

If we even look at simply the New Testament, or I'm sorry, the Ten Commandments, right?

Inside the Ten Commandments, we have both the principle of love God and love our neighbor, and He has provided for us distinct practices of which that should look.

So if we are to love God, right, the first part of the Ten Commandments are what?

Don't have any other gods before me, thou shalt not have graven images, do not take my name in vain, right?

Remember the Sabbath, keep it holy.

All of these are what?

Rooted in loving Him.

And He gives us distinct practices of which that should look like.

He also allows us to be equipped with the ways in which we should love our neighbor.

So, what does the Ten Commandments go on to say?

Do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not covet, do not bear false witness, right?

These are all things that help us be trained and disciplined in what it looks like to love our neighbor.

And how many of you are thankful that God has given us such revelation, right?

Like I'm super thankful he said, don't murder people.

I'm really happy about that, right?

I'm really glad that he said, don't commit adultery or don't steal or don't do these things, right?

These are good and beautiful things for us that really cause flourishing for our individual lives when submitted to.

And so God has given us revelation that we might know how to love him and love our neighbor.

We also have the second guiding principle is devotion.

Devotion, expressing faithfulness to God and his mission, expressing faithfulness to God and his mission.

We really foster devotion through practicing spiritual disciplines in our lives.

Spiritual disciplines are things that are derived from within the scriptures that has been communicated to us as beneficial toward our spiritual maturity.

Right?

We don't just get to fabricate spiritual disciplines to be whatever they want.

Like, oh, I hear God when I'm gardening.

Cool.

Not a spiritual discipline.

Or, yeah, what I'm, you know, doing on my bike and I'm just cruising through.

Okay, that's great.

Not a spiritual discipline.

We're not saying that you can't have relationship with God in all manners of life, but we cannot substitute or forsake what has been revealed as spiritual disciplines for our maturity in Christ Jesus.

And so they are derived from the scriptures to help shape us and conform us into the image of Christ, of which our maturing's endeavor is aimed toward.

Things like prayer, meditation, fasting, worship, confession, witnessing, these are all spiritual disciplines that we apply to our life to both express and cultivate devotion.

Right?

So Paul, again, writing to Timothy, but this is the first letter that he wrote.

So in 1 Timothy 4, 7b, according to the NASB translation of the scriptures, we see this: discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness.

Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness.

So what's Paul saying here?

Discipline means to something that we apply in our own efforts and strengths, right?

We're going to put discipline upon us for the purpose of or the end goal of godliness, that we might reflect God's heart, his love for us, and the ways of which we're called to love others.

Spiritual disciplines are both spiritual, uh, are both personal and corporate.

So if we look at spiritual disciplines in our lives, there's a reality where these spiritual disciplines are personal or private, right?

Many of us think about spiritual disciplines.

We probably think about kind of morning Bible reading time, right?

Or we might think about private prayer life, or we might think about fasting where we don't indulge our flesh in its desires and needs, right?

These are things that are mostly personal.

But we can't just think through the lens of personal when we think of spiritual discipline.

We have to think through the lens of corporate also.

Most of the spiritual disciplines also facilitate some type of community reality to them.

And so what the Bible is helping us understand is that to fully mature in Christ in the way that we're called to be, it's not just something that we can do in autonomy or in isolation, but it's also something that we do in the community of faith together as we are endeavoring for that end of maturing in Christ.

So they are both personal and they are corporate.

We need the body and we need the expression of those spiritual disciplines within the body to fully reach what God has called us to.

Also, spiritual disciplines are things we do in the process of who we become.

Things we do in the process of who we become.

All of us are working to be conform to the image of Christ.

If we're a Christian, right?

That's the end goal.

And so these spiritual disciplines are things that we do in the process of who we desire to become.

Think of it this way: many of you probably have made some type of goal in your life, right?

You've either said, I want to be more healthy, maybe you've said I want to be more productive at work, maybe you've said I want to be a better reader, whatever your goal might be, right?

What's the fascinating thing about setting goals?

If we never work toward them, we never accomplish them, right?

And oftentimes when we don't apply discipline in our behavior and actions, we see negative effects toward the end goals that we might have had in mind.

Like for me, I always have this like thing of losing weight.

And then summer hits and I get a King's Island meal plan.

And I don't put any discipline around my life of the choices that I make while I'm at King's Island.

And so what happens?

I gain weight during the summer.

I don't know how that works.

I'm sweating more than I've than I've ever sweated all year.

I walk more than I've ever walked all year, but somehow I put on 25 plus pounds in the summertime.

And what happens?

I might have a goal of who I want to become, but if I don't understand how to put discipline upon my life of things I do in the process of who I'm desiring to become, chances are I'm never going to accomplish it.

And so, same thing.

God in his mystery has done something very fascinating.

He has fully held intact his sovereignty while still fully holding intact our will.

They are not in competition necessarily with one another, of which one has uh dominance in through that one does not eradicate the other.

God is fully sovereign, man is fully responsible.

If God was so sovereign in such a way that it eradicated our will and responsibility, man would not be able to be found guilty in our inability to walk out the righteousness of God of which he's called us to.

We would lose a sense of agency, we would lose a sense of responsibility, we would lose guilt.

So man has responsibility.

And man is shown that responsibility throughout the scriptures of the ways in which we conform our life to that of Christ Jesus.

God's sovereignty, man's responsibility, and mystery are suspended in perfect harmony with one another.

God is totally sovereign, yet we are totally responsible.

And so we have to look at spiritual disciplines as things we do in the process of who we are becoming.

And then lastly, spiritual disciplines are the means to obtain the end.

The means to obtain the end.

There's a reality where we can put spiritual disciplines as the end.

And if I can just read my whole Bible, if I can just have this many hours of prayer life, if I can just be this pious, if I can just, right, and we kind of put these things in view of the way that we understand spiritual disciplines, and they become an end.

And when we don't accomplish that, when we don't achieve that, we often are devastated or we see unhealth be produced within our spiritual life.

Spiritual disciplines are a means to an end of which is God.

They should be driving us toward more of Him.

Right?

What is the chief end of man?

But to know God and enjoy Him forever.

That's our purpose in life, that we might be fully consumed, intoxicated with the reality of who God is.

Because in that is all of the joy, pleasure, satisfaction, peace that we could long for in our lives.

It is found fully in Him.

God is the source and substance of all things beautiful.

And so for us, spiritual disciplines are a means to a better end, which is to fully know and have Him.

Last guiding principle.

So we've got revelation, devotion, last is transformation.

Transformation, working with the Holy Spirit to renew the image of God in us.

We have to understand that the Holy Spirit is the primary agent of transformation.

Without the work of the Holy Spirit, all of our efforts in trying to do good and do better are actually found condemning and damning to the individual because they are rooted in a pursuit of self-righteousness where we have tried to earn our own right standing with God through our own works rather than fully trusting and resting in the finished work of Christ Jesus who has accomplished that for us.

And so the gospel demands that we are a people who do not work for relationship and reconciliation with God through our own strivings and efforts, but we work from reconciliation and relationship with God through Christ's perfect effort.

And it is there that we are able to be conform to the image of Christ in our strivings because we are not working for His reconciliation, favor, love, blessing.

We are working in joy from it.

In that, we have to also realize that the Holy Spirit does not work in contradiction to our efforts, but in concert with our efforts.

The Holy Spirit does not work in contradiction to our efforts, but in concert with our efforts.

Going back to what we were just talking about a little bit, if we don't apply spiritual disciplines to our life, there is a strong reality where the Holy Spirit will not foster transformation within you.

There is some mystery to be understood and submitted to that the Holy Spirit works in concert with our own efforts to see the image of Christ conformed in us.

Now, without the Holy Spirit, all those efforts would be vain, condemning, damning.

We'd have no hope in our own strivings and efforts.

But with the Holy Spirit working in concert, not contradiction to our own strivings, as Christians who have been bought with the blood of Christ and brought into the family of God, now we see the harmony of power.

We're reading our Bible, actually does something.

We're praying, does something.

We're fasting, does something.

We're these spiritual disciplines empowered by the supernatural gift of the Spirit produces the change in outcomes we long for in our lives.

You see, we are indwelt, sealed, gifted, and subsequently filled by the Spirit to become more.

Like God, specifically God the Son, Jesus the Christ.

2 Corinthians 4 10 kind of displays this for us.

As Paul's writing to the church at Corinth here in this letter, he he says, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

What's Paul talking about?

Himself.

He's always carrying with him the death of Jesus, meaning putting to death the desires of his flesh, the lusts of his eyes, the works of his own hand to accomplish righteousness.

Paul has continually talked about how he puts no confidence in the flesh.

Why?

So that the life of Jesus may be known, he also says, manifested in his body.

That's through the power of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection, power of the Spirit in Paul is able to produce the life of Jesus in his flesh as Paul labors on to put to death his fleshly carnal state.

In this transformation, our affections are conformed through our person being conformed to him.

So in the process of transformation, our affections are conformed through our person being conformed to him.

As we become more like him, we grow in loving both the things that God loves and the ways in which he loves.

So, more of God in us will create more of God through us.

It seems like a simple concept, right?

More of God in us, more of God through us.

But it's an extremely difficult part of the Christian life.

Something that we struggle with constantly throughout this life of faith of which we live, and something that seems so simple of a concept.

But probably what I would submit happens often is that we simply leave this concept as a concept itself.

Rather than working to apply that truth to our very life.

We understand the theology, we understand the concept, we understand the knowledge of it, but to actually apply discipline and truth to our lives is a whole nother thing.

And that's where the rubber meets the road of Christian maturity.

Can you take the theology and can you make it applicable to your actual life?

There's so many of us that just stay in headspace.

We stay in knowledge, we stay in concept, we stay in theological uh premises, yet we rarely take those things and apply them to our Christian life in a way that actually produces the fruit that we long for.

You can study systematic theology, biblical theology, or whatever other theology all day long.

If you can't take that and apply it to your life, it's of no benefit.

Simple as that.

Your theology will not save you.

We have to be a people who strive to not just leave it in concept, but see it actually manifest in applied truth.

This is where the fruit of Christian living is discovered.

To understand the concept alone is fruitless.

But when it's applied, uh but when it is applied, fruit will begin to produce.

Yeah, in all of this, there's still one piece to uncover.

Right?

What's the end goal?

So if we're gonna be a people who strive to love the things of God more, to love the way in which God calls us to love more, what's the end result?

Typically, when we talk about this in the Christian church, in our context, it's typically met with some type of self-absorption and result.

Right?

I want to have more self-confidence, I want to have more self-esteem.

I want to be more about self-care.

I want to be more about self-promotion, I want to be more about the life I always dreamed of having for myself.

If we're honest, much of our pursuit of more of God is actually rooted in a desire for more for ourselves.

However, that's not what we actually see in the scriptures.

If we look at anything post-Pentecost and the filling of God's people by the power of the Spirit, what I hope to put on display for us is that what the fruit is, is not more of God for more of what we desire, but more of God for more of Him to be made known to the world around us.

Christians were not just filled with the Spirit to be conformed to Christ.

Christians were filled with the Spirit to make Christ known.

And so we have a reality where more of God in us will mean more of God through us.

This is the heart of more.

Not that we become radically self-absorbed, which seems to be the aim of many, but to become radically him absorbed in our person and proclamation.

Now let's look at a story in the book of Acts to help us unpack that as I try to bring us in here.

So we're in Acts 4 as we're reading this text.

And let's set the scene of what happened.

Earlier in Acts 3, Peter and John were walking to the temple, and on their way, they passed by this man.

He was a lame man who was laid daily at this gate called beautiful.

The gate called Beautiful was a really big gate, quite beautiful, at the temple.

And it separated at this point the court of the Gentiles, where just about anybody was allowed to come into, and then the more exclusive areas of the temple that started to get more exclusive as you went in toward the Holy of Holies, right?

Of who could enter these places.

So this lame man was set at the gate called Beautiful, and he would beg for alms.

Peter and John are coming to the temple, and they pass by him, and he begs for some money.

Peter and John respond very simply Gold and silver have I not, but what I do have I give to you.

Rise up and walk in the name of Jesus.

And the dude gets up and he starts walking, and people start noticing that this guy who has been a lame beggar for days upon days upon days, now is all of a sudden up and walking and seemed to be made whole.

So what does Peter and John do?

They walk over to this other part of the temple called Solomon's Portico.

Portico is just a fancy word for porch.

And if you look throughout the Gospels, you'll see Jesus taught a lot here because many people gathered in this specific area.

Again, because it's located in the court of the Gentiles, both Jews and Gentiles could kind of uh facilitate being assembled there.

And so they start preaching the gospel.

Well, people get mad.

Religious leaders come over and they say, What's going on?

And they hear that John and Peter are preaching the resurrection in Christ Jesus.

And there's these group of dudes named the Sadducees, and they're really upset about this.

Why, you ask?

I'm glad you asked.

Why is because they did not believe in the resurrection of the dead.

That's why they were sad, you see.

Got it?

Because they didn't believe in the resurrection of the dead.

So they're mad that Peter and John are preaching the resurrection of the dead through Jesus Christ.

So what do they do?

They arrest him.

They arrest Peter and John, and it is too late at night for them to do anything major.

So they spend the night in uh in jail.

Then they come out before the council the next morning to be judged.

There's a couple problems.

One is they don't really have any genuine charges to put against them.

And two, too many people are being uh corralled around this reality that this lame man has been healed in the name of Jesus.

And so, out of a little bit of fear of the crowds and out of no legitimate charges to apply to them, they just threaten them.

Well, what does Peter and John do when they threaten them?

They preach the gospel even more.

And so what does that council do?

Well, they threaten them even more.

And because they have no real charges to apply to them, and because they see the crowds that are assembling around this miracle that happened, they release Peter and John.

And what do they do?

They run back to the church.

And that's where we enter the scene in Acts chapter 4.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

They run back to the church.

I love this.

Let me just highlight Acts 4, 19 through 20, right before this passage.

Here was Peter and John's response to the council before them.

They said this.

They said, but Peter and John answered them.

Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.

They're saying, look, whether you think it's good to preach the gospel or not, you're gonna have to stand before God, figure that out on your own.

We cannot help, we are compelled to proclaim the majesty and glories of Christ Jesus because of what we have seen and heard through our own testimony.

And so they run back to the church and they meet with their friends.

And in verse 23, we see in the text the place of their prayer.

As soon as Peter and John were released, they went to their friends, they went to community to support and to care.

And together with their community, they lifted their voices in prayer.

Here's three things I love about this.

Number one, prayer is primary.

Imagine yourself in this situation, right?

You just went out to like Fountain Square and you were preaching the gospel, and then uh the Scientologist people come over and they kidnap you, force you into a dark chamber.

No, I'm just taking this too far.

Anyway, you get into some trouble.

People threaten you because of your preaching of the gospel, and all of a sudden you kind of get back, you're released out of this dangerous situation, you're back with your friends and family, you're back with your church community.

You and I probably would have the propensity to strategize retreat or retaliation.

That would be our propensity, right?

Hey guys, this crazy thing just happened.

We either have to figure out a way we're gonna retreat, or we're gonna have to figure out a way we're gonna retaliate against what happened.

What do they do though?

Pray.

Prayer is their primary response to threats being made about them in relationship with the mission they understand that they're called to to preach the gospel of Jesus.

Second thing, we see that prayer is critical to the mission.

So prayer is their primary response, but prayer is critical to the mission.

They were preaching the gospel, right, when they the lame man was healed.

They preached the gospel when they were threatened by the trial, and they had every intention to continue preaching the gospel even after they were released and threatened.

And so, what did they understand?

If we're not gonna cover the mission of God in prayer, we're gonna set ourselves up for disaster.

And so they saw prayer as actually critical to the mission.

What was the mission?

Not having more blessedness in your life, not having more comfort, not being able to have your the the life you've always dreamed of or be more self-esteem or whatever, blah, blah, blah.

Whatever.

Throw it out the window.

What was the mission?

Make Christ known.

That's the mission.

At all costs, even if it cost me my life, I'm going to make Christ known.

So what do I need to do?

I need to cover this in prayer.

Thirdly, it's prayer as a voice of unity.

Persecution was coming.

And they would need the unity of the church to endure.

This is what we talked about throughout the letter of Philippians, right?

What was Paul calling the church to?

Fearless unity.

Why?

Because if we really are living the Christian life and we really are proclaiming the gospel of Jesus to the world around us, persecution is guaranteed to follow.

And so we need the fearless unity of the church to be able to withstand the culture around us seeking to snuff out the beauty of the gospel.

And so, like many militaries of past who would have a song as they marched out into battle, prayer became the anthem of the church.

Prayer became the anthem of the church.

Verses 24b through 30, we see the prayer for more.

The prayer for more.

So if the first part was the place of their prayer, here we're gonna see the plea of their prayer.

They start this prayer off with the adoration.

Sovereign Lord.

First part of their prayer.

Sovereign Lord who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them.

Sounds very familiar to the way that Jesus taught us to pray.

Father, hallowed be your name.

Adoration of his glory, his holiness.

This is exactly what they point to first.

God, you are sovereign Lord who made the heaven and the earth.

And then what do they do?

They quote scripture for assurance and strength.

I love this, that they're pulling from the script.

We talked about all scripture is God breathed and beneficial for, right?

And so what do they do?

They're quoting scripture here.

They're actually quoting a messianic psalm out of Psalm 2, verses 1 through 2.

Psalms 2:1–2

And here's what they quote, right?

They say, Who through the mouth of our father David, right, the psalmist, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, inspired by God, breathed out by God.

Remember, 2 Timothy 3.16, why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples plot in vain?

The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed.

Psalm 2, 1 through 2 actually states, why do the nations rage and the people plot in vain?

The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying.

But here's what's beautiful about what they do they see the scriptures in light of the gospel.

And they tie perfectly, Psalm 2, 1 through 2, to the reality of Christ and His suffering and glorious resurrection.

You see, all of Scriptures should cause us to see the truth of the gospel.

If we look and we read on, it says, For truly in this city they were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus.

So they're taking Psalm 2, and what they're doing is they're flowing it perfectly into the revelation of Christ and who He is.

It's a gospel-centered understanding of the text, of all of Scripture pointing to the truth of Jesus.

The scriptures reveal all of them that the Messiah should suffer and then rise again.

If we look in Luke chapter 24, Jesus has already resurrected from the dead, and he's walking with his disciples through the uh road to Emos, and he stops, he starts teaching them the scriptures, and it says this in Luke 24, 45 through 46.

Luke 24 · chapter mention

Then he, speaking of Jesus, opened there the disciples' minds to understand what?

The scriptures, the OT.

And said to them, Thus it is written, in this way the scriptures are written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead.

Literally, what Jesus is helping his disciples understand, all of the scriptures point to the glorious truth of the gospel.

And we see in this very prayer, the apostles very early on in the earth of the church starting, how they're able to weave and understand even something like Psalm 2 pointing to the truth of Christ.

Now, we wouldn't be a very good reformed church if we didn't park on verse 28 for just a moment.

Verse 28 declares this to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

What Paul is helping understand there is that God orchestrates or works all things for his glory.

And what they're helping us understand is that even in the suffering of Christ, in his crucifixion, in public death, God worked all things, even the sin of man, for the glory of God.

You see, all things, even our sin, are used for the purposes of God.

We have agency in that we have responsibility and guilt in our actions, but God is so sovereign that even he uses them for his glorious purpose.

Isaiah 53 says it was the will of the Father to crush him.

The scriptures reveal to us that he is the Lamb who was crucified before the foundations of the earth.

This is the whole aiming focus of God, that he would even use sin for his glorious purposes.

Look at the story of Joseph.

What the devil or enemy meant for evil, not God turned around, not that he flipped the script on him, but what it actually says is that even though the enemy meant this for evil, God meant this.

And what's that mean?

The exact same actions, the exact same outcomes, God meant for good.

God used the wickedness of Joseph's brothers to save Israel from famine.

Because he's that sovereign.

I love what Paul uh John Piper says in his book, Spectacular Sins and Their Global Purpose in the Glory of Christ.

He quotes this God did not just overcome evil at the cross, he made evil serve the overcoming of evil, he made evil commit suicide in doing its worst evil.

Look at the sovereignty of God's hand, even in our sin.

Nothing was going to thwart the purposes of God in Christ Jesus.

Lastly, though, they petition God.

Here's the heart of the request that they make.

Says in 29, and now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.

What are they asking for?

What are they requesting?

To preach and to prove.

To preach and to prove.

Grant us boldness to continue to proclaim and preach the gospel and prove or affirm the message by continued signs and wonders through the name of your Son Jesus.

You see, the church was committed to mission, which fundamentally meant they were committed to prayer.

A prayer that would resound throughout the church and the spreading of the kingdom, more of you to make you known more.

And then verse 31, we see the fruit of a prayer for more.

The fruit of a prayer for more.

What happens?

The place in which they were praying begins to shake.

And they were all filled with the Spirit.

We have to look at this as this filling of the Spirit is a subsequent, ongoing empowerment that God provides to his people for mission.

A subsequent, ongoing empowerment which God provides for his people for mission.

What I mean by that is this when we are saved, when our faith is put into Christ Jesus, and we are regenerated into new life, right?

We've been born again.

In that moment, the Spirit fills us, indwells us, seals us, baptizes us into Christ.

But we see evidences throughout the scriptures, and Acts 4 is one of them, where we see these subsequent fillings of the Spirit that are ongoing empowerments for the believer for the purpose of mission.

Throughout Acts, you see this reality.

You see this call to be filled with the Spirit.

Paul's already talking to a group of believers who have been regenerate, who've been born again, who already have the indwelling spirit within them.

But what does he call them to do?

Be filled, ongoing realities of us as New Testament believers.

We have to look beyond some measure to, in our new mythology, our understanding of the Holy Spirit, how by faith through salvation, yes, we are sealed, we are indwelt, we are baptized by the Spirit, but the scriptures call us to continually pursue the Spirit in such a way that we are ongoing being filled by Him for the purpose of mission.

And the fruit of their prayer and subsequent power was proclamation.

Continued to speak the word of God with boldness.

You see, the fruit of a prayer for more of God is not for some promotion of self, it's not for the promotion of our own state, our own self-confidence, self-esteem, self-care, but for the promotion of him and his gospel.

Our best self-state is known when we are completely absorbed in the glory of his name.

And so the fruit of a prayer for more will result in making him known more.

God fills us with his spirit so that we would pour out his fame.

And so our main idea as we walk away from this message, this introduction to the series is more of God fuels making him known more.

More of God fuels making more Him known more.

Here's what I know.

What we are full of will pour out of us.

What we are full of will pour out of us.

You've probably been around me long enough to some measure, or maybe you have a friend or family member who's like this, right?

When they get like a new hobby or a new interest, they're a person that you don't even want to be around.

Right?

They get so absorbed into reading everything that they can about the subject.

They watch YouTube videos on all the different uh angles and understandings and nuances of this particular hobby.

Then they start buying stuff and then they don't like what they bought, so they sold that stuff, and then they buy more stuff, and then every time you're around them, they got to tell you all about it, right?

I got you some of you do this in workout, right?

I I can tell when you are like fully immersing yourself in workout stuff because you're talking to me about all the, you know, I got these rogue plates and I got these shoes that help me lift better.

And have you, how many, what kind of protein are you doing?

I'm like, I don't know, man.

Uh meat and cheese, I think is what I'm doing.

Uh some of you do this, right, with like camera gear, or you might do this with uh guitar pedals, or you might do this with whatever.

Sometimes I geek out about different Bibles because like all the different skins, is this goat skin or is this Italian calf leather?

What kind of yap you got on that?

Hey, hey, what's the block script?

Is it 16-point slab serif?

I do like I geek out about this stuff, right?

And what happens?

When I'm filling up myself with something, it pours out of me.

And why do you think that it's so difficult for us as a people to have God naturally pour out of our life?

Let me submit, it's because we're filling ourselves up with things that are not Him.

There's plenty of us in this room where every time we talk, we talk about, you know, we talk about bourbon or we talk about craft beer, or we talk about bands, or we talk about MMA, or we talk about whatever.

And hey, praise God that we can enjoy the good things that he gives us with one another.

I'm so thankful for that.

And God can be worshiped and glorified in that, right?

But how many times have we got together and just not talked about the beauty and glory of the gospel?

About the way that Christ is transforming us and renewing us and conforming us into his image, about how the Holy Spirit played it out in our lives in the workplace or our family reunion or the whatever get together that we got to go to, or hey, about this opportunity where I got to witness to this brother about the truth of the gospel.

Why is that so absent from our everyday life?

Because we really don't want more of Him.

And we pursue filling ourselves up with things that are not of God, and it's no wonder that that's the very things that pour out of us.

What we take in, meditate on, long for, sacrifice to attain, these are the things that will pour out of our life.

To be filled with God, to love the things he loves and the ways in which he loves will burn inside us.

And the result of such passion is a passionate witness to the world around us.

A passionate pursuit for more of God will inevitably work itself out to a passionate witness to the world around us.

It can't help but to do that.

We have a propensity to want more of God for selfish reasons.

But to truly have more of God will result in selfless lives focused on Him and others.

Amen.

Amen.